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‘Healthy Living’

October 22, 2015
admin
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I am staring at my second gluten free beer of the night. My intention was to go home and make a salad of bitter greens and eat some oily fish because a) I bought those greens last week and they are rotting as I type and b) oily fish in a can is both cheap and relatively healthy, if not exactly saliva inducing. That’s what a responsible broke person with auto­immune issues and a crummy thyroid would do. They would go home after work and patiently make that meal that aims to be both frugal and nourishing and as such succeeds also in being BORING AND JOYLESS AS FUCK. So I went to a nearby pub and got a great gluten free burger and two beers instead. I rested my legs. I revelled in doing nothing.

I’ve been extremely tardy in putting up my blog posts, but not because of my innate laziness. I work long hours, sometimes with commuting it amounts to 10 am ­ 10 pm, and that leaves time to shove anything ready­made in my mouth, browse the internet in bed, and fall asleep to dream of smashing all clocks like that kid in Hook. The alarm goes off nonetheless and I drag my puffy corpse out of bed to make an enormous coffee and maybe eat a boiled egg or if I’m feeling hopeless, a peanut butter cup.

This is not good for me, not by any standards. I know this. I know this intimately because with a body that is running at a disadvantage already, my food selection leaves me scraping by on energy fumes. I also know this because in bouts of chutzpah and motivation, I read books and blogs prescribing lifestyle and dietary changes, always with the same mermaid­haired, white­toothed, white­kitchened woman beaming at me with her “quick and easy” coconut rice, evil­free paleo curry and her 5­ minute breakfast smoothie and her immaculately lit and arranged grain ­free, sugar­free raspberry bars. Where do these bitches find the time and money to wrap things in twine?! These images fill me with deep guilt and self­disgust as I stare at them wearing a t­shirt off the floor, my greasy fringe grazing my unplucked eyebrows framing my baggy eyes staring at this unbelievable woman while I brush some chip crumbs off my chest and emit a hungover burp. Where do these people live? What do they do? I’ve come to the conclusion that they are all in some way, in finances or lifestyle, moms in LA. No one else could possibly proclaim the “simplicity” of that kind of life and believe what they are saying. It’s worse when they make some concession to the harrowed, hurried, stressed lives most people live with the encouragement that eating this way or sleeping that much or using lavender twigs as barettes is worth the effort. It is out of touch, it’s classist, and it’s patronizing.

The people I know work lousy jobs for the most part, for measley pay. They look for joy where and when they can. In going out with friends after a long day instead of getting that much ­needed 8 ­hour sleep. In having some sweet, sweet alcohol to take the edge off having 50 customers treat you like a whim­robot all day instead of making themselves a puritanical banana, camu­camu, date smoothie or paying $12 to have someone else do it. They eat potato chips because potato chips are fucking delicious and so few things in life that cost less than a twoonie/pound bring that much instant satisfaction, especially at 3 a.m. They hit snooze instead of waking up at dawn, in line with their circadian rhythms, to meditate on the crushing pace and fruitlessness of modern, capitalist life. The people I know need to pay rent.

But they aren’t dumb dumbs. They are also educated and aware and they know about their gut bacteria and environmental pollutants and all the ways modern life can slowly degenerate you. They try, when and where they can, to make good choices for their bods, because it does make you feel better to drink some water occasionally instead of a third gut­rotting coffee. Sometimes they buy probiotics on their credit card. My issue with the glut of current health blogs is the illusion of bright simplicity and vitality. Where’s the grit? Where are the single moms with canned food? (Jack Monroe excluded obviously, who is a wonder). 99% of my meals do not look like they do on instagram and you know what, nor should they. If the focus is health then let the focus be health, the messy, down­to­earth, salty, hearty pursuit of health. It should be about how to feel more functional without also feeling like a wet hemp napkin on a night out with friends, or like a failure because you can’t afford organic kale and now you’re going to get ab cancer. Oh wait you don’t have abs so it’s fine. Selling people images of pistachios placed just so, of god damn wooden boards and charming china, of women in “natural makeup” eating a bowl of food that costs as much as my free time and money budget for the day to make; is not helping anyone save the people who can already live like that. I want to see recipe pictures with chipped, ugly plates and the guts of the operation. We need blogs for working people, for stressed, depressed, clean­laundryless, scrambling for bus fare types. Direct and unmanicured and realistic about what’s possible. I’m hoping to make this one of those spots.

It won’t always be magnificent and hardly ever Pinterest­worthy, but I do hope it will give you some ideas for what to eat instead of the leftover half of Ritter Sport on your table, with as little fuss and money, and as much satisfaction as I know that chocolate can give.

health dani

 

Sincerely Glandy x

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A Handy Introduction to Glandular Malfunction

August 13, 2015
admin
0 Comments

Howdy from across the Atlantic. Reporting live from my living room where I am drinking all manner of ungodly potions in an attempt to eradicate a sore throat. It occurs to me that having hypothyroidism and celiac disease is quite a lot like having a little common cold in one respect: you feel mildly crap at all times. Always a little on the invalid side. Sure, you can laugh at TV shows and drag your butt out for a drink, but inside, your body is moaning a low and steady, “bleeeeeurrrrgh” at all times. That’s where the similarity ends and one glaring difference appears – having a chronic disease of the thyroid gland, and being allergic, but not fatally, to gluten, is very unlike the common cold in that the general public have no idea what you’re talking about when you inevitably have to talk about it, and thus they illicit very little understanding. Because it is just as disruptive and inconvenient as the flu, often more so, but not as familiar as a peanut allergy, or as obviously uncomfortable as arthritis. So when I explain about not being able to eat gluten or having a gland problem, I come across like the sniveling little sissy boy from The Secret Garden:


“I really can’t eat that bagel. Not unless you want me to travel home on a poo rocket”.

I’ve had hypothyrodisim, a condition that means my thyroid gland is forever straggling along at sub-par levels, since I was twelve. I’ve known I have celiac disease for the last four years, but gaging by my childhood health problems, I’ve probably had that a lot longer too. This doddling duo don’t do anything dramatic if you keep general tabs on them, really they’re about the long game. The thyroid gland is an essential part of the endocrine system which governs your orchestra of hormones – your metabolism, sleep, mental health and clarity, lust for life and sex – all these get their cues from the thyroid, adrenal, and pituitary glands, and if one isn’t in harmony then they all tend to go off key. Celiac disease manifests itself in umpteen symptoms, which is why it classically goes undiagnosed. I myself react with oozey, bleeding, pustular rashes that would make a plague doctor flinch, and a kooky medley of digestive and mental side effects, the mildest of which include diarrhea and anxiety, the most severe including holes in my gut and raging OCD. Nice stuff.

So Amanda and I chit chat on the regular about being unwell. Recently, we’ve both been going through a rough patch. She was having a (bum) bleeding awful time in and out of the doctor’s with her Crohns, and I was being continually disconcerted by my GP’s lackadaisacal handling of my general poor health and my upcoming annual thyroid cancer test. My thyroid is covered in nasty little nodules which have to have an eye kept on them for signs of cancer. So every six months I have an ultrasound to check on their fluctuating size, then a needle is jiggled, yes jiggled, deep into my nodules to collect cell samples.


Like this but less scary because it’s not John Travolta.

Sometimes I get the all clear, sometimes, the test comes back inconclusive for various reasons, and the endocrinologist gives a helpful shrug and consoles me with the knowledge that thyroid cancers are very slow spreading should I have one, or that I could always have the whole damn thing removed and replace this very vital gland with thyroid medication that has never worked well for me at all, for the rest of my (probably sluggish and miserable) life. For both of us it has often seemed that no one really knows what you’re experiencing or how best to help, which leaves you squinting at endless internet sites compiling a hodge-podge of notes on how to fix yourself. Well dear readers…

Welcome to our hodge-podge!

We’re two best friends separated by an ocean but joined by many bonds, one of them being our crummy bods, our inflammatory tendencies. We’re trying everything within our reach – traditional medical routes, alternative ones, ones my Serbian grandmother suggests (it involves a candle and… maybe the devil? I don’t know, cabbage features heavily), anything and everything to feel a bit better, and who knows, maybe even glorious. Ha! We’ll see.

Fingers crossed, buttholes clenched, minds open.

Love Glandy x

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