When do we get to stop freaking out about food and just eat like a human? My cardiologist will likely live longer than me, but I will outlive her in the sensory joys of being human.
Yesterday I had my annual appointment with my cardiologist. Everything looked great and I was no longer having the palpitations that brought me to her in the first place.
I had been caught in a cycle of not getting enough sleep which was increasing stress hormones, causing palpitations throughout the day and night. The palpitations at night were waking me up, further contributing to stress and creating more palpitations.
Dr. Cardio had me buy a gadget that cost $100 for an at-home EKG and talked about pacemakers, but offered no immediate assistance.
When I stopped the cycle of stress palpitations with valerian root and magnesium, allowing myself some deeply restful sleep, the palpitations resolved. And may I say, the sleep was delicious?
Dr. Cardio was glad to hear this but now (now?) had questions about my high LDL cholesterol, a number she was looking at from last year, probably from a blood draw taken after a night of eating a decadent, juicy ribeye steak. (Likely with bleu cheese on top? Oh Lordy!)
I’m really bad about craving steak right before a blood draw. Not because I’m trying to confound my doctors. I know they are trying to do their jobs and help me protect my health.
But before a blood draw to check my lipids I get anxious about being deprived of red meat. I figure I’d better enjoy a really great steak before the doc cuts me off of red meat all together. Turns out the night before the blood draw is the peak of intensity for the craving–kind of like Dracula during a full moon.
“You need to get online and see which foods are high in cholesterol,” Dr. Cardio says.
“Maybe I just need to stop eating steak before blood draws,” I say.
“That would help,” she says. “You don’t want to have a stroke or heart attack.”
She’s right about that.
I tell her my husband is a vegan and I would eat like him but it requires too much cooking.
“How much work can it be? You just eat fruits and vegetables.”
Little does she know.
Vegan cooking is quite a bit more complicated than that. The typical vegan meal at our house requires a lot of preparation, pre-cooking, peeling, chopping, stewing and other techniques if you want to make things taste good.
“To make things taste good, it takes more time and energy than I’ve got left after working all day,” I tell her.
Then she very eloquently informs me–and I’m sure this is the whole reason she went to med school, “We eat to live, we don’t live to eat.”
I told her that might be the reason she eats, but it is certainly not the reason I eat. Then she asks me if I neglect to get my car engine’s oil changed regularly. Oh god, she’s offering me an oil change now.
“No,” I say. “But I’m not a car.”
“No. But you’re a machine,” she says, slipping out the exam room door.
“Well!” Clearly the woman has never experienced the ecstasy of smoked blue cheese with good red wine or she wouldn’t spout such insane drivel!
But she has a point.
In the future I will be kinder to myself and my doctors, wait to indulge my cravings for red meat at least until the day after the next scheduled blood draw. I will continue to refrain from most fried foods and sweets and to get most of my nutrition from plants and get the oil in my car changed regularly. I am only human and I intend to eat like one for the rest of my life and enjoy every single mouthful.