Mr. Brooks

I was just about to write this and then decided to read through my feeds before posting, and read my dear friend Shelley's blog and her post about a dear person in her life who departed earth too soon.  It sort of reinforces to me how we all have those people throughout our lives that we may not see every day, or even have seen for many years, but who were SO important in defining the people we are today.

Mr. Brooks was my first band director when I started playing the saxophone in band in 6th grade.  He was a wonderful teacher - approachable and easy-going enough for a shy kid like me to get along with.  A wealth of musical wisdom that he just wanted to share with the middle school students who came through his band.  Always a smile when you saw him in the hallway.

Mr. Brooks taught me how to play the saxophone.  I'm sure that giving music lessons was part of his teaching contract, but I also have to think that his contact didn't cover all the lesson hours he put in with kids, or the help he gave them finding instruments and sometimes even fixing them.  I remember a day in 7th grade when we had chair placement and I finished 7th chair out of 8 that day, and was ready to quit band.  I went to my lesson later that week and Mr. Brooks said that I just needed to hang in there and practice, that I had the ability it just hadn't all gotten together yet.  Thankfully I stuck with it (my mom had some say in that too, thankfully :)

I have been playing the saxophone now for 25 years.  I've been involved in many things, groups, organizations, etc. over those years, but my saxophone has given me more opportunities and allowed me to meet more people and be a part of more important things than anything else in my life.  High school band, college marching band (all the great trips I got to take! and many of my best friends came from there), concert band, and pep band, Rochester Civic Theater pit orchestra, Kasson Community Band, 37th Street Gold Jazz Band, Notochords Jazz Band, music groups at church, playing for weddings, the salsa band and world band gigs I got to be a part of.  And probably more stuff that I haven't thought of.  So many things and people I probably wouldn't have been a part of had it not been for Mr. Brooks and his desire to share the joy of playing music with kids.

I have tried to make a point of telling people from my life that they were important to me, that they made a difference.  I've been blessed with so many.  And sometimes I have actually made the effort to do it.  But not enough.  I hope Mr. Brooks knew how much of a difference he made in my life and the lives of so many other kids.  It's too late for me to tell him that now.  Don't wait "until later" to tell those people how important they were to you.  It probably means more to them than anything you could say or do.

Diet - Year in Review

I made the conscious decision last March 14th (2011) to change my diet.  My goals were to

1. lose 40 lbs
2. bring my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers down to "normal" levels (within the accepted medical range).  

I had a physical exam right around this time, so I had both baseline weight, cholesterol and triglyceride numbers done at that time.  They were:

1. Weight = 223 lbs
2. Total Cholesterol = 270
3. Triglycerides = 185
4. HDL = 23
5. LDL = 188

For one year I followed what I'd consider a combination of the Atkins and South Beach diets (which as I've mentioned are extremely similar in the long-term, they vary slightly at the beginning).  The main changes I made to my diet were to remove nearly all sugar & processed carbohydrates, increase fiber consumption, and increase fat consumption across the board (meaning all type so fat except for trans fat which I attempted to eliminate).  The amount of protein I consumed remained roughly the same.  I also, independent of this, made a conscious effort to supplement Vitamin D, as I've read a lot recently about how those of us in northern climates and who work in inside jobs are constantly deficient.

It is important/interesting to note that I did not add a lick of exercise to my routine over the past year.  I am not at all advocating that people should not exercise, and I plan on doing so starting this summer now that school is finishing up and I will have more time.  Mainly I wanted to note it because it makes the following that much more impressive and interesting.

I had another physical exam on March 19, 2012, and got all my test results back a few days after that:

1. Weight = 188 lbs
2. Total Cholesterol = 204 (medically optimal range is < 200)
3. Triglycerides = 129 (medically optimal range is < 150)
4. HDL = 46 (medically optimal range is > 40)
5. LDL = 132 (medically optimal range is < 130)

So, in one year, with the only real change to my diet being elimination of sugar and refined carbohydrates and an increase in fat consumption, I was within 5 pounds of my goal of losing 40 (I actually got to 183 at one point so I was there), and my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers all drastically improved across the board, to the point where they are all within the normal ranges, or just a few points above.

Hmmm.

When the doctor saw my weight loss and numbers, he asked what I had done, and I told him what I'd changed.  I could tell he was skeptical and really wanted to tell me what I was doing was not healthy (as just about every doctor and many other people have pushed back when I tell them I'm doing this) but he also couldn't argue with the numbers.  He then suggested that I read about statin drugs (cholesterol-reducing drugs), which he said are being found to have preventative benefits, and decide if I wanted to start taking them.  I was a bit surprised by this, given that I'm a relatively young healthy person who now has their numbers in the proper range, and show no symptoms.  But I decided to be open-minded and read about them anyway (more on that later) and I did appreciate that he was advising me to make informed decisions.

I've since done some more reading on carbohydrates and statin drugs as well.  In particular, I'm halfway through a book called "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taube, which I would recommend EVERYONE read.  It isn't a diet book or a book about what to eat and not eat exactly, but it does give a complete history of the research and the politics involved in food, diets, cholesterol, fat, and carbs, and how we got to where we are today.  I will warn you that you may get increasingly angry at how much politics determines what is "truth" in the medical field, the FDA, the USDA, and many of the organizations like the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society (vs. true research organizations that are science-motivated and not politics-motivated).

The truth is that we really DON'T know everything about all of this, and studies involving diet, fat, carbs, cholesterol, etc. are extremely difficult to do accurately, and take many years of work to achieve (whereas things like drug trials can actually be done with control groups and double-blinds to produce much more accurate and meaningful results).

What we can say is that we've tried 40+ years of low-fat diets, with promises like conquering all heart disease and obesity by the year 2000, and we see can see where we are as a country (obesity rates are now around 50%).  And for me personally, I've tried it both ways, and it's very obvious that one way has worked far better than the other.  Certainly I can't know if what I've changed may have other long-term effects, but I have to believe that I'm better off now than I was in March 2011.

More to come...I'm excited to finish the book.