Health and middle age

Well, it’s finally caught up with me. A life of not quite looking after myself. I am staring down the barrel of hypertension and high cholesterol. I can’t say that I am surprised, but I am still a bit shocked! You see, we have a family history of this, lots of it. There is only so long that you can outrun your genes before something catches up with you…

For most of the early 90s, I was a drinker and smoker. I told myself this was OK because I cancelled it out with being a vegetarian, and a crap one at that. I drank a lot. We’re talking several bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and being falling over drunk. Actually, it was worse than that. I’d sit in the middle of the road trying to get my boots off I was so pissed, but that is for another blog. If I’d have met me back then, I would have run a mile. I was an accident waiting to happen. But somehow I was physically OK. Don’t ask me how I managed that minor miracle, particularly due to my unhealthy obsession with cheese and onion pasties!

In 1999 I moved to Manchester. I stopped drinking so much, mainly because I ended up on anti-depressants that I couldn’t drink with, but also because I was scared of getting that drunk I’d end up trying to get back home to where I used to live in Sheffield. I stopped smoking too. I remember trying to inhale with a chest infection and nearly losing a lung on Piccadilly Station. Nice…

The big problem was then my diet. I lived with a guy who had a really ‘healthy’ appetite. He’d clear 500g of mince in a sitting and half a pack of pasta. Pizza night was two massive Dominos, with garlic bread, sides and whatever else we could get our hands on. My perfect Cholesterol somehow managed to stay intact. The scales did not. I managed to put on 6 stone, yes SIX stone. Mainly through a diet of takeaways and sugar. Something had to give. The relationship ended, but I went back to eating meat. I’ve talked about this before here. Not only that, I developed IBS. This was not pretty, coupled with the fact that my GP thought I may be either gluten or lactose intolerant, oh and an underactive thyroid! For years I’d been pretty blase about my health, it was about to ramp up a gear.

I’ve never been one to look after myself. I don’t know if this comes from my periods of depression, or if it’s just how I am. Everyone else gets looked after before I do. The more my health has suffered, the more it seems that I’ve been determined to look after others. Even when I had a serious health scare the other year, I put everyone else first. Now I am looking at this double whammy of conditions and something needs to change.

I did get fit at one point. I lost a stone or so on my own, then another three – so I was doing pretty well. I was boxing, running and flinging kettlebells around like a woman possessed. Then an old back injury flared up and I am now much more sedentary and nearly two stone heavier again. I’ve been sulking about that for about 8 months now, but I can sulk no longer.

I need to look at my diet again. I need to stop eating crap and all the lovely German salami and go back to being sensible about my health. My cholesterol is currently 6.5, it’s not massively worrying the docs, but my blood pressure is. The bottom number is too high, and I am facing an extra line on my repeat prescription.

Do you know what makes me sad about all this? Yes, there is some family history, but a lot of this is self-inflicted. I know how to eat well. I am not dumb. I absolutely love veg, honestly, I could live on sprouts for a year and not bat an eyelid. Do I eat enough? Do I heck! A lot of it comes down to time pressures and being lazy. I need to put myself first.

For the next two weeks, I am taking my own blood pressure, and hopefully, it comes down. I’ve always said I’d spontaneously combust – but I am not prepared for that fate just yet!