Cabin Crafted

Tag: aging

  • Aging and food-8/28/2019

    From an early age when processed foods were really digging into families diets, I have preferred whole foods. In my early to late 20s even eating as an Ovo-lacto vegetarian as it was called in those days before Vegan was added and vegetarian described my diet. Hubby has a meat and starch preference to his diet, so meat was re-introduced to mine when we became a couple. I still don’t really care for meat and will prepare meat for him and not for me if it isn’t a stew, goulash, or casserole where the meat is part of the dish. I will eat it then and will eat vegetarian or shrimp when we eat dinner out generally.

    I don’t buy mixes and canned goods (other than organic cream of soups for sauces and gravies), cooking from whole ingredients, produce that I grow or purchased from local farmers at the Farmers’ Market, even getting as much of my dairy from local farms as possible. We do like many international foods and use spices and herbs, but generally making spice mixes myself so that they don’t contain fillers and flavor enhancers. And I do like coffee and tea.

    Beginning about 2 decades ago, certain foods produced unpleasant after effects including sending me to the Emergency Room thinking I was having a heart attack almost a decade ago. GERD and gas have been a bane with increasing frequency to the point that certain foods and most anything with peppers, sweet or hot, have been avoided. For a while I was purchasing low acid coffee, but really didn’t care for it and returned to drinking whatever was readily available.

    After my return from last weekend’s trip, I quit on the coffee and have started my morning with a single cup of tea. I have reduced the amount of cold or hot tea during the day, have reduced portion sizes, and limited curcurbits, peppers, and heavy spices. I don’t want a life of bland boring food, but neither do I want to rely on antacids, PPI drugs or other unnatural solutions.

    I have tried the raw apple cider vinegar trick, the eating a green apple a day trick, even trying aloe juice in small quantities, but avoidance seems to be the most effective relief. I remember my Dad complaining that he loved certain foods but they didn’t like him. Now I understand.

  • Not for the Faint of Heart

    My Dad is a spry 90+ year old.  He still does most of their cooking, helps with housework, does some of his own yard work and delivers “Meals on Wheels” to folks decades younger than he.  He walks daily, hasn’t smoked since the first Surgeon General’s warning in 1964 and is much healthier than would be suspected for one his age.  His side of the family tend to exceed the average age rule, his grandmother living to 94, his mother to 88, his brother into his 80s.

    This makes me young, right?  After all, I am a senior citizen, eligible for Social Security and Medicare, but still young.  Sometimes I feel like I can still climb mountains, have learned to ride a horse in the past couple of years, garden, drive a tractor and mow acres of land.  But this winter is making me feel not so young.  As a late 20 something, I separated a shoulder skiing.  As a mid 50 something, I broke a wrist roller blading with my daughter.  The shoulder was before they sent you to a specialist and physical therapy for such injuries.  The wrist was not cast correctly and has a 17º healed displacement.  Unfortunately, they aren’t the same arm and both are aggravating me this winter.  The wrist has encouraged arthritic deterioration of my wrist bones.  This was causing me pain and after a couple of steroid shots I agreed to surgery to remove the most damaged wrist bone at the base of my thumb.  This has caused the muscles to atrophy, reducing the strength of my hand and sadly only temporarily provided any relief.  The pain affects my radial nerve so I also have pain in my elbow and my shoulder.  Not wanting to take NSAIDs regularly, I have tried capsaicin cream, OTC herbal supplements that supposedly reduce inflammation, Tart Cherry juice and just about any other alternative.  I haven’t tried acupuncture, nor have I been willing to return to the orthopedist, though I wonder if there is anything else he could do other than more steroid shots which I also want to avoid.  To add insult to injury, it has also intensified trigger finger in my ring finger on that hand.

    I’m not ready to accept aging, I’m still too young.