Huh?

Conversation overheard from the family room:

Just put the bomb down and run!
Jump over the top of that thing.
Hey - I can drive a car.
Can I do my boomerang?
I have no idea how the controls work.
How did you get into the bat cave?
Later she goes crazy and just wants to be friends with the tape recorder.
I can buy health from the vending machine.
Can't believe I'm taking things out of the toilet....
For you, I'm afraid it will always be puke-y.
So you don't think I should have Princess Leah buns?

I suspect this is all related to a video game, but I don't think I want to know for sure......

Image found here.

Of Sunscreen, Sunhats, UVs and SPFs

I wanted to give y'all an update on my quest for sunscreens and other aids to protect me from UVA and UVB rays.  (BTW, I don't profit in any way by reviewing these products and have not had any contact with their manufacturers).

I, like most others dealing with autoimmune disease, experience significant nasty effects when I spend time directly in the sun. My earliest symptoms were related to increased fatigue, dizziness, nausea, and generalized skin redness. Last sumer, however, my cranky skin refined it's response to minimal amounts of sunshine to include hive-like lesions covering my arms, neck, and shins. Lovely. You can read more about autoimmune skin issues here, and here.

If you are a Sjoggie, or are dealing with any autoimmune disease, take note: Most of us need to take serious precautions to protect ourselves from the effects of UVA and UVB's. Which isn't to say that an AI diagnosis is a life sentence to cower inside the house for the rest of our lives - it just means that we need to be diligent in using effective methods to protect us when we get out there and enjoy the great outdoors.

My plan of attack is twofold: First, to find, and actually wear, clothing that blocks both UVA and UVB rays. I have a variety of hats that I've attempted to use over the past few years, but they don't fit well, are difficult to travel with, get soiled easily, and make my head sweat. I recently found one which may have promise:

 It's made by Outdoor Research and I found it at REI. I like it because it comes in a variety of sizes, so I could choose one that really fits, plus it has a neat little adjustment thingie to further refine the fit. The cap portion of the hat is very lightweight and has a sweat band on the perimeter, is washable, and crushable. So far it has been very lightweight and cool, yet has a wide brim which provides great coverage. The SPF factor for this hat is an impressive 50. Unfortunately, it also has a significant dork factor. Ah, well. So do I, even without a hat.

I'm still experimenting with various styles of clothing and fabrics that provide protection without being uncomfortably warm and outrageously expensive. Our weather here has been cool and wet, so I haven't had the opportunity to really give them a test run. I'll keep you posted.

Second plan of attack: sunscreens.

Why not just grab any sunscreen off the grocery store shelves and slap it on, you say? You can read more about concerns about a common ingredient found in most sunscreens - oxybenzone - here.

I've been looking into various sunscreens that advertise as being "chemical free". It appears that these products do not contain oxybenzone, but use titanium dioxide or zinc oxide, minerals that reflects light away from the skin. While this sounds like an ideal solution, it translates a little differently when applied to the skin. These minerals are white. Opaque white. Think lifeguards at the beach slathered with a thick white layer over their noses.

I have only tried one of these products, made by Burt's Bees. It's active ingredient is titanium dioxide and has a SPF of 30. The product is thick and is tinted with a peach color to tone down the white effect. It takes some serious rubbing to apply it evenly and completely, and when it has been applied, leaves my skin feeling somewhat sticky. The label advises caution since it may stain clothing, which may be an issue for me. The reason I chose this particular product for my first test-run was it's price tag: about $15. Other products with similar ingredients can be found with prices as high as $55. Yikes. I may need to continue my search and loosen my purse strings a bit.

I am not giving up, however. I am determined to apply sunscreen on exposed skin every day in order to avoid last year's disastrous skin debacle, especially since two of these nasty lesions have already appeared on my forearms after our trip to sunny Nevada.

All righty, then. Hat? Check. Sunscreen? Um, sorta check.

Bring on the sun.

It's All Ree's Fault

Curse you, Ree Drummond!

I love Ree's blog, The Pioneer Woman. She recently appeared on one of those morning talk shows looking all cute and trim and perky while whipping up a batch of irresistible gooey buttery cinnamon rolls. Ree, Ree.....I'll betcha just about anything that you don't eat too many of those delectable calorie bombs. You can find her cinnamon roll recipe on the link to her blog, above.

I could not get the image of those cinnamon rolls out of my mind all day, and although luckily I don't have the ingredients to make them, unluckily I did have the ingredients to make one of my other favorite goodies - oatmeal/walnut/white chocolate cookie bars.

I'm rationalizing the fact that they are now baking in my oven by reminding myself of a previous post about the healthy benefits of walnuts. And, come to think of it, oatmeal is a healthy thing too. And they have an egg! Protein! And, and......oh, just give it up, Julia. You want 'em. You made 'em. You'll eat 'em. Yum.

I'll share my very own secret recipe, but be forewarned: You need to begin making these cookie bars a year in advance.

I'm not kidding.

So here's the recipe:

One year before making these cookies:
Take one 750 ml bottle of the cheapest vodka you can find in the liquor store.
Open the bottle, and insert four vanilla bean pods.
Re-cap the bottle and let sit undisturbed in your pantry for one year.

This makes the best vanilla extract that I've ever used, and it only gets better as it ages. Of course you can use this vanilla extract in any recipe that calls for vanilla, not just these yummy cookie bars.  Speaking of which, here's the rest of the recipe:

Julia's Walnut Oatmeal and White Chocolate Cookie Bars

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9X13" pan with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together:

• 3/4 cup room-temperature butter 
• 1 and 1/2 cups dark brown sugar

When smooth, add:

• one large egg

In a small separate bowl, combine:

• 3 TBS water
• 1 TBS home made vanilla
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

Pour liquid mixture into the sugar/shortening/egg mixture and beat until smooth. Add:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 cups uncooked old fashioned oats
• 1 cup (or more) coarsely chopped walnuts
• 1 cup (or more) white chocolate baking chips 

Dough will be stiff. Spread in prepared 9X13" pan, and bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes. Cookie bars will be chewy. If you prefer a crispier cookie bar, spread batter in a 11X15" jelly roll pan, and reduce baking time to 20 minutes. Bake until lightly browned. Cool and cut into squares. Devour. 

Note that my explosive gas detector is safely plugged in and functioning. Woo hoo! Julia avoids disaster for another day.

Boys Will Be Boys

My favorite napping spot in the house faces a window, in which the primary view is of my neighbor's house across the street. Sue and Dave have lived here for a number of years and have two sons - great kids. Good kids. Kids with a great deal of energy and intelligence and friends that congregate at their home. Kids that remind me a great deal of what my son and daughters were like at that age.

Although we always have considered their family as good friends and socialize with them quite a bit, I didn't have have the opportunity to really appreciate the boys until I was forced to spend time in my napping spot, staring grumpily out the window. I gradually came to realize that there was some seriously interesting shenanigans happening right across our street once the school bus stopped on our block at the end of the school day.

But alas, the days of having local emergency services on speed dial as I incredulously watched their antics are rapidly coming to a close. The school bus doesn't stop on our block because these guys have grown up and have their own cars. They pull up the driveway and lope into the house with backpacks slung over their shoulders. Friends show up in their cars, and they all head off to who knows where......sigh.

I miss seeing them hanging precariously from the highest branch of their willow tree, running around on the roof of the house shooting each other with Nerf guns, making a water slide out of a tarp, a hose, and some tent spikes, ooo and my favorite: the time they stuffed a kid in a metal trash can, slapped a bike helmet on his head (good thinking, guys) and sent him and the can rolling and rattling down the driveway. I was really lucky that their favorite spot was in the driveway, right smack dab in the middle of my line of sight. It was there that they and their buddies re-enacted fight scenes from their favorite movies, and videotaped all their school projects. "OK, now this time I get to be the reporter and you guys be the mummy embalmers.."

It all made me nostalgic for the days when my kids were that age - so confidently risking life and limb every day after school. 

Now they're growing up into unscathed, smart, attractive, well-behaved young adults.

The nerve.

Image found here.

Nutty Goodness

*Disclaimer: Disregard if you have nut allergies. Nuts have limited nutritional value if they cause you to stop breathing.*


The results of an interesting study regarding the potential benefit for diabetics in eating walnuts every day may prove instructive for everyone - including non-diabetics:
"We know nuts are rich in fiber, and have a variety of micronutrients, minerals, B vitamins, magnesium, and a number of properties that make them a likely candidate for benefits in people with cardiovascular risk," David L. Katz, MD, a coauthor on the study and director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, told Medscape Public Health & Prevention...."We asked if this could prove a vascular benefit in an at-risk population — adults with type 2 diabetes," Dr. Katz explained........."What it tells us is how the blood vessels are feeling in light of everything that is flowing by. You can measure everything you can think of that is flowing by, such as LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, or stress hormones, or you can simply ask the blood vessels, in essence: 'Given everything that is floating by, how are you feeling today?' And the blood vessels in this study said, 'we feel better after we've been fed walnuts daily.'"

You can read the study results here. I wish my blood vessels could talk.....

The Word of the Day

.......is dither.

Definition by Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Pronunciation: \ˈdi-thər\ 

Function: intransitive verb

Inflected Form(s): dith·ered; dith·er·ing \-th(ə-)riŋ\

Etymology: Middle English didderen

Date: 15th century

1 : shiver, tremble

2 : to act nervously or indecisively : vacillate

Ever have one of those dither-y days? When a choice as simple as which breakfast cereal to plop into your bowl leaves you pondering in the pantry for twenty minutes?

I woke up this morning even unable to choose what to wear. Which is silly because I don't have any plans for the day. Hm. The grey hooded sweatshirt with the coffee stains? Or the yellow hooded sweatshirt with paint on the sleeve? Let's see now.......yoga pants or yoga pants? Or sweat pants?

If BICJ - my bratty inner child Julia - were awake, and shhhh.....let's not go there......she wouldn't have any problems with indecisiveness. She'd throw on just about anything and blow right by the organic foods waiting patiently in my pantry. She'd be in the car and heading towards IHOP and the all you can eat pancake special before she combed her hair for the day.

Maybe what I need is a good strong cup of coffee. Sure. That'll get me going this morning. Let's see now.....hm.....do I want a dark french roast? Or maybe a mellow breakfast blend? John has so many different types of coffee here.....Wait, maybe tea....well, hot chocolate sounds good too....

Image by weetabixx

Sjogren's Syndrome and Hyposmia

Judging by the comments on my last post about anosmia and my natural gas escapade, I think I should clarify things a bit further on the status of my non-functioning sniffer.

Although my ability to detect odors is seriously compromised, I can occasionally smell things completely randomly. What a gift it is to stick my nose in a bouquet of flowers and smell their fragrance. The senses of smell and taste are closely related : sometimes I can smell and taste a food on first exposure - like lifting the lid of a pot, or opening the door of an oven, or taking that first bite of moist carrot cake. With tangy cream cheese frosting. And crunchy pecans and sweet golden raisins.

*blink* OK. I'm back.

Perhaps the first bite, or two or three, will be abundantly flavorful. But once the initial rush to my senses has hit, it diminishes, so that by bite four or five, the characteristics of the food's scent and taste fade away. What I can count on, however, is the ability of my tongue to detect those basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It's the nuances of flavor and scent that are lacking.

I can never count on being able to smell something, as my recent experience with natural gas demonstrated so vividly. Sometimes I have wonderful dreams in which I'm able to smell and taste with exceptional acuity. Sigh.

Technically, the fact that I have a limited ability to smell stuff means that my problem should be more accurately described as hyposmia. Anosmia means the ability is completely gone, and hyperosmia describes the abnormally increased ability to smell.

There can be a zillion things that impact one's ability to smell, and to understand those things, we probably should back up a bit and take a look at how our sense of smell works. Here is an illustration of a cross-section of our nasal passages. At the top of the passage, the olfactory bulb detects molecules that carry scent, and transmits this information as an electrical charge to the cranial nerve 1, and into specific areas of the brain: the hippocampus, amygdala, olfactory cortex, and hypothalamus.

Images found here. 

Any condition that alters the olfactory system to detect scent carrying molecules will change the system's effectiveness. Here's a list of just a few of the conditions that can snuff out your sniffer capabilities: 

Endocrine

Adrenal cortical insufficiency

Cushing's syndrome

Diabetes mellitus

Hypothyroidism

Kallman's syndrome

Primary amenorrhea

Pseudohypoparathyroidism

Turner's syndrome

Local diseases and mechanical obstruction of the airways

Adenoid hypertrophy

Allergic rhinitis

Atrophic rhinitis (Ozena)

Bronchial asthma

Deformity secondary to trauma

Exposure to toxic chemicals

Leprosy

Malignant disease of paranasal sinuses with extension into the nasal cavities

Nasal polyposis

Sinusitis

Sjogren's syndrome

Tumors of the nasopharynx with extension into the nasal cavities

Vasomotor rhinitis

Neurologic

Alzheimer's disease

Epilepsy

Head trauma

Huntington's chorea

Intracranial surgery

Multiple sclerosis

Parkinson's disease

Nutritional

Chronic renal failure

Cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) deficiency

Korsakoff's psychosis

Pychiatric

Depression

Olfactory reference syndrome

Schizophrenia

Tumors

Intracranial:

Aneurysms of the anterior communicating bifurcation

Frontal lobe glioma

Hydrocephalus

Internal carotid aneurysms extending over the pituitary fossa

Neuroblastoma

Suprasellar meningioma

Sphenoidal ridge meningioma

Other meningiomas

Intranasal:

Adenocarcinoma

Inverted papilloma

Melanoma

Squamous cell carcinoma

Viral and infectious

Acute viral hepatitis

Herpes simplex

Influenza-like infections

Source: From Doty RL, Kimmelman CP. Smell and taste and their disorders. In: Asbury AK, McKhann GM, McDonald WI, eds. Diseases of the nervous system. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1986;469.

My hyposmia is most likely due to Sjogren's syndrome, probably as a result of lymphocytic activity in the mucous layer of my nasal passages. 

A diagnosis of Sjogren's syndrome does NOT mean that hyposmia or anosmia is a certainty. We all know that everyone's experience with this strange disorder is different. Some medical literature classify Sjogren's related anosmia as being one of the less-encountered symptoms. I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones. 

You can read more about the olfactory bulb and the ruckus that it can cause here, here, and here.