It's not like I haven't learned this lesson before. There are so many obvious examples. Love sugary treats? Watch it love your love handles all the more. Enjoy a drink or two which experts believe to be good for your heart. Regularly surpass those two drinks and you run the risk of a myriad of problems associated with alcoholism.
Many years back when I was taking my lunch to school, my mom packed a lovely strawberry themed lunch knowing how much I loved them. Strawberries are considered a top antioxidant. She selected strawberry yogurt paired with a strawberry/banana nectar drink. Late that afternoon, I clearly was experiencing some sort of reaction to something I ingested. My poor mouth turned into an acidy fuzzball. Final conclusion, too many strawberries caused the side effect. Treatment: my meals needed to have more variety.
Cinnamon should be no problem, right? Cinnamon has been documented to help lower LDL cholesterol, it helps slow cancer growth cells in leukemia and lymphoma, it can help regulate type 2 diabetes and it has an anti-blood clotting effect. A girlfriend of mine was working under a deadline for a master's class she was taking. Her soothing drink of choice was cinnamon tea. She also loved her cinnamon flavored gum. And who wouldn't? Mysteriously, she had an outbreak where her gums swelled up. She went to the dentist. Sure enough, it was confirmed her body chemistry had a low threshold of taking in cinnamon. Treatment: moderation.
Skipping to a couple of months ago, I began experiencing dizzy spells. It crept up on me and seemed unpredictable. But as the weeks rolled by, I began having more dizzy spells when I would stand up quickly or even more scary while driving looking in the rear view mirror. It was as if my brain wasn't in sync with my head movement. All my research on-line popped up horrifying possibilities but no definitive conclusions.
Using a technician's troubleshooting theory, I asked myself what had recently changed in my life? Was it the new set of contact lenses and perhaps something was off kilter with my prescription? My eye doctor ran a battery of tests and determined everything was just fine. She recommended I go see my GP.
My GP is what everyone would hope. I refer to him as my very own Sherlock Holmes. We did the usual weigh in and had my blood pressure taken. All good including my usual low blood pressure. Then we stopped with the measurements and we just talked. Sherlock asked about my diet, vitamin intake and drink choices. On the surface, it appeared I was doing all the right things. Not convinced that it didn't have to do with something I was consuming, he continued with the questioning versus employing costly tests.
He zeroed in on my drink choices and specifically how many cups of coffee, juice, water, tea and wine. When he thought about my tendency to have low blood pressure and the ratio of my diuretic choices (coffee, tea and alcohol) to my water intake it was "elementary my dear Watson." I was drying out my brain. The blood flow doesn't move around so well when it's parched. After giving this more thought, I realized I had recently swapped out my usual glasses of water in the morning for a couple cups of green tea, believing green tea was supposed to be good for me. To test his theory, I eliminated the green tea altogether. I didn't care for the taste of it that much anyway. Within a few days the dizzy spells disappeared.
I'm not sure if we are hardwired to imagine the worst case scenario or if the news is overly weighted to bring us bad news and we just mirror that behavior. Why it doesn't occur to me we may be overdoing something isn't clear. Even when I have empirical proof as I have in these 3 instances where the symptoms actually indicated excesses of what we normally think of as a good thing, I still jump to a negative possibility. The WebMD's of the world are a good starting off point, but what many diagnosis websites fail to emphasize is our individual, unique body chemistry plays a major role and that's why you should go see a doctor.
Skipping to a couple of months ago, I began experiencing dizzy spells. It crept up on me and seemed unpredictable. But as the weeks rolled by, I began having more dizzy spells when I would stand up quickly or even more scary while driving looking in the rear view mirror. It was as if my brain wasn't in sync with my head movement. All my research on-line popped up horrifying possibilities but no definitive conclusions.
Using a technician's troubleshooting theory, I asked myself what had recently changed in my life? Was it the new set of contact lenses and perhaps something was off kilter with my prescription? My eye doctor ran a battery of tests and determined everything was just fine. She recommended I go see my GP.
My GP is what everyone would hope. I refer to him as my very own Sherlock Holmes. We did the usual weigh in and had my blood pressure taken. All good including my usual low blood pressure. Then we stopped with the measurements and we just talked. Sherlock asked about my diet, vitamin intake and drink choices. On the surface, it appeared I was doing all the right things. Not convinced that it didn't have to do with something I was consuming, he continued with the questioning versus employing costly tests.
I'm not sure if we are hardwired to imagine the worst case scenario or if the news is overly weighted to bring us bad news and we just mirror that behavior. Why it doesn't occur to me we may be overdoing something isn't clear. Even when I have empirical proof as I have in these 3 instances where the symptoms actually indicated excesses of what we normally think of as a good thing, I still jump to a negative possibility. The WebMD's of the world are a good starting off point, but what many diagnosis websites fail to emphasize is our individual, unique body chemistry plays a major role and that's why you should go see a doctor.
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