They Said This 30 Years Ago

Boozers' kin more likely to be obese and lap up food instead of alcohol: study

Reuters

Sunday, January 2nd 2011, 4:00 AM

CHICAGO - People with a family history of alcoholism are much more likely to be obese - and researchers think it's because their brains make them binge on junk food instead of booze.

"Much of what we eat nowadays contains more calories than the food we ate in the 1970s and 1980s, but it also contains the sorts of calories - particularly a combination of sugar, salt and fat - that appeal to what are commonly called the reward centers in the brain," said Richard Grucza of Washington University in St. Louis.

"Alcohol and drugs affect those same parts of the brain and our thinking was that because the same brain structures are being stimulated, overconsumption of those foods might be greater in people with a predisposition to addiction."

His team found that people with a family history of alcoholism - who may be predisposed to addiction - were almost 50% more likely to be obese.

The alcoholism-overeating link might help explain rising obesity in the United States, which has doubled from 15% of the population in the late 1970s to 33% in 2004.

* * * *

ACOA - Adult Children of Alcoholics - and Overeaters Anonymous have been saying this for decades now. In its heyday back in the 1980's you could find as many ACOA 12-step meetings as AA or OA ones. Many people in OA arrived there via AA or NA or other 12-step groups. In my own family, most of my parent's generation and before were alcoholics and over-eaters. In my generation you also have alcoholics and over-eaters but also gambling addicts, shoppping addicts, hoarders, drug addicts, and sex addicts.

57 in 2011; 500 in 52

I now have a goal of losing just a bit over a pound a week for a total of 57 (and a half) pounds by this time next year. I splurged a bit this holiday season, and was unable to exercise as much as I needed to.




I also have a goal of getting the equivalent of 10 miles per week of exercise, too. I know that some weeks I'll get in more, but I'm a realist and realize that due to circumstances I may not get in even half that on some weeks, especially if an injury occurs. My exercise will be a combination of Leslie Sansone and Richard Simmons aerobics, the treadmill, the exercise bike, and qigong.

I might continue the McDougall food plan when it comes to food choices, but, again as a realist, I know I have to calorie count if I want to lose any weight.

I might just eat a wider variety of foods, including meat and dairy, and just keep the unhealthier choices, like hamburgers and peanut butter cups, to a minimum. I might use the Richard Simmons Foodmover to keep track of it all.

I also realize that I may do all of the above and not lose another ounce, thanks to my still uncontrolled hypothyroid condition, ravages of age that contribute in injuries, and decades of dieting that have left me with the metabolism of a sea sponge.

Or a large rock. Sure, it will reduce its mass, but only after a few millenia of constant pounding on it by running water.

I don't have a few millenia, only a few decades left. In my first 24 hours of life my family was told I was too big, to cut my food in half. And for the majority of my time on this planet I was eating less than my body required for optimal health, yet my size remained about twice that the BMI charts says I should weigh. I have a list of medical problems that can be proven to be caused by these food restrictions, from the thyroid woes, through all the musculo-skeletal problems, and now various nutritional deficiencies.

The doc phoned to say my Vitamin D level is lower than any patient he ever saw, that the lab phoned him to say they ran it twice, it's not a mistake, that even they never saw a level that low. He couldn't wait until my office visit next Monday - he wanted me to start supplementation immediately. If you do a web search for Vitamin D deficiencies you'll find that everything I've complained of the past few years could have been caused by it, including my heart thing from September 2009 AND the lack of weight loss AND the inability to find the right dose of thyroid replacement meds.

When I have that vitamin level retested in a few weeks he's also going to test me for a few other vitamin and mineral deficiencies that usually go along with the Vitamin D one.

I'll find out Monday how the rest of my lab work went - liver profile, lipid levels, thyroid. He said on the phone that a few other things were not normal but they could wait until we spoke in person.

And when I see him Monday we're going to have a serious talk about my food plans. Obviously the low fat vegan one isn't working out as well as hoped. If eating this way leaves me with nutritional deficiencies and I'm still not losing weight, why continue with it? Remember Einstein's definition of insanity!

Richard Simmons's Christmas Message

Can't Wait Until This Year Is Over!

It hasn't been a good few weeks.

The elderly relative we care for, the one who lives an hour away, suddenly had no heat on the first day the outside temps stayed in the 20's. Twice that week we had to drive over after work and stay until 1am while the utility company did its thing. We still had to get up at 4:30am the next morning. Then my husband had to use his last vacation day of the year the next week when they came to remove the old, broken furnace and install a new one. They left at 9pm, leaving her with a new working furnace but also a clogged up sink and a broken radiator, the one they installed a new steam vent on hours before but was now spurting brown water like a deranged Old Faithful! They eventually told us to get a plumber, that it's no longer a utility company job. Since my husband used up all vacation days and won't be off again (not counting New Year's Eve, when the plumber isn't working) until January 17th for Martin Luther King Day, she is now without a sink or radiator in her downstairs half-bath. OK, she can live with that.

Then her kitchen phone starts breaking. It was a $100+ phone with special volume boosters for the ringer and handset, but now it's so low that even my husband, he of the animal-ears and can hear a mouse squeak 3 rooms away while the stereo is on, had trouble hearing anything. I ordered a new special phone from a company that specializes in items for the hard of hearing and deaf, but it won't arrive until next week.

Her hearing is getting worse and she not only can't hear her alarm clock, but she no longer hears the radio part of that alarm clock even though the volume is on full blast, nor does she hear the bedroom phone ring and it's mere inches from her head. I ordered one of those loud ringers with the strobe light flasher that attaches to the phone. We had bought one last year for her kitchen phone so now she does hear that ring if she's anywhere downstairs. We also bought an attachment for the new flasher that goes under the mattress and is supposed to shake her bed when the phone rings, but my tiny cell phone vibrates more than the shaker does so we're returning that. The ringer/strobe arrived at our house the other day, but we haven't been able to get to hers yet to install it.

Why the rush to get this thing installed? She's now gotten her days and nights reversed and stays awake until almost dawn, sometimes stays up 2 days in a row. She's asleep in bed when her homemaker is trying to get in at 2pm. So it's now my job to phone her and wake her up before 2 so she can let the homemaker in. But she doesn't hear the phone! I start dialing her number around 11 am and keep trying until she answers, and last week alone we had to send the homemaker home twice because I couldn't wake the aunt up after three hours of phoning her. Only one of those days was after a 1am furnace call. We're paying over $20 an hour (three hour minimum) for a homemaker who can't get in the house because the aunt is puttering around the house at 3 in the morning instead of sleeping.

At least once the ringer/strobe is installed she'll wake up on the first phone call. Why hasn't this ringer been installed yet?

Have you looked outside (or on the TV, if you don't live in the NY/NJ area)? We got 22 inches of that ugly white stuff the other night and our car is completely buried by the drifting snow. Nobody on our side of the street has been able to dig out yet. The other side of the street got less than 6 inches because the wind blew it all over this way. Everyone across the street has already been driving their cars since the morning of the blizzard.



The snow is up to his shoulders, and that's our car in the upper right corner there.

The homemaker phoned yesterday - she has no where to park her car. The aunt's city only plowed the main streets, streets that allow no parking on normal days. None of the side streets have been plowed, and the neighbor that uses the aunt's snowblower only makes a footpath from the back door to the garbage can and down the driveway to the sidewalk, and a path on the sidewalk. He doesn't clear her whole driveway - and we don't expect him to - because she no longer drives. Luckily her next door neighbor saw the homemaker's dilemma and told her to park in her cleared-out driveway for the 3 hours she was going to be there. Hopefully their city got around to clearing side streets since then so she has somewhere to park today. We're going to ask the neighbor around the corner from her if the homemaker can use his driveway if he's not going to be home. The only other thing to do is for her to find a space a few blocks away in the town's shopping district and walk over. The service's office is there and they have a parking lot. I don't know what else to do. We may wind up having to cancel the homemaker until that city finally clears its streets.

On top of all this, my son has been sick. It started out as the sniffles and went into a full blown ear infection and strep throat. He's 27, and has been sick for all but 2 Christmasses in his life. This is the first time he's ever had an ear infection though. Even as a baby he never got them. I'm the one who always had the ear problems, which is why I'm partially deaf since childhood. Anyway, he was glum enough at the lack of employment opportunities around here and being unemployed since he graduated 2 years ago, then his best friend went away to Thailand with his family for the holiday season and won't be back for a few more weeks, then he had to get sick at at time I had to be out of the house and at the aunt's place playing with the furnace. Poor baby! He's got me now - I can't get out of the house with all this snow!

All these mini-catastrophes have upset my food and exercise routines. It's hard to get an hour of exercise in when you had only 3 hours sleep and have to drive to the aunt's place again at 6 in the morning during rush hour traffic near the Holland Tunnel. I didn't have any leftover healthy food to bring with me on those days so we relied on fatty, salty fast food to sustain us, for all three meals on a few of those days. Then comes all the holiday goodies my husband brought home from work or we got for the aunt/kid. We bought for them but they both kept waving those boxes of butter cookies under our noses. After not having any for 5 years, who can say "No?" Not me.

Luckily I insisted we hit the grocery store on Christmas Eve, when we heard the first rumors of getting more than an inch or 2 of snow. "Snow showers" is what the forecasters were saying up until then. Suddenly it was now up to "a foot or more" in a forecast an hour later. I have a freezer stocked with veggies, a pantry and extra boxes filled with all kinds of beans, tomatoes, pasta and grains. I have enough TP to last us a month. If I need anything else, my husband walks right past a grocery store every day in his journey home from work, and between our house and the light rail station he passes not just that store but about 5 mom & pop delis, a Walgreen and 7-11 if I get desperate.

My lab work was drawn the morning the aunt's furnace went out. I was supposed to get the results this past Monday, but with the doctor stranded in his home city and the office workers stranded in their homes in this one, the visit has been rescheduled for next Monday. Even if my car is still buried I can walk over there. If my B-12 is low he can give me an injection right there and I can increase the amount I'm taking at home. If my Vitamin D is low I can order a vegan version of supplementation from on-line. If the thyroid med needs to be increased the office can phone it in and my husband can pick it up on the way home from work (Since he already walks past Walgreen, anyway). Any other prescription changes will get mailed in to our long-term pharmacy, but I don't foresee anything else changing. It took a long time to get the right combo of asthma meds and I'm sure he's not going to mess with them.

One good thing about being snowed in - I have no excuse not to do my exercises, and have done my workouts every morning since the furnace business was finished, including Christmas morning. My meals have been back on plan, but with those cookies still in the house, well, a few always find their way into my tummy. There aren't that many left and I told my son last night to keep them in his room and enjoy them, NOT to try share them with us any more. They lasted this long because of his sore throat. We'll probably get him more when he's feeling better and I'm back on plan for a while and strong enough to resist them again.

After all this, I only gained one pound this month. That is a miracle in itself. With diligence and sticking strictly to my food plan, that pound will be gone before I hit the doctor's on Monday. Unfortunately I'm up 7 pounds since my last visit to him 3 months ago. I'm sure the thyroid med is going to need to be increased again.

I know I'm hoping 2011 will be better, but know it won't. Already my husband had to use one of next year's vacation days because none of the trains, busses, or light rail were running yesterday so he couldn't get to work. And with the aunt getting more and more confused she's going to need care a lot longer than for 3 hours a day. During the furnace fiasco (started because she forgot it needed to get flushed and have water added) she asked "Where does the coal go in?" even though she has had a gas furnace for over 60 years, and most days when I call and wake her she can't remember who I am. So it looks like this is the year we'll be moving in with her. God help us all!

A CFS Christmas VIdeo

I found this on the CFIDS Community on LiveJournal. It sums up nicely what many of us with undiagnosed - because there's no definitive diagnostic criteria yet - CFS go through. The maker of this video was told she needed psycho-therapy. Many of us just get told to buck-up, walk it off, lose weight and exercise and the fatigue will go away. Well, it's been over 27 years now and my weight has gone up and down but my fatigue persists, now accompanied with even more muscle, nerve and joint problems as well as increasing brain fog.

Marry Christmas.

Pathetic and Apathy

I'm still struggling to maintain my weight. Right now I really don't care too much about losing - I just want to stop gaining! I go for follow-up blood work next week and see the doc the week after, and I'm sure he's going to need to increase my thyroid med again.

Besides the weight gain I'm still very, very tired. I fall asleep during the early evening (during Jeopardy, some times!), go to bed for the night by 8:30pm the latest, and when I wake up to hit the bathroom around 2am just can't get back to sleep most mornings.

I ache. My sciatica that affects my also arthritic right hip makes most even low impact aerobics painful, and a few weeks ago I hurt my left leg doing a T-Tapp exercise known as a Hoe-Down.



The human leg was NOT made to move in extreme side directions, especially not the leg of post-menopausal women with osteoarthritis in her spine and various other joints! I still can't move my left leg/hip in certain positions and it's been about a month now.

The 2 above problems also contribute to my lack of restful sleep every night. Who can sleep when her hip is in pain?

As for the weight, I gave up trying to lose anything eating the McDougall way and for the past week have been sticking to strict Phase 1 of the Rice Diet program, the plan people who actually attend the Rice House get put on for the duration of their stay, the original plan devised by Dr. Kempner back in the 1940's. By starving myself on less than 1000 calories a day (I was already keeping sodium low since childhood) I'm now back down to the weight I was at for one day in November, about 2 weeks in March before that. But I'm starving morning, noon and night. I have increased brain fog, worse than on a bad CFS day. I have less energy than ever. I need to follow The Spoon Theory even closer than usual if I want to continue to eat this way.

That said, I would probably spend every day just lying in bed, but I do have responsibilities. I do have to shop, hit the laundromat, do the cooking and bare minimum of housework. Right now I don't even have the energy to get away from this computer and go refill my water glass.

I'm in a Catch-22 situation regarding next week's bloodwork. In order to have a great lipid profile (Cholesterol) I have to continue to eat a no-fat-added, no sugar, no animal products food plan and get a minimum of an hour a day of cardio/aerobic exercise. But if I eat enough to have enough strength to do that much exercise I'll gain weight, making my cholesterol and triglycerides go back up, making my doctor very disappointed in me.

What the heck, he's disappointed already because near starvation levels of calories aren't making my weight go down. He's been after me for over 27 years now to lose weight. Why can't either one of us accept the fact that it's just not gonna happen in this lifetime?

To assist me in accepting this, I'm first going to have a decent breakfast, once I finally peel myself off this seat. I'm going to re-read Dr. Linda Bacon's book, Health At Every Size. Last week I finally got to order Beyond A Shadow of A Diet, another book that promotes the same philosophy as Overcoming Overeating.

I already planned the labwork for before Christmas so this year I can have some indulgence for the holiday without feeling guilt. That's a start, I guess. Hopefully the TSH will prove to the doc that my thyroid med needs to be increased yet again, and my lipids will be as perfect as they were back in March so he'll leave me alone about the weight for a while.

I know, I sound like a broken record, writing the same things over and over again, year after freaking year. Does it ever stop? Will I ever not care? I was there summer 2009, then had the stress-related heart event that has me now labeled as a cardiac patient and sent me back to square one. I would love to get back there again.

TMNT

For anyone who has a child born in the early 1980's like I do, you KNOW what those letters mean - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

To this day my son still owns every Turtle action figure (including the elusive April one) and video (Yes, he still has his VHS tapes) he ever purchased or got as a gift. In fact, this year for Christmas he's getting the DVD set of the 3 original TMNT movies plus the newer one from 2007.

I've got to email him the url for this video, though. It'll make his day.