Decades ago,
when I was in college, I guzzled gallons of tea—I’ve never cared for coffee—to try
to stay awake while doing homework, writing term papers, and/or studying for
exams. It never worked.
Fast forward at
least forty years. I finally realized
that eating chocolate, instead of energizing me, actually made me a bit sleepy
and off-balance. Am I the only one who
gets put to sleep by caffeine?
In recent months,
I realized that eating large quantities of seeds had roughly the same effect on
my brain as eating chocolate. So I gave
up my beloved sunflower seeds.
But last week, I
went to a dermatologist because the skin between my fingers was so dry that I thought
I might have a fungal infection. (Is
there such a thing as Athlete’s Hand?) She
assured me that all I had was extremely dry skin, and recommended that I switch
from hand lotion to ointment. That did
seem to help, but I wondered whether she was treating the symptom while
ignoring the cause.
I can’t eat a
lot of nuts because they’re loaded with oxalates and cause kidney stones (for
those whose stones are oxalate-based). Eliminating
most seeds from my diet, as well, meant that I had very little vitamin E in my
diet.
So I decided to
start eating sunflower seeds again, but I have to eat them when I’m at home,
and preferably in the evening, so that I can go to bed (or at least nap) if they make me tired. But I can’t eat them after 8:30 PM, lest they
give me acid reflux.
The bottom line
is that, since some foods give me digestive issues, some can give me kidney
stones, some can aggravate my arthritis, and some do odd things to my brain, I
have to do a cost-benefit analysis with just about everything I eat. Sorry, hubby, but accountants don’t have a
monopoly. 😊