Happy heart, nervous, abused stomach

Sometimes when I'm nervous with anticipation, I don't eat wisely, in fact, I get eccentric. That happened yesterday, and my stomach is suffering today.

I changed my diet recently anyway. I've gone on a variant of the Adkins Diet. My Dad asked me why, and I said, "Because if you're a male over the age of fifty, your chances of developing heart disease are over ninety percent." He looked at me startled, like Mr. Three Heart Attacks, two stints and quadruple bypass thought I had nothing to worry about. Immediately he realized how weak his argument would be and let it drop.

 The attitude seems to be in my family, and actually in a lot of families, that one shouldn't show that much concern for one's health. There's a shame involved, or perhaps a concern for being thought a hypochondriac (and I've psychosomatic illnesses before). Or that diseases should be regarded as God's choice. That translates to mean "random and out of our control." Trust prayer for your health. What's left unsaid is, trust laziness for your health.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. No, it's not exactly the result of the Western Diet, though the Western McDonald's diet might bring it on sooner. In physical terms, there's a major engineering/logistics challenge to providing trillions of cells with oxygen and nutrients. Probably the evolution of the circulatory system to solve it was the reason for the old "Cambrian explosion," where thousands of macroscopic animal species of novel variations suddenly evolved 530 million of years ago.

However, this means that the circulatory system is also the weak link in animal physiology. It's most important and most prone to catastrophic failure. Though cardiovascular disease is random, it's random like poker and not like roulette. You do have some control, some actions you can take to effect the outcome. Diet is known to be important. Controlling inflammation in the the blood vessels is also important. It's important not to eat things, like trans-fats or excessive sugar, that actually irritate the artery walls. Of course it's also important to control weight for many reasons. I won't even go into smoking and the ways it sabotages your circulatory system.

 The Adkins diet is almost all fruits and vegetables. You keep calories from fat to less than ten percent total calories consumed, and avoid poly-saturated and trans-fats. This makes it almost totally vegan, the only animal product you're allowed to eat are egg whites. It restricts you on grains. You could snack as much as you want on fruits and vegetables. However, the diet is designed specifically for people who have had heart attacks and need to reverse cardio-vascular disease. That doesn't include me, so, I'm not that restricted. I'll eat a serving of meat once every other day. I don't totally avoid dairy, and add the occasional egg yolk to my food. I don't avoid high fat vegetables like olives or avocados. Instead of less than ten percent of calories from fat, I'll go with twenty, especially when I snack of vegetables that have far less fat content than ten percent.

 With the move on my mind, where did this get me into trouble? By snacking on carrots, radishes, adding some pickled okra (high salt, I know) and olives to the mix. (Bean-O or anything with simethicone is a must with this diet anyway, otherwise you become a pariah.)

I chowed all this down at bed time and when I woke up, I knew my stomach had penciled in half my day for intimate time. The toilet has become my workbench for at least a few more hours.

 Except for that damn okra, I know my heart is joyful at least. Oh, what price love. .