A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on February 11th, 2012 in blood pressure, depression, health, no salt

At this point, I can say that I’m in better physical shape than I’ve been in probably a decade. Unfortunately, that isn’t really good enough. But I’m far enough along in my personal rehab that I can see that the rest is possible, but going to require effort.

Five and a half years ago, while my wife was in the hospital waiting to deliver our twins (that makes it sound rather like a pleasant vacation or something), the older of my two brothers died. He was five years older than me, and only made it a few months older than our father was when he died. It is possible that there is something about being forty-three that my genetic material doesn’t like – although there were significant lifestyle issues for both of them.

Anyway, shortly after the twins were born, the head of the NICU sat next to me while I was holding one of them. For some reason he began quizzing me about my health. Then he took my pulse. Then he took out his Rx pad and wrote a phone number on it. “Put the baby down, and go call my cardiologist. Tell him I said you need to go in today.”

The appointment I made was actually a few days later. But I was immediately put on blood pressure and cholesterol medicine. I was slightly more than three hundred pounds at the time. I had horrible headaches on a regular basis – so bad that I couldn’t keep my eyes open – and I was out of breath when I climbed the stairs to our second floor. My resting blood pressure was 154/97.

I was also depressed. A separate occasion found me sitting in a psychiatrist’s office where he shook his head as he scribbled on his Rx pad. “Why didn’t you come here a few years ago?” he asked. Well, I was too depressed to do that, I suppose.

So I’ve been making some changes. I started exercising – walking every day and now adding push-ups and sit-ups to the mix. I take medication for blood pressure, cholesterol, and depression. I make sure I take good care of myself. I gave up red meat (mostly) and started putting more fresh veggies and fruit in my diet. I cut back on salt…

I’m now down to 255 and my resting BP (without meds) is 148/94 (at least it’s going the right way). I had a great medication called Diovan HCT that pulled my BP all the way down to 122/81, but a change in insurance coverage boosted the cost from $10 a month to $171…so I’m not taking that anymore (who was it that was afraid of the GOVERNMENT telling our doctors what to prescribe, and why aren’t the afraid of BCBS doing the same thing?). I can run a half-mile without getting too winded (I can catch my breath fairly quickly) and the stairs are barely worth noticing now.

Of all the things I’ve done, the hardest has been cutting back on salt. I’ve never been someone who reads labels, so it was shocking to see how much salt is added to everything. I never thought I had a salty-tooth until I started cutting it out of my diet. Then I started counting calories and realized what didn’t have added salt probably had added sugar.

One of the major issues in cutting salt, and sugar, has been finding bread that isn’t loaded with both. I’m trying to keep my daily intake of salt below 600 mg, and each slice of Wonder Bread (as an example) contains 130 mg of sodium (approximately). A slice of Wonder Bread is also about 58 calories, so a regular sandwich would contain 260 mg of sodium and 116 calories. That’s before anything actually goes between the slices of bread.

So I started making my own bread – technically a sourdough since the starter is recycled endlessly. It has no salt added to it and no added sugar. Despite what you’ll find in most recipes, there is no need to add these ingredients (or extra yeast – something I am truly puzzled to find in a sourdough recipe). It tends to be a bit dense and it takes a long time to rise, but it tastes great.

If you want to cut your salt and sugar, and don’t want to give up bread, I’ll post my basic recipe separately.

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