Living with MCL

Still believe in the benefits of vitamins and supplements? Still have trouble grasping the idea that vitamins and supplements are a well devised scheme by the pharmaceutical and supplement industries to separate you from your hard earned money?

Then maybe this article from Consumer Reports will finally convince you otherwise.

Americans ………….. spent an estimated $10 billion on them [vitamin and mineral pills] in 2008, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. But recent studies undertaken to assess their benefits have delivered a flurry of disappointing results. The supplements failed to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and premature death.

“We have yet to see well-conducted research that categorically supports the use of vitamin and mineral supplements,” says Linda Van Horn, Ph.D., a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Most studies show no benefit, or actual harm.”

While some people may need supplements at certain stages of their lives, nutritional deficiencies are uncommon in the U.S. “Almost all of us get or can get the vitamins and minerals we need from our diet,” says Paul M. Coates, Ph.D., director of the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Just more evidence supporting what I’ve been trying to tell everyone all along. Vitamins and supplements do more harm than good, and it’s what I attribute my contracting MCL to, and it’s the complete stopping of taking any vitamins or supplements that I attribute my longevity (8 years without treatment), along with high intensity exercise, and [of course] wine.

Even if you don’t believe me, at least believe Consumer Reports. They don’t have any axes to grind.

Read the entire article.

Can you imagine anything more decadent than that?

Yeah probably, but as we were eating them this afternoon at Charlie Palmer’s at Bloomingdales, accompanied by a glass of the Hartford Court Lands Edge Pinot Noir, I didn’t much care.

They were that good!

At least you can negotiate wine prices. I didn’t try negotiating menu items.

Just returned from a weekend vacation in Las Vegas to celebrate our [Edie and me] 35th wedding anniversary. WOW! 35 years, that’s longer than a lot of people I know have been alive.

Oh well, but I digress!

All in all, this weekend was one of the more pleasant and memorable ones. We stayed at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay in a very comfortable 725 square foot suite. We saw Bette Midler on Saturday night, which surprisingly [at least to me] was very enjoyable. We then ate at Bradley Ogden after the show, Aureole on Sunday night [our anniversary], and RM Seafood Monday night.

All the meals were great, as were the wines. The most memorable being the 10 course dinner we had at Aureole on our anniversary, which is the main reason I’m 7 pounds heavier today, than when I left on vacation. But the best part of the weekend was negotiating the price for a bottle of wine at RM Seafood Monday night.

As I was perusing the wine list, I noticed a 2006 Dumol, Ryan’s Vineyard, Pinot Noir. I’ve had the wine before, and it was great, but the price at RM Seafood was nearly twice the price of the same bottle at Campanile in LA.

There were a few other good bottles of wine I could have ordered instead for less money, but at that moment I was in the mood for the Dumol. I just wasn’t willing to pay the price on the list. So after already having two glasses of wine in the hotel lounge, while we watched the Steeler game, and not thinking the waiter would accept my offer anyways (the wine manager was gone for the evening), I offered him 25% less for the bottle. Without hesitation, the waiter said “sold”.

Damn! Had I’d known it was going to be that easy, I would have offered him a lot less. Oh well, it was worth it, and it was a fitting end to a great weekend.

So that experience taught me a valuable lesson. No matter the circumstances, you don’t always have to accept things the way they are, or appear to be. Very little in this world is fixed in stone, and if you want something you think may be out of reach, you shouldn’t be afraid to try to reach it anyways. You never know, as in this case, you might just be successful. And besides, the worst that can happen is the answer is no, and you’re no worse off for trying.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone for a bike ride this morning, after a relatively hard ride yesterday [but not overly hard], and a pretty fancy dinner last night, consisting of two especially good bottles of Pinot Noir (2006 Dumol Ryan’s Vineyard, and a 2005 Frédéric Mugnier, Nuit St. Georges, Clos de la Marechale), and just rested instead. But I’m a glutton for punishment I guess, and I refuse to let this feeling of malaise, I have been experiencing lately, continue. So I ventured out anyways.

I didn’t go with the club, since I got up late (remember those 2 especially good bottles of wine) plus there wasn’t a scheduled ride today, as the club was putting on a cyclocross race. Instead I went out by myself, and did my favorite ride, Turnbull Canyon.

I knew I wasn’t feeling that great, but I was able to make it up the first climb (Colima) struggling only slightly. It wasn’t until I started up the back side of Turnbull, that I realized just how badly I was feeling. After getting only a 1/3 of the way up Turnbull, a rider from the Banning Bikes group, which I passed earlier, while they were regrouping after Colima, went by me like I was standing still.

Now I realize I’m not the strongest rider around (far from it, noting I am 61 and anemic), and it may have been only a minute or two before they resumed their ride, but still it was demoralizing. Fortunately, I didn’t see anyone else behind him, so I tried picking up the pace [a little] in the hope I could at least stay ahead of everyone else, before getting to the top. I did manage to get to the top before anyone else caught me, but my time was really disappointing, and I think I paid for that little bit of extra effort on the way home.

The last 8 miles, which should have taken only about 25 minutes at most, took almost 32 minutes. I was didn’t have much left. Fortunately I can rest the remainder of the day, and hopefully after a little while, I might even feel like walking over to the park, and watch the remainder of the cyclocross races, if it’s not too late already.