HealthMysteries

St. Valentines’s Day is a great time to think about your heart and health.  If you don’t already have one, go out and pick up an inexpensive blood pressure monitor for your wrist or arm, so you can keep track of where you stand.

If you have a family history of high blood pressure or even if you don’t, know what your numbers are, and you can use that as a barometer of how you are doing in a general sense. 

Without a monitor, you can easily assess your heart rate by finding your pulse on your wrist with your finger (not your thumb which has a strong pulse too) and using a watch with a second timer, count the beats for thirty seconds and multiply it by two.  This should be in the 50-80 range.  If it is 80 or higher, and you have not been running around a bit, this is on the high side.  Over 100, as a resting pulse, should be medically evaluated, as there may be a rhythm problem or other heart issue.

When you get your blood pressure monitor, the healthy range is about 120 over 80.  The peak pressure, the systolic is the high number and the lower, resting number is called the diastolic pressure.

We will talk about the variations and when to be concerned in future discussions.  Have a great and healthy day!

There is nothing quite so delectable as homemade soup, chili and stew on a stormy winter afternoon.  I have such fond memories of the old Campbell’s soups in the cabinet and my grandmother making me cream of tomato soup with those yummy little oyster crackers floating on the top.

Soup is my comfort food.  After a hard day or when nothing else seems to satisfy my appetite, I turn to a good soup or chowder.  Which ones do you like?  They now make a healthy version (less salt and fat) of the Campbell’s Chunky Chicken and Corn Chowder that is very good. 

Homemade soup is the best.  I have a turkey in the freezer and I think I will make a stab at my own version of turkey soup with the leftovers.  As long as I keep the salt under control, with lots of vegetable add ins, it really can be a healthy meal.

Sometimes, like Peter Allen used to say, I go to Rio.  Although to be honest, my Rio happens to be castles in England and Ireland.  I like to take that escape hatch to the green fields, blue skies and open air.  With sheep grazing by my feet, I take a long deep breath and smell the early spring flowers, so heady and delicious. It feels like going back in time when you think about the lovely cotswold roofs surrounded in mist from the moors…

Although I cannot afford to head over to England just now, one way to take that kind of vacation for the senses is to visit a greenhouse filled with flowers in the middle of the winter.  The sun beating through the glass onto the ripe red and yellow rose petals is a wondrous treat this time of year.  And many of the greenhouses are preparing their bounty for Valentine’s Day, which is only a couple of weeks from now.

Even less time consuming, stop into a florist shop and take a big whiff and enjoy the freshness for a moment or two.  It will chase your blues to the back of your head for a while.

One way to rise above the depressive, cold weather of winter is to think about lying on a beautiful beach somewhere (with your SPF 45 slathered on all your exposed skin).  You can almost smell the coconut scent and feel that warm breeze blowing your hair in four different directions.

The seagulls are circling overhead and shouting seagull swears at one another, as they fight for a lonely chunk of crab leg that had washed ashore about fifty feet away from you.

Your sunglasses feel like that are sticking to your cheeks as you feel the sun beat down dancing off the waves that carry an arc of moisture toward you in the late morning spray, cooling you off just in time.

Your toes dig into the warm damp sand by your feet and you remember digging with a pail and shovel as a child.  Take a nice, long and deep breath.  Stay with me here on the beach for as long as you can.  Have a great day.

Psychologists understand the importance of self-expression and the value of articulating our true feelings to a healthy psyche.  Poetry is certainly one avenue to take to express one’s innermost feelings both positive and negative (see my prior post for the poetic expression of depression). 

Anger is another strong emotion that can be alleviated with writing.  If you are very angry about something or at someone, write a letter about how you feel and express all the things that are pent up inside you that you have wanted to express but either could not say or did not want to say it.

Then, throw it in the fireplace and burn it.  Most of the time, this is not something you may wish to say in the words that you wrote down, so it is best not to send the letter, especially if it is to your boss or a loved one.

Writing as therapy is one way to deal with your feelings.  If you are an artist, you may prefer to draw about it.  Get your feelings out with your oils and brush on a canvas.  There is something very basic about creating something - an artwork, an essay, a statue - when you are filled with a strong and vibrant emotion.  There is a sense of satisfaction when it is completed and it reveals itself.

Even if you are not a poet, if you are deeply in love, you can write a poem and express your feelings in words.  Try it and see if it does something for you.

Feeling blue?  Me, too.  I have a mild version of seasonal affective disorder, which is feelings of depression that result from limited exposure to sunlight, that occurs with some of us who live in cold winter climates.

I have seen an improvement in my condition over the years but one year, I wrote the poem below.  It was one of my darker poems called, “Over the Edge”.

Over the Edge by Therese Haberman

Feel old and weak

Much too tired

Cannot seem to hold

My head up

Depression seeps into my seams

Saturation point reached

Angst way above maximum limits

You push me over the edge

Sharp edge that cuts through soft skin

Leaving cruel scars

Memories of agony

Deep inside a failing heart

Careening down the road

To dead silence.

You stand in the blowing grass

Threatening clouds bubble above you

Race by too fast for this to be real

Smile and touch my hair

Your last sweet kiss

Lingers in feather softness.

You turn and walk away

Without a hint of a backward glance

Gray eyes sparkle with tears

You will never see

Sight blurs into a salty mix of memories.

Slowly wake to the feel of a wet pillow

Cold spilling drops plummet to oblivion

Wish only for empty numbness

To plug these caverns of raw, endless pain

Want to drown in nothingness

Like the demented.

Anything would be better than this.

I warned you, cheery it ain’t.  Let’s talk about poetry and mental health when we meet again.

Feeling good and being healthy, next to having a loving family and friends, is perhaps the most important thing you can work toward. For those of us who are suffering with serious health problems and disabilities, we understand the value of good health better than the average person.

Disabled people refer to healthy folks as “temporarily abled” because at some point in time, you will very likely develop a problem that interferes with your activities of daily living.  Then you will see firsthand how important your health really is and will appreciate even the little things more.

I do miss some of the things I could do at one time.  I miss hiking, cross country skiing, ice skating and just being able to do whatever I wanted without question.  Now, I worry about even going to the grocery store because I may get weak and have to leave part way through my shopping.  So, I don’t go shopping alone anymore, if at all.

Yes, health is everything. So keep yourself healthy, well nourished and “abled”.

Trying to change too many things at once or alter your routine too dramatically is a sure way to fail in the pursuit of a weight loss or fitness plan.  It is better to change things gradually over the course of several weeks or months, than to try to do something too fast. 

For example, building strength is a slow process and will take patience. A fitness routine will take at least six weeks before you see any real results in how you feel or look.

Weight loss may hit a spike in the first couple of weeks, but will level off to only a pound or two per week, once you get going.  A faster weight loss may result in losing water weight or even muscle mass if you try to starve yourself into a loss.

Many of us need to adjust our attitude about increasing our fitness and try to move away from the concept of just reaching a certain goal and then going back to our old ways of eating or not exercising.  We need to accept the change as a permanent way of acting or doing.  Losing weight is relatively easy to do, keeping it off is the real trick.

The overriding theme of both of my blogs - Careermysteries and Healthmysteries - is that a positive and constructive viewpoint in approaching any and all of life’s many obstacles and challenges is a great attitude.  If you believe in yourself and your abilities, you will achieve your goals.

Some people are faced with greater challenges than others.  I have a heart disability which affects most every other aspect of my life, but I don’t allow that to make me a lesser person in any way.  How?  Because instead of climbing mountains or achieving feats in sports that are not possible for me, I achieve other things like writing essays, poems and articles.  And I try to help others achieve their dreams with career advice, guidance and health information.

The point I want to keep in the forefront of all the things I do is that your good attitude and “can do” approach will get you the results you want to achieve.  So don’t give up on yourself or your dreams.  They are right around the next corner.

Having a tendency for developing depression can be a genetic issue.  I know it runs in my family, so I am more susceptible to it that most.  For that reason, I am very sensitive to my negative feelings and any tendencies toward not wanting to do things, go places or even get out of bed in the morning.

I have been lucky in that my episodes have been minimal.  The hardest time I have had in recent years was really postpartum, and thus a hormone related slump.

Depression can be a very serious problem for some.  My mother was prone to it for a number of years and I know that it took a long time for her to recover once she was given the proper medication.

I am very fortunate in that I have not been subject to severe or chronic mental illness.  I do feel for those who battle depression, bi-polar disorder and similar problems.  Encouraging others who may be depressed to seek help and counseling is the right thing to do.