Since the weather has been unpredictable this winter, rather than wait until Friday which is what I would've normally done in past years, I had the urge to get everything settled yesterday: took my paperwork to the Parks & Recreation office; got the dog licenses renewed and paid for at a different office in a different location; paid the Town and County taxes due for the year. It was well into early afternoon by the time I was done driving around.
I have no excuses for why I got to the gym so late today, but I was surprised at how empty the parking lot was. It's $5 Tuesday at the local cinema next door but I guess not too many popular movies this week. The gym was equally empty and I had my choice of elliptical machines. It's also very cold inside the gym and I wished I had worn my new heavyweight hoodie instead of the thinner blue kids one. Cardio sucked but I did better on pull-ups. That's a win!
Yesterday I got a chance to watch a couple of video posts provided by the Glaucoma Foundation about lifestyle changes that might help mitigate this disease. I've heard most of it before: don't sleep on your face, no prolonged head below heart positions, quit smoking if you smoke, moderate coffee okay, cardio exercise very good, weight training where you hold your breath is bad (valsalva maneuver). A few mentions of gingko biloba, bilberry extract (basically a variety of blueberry) that might be the equivalent of eating a pint of blueberries every day (that's a lot of blueberries!), and niacinamide (vitamin B3). The latter showing the most consistent results for improved Visual Field exam results and potential optic nerve preservation.
Now, I've tried B3 before and I don't remember exactly, but I think I had a mildly unpleasant reaction. I'm willing to try it again though since I have little faith that the Durysta implant has actually worked (I get my IOPs checked next month). And I'm a bit scared of the Ahmed device being installed in my eyeballs. It'll keep me from exercising for months during recovery, and I fear that I'll be able to feel this cumbersome shunt and drain inside my eye socket. I'm ridiculously sensitive to certain sensations, like my own hair poking me in the nose or mouth. How am I not going to feel this?!
Of course, by starting niacinamide today, I'm skewing any results from the Durysta implants. But if my IOPs are higher with Durysta, my doc will want to do the Ahmed shunts, and I might not get the chance to test if niacinamide might be effective. I have a bottle of 500 mg. The glaucoma presentation suggests 1500 daily, breaking it into a morning and evening dose (750 mg x 2). I added one capsule to my vitamin mix to take after my gym routine. Several hours later and my face feels a bit flushed. That was only 500 mg. Not sure how I'll feel taking a second capsule later... I'm definitely not taking a third capsule.
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| Soft-boiled egg on ramen |
I bought some organic eggs on sale over the weekend, just before prices doubled due to the massive bird flu outbreak that has caused chicken farms to cull millions of bird. I don't usually buy organic eggs but they were oddly the cheapest.
I'm shocked at how orange the yolks are. I haven't seen such deep pigmentation since I got eggs from a friend's free range garden chickens decades ago: she said the yolks were colored by the marigolds her birds liked to eat. I've gotten eggs from other friends, and none of those eggs had the same fiery orange color even though they were also "free range." They also didn't grow marigolds between their tomato plants either.
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