Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Is "chemobrain" real? Yes, yes it is. And the research? Well, there's the thing. But first, what is chemobrain? Cancer patients who have had chemotherapy often report mental fog, inability to think, difficulty focusing and generally increased forgetfulness - cognitive impairment. For a long time, doctors treated patients' claims about chemobrain as a temporary thing, brought on by the stress of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Now, there is growing recognition that the toxicity of chemo drugs may actually cause damage to the brain (of course survivors have known all along we were not crazy). And I'm only now blogging about this? I've taken you into the infusion room , and showed my baldness , but there is a reason I have not blogged about chemobrain before in these past 5 years - I continued to work. I could not have said to my colleagues "Hold on, my brain's not working right. Give me a moment or two or twelve."  Brain on chemo

See what I did there? I just pulled you in with a sensational headline.    Sensationalism. It seems all too common now. A friend was talking about the dramatic headline some time ago regarding batteries that could cause a house fire. So instead of immediately saying in the headline, that  "Batteries improperly stored could cause a house fire",  the news lead with the headline that something everybody has in their home could cause a fire. It's the way news works now and even unfortunately in medical reporting. It's called sensationalism. I am sure that if you did not know that before, the ongoing political coverage has helped you to understand that  term very well. For example, Women's Health Magazine ran an article "The Scary Mental Health Risks of Going Meatless" based on 2 studies and some anecdotal evidence. According to the Health Letter from the Center for Science in the Public Health (April 2016), one study couldn't be foun

  Information Overload Oh My God! On my list of 50 things to do this year , I decided I would experiment with social media (#13). Oh My God!! There is a flood of tweets coming my way and I have no clue what to do with them! I am only following about 40 people, but I know some who are following thousands, THOUSANDS! What tools and how many assistants do they have? 9 things I've learnt about Twitter People follow you based on what you list as interests in your profile and you may or may not follow them back. It is used as a marketing and promotions tool by many people (for example, authors promote their books, giveaways, and good reviews on Amazon or Goodreads) . It is a great way for people to communicate with fans and any others who share their interests. Rick Riordan who tweets @camphalfblood has great interaction with his fans. You can choose to have Twitter promote specific tweets for you. You get some useful analytics, for example my top tweet showed up more t

My Cholesterol Numbers When last I blogged about diet I was very optimistic about impacting my vitiligo with my new diet, and talked about it here .  However, on a recent trip to the doctor, I've realized I have to defer working on my vitiligo yet again for a bit. Last year, my cholesterol was high, so I made some dietary changes (reduced the red meat, cut the amount of eggs, etc.). My cholesterol dropped 33 points. For the last 3 months I've made even more changes. I've cut dairy, bread and pasta and I've had maybe 3 servings of cheese and red meat in as many months, increased fish and lean quality meat; gave up added sugar so dessert was fresh or dried fruit. However, despite all of this a recent retest showed my cholesterol has dropped only 2 more points and is still high. I don't often vent and rant, but I feel defeated. I even gave up chocolate, 85% (cocoa) dark chocolate!  It took a lot out of me to be disciplined about this, so after I got the results,