Stormy's Corner

How to get rid of the hiccups ... in New Orleans

While at the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans, I got the hiccups. We happened to be passing a witchcraft/voodoo type shop and someone jokingly said, "You should see if they have something for hiccups!" So we went on in and met the rudest woman I've talked to in quite a long time. She said:

No, I don't have anything for hiccups. Lemon and bitters - everyone knows that!

So we went to the bar next door, asked for lemon and bitters. The bartender took a slice of lemon, added a few drops of bitters and some sugar and handed it to me. Five seconds later, the hiccups were gone!

Bitters are 45% alcohol so use with caution - it only took a splash on the lemon.

Eat breakfast, have boys

According to this study eating lots, eating varied foods and eating breakfast during pregnancy makes women more likely to have boys. No wonder I had a boy.

My Pants Fell Off!

We've been eating "low carb" since Thanksgiving.  The first month or so I lost 10 pounds and then nothing happened even though I continued to be good.  Whenever anybody asked me how it was going, I'd say we're being good and it's working really well for Frank (my boyfriend.)  And I'd go on to explain that I'm eating a lot less because I'm not as hungry as I used to be.  I think eating less is a good thing as I used to eat continuously.

Last week I put on a suit in my hotel room getting ready for my keynote presentation and I looked down and thought "who let my pant hems out??"  My pants were so long I was standing on them!  So I grabbed the waist and pulled up and discovered I had a good 4 or 5 extra inches!  With a bit of work and creative use of my belt - on the smallest hole, I managed to come up with a solution that looked decent.  When the guy that put the mic on me suggested I take off my jacket, I looked at him just horrified.  "Well, you see, but, I've lost some weight ... NO!"

So it's going good.

P.S.  This post is my entry for a free trip to BlogHer.  It's also a true story.  The conference was SCALE and my keynote was "Would you do it again for free?"

Strange diets

We've been trying to eat low carb and while that means lots of veggies, it means not much fruit.  So it's been strange to see all the pictures of Steve Pavlina's raw food diet.  He's trying to eat healthy and eating only fruits and vegetables (that look yummy but very unsatisfying) and we are trying to eat healthy and eating lots of (very yummy) chicken, pork, cheese, elk, deer, asparagus, lobster, green beans, steak, ... 

It just goes to show you not only are their different tastes for different people but we also have no idea what the healthiest diet for a human being is!  (I do assume there is more than one type of healthy diet.   People have survived in many different places in the world.)

Sperm power for robots

Cornell University Researchers aim to harness sperm power for nano-robots.

Talk Review: Good Calories, Bad Calories

If you didn't read Good Calories, Bad Calories because you are not into reading nonfiction books or you didn't want to buy it, then I recommend you watch Gary Taubes talk The Quality of Calories: What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care at University of California Berkeley.  It's a free webcast and he makes some really good points.

1. It's an undisputed fact that it takes insulin to store fat.  No insulin, no fat.  That's why undiagnosed diabetics lose weight.
2. Another undisputed fat: carbohydrates cause insulin, not fat or protein.
3. In many poor societies, the women are obese and the kids are undernourished.  (He gave almost 20 examples.)  Either the women are starving their kids (unlikely) or it doesn't take a lot of calories to be fat.  Those women are fat because they are eating the wrong foods not because they are eating too much.
4. Lack of will power, gluttony and sloth are not the causes of obesity.
5. Kids eat because they are growing.  They don't grow because they eat.  Vertical and horizontal growth are not so different.  People eat because something is telling them to grow horizontally.  They don't grow because they eat.

Gary Taubes' talk is well worth listening to.

Does your doctor take your concerns seriously?

As I said in my last post about choosing a new doctor, we've seen a lot - like really a lot - of medical people this year.  I've really come to appreciate medical people that take my concerns seriously (all of those visits but one were very necessary) and I've become really annoyed at people who don't take me seriously or don't believe me.

Today, before the doctor even looked at Caleb she was already trying to tell me there was not much chance of him having an ear infection because he didn't have a fever and he wasn't fussing with his ears.  I felt myself getting defensive - and a bit worried that she might not even look at his ears!  I think I stayed civil and calm.  The minute she peeked in his ear, she said, "Oh, that's definitely infected!" and I didn't even say "I told you so!" 

In contrast, I took Caleb to the ER a couple of weeks ago and they made me feel believed, trusted, knowledgeable, ...  When all of Caleb's terrible choking sounds stopped when we got there,  I was so worried they wouldn't believe me!  But they went out of their way to listen to me and to check him.  They even took xrays!  (Turns out he had a throat infection and his throat was swollen so much that when he cried his vocal cords would hit the sides of his throat and it sounded terrible!  It got Frank and I out of bed faster than I think we've ever moved before!)

Does your doctor believe you?  Or do they take a "I'll be the judge of that" attitude with you?

When do you need a new doctor?

When do you decide you need a new doctor?  In the past year we've been to the hospital once, the ER three times, urgent care twice and the doctor's office countless times!  That's a lot of medical care - and all of the visits except one justified some type of medical treatment.  So today when I called the doctor's office to ask a nurse a question - to see if we needed to see a doctor - and she told me there were no doctors or nurses on staff and I should go to urgent care ... well, I decided we needed a new plan.  So I called a pediatrician who works in an office of pediatricians.  Because of their large staff of doctors they were able to fit Caleb in right away.  We had to jump in the car to make it in time.  (Instead of half a mile away, they are 15 miles away.)

So while I really liked Caleb's small town family doctor - he always took the time to sit down and answer all my questions and he had a very matter of fact, no worrying way of looking at things - I really needed a doctor we could see on short notice.  One that wouldn't constantly refer me to urgent care and the emergency room.  When your kid has an ear infection, you can't wait till next Tuesday.

Wow! We're fat! Lose weight for your friends!

A couple of blogs I read pointed me to this article.  They focused on the fact that by 2015, 75% of Americans will be obese or overweight.  What I noticed is that two thirds of us already are!  66% of Americans are overweight or obese.  It's already normal to be overweight.  And since a recent study found that you are more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight, the more of us that are overweight, the more of us that will become overweight.  So not only are most of us fat, but if we're not, we're likely to be fat soon. 

And fat's not healthy, so let's all work on reaching our ideal weight.  If not for yourself, for your friends!

Drugs or no drugs when giving birth? And why all medical sensors should be wireless!

Here's my post on how people do not agree on what "natural childbirth" is or should be and how all my problems could have been solved with two little wireless sensors.

I was firmly against drugs during labor unless I changed my mind during labor.  (How's that for a decision! But having never been in labor, I didn't figure I could really decide till I was there.)  You would not believe the number of people that acted like I was crazy and tried to talk me into drugs!  I'm not a big fan of pain and I wasn't going drugless to be natural or tough or to prove a point.  If you could give me drugs during labor that would take away the pain and still let me walk around, I probably would have opted for them in the beginning.  I believe that vaginal births work better if women can get up, walk around, use the birthing ball, or just find the sitting or standing position that works best for them.   When I'm in pain, I don't lie flat on my bed - when my stomach hurts I usually hold it and curl around it.  Look at any kid with an injury - they don't lie flat on their backs - they curl around the pain.

I knew the minute I accepted drugs I would be entering into a spiral that would end with me trapped in bed.  And I was right.  Once you get any drugs, you have an IV going into you and they want to keep you attached to the machine that monitors you and the baby.  So at that point you have two machines/stands that have to go everywhere with you plus at least 3 cables and tubes coming out of you.

Here's how it happened for me:

• My water broke,
• Caleb was in distress,
• They made me lie in bed while they figured out what was distressing him,
• I wasn't allowed to move - not even sit up, until they figured it out,
• They attached a sensor to the top of Caleb's head with a wire that came out and attached to a machine next to me,
• They put a balloon like thing in the uterus next to Caleb to time the contractions more accurately, with a wire that came out and attached to a machine next to me,
• Caleb had the cord wrapped around his neck and sometimes he wasn't getting enough oxygen,
• They inserted a catheter into me with a tube that came out,
• At which point I gave up on any notions of "natural" and I asked for an epidural,
• The epidural doctor gave me a hard time about changing my mind from no drugs to an epidural,
• The epidural meant I had yet more tubes attached to more machines,
• I threw up because pain killers make me sick, so I got some anti-nausea medicine which I think meant another tube but I'm not sure,
• I fell asleep because the anti-nausea medicine makes you drowsy. 

So I had a vaginal birth.  Was it natural?  Not really.  Would I have had it any other way, i.e. less drugs or cables?  Not with the cord wrapped around Caleb's neck!

BUT, I think it would have all been different if the sensor they attached to Caleb's head and the sensor that timed contractions had been wireless.  Then I wouldn't have been attached to any machines, and assuming Caleb reacted well, I could have still moved.  Why don't they make wireless sensors when we have wireless phones, wireless computers, wireless copiers, wireless garage door openers?  I don't know.  My theory is that the people designing the sensors never bothered to interview the women in labor, the users, about them.  The nurse tried to tell me they didn't have wireless sensors because the heart is an electro-magnetic organ and that would some how interfere with the measurements.  I pointed out that even my heart rate monitor is wireless!

So I wasn't trying to be "natural,"  I was trying to have the easiest, quickest and healthiest birth.  I think taking drugs and lying on your back makes it harder and longer.  I think a C-section makes the recovery a lot harder.  I think staying at home makes it more dangerous.  (We wouldn't have known Caleb was having difficulties.) 

And I think medical device manufactures could help everybody by developing devices that take advantage of technology and deliver the best experience for their users.

Would you rather be dead?

My vet says my dog would rather be dead.  Actually, he didn't say it like that and he's a great guy but he does really think I should euthenize her.  I don't agree.  As of yesterday she was still walking around, following us everywhere, tail wagging.  Not her usual self, but she still wanted to be a part of things.  Today I'm not so sure.  She slept most of the day and she had to be coaxed out to the car to see the vet.  But he assures me she's not in pain, she's just extremely uncomfortable.  So how do you decide whether she's so uncomfortable that she'd rather be dead?  Personally, I think she'd rather be alive.  Am I making the right decision?  Nobody can know.

As for what's going on - Teddy was diagnosed with kidney failure last September.   The vet gave her two months to two years to live and it looks like it's going to be within the next week. She's down to 35 pounds - from 75 pounds a year ago and she hasn't eaten anything for the past week.  I'm going to miss her!

Are you always hot? Or always cold?

Cognitive Friday got some interesting data about who is always hot and who is always cold.  As most of us would have guessed, women are much more likely to be cold than men.  (As I type this my hands are freezing!)  Thin people and young people are also more likely to be cold. 

One related theory I heard is that women have a much smaller range of "comfortable" temperatures because their bodies need to be able to regulate a fetus' temperature.  I no longer believe this one because the one thing I really loved about being pregnant was always having warm hands!  So obviously I was much warmer when I was pregnant than when I'm not pregnant.

Cognitive Friday also discovered that exercise didn't change people's answers at all which surprised me.  I wonder if you could measure muscle mass if that would coorelate to feeling warmer like being overweight does?

Do you fit the data?  If not, how are you different?

The Secret to Losing Weight is to Work Like a Sled Dog

The secret to losing weight is to work like a sled dog.  According to Wired Magazine sled dogs burn 10,000 calories a day!  Since there's 3500 calories to a pound, that means they would lose three pounds a day if they didn't eat lots.  So, work as hard as a sled dog running and pulling a sled all day and you too could lose three pounds a day!  (Check with your doctor first!)

Photo by Ranger Gord.

What's causing our kids to become autistic, fat, near-sighted and sleep deprived?

TV!  This latest study found that watching TV lowers melatonin levels which can create all sorts of nasty side effects in children.  This study (as others) linked TV watching in kids to:

• autism
• obesity
• trouble sleeping
• eye problems
• lower melatonin levels
• early puberty

In adults, "the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease increases with each extra daily hour of television viewing among people aged 20 to 60."

Watching TV must give people immense pleasure ... otherwise I can't imagine why they would expose themselves and their kids to so much of it. We spend nine months of pregnancy trying to eat right, drink no alcohol, get all sorts of prenatal tests and then we plop our toddlers down in front of another round of SpongeBob or Thomas the Tank Engine without a second thought.

Dogs are Good for Babies' Health

Infants Wheeze Less in Homes with Multiple Dogs.  If that's true, then Caleb is set.   He's got two big furry companions who shed everywhere and follow us around everywhere - including the middle of the night feeding.

Babies Gagged in Russia

Having just spent three days in the hospital with my own 5 month old son, this article hit a nerve, Russian Shock at Gagged Babies.  The babies were gagged with plaster and tape because their crying was disturbing the nurses.  A woman who happened to be in the hospital with her own children heard the babies and took a video with her cell phone.

All of the gagged children were orphans.  It definitely made me understand why people want to adopt!  Everytime Caleb cried in the hospital I talked to him or held him.  The thought of those babies being gagged instead of comforted just made my heart hurt.

We're home!

We're home and Caleb is doing well!  His crib mattress is at a 45 degree angle and he has his own humidifier.

Cross Your Fingers!

We're two hours into the four hour test - can Caleb maintain his oxygen levels without supplemental oxygen?  If he can, we'll be going home in two hours!  Yeah!

Monday update to "Caleb has RSV"

We had kind of a rough night.  Caleb was doing good on 1/4 L at midnight so they decided to slowly turn down the oxygen overnight.  (They were trying to get us home today!) Only they didn't tell me.  So in the wee hours of the morning I couldn't figure out why his oxygen levels kept falling to 80% and then spontaneously going back up to 90%.  When they fell below 80% I paged the nurse.  The nurse that responded wasn't our nurse but she figured out that Caleb was on room air!   We turned it back up to 1/2 L and he fell asleep for a couple of hours and woke up his usual happy self.  But neither of us got a whole lot of sleep.  (Caleb's taking a nap now so all is good.) 

We are now back to a 1/4 L and expecting to see the doctor over lunch.

(Caleb's figured out how to get the oxygen tube out of his nose.  So he did that 3-4 times last night.  Luckily he hasn't figured out how to keep the machine from beeping when his oxygen levels falls so I always find him out!)

Sunday evening update to "Caleb has RSV" Part 2

10:21pm.  We are back down to 1/2 liter of oxygen and looking good!  Caleb spent the last couple of hours eating a ton (well, compared to the last couple of days anyway) and playing and talking.

Sunday evening update to "Caleb has RSV"

They got his oxygen down to 1/4 liter this afternoon.  (They turned it down little by little and then waited to see if his numbers held steady.)  But we had to turn it back up to a 3/4 liter this evening because his heart rate jumped back up to the 200s and his oxygen went down to 88%.  (Actually, probably his oxygen dropped and then his heart rate went up as he tried to get more oxygen.)

I don't know much about this but I don't think we'll be going home tomorrow.   He has to be completely off oxygen for four hours and still doing well before he's ready to go home.

Sunday update to "Caleb has RSV"

Caleb is doing much better today.  He slept all night, ate 5 ounces in one sitting and woke up "talking" like he normally does.  His heart rate has also come down a lot.  We even got a couple of smiles out of him today.  (He's been playing and interactive most of the time but no smiles.)  As soon as he can maintain this without oxygen, we'll be able to go home.  In the meantime, it's nice to be here in the hospital with all the help from all the experts.

Oh ... and did I mention that everyone that comes to visit has to wear a mask, gown and gloves?  (RSV is very contagious.)  I think Caleb's wondering why everyone looks so funny ... he stared at our new nurse this morning for a good 10 minutes.  Then he finally gave her a big smile!

Caleb has RSV

In case you are wondering where we are - Frank and I are camped out with Caleb in a hospital room this weekend.  Caleb has Respiratory Syncytial Virus, RSV for short since I haven't even figured out how to pronounce it yet.   For most of us this would be just a common cold but for the little guys like Caleb who are under six months of age, it can be quite serious. 

Caleb had been sick with a runny nose and a cough since Wednesday.  Many thanks to his day care provider who on Friday called us at work and said she thought we ought to take him to the doctor.  With a temperature of 99.6, a runny nose and a cough, we would have dismissed it as a cold until much later on Friday when it got much worse. 

After a very long wait in the urgent care waiting room (over 90 minutes during which our six year old was very, very good), we finally got in to see a doctor.  They immediately determined that his oxygen saturation was not sufficient (85% instead of at the 92+% they would have liked to have seen), his temperature was 101.6 and he was starting to have problems breathing.  You could hear him struggling to breath.   His heart rate was also over 200bmp - part of the trying to get enough oxygen to his body.  They immediately did chest xrays to eliminate pneumonia.  (The xrays were very cute - his whole torso fits on one xray.  You could also see his teeth even though none of come out yet!)  They sent us over to hospital and by 9pm we were checked into this room where we've spent the last few days.  They've been treating him with oxygen and nose suctioning.  (Not his favorite but he must realize it's helping because he's gotten better about them.)  The earliest we can hope to take him home is Monday morning.

Why you should lose that extra 50 pounds

I really liked Steve Pavlina's way of realizing how much extra weight you are carrying:

Go to the gym, pick up two 25-lb dumbbells, walk around with them, and ask yourself if you really want to carry that burdensome weight 24/7 for another year.

(His post is about setting your year's goal, not about losing weight in particular.)

See more health related posts at Living Well.

A 3 year old's courageous battle with cancer

Read Samantha's Story for a 3 year old's courageous battle with cancer.  It's both a tear jerker and heart warming.

Women that have epidurals are less likely to breastfeed

Women that have epidurals are much more likely to stop breastfeeding before six months. Epidurals 'hamper breastfeeding':

Three-quarters of those who had no analgesia were breastfeeding at 24 weeks, compared with 53% who received pethidine or epidurals.

The epidural is also tied to trouble breastfeeding in the first week.  They don't know why, but one theory is that the epidurals make the babies more sleepy and it's harder to breastfeed them.

I had an epidural against my wishes. (Well, the epidural wasn't against my wishes - being tied to the bed was.  Once I wasn't allowed to get out of bed, sit up or turnover, I gave in to an epidural.)  And I quit breastfeeding after a month - a very hard decision.

Exercise, not diet, is the key

A recent study confirms that exercise alone can provide tremendous health benefits. BBC NEWS | Health | Obese should exercise not 'diet':

A programme which encouraged women not to diet but to take part in exercise classes found significant improvements in health and mental well-being.

The study showed exercise improved blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol levels.  In addition, I think exercise is crucial to maintaining quality of life.  I see too many heavy people that can't carry their kids or grandkids, walk around the mall or try new activities.

Drinking when pregnant

The New York Times has an article today on drinking alcohol and pregnancy: The Weighty Responsibility of Drinking for Two. They focused on a couple of themes.  One, how there are no studies about moderate drinking and pregnancy.  All the studies are about five drinks a day or no alcohol.  Two, how society tries to regulate pregnant women drinking.  We are all uncomfortable with pregnant women drinking.  (I have to admit to some of this myself.  Before I got pregnant, I saw a pregnant women at a sushi restaurant and I wondered what she was doing there.  Now I know.  She was probably eating sushi!)

I only had a problem once with someone trying to tell me what I should do when I was pregnant.  (Or should I say tell me what I shouldn't do.  Don't drink, don't lift that, don't stand there, sit down, etc.)  When I was six months pregnant we went to a really nice restaurant for my birthday.  I decided to get a glass of wine with my dinner to celebrate.  So we ordered two glasses of wine - one for him and one for me.  When the waiter brought them out, he did a double take, sat them down on an empty table and then came over with one glass and put it in front of Frank.  When Frank told him we'd ordered two glasses, he looked at me and said, "Oh, I thought you weren't drinking." 

Healthcare: Different Costs for Different Folks

Having had a lot of experience with the health care world lately, I've become amazed at how pricing is set.  When trying to pick which insurance company to go with, I called my doctors and the hospital to find out what my expenses would be.  I discovered that what they charge depends on what insurance you have!

Recently our doctor billed us $1230 for a visit and our insurance company agreed to pay $291.92 and the doctor's office called it good!  I wondered if I could have negotiated it down that much if I'd been paying without insurance.  Well, this guy did too.  He called several hospitals and asked if they would negotiate if he was uninsured.  Here's what he found out:

# The list price varies by 75% ($1,013 to $3,970).

# The best uninsured price varies by 92% ($204 to $2,600).

# List price discounts range from 0% to 86%.

# To get many of the discounts hospitals offer the balance needs to be paid in full at the time of service or a large down payment made, to receive it.

# Some hospitals are unwilling to divulge the price over the phone and others will not call back.

The details are at HealthCare Advocate Blog � Blog Archive � The Uninsured Patient Experiment.

Early prenatal drinking affects baby's stress response

Women's biggest concern about drinking alcohol during pregnancy is "what about those drinks I had before I knew I was pregnant?"  This is the first study I've seen about what affect drinking early in a pregnancy has: MedlinePlus: Prenatal drinking may boost baby's stress response.  Basically they found that two drinks a day early in pregancy cause a baby's stress response to be greater than normal.  When you are stressed your heart rate goes up and your stress hormones go up.  That's bad not only for your health but for your ability to learn.

For the record, there are lots of other things that also affect a person's stress response.

To circumcise or not?

I bet many a couple has had the "circumcision" debate but hardly anybody talks about it.  This medical student feels very strongly that boys should not be circumcised and she explains why here: Tales from the Emergency Room and Beyond....

She says that less than 20% of boys in Canada are circumcised.  According to this website, just over half (55.9%) of boys in the United States were circumcised in 2003 but it varies greatly by region from 31.4% in the West to 77.8% in the Northeast.

As I wrote this, I realized that I am very, very anti-female circumcision and not so anti-male circumcision simply because of my culture.  I'm going to have to rethink my values.

Is your baby allergic to milk?

If your baby is allergic to milk, switching him or her to soy based formula is not the answer.  Being allergic to milk is not the same as being lactose intolerant.  Babies with milk allergies should proabably be switched to a hypoallergic or amino-acid based formula.  BBC NEWS | Health | Milk allergy in babies 'missed'.

(Note that the article also alluded that soy based forumulas could cause long-term fertility problems!)

Why you shouldn't eat after brushing your teeth

Ever wondered why things don't taste good after brushing your teeth?  It's because of something called "sodium laurel sulfate."  It blocks the sweet sensors on your tongue and enhances the sour and bitter sensors.

Why does orange juice taste so bad after brushing your teeth? :: ABC Gold & Tweed Coasts.

Medical school on an airplane

This plane is flying around Vietnam not just performing eye surgery on people that can't afford to go to a hospital for surgery but it also has a teaching room to teach local doctors to perform the surgery themselves. Flying eye hospital aids world's poor - Yahoo! News.

The front section of the plane has been converted into a classroom, complete with a medical library and a big screen that broadcasts close-up interactive surgeries from the operating room, located in the middle of the aircraft.

It's always good to teach people how to do it themselves and this is a great idea on how to bring training (and handson, live training) to the people that need it.

Losing weight while breastfeeding

I recently quit breastfeeding; see my post on it here. 

While I was breastfeeding, I was losing 2-3 pounds a week and eating lots.  (Two lunches, seconds at dinner, lots of brownies, etc.)  I've figured out why:

This first week after breastfeeding, Caleb is eating 700 calories a day.  Assuming he was consuming 700/day breastfeeding, that's 4900 calories/week which is about 1.5 pounds a week and that doesn't count production costs!

Am I sorry I quit?  Nope.  I'll just use all my extra time to get some exercise, which I have really missed. 

Deciding to Stop Breastfeeding

I'm going to post about deciding to stop breast feeding because I couldn't find hardly anything at all about deciding to stop breastfeeding on the web.  (I posted on dogs and alcohol for the same reason, and my blog post on it Stormy's Corner: No Drinks for Dogs! is not only one of the most popular posts on my blog but it's also the top search result for dogs and alcohol on the web.)  As much information as there is on the web, some topics are very hard to find!

I decided to stop breastfeeding after a month and while I was considering it, I searched the web extensively.  While there is a ton of extremely helpful information on breastfeeding on the web, it is all centered around solving any problems you might have, not in making a decision one way or the other.  (And if it is about making a decision, they spend pages and pages telling you how good breastfeeding is for your child.)  There's also no information about, when you decide to quit, exactly what you are supposed to do.  Stop cold turkey?  Gradually phase it out? I did find three pages of information on stopping breast feeding:

• Ending breastfeeding.  This poor woman had obviously already decided to stop breastfeeding (a hard decision!) and the expert answering her email first questioned why she'd made the decision.  The expert did answer her question about how to stop breastfeeding and said to gradually wean the baby by cutting out a feeding every day or two.
• Life After Weaning: Ending the breastfeeding relationship.  This was actually the most helpful webpage.  It's an excerpt from a book and actually talks about both the physical and the emotional effects on the mother and the emotional effects on the child.  (Note that the emotional effects on the child tend to be largely those that breastfeed for several years.  It doesn't talk about the effects on an infant.)
• ending breastfeeding....what happens? This was a very short discussion between moms about what happens.  Like the previous article it suggests weaning slowly and points out that you should never completely drain your breasts if you want your milk to dry up.

Deciding not to breastfeed is a very hard decision because while nobody says it's wrong not to breastfeed, the minute you become pregnant you are inundated with literature and people telling you how good breastfeeding is for your child and offering all sorts of support.  (In particular the hospital staff and nurses were awesome.  They were extremely supportive, very helpful and offer all sorts of free services to help and encourage nursing moms.)  And when I asked friends and family what they thought everyone was very careful not to say anything one way or the other.  Although all offered support either way!  And many pointed out that there are plently of healthy children and adults who were not breastfed.

So why did I decide to quit?  It wasn't health reasons, it wasn't because I couldn't nurse Caleb and it wasn't because Caleb wouldn't nurse.  (Those seem to be the "acceptable" reasons to give for stopping breastfeeding.)  I quit for many reasons, although it basically boiled down to the fact that I didn't like it.  Here are the reasons I didn't like it, pretty much in order of importance to me:

• Time.  It was extremely time consuming.  During the day Caleb wanted to eat every 1.5 to 2 hours.  And he ate for 30 minutes.  So that means that 25-30% of my waking day was spent feeding him.  That's a lot of time!  And planning around that is very difficult.  (And it's really hard to pump milk so that you can leave him with someone else for an hour or two when you are already nursing all the time.  We ended up using formula in those cases and Caleb didn't seem to mind going back and forth at all.)
• Worry.  I was always worried he wasn't getting enough to eat (why did he want to eat so often!) or that what I was eating or drinking might affect him.  (How many diet coke's should you drink?  Probably none, right?  So what about the two you just drank?)  And it turns out he probably wasn't getting as much in the afternoon as he wanted because he's much less fussy now.  But the doctor said he was getting plently because he was sleeping 4-5 hours at night and gaining plenty of weight. 
• Sore nipples.  A month is a really long time to have sore nipples.  And yes, he was latching on and eating correctly.  I think just feeding him 30% of all waking hours made them sore.  I'm sure eventually they would have toughened up.

Of course I have doubts and regrets.  Most of them centered around the health benefits.  Breastfeeding is supposed to help kids' immunity and decrease their long term odds of obesity.  Those are the two I worried about the most.  But I'm confident that there are lots of other factors that also influence Caleb's health and the two of us being happy is one of them!  (I realized I never talked to him when I was nursing him except to wake him up continuously and to ask him if he was done yet.  When I feed him a bottle I talk to him the whole time and it's fun!)

I feel a little bit like I'm airing my personal diary in this post, but I wanted to make the information I found available to others and I wanted to add my own experience and decision to the pool of knowledge so that others might feel more comfortable making a decision one way or the other.

Hungry guys like heavier women

Another weird tidbit for you from BBC NEWS | Health | Hunger dictates who men fancy.

A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated.

They also said that societies where food is scarce tend to value heavier women and societies like ours where food is abundant tend to favor thinner women.

Why we are having a boy

I really liked the book Freakonomics, so I follow the authors' blog, Freakonomics.  I also find genetics fascinating, so this post caught my eye: Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?.  Taking it all with a grain of salt it makes for some fun reading.

Selection pressure means when parents have traits they can pass on that are better for boys than for girls, they are more likely to have boys. Such traits include large size, strength and aggression, which might help a man compete for mates. On the other hand, parents with heritable traits that are more advantageous to girls are more likely to have daughters.

And it goes on to say that beautiful parents are more likely to have girls because being beautiful is a bigger advantage to girls.  And engineers and mathmaticians are more likely to have boys because it's a bigger advantage to a boy to have those talents.  So, again, taking it with a grain of salt (or perhaps a shaker of salt!), I figure that since Frank and I are both engineering types and Frank is definitely big and strong, we were destined to have a boy!

(So to the answer to the blog's title, why do beautiful women marry unattractive men?  According to this theory it's because there are more beautiful women in the world because beautiful people tend to have girls just like strong people tend to have boys.  Don't forget that grain of salt. :)

 

Better memory = Ignoring things

People with better memories are not necessarily better at remembering things.  This study shows they are better at ignoring the unimportant things.  They filter better so they only have to try to remember the important things.

That makes me feel better.  All those things I can't remember?  They weren't important.

Boing Boing: Better visual working memory stems from ignoring stuff.

Keep your nose warm to ward off a cold

You are more likely to get a cold when you're cold, especially if your nose is cold.

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Mothers 'were right' over colds.

Interesting theory on what makes us eat more

I just read a very interesting article by Seth Roberts, "What Makes Food Fattening.  (The Freakonmics blog pointed me to it.)  Nobody knows what makes food fattening but Roberts had a lot of interesting theories.  The article was well worth reading but if you don't have the time to read all 77 pages, here's my summary.  (Note that all the figures were at the end of the article.)  I'm going to state these as facts but the paper makes it very clear that they are all still theories.

• We have body fat "set point", a level of fat or weight that our body tries to maintain.
• This set point is variable and depends on what we eat.
• Food has a flavor and an amount of calories.  The higher the amount of calories, the better the flavor will taste.  This is flavor-calorie association.  So if a banana had 200 calories, it would taste better than bananas do now with only 100 calories even though the banana flavor is the same.
• The faster your body notices the calories, the higher this flavor-calorie association is.  So if it's flavored sugar water, it reaches your digestive stream quickly and it'll have a higher flavor-calorie association than food that needs to be broken down and processed by your stomach.
• Foods can be paired together and have a joint flavor-calorie association.  French fries don't have much flavor, so their flavor-calorie association would be low, but when we eat them with high flavor foods (like hamburgers), the hamburger/french fry flavor-calorie association is high with hamburgers contributing to the flavor and french fries (and hamburgers) to the calorie part.
• The more flavor-calorie foods you eat, the higher your fat set point is.  This has something to do with when foods are plenty, food is more diverse and flavor-calorie associations go up.  When food is scarse, they go down and our fat set points go down.
• Japanese are thinner because their food has less flavor and so the flavor-calorie association is weaker.
• Fast food has a very strong flavor-calorie association and it's very consistent.
• The more consistent a food, the more likely you will develop a flavor-calorie association with it.

His advice?

• Eat new foods often!  Your body doesn't have a flavor-calorie association for it.
• Vary food flavors often.  If you cook at home, make your dishes just a little different each time.
• Consume calories with no flavor.  This will decrease your set point.  (Roberts claims drinking fructose water between meals will actually decrease your set point and cause you to lose weight.)

I'm not sure what I think about it all yet, but it's a lot of food for thought.

2:36pm: I forgot one:

• Eating the same food all the time makes it boring and lowers the flavor-calorie association.  All liquid diets are boring and so people eat less of them.

 

MyFoodPhone: the new nutrition log

Surveys show that dieters that keep a food journal lose more weight and keep it off.  Now a new service allows you to take pictures of your food and somebody else figures out how to journal it: MyFoodPhone.  At a $100/month, it's not cheap.  You do get personal advise from a dietitian though.

Gay and Straight Men React Differently to Sexual Odors - New York Times

Gay men react to sexual orders more like women do than straight men do.  Whether their response is a cause or an effect of being gay is still unknown.

Gay and Straight Men React Differently to Sexual Odors - New York Times.

Rich people are fat now too

Rich people are fat now too. Obesity surges among affluent - Yahoo! News.

Episiotomies Are Not a Good Thing

Several of my friends are either pregnant or have just had a baby, so the topic of episiotomies has come up a few times.  Episiotomies are not a good thing for women - they might make it easier for the doctor and they might be better for the baby in a few cases, but they are not good for women.  There is scientific proof to back this up and we've known this for years, but most people still think they are a good thing.  In case you are one of those people, here's a link to the latest study showing that episotomies are not necessarily a good thing and they are not better for women than tearing:  Review: Episiotomies May Bring More Risks - Yahoo! News.

Fast Food Will Make You Fat

In case you missed the previous gazillion studies, here's yet another one, Fast Food Linked to Obesity, Diabetes. The real question is what are we going to do about it?

Get your sleep

Once again, researchers are saying that if you don't get enough sleep, you are more likely to be obese.  In this study, people who got 6 hours of sleep a night were 23% more likely to be obese than those who got the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep a night.  For those that only get 4 hours of sleep a night, the chances of being obese go up 73%! 

Study Links Sleep Deprivation, Obesity

So get your sleep!

Companies & Health Care

Personally, I don't think an American citizen should have to be employed by a company in order to get good health insurance. But at the moment, that's the way the system works. And I believe we give adequate tax benefits and incentives to large companies so that they are able to provide good health insurance options to their employees. Many large companies in the US do offer good health insurance options to employees.

Walmart not only pays dismally, but it is also rather stingy on the health insurance. From The an article in the New York Times, here's an example of a Walmart employee. "Ms. Caizza, for example, worked about 32 hours a week, making $8 an hour. Full-time employees make about $1,200 a month on those wages, meaning the $133 to $264 they are asked to pay for family coverage may not be within their reach."

No wonder Walmart does so well. Tax payers are paying for the benefits for their employees. Do you still think that cheap Walmart goods are so cheap? Next time, consider the millions that California tax payers alone have spent insuring Walmart employees.

Calories In, Calories Out. Not?

I've always heard, and firmly believed, that there is 3500 calories to a pound. However, studies show that when people are fed the same amount of extra calories, they gain differing amounts. Widely differing amounts, anywhere from 9 to 29 pounds in one study!

It might be that 3500 calories is not always a pound.

Can You Keep it Off?

Here's an article in the New York Times,