HEALTH

Coughing until puking, constant headaches, and a general bad feeling. That is my mid morning report from Aurezuh, Ranyah and Lina when I give them a call at about 10:00 am. I have a feeling that through no direct action we have reduced the air quality of our home. I think we may have radon escaping the soil under our house and polluting our lungs.

One unintended change to the performance of our house may have exasperated the problem. I put some boards along the south side of our house to store them until I have time to fix our garage wall. I placed them right in front of our only really open crawlspace vent. therefore our crawlspace is not venting properly or at all and gas has a chance to work up into the house and our lungs as apposed to being removed at the crawlspace level. This radon gas is supposed to be highly unlikely in our region but I don't want to take any chances.

I have devised a solution: Remove the boards, create even more venting and replacing and improving the vapor barrier at the crawlspace level. In the future I will spray foam insulation in the crawlspace under the sub floor enabling an air tight seal and vapor barrier. I will have a contractor do this work so I will not be able to accomplish this right away. I will also test for radon levels in the house after I have completed the repairs. I would test before but I don't want to take the time to wait to actually try to fix what I perceive to be the problem. hopefully with this action I will improve our household health and stop the coughing, puking and headaches.

Other health related subjects include my physical health. Unlike Lina and the girls I have a tendency to gain weight with age. I have been to the doctors office three times in the last 6 months and each time I go in I am 10 pounds heaver. The last visit I weighed 210 lbs. This is distressing to say the least. So I decided to do something about it.

First I decided to take a look at the current science on how the body uses energy including food and fat energy. I figured if I could control the times of the day in witch my body was using different types of energy I could reduce fat and increase energy by timing when my body was using the different types of fuel it has at it's disposal.

This led me to Wikipedia where I found this research clearly explained. In a nutshell when my body was producing insulin it was using glucose energy from the food I had just eating that caused the production of insulin. When I did not need all of the glucose energy my body would store that energy in the form of fat. When I reduced my insulin production by reducing the contributing factors: carbohydrates, sugars etc., I went into fat burning mode. So far I have been working towards reducing my insulin production to increase the utilization of fat burning. After I feel I have mastered the ability to switch from fat use mode to glucose use mode I will use the added benefits of glucose mode to build muscle, and increase performance in physical activity. Your body can sustain itself more efficiently by having allot of sugar to feed the muscle growth. I will use this to improve muscle definition and tone.

Finally, I have had an epiphany regarding quality of live issues. My epiphany is: things you acquire or create are not what makes a life worth living but the relationships you have and cultivate that make life good. My men's health has a statistic that a person who has lots of friends lives 22% longer. The movie Moulin Rouge has a famous song in it called Nature Boy, one of the only songs I can sing from beginning to end without forgetting the words, where the point of the song is the boy who has traveled and learned many things learned that the most important thing one can do is to love and be loved in return. I think he means that the most important thing in this or any life is relationships. I want more relationships with people, more friends, less driving, less head phone, droning. I am open to creating new friendships but todays society makes people closed reserved and focused on their I-pods, computer screens, jobs, books, phones and whatever else that can take their attention. I know I am one of them. I spend hours at cafes working on drawings, email, blog, Photoshop, and listening to music. I never ask how anyone else around me is doing, or anything to break the ice. The crazy thing is I am also never asked anything or very rarely. Sometimes I feel like saying something but my fear of connecting or breaking my safety barrier is greater than my desire to connect with a stranger.

If you see me at the cafe please ask me a question or just start by making a comment. If I see you on the bus or in a cafe be open to communication, making friends, talking and building more relationships. These are important for a long and fulfilling life and whats the worst thing that could happen?

So this concludes my blog post on health, which I realize is outside of my regular topics but I thought could be interesting for a few people out there who are interested in that sort of thing.

Thanks,

nathan