Which means it's time for another chance for clever and inspiring Cranketeers to chat and offer support around our various goals.
Are your goals perennial old favorites that you return to time and again? Or are they all fresh and new and shiny? Are they easy-peasey no-brainers, or are they awe-inspiring challenges or are they just plain crazy-ass outrageous?
It's all good! I'll be very curious about how the last part of February went and what you're all up to in March.
As it happens, my thoughts on goal setting aren't really all that "from the heart." It's honestly more of a "head' than "heart" post. But hell, "Goals From the Head" doesn't fit in very well thematically since we're just about at the end of National Please Don't Croak From A Heart Attack Month*** plus we've got a nifty Polar FT7 Heart Rate monitor to give away designed to keep your ticker tickin' throughout the year.
Years ago I came across an article that claimed having creases in your earlobes was an indicator of a higher risk of heart disease.
"Well crap," I thought at the time. Because I kinda-sorta have a faint crease in my right earlobe. I worried about it for a couple of days, then forgot all about it.
Until last week, that is. I was surfing the web and somehow ended up over at The Straight Dope at an article about earlobe creases.
And, yep, while the research is not all in agreement there are yet more studies saying earlobe creases are a bad sign. (For example, in one of the studies the creases had a "positive predictive value" for coronary artery disease of 68 percent, and for people under 40 it was even higher, at 80 percent).
Also, according to the Straight Dope article, there are other weird heart disease "danger" signs out there too, like the color of your earwax, the smell of your breath, the length of your ring finger, and some other gross things I won't even mention.
Oh, and then some study recently came out and said that having thin thighs was a bad thing when it comes to predicting heart disease. Thin thighs, bad? Really? And at first I thought maybe they meant super-skinny folks, but then I went back to the article and measured: damn. Apparently I have thin thighs. Because if you measure "just below the point where your seat meets your legs" and the number is less than 23 1/2 inches? You may be at increased risk of premature death.
Wonderful.
So apparently my thighs and earlobes are saying "heart attack," even if my earwax is trying to reassure me, "nah, you're good." When you read about ominous warning signs for diseases you would rather not end up with, and discover you're at higher risk, do you worry about it?
I used to fret about these sort of articles more, but here's the thing I realized: when it comes to the risk of premature death, I'm already completely screwed.
You know how every article that mentions health risks always gets around to family history? Well, my father died of a heart attack in his early fifties, and both my mother's parents also died in their early fifties (of hemorrhagic stroke and cancer, respectively). My mother, thank goodness, is doing fine, but as I'm getting close to 50 myself, I can't help being aware that my genes are not necessarily my friends.
Is this a bad thing? Well, not necessarily! Because knowing I'm potentially high risk helps me take way better care of my health than I would if I were cheerfully oblivious. While I'm way too lazy to go the gym just to fit in a particular size jeans, I am not too lazy to go to the gym in order to be around to wear jeans at all.
But it still creeps me out a bit when I come across yet another study alerting me to brand new signs that I'm doomed. Are there are any other anxious types out there? If so, here's a reminder of some tricks you can use for blowing off bad news:
1. Wait until another study comes out that completely contradicts the obnoxious one. This may take years or it may take minutes, but eventually, there will be one that says what you want it to.
2. Distinguish yourself from the population under study. Not a lab rat? Excellent, nothing to worry about then! Are you human, but not, say, Swedish, or a nun, or a post-menopausal woman or whatever? No worries then, because they're not talking about you!
3. Eat a big serving of broccoli. It will make you immortal.
4. Develop a selective memory. Note: this gets easier and easier as you get older. Was there some research that said something about heart disease risk? Wait, do we need milk at the store or did we get some yesterday? Pizza sounds good for dinner, doesn't it? Presto! Scary study? What scary study?
5. Reframe your anxiety as a positive: Don't think about yourself as a high-risk worrywart; you are actually a highly motivated health freak! This is a good thing. Unlike most folks these days, you are staying active and eating your vegetables, not sitting on the couch waiting around for a surprise heart attack or stroke to finally motivate you to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
6. Diagnoses are no longer death sentences: Even if you do everything right, you may still end up with heart problems or cancer or diabetes or something frightening. But with modern medicine and a fighting spirit, so many of these conditions are beatable. Even if you should run into trouble, a lifetime of healthy living will give you much more strength than the average schlub to fight off scary diseases.
(And speaking of coping with a scary diagnosis: one of our dear blogfriends, Missicat, could use some kind words and support during a stressful time; you may want to stop by her blog, Missicat's World, if you haven't been by yet.)
7. Lighten up! There are better things to do than worry about things you can't control. Like, for example, you could watch a cat take a shower!
8. Take a Quiz! What does this have to do with earlobes, thin thighs, or heart attacks? Absolutely nothing, but it's Friday and it means it's time for our obligatory Juice quiz question!
This week, the theme at the Juice was "staycations." So with her usual laser-like focus, Crabby blogged about:
a. Staycations for families; staycations for singles; and staycations for couples;
b. Staycations, flatulence, and head lice;
c. Staycations, zombies, and serial killers;
d. Staycations, drag queens, and foot-fetishists;
e. Staycations, spontaneous combustion, and nuclear war.
"During various 40-minute tests, researchers saw a decrease in blood-flow velocity over time, and, therefore, a decrease in attention. "Sometimes in the first 10 minutes," Warm says. "That early." And he says many times the participants didn't realize it was happening."
The really scary part? They plan to use this to test people who work in nuclear power plants, to find out when the person monitoring the controls has zoned out while on the job. (Just the thought of a person in that job zoning out scares me. Or a pilot zoning out while flying a plane. Or... okay, you get the idea.) Pay attention!
Another reason to feel paranoid when you're feeling sick
The study stresses that while the flu may make fatal heart attacks or other heart disease deaths more likely, just the fact that you have the flu doesn't seem to actually cause a heart attack. Dr. Mirkin reasons thusly:
"Nobody really knows why, but inflammation is the leading theory on the cause of heart attacks and strokes. Your immunity is good for you because it helps protect you from infections However, if your immunity stays active, it can attack your body to cause inflammation which damages blood vessels and sets you up for clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. "
Moral: if you have heart trouble, get a flu vaccination. Especially if you're over 50 and live in Russia. Well, frankly, even if you live in Florida.
Hey, I had to throw in a scary bit of research to see if you were paying attention
Cyclists are fit to be tied... er, I mean clipped in
People who really get into bicycling tend to use toe clips or clip-in shoes to secure their foot to the pedal. The common wisdom is that this is more efficient that regular pedaling. (You not only push down on the pedal, you also pull up on the upstroke, thus utilizing all the leg motion to keep the bicycle going.) Researchers (not the same ones as the gossip study) at the University of Bath in England showed that cycling efficiency is not altered with and without toe clips (Journal of Sports Sciences, January 2008). Turns out toe clips don't really lower submaximal oxygen consumption (VO2).
On the other hand, riding clipped in does help in other ways. Your foot isn't going to slip off the pedals if you have to speed up or slow down quickly. Personally I don't recommend it if you're the forgetful type. Otherwise, you'll come to a complete stop and only then remember to unclip... while the bicycle is falling sideways onto the pavement... um, not that I'm speaking from experience. Oh my no. Nope, not me. (Thankfully, most bicycles do not come equipped with video cameras, so there's no evidence to suggest I'm being less than candid.)
Did you know that looking for YouTube clips of bicycles with toe clips brings up Porn videos? I didn't know that until just this moment. Wait... where's everybody going? Geez, now you pay attention?
Professor Manfred Milinksi, working with Drs Ralf Sommerfeld, and Hans-Jurgen Krambeck in the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, found that gossip is a vector for socially relevant information.
Those who were fascinated by the lives of others were more successful than those who were not, the researchers found. Gossip is "the glue that holds society together." (It can certainly create sticky situations, so I suppose that analogy is accurate.)
The next time you're at the gym and someone stares at you while you're working out, just tell yourself that they're looking for socially relevant information about you to share with others.
The study concludes that if people hear a lot of gossip about someone, they tend to automatically discount what they're hearing. But in small dosages, gossip can (they say) give useful information, such as whether you should avoid a prospective mate because of habitual infidelity.
I don't know. Seems to me if I heard a lot of gossip over and over about someone, I'd be inclined to start thinking about cliches such as 'no smoke without fire' and things like that. The kind of gossip I like is the sort that I used to find in the Weekly World News. Did you know that a scientist has created a death ray for the iPhone? It's amazing what you can learn.
So, did you hear the rumor about Crabby? Well, it turns out it's all true. Yes, she really is the secret love child of Elvis and Princess Diana, but don't tell anyone I told you...
Tomorrow, I promise, there's a real post about fitness and crabbiness and interesting stuff like that. Honest!
