When I was growing up we had an old encyclopedia set for our reference materials. This set was always older than me, luckily at that time (the 60’s and 70’s) we were all pretty much on the same page, there was no current answer to a question. If you couldn’t find the information you needed, you could call the librarian and they would somehow find the answer in a book on their many shelves. There was no google or youtube to find an immediate answer, or number of answers, to your query.
This is the antithesis of ‘long story short’ – I was watching DIY videos on Youtube and stumbled upon the correct way to use a gift bag. All the gift bags I’ve used over the years and the frustration of using tissue paper that would be tossed (or gently snatched from the giftee and folded to store away for next year) and here was a solution. Maybe I’m the last person on the planet to realize you should poke the ends of the bag handle into the opposite sides and gently pull the two handles to snugly close the gift bag so no need for tissue paper to hide the gift! Never too old to learn a new trick.
What else did I learn this week? Well, I learned that when you eat what some would consider too much organ meat you can get gout! We didn’t do a turkey for Thanksgiving, but I love giblet gravy and stuffing so I smoked turkey necks and heart/liver/gizzards in the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Thinking I was making good ‘lean’ choices, what I didn’t use for the gravy or stuffing I had for lunches throughout the week. In addition to those ‘good decisions’, I chose to have oyster shooters and a beautiful steamed clam dish last week. No dessert, no alcohol, just healthy eating. Friday I woke up and my toe was pretty sore, I didn’t remember banging it into anything and wondered if I got a bug bite of some sort overnight?? On Sunday night I felt like the Princess and the Pea (me being the Princess of course), the weight of the comforter on my toe kept my up half the night. By Monday, I couldn’t put on a shoe or a sock and with my upcoming surgery I thought I better go to the doctor and make sure I didn’t have some strange infection. After an xray to rule out I hadn’t somehow broken my toe, the blood work had the answer.
Food high in purines can increase the risk of gout. High purine foods include organ meat, red meat, and some types of seafood, such as sardines, tuna, trout, and anchovies. Consuming alcohol and fructose, a kind of sugar, also results in a higher risk factor for gout.
Researchers suggest that chocolate could be beneficial to health because it contains antioxidants. However, chocolate also increases the amount of uric acid in the body, which increases the risk of gout.
You might not always find a straight answer when you google information but I’m thankful to have the vast amount of information to learn from as I now research the purine levels in everything I’m eating to keep the uric acids at a minimum! Again, I have to say, 60 has not been my favorite year!
#gout #thanksgiving #giftbags #alwayslearning #organmeat #xray #princessandthepea #uricacid #purine #encyclopedia #knowledgeispower #liveyourbestlife #livefortoday #preparefortomorrow
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