This old A&J from five years ago reminds me: I need to make an appointment with my dermatologist for a look/see. Which further reminds me, I need to get a dermatologist. I’m afraid of what I’ll hear; when I think of the hours I spent lying on a blanket in the broiling sun, I marvel I’m still around. Of course, for most of us guys the object was to drink beer all day and be around scantily clad women, who were the serious sun worshippers. Now, I get my vitamin D in reasonable doses, working in the garden, messing about with boats and always covering up responsibly—as do the women around me. I don’t drink beer all day anymore, either. *sigh*
300 responses to “The Golden Years”
JJ – I also sigh at the realization that I don’t (can’t) drink beer all day. However, I find that now I can appreciate drinking one or two much finer beers, and as for scantily clad women…. well, if they want to dress that way, I’ll still look at them.
My doctor said I had a vitamin D deficiency ! I’m 56, don’t have to take any medicine for anything yet. I went for an earwax blow and he gives me the whole checkup. My cholesterol was slightly right above the perfect level, so he gives me a scrip. I didn’t get it and instead take a spoon of some flax chia thing every day, (it worked for my wife). and I know from giving blood, that cholesterol levels can change a lot day by day. He gave me a scrip for massive doses of vitamin D, I didn’t get that either. A coworker told me there’s some new Vitamin D test, so everybody’s being told they have a deficiency. My favorite panel above is #3, like the self-assured unveiling?
OK, here’s a deep philosophical question. Which is sexier? A pair of fully opaque garments of relatively thick material which leave more than 95% of a shapely female body bare? (Remember, I did the math.) Or clothing that covers well over half of said female body but is relatively thin and has been suddenly rendered clingy and semi-transparent?
I’ve never previously criticized the artwork here, but I have to say that today’s cartoon (6/24/14) was just two small details shy of being spectacular. But as someone once said of Aubrey Hepburn, “She just missed being beautiful. But the way she missed it was spectacular.”
I walk outside 5 days a week for about 50 minutes total. I was shocked when the Doctor put me on Vitamin D. I am on cholesterol medicine, so I assume that might have been why. However the Doctor or his aide claimed that Michigan sunshine did not produce enough Vitamin D, which I assume is suspect.
I also went on additional calcium, as did my wife. I believe that Doctors were given new thresholds and so many people ended up being asked to supplement both Vitamin D and calcium. My wife read where a new study said that women of her age where being asked to take more calcium but that it was recommended that they quit. She quit and has had 2 or 3 blood draws with no comment from her Doctor.
Mister Ghost, you would love the pool atop the Vegas hotel I am staying at. GT 95% of the females are mostly uncovered. Can be dangerous to the delicate bits during the hot days.
I am spectacularly Vitamin D deficient. People with autoimmune diseases almost all are. Either we don’t make it or absorb it, whatever. D is essential for everything, heart, body, brain, it is most important of all apparently. I have lupus, RA and eight other forms of autoimmune disease, to point I thought the diagnosis of mixed connective tissue just was a lump sum. Turns out it was another autoimmune disease!
Those with sun prompted diseases like lupus cannot go out enough to get D naturally and yes, I am supposed to take 50,000 units twice a week. The rest of you don’t need that so forget it!
Northern places like Sweden, Norway and Michigan, Minnesota are lacking in the right kind of sunlight which if I weren’t in such a hurry I would remember but I bet there is a scientist here that can explain it!
I can tell you the exact day I discovered my spectacular lack of autoimmune whatever’s – I was in Biloxi, Ms at a fraternity
weekend during rush week. Wearing very little, bright sun, beach and high intensity sunbeams (is that IUD’s or is that birth control?) Anyway, I ended up home in hospital and nearly died`
many times over next several years and spent a third of my time hospitalized before I got diagnosed.
And yet no one ever really sorted it all out until I was 50 and it all came together in a rush of illness with no intermissions.
So, sunlight, Vitamin D have complicated consequences. But skin cancer is still the most serious I think.
Love, Jackie Monies
However you feel about Fox News, their Medical House Calls with Dr. Marc Siegel and Dr. David Samadi is well worth watching. Here’s a good clip regarding the efficacy of vitamins and food supplements. (Without any Dr. Oz-like hype.)
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/americas-news-hq/sunday-housecall#http://video.foxnews.com/v/2845246354001/study-vitamins-dont-prevent-heart-disease-or-cancer/?playlist_id=86895
Thanks Ghost, I knew about that report. But the autoimmune specialists and cardiologists are still prescribing the prescription strength potassium and Vitamin D, along with my endo guy. The levels I take a extremely high and without them my tests go toward the 0 range. Interestingly, potassium and D are all they worry about, as I am not allowed any over the counter meds or supplements or vitamins?
On caskets (does that go with above?) several years ago my mom went off on prearranging her funeral. So, I go to funeral home our family uses in Louisiana and talk to them, pick out coffin, locate good florist, this isn’t hard for me as a retired florist, we took road trips and sightseeing trips for such things.
Then mom refused to go look at coffin or talk about what I’d arranged!
But my aunt’s funeral used the EXACT same coffin I picked out which would not be unusual except it is a man’s coffin and they told me so. I said, don’t care, it is solid wood, looks like dark mahogany or cherry, very tasteful.
My cousin said same thing, he hated all the women’s caskets and ended up picking the wooden man’s casket. But VERY beautiful like a fine piece of furniture.
Love, Jackie Monies
The only thing on that clip that made sense to me was when he said “The more is not the merrier”
Regarding vitamins: Many of the new studies show that vitamin supplements are not properly absorbed by our bodies. It seems that our bodies cannot process the artificial ones in the absence of the substances that occur in the natural sources. One of the few exceptions, so far, seems to be vitamin D. And my personal blood work shows that the supplemental vitamin D that I have been taking is being absorbed. Your mileage may vary!
Seems funny that the conversation wound around to the ‘neutraceuticals’ things (vitamins, in this case) and how they are (or are not) being absorbed properly by our aging bodies, but we fail to mention how well our bodies absorb the other non-beneficial things (beer and good, rich food in this case). Ah yes, I saw the better side of 40 a few decades ago. I am in total agreement with TruckerRon, “Your mileage may vary!”
I don’t worry much about it; the consensus about vitamins will change again in another couple of years. 🙂
Debbe 😉 Did you say you were planning to take a day off today? If so, and if you did, I hope that you’ve enjoyed it. Well, time to go back to work…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg_teg7aIFo
Fortunately, Jackie, my Mom is far from being the Queen of De Nile.
One of my uncles by marriage was the oldest of six brothers, and due to family circumstances, he had basically raised his five younger brothers from young ages. All five went on to become very well off financially, and when my uncle passed, they put him away in the largest mahogany casket I’ve ever seen. It was absolutely beautiful, but it required 10 pallbearers at the cemetery.
I know some may view that as an unnecessary expenditure of resources, but I see it as one of their signs of respect for his memory. Besides, it was their money.
Wow, I feel really stupid, I just now learned there are men and women’s caskets? Reminds me of a Frasier, where Martin picked out women’s eyeglass frames and didn’t know it and no one would tell him.
More than 27,000 days…in spite of several very severe sunburns (very fair skin) during earlier decades. There! I knitted two recent topics together!
Although I am a scientist, I am not up on northern sunlight’s spectrum. Would it be a reasonable assumption that the angle at which sunlight impinges upon the earth’s atmosphere can affect just which wave lengths of light get through more effectively and which do not? If anyone out there knows, do tell. Perhaps Google knows….
Another note on vitamin D – mine was low, of course, and my doctor prescribed the short mega dose prescription supplement to take (which I couldn’t finish because it made me sick) and also told me something I’d never heard. I explained that I consumed dairy every day and also got plenty of sun exposure. He said that being in the sun does not supply vitamin D. The sun only activates the vitamin D that your body has taken in. I never heard anyone say that before but it makes sense to me. I believe that many of us have low vitamin D because we have a malabsorption problem and we are not utilizing the vitamin D we consume. This also goes along with autoimmune conditions, which is prevalent in my family.
c x-p et al.:
There is pretty good info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_d
on vitamin D and sunlight.
The skin, in the presence of sunlight, secretes calciferol, one of three forms of ‘vitamin’ D. The skin has no ducts and secretes calciferol directly into the blood stream in the skin’s capillaries, just as the thyroid secretes thyroxin into its capillaries. Calciferol is thus a hormone, as are thyroxin, testosterone, adrenalin, and others. Your skin is your largest endocrine gland. Calciferol promotes deposition of Calcium into growing AND into mature bones. Commercial milk contains both Ca and ‘vitamin’ D. You never outgrow your need for milk [if you are lucky enough to retain your ability to digest it after childhood].
Melanin, a pigment most Caucasians [outside of India] have only small concentrations of, absorbs sunlight and thus decreases the skin’s efficiency at synthesizing calciferol. Natural selection has thus favored a lessening of pigment density in many human populations that have migrated into cold climates. A black child in Glasgow is thus more susceptible to rickets than his equally bundled up white playmate, whose ruddy cheeks are producing enough calciferol to get him through winter. The white child is more susceptible to skin cancer, but the devil is in the details. You need calciferol to build strong bones while you are growing up, before reproductive age. Skin cancer, among others, gets more likely with age, by which time most people have already had any kids they are going to. There will be a quiz . . .. emb
Sunlight. Calciferol. ‘Vitamin’ D. Skin pigmentation. Rickets. Got it, emb. Ready for the quiz. 🙂
I stopped by the funeral chapel this afternoon to pick up the paperwork on my Mom’s prearrangements. Unlike yesterday afternoon, there was a visitation in progress. I realize and am OK with the fact that some people do not have (and/or cannot afford) “dress up” clothes to wear to church or to the funeral home. But surely young women (and some not-so-young women) have something they could wear to those places that doesn’t make them look like hookers.
I suppose one could make a case that I am hopelessly old-fashioned and am getting more so every day.
Some studies show that SPF sunblock is up to 98% effective in blocking production of Vitamin D in the skin…. might need those supplements if you are consistent with the sunblock.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56078/
Sunscreen is mentioned about halfway down.
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee to Review Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium (2011). “8, Implications and Special Concerns”. In Ross AC, Taylor CL, Yaktine AL, Del Valle HB.
(This is not about sunning, but it does fit the general topic of David Bowie.)
The stages of life are three, three are the stages.
In the first, I sometimes felt the effects of too much exercise.
In the second, I worried about not exercising enough.
Now, the stage of all exercise being too much holds court.
Ghost: No, you are right on. I love to see skin as much as the next guy, but a wake is not the right place. Especially if it also involves piercings.
Ghost – I agree that much of what is considered fashionable by younger women these days is, at the least, questionable by my standards. Their shoes do make the future look secure for podiatrists and chiropractors. However, we should perhaps consider the possibility that they were dressed to honor the “profession” of the dear departed:-)
Well, this one is pretty hilarious. My wife and I love several scenes from Kindergarten Cop and if you have watched the movie, you can appreciate this video.
http://www.godfruits.com/3913/when-this-big-brother-meets-his-little-sister-he-only-has-one-hilarious-question-to-ask.php?ref=8
Ruth Anne, I had that same thought. 🙂 There were an awful lot of them them there, all dressed like Pavement Princesses.
Call girl goes to see her doctor, tells him she’s too sick to work. He gives her a prescription. “Are you sure this will make me better?” she asks.
“Certainly, my dear,” he tells her. “Take these as directed, and you’ll be back on your back in no time.”