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Category: health

Purchasing Psedoephedrine Is Hard

Published April 6, 2010

To deal with my current cold I purchased some NyQuil D a super-hardcore night time cold medicine. Because it contains alcohol (10%) and pseudoephedrine I had to show ID and sign something informing me of the penalties (jailtime and fine) if I sell it to minors. I also purchased some straight 120mg time-release capsules for daytime use.

After taking the NyQuil I ate some Hungry Howie’s Cajun Bread along with a beer. I’m now quite, quite tired and ready for bed. The beer may not have been the best idea as the medication already contained alcohol (which, oddly, is not listed as an active ingredient), but I don’t think that just one will do anything more than contribute to the feelings of sleepyness.

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Contact Lenses

Published March 12, 2010

Today I made a stop at Costco and visited the eye doctor inside to get some contact lenses. I’d tried getting them back in 2002 or so, but found that I didn’t really care for them at the time with my eyes feeling dry almost all the time. Now that I’ve been biking a lot I find myself wanting sunglasses, but it’s both difficult and rather expensive to get them in prescription models, and even if I do it’s necessary to carry a pair of clear lenses if I’m out late enough that it becomes dark.

This eye exam was much different than the last, with a device being used to determine how much correction my eye needs then the results of this confirmed with the old fashioned lens-based eye exam tool. This is much nicer than the old “This or That”, “One or Two”, “A or B” method. This was followed up with a puff-less glaucoma test, inspection of my retina, and then application of a fluorescent dye and close-up inspection of the surface of my eye and tears.

The device which automatically determined my prescription displayed an image of a hot air balloon with three colored stripes, which I suspect is really the image it looks for on my retina, with the three colors being used so it can compensate for chromatic aberration. It also measured my pupillary distance, which the doctor noted on the prescription after I asked for it so that I can use said prescription to order glasses online.

Hopefully I’ll have some time this weekend and throughout this week to try out the daily disposable contacts that I was given. This type was suggested to me by the doctor after I told him that I only plan on wearing them on days when I’ll be riding my bike, and that otherwise I’ll probably just wear my glasses. He told me that he uses this type as well when playing softball and is quite happy with them.

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Measuring My Sit Bone Spacing

Published December 26, 2009

 

 

 

 

Using a spare aluminum plate†, some leftover cheap cardboard‡, a chair, and a ruler I was able to measure my sit bone spacing. This was done by sitting on the assembly with my legs bike pedal spacing apart, then grabbing the metal plate and pulling it against myself to ensure good dent formation in the cardboard. I then looked and felt for the dents in the cardboard, marked the centers with dots, and measured. I then rotated the cardboard and repeated the process to get a second measurement. Both measurements were ~122mm, so I’m happy with the result.

Some research into how sit bone measurement should translate to saddle size uncovered the Specailized Body Geometry recommendations for saddle widths, which are supposedly as follows:

· 130mm saddle for sitbone center to center width of 100mm or less.
· 143mm saddle for sitbone center to center width of 100mm to 130mm.
· 155mm saddle for sitbone center to center width of 130mm or more.

The WTB Rocket V saddle which came with my new bike (post forthcoming once it is complete) felt a bit narrow in the few test rides I’ve taken, and at ~130mm measured width these measurements confirm that it likely is the wrong size for me. The Specialized OEM saddle that came on my old bike is ~140mm and matches the aforementioned recommendations. As it has been comfortable for two years now, I think I’ll be looking at a new saddle somewhat along these lines.

Now to figure out which one to try…

† Former Power Mac G5 and Mac Pro stand.
‡ Twelve South BackPack box.

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Danielle’s Wisdom Teeth

Published October 9, 2009

Danielle had her wisdom teeth removed this morning and is currently in the living room napping. While all four wisdom teeth were impacted, three were removed intact, which impresses me. In particular I find the one on the right with the twisty root to be neat.

Click here or on the image above to see all the detail, including the yet-to-dry-out pieces of her gingiva.

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Up and Up and Jittery

Published October 4, 2009

The most recent stage of the cold is an exceedingly runny nose. Danielle experienced this yesterday and purchased the box of Target-brand (up & up) pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, which helped her but kept her from sleeping well last night.

Knowing that this drug makes me feel overstimulated I resisted taking any, but by mid-afternoon when my nose needed to be emptied every five minutes or so, I relented. Since twenty minutes (or so) after injecting the pill I’ve felt twitchy, shaky, and slightly nauseous, the same as if I’d just ingested a few hundred milligrams of caffeine. This is not very much fun, and hopefully it won’t keep me from sleeping, as there’s a bunch of things that I want to get done at work tomorrow.

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No Alton Brown

Published September 30, 2009

The aforementioned cold was hitting me a bit harder than expected today; so much so that I didn’t go to the Alton Brown lecture. Thankfully someone had found my blog post and was wanting two tickets. While I originally only had one ticket for sale, his need for two made my decision not to go all the easier.

After meeting up with Kate to get her ticket to her I ended up grabbing some carry-out Indian food, then sitting at home and overeating while sitting on the couch. I then fell asleep on and off while watching TiVo’d episodes of Good Eats and How It’s Made as the Netflix streaming of Man on Wire that I’d initially tried to watch kept pausing.

Boring night, eh? And I’m still not feeling any better.

Please have photos of things found in a (separate) parking lots within the past few days: Teabag Without Tag, Baby’s Shoe Without Laces. Found within a parking lot-sized place, Costco, the photo above is my face on a broken camera in a cheap karaoke machine.

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Sandoz Azithromycin, 6 x 250 mg, GGD6

Published September 29, 2009

Last night both Danielle and I started to feel a bit run down, and this morning I found myself feeling heavy and sluggish, with a bit of a headache and stomach ache. Since both Pandemic H1N1/09 is going around and my coworker Tom just got back to work from being off with strep throat, I opted to go to the doctor this morning. The doctor tested me for strep, then determined that I likely just have an upper respiratory infection and prescribed me a course of Azithromycin, as seen above.

Made by the same company that brought us Delysid, this serious antibiotic has worked well for me in the past. I hope it does this time – and does so rapidly – as I’d like to be feeling well before Massive Fallout, which is scheduled for this Saturday.

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Artificial Sweeteners and Overeating

Published August 31, 2009

I’ve read a few things hinting that artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame (NutraSweet) and Saccharin cause an insulin response, leading to blood sugar drop and often overeating. While I don’t know enough to say how true it is, these three articles seem to support this:

Effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin release and cationic fluxes in rat pancreatic islets.

[…] Sodium saccharin (1.0-10.0 mM), sodium cyclamate (5.0-10.0 mM), stevioside (1.0 mM) and acesulfame-K (1.0-15.0 mM), all of which display a bitter taste, augmented insulin release from islets incubated in the presence of 7.0 mM D-glucose. In contrast, aspartame (1.0-10.0 mM), which is devoid of bitter taste, failed to affect insulin secretion. […]

A role for sweet taste: Calorie predictive relations in energy regulation by rats.

[…] We found that reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes. […]

Sweet taste receptor expressed in pancreatic beta-cells activates the calcium and cyclic AMP signaling systems and stimulates insulin secretion.

[…] In these cells, artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, succharin, and acesulfame-K increased insulin secretion and augmented secretion induced by glucose. […]

When I was rather young, eating anything containing NutraSweet would give me a pretty bad headache. While this doesn’t happen any more, I do wonder if it was related.

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In The Face!

Published August 24, 2009

Please excuse the poor quality photo, but it’s hard to take a macro photo of one’s own lip.

Today while riding back towards Rochester along the Paint Creek Trail with Bob, Erik, and Kristi, just before getting to the Tienken Road crossing I crossed paths with a large insect. While hitting, inhaling, or simply swallowing bugs is pretty common during late-summer riding, this was different. As soon as the bug hit my face I instinctively closed my mouth, which apparently trapped it between my lips.

In between that time and when I was able to pull it off my face (seconds, really) three quick bites or stings were applied to my lip. I’m not completely sure what it was, but the spindly, leggy feeling between my fingers and multiple punctures in such a short time leads me to believe that it was a wasp. It could have been a black fly or deer fly but I’ve never known them to bite so quickly.

At first the pain was like a sharp, stabbing cut, bothersome enough that I needed to stop for a few moments. After that it went down a bit, and now is sting a deep ache, similar to both the pain of split open chapped lips and having bit one’s lip quite hard.

At least the ride tonight was really nice. We started out at Rochester Mills, then headed up Bald Mountain South Unit, rode most of the mountain bike trails, then (due to my misdirection) didn’t quite find the connector to the Lake Orion High School mountain bike trails before sunset threatened.

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