I have rediscovered my love of reading. When I was growing up, I always had a book with me. I read as I brushed my teeth, dried my hair, ate my breakfast, walked to the bus stop, on the way to school and whenever I had a break during the day. My senior year of highschool, I read over 100 books. My favorites at the time were gothic romance, Stephen King, Dean Koontz and John Saul. My 12th grade English teacher, Mrs. Boswell, told me it was fine to read the fun stuff, but to be sure to spend time in the classics as well. I took her advice to heart and developed a love for Hardy, Steinbeck, Dickens and Vonnegut (to name a few). Well, now my challenge to myself is to read nonfiction books as well as fiction.

You can check on my Shelfari account in the sidebar of my blog to see what all I have been reading this year. I read from my Kindle while I exercise and then from the stack of books that I have collected over the last 10 years, but hadn’t gotten around to reading. The book I finished today was Reversing Heart Disease. It is a book that my hubby bought a few years ago, but then never read. When my dear friend, Carole, called me to tell me her hubby had had a heart attack, Daniel remembered the book and told her about it. I thought to myself…this is a book I should read, so onto my shelf it went. And I got a copy of Reversing Diabetes by Dr. Whitaker to read on my Kindle. I have a history of Diabetes in my family. I am overweight, sedentary and love to eat sweets. Last August, after my yearly physical, my doctor sent me my blood test results and a prescription for a cholesterol medication.

We were headed to Australia and I didn’t have time to discuss it with her. Even if we hadn’t been heading out, I have been one to follow a doctor’s recommendations…after all they are the doctor (at least in everything but losing weight since that is easier talked about than done).

Then, my mother-in-law became ill and went through procedures she should never have gone through and that I have no doubt shortened the time we had with her. And it got me to thinking that doctors aren’t infallible and that sometimes they aren’t presenting us with the best options. Either because they don’t know about them or because the perks they are getting from the drug companies are too ‘cool’ to ignore. For instance, my husband and I both attend the same practice. We both are on cholesterol meds. His doctor recommended Lipitor which costs over 100.00 a month! My doctor recommended simvastatin which did the trick and is much less expensive at 15.00 a month (which means a lot when you are one of the uninsured). There was another prescription we both needed and the same thing happened, he got given meds that cost over 100.00, while mine cost around 10.00.

So, I thought, perhaps it’s time I read that Reversing Heart Disease book. I need to have more knowledge about what may be going on inside of me and what I should be doing about it. I have been so inundated by diet plans over the years, I have no idea what the right thing is to eat anymore…and part of this book contains recipes and other nutrition information.

The first thing I want to say, is that if you find nonfiction boring and slow paced, you won’t find this book to be that way. It is written in short sections, so you can quickly read a section, digest the information and go on to the next. The information is written in a way that it is easy to understand. And the information will startle you. The diet makes sense and while I anticipate some parts may be harder than others, it helps that I have already been making changes over the last month. There is a section on supplements (vitamins, minerals and hormones) and how they can do amazing things for your body on the inside and these are natural elements, not medications. There is a section on exercise – what types help, how, and how much you should do.

The scary sections are on medications and surgical procedures. For instance, the statin family (which both my hubby’s and my meds are from) have a lot of unwanted side effects and one that (at least 8 years ago when the book was written) aren’t mentioned in the physician’s reference guide and a lot of doctors just don’t know. The statin family can reduce the level of CoQ10 in your body – which your heart really, really needs! Now, tell me that makes sense!?  Also, according to a wide range of studies done over the years, for approximately every 100 people that undergo angioplasty, only 6 really need it!  And you know how our drugs have to go through all this testing to meet the FDA standards? Well, surgery doesn’t have to!  So some surgical procedures that are done, are later determined to not be the best thing (remember how tonsillectomies were routine surgery in the 50s?)  And did you know that when angioplasty is done and even bypass surgeries are done, that often times, the arteries will close back up within a year!  Did you know that exercise can actually help you create natural arteries in your body that will circumvent blockages?

Surgery/cardiology/prescription drugs are big business. And the book doesn’t say that operations are always unnecessary, but there are other options. Things we can do that are better for us and will help our over all health and help our pocketbooks! Even if you don’t have heart disease and are lucky enough not to know anyone who does, I highly recommend you reading this book. Why wait until the attack comes, why not get a start on getting healthier and preventing the attack? Our society has become so ingrained in fixing it after the fact, that we often forget an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

So, what are you waiting for?  Order this book today!

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Yep, you read that right! Scientists think that when people migrated thousands of years ago and killed off the woolly mammoth (because he was such good eating), that their actions led to global cooling…you see, the um…gas…that the woolly mammoth produced was helping to keep the planet warm. But once that um…gas…was gone, then the planet began to cool and this led to the Younger Dryas period which lasted 1,300 years and which led to drops in temperature of 7 to 14 degrees in North America and Europe.

Now if you go to wikipedia, there is no mention of the Woolly Mammoth theory. As humans, we are compelled to find reasons for why the climate changes (or why the sky is blue or why the chili dogs from Moore’s taste better).  I still believe that our planet goes through natural climate shifts and they are probably more related to solar activity than to things we do on this planet. In fact, solar activity is on the increase and a rise in temperature has been recorded on Mars even though there are no people there to muck things up.

At any rate, I am not sure if we should blame humans for killing off the Mammoth and leading to prehistoric cooling or if we should blame Mammoths for being so gassy and making the world a warmer place to begin with…ah…this if for better minds than mine to figure out!

Woolly Mammoth

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In an attempt to get higher in the atmosphere and decrease the infrared wave interference, NASA has gutted a 747 and installed a telescope in its belly. You can learn more about the process and see photos at National Geographic.

Two Views of Jupiter

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This 30-story sinkhole appeared in Guatemala after Tropical Storm Agatha passed through. It swallowed a three-story building. The sinkhole is 60 feet wide. It may grow even bigger depending on the makeup of the surrounding ground.

Guatemala Sinkhole

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I don’t know if everyone sleepwalks at sometime in their life, or if some people do it a lot and others none at all. When I was a kid, I had a couple of sleepwalking incidents (the one I remember is my mom telling me I walked down the hall with my pillow and when asked what I was doing with it, I told her I was putting it in the dirty clothes. I didn’t wake up, but went back to sleep. I did it enough that my parents kept the door to the basement shut at night because it was right across from my room and they didn’t want me falling down the stairs.

Daniel has a funny sleepwalking story where he carried on a conversation with his parents, asking them a variety of questions, the whole time he was sound asleep.

Those are kind of funny stories and though I knew sleepwalking could be dangerous, I didn’t really think about it.

Friday night, our power went out at about 7 p.m. A drive down the road let us know it was just in our subdivision, which if there were lots of power outages around, we would be low man on the totem pole (back in an ice storm of 95, we were without power for three days). Now that we are aware of Daniel’s severe sleep apnea, and have been told he is not to sleep without his CPAP, we knew we had to do something. So we found a couple of rooms in town at a hotel where we could stay.

Even though only Daniel really needed to go, we all went. We get two rooms because when you have a son and daughter, putting us all in the same room, just doesn’t work too well anymore. Daniel was wide awake, so I bunked with the kids. We were asleep about 11:30. 

In the midst of deep sleep, I heard banging on the door. Loud banging. It took me a moment to clear my sleepy brain. I got up, figuring it was Daniel and something was wrong or it was someone knocking on the wrong door. When I got up, I noticed Katrina wasn’t in bed beside me. As I got closer to the door, I heard her crying. I thought she was in the bathroom, but then realized SHE WAS OUTSIDE OF THE ROOM!!!!!  She was hysterical and crying. At first all I could get from her was ‘sleepwalk,’ but as she slowly calmed down, she told me her story.

She had left our room (and I didn’t hear her – Jack thought she was going to the bathroom when he heard the door). She sleptwalked down and into the housekeeper supply closet. She said when she was in there, she sat on a bar of some sort (she thought it was the bed in our room. She saw me standing there (a vacuum or a mop) and kept calling my name and I wouldn’t answer. She was mad and got up to come to me, at that point she saw the vacuum and realized she wasn’t in her room anymore. She got out of the closet (no lights, door shut) and came back to our room and woke me up.

As I listened to her sobbing tale, I was horrified. How could she have left the room and I slept right through it? How long had she been gone? And of course, I couldn’t help but think of how much worse this could have been – what if she had run into an unsavory character in the hallway…

She was afraid to go back to sleep, but she is young and she was tired, so eventually, her breathing slowed. I held her all night and kept telling myself that if she moved at all, I needed to be aware. I am so glad she is safe and the story ended well, but now I need to do some research and see what more I can learn about sleepwalking.

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