New Thing #312: Vitamin C

I used to be a big orange juice drinker. Well, not a huge orange juice drinker…but every morning with breakfast I would have a juice glass-sized glass of OJ.

My dad always did it and it seemed like a healthy thing to do, so I did it.

Then as part of my dental scare visit, I was told that orange juice was terrible for your teeth because of the sugar and acid.

Because at the time they thought there was a lot wrong with my teeth (it later turned out there wasn't…man, I think I need a new dentist), I pretty much stopped drinking orange juice cold turkey.

But every time I think I'm getting sick I think of the lack of Vitamin C in my diet because I no longer drink orange juice.

And now I think I have a solution to that problem.

My co-teacher recently introduced me to these Vitamin C supplements you see at right - they're gummies and they're shaped like little orange slices and I love them.

I can feel the health spread through my body whenever I have them.

Then this week, I got sick. Again, I decided it wasn't directly as a result of not having enough Vitamin C, but I figured it certainly wasn't helping that I wasn't having Vitamin C on a daily basis.

So I asked my wife to pick me up some because she was hitting CVS on Wednesday afternoon.

She got the chewable tablets in that first picture above.

They're not as tasty as the gummies, and I don't exactly feel that wave of healthfulness…but I don't like being sick.

And if it takes chewing these pretty ordinary tablets, well, that's what I'm going to do.

One problem I need to figure out a solution to: the tablets say I should take them with food. That's also what my Vitamin D pills say. And the Vitamin D are what I take with breakfast. So I'm not sure how to work in the Vitamin C - do I just pop both of them in at breakfast? What am I - an octogenarian?

I'm toying with the idea of leaving the Vitamin C at school and taking them at lunchtime - but of course what would I do on weekends? Dinner time seems too late in the day.

So there's some figuring left to do.

One positive - just like with the Vitamin D - I get to play my "before you know it" game.

There are 60 tablets in the Vitamin C bottle. That means I'll finish the bottle in 60 days, give or take a forget day or two.

In 60 days we'll be about a week into the new year. So before you know it, 365 New Things In 2013 will be over, we'll be past all of the holidays, and my winter break will be over and I'll be back at school.

But I bet I'll be healthy.

Because I'll have taken two straight months of Vitamin C.

New Thing #195: Odwalla Food Bar

Last week I needed to grab a lunch on the way to work. I stopped by the supermarket and picked up a pre-packaged sandwich but decided I needed something else.

I wasn't feeling like potato chips - I wanted something a little more healthy...like a granola bar.

But I didn't want to buy a big box of them.

And then I came across the Odwalla food bar stand.

As you can see in the picture, the bars were two for $3. So I got two. I probably should have tried two different ones, but I got two of the same.

And actually, I meant to get the 'super protein' one. Because, you know, I recognize the importance of protein and all.

But I got the 'superfood' one - it says original on it. I think that might have been what swayed me - I figured if I'm trying something new I should start with the 'original.'

It has 500mg of spirulina! (I don't know what that means!)

But then, when I opened it...it. was. green. Green!

(I apologize for the blurry picture, but I took multiple pictures and they all had trouble focusing. It seems even my camera had trouble accepting the color.)

My stomach turned instantly. I just wasn't expecting green snack food.

But, being 2013 (New Thing!) I pushed through it. I took a teeny bite. It wasn't bad. It kind of tasted like other types of nutrition bars I've had. So I nibbled my way through it and finished it. I just didn't look at it.

I had the second one the next day. They were good. And they held me over pretty well, which was the whole point.

There's certainly a wide selection of the Odwalla food bars, as you can see in that top picture - I wonder if they're all green. Just in case, next time I might go for one of the chocolate ones.

The chances are slim I'll nibble anything with chocolate.

New Thing #191: Taking My Daughter To The Dentist

I was dreading Tuesday a little bit this week. Probably not as much as my daughter was dreading Tuesday this week.

But, actually, the fact that she was dreading it was a big part of why I was dreading it.

Don't judge me as a parent...but she has some cavities. And Tuesday was the first of multiple appointments this summer to fill those cavities.

And, as I told you when I had to take another daughter to the doctor earlier in '365 New Things In 2013', with my wife at work I've had to take on some of the going-to-the-doctor-and-dentist parental responsibilities.

As I alluded to in the January posting, between me and my wife you have a 50-50 shot at getting a competent parent at a doctor or dentist appointment. I'm the wrong 50.

What I didn't allude to, and I'm not sure I've mentioned this yet in 190 previous posts, is that I'm somewhat squeamish. So the dentist's office is a bit of a dicier proposition than the doctor. Especially with the filling of a cavity and some drilling and all.

(I feel here I need to stop and stress to you that we don't feed my daughter sugar or send her to school with a lunchbox full of taffy. I have a feeling her dental difficulties are genetic....and I have a sinking suspicion that I'm the parent to blame [New Thing #87]. I hope she doesn't find this out when she gets older and probably is mad at me for the other things I've inevitably messed up between now and then.)

Well, I'm happy to tell you that when I wasn't using my iPhone to sneak pictures of the empty dentist chair next to ours, I was a pretty solid support for my daughter.

Parts of this experience were not as bad as I expected - I thought I'd be in the way trying to soothe my daughter, but the dentist was very appreciative of my efforts and when I had the idea of showing my daughter pictures on my phone (not of the empty dentist chair...family pictures), she didn't mind that I was shoving the phone past her to get in my daughter's sight line. (She also encouraged my daughter to pick out a toy but there was no possible way my daughter was able to play a game laying there while the dentist was working in her mouth. I was not prepared for helping my daughter with that. Also, pediatric dentistry is something else. That woman told stories and tried to distract my daughter for 97% of the time she was filling that cavity. I wonder if she's available for birthday parties.)

Other parts of the experience were pretty terrible - worse than I was ready for. For example, my daughter repeated, "Ow, ow, ow" over and over again (she was much more understandable than I think I ever was in 30-plus years of answering the dentist's questions with my mouth full of equipment, for what that's worth). I hated to hear her indicate she was in pain...and I have no idea if she was just saying "Ow" because she was truly in pain or because she was scared. But I didn't like it.

As for my squeamishness, well, it wasn't a factor. I didn't look at the nitty-gritty stuff. But I'm not that sure it was even all that nitty-gritty. At the end there were some bloody gums, but that was tolerable enough for me.

It didn't seem to be all that tolerable for my daughter though. And I'm sure I'm not the first parent to have this thought sitting with their child next to a dentist's chair...but I hope that's the most painful thing she'll ever have to go through.

New Thing #94: Vitamin D

When I broke my non-going-to-the-doctor streak a couple of years ago, it was a much healthier experience than when I ended my dentist office absence a couple of years earlier. I received a pretty much fully clean bill of health.

The one thing the doctor thought was worth mentioning was the fact that my Vitamin D levels were a little low.

(He did see fit to mention that, since it was mid-April in New England, this wasn't unusual. Vitamin D is related to getting sunlight...and that doesn't happen much between November and April in New England.)

Anyway, the doctor recommended I take some Vitamin D...so I do that now.

But that's not the New Thing.

The New Thing is that I just had to get a new bottle of Vitamin D vitamins. (Is that redundant? I don't mean it to be.) And it was right on schedule.

What do I mean by that?

Well, I like to play a little game with my vitamin bottle. The previous kind had 300 or so vitamins in it. I got it last May or so. And since I take one a day, I figured it would be around mid-March when I would need a new bottle.

See how that goes? It's like a math problem (at the beginning) and a memory test (at the end) wrapped into one.

(I play a similar game with the black garbage bags that I leave for the trash pickup. Our current pack had about 60 in it - which, depending on how many weeks we just use one and how many weeks are 2-baggers, will last us well into the summer..maybe even the fall.)

So the new bottle has just 100 vitamins in it. That means when it runs out, it will be close to my birthday.

And then I'll start a new game. Happy Birthday to Me.

New Thing #87: Whitening Pre-Brush Rinse

I'm not all that in love with my dentist's office these days. I think I'm going to have to give you a little dental history here.

It's not something I'm very proud of.

But I think in order to tell you about the pre-brush rinse that I'm going to write about I'd better give you the full picture.

There was a large period of time, spanning my college years and those shortly afterwards, where I didn't see a dentist. Those years also happened to be the years in which I drank soda like it was water.

It's not like it was totally by choice.

Well, the soda drinking was by choice. (Though, in fairness, I worked a lot of overnights, and soda at all hours helped me through that.)

But the dentist thing - I don't even know if I had coverage for a period of time. And then, when I did have coverage, I didn't want to go because I was convinced any dentist who looked at my teeth was going to yell at me for how horrible they were.

Fast forward to: I get married, and my wife gets me to see a dentist. The dentist does not yell at me - in fact - she's super-nice. I really liked this dentist. I had a cavity or two, I had a root canal or two (it's terrible when you lose count of the root canals you've had...I think I had one in my early college years...or late high school?...then again one or two recently), but then she had a baby and I had to start seeing the dentist who owned the practice.

According to all accounts, he's a good dentist. But I had such a bad experience with him one time that I wrote it all down. Here's what I wrote on February 8, 2010:

Since it's fresh in my mind, my public service to you. In case you're unsure whether or not you had a bad visit to the dentist, compare with mine, which has to rank among the all-time worst: 

1) You get there at 6pm for a regular 6-month cleaning. You leave at 8pm.  2) You sit at 3 different x-ray machines before anyone tells you why.  3) You are told you need a root canal.  4) In an effort to show you why you need a root canal, the dentist puts little plastic sticks into your gums to highlight the problematic tooth for (yet more) x-rays.  5) The dentist breaks one of the said plastic pieces inside your gum.  6) He asks, "You sure you're OK with all this?" as he digs to retrieve the piece of plastic. (My response: "Pain-wise, I'm fine." I didn't get into the inconvenience factor.)  7) The hygienist has a look like she might pass out. (I know the look, trust me.)  (Aside - I have concluded that I possibly have a super-human tolerance for dental pain.)  8) The dentist apologizes to you...repeatedly.  9) You leave the dentist's office with a prescription for amoxicillin.  10) When you show your wife the affected area, she says, "Whoa! There's a hole in your mouth!" 

All of this came to mind last week because I had another not-so-great appointment - this time with the dental hygienist. I was there for an hour-and-a-half for the regular cleaning and she was really beating around the bush. Clearly I had a problem but she didn't want to commit to telling me that I had a problem. She wanted me to come back to see the dentist (who wasn't there). She thought maybe my caps from the root canal were loose...but I think she couldn't think of any reason why this could have happened, and she was thinking, liability-wise, she didn't want to come out and say it herself. She wanted the dentist to take responsibility.

(Shortly after leaving the office, as I thought about how things could have gone so wrong, I remembered that while playing basketball in the fall I fell face-first to the gym floor. I had a fat lip, but really no other damage. Or so I thought. I now suspect I knocked some caps loose.)

Anyway. That's the history. Believe it or not, I've had some really good appointments in between the root canals. I pride myself on how well I take care of my teeth - I suspect, had I not done such a good job in the 'dark (non-dentist-seeing) years', I would have been in much worse shape when I went back to the dentist.

Except for one thing: staining.

I've stopped drinking soda, for about 5 years now, I think. But now I drink tons of coffee. And that stains the heck out of my teeth. At my last two appointments, the hygienists suggested a whitening pre-brush rinse - two separate hygienists suggested it and both raved about it. Luckily for the second hygienist, the suggestion came in the year I'm trying new things...so there it is.

The rinse is very soapy. It's too early to tell if it's working, but it's an interesting sensation - it seems to get everything all lathered up in there before the toothbrush comes into play. What's really weird is that it's very bland - other than the froth it has no effect on my mouth. It almost dulls the mouth. But then, when I use Listerine after I brush, that feels even stronger than usual after the whitening rinse.

(I do worry sometimes that when I finish flossing and pre-brush rinsing and brushing and mouthwashing in the morning that it will be time to start the process over again because it's almost bedtime. It's becoming an ordeal.)

In conclusion, it may be time for a new dentist. (That would be an interesting New Thing for the fall when I have my next 6-month appointment.) My wife and I just discovered the dentist I used to like so much has her own practice now - maybe I'll switch back to her.

Thanks for reading this one. I guess I had some stuff to get off my chest. I didn't mean for it to go on as long as one of my dental appointments.

[I need to tell you that I originally wrote this Tuesday night, before my Wednesday appointment. But I saw the new 'other' dentist in the office on Wednesday, and she was great. She didn't think the crowns had any big problems. Clean bill of dental health. Me and the dentist are cool. I didn't want to change the post, though, because I wanted you to get a picture of the angst the dentist has brought me.]

New Thing #74: No More Gym

You know how it usually goes when the new year hits: "This year I resolve to go to the gym more often." That's usually me.

And actually, in recent years I didn't necessarily need to resolve to go - I just needed to maintain my multiple times a week schedule.

We were members of the local YMCA and working out was part of my normal routine.

But last year, especially since school started in September, I just wasn't going.

So my wife and I resolved to quit the gym.

It's not the first time we've left a gym - we've been members of numerous gyms, and when we moved or found something better we've had to cancel our memberships to numerous gyms.

The Metrowest YMCA, our most recent membership, was pretty great. Especially for  a family of 5 with young kids - we had a daycare option, and my oldest took a tee-ball class a couple of falls ago.

But we just weren't using it enough.

The New Thing here is really that I've been working out at home a lot more. Along with keeping track of my weight and watching the calorie intake, I've been keeping track of my workouts. I've been trying to do push-ups and sit-ups every night, along with other, newer exercises. (Stay tuned for those. And for those skeptics out there, you're right, I haven't been doing it every night. But I've been doing pretty well.)

Those exercises, coupled with the occasional basketball game and then running once the weather gets warmer, has me feeling good about my new exercise routine.

My wife and I have talked about perhaps enrolling in another gym once the summer rolls around. We've also talked about some other New Things we could possibly do. I'm kind of excited (and maybe a little nervous) about one particular option.

I'll be sure to let you know about it when it happens.

New Thing #50: Lose It! App

I'm counting calories these days. No kidding.

As I mentioned the other day when I wrote about keeping close track of my weight - I'm not terribly worried that I'm going to become fat.

At least, very soon.

But I know there's a chance that if I keep eating the way I've eaten my whole life, my metabolism won't keep up.

So I've been doing a number of 'New Things' related to my health.

As I've mentioned, I'll roll them out periodically.

Most recently, though, I stumbled upon this app.

And now thanks to its help, I'm counting calories.

It's called 'Lose It!', and I'm sure, like '4Square' and other apps I used to use multiple times a day before I quit them, it may not last long. But it's given me some information that is bound to stick with me for a lifetime.

I've always heard the term 'empty calories', but had never really thought about what it meant. Now I have a better idea.

I've been surprised at how few calories some foods can be (like chicken) and how many others can be (like, oh, I don't know - Brownie Batter Donuts).

What I like about the app is that you enter your meals each day, and then it gives you an idea of how you're doing by week. And my wife tells me it's all about calorie intake per week, not daily.

I get a little frustrated when I can't find a comparable food to enter for what I ate (this most often happens after lunch at school), but generally I've been successful matching foods I've eaten to what's in the app's database. (Including restaurants. Much of the restaurant food I've eaten in the past three weeks or so has been on the Lose It! app, and once you find the restaurant in their choices, the whole menu is on there.)

The best thing, though, is that I can also subtract calories. There are all kinds of exercises loaded in to negate the intake. I've been taking walks, and it calculates time walked into calories burned. Snow shoveling was amazing exercise, and it was in the app. Playing the piano is in there! (As you might imagine, though, it doesn't burn all that many calories.)

I was losing weight before I downloaded the app - that generally happens from January into February since late December into January is my peak weight due to the holidays. But I'm sure counting calories has helped me avoid adding more winter pounds.

I hope to keep up keeping track into the summer, when I tend to go a little crazy on the ice cream desserts...but it's also a time I do a lot more exercising when I can run outside.

If you're looking for some motivation to count calories, too - let me know. There's also a "friend" opportunity on Lose It! I haven't used that yet, and it might take a new wrinkle to keep me invested for another 4-5 months.

New Thing #48: Weighing Myself Every Day

I'm trying to take care of myself these days. In the coming days, weeks, and months I'll feature New Things dealing with fitness, diet, and overall health.

As a starting point for all of that, though, I decided to try a little experiment in 2013, and here we are almost 50 days in and I've kept it up:

I'm keeping track of my weight every day of the year.

I'm sure there are hundreds of people who do this all the time, but it's very new for me.

Actually, the concept of paying any attention to my weight whatsoever is pretty new to me. I always had a general idea of how much I weighed, but I didn't give it much thought.

There were times I'd feel like I was putting on weight, but I kind of expected it - the holidays, the dead of winter...times when I knew I was going a little overboard with the dessert.

My hope, I guess, is that I'll catch myself before I go too overboard. I kind of have a range of weights that I want to stay within...but I'm not really going to panic if I go over. I'm not actually sure what my target weight should be.

I can already anticipate some problems here - when I'm away from home I might not have access at all to a scale...and the times I will, it might be a scale that calibrates my weight differently.

But I'll try - even if I'm weighing myself more than 300 times this year, that's a good 290+ times more than most years.

New Thing #18: Taking My Daughter To The Doctor

As mentioned previously, my wife is back to working from an office. As such, for the first time with 3 kids, I'm fair game to miss work for a child "emergency" (nothing terrible, but for lack of a better term here I'll go with emergency qualified by quotation marks).

For 4 years my wife was home to take one of the girls to the doctor at the drop of a hat if need be.

On Thursday, though, my number came up.

First of all, understand I'm not complaining. I did it, and I was happy to do it. (Well, not happy, because one of my girls is sick...but you know, I'm not whining about it. That kind of happy.) It's just that, in the dividing up of adult tasks between me and my wife, she is the better option when it comes to taking the kids to the doctor. I'll go along if need be, but when it comes to medications and medical terms and insurance and all of the things that go along with a trip to the doctor, we both know she's our better bet.

Second of all, it's not like our girls are sickly. Thank goodness, this is a rare instance where we've kind of had to drop everything to get one of our girls to the doctor. We're lucky.

OK, so on with the "New Thing". My wife called shortly before dismissal at school to tell me that day care had called to say our youngest should probably go home. She was coughing a lot. My wife thought I should take her to the doctor's too. So as soon as school was over I took our oldest, picked up the sick child, and made it in time for the appointment.

It all went smoothly. I think I kept straight all the info the doctor dumped on me. Then we went back to daycare, picked up my middle child, and got home and had our dinner.

Verdict: Ear Infection.

And life once again proves to be somewhat idiot-proof: Apparently I can handle a trip to the pediatrician's by myself.

New Thing #2: A Winter Walk

It's only new thing number 2, and I can already hear your skepticism:

"A winter walk? That's nothing new."

Maybe not for you. But it's not something I do very often...if ever.

But I did it on New Year's Day. And I didn't even intend it to be a new item in the list. But it was such a pleasant experience that it ended up becoming New Thing #2.

As you can see, the walk was kind of picturesque.

Some snow on the ground, but not enough that I couldn't walk on pavement most of the time.

It was the morning of New Year's Day, so the streets were quiet. There are no cars in this picture, and that pretty well illustrates the entirety of my walk.

I wanted to walk partly because I've been on an exercise break over the holidays and it was time to do something active, but also because it was such a nice day. Had it been a few degrees colder I'm sure it would have been a much different experience - but as it was, I actually broke a sweat on the way home.

I walked the route that I usually run, and that's what made this such a unique experience. In the spring and summer if I have a half-hour of free time I'll jog this route (or maybe half of it, stop for ice cream, and walk back) and won't think twice about it. I'll even bring my youngest in a stroller so I'm not leaving my wife with three kids back home.

But in the winter, this hardly ever happens. To be honest, the biggest reason is that usually everything is so salted and sanded that I feel like I'm destroying my shoes when I walk in the street. And I'm always afraid I'll slip on the ice if I run in the slushy, icy winter streets. But as I walked and the sun beat down Tuesday morning, I considered running.

So even though my winter walk wasn't intended to be New Thing #2, it may even result in another new thing - stay tuned to see if a winter jog ends up on the list.