i’m home sick today, and bored, so feel free to ignore this. just musing.
reading junkfood science has given me some food for thought. (hoorf hoorf.) i thought about my family history and how it compares to all the studies that come out all the time about the next big thing that’ll kill you.
let’s start with my dad’s side. i know next to nothing about my great grandparents. i think one of them had parkinsons. i also seem to remember that they lived to be quite old, regardless. then there’s my paternal grandfather, who died soon after helping to conceive my dad, when a tractor fell on him. grandma then married one of grandpa’s friends, who adopted my dad as his own. (dad wasn’t aware of this until he was 13.) though his genes have nothing to do with me, i’ll just point out that he has alzheimers and is in his late 70s/80s. he’s not fat and, to my knowledge, never has been, though one of his favorite sayings was “it’s 5:00 somewhere” before downing a drink. and there’s my paternal grandmother, who died in her 50s – i think – from cancer. no one’s sure where the cancer actually started, but by the time she passed away, it was systemic. she was always relatively petite, but, like grandpa, she liked to drink. being a 1950’s housewife will do that to you, or so i’ve heard. (i blame my digestive problems on her, as my aunt and i have them, too.) what have my paternal grandparents taught me? don’t drink too much. and stay the hell away from tractors.
then there’s dad. after a lifetime of outdoor living and multiple sunburns that have stained his skin red, he developed skin cancer in his late 40s. it was in a mole on his neck and successfully removed, though he never went back for a follow up, so we can only assume he’s cancer-free. he also has high blood pressure and maybe high cholesterol, which he’s on meds for. he quit smoking less than five years ago and still drinks a lot of coffee. and chews nicotine gum like a madman. he gained some weight and was fat for about a year, but dropped the weight by getting back to his old jock habits of working out for two hours a day. (i don’t remember how he gained the weight to begin with. maybe a failed smoking cessation attempt.) he eats a lot. his love for dairy is renowned. as a college student, he had a job driving a route for a dairy company, and one of the perks was that he could eat or drink whatever he wanted from the stock for free. he would drink entire containers of milkshake mix. when i lived at home, he would eat twice as much as the rest of us, then finished whatever we didn’t want to eat. and managed to stay thin, somehow. nowadays, i think he looks a bit too thin. probably because he’s always been kind of muscular, and now he’s mostly just skinny. (doing cardio as opposed to much weight-lifting, i guess.) he’s in his mid-fifties now, and seems to be doing alright. i hope he’ll be around for a long time.
now for mum’s side. the only great grandparent i know much about is her grandfather. he was a farmer, which meant lots of exercise, lots of sun. to my knowledge, he never developed anything like skin cancer – or any cancer at all. he was always thin and lanky, despite bacon fat being a staple of his diet. (nothing better that sopping up bacon grease with biscuits as far as he was concerned.) he died when he was in his 90s of “natural causes” which i guess means his body just gave out. the only problem he really had, i think, was senility. but that’ll happen when you’re 90. mum’s dad died in his early 50s from a heart attack. he smoked, and i don’t know about his diet or drinking habits. he wasn’t fat, either, though. (i bet, if you’re actually reading this, you’re starting to wonder how it is that i’m basically the only fat person in my family. i wonder that, too.) anyway, like mum, he died relatively young. my maternal grandmother is still alive, and, i believe, in her 80s. she is the only other person i know of in my family who’s obese. but that came with age. she was always pretty thin until she got older. she has a heart condition and has had a stroke. she’s also borderline hypothyroid, and i may be, too. but she’s outlived two husbands and a child, and seems to be doing alright post-stroke. though i think she forgets things sometimes. (sohei’s dad is the same way, though, and he’s in his 50s.)
as for mum, she was “chubby” as a kid (not by my standards), but was pretty thin throughout her adulthood. in fact, one of the reasons she didn’t want to quit smoking was that she didn’t want to be fat. it worked, i guess. she was plenty skinny when she passed away. so, obviously, she smoked. she had a bit of a drinking problem when i was a teenager, but didn’t hardly drink at all by the time i moved out. her health seemed pretty good except for the chronic smokers cough. i don’t think she had blood pressure or cholesterol or heart problems. she took a preventative aspirin every day, and she was on meds for arthritis, and i think that’s it. then she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and the blood clots she had were though to be caused by the cancer. though smoking causes them, too, so that probably exacerbated it. she ultimately died when one of the blood clots broke lose and caused a stroke.
and then there’s me. my old doctor was convinced that i had borderline high blood pressure, though every other doctor and specialist i go to says it’s perfect. and though my blood tests always came back fine, he was also certain that i could be stricken with diabetes and put me on these stupid diets i could never stick to. so my blood pressure’s good, my cholesterol is borderline bad (though i only got a test for it once, by my old doctor, who seemed to think i was at death’s door all the time coz i was fat.) and my blood sugar was fine the last it got checked. no one in my family, to my knowledge, has ever had diabetes. none of them were what you’d call fat, either, except my maternal grandmother, so it remains to be seen what’ll happen later. though i’m out of shape (i admit to getting winded embarrassingly easily) my lung capacity has been described as excellent. my guts are definitely a problem, but the disease hasn’t been found to cause cancer or any other deadly disease. so it hurts and stops me from living a normal life, but it won’t kill me. so, basically, i’m young and in decent health aside from my guts. and i need to stay away from excessive drinking, smoking (i’ll be quitting again when sohei gets home), and motorized vehicles. but we all already knew that.
a brief glance at sohei’s family is also telling, to me. his paternal grandparents, who smoked and drank a lot, died of cancer. i think they were in their late 50s/early 60s? i never met them, but neither of them looked particularly overweight to me. his maternal grandfather died relatively young, and i think it was also cancer. i don’t know that much about him. but his maternal grandmother is still alive and mostly well, in her 80s, with a heart problem. she, like my grandmother, is obese. sohei’s dad is also obese, and smokes and drinks, but seems to be pretty healthy nonetheless. and sohei’s mum, who is thin like my mum was, is a cancer survivor and has been healthy since being cancer-free for ten years.
in my personal experience, smoking will make you die far too young, and drinking isn’t great for you either. but you can be skinny and still have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and circulatory problems. for instance, my supervisor is almost half my weight, and her cholesterol is way, way worse than mine. she’s also nearly ten years older than i am. it seems, to me, like age and smoking are probably the biggest indicators of an early death. there will always be weird instances like sudden aneurysms, accidents, etc. oh, and being male isn’t too great, either, for some reason. i don’t even know where to begin to hypothesize about that. but weight, ultimately, seems to have very little to do with any of it. this is what many of ms. szwarc’s posts point to, and from looking at my family’s history and people i know, she seems to be spot on. anecdotal evidence should be discounted, yes, but a lot of studies seem to ultimately support what i’ve seen from experience. you just never hear about them, or the convenient bits are presented in such a way as to distort the study entirely. her blog has taught me to further view media reports – about anything – with a critical eye.
well, it was interesting to me.
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) i saw this woman with a huuuuge adam’s apple. other than that, she looked pretty female. it reminded me of a story. one time, when i was 11 or so, i was at the store with mum. i hissed, “mom, i think that’s a guy wearing women’s clothes.” she shushed me and looked around. “what makes you say that?” i shrugged. “she’s got an adam’s apple.” mum had to admit she did. very clever. and ann coulter has an adam’s apple as well. can women really have these? i just checked, and apparently, while rare, it happens. so i guess that’s one characteristic i’ll have to quit using when determining gender in someone questionable. 
you know what i love about sohei? his hair is naturally black. i love black hair, and he would never be willing to dye it, so i’m glad it’s that way anyway. (but if he dyed the tips blue, it would make me even happier. he should also get an eyebrow piercing.)
um, bulimia is a valid illness you selfish cunt. why don’t you just tell her to binge on something less expensive or that will cause you less stress? because i’m sure that while she was purging all her pain and the bottom tier of your giant wedding cake into the toilet, she probably needed your surely shrill voice ringing in her ears, to add to her shame. 
i know what i’m not doing today. going outside.
