As a probable result of a very poor night's sleep, early this a.m. I felt as if the flu I have had since January 14 was reasserting itself ─ this gem of wisdom had actually been born the evening previous as I watched T.V. (via our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box) until well into the midnight hour.
I think that it was likely approaching 1:00 a.m. by the time I got to bed...yet not two hours later after an initial bout of sleep, I had awakened and was soon in the grip of an extended bout of nearly violent coughing.
My wife had not yet arrived home after her long workday at her friend's Thai restaurant, and could well do so at any moment. Yet here I was, filling the bedroom air with shed flu virus as I projected forth roaring cough upon cough.
The guilt overpowered me and, despite feeling most ill-slept, I rose and was soon at work on the post I have in development at one of my six hosted websites. And although I questioned that I could do it, I remained at the task until a regular day's content assignment had been met, by which time it was probably at least 6:30 a.m. ─ if not even around 7:00 a.m.
My eldest stepson had not risen to go to work...nor had my wife come home.
So I returned my ailing corpus to bed, by which time the coughing urges had quelled.
And I slept.
When I go to sleep or nap, I tend to wear earplugs and a pair of bandannas folded together that serve as a blindfold ─ they are held in place by an old fleece headband that encircles my chin's underside and the crown of my head. So although I had bouts of consciousness, I was never appreciative of the time as judged by the daylight outside. I remained unaware.
Or at least, I did remain unaware until I finally took a peek at the time ─ it was something like 11:01 a.m.
This almost did not seem possible, for coughing had never affected me during that time. Why, then, did coughing ruin my initial sleep at night and reduce it to what was likely not much over an hour of actual sleep?
I rose, and soon had joined my younger brother at the T.V. in the living room. Over the past several months, we have slowly been working our way through the documentary series The Vietnam War, and today we watched episode seven.
At its conclusion, my brother sought some bedrest ere he left for the afternoon to end up drinking somewhere.
The day had some sunny periods during the latter morning, but the sky seems overcast since then.
I have a few health-related topics that I want to delve into for this post.
To start, last year I felt considerable concern when a sensitive left breast's nipple progressed in sensitivity to the point where the area beneath or surrounding the nipple was clearly swollen and the whole felt to be a rather hardened mass.
I am by nature quite negative, and since my teens have wrestled with thoughts of suicide. As a probable result, I have not sought any medical attention for this sensitive breast situation. The actual hardness seemed to reduce after some months, as did most of the distinct apparent swelling that was most pronounced when viewed in profile.
I would estimate that I had breast sensitivity for the entirety of 2018, and some is still present. I just don't make a point of touching the area ─ whether it's due to the 'out of sight, out of mind' sort of philosophy; or because I just don't like self-examinations (which I intensely do not, and thus never regularly practice any); or even because I am at that point in my life where I feel that if my only purpose for living anymore is my death, then God may as well get it over.
Probably all three elements factor into my attitude.
And of course, my problem may be naught more than something like a duct blockage and / or an infection, and is unrelated to anything like cancer.
Nevertheless, I tend to find articles like the following to be of some personal interest:
HSIonline.com
It is my great regret that I do not live somewhere in which I could garden extensively ─ I would love to have been able to raise the bulk of all of my vegetables and herbs, and also have fruit trees.
But I have no such place; and with only a retirement pension for income, and what seems an insurmountable level of debt, I am destined to live nowhere else, barring some financial miracle.
That article makes some stark claims that one would expect if a product was being promoted, but that is not the case ─ absolutely no sweet marjoram products are linked to.
You can perform a Google search using the phrase "Origanum majorana and cancer" ─ I did here ─ and the first page of results will be filled with links to published research. Clearly, studies definitely exist. Those search results even included an article at TheNational.ae reporting on the United Arab Emirates 2013 study (that was mentioned in that first article that I led this off with): UAE scientists discover Marjoram, a cancer killer in your herb garden.
Of course, a Dr Emma Smith ("senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK") who was uninvolved with the study commented:
“This early research, which suggests that extracts from the herb marjoram may stop the growth of certain types of breast cancer cells, was only carried out on cells grown in a laboratory,” she said. “This means there’s no evidence yet that it would be safe or effective as a treatment.”The results also do not indicate, she added, that eating large amounts of marjoram could reduce the risk of developing breast cancer or could be beneficial to people with the condition.
But does that mean that doing so would NOT prove beneficial as a preventive?
And why suggest that eating large amounts of marjoram might not be safe as a treatment? How could eating lots of sweet marjoram not be safe?
I'm going to drop the topic for I want to also touch upon something that I have always believed was extremely useful for weight loss ─ that is, becoming extremely active and thus eventually burning off the pounds.
A study has apparently come to the conclusion that activity is of scant benefit for the purpose of weight loss:
JacksDailyDose.com
NutraIngredients-USA.com
USABusinessRadio.com
I can agree that the Hadza people may well be living a hunter / gatherer lifestyle and have physiologies perfectly suited to that way of life ─ their bodies have adapted to conserving energy by having lowered metabolic rates.
But I do not agree that we would not benefit from heavy energy expenditures each and every day.
Now of course, the average person is not going to be able to achieve that in a gym. Rather, I am speaking of at least walking vigorously for several hours at a stretch on a daily basis ─ anyone who can do that will undoubtedly lose pounds.
But a steady diet of garbage will probably monkey-wrench the outcome. Nor are we designed to be eating all the day through like so many people do.
Sure, maybe the Hadza people do just burn the same number of calories daily that does an average Westerner.
However, that does NOT convert into the average Westerner failing to burn far more calories than does a Hadza person by being just as physically active all the day through. All the study did was reveal that the Hadza had some peculiar metabolic safeguard that shielded them from calorie-burning themselves into a state of starvation.
It did not prove that we can't lose our pounds by getting out there and expending the necessary energy each and every day that would achieve the weight loss.
We are not the Hadza. We can't eat a litre of honey a day, either.
I conclude this day's post with another few photos taken a year ago when my wife and her two sons arranged a small reunion in Bali with five of their family members.
All of these photos were probably taken exactly a year ago, and the first two feature both of my stepsons ─ the eldest is shirtless, and was 23 years old at the time; his younger brother was 20 years old:
Now I must create a post at my private blog ─ one that now has absolutely no readers, despite it being online for over 10 years, and with thousands of posts.
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