Saturday, February 11, 2012

Lets Talk Cholesterol!

This is a pretty important subject to people in their forties... or so i thought!!

Duh Duh Duuuhhh

Lately in my house there has been LOTS of talk about \kə-ˈles-tə-ˌrōl\!! It began with this excerpt from the china study: "Military medical investigators had examined the hearts of 300 male soldiers killed in action in Korea. The soldiers, at an average age of 22 years, had never been diagnosed with heart problems. In dissecting these hearts, researchers found startling evidence of disease in an exceptional number of cases. Fully 77.3% of the hearts they examined had gross evidence of heart disease (in this instance gross means large)... These soldiers were not couch potato slouches, they were in top condition in the prime of their physical lives. Since that time several other studies have confirmed that heart disease is pervasive in young Americans."

Husband has been talking with his dad(who has heart problems) about eating a vegan diet, and he told us about the Engine 2 diet, by rip esselstyn(the son of Dr.esselstyn in the china study) We read into that and came across a story of all the firefighters betting on who had the lowest cholesterol, and finding out that one of them was on the brink of a heart attack at well over 300 total cholesterol... they get him on the vegan diet immediately and within a month he is down to 123 total!!!!

Wow!!! I think, if he did it for one month and got such amazing scores, i bet ours are pretty low considering we've been doing it for over 3 months. So i get a full blood panel done (gotta love tricare)
i felt silly being 25 and wanting to check my cholesterol, but the doc said you should have it checked every year. Got a call a couple days later from the nurse said every thing was perfect... It was like pulling eye teeth to get the numbers out of her, and all she told me was, my total cholesterol was 188.

WHAT!?!?! i call andy and he checks the numbers out, and it is more like borderline heart disease than "perfect"... so andy gets his last scores from work(from last year) and he had a 144, and that was his highest, his previous scores were 120's. We cant figure out where the "perfect" came from, so i call and have them mail me the full test results(e-mail was too modern i guess)so we can see all the numbers. Meanwhile i start scrutinizing my, all ready scrutinized, meals, and come up empty handed. Then i start blaming it on family history and genes... its got to be all those years that i didnt watch my diet. But i have always considered myself a healthy eater, with the exception of a few broke times in college where we lived off of oat meal and mac and cheese.  So what is it!?!

The results came in and every thing was WAY low except my cholesterol... so weird right? At this point i am pretty sure my genes have screwed me and i will be having a heart attack before 30. I say, "i dont know what i am eating to make it so high". Hubs says our bodies MAKE cholesterol, i could just be making more cholesterol, maybe because i am breast feeding. We look it up... LO AND BEHOLD:


During pregnancy, lipids and cholesterol levels fall during the first trimester and then rise throughout the remainder of your pregnancy. Increases in serum triglycerides, cholesterol, and free fatty acids are seen. This is not related to diet. The liver (the organ responsible for making most of our cholesterol) produces more cholesterol in response to the hormones of pregnancy.
Cholesterol levels can be very high during pregnancy and while nursing. Normal levels for total cholesterol are between 120 and 190 mg/dl, while typical values in pregnancy range from between 200 and 325 mg/dl. Nursing women also have higher levels of HDL and other beneficial lipoproteins. In an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1989, the authors recommend against lipid screening during lactation. They go on to state that the effects of lactation on lipids are beneficial.


All that worrying for nothing. But just incase, we went to the gym today!!

The moral of this story: get a yearly physical, and have you cholesterol checked!





Thursday, February 9, 2012

I Spy Costco

Recently, we bought a membership to Cost-a-co(as my children call it). After pricing a few other stores and comparing it to our favorite Grocery store, we decided that it was much cheaper than Wegmans, and had more variety than BJs and we hate Sams club anyways! So here we were with a shiny new membership, and lots of extra foods to find a spot for when i realized that my pantry kinds looks like a page out of my childrens Beloved 'I Spy' books. Naturally, I grabbed my camera and set to work!! Click on the pics to enlarge... have fun!!



I Spy sushi, three strawberries, 5 garlics and KIRKLAND,
two cups of coco, a cookie, an ear of corn, and an indian.
I Spy a dragon, a heart, a barrel and wheat,
Three garlics, some raisins, popcorn, and two batteries.









Due to the limited space in my kitchen, i had to use a very wide angle to get my whole pantry in, so it has a really bad barrel effect, that i typically like but not some much for this... oh well what are ya gonna do? Hopefully one day you will come to my blog and see KITCHEN REMODEL!!! that will be a good day... a good day indeed!



Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Beakman's World

You've just broke into Beakman's World!!! 
We have been learning crazy science via the netflix!!
Here is our BEAKMAAAAANS CHALEEEEEENGE!!!!

We are gonna do what?

Daddy can you pick up this jar without touching it?

Light this match and drop it in the jar...

put the balloon on top fast!!

Wait for it...


now pick up the balloon and the jar is stuck to the bottom!!

Daddy can pick up the BALLOON with out touching it!

That was fun but we want the balloon to get sucked down farther so we had another experiment!!


Pour boiling water into the jar

Pour the water out

place balloon on top
Look at that it sucked it in pretty far... but that is not good enough

so we put it in ice water to cool the air off inside even more

then we put it in deeper ice water!!!

After a while, the whole jar filled with the balloon!!!





WAIT!!! something is different about this balloon.....


psych!!!
Mommy blew up a new balloon into the jar :)

that was fun! see ya next time for a new BEAKMAN'S CHALLENGE




Its Spidey Time

I was never a big fan of spidermans silly phrases or his web swinging action, but my son (like mosts little boys) is a believer!! Most days he IS spiderman, so naturally when i ask, "what kind of birthday party do you want?", he blurts out "biderman" without hesitation!! So after much planing (about a days worth) and a ton of shopping (a trip to walmart and costco) we had the coveted SPIDERMAN PARTY complete with a pinata and face paint!

pictures by: Collin

There were no spiderman balloon when husband went to get them so he got the BIGEST BALLOON ever it was the subject of many conversations!




jelly filled spiderman cupcakes (veganomicon)




The Pinata, mine own creation, mwahahahaa!!  i wanted a pull string spiderman pinata, walmart did not have it so i made one, it work perfect until one party guest got excited and pulled all the strings. the candy still fell and it was very anticlimactic. Husband later told me the OTHER walmart had spiderman pinatas... well woop dee doo


This party was particularly fun because pierce was old enough for BOY oriented toys!!! last party was strictly legos this one all sorts of rough and tough red and blue toys that any boy would be proud to have!!
Disneys Cars play set (fought over for the rest of the party) quite a hit!!

Americas favorite pass time

best gift ever SWORDS!!!!

remote control truck

Even daddy couldnt resist the draw of masculine toys!!

It looks like a rocking good time in the pictures, but there were several mishaps, the banner fell down hot potato almost got river a broken nose, the pinata incident, our happy birthday song was flat, the general feel of the whole party was awkward and somewhat boring.... but i dont think pierce noticed, i think in fact he had a GREAT time being spiderman getting presents eating as much candy as he could shove in his mouth before mommy said "thats quite enough"

We also had a tone of fun with the helium afterwards, and have decided that the next "happy birthday" we sing will be with helium filled lungs.

That was just another visit from your friendly neighborhood Spiderman!!