Off all meds

For years I took drugs for high blood pressure, and for almost as long for allergy symptoms. This post is just to mention that going low-carb has gotten me off all of them.

I got off the allergy meds first. I got on them gradually. For years I said I didn’t have allergies. Then for years after that I said, “Well, for a couple of weeks in the spring and a couple of weeks in the fall, I get a little snuffly.” Then I started being snuffly all spring and all fall. At some point I started taking antihistamines (Claritin seemed to provide the most symptom relief with the least amount of drowsiness), and then at some point I started taking Nasacort as well, to manage congestion that otherwise made it impossible to breathe through my nose.

I initially went low-carb specifically to get off the allergy meds. Without the Nasacort I often had to breathe through my mouth—unpleasant, but also a genuine safety hazard while eating.

It worked, and it worked very quickly—in about three days I was off the allergy meds.

Getting off the blood pressure meds (lisinopril) took a while longer, although I saw improvement almost as quickly. Just a few weeks after going low-carb, prompted by some postural hypotension, I cut the dose I was taking first by half, and then by half again.

I remained on that one-quarter dose for about a year. But two months ago the postural hypotension returned. So, in consultation with my doctor, went ahead and stopped taking the bp meds altogether.

I’m especially glad to be off the Nasacort, which although supposedly a topical steroid is known to have systemic effects in at least some people. Claritin is probably not associated with Alzheimer’s (because it is non-drowsy), but people haven’t been taking it long enough to be sure. I’m sure glad I took the lisinopril—I don’t want to think about the shape my heart and kidneys would be in now if I’d had uncontrolled high blood pressure for the past 25 years—but I’m glad to be off it now.

I no longer have to deal with the common side effects (or worry about the rare side effects). I no longer need to make the monthly trip to the pharmacy. It’s going to make things like traveling easier—not to have to carefully pack up the necessary doses for each day of travel, not to have to worry about getting separated from my meds.

It’s a really nice feeling.

 

Not posting clickbait. Really.

My brother complained that the two posts I put up earlier this morning (where I shared links to interesting articles) amounted to clickbait. I deny it categorically. This is actually a Twitter issue.

As evidence, let me point out that Micro.blog gets it right, that Facebook has the link right there, and so does Google+. Of course my RSS feed includes the link.

For reasons I can only guess at, Twitter is stripping the link out of the post before sharing it.

Given that he is quick to criticize Twitter for its many similar misfeatures, I was a bit surprised that Steven aimed his criticisms at me rather than at Twitter in this case.

Still, there’s a silver lining. I had already added the link to my microblog at micro.blog to the “social media” menu at the bottom of the page, but writing this post prompted me to notice that I hadn’t gotten it added to the list of social media links on my Contact page. Fixed.

Gathering garlic mustard

I’ve been occasionally joining Jackie when she does stewardship workdays at natural areas around the county as part of her Master Naturalist work. They’re fun, and they fit in very well with my shift away from exercise and toward movement. Our work Sunday, clearing garlic mustard from the South Arboretum Woods, is a great example.

(Garlic mustard is a nasty invasive, largely because the first-year growth leafs out very early, and covers the ground almost completely. Native plants emerge a little later in the spring, by which time they can’t get enough light to get going. The upshot is that the understory loses most of its natural diversity, becoming just a vast carpet of garlic mustard.)

What we did Sunday was make our way through the woods, spotting and then pulling up all the second-year garlic mustard. (It’s a biennial. The first year is the low ground cover. The second year it puts up a flowering stalk and produces seeds. If you can get the flowering stalks before they set seed, you can make a dent in the local garlic mustard density.)

What struck me was how similar our activity was to “gathering” à la hunting and gathering. It was physically similar—walking through the woods, and then squatting, bending, reaching, and pulling. It was also mentally similar—doing exactly the same pattern-matching that someone seeking to gather edible or medicinal plants would do.

I suspect that both of these aspects of this activity enhance the well-known beneficial effects of “forest bathing” (aka spending time in the woods).

The area we were clearing has a lot of downed branches, big and small, some partially or completely hidden by the ground cover, making for a complex walking surface—more good stuff for both the body and the brain.

Of course, volunteering for and participating in a stewardship work day produces all sorts of additional benefits—in particular, doing something good for the local communities (both the human community that uses the space and the natural community that inhabits it) is rewarding, as is making social connections with the other volunteers and engaging together on a common effort.

Every time I do one, I am reinforced in my desire to do more stewardship workdays, despite my slothful nature.

(The picture at the top is another view of the Cecropia moth that Jackie spotted while we were there.)