Parts Department

I am a physical therapist. It's my job to understand mechanism of injury. I'm supposed to have a grasp on the biology of ligaments and tendons, muscles, bones and joints, and to apply the appropriate treatment following injury to bring about a return of function and reduction of pain. Unless of course it's my own dysfunction and my own pain--in which case it turned out on Thursday of last week I was totally useless.

Of course when you get to be my age, pain doesn't necessarily have to have a precipitating trauma. The warranty on various parts goes void at odd times and for no apparent reason. One part or another simply hurts. Thursday, while simply walking across a parking lot the parts-failure du jour was my left ankle.

It was mild and barely noticeable at first. I finished my business at the Jacksonville Center and went to visit a friend for lunch. I managed to walk up his front steps, but an hour later could barely make it down them to get in the car. Driving home--and especially operating the clutch with the left foot--was sheer agony. This was the second worst pain I've ever experienced in my life.

I was certain that I had a severe ankle sprain, and telephoned Ann in Floyd to pick up a pair of crutches. I called the clinic to cancel my patients for Friday knowing I wouldn't be able to drive the car or tolerate a full day on my feet.

But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had caused this degree of pain. I have no pre-existing ankle injuries. There was absolutely no swelling. There was pain with both inversion and eversion of the ankle, where most sprain injuries will produce one or the other but not both. And the pain was getting progressively worse over a period of four hours.

Here's the strange part: the pain suddenly went away.

Next day, I still wasn't confident enough to drive or to risk being on my feet all day. But for the most part, my symptoms disappeared. This couldn't possibly have been a severe ankle sprain but I had thought.

Diagnostic conclusion: gouty arthritis

Or maybe not. We had dinner with a physician friend last night. He has had three episodes of gout himself and seen many patients with it. He says it doesn't just go away abruptly in the way I described. So what was it?

Whatever it was, once was enough. Been there, done that. And I've got a five dollar pair of crutches from Angels in the Attic to prove it. image from treasury.state.tn.us/ --heck: the little guy even has my initials on his shirt! But I have more hair!

Whole Foods, Whole Planet

"An Enviga website says that the drink's blend of green tea and caffeine burns more calories than it contains and can help drinkers maintain an ideal weight. According to a Nestle study, young people who drank three of the 12-ounce drinks a day burned an average of 106 calories." link

I thought it was a joke when I heard about this new soft drink on NPR tonight. Targeted at overweight teenagers, it burns calories, they say. But wait a minute: you have to drink 36 ounces of the stuff, including the artificial sweeteners, caffeine and theophylline plus lord only knows what else--to burn a hundred calories?

This especially striking example of "nutritionism" loomed large after recently reading Michael Pollan's piece, Unhappy Meals in the NY Times. How have we become so far removed from WHOLE FOODS and so wrapped up in their reductionist dissection into "nutrients" about which we still understand so little? Whatever our modern western notions are about eating, they're not working. They're killing us and the planet.

"The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science," points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist, "is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle."

In the end, Pollan's simple but well-reasoned advice (in the long NYT article--clip and save it): Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Consider avoiding anything that wasn't around when your great grand-parents were having their meals. Eat as few industrialized, refined food-like substances as possible. And don't listen to food labels, or most food or diet fads.

Why are we in America the most "well-fed" while our diet is killing us? I highly recommend you read this piece, and like me, send it to your kids. They need to hear it again: eat your vegetables! Our health future--and the world's--may depend on it.