Cold Season

Kern's sick, I'm sick, apparently Blogger is sick. Sorry about yesterday's debacle of an entry. I'll try to redeem myself today.

Last night I was working on our den (yes, that's right, it's still not finished)and intended to finish up around 10. Well, I was kind of on a roll and I wanted to finish all of the paint in the tray before I called it quits for the night. So, I didn't get done until 11:30. Then, I had to quickly blog. I figured it'd be ok, since I had already written half of my entry in Word and could just finish the other half. I openened up Blogger, copied in the text and then tried to finish writing. I got finished at 11:55, which I'm prety sure was with Rob's help (he would periodically look at the clock and say 'uh oh. you'd better hurry up!'). So, I hit the button to publish, but it wouldn't go. There was something wrong with the way the text copied and pasted. There were little html text nibblets inserted all over the place. Blogger wouldn't let me publish or save the text!! Now, it's 11:57. In a panic, I completed deleted all of the text, wrote that little cop-out blurb, and published at 11:59 by my clock. On the post, the time stamp says 11:27! I consider working on it for another half hour and then reposting, but didn't think that'd be within the rules of NaBloPoMo. Besides, I was tired and I'm sick (as I mentioned).

So, without further ado, here's the essay that I meant to post yesterday, more or less:

{Warning: lots of opinion ahead. little factual information to follow}

The essay was meant to support my argument about the statement that Kern made in his blog yesterday. Kern says that typically, he is adverse to doctors and medicine in general. He has adopted the philosophy that "Under most conditions, the human body is an incredible self-righting machine". To this end, Kern has chosen to allow his body to right itself in most circumstances and to interfere with medicine as little as possible.

I would say that I also have adopted this philosophy but I think I take the "under most conditions" a little more to heart than most. Sadly, I hear of stories of people who use the body's natural homeostatic process to defend what I would consider irresponsible behaviour. For example, a prominent medical speaker gave a talk at Convocation Hall last year, touting the phenomenon that is the human physiology and in fact, indicating the marvel of homeostasis. His example, was in weight gain. A person could consume in one week 5x the calories that he would normally consume and there would be a relatively insignificant weight gain as a result. Conversely, a person could consume 0.2x the calories that he would normally consume in one week and could still survive and function and the weight change would be again, relatively insignificant. A colleauge of mine used this point to argue that the fact that he's 40 lbs overweight isn't really an effect of his eating habits but in fact, it was his body's 'natural weight' and that his body was maintaining it's proper homeostatic state. He felt that he should continue with his high fat, high calorie diet, that it wouldn't have an effect on his weight. He also used this argument to claim that dieting never works - and the reason is homeostasis.

This man truly believed that if he controlled his caloric intake for a year, that he would not maintain a healthy weight. This kind of logic, is to me like being a fatalist. Would you stand in the middle of a road and wait for cars to come by and then argue if you were hit, that it must have been fated? That it was outside of your control? Since, if you were fated to live, no cars would have hit you? Too me, the logic is the same.

Your body is an amazing piece of equipment. It balances or "self-rights" when it needs to and completely adpats when that is required also. It will let you feed it toxins in large amounts and the only effect is a hangover. You can function well in temperatures from 15 degrees to 35 degrees. But it can't function properly if it's not given the rest and food and water that it needs.

I think that's all for now.

Talk to you soon,

B.