(no subject)

[the_rck]

Cordelia came home yesterday and announced that she needed fourteen individual serving bags of baby carrots and a bunch of stickers that would appeal to kindergartners. Further questioning yielded the information that the stickers were for sticker charts which is quite a different thing. Scott ended up stopping at three different stores on his way home. Target had neither stickers nor carrots in individual serving bags. Kroger had the carrots but not the stickers. I'm not sure where he ended up getting the stickers. There's a RiteAid across the street from the Kroger, but he pretty much always forgets that it exists, so he may have gone further for it.

This morning, I went to request a prescription renewal for my migraine mediation, Amerge (naratriptan). I had asked my doctor for that when I saw her in May for my annual, but the request seems to have gotten buried under other things and forgotten. The patient portal has the option of requesting refills by checking things off a list, but, for some reason, Amerge is no longer on that list, so I had to email my doctor to ask for it. I still have four tablets which will definitely get me through June and will probably get me through July, but I really don't want to wait until the last minute to ask for more. I've been taking the stuff for nine years, so I'm hoping that asking by email will be enough. I can't imagine why my doctor would need to see me again over it, but... Who knows?

I have Beyonce's Lemonade from the library right now and have watched about half of the DVD (which is apparently censored as it's titled "BEYONCE_LEMONADE Censored". I've seen scenes with pixellation, so that's part of it. I wonder if there's censored language, too). Sadly, it's not captioned, and I can't follow the lyrics. I don't think I'm willing to go to the trouble of finding lyrics online to help myself out. Also, I'm not familiar enough with this sort of music to comprehend things from that angle. I mostly listen to folk, bluegrass, and pop from the late 1970s and early 1980s. (And, for that last category, I only like the songs that I actually remember from those years. New to me stuff in the same style just doesn't appeal to me.) I mostly felt like I should take a look at this for cultural literacy purposes.

I think I'm more awake today than I was yesterday, but I'm not sure. My leg joints don't ache as much, at least.

I'm in that annoying state of having to force myself to eat when nothing looks appealing. I don't know. I forced myself to eat something for breakfast, but I didn't want to.

I'm posting my lists of foods that do and don't help me wake up/focus mentally. I don't actually expect the list to be of interest to anyone but me (and eventually, I hope, my doctor), but I want it somewhere where I won't lose it.

Food that almost always wake me up:
OJ
High protein instant oatmeal
Baked potato w/margarine and cheese
Toast w/margarine
Wendy’s double w/cheese hamburger
Twix candy bar
Snickers with almonds candy bar
Baked beans
Potato soup
Chicken skin
Celery with almond butter
Almond butter with honey
Spinach bean soup with cheese

Medications that sedate most people but leave me unable to sleep
Fiornal (sp?)
Tofranil

Foods that sometimes wake me up:
Coffee w/sugar and creamer
Soda pop with or without caffeine
Cheddar chicken sausage
Fish
Dates
Cookies
Cake
Pizza (no sauce)
Spinach bean soup
Rice with cheese
Junky snack foods like Cheetos or Combos, etc.
Milky Way candy bar
Three Musketeers candy bar

Foods that almost never wake me up:
Chicken breast w/out skin
Breaded fish fillets
Breaded chicken patties
Caffeine in general
Lunchmeat
Almonds
Cashews
Hard candy
Cheese
Protein bar
Bacon
Turkey bacon
Pancakes w/syrup (actually makes me sleepy)
Chocolate
Black tea w/stevia
Plain bread
Apples
Pineapple
Peaches
Apricots
Mandarin oranges
Vegetables in general
Hummos
Regular oatmeal/instant oatmeal

Medications that are supposed to cause wakefulness that don't for me
Provigil
Wellbutrin

Foods I can’t eat:
Eggs (can have small amounts as in baked goods. These are a migraine trigger)
Aspartame
Sucralose
Sugar alcohols
Peanuts
Walnuts
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Oregano
Basil
Peppers of any type
Most sausages
Kefir
Purple grapes and purple grape juice
Apple juice

Comments

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Cordelia's request seems so random without context. Is she volunteering at a summer camp or something?

[the_rck]

Her class is doing some sort of nutrition oriented activity with one of the kindergarten classes.

[lady-of-mists.livejournal.com]

You helped me remember to refill my prescription today. Thank you! :D

The list of foods was actually interesting to me since I'm having food aversions right now (nothing sounds good, but I've got to eat because that queasy feeling will only get worse) and some of those sounded interesting. :)

[the_rck]

I really hope that you can find something that will go down okay. ::hugs::

[ramenkuri.livejournal.com]

I'm listening to this book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, and he just mentioned some research by Bowmeister that the nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and effort-ful mental activity appears to be especially expensive in terms of glucose usage. If you are actively involved in difficult mental reasoning, or engaged in a task that requires self control, your blood sugar levels drop.

So at a physiological level, it makes total sense for candy and certain foods to improve your ability to do certain tasks. I think it may mean that you may have higher sensitivity to glucose levels, or you're operating at a pretty low glucose level, or your brain has trouble obtaining glucose from your energy stores (e.g. fat), or something. I wonder if your anxiety means that you use a lot more glucose than people without anxiety do. It would make sense physiologically to me (not a doctor, though, so not sure how much it's worth that it makes sense to me!).

Anyway, I thought it was quite fascinating.

[the_rck]

I've been told that there's some indication that epinephrine both raises blood glucose and makes that glucose less available

[the_rck]

Drat. I'm on my phone and hit the wrong thing.

Anyway, I haven't been able to find any research supporting that that my doctors would be likely to take seriously, but it would explain a lot.

[ramenkuri.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the researcher's name is Baumeister (trouble with audio books is that you can't hear how things are spelled) and this is the study referenced.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17279852

epinephrine raising blood glucose and making it less available would definitely explain a lot!