Setting health goals

This is going to meander a bit, but there is a reason for that. When people think about health, they tend to focus on one issue to the elimination of all others. That is often the most destructive path to any kind of progress.

There are reasons for that as well, but for now what I want to emphasize is that just as it is important to be listening for what you should do and what will help you for other goals, that is true for your health as well. Part of that is listening to your body and knowing that you are an individual with your own needs.

We are going to go along the body from top to bottom, but first I am going to mention something not really health related and higher up: my face. It no longer has that dewy freshness of my youth, now that I am in my 50s. (Age will play a role in a lot of this.)

I have been meaning to do facials more often, like weekly, but I kept forgetting or not getting around to it. Part of that was having to dig out my tube of face mask. I recently moved it next to the stuff I use daily, and that helps me remember. So, if you need to make updates to your routine, little things that make remembering and executing easier are to be seized.

Now for the feet.

Speaking of aging, now that I am older I have to wear supportive shoes. I don't think I actually had plantar fasciitis when I was younger and wearing very cheap shoes, but having worn supportive shoes now I can see that they would have helped me then, when I was working eight hour shifts in retail and fast food.

It is not helpful that these shoes are so much more expensive, but being able to walk without being in terrible pain is very helpful. Depending on the severity, inserts may be enough. Either way, being able to move is huge, and support is one way of taking care of your feet.

That reminds us that one thing to look for is pain. Pain is a signal. It is telling you something. New pain, or increased pain, means something has changed, and should be investigated.

We may also visually notice changes. For example, feet can be prone to fungus. You may feel an itch, but you may also notice discoloration of the toenails. There are remedies for those. 

If you have a tendency to get ingrown toenails, and the best solution seems to be regular pedicures that are also a source of relaxation for you, great! There can be good answers once you start looking. 

Moving up slightly, one amusing story from author Beverly Cleary was that her gym teacher told her she had weak ankles, and assigned her to spend class picking up marbles with her toes. I don't know if that is the best method, but later on Cleary was able to ice skate, which indicates that her ankles got stronger.

Are there areas of your body where you know you are weak? Strengthening is possible. Often it is not even a matter of needing to increase muscle mass but of helping the muscles coordinate together better. This is doable.

Moving on up, pain in your legs could mean many things. If you are increasing activity, you could end up with shin splints; those will hurt. This may again be an issue where you need to change shoes, but healing may also require rest. If the injury comes from increased exercise, that will be frustrating, but remember that there are many types of exercise. Maybe that type will work after some recovery and with improved shoes or methods. 

Giving yourself a chance requires understanding yourself.

What about knee pain? If it's arthritis, I have two pieces of advice for you. Depending on the scope, it may eventually require joint replacement, which is amazing for how it takes the pain away. However, it will not restore flexibility. Holding yourself stiffly to try and avoid the pain may lose something that cannot be restored prior to the resurrection. 

I will also add, though, that strengthening your core may help relieve pressure from your knees, or your shoulders, depending on what other parts of your body you use to help with getting up and down. Strength can be increased, and that can help with many things.

As we move past the lower limbs and into the organs, we must now refer to things that are gross. Maturity and an interest in health must be our guide.

So, are you drinking enough water? It is helpful for your kidneys, and your body operations in general. One guide may be how yellow your urine is. It is darker in the mornings after sleep, but otherwise it should be getting lighter throughout the day as you drink. Then, if it has no yellow at all, you may be drinking too much, which has its own problems.

Drinking water does not come naturally to everyone, so this is an area where little things may help. Would it help if you kept cold water in the fridge? What about adding lemon wedges? Should you get a water filter? It does not have to require buying expensive (wasteful) bottled waters with flavors and tested pH or carbonation, but there may be small things that you can do that will make things easier.

Even grosser now: are you pooping regularly and easily?

If not, you may need to eat a more balanced diet. I don't say "fiber" specifically, because it is generally better to eat a variety of foods than to try and compensate with supplements.

If you should be menstruating, are you? How regular is it? Is it accompanied by a great deal of pain?

Pain again, but one issue for women is that their medical issues are often not taken seriously or researched as much. If one practitioner tells you that the debilitating pain is normal, another might be able to help, or at least try harder to help.

Also, even if you are at the age where slowing down is normal, there may be effects from the hormonal changes that are worth discussing with your doctor, 

Don't be squeamish about your health.

How is your digestion? Increasing heartburn could be a reaction to stress, or a sign to lay off certain foods (at least at night), but it could also be a hiatal hernia. There may also be some connection to low thyroid functions.

For your pancreas, do you know how your blood sugar is doing? That can be measured easily. How is your cholesterol? 

As we move to your lungs, how is your lung capacity. Do you get short of breath? When does it happen? 

This can be a training issue. For example if you can walk for miles on flat space, but a slight incline or flight of stairs leaves you panting, you could look at some interval training to increase your ability with raised elevation. 

You may also notice that there are certain times when emotions seize you that increase your breathing rate, maybe not going into a full blown panic attack or even technically hyperventilation, but that you notice. That is also something that can be addressed.

Do remember that COVID has been causing lung damage, and you will not be able to heal that via will power. For all of the areas where you should consult a doctor before starting a new exercise program, this may be the most important.

We have reached the heart. Probably the first thing to know here is what is your blood pressure and pulse; how is your heart doing? 

As we have gone through internal organs, we have been passing by another set of limbs. 

Obviously arthritis can affect the hands and shoulders as well, but I want to mention two other possibilities.

Watch out for repetitive stress injuries. There was a secretary at my grade school who got tennis elbow from cranking the mimeograph machine. Those don't even exist anymore, but there are plenty of other ways to hurt yourself by repeating an action, perhaps most frequently appearing as carpal tunnel syndrome.

Little things like braces may help, or paying more attention to the positions you hold, but it is worth paying attention, especially when it relates to being able to perform a job that you need.

In addition, if you frequently wake up with numbness or tingling in your hands, or your hands are cold when the rest of you is not, that may indicate Hashimoto's Disease, also connected to the thyroid.

Also near the arms and organs we have the back, frequently susceptible to pain. I once made a huge difference for my life by replacing an old mattress, but this could also be an area where core strengthening exercises will help. There may be adjustments needed. The key is to know that pain is not automatically necessary. You may have to accept it, but first see if there is a remedy.

We move on up to the head.

First off, are you taking care of your teeth? Dental health plays into your susceptibility to infection, your pain, and how others perceive you, which can be important for social and emotional health. Dental plaque may even correlate to arterial plaque. 

I hope it is has been obvious by now that this is not an exhaustive list, because that would not even be possible. This becomes even more true with the head.

If we look at just the physical pain of a headache, that could be eye strain or stress or sinus pressure or dehydration or a migraine or lack of sleep or a tumor. The type of pain and other symptoms can be a clue, but there are a lot of options. This is where being familiar with your body and paying attention to changes in your life and how you feel becomes so important.

If you are normally well-hydrated, but one day you are not, and can realize that, that makes resolving the issue easier.

Then if we look at the mind-body connection, things can become even more confusing. For example, a potassium deficiency can show up as depression or even hallucinations. Because potassium helps run the electrical processes in the body (so how your heart and brain runs), that makes sense. However, it might not be the first thing that you think of.

Therefore, having your body physically healthy is going to make sustaining your mental and emotional health easier, and vice versa, but it may not always be clear what to address first.

I maintain my belief that guidance is available if we will listen. Sometimes getting that answer will require research and doctor visits and "own efforts", but it is possible.

I wish you well.

Mighty in prayer

That's my resolution for the new year: I want to be might in prayer.

That phrase came to me, and sounded right; then I had to figure out what it meant.

I am writing about that now because I have seen many things about resolutions from other people, and it seems like a good topic to address.

This post is at least partially a backlash to a certain type of resolution that appears most frequently, but I am going to hold off on addressing that specific one for now, except to say they are resolutions based on worldly standards.

It is very easy to know what the world thinks is wrong with you. 

It is perhaps harder to trace the reasons for those pressures and how they tend to be deeply rooted in capitalism and dominator culture. There will often be ways for someone to profit off of your perceived deficiencies. Even if there is not an actual cash profit, at least if they can feel superior to you, or have you feeling distant enough from other people with similar issues that needed solidarity is disrupted. That still works out for those already in power.

I don't think it will necessarily be helpful for me to go off on capitalism (though it may be worth pointing out that something designed to extract profit from you is likely to have a high failure rate built in), so instead let me tell a story from a friend.

She was living in another city where there was a singles ward but a big gender imbalance. She and her friends prayed for more men to move into the area. Several men did, but they were gay. They kept praying more specifically for exactly what they needed, or at least what they thought they needed (more righteous straight men, with jobs), but somehow there was always something missing in the response.

What I couldn't help but think (and this was long after the fact, so not at all helpful) was that maybe they should have tried asking what they should do instead of praying for what they wanted.

Maybe you should move. Maybe there's someone that needs to be reactivated. Maybe you have personal growth that is needed before marriage would be good for you. 

Please believe me that I understand the desire to be married and the feeling that there is no one there for you. I have been there, but I have also completely missed other messages that were right there. 

Let me add that it was fine, and I still think that things have pretty much turned out well, but there was a lot that I didn't understand along the way.

There are many voices out there -- some of which seem really reasonable -- that are still wrong, at least for you.

I can't tell you what your path should be, but I can offer you my own example.

I believe the reason "mighty in prayer" came to me was because I am always feeling like there is so much to be done and my efforts are so small. In trying to understand what can be done, and what can and should be done by me, that was my direction.

It is an answer, but it's not a complete answer. What does that even mean, and how do I get there?

The first thing that I see that is lacking in my prayers is that I am often too tired to spend enough time on them or have enough clarity. When I have too many worries and thoughts buzzing around, there is a real danger of inspiration being crowded out. 

That makes the first phase of this resolution working on being better rested while also taking time to write about my thoughts, or locate missing items, or other steps to take away some of the noise.

See? Even as I am imploring you to listen more, I am working on listening myself. It takes work, but all of the small answers and guidance that comes are worth it.

If bigger and bolder answers come, that require bigger and bolder things of me... well, being better rested and organized can only help.

Two things about Enoch

Except it's really kind of just one thing.

This is not about the Biblical Enoch who had a city named after him that was united enough to be taken to Heaven. That would be great.

This is about eight people dead in a murder-suicide in a small town in Utah.

https://ksltv.com/516921/what-we-know-about-the-family-killed-in-enoch-murder-suicide/

The first thing -- and this is so Utah -- is comments made by a relative that the murderer removing the guns from the home left his wife, children, and mother-in-law vulnerable.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/utah/articles/2023-01-06/family-of-slain-utah-family-says-husband-took-guns-from-home

The theory is that both women were trained in gun safety and able to protect human life, so if they'd had their own guns they would have been able to take him out, I guess.

“This is the type of loss that will continue to occur in families, communities and this nation when protective arms are no longer accessible.”

I suspect him having the guns was a bigger problem than her not having the guns.

This is where it kind of becomes the same thing... I doubt that Tausha Haight would have been able to kill her husband nearly as easily as he was able to kill her.

This is not about women being more tender or gentle or timid, but one thing that happens in our social conditioning is that it is much easier for a man to view his wife and children as his property and his by right than it is for a woman to believe that.

It is easier to kill property than people.

One of the more enlightening Twitter accounts can be found at https://twitter.com/ask_aubry. She pulls news stories and items from forums and dating sites, but also she will frequently get text or message threads and post them, removing the names.

With horrifying frequency you will see threads where a man initiates contact with a woman, is being all friendly and supportive, and then, as soon as he deems that there is not an appropriate response, lets loose a string of abuse. 

Now, you might think that inappropriate response would be a "No." Sometimes it is, but also sometimes it is just not being available at the requested time and suggesting a later date. Sometimes it is simply not responding within the desired time frame. The scariest of those was someone adding that he knew she was not driving when she got the text, because it only takes her so many minutes to get home, even if she does have to wait for the light.

Often thrown in with all of the profane insults is something about being just like all the others. Many posts seem to demonstrate a belief that women are like video games with cheat codes; if you go through the proper steps you should be able to get one, regardless of her interests. That makes it horribly unfair when the process fails, and it justifies hate.

No, they are not all going to turn homicidal. Sometimes it's just that they won't take her needs seriously, or that all of the domestic chores are women's work (from which she never gets time off). Often it is a benevolent sexism where there is a pedestal and talk about "marrying up", but none of it is as valuable as being able to be recognized for the full person that she is.

And then, when masculinity requires that he can't lose to her, yeah, sometimes they get violent and it's not always easy to predict.

Except when you're leaving, that is when the danger is highest; that is pretty well-established. The murderer had recently received divorce papers.

Also, him taking all of the guns is a red flag, but often the only route to safety is disappearing, uprooting everything in your life. That's hard enough for one person, and with five children would be almost impossible.

What we really need is a change in thinking.

Years ago I read a book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne. She focused a lot on definitions, and the end result seemed to be that men feel women should be available to them, even if it's just a matter of smiling on command. There can be exceptions of the woman is property of some other man -- that's why if a man is being creepy to one woman and finds out she is married, he will apologize to her husband -- but overall, women should be at men's disposal.

Which can also result in being perceived as disposable.

This is not good for men either. As part of dominator culture it means that they are in competition with other men, when it would be unity and cooperation that would get us back to God.

It can be a barrier to depth in relationships, when the woman is perceived as an object instead of an equal subject.

Quite frankly, it also allows men to remain mediocre, which interferes with the purpose of this life, but it sure gets resented when they start feeling that pressure of having to be more.

So no, they don't always kill, but that happens often enough that we should think about getting over the shock and eradicating the root cause.

 

ETA: Linking to this post from DesignMom who adds some insight, and also references Kate Manne:

https://designmom.substack.com/p/he-murdered-his-whole-family-who

Gifts to help: Different Witnesses

Okay, maybe I do want one post to focus on the Spirit.

It came from something in my scripture study, in the January 1995 Ensign.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1999/01/living-a-christ-centered-life?lang=eng 

That article is lengthy, but under the (lengthy) section "Developing Faith in Christ" it mentions an elder who was praying to make sure he had a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Restoration. He was testifying of it and encouraging others to pray for their own witness, and he wondered if that weren't hypocritical. 

The elder was discouraged that after a month he had felt nothing. He kept praying, especially hoping for an answer before they taught a new family, and still had nothing as the appointment started and he began to recount the First Vision.

"As the elder reached the point in the story where the Father introduced the Son... a warm feeling began to envelop him, starting in the deep recesses of his soul. Within moments, it had filled his entire being, and he began to cry. He dropped his head in embarrassment. Why was he crying? What were these feelings? He had never felt them before. The feelings were sweet and penetrated his very being. As thoughts rushed through his mind, he realized that he knew... he looked up at the father and mother. Tears were streaming down their faces! They were feeling the same powerful influence of the Spirit that he was feeling. He looked at the children. They, too, had tears in their eyes. The Spirit had borne witness to them of the truthfulness of his words. He continued the story and finished with a humble witness that the Father and the Son had appeared to the boy Joseph...

I thought of how efficient Heavenly Father is. The father, the mother, the nine children, and the young missionary were all converted that evening. Twelve were converted that night, whereas only one would have been converted the night before."

This reminded me of my own experience praying for a witness at the Missionary Training Center. We were challenged to do that, which makes sense. Your being there should indicate that you believe, but it's not a given.

For me, I didn't remember ever not believing, so it felt weird, but I did it anyway. I remember specifically getting answers on the Atonement and on Joseph Smith, but they came during hymns a bit after the prayers, and they spoke to me on an emotional level. I felt how much I cared, and that was my confirmation that I knew it was true.

And that was the confirmation: not just that it was true, but that I knew. That was important, because it reassured me that my believing I knew was correct. I had not been fooling myself all this time, or being too casual about it.

There was another witness there where I don't completely understand why it came the way it did.

We had general authorities speak to us on Tuesday nights. There was one (I believe it was Elder Rojas), where I heard a voice tell me as he was speaking that "He knows."

That seemed odd, rather than saying that "It's true," except that I still remember it so clearly, after all these years. I remember hearing him speak in another conference, but he did not become a significant presence in my life. I nonetheless knew in that moment that his witness was sure.

I have reflected before on how the different times that Jesus healed the blind in the scriptures have different methods, and concluded that they learned different things from their healings; their blessings were individualized for them.

It is logical to me that when we feel the Spirit in different ways -- not just individuals having different experiences, but different times being unique, individual experiences -- that there may be reasons for that. 

When I got confirmation to go on a mission, I had never felt anything like that. Realistically, as against it as I had been, and given the obstacles in the way, it probably required that strong a witness. Other things have been able to be quieter and have also worked.

One point here is that there may be more to your answers than the answer itself, and it is worth reflecting on that, not just to see if there is more to extract, but because it is a special thing to receive confirmation and inspiration and moments of knowing. We should ponder those.

The other point is the reminder that we are known. We may be in a crowd, but we are still one in a crowd, and recognized and loved.

The thing I missed about the First Vision, until it was pointed out, was that the first thing said to Joseph was his name. 

You are known.