THad my arranged phone conversation with a hospital nutritionist at RGH today and she firmly confirmed what I had started to suspect :
There IS such a thing as too few carbs in the diet!
She said I should be getting a minimum of 130…. somethings of carbs every day, minimum.
She didn’t specify and I didn’t ask. Grams, I am guessing?
She said there should be thirty in every meal, and here my dumb ass has been having the vast majority of my meals with none at all.
Shows the dangers of nutritional absolutism. Never thought I’d be one to fall for that.
She said that what happens when your body isn’t getting enough carbs is that it pulls the glucose it needs from your muscles, leaving them weak.
Um. That sounds familiar. Wouldn’t it be wild if I found out the real cause of my weak leg muscles was not the spinal fracture but carbohydrate deficiency?
In extreme cases, your body will even digest your own fat and tissues in order to get the glucose it so desperately needs. In order to keep the brain going.
Because brains run on glucose and that’s it.
Another thing that happens when you take the whole low carb thing too far is that your body signals the liver to release its stored up glucose into your bloodstream.
And you know what that leads to? High blood sugar!
So um… yeah. Kind of need to put some carbs back into my diet.
But in what form?
Not chocolate bars, presumably. Those are still bad, mmmkay? But my time in the hospital showed that having some of the no-no carbs like bread and rice and mashed potatoes with each meal is OK.
So I will be looking at things at that approximate level of carb complexity.
I will certainly be looking into the exciting new wave of healthy snacking options in the world. Like all the potato chip and tortilla chip clones made of something other than potato or corn.
And of course, I am always looking for no-sugar cookies, candy, and so on.
And speaking of tortilla chips, I might get some of those, along with some salsa. I am fairly certain that real plain tortilla chips (not that Doritos junk) is a fairly friendly sort of carb.
And of course, I have to always been careful to get low-effort foods these days.
Even with the walker there to lean on, I can only stay on my feet in the kitchen for a short time before my legs start to buckle under me.
Which suuuuucks. I hate having to hurry. I miss being able to spend however long I needed in there.
Beats having other people prepare my food, though. Not only would I hate to have to impose on Joe and Julian to that extent, I have have doing food my way for a very long time and the thought of either having to put up with it done “wrong” or teach others how to do it “right” appals me.
So I will continue doing food myself for as long as I am able.
I’m serious. Even if I was a billionaire, I would probably still make my own meals.
I’d just be doing it in a super modern kitchen filled with all the latest kitchen gadgets.
And maybe a sous-chef or two.
To be honest, that seems like way more fun that having to wait for my personal chef to make me a meal that he or she might very well get wrong,
More after the break.
It’s getting dark
Well today’s been shitty.
First, my web host, Fatcow, seems to have disappeared into the seething void.
When you try to go to my blog, you get an Fatcow error page telling you about how they can’t find my blog and how if I am having a problem I should click the link to Fatcow’s primary hosting site.
Click that, and you get an internet error saying that they can’t get there from here.
Lovely. When it was just the Fatcow error, I assumed it was just one of those things where I didn’t update which credit card Fatcow had on file for me and so I missed a payment.
Annoying, but easily fixed with a few minutes’ work,
But now that it can’t find Fatcow itself, I have no idea WTF.
Then I developed this weird pain that extends from my bladder down to my right testicle then further down the inseam of the right leg.
It’s got me pretty worried. I’ve had urinary issues before, including ones that made me pee blood, and so any weirdness in that general area has me on high alert.
The pain gets worse when I move and the muscles around that area have to flex.
I sure hope I am not going to start peeing blood again.
Finally, I have been feeling overheated out of nowhere again, which suggests that I might have some kind of infection resulting in an inflammatory response.
I am going to take some Naproxen, aka Alleve, and see if it helps.
Oh, and my back pain is much worse today after a lovely period of it being fairly mild.
Not hard to guess why, seeing as I can feel a large bolus of semi-digested food just hanging there n my lower colon like a bowling ball in a hammock.
I paint pictures with words.
The bladder/ballsack pain might be related. Hard to tell.
I decided that what with my digestive system in a questionable state, I should not eat the curry I bought on Saturday night just yet.
It will have to wait for when I feel more settled.
Now is not the time to introduce even a mild curry to my system. That seems like i would be playing a very dangerous game – East Indian cuisine roulette.
“This might make things much worse…. or much better. Now EAT! Mao mao didi mao!”
Both are possible with me and spicy foods. Which is weird.
Then again, so am I.
Oh right, one last thing : my dizziness on rising is back, too.
Same to you, life. But double.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.