Category Archives: Health

Take a Nap

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I can’t help but sing the praises of melatonin. I picked some up at Meijers a week ago to help me overcome some sleeplessness. They are tiny 5mg pills and about an hour after taking one I feel a distinct urge to fall asleep. It’s way more pleasant than the one time I took a Advil PM because I had a headache and it was late at night and I figured what the hell. The ‘sleep aids’ that go in these pills may work for other people, and I’m not going to disparage them if they work for you, but for me the experience was incredibly unpleasant. Instead of naturally feeling drowsy and maintaining control it felt like I was going into a blackout. It wasn’t terrifying, but it was extremely unpleasant. The melatonin works with me instead of on me. I can retain consciousness if I need to, but it brings on some serious yawning and some definitely powerful feelings of drowsiness. Of course, this is not really the most natural way to fall asleep and I’m always very conscious of allowing myself to become dependent on them to help me get to sleep usually. So far I just used them once, and then yesterday at 4am after getting no sleep with this stupid coughing/congestion bit. By around 4:30 I was nice and asleep. One thing that I have noticed under the influence of melatonin is that I still have the ability to dream, which I’ve heard becomes stunted or disappears completely when you are taking stronger drugs to put yourself down to sleep, like Ambien and so on.

While browsing some news I came across a site detailing how some people with insomnia have a very hard time getting to sleep because their brains are “too hot” and that possibly getting a cooling system or maybe even an icepack might help initiate the proper descent into sleep. The article did say that one of the side effects of melatonin is that it cools the body, which makes sense. I sleep best when I’m cold and under the blankets. For me personally I can’t sleep with my feet bare, well, I can eventually sleep but it is not as quick and easy as if I had something on my feet. I’m the opposite of Scott, he needs to have bare feet, I need to have socks. The woolier and more fuzzy the better. It struck me, for all the people who I know who suffer from insomnia that you could work a kind of hat-trick to put yourself down to sleep using a strategy of chemicals, food, and conditions. I have only had one bout of insomnia when I was a little kid, but haven’t since then. I sort of wonder if something like this would work well for people with insomnia. Now before people get all bent and bothered, and yark about snopes.com and all, I’m just going by what I experience myself when it comes to these things.

  1. For Dinner prepare a turkey breast with mashed potatoes and a vegetable of your preference. I’ve heard it said that turkey meat has a lot of tryptophan in it, and that can bring on a sense of drowsiness. I’ve also heard that cooking the turkey eliminates the tryptophan and even if it was in there, tryptophan doesn’t do what we think it does. It is my experience that after eating Thanksgiving dinner everyone is dead to the world. It’s purely anecdotal, but it can’t hurt, plus turkey is good for you. It could be just a grand carb-crash, but I like to think there is more to it than that. Perhaps it’s a chance to say hooray for the placebo effect. Turkey makes us sleepy because we’ve told ourselves that it does. 😉
  2. 1 5mg pill of melatonin washed down with a glass of milk. The classic treatment for sleeplessness is a mug of warm milk, but I don’t think the temperature matters unless the warm milk helps soothe your throat somehow. Perhaps there are factors in the milk that bring on drowsiness and that if the milk is closer to body temperature that these factors move into your system faster. I don’t know. But again, does it hurt? If your lactose intolerant then water, but still.
  3. Wrap an icepack in a washrag and slip it into your pillowcase. This will cool the back of your neck, along with the blood going up both arteries up to your brain. The brain will likely note the cooler blood and figure that it’s time to sleep.
I get to wondering if someone with insomnia tries something like this, or even a part of these ideas and maybe they can get a good nights rest. The only thing I’ve noticed, at least about today is that my circadian rhythm is shot to hell, so I’m wide awake at 11:40pm when I should be starting to flag down. 

 

If anyone tries these ideas, I would love to have comments to see if any of it worked for you. I like the idea of natural treatments replacing prescription drugs.

An American robs a bank of $1, just for free health care in jail – Shareables

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An American robs a bank of $1, just for free health care in jail – Shareables.

At some point all these distressing, disturbing, and ultimately embarrassing situations will have to be resolved or a majority of people will end up in jail not because they need correction in any criminal-justice way but because there is no hope for them anywhere but in jail.

What happens when people try to break into jail? They don’t want to be a part of the world anymore, they want desperately to go to jail, where they’ll be fed, educated, and provided with healthcare while they are being “punished”. At what point does the definition of jail switch with the definition for not-jail? This is right up there with the people that argue that having jails is more preferable than having schools. In many American cities I’m sure you could find schools that are more secure than the nearest jail.

In a few short weeks I will be visiting with some of my more conservative family and I most certainly will be thinking about this while I endure their endless prattling on about why conservatism is so much more superior to liberalism. Then again this time I will be armed with my iPhone, so I can ignore most of it conveniently.

Gunnars

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I got my glasses today! Here’s a picture I posted on my posterous account showing them off:

They are light as a feather and I don’t even feel them while I’m wearing them. I don’t know if it’s helping my vision. The promotional materials claim that they do a lot, and I’d like to think I’m benefiting but I also can’t help but shake the idea that I like them and they are “working for me” because it’s something different and I am mixing up different for better. My eyes do feel better after a hard days work on the computer after wearing them, I will say that, but I can’t say that it’s anything particularly specific that the glasses are doing. I have faith that they are, but that’s all.

The glasses came in a microfiber sack to keep them in. I’m going to go out and get a glasses-case from an eyeglass shop to replace this microfiber sack so I can toss my new glasses in their case in my pocket without having to worry about them getting bent, broken, or scratched.

Over the next few days I’ll be using these while I’m using my various devices and I’ll be sure to post more information as I get along with them. I paid for them out of my own pocket, so I don’t have to feel guilty about using them outside of work, they are mine. Although if I like them a lot and they do help, then I can make a professional recommendation to work and maybe help some of my coworkers cope with eyestrain and headaches while at work. Only time will tell.

Blessings

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I read a lot online. Mostly material curated by my friends and acquaintances. Sometimes I run into a thick vein of feel-good affirmations. About the nature of happiness and how to cultivate it in your life. All of this is good and wonderful and I value those friends that bring those things to light because they really do deserve saying and sharing.

One thing does get me though, and this came up with the notion that happiness is not bound by external situations. Are you sure? I think about all the people I read who are very loving, very expressive, and very positive people… how much of that output is supported by a comfortable life? What happens if you don’t have the blessings that come with a first world existence? What if the water that surrounds you is toxic and if you drank any of it would lead to a slow agonizing death? What if you were homeless? What if you were starving? What if life arranged to punish you at every turn and you could never catch a single break? How fluffy and positive would that poor person be?

Don’t get me wrong here, I think that these people are vital and what they share is wonderful and I’m glad they do so, but, all the advice in the world, all the love and fluffy feelings and rah-rah aphorisms, when they land on the ears of someone who is struggling for the most basic things in life – how is that person supposed to react? Do they react with anger? Upset that people who are blessed with comfort feel compelled to export super-fluff are somehow not getting the big picture?

I think quite often on the poor soul who can’t scrape together a meal today, who has no reliable potable water to rely upon for survival and has no idea if someone or something will end up trying to kill or nibble on them in the night. How would they react to being told that everyone is suffused with love and true happiness is all in your mind and how you perceive and approach the world? When I imagine myself in that condition the last thing I want to hear is someone expounding on the fluffy. I’d really like something to drink, something to eat, and maybe someone to watch over me as I collapse.

It isn’t until you get to writing how you feel that you find yourself tripping over the very core reason why your political views are formed the way they are. I think it’s this, this poor soul, a nameless faceless sufferer that compels me to be a liberal. To share what I have, (with hope that we share what we have) in order to ensure that this one poor soul never has to face such an empty existence. And I think it’s this poor person that I always think about when I walk into the voting booth, and when I look upon my paycheck and note how much FICA I’m paying, just to start. It’s something I cannot understand, and probably never ever will. Why people can be so cold and unfeeling, so unimaginative that they cannot comprehend someone to be in this suffering state. I think that’s one of the core reasons why I am filled with boiling waves of rage when I hear conservatives railing against social programs. How corrupt and alien would be our world if any one of us fell through the cracks and died while others did nothing. If you want to know evil, I think that’s the core of it. Not being violent or malicious, but being indifferent to suffering. By being indifferent, in some ways you are actively collaborating with suffering itself. It makes me feel wretched.

So, getting back to where we started, the central question remains. Is happiness bound by external things? I think it most certainly can be. People should not lose sight of that.

Which Eyeglass Style Looks The Best

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I’ve thought about possibly getting some eyeglasses for myself at work since I spend so much time in front of a computer. I don’t need correction, but the glasses I’m looking at, from Gunnar, claim to help relieve eyestrain, cut glare, and generally improve eye health especially when using modern display equipment. To that end, if I do spring for these glasses, there is a question of style. For those of you that know me and know what I look like, I have created a polldaddy poll with the models that I think would look the best on me. I’d like all my readers to please vote on what they think the best style is.

[polldaddy poll=5107799]

Thanks for everyone who votes!

Raw milk update: Michigan State University dairy newsletter cites fresh statistics, touts website | MLive.com

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Raw milk update: Michigan State University dairy newsletter cites fresh statistics, touts website | MLive.com.

Once again people! There is a reason why Louis Pasteur is the father of modern food safety! I see this in lots of states, here in Michigan and also quite notably also in South Carolina where some of my family lives. Apparently not enough people have needlessly died from e. coli, cryptosporidium, or listeria!

I can’t believe this is still being talked about seriously. Just when you thought you won the war for one class of food to be pasteurized, and you’ve moved on to another (lets hear it for pasteurized eggs!) this bullshit comes roaring back. Raw milk was fine if you lived on a farm in 1928! It’s 2011. COME ON PEOPLE.

Of course, not enough death and illness have been suffered, we need more of that, yes, please! Sometimes humanity, as a species, dazzles me with it’s collective stupidity.

Overcast

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While talking to several of my coworkers about the ways I organize my digital life it struck me that I have never detailed the what, the how, and the why. To me organization has set me free. There are only a few places where information is kept and so finding it is just a matter of checking a few places and almost always I can find, or remember, what I need.

Here at Western we have changed our email infrastructure to what is called “WebMail Plus” and I affectionately refer to by the initialism WMP. WMP runs on Zimbra servers out of our ISP in Ann Arbor Michigan and ever since the changeover I’ve never been very comfortable in the new system. I don’t like the web-based interface and I don’t like my email to stay in Ann Arbor for very long if I can help it. It’s purely a personal thing and I don’t expect everyone to have the same resistance to WMP as I have. There is a significant amount of history between me and WMP that goes quite a bit back.To that end, I store my email somewhere else and I store some files in other places as well, depending on where I’ll use them most of all.

Tools

I use these tools in order to better organize my digital world:

  1. Mail.app
    1. The native Mac Mail.app is set to pull in my WMP Mail over the IMAP protocol. This protocol allows me to select the Mail.app interface and bolt it on, covering up the less liked WMP Native website interface. Several key benefits to this are how I can configure all the aspects of Mail.app’s fonts to suit me and make it easier for me to read text. Mail.app also has a Bayesian Filter for identifying Junk Mail. I teach it what is and what isn’t Junk mail and it does a pretty kickass job identifying future Junk and getting it out of my way. The other feature of Mail.app that I have come to rely on is the “Redirect” command. This command allows me to effectively ‘resend’ an incoming email somewhere else as if it was always destined for that other address. This feature is a ‘killer feature’ when combined with other cloud services that I’ll write about further along in this post.
  2. iCal.app
    1. Just as much as I don’t like WMP when it comes to email, I also do not like it when it comes to Calendaring. I prefer to use iCal for my calendaring needs. Thanks to Zimbra’s adherence to standards I can have my cake and eat it too. WMP provides a CalDAV service which I can subscribe to using iCal. Not only can I have my local calendars off my home server subscribed on my iCal, but I can also have my WMP calendars as well.
  3. AddressBook.app
    1. As with iCal, the AddressBook.app application can subscribe to CardDAV Services that WMP provides. With all three in concert I have effectively replaced my need to use the native WMP interface and instead replaced it with a far more friendly Mac-based interface.
  4. Evernote
    1. Evernote is a cloud service that “remembers everything” and is only limited by the amount of information you send to your Evernote system, but not how much material you store there. Each free Evernote account comes with an “Evernote Email Address” that is private to the user and can be the destination of emails and when you do send an email to that address it is just like you have clipped the text directly into Evernote with a client. In this regard, the “Redirect” command and the “Evernote Email Address” are a match made in heaven.
  5. Toodledo
    1. Toodledo is an online cloud-based To Do List manager. There is a website that manages the Toodledo system very well and Toodledo provides a CalDAV compliant feed so I can subscribe my iCal client to my Toodledo task calendar and see everything, including my tasks, on one central iCal calendar. Toodledo also has its own “Toodledo Email Address” that inserts Redirected email into my task list. I can use a shorthand notation in the subject line to enrich the task so that when it is added to my Toodledo system it gets the appropriate context, date, time, and folder. Within Toodledo I have three contexts, Home, Work, and None. I have a gaggle of Folders such as “Email” and “Millennium” and “Personal” and the date system is very flexible. I can write an email to my Toodledo Email Address, set the subject as “Add Files to Folder @work #tomorrow =5pm *email” and the task is created with the body of the incoming email being the attached note of the task and the context is set to Work, the due-date set for 5/6/2011 (tomorrow), the due-time set to 5:00pm and the folder set for Email.
  6. Instapaper
    1. Instapaper also has a “Instapaper Email Address” and anything you send to that address gets queued up in your Instapaper queue. It’s really quite useful if you get a link in your Inbox and want to read it eventually, but not now.
  7. Dropbox
    1. Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage system that synchronizes a folder on every computer or device you use and a central folder stored in the cloud.

Tackling the Email Monster

I’m quite fond of achieving what I like to call Inbox Zero at least once a week, and usually on Friday afternoons. For me, email comes in and usually falls into a few neat categories. There are purely informational emails, such as notices from OIT and advisories about the University Trustees and other WMU news, then there are requests for me to do some sort of task, and then there are email discussions about some sort of running topic. I tackle an inbox that has gone out of control by starting with “low-hanging fruit”. I identify and pitch all the informational emails that I don’t need to note or keep storing. Some of this mail is merely meant to expose me to some news item or some event and after I appreciate the contents, they lose all durable value. For these messages I’ll either mark them as Junk or just delete them. The next level is to identify all the tasks-in-email and redirect them to my Toodledo account. Once they are redirected I delete those from my WMP account as well. All that is left, usually are discussions and “durable value” emails that contain something I really should remember. For the latter I redirect those to Evernote and delete them out of my Inbox. The rest are conversations and usually I won’t keep a lot of these floating around anyways. Once I send a reply the entire conversation is pretty well “backed up” in my Sent Items and so there is little point to keep old conversational emails that I don’t need anymore. Any emails that remain I look at and decide if they are conversations, tasks, or something I need to remember. I keep on whittling down on the pile until I run out of Inbox messages. Some people will note that I’m just playing a cup-game with my emails in Evernote. On Sunday I start organizing my Evernote into folders and let all that information build up there. Because Evernote is bottomless I don’t really care how much information I stuff into it since I can pretty much search text and folders to find anything I might need later on. Another hidden gem is that all of these services, Instapaper, Evernote, and Toodledo all have really great iOS apps for both iPhone and iPad, so I can manage everything on any device I like any time I like. I’ve been known to knock several emails out while waiting in line at the supermarket, or waiting for a movie to start at the cinema. Every bit helps and if you are vigilant you can whittle all your Inbox down to size and then get into a habit of keeping it that way.

Cloud Data Storage: Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

Another need I’ve found is to store data in an easily accessible way between many devices. I have an iPhone, and iPad, a MacBook, a iMac and a Mac Mini. There is always a need for me to keep a certain set of files available on each device. It makes life easier to have them conveniently located and every single machine having the right set of files no matter what. Dropbox suits this need very well. For run-of-the-mill data Dropbox can’t be beat for convenience sake. There is however a problem when it comes to security. Dropbox is secure, but they are vulnerable to search and seizure orders from the government and so they *can* break security on your files in order to comply with a government action. There are some files that I really would like to have available, but I really don’t want to risk having these files exposed. If I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of compatibility (really secure use of Dropbox precludes iOS devices) I have a way to secure files even from Dropbox itself, while still making use of their syncing services. Here’s how you do it. Dropbox is a free service and they kick in 2 gigabytes worth of storage. On a Mac open up Disk Utility, create an AES-256 encrypted sparsebundle disk image file and save it to your Dropbox. Put a nice long password on it and don’t save that password to your Mac’s Keychain system (that makes it really secure, because the password is just in your head) and then you can have your cake and eat it too. The disk image file can be mounted by any Mac computer, you have to type in your access password to mount it. Even if Dropbox were to ship the file to a third-party for analysis the file’s AES-256 encryption (at the moment) ensures that the data within the file is safe. The neat thing about a sparsebundle with Mac computers is that a sparsebundle can be assigned a maximum size, say one gigabyte, and if you only fill it with say 200 megabytes worth of data then the disk image itself isn’t one gigabyte, but instead right around 200 megabytes. The sparsebundle is a lot like a bellows, it expands to contain only the data it needs to. It has a capacity of whatever high-water-mark you’ve set it up for, but it’s efficient in that it only takes up what it’s contents need versus a standard disk image which is a monolithic file. Another neat part of sparsebundle images is that you can issue a rather straightforward CLI command to compact them if you’ve removed data from them. That command is:

“hdiutil compact image.sparsebundle”

So even if a sparsebundle were temporarily carrying a big bulge of data, you can get the storage back out of it by running this command. It’s quite neat and tidy. The only thing that would seal the deal is if the sparsebundles would automatically compact themselves on-the-fly, but even with this command you can still quite enjoy having your cake and eating it too. As it turns out, every removable device I own has an encrypted sparsebundle file stored on it. This is the best way that I know how to have the convenience of this sort of technology and the peace of mind to know that if you lose it, nobody but you can make sense of the contents.

I hope that this makes sense to you all. I’ve found this entire procedure to be quite effective and useful and makes organizing my life much simpler and less burdensome. Perhaps it can do the same for you! 🙂

Furry Mystery

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Just finished a phone consultation with our vet in regards to our youngest male cat, Griffin’s odd behavior. We put him on a 14 day series of Zeniquin antibiotic and that helped him out, and yesterday I noticed we’re starting to see a similar set of behaviors from Griffin. He will visit his litterbox and urinate just a little and then leave, 10 minutes later he’ll be back. It doesn’t happen all the time, and sometimes he urinates more, at least from what I’ve been seeing in the litterbox. The vet said that his X-Rays are clean, pH is right, and there aren’t any blockages or crystals. The vet suggested that we try some bladder-health supplements that might help correct what amounts in the end to being both pee-shy and having a nervous bladder. Griffin’s behavior is completely normal, no pain, no struggling, and no accidents. We’re going to go the supplement route and see how we do. The last thing I want for him is another overnight at the hospital and the dead last thing I want is surgery. One thing that did occur to me is changing the litter type. We have a continuous odor control litter and this problem may be linked to that in some way, perhaps going to a low-dust type would be better. We’ll have to see.

Having a sick pet is worse by far than a sick kid. At least you can talk to a kid and get a clear list of symptoms. All you get with a pet is a head-nudge and staring. I keep on having this recurring fantasy of being able to scan Griffin with a Tricorder. Too much Star Trek dammit. 🙂

News is Depressing

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One of my friends on Twitter expressed their physical disgust whenever they encountered “News”. I advised them to just stop looking at it.

Really.

What good can come of consuming “News”? Horrible stupid incompetent idiots who are bumbling around with the world in their hands and they have butterfingers! Nearly everything in the 24 hour news cycle is negative or upsetting in one fashion or another. Most of it doesn’t really directly affect any of us in any meaningful way other than to make us sad, depressed, upset, or disgusted. I have stopped watching the 24-hour news cycle shows and now get most of my news-a-tainment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and even that I pick and choose what I watch and what I just toss out.

If something in your life just makes you angry and upset, what’s the value in it? The world will continue, or not, whether you are aware of it, or not. Is knowing about what is going on really that important to you? Ignorance is bliss, so why not choose ignorance? In the end it’s far better for your mental and physical health. If you absolutely MUST touch this toxic stew of suffering, at least filter it through your preferred satirist. Laughing about the horrible is far better than enduring the horrible all by yourself, without the laughter.

Griffin

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It all started a few days ago, we noticed our youngest male cat, Griffin, making five to ten minute return trips to the litter box to pee and not being able to. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, just a lot of squatting. A day went by and nothing much improved and then he started having accidents around the house, little tiny accidents. So off we went to KL Cat Hospital, our vet.

They admitted him and we discovered later on that he didn’t have a blockage, that the pH and various things you can tell from test strips were acceptable but he was pee-shy for a very long time. Once he did use the pan he accidentally got his hindquarters in it and further made a mess of himself, and ruined his progress. The vet gave him a little ether and then coaxed some samples out of him manually. The samples were spun and analyzed. There was nothing to indicate any kind of kidney stones or crystalizations, so we were looking at a bacteriological etiology. They gave him a shot of flouroquinone (sp?) antibiotic and the next day they had him (it was an overnight) they gave him 12.5mg of Zeniquin antibiotic.

I got him home, through a fusillade of yowling and general complaining, Griffin does not like car rides. I suspect that too much car ride would bring on motion sickness. Griffin smelled a lot like the vets office, as well as the gas they used to do that quick-knockout earlier so Owien gave him one sniff and then started to growl and hiss. This upset us until we did some research and confirmed what we kind of already knew, that Griffin smelled very different from what Owien remembers and that over time everything will be fine.

It’s both amazing and a little surprising to note just how easy it is for humans to note a smell change but that it doesn’t affect us nearly as much as it does with other animals. I chalk it up to sentience, our vastly bigger brains, and the fact that human olfaction is pitifully weak. Smell was never a big thing for primates because we suck at it. The two of them are getting used to each other again, it’s just going to take time.

This morning I got a bit of butter and embedded the pill in it, then popped it in Griffins mouth and held his mouth closed. Down it went. He wasn’t upset, just unwilling and a little surprised. I left him licking his chops and looking at me with guarded affection. “What else are you going to try to make me eat?” 🙂 So his daily 12.5mg of Zeniquin is down-the-hatch and doing its job.

I am glad to note that he is going pee less often, he’s producing more, and he’s eating and drinking water normally. The only things we have to work on now are the other 13 doses of Zeniquin and repairing the relationship between Griffin and Owein. There is only one real cure for that problem and that is time. I figure I could hasten things along by daily grooming with the same brush. Mingling the two cats scents together so that Me + Strange Cat = Us.