There’s been lots of worry recently over plastic bottles and other food containers, and what is safe and what is not.
Here’s what’s safest: #2 and #5.
#1 is okay (it’s what most bottled water is sold in). But you don’t want to repeatedly reuse it these kinds of bottles – they don’t hold up super well over time.
#3 is PVC. Very very bad. Dioxin, phthalates, and other carcinogens. We should not be using this stuff at all.
#6 also not cool. Polystyrene. Styrofoam, generally.
#7, which is what your Nalgene bottle is made of (although apparently not the new ones), is bad. Releases bisphenol A, which is an endocrine disrupter, (acts like a hormone in your body. Bad bad bad.) Canada banned BPA, and there has been a real worry that a lot of baby bottles are made of #7 plastic. Hormone-like chemicals + babies = bad news. Actually hormone-like chemicals + adults = bad news too.
#2, #4, and #5 are fine. At least for now. My Rubbermaid water bottle that I drink from at work is made of #5 plastic. I’d recommend you chuck that Nalgene.
Apparently all that mess about canned vegetables being much less healthy than fresh veggies is not so cut-and-dried. Heat-sensitive nutrients like vitamin C break down in canned veggies, but other phytochemicals in vegetables, such as the ones found in corn and tomatoes, actually increase when they are exposed to heat. So pile on the corn and tomato salsa I guess.
Apparently, our shoes are ruining our feet, and we should all either walk barefoot, or buy expensive shoes that are almost like walking barefoot. At least according to New York Magazine.
I’m somewhat skeptical, as I felt like the article was pushing a particular product pretty hard, but I did find it interesting that women who wear high heels all the time actually cause the tendons in their feet to shorten, thus causing them to eventually only be comfortable in high heels.
I also thought it was interesting that historically, shoes were not made for walking, but were rather a sign that you were so rich you didn’t have to walk.
I also saw someone running barefoot in the 10K I did on Saturday. Makes me want to give it a try (though probably on a treadmill…)
I haven’t been posting much lately because I am planning to start a new blog. It’s slowly coming together, and I’ll keep you updated as soon as it goes live. Hopefully sometime in mid-June.
This is just wild! A tornado swept through Atlanta and ripped up parts of the Georgia Dome (during a basketball game!). Oh yeah, and it was happening three miles away from my mom’s house, where I am right now.
It’s funny how fast times change. When I was a kid in school, I didn’t know anyone who was on Ritalin. Acronyms like ADD and SSRI hadn’t entered the public lexicon yet. The only psychopharmeceuticals I had heard of were Valium (from the movies) and Haldol (from a novel I’d read). I remember how astounded I was when I discovered that my first college roommate took Prozac. Someone my age who seemed normal. Gradually, pills of all kinds were trickling into the mainstream. Now I am familiar with lots of them, from talking with friends, family, coworkers, you name it. I can easily rattle off several names – Lithium, Lexapro, Effexor, Paxil, Wellbutrin.
I’ve felt varying responses to the drugs that seem to have flooded American life. I know people who have said that these medications save their lives and make them normal and whole. I know others who have had or have tales of very bad experiences. In one case, I recall the trials of a friend whose parents chose a pharmacy as an answer to the emotional troubles of a dysfunctional family and the pain of being a teenager instead of you know, just talking about things or at least sending the kid to a therapist.
This kind of thing troubles me. Being a teenager is supposed to suck. And coming through all that pain and awkwardness is sort of a rite of passage to adulthood. It’s not a medical problem. And I doubt medication could have helped me deal with the social awkwardness and confusion at that time in my life. It could have, however, dulled my ability to deal with it adequately. I’ll never know – I did zero drugs in high school; I didn’t even drink alcohol. But nowadays the establishment seems to be a little less gung-ho about medicating teenagers for emotional trouble. Any mention of Prozac now carries the following disclaimer:
Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.
I guess it ultimately troubles me that more and more, the response to even minor mental or emotional trouble (including PMS!) is to medicalize the problem, rather than recognize the complex forces at work on a person’s psyche. Or simply: if you’re sad (or anxious or shy or hyper), pop a pill.
There was an interesting story on NPR a few weeks back about how playtime for children has changed so much in the past several decades. Over time most children have less and less time for unscripted, improvised play, spending time rather with the television, with toys that do not require imaginative use, and at supervised “enrichment activities” like piano lessons and karate classes. Researchers have found that “time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.”
Could there be a causal relationship between loss of free playtime and a rise in ADD? If this is even possible how can we respond by drugging our kids? Just because we don’t have the time to really work on the actual problem?
The week before that NPR story came out, I happened upon an article in the Washington Post (while sipping the second yummiest* hot chocolate** I’ve ever had). The article was by Charles Barber, a lecturer at Yale University, who very eloquently expressed my sentiments on mental health. I recommend giving it a read.
I absolutely think that medication is appropriate to treat some mental illnesses. But I also think we have found that even with straight-up physiological conditions, a holistic approach to illness often results in more lasting health. I think this is especially true for mental health. Our ability to function mentally is tied to things like finding meaning in our lives and having supportive people to care for us and foster growth. And it’s also important to understand the mechanisms in our daily lives that lead us towards or away from a healthy mental state.
The film A Beautiful Mind is a wonderful example of how one can learn to cope with a pretty major (and frightening) mental illness. John Nash had delusional paranoid schizophrenia, and he learned how to live with it, found meaning in his life, and had a supportive family to cling to. Yes, it’s a movie, but the real Nash stopped medicating for his schizophrenia from 1970 onwards.
Just some food for thought.
To inject some levity into the subject, I offer you the music of Jonathan Coulton (who is playing at the Birchmere on Friday!)
[I chose to edit this piece, because well, I just didn't like it as it was.]
* The yummiest hot chocolate I’ve ever had was from Butler’s Chocolate Cafe in Dublin. They had handmade marshmallows. ** I recommend The Lucy – semisweet hot chocolate infused with chipotle.
My friend Susanna shared it on Facebook. I know she’s thinking of it in the context of grad schools, but there are so many applicable contexts to the ideas in this article.
Man, the New York Times has some pretty kickass content. Good food for thought.
Also, if you’ve been single for a real long time, you might want to consider moving to another city. Apparently the odds are strongly in your favor if you’re a single male living on the east coast or a single female living in the western part of the country. But does San Francisco really count?
For myself, I’m going to enjoy the day. It’s cold but it’s sunny, and I have lots to smile about. I wish everyone lots of love (romantic or otherwise) and a Happy Valentine’s Day!
I discovered yesterday that This American Life” is great listening for a run. I thought music would be better, because it has a beat and makes you want to move, but for my long run yesterday, hearing Ira Glass tell me stories made me forget I’m running at all.
During this week’s long run I listened to an old podcast, entitled “Break-Up.” It carried me through the first 6 miles of my 11-mile run to Bethesda.
I have to confess, my friend Jim turned me onto this particular episode. I was telling him about some recent difficulties in my romantic life, and he asked me if I’d ever heard it. He heard it when it first aired in August, when he too was having hard times in his relationship. The show really struck him, and he told me that I HAD to listen to it.
I now pass the recommendation along. You can listen for free streaming on the web. I will say I was disappointed to discover that there is now a charge for downloads of past episodes – they used to be all free. Still I paid the $0.95 so I could put it on my iPod. I can hardly begrudge Chicago Public Radio a dollar.
Listening to the episode actually did made me feel a lot better. And by better, I mean better.
All political advertisements should be music videos.
There have been some that have said that this video makes Obama look even more like a candidate that’s all rhetoric and no experience. Hogwash, I say.
The man has tons of experience. Yes, it is impossible not to agree that Hillary has more experience (though I would argue it’s not the kind of experience America needs.) But experience doesn’t win elections. If people voted for the best qualified, most experienced candidates, we wouldn’t have ended up with half of the presidents we have had. The fact is that most people vote with their emotions, with how they feel about a candidate.
So making an emotionally-manipulative video makes a lot of sense. At least this emotionally-manipulative video has a positive message, as opposed to what we’re usuallyassaultedwith.
Of course, I think Obama both inspires people and will be a good leader that unites our country.
Keep in mind, more Americans vote in American Idol than in presidential elections. Maybe we need a candidate who can MTV it up, just to get people out to the voting booth.
If you have not seen the movie Once, I urge you, I implore you: rent it. I wish I had seen it in the theater, but I missed it. But finally it came in my Netflix this week. My mom and I watched it tonight.
The story is so simple and wonderful. But the music, the music. Together Glen Hansard (of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova create aching melodies, haunting harmonies, and beautiful lyrics that moved me to near tears a few times. I now cannot get the songs out of my head. (They’ve also since released another CD together called The Swell Season, which I want to check out.)
I really recommend watching the movie before listening to any of the music on its own. But if you really think you’ll never watch the movie, here’s a taste of what you’re missing.
Wednesday night marked my return to speed work. If I am going to finish a marathon, and finish it faster than I did the last time I attempted one, speed work is, unfortunately, necessary.
For the record, when I started doing speed work last year to train for my abortive attempt at the Shamrock Marathon, I had a real love/hate relationship with it. I trained with Dave out in Ballston with a running group, complete with a coach doling out workouts like prison sentences. 1200 x 4 at 8:15 – go!
Ugh.
Speed work is hard for me. I have, over time, gotten so used to running at a comfortable pace, that when I push myself to run faster and experience all of the discomfort that goes along with making greater demands on my body, it almost feels… wrong. In training for the Dublin Marathon and subsequent races, I discovered I really do enjoy endurance training. Running for long periods of time at a conversational pace feels good. But oh man, I do not love running in a repetitive loop so fast that my lungs burn and my legs begin to feel like jelly. It’s just (good) pain.
Hashing was my speed work for awhile – I was running after something and trying to keep up with faster runners, so I had something to distract me from the pain of pushing my speed. But running around a track, there’s not much else to concentrate on.
Still, this year, I’m determined to rock those track workouts as defined in my training program. They won’t be too bad – it’s all just 400 repeats with a rest between each one. That’s just one lap around the track. And I have a partner to keep me motivated, which really helps. Even better, we’re doing the workouts at Cardozo High School, instead of out in fucking Ballston, which is a motivator in and of itself, given that I can jog there in 5 minutes.
Our workout on Wednesday night was a little fast – we were supposed to be doing the repeats at 2:05 to 2:15, but we were clocking in at 1:45 to 2:00. But it didn’t hurt. It was hard, but my joints all felt fine, and I even had a ton of energy for the rest of the evening and even the next day.
Saturday I have 7 miles on my own – I’ll be in Atlanta visiting my mom. Luckily she lives right near some nice asphalt running trails, complete with mile markers, so I should be in good shape.
I probably will be laughed at by some for liking this song, and even moreso for liking a lot of songs I’ve listened to by the band, Needtobreathe.
But whatever. So what if it was featured in the film P.S. I Love You, which was so schmaltzy that nearly made me roll my eyes a couple of times? (Though it still ended up making me teary – maybe because I like Irish dudes…) So what if this band is popular with Southern, alternative Christian music types? So what if their sound is a little more mainstream and poppy than the music I have lately been absorbed in?
So what? I like the song anyhow. It makes me feel dreamy. It makes me think of the movie, and how parts of it touched me.
If you have not seen the movie 
But whatever. So what if it was featured in the film