Tag Archives: Health

Yearly Doctor’s Visit

Last year, I decided that on or around my birthday, I would make an appointment with my PCP to do a routine check to make sure that everything is OK. Last year, I got all my stuff checked, got a standard lipid panel and everything was fine.

Over the course of the year, I have learned so much new information regarding health and wellness. I wanted to carry this information with me into this years visit. Without going into details of everything that was done/checked at this visit, there were a few things that were particularly frustrating.

Firstly, the doctor told me that I had gained 11 pounds since my visit last year. She said that according to her BMI calculation (which she said “she had done”, when really, I’m sure it was her “Doctor Application” on her laptop that blinked red and said “UH OH!”), I was sitting at 33% body fat. The BMI measurement is not always accurate. There are tons of articles on this and I am not really sure as to why it’s still used as a standard measure. In any case, I know this is not true. I had my body fat measured a month ago and it was about 10% less than that. I will have it measured again in the next few days as part of my monthly data point.

So, she told me I needed to loose some weight. OK fine.

Secondly, I walked in there with a list of additions to the standard lipid panel that I wanted to check. It was things like my vitamin D level, C-Reactive Protein, and LDL particle size. I also asked about getting one of the more extensive lipid panels like VAP, NMR, or GGE, but she quickly shot those done stating that they likely would not be covered as she had no reason to order them. At one point, she even said that if I wasn’t requesting it, she wouldn’t even be doing the standard blood lipid panel on me because mine was normal last year. WHAT?

Lady, I have all sorts of shit running rampant in my family. Diabetes, hyper-tension, high blood pressure, auto-immune stuff, high cholesterol, strokes, blood clots, you name it… Excuse me for wanting to be sort of on top of this. Fucking medical industry…

In the end I ended up going with the standard lipid panel with adding vitamin D and C-Reactive Protein. I still am curious about a more extensive blood lipid panel and will likely do one of the self testing options that are available.

It really bugged me that it was almost like a negotiation session to get her to test for some of these things. What better reason than “I am the damn patient and I want to know” do I need?

I understand that most people go in there and don’t know their ass from their elbow. They are completely oblivious and have taken a back seat to their own health and wellness. Most people do not ask for this sort of testing. I get it. Really, I do.

Sorry, I am not those people.

I read. I research. I listen to ideas. I am curious. I am an active participant in my own health. Why is this not normal? Why is it considered weird or paranoid to want to know what is going on inside your own body?

The world we live in today has quite a bit wrong with it.

Grocery Shopping

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In my last post, I talked about going to the Sassy Pea market on Crystal Falls Pkway. While we were there, I started talking to V about the sense of satisfaction that I get from buying my food from people who actually know where it comes from.

I talked about this with my friend Ryon once and he said “I die a little inside every time I go to Costco”. I can’t think of a better way to say that.

Believe me, Costco has it’s uses, but I don’t really buy that many food items there anymore. Their meat isn’t grass fed and the majority of their produce is not organic. Lately, though, I am starting to see a few more organic products popping up here and there. Still though, there’s no way I can get everything I want/need as far as food goes there.

The next step we took was to start going to Whole Foods. Whole Foods claims that it’s chickens are free range and that it’s “grazing animals” are grass fed. Do I believe them? Well maybe. I don’t know. I can’t see them, nor can I talk to the person that raised the cows/pigs/chickens/etc. Also, their produce is too damn expensive and is shipped around the world from god knows where. In fact, I cracked a joke this weekend at the register asking when they would be accepting “first born child” as a method of payment as I “can’t afford this shit”. I will go adopt a kid and give it to Whole Foods if I have to.

Yes, I was joking. Luckily I can afford to pay for this crap. Hell, you can either pay for it now or later right? I guess I might as well pay now and hopefully not get a bunch of diseases later on.

Whole Foods does a great job of “selling organic”. Yes, I know that tons and tons of fossil fuel was burned to get this cauliflower to the store, but AT LEAST it wasn’t grown with nasty chemicals and <whatever>iscides. I always feel like I am doing something better for myself than buying the beef that walked around in it’s own shit and never saw a blade of grass from Costco/HEB/Walmat/<supermarket>.

I guess where I am headed with all of this is that I want local and I want organic. Yes. I am one of the hippies that I used to always bitch about. The corporate machine, man, the corporate machine is killing the people of this country with the terrible food that they MANUFACTURE to make money. And yes, people are WAY to stupid to know what is going on. Not many people want to know where their food actually comes from and what’s in it.

Getting back to the Sassy Pea market…

I loved shopping here because the woman that I interacted with knows the rancher that she gets the beef from. She knows about the cows, what they ate, why they ate it, and all sorts of great things like that. Do you know what YOU’RE steak ate before you ate it? I’ll bet you don’t. Maybe you THINK you do, but you probably don’t.

Starting on March 27th, Cedar Park will get it’s own Farmer’s Market and I could not be more ecstatic. There is no better food buying experience than being able to ask the person selling you the food how it was produced, what’s in it, and what practices are used. Try THAT at HEB while you buy your <manufactured chemical piece of shit> along with your <two free pieces of shit> that come along with it. Now THAT’S loco.

Strength WOD and Blood Work

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My first day back to crossfit in a week and we finally get a strength workout! There were 2 mini workouts:

1) Back squats: 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3

2) Pull up ladder (for every minute, do that number of pull ups until you can’t anymore)

My max on the back squats for today was 225lbs. I never reached failure, so I assume I can probably try for a bit more next time. I was happy being a bit conservative today as it was my first time doing them.

I made it through 9 rounds of the pull up ladder (9 + 8 + 7 + 6…). Victoria, the little badass, after she told me to stop bitching about the barbell hurting my neck muscles, then proceeded to own me on the pull up ladder. She made it through an impressive 13 rounds.

This was, however, the first workout where I wasn’t doing jumping pull ups. I moved up to a band and actually started trying to do some kipping. The band helped quite a bit.

In other news, I got results to my blood work from the physical I took on my birthday. I have to say that for the most part, I am very pleased with what I see. For those of you that read this and are always wondering about “that weird eating thing” that I do, I think this is some pretty good evidence that paleo works despite what you might thing about the amount of meat, fat, etc that I take in. If you’d like to see the results, here’s a link:

http://www.familyofgoldsteins.com/files/bloodwork.pdf