Perhaps it is my age that I am conditioned to love a good chase scene. The cop in pursuit of the bad guy of course is the classic. Running down the lanes, and jumping over the fences. The famous car sequences like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, or the Bond films with car and boat chases come to mind.
But what if you are chasing the wrong villain?
Now you may think that this is where I pivot into talking politics and after giving a little acknowledgement to some of the current political monsters in the world (you know who they are) move to talk about Xi Jinping and how he is that sleeper that is going to really make a mess of the world during, or shortly after the American presidential election. No. I am not that smart.
What I am referring to is a nasty villain I learned about on my last trip to the Doctor. In various other posts I have covered some of the things I have learned at such visits. My “Doctor” is actually a clinic with several practitioners, all of whom seem to enjoy messing with me and my aging body.
But this time my usual designated General Practitioner at the clinic, wanted to talk about a villain I had ignored while trying to pursue the big nasties in my hypertension life: Fat, Sodium, Sugar, and Carbohydrates. While judiciously trying to cut down or avoid these four, Cholesterol was often there lurking in the wings I learned. Damb, I like brie cheese and milk, and eggs and croissants and….well, it’s a long list once you start into it. Those four current components I am already avoiding make me feel like a pinball. Just bouncing away from one only to bounce into another. And now there is one more pin to hit in trying to complete the course. Its not that I was chasing the wrong health thief, just that while chasing the right ones, another was picking my pocket.
My doctor is a bit of a character and I was leaving the office she called to me down the hall with a little afterthought that I should also think about joining a fraternity. My puzzled look was her queue to snicker: Omega 3
So last week there I was at the grocery store, with my glasses on, scribbling on my pad looking at some of my favourite foods and dutifully not letting them make it to the cart as they all have at least one of these five problem components in abundance, and most have many of them represented. I already eat a mess of vegetables and fruit but really need to up the beans, lentils, oats and oatmeal and some fatty fish like salmon for this cholesterol component. Dark chocolate is a crazy one. Its good to reduce the bad cholesterol, and to increase the good cholesterol but comes packaged up with lots of sugar and fat.
I take this health business personally and when I am not getting good blood pressure numbers indicating my hypertension is winning it gets me down. But you have to take it all in stride and not let one days bad numbers dampen your spirits if the day before you didnt go for a nice walk or were not as diligent in your food choices. Don’t beat yourself up, just resolve to do better the next day. I also know that there are a lot of people in the world who would love to trade their problems for mine.
Stay tuned. I will may survive this.
Django