Iron is an important element in good health.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, iron deficiency can increase the risk that pregnant women will bear small or early-term babies. It can also cause developmental delays in infants. In adults it can cause fatigue. And in teens it can affect memory and other mental functions.
Menstruating women are probably at the greatest risk of iron deficiency, particularly if they experience heavy periods. There’s undoubtedly a sexist joke to be made here, but I’m single and I still hold a faint hope that I might get another date—or, better yet, have sex again—sometime before I die, so I won’t bother trying to come up with one.
Now that I think about it, there is one group that is at a greater risk than menstruating women. Men or women who have had most of their blood drain out of their bodies through a knife or gunshot wound will be seriously iron deficient. However, they have graver medical problems that should be attended to first.
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Obesity is a major risk factor for a great many ailments, some of which are extremely grave. Yet losing weight can, to say the least, be difficult, particularly with all of the charlatan diets out there.
Working hard at your program of diet and exercise, only to see little or no progress can be disheartening. Moreover, reaching a plateau that is still well above your target weight or, worse, backsliding can be depressing.
Don’t despair. The following are some helpful hints that will help you to see better results when you get on the scale:
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Do you hate the common cold as much as I do? It leaves you feeling headachy, sniffly, stuffy and generally lousy, but it’s not severe enough for anyone other than your loved ones to commiserate seriously with you for your plight—and your loved ones are probably only feigning sincere compassion to humor you. And doctors would likely tag you with a hypochondriac label if you ran to them with so insignificant an ailment.
A big part of the problem is the name used by pretty much all of the non-medical world, along with many medical professionals as well: the common cold. You feel miserable. What you’d really like is for people to make you feel special, but no. You’re merely common. Who the hell wants to hear that?
It’s worse for me than for many other people because I’m single. At some point in my cold I usually have to venture out to buy food and other supplies. There’s no one who will do that for me.
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This post was inspired by a comment from an great and beautiful blogger who writes under the name of Helena Fortissima. Helena’s comment on my post about Exercise Excess suggested, “You might wish to devote your next post to Toxic Grunting Syndrome: What It is, and 10 Ways to Avoid It.”
Because I’m morally opposed to exercising vigorously enough to engender involuntary grunting, and I’ve never had the urge to grunt voluntarily, I couldn’t say much about Toxic Grunting Syndrome and I certainly couldn’t come up with 10 ways to avoid it. However, Helena’s comment got me thinking. Etiquette usually isn’t as well observed as it should be in gyms. I want to correct that.
To that end, the following are some tips on gym decorum from Mr. Gym Manners, a sobriquet that I shall enthusiastically abandon immediately after publishing this article:
- With regard to Toxic Grunting Syndrome, I haven’t seen any polling statistics on this, but I seriously doubt that many people are interested in listening to you grunt like an alpha-male gorilla vigorously protecting his territory and harem.
If the grunting is involuntary I strongly recommend that you adopt my philosophical opposition to exercising strenuously enough to force grunting.
If you’re grunting intentionally because you think it will impress women, I suspect that’s a bad strategy. I’m not sure—you’d have to ask women—but I seriously doubt that attracts many females, unless they are female gorillas, and even then I’m not sure. Then again, I’m still single after all of these years, so what the hell do I know? Maybe I should start grunting.
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So, you’ve decided to join a health club or gym. Great! But how do you choose the right one?
To increase the likelihood that you will indeed go and workout after you’ve joined, it’s important to choose a fitness facility that you’ll feel comfortable in. On the other hand, if you’re joining just to impress your friends and you’d prefer to steer clear of the place, an uncomfortable facility is your best bet.
The first question you might have is what’s the difference between a health club and a gym? The flippant answer is a large initiation fee and, typically, $50 to $100 more per month. The more serious answer is you’ll usually get a better decor, more yuppie equipment and classes, and more amenities at a health club than at a gym, and the former will typically cost you a large initiation fee and $50 to $100 more per month.
The next question is what should you look for when choosing a health club or gym? Not surprisingly, I have a few answers, including the following:
- Cleanliness is important. A gym probably has fewer housekeeping staff than a health club, so the level of tidiness might be somewhat lower at the former than at the latter, but a minimum standard of hygiene is essential in both cases.
Demand a tour before joining. If the floor of the shower room is covered with a deep layer of pulsating, slithering, green slime, you might want to avoid that facility. Either that or make sure that your life and health insurance are paid up and your will is up to date. If you don’t have a beneficiary for your life insurance and estate, I’d be happy to serve in that role because that’s just the sort of caring person I am.
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It has recently come to my attention that there are some widely believed, ridiculous medical myths out there. They aren’t true. That’s why they are called myths rather than, say, facts. That’s also why I employed the adjective ridiculous. Some of these myths are downright dangerous.
I have no medical training and little medical knowledge, but I’ve done enough research to be able to debunk some of the more egregious myths, such as the following:
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Canada is in the midst of a food scandal. Meat from one Canadian processor was contaminated with E. coli. U.S. officials learned about it fairly quickly and immediately closed the border to meat from that company. Canadians weren’t told about it nearly as quickly and meat from that processor remained on Canadian store shelves for an unacceptable period before being recalled.
We rely on government, industry, and company food regulations and inspections to keep our food supplies as safe as possible. If we can’t depend on them, that’s scary.
E. coli is not visible to the naked eye. And you’d have to be much more neurotic than I am to buy the equipment you would need to test for E. coli on your food at home. Considering how difficult it would be to be even a little more neurotic than I am, I don’t think many people have done that.
I don’t have any suggestions on how to guard against E. coli. Eliminating meat consumption alone won’t do it because E. coli can also hitchhike on fruits and vegetables. So, I’m afraid it’s the luck of the draw when it comes to E. coli. Thankfully, despite E. coli food contamination making headlines from time to time, it is exceptionally rare relative to the volume of food that the world consumes. (Although, that’s no consolation to the people who get sick from it.)
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In the hectic, hurly-burly whirlwind that is life for many of us, it is hard to find time for a salubrious exercise program. This isn’t a problem for me because I have an empty shell of an existence. To me, a busy day is when I have to make two trips to the garbage chute located almost beside my condo unit door rather than one. (It’s appalling how much packaging you get with some junk food.) Nonetheless, there are people who do have trouble squeezing a fitness routine into their allegedly busy days.
I have a different challenge. I find exercise horribly boring and unpleasant. If it comes down to a choice between working out regularly versus risking agonizing ailments, a steady decline into decrepitude and a premature demise, the latter don’t seem like such bad prospects to me. Needless to say, when it comes to not only picking myself up and taking myself to the gym, but also engaging in a little exercise when I’m there, neither my flesh nor my spirit is willing and both are weak.
If you suffer from either or both of these problems—not enough time or not enough will to engage in a regular fitness program—don’t despair. You can include exercise as a normal part of your everyday life in ways that you will barely notice. The following are just a few suggestions on how to do that. You can probably come up with many more. (If you can, feel free to leave them as comments on this post.)
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