Baby, It's Cold Outside

This morning we had a blast of winter. The temperature was down to 41℉. It was a big change from our 70 degree weather. My girls thought it would snow. They really want snow badly. Matter of fact, it was four years ago today that it snowed last.

Here's a picture from our snowfall on December 11, 2008. Yes, can you believe that? Snow in Louisiana.

I doubt we will get snow this week, but it sure is nice to get a taste of winter, finally. Stay warm and bundled up!

Headache Help

Do you have any headache remedies? Since my Complex Migraine episode on November 27 post, I've been getting migraines and bad headaches almost daily. I've been given Fioricet, but I don't really like taking it. Lucky for me I am not getting the neurological or stroke like symptoms or even the aura with these migraines, but I am still getting rather intense head and eye pain. It was so bad last night I went to bed at 8:00 PM.

I am not too pleased to have to take a barbiturate daily, but I don't really know of any other means to rid this. I've been going to see my chiropractor, but kind of feel it is making things worse. Since I started seeing him, if I turn my neck a certain way I hear and feel a click and that's when this intense pain appears. Maybe I'm just over analyzing this.

I stopped in Whole Foods and was recommended Butterbur. I purchased it, but haven't taken it yet. I was waiting to hear more about it. I am just doing a bit of research on it now. If you know anything about Butterbur or any other migraine treatment, please let me know. These damn things can be disabling.

Passionate about Heart Health

Have I ever told you how much I love my job and love what I do? Yes, I really do. When I was a little girl I wanted to be a teacher. When I finally got to college I realized how much teachers made and looked into other career options. That's when I decided to look into nursing.

For the first eleven or so years, I mainly worked in cardiac type units such as telemetry, CCU, ICU, and heart transplant. Within the last 8 years or so I decided I needed to scale back my working hours and not be in such high stress areas. Therefore I moved into the echo/stress lab running cardiac stress tests, helping out in the cardiology offices and my newest job as cardiac rehab nurse clinician.This is where my job comes full circle because I am clearly doing what I initially set out to do and love....educate.

Even though I am a nurse, I am the educator I always wanted to be. I spend my working days educating people about taking care of their health and hearts. We discuss diet, exercise, risk factors for heart disease, and what they can do in order to have a healthy lifestyle change.

Monday when I went to work, I had 15 patients that had heart attacks. This number is too high. I might see that many of heart attacks in a week, but in one day....I am slightly in shock by our culture. I try really hard to educate this population as to what one can do to try and reverse or change risk factors for heart disease.  The patients keep getting younger and younger.

Personally, I feel the food we eat is killing us. It is not uncommon to see a patient with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, overweight, diabetic, and a smoker. To have one or even two of these I can accept, but to have all of these is unacceptable.

People, we need to wake up and listen to our bodies! Take a better look at your food. Read the labels. What are you actually eating? How much are you eating? Are you eating to live or living to eat?

I think one of the reasons I am so passionate about writing this topic today is because I lost one of my work colleagues last night. She was in her forties and had a massive heart attack. I am just crushed that I saw her one day walking and talking and the next day she is dead. She has children and grandchildren.

My job proves to me over and over again that if you eat well, exercise, take time for yourself and minimize stress you can avoid the risk factors for heart disease and end up a statistic.

I would like to challenge everyone I know and who reads this to eat well and healthily, exercise daily if possible, do not smoke or chew tobacco, take time for yourself everyday to meditate or just have quiet time, go to the doctor to have your blood work checked, and get a baseline EKG and possibly an echocardiogram.

My personal journey with food has been a great adventure and has taught me many great lessons. I have eliminated about 98% of all processed foods. I no longer use cows milk. I have increased the amount of fruits and vegetables daily. My total cholesterol in September was 179 and the result from last week was 136. I think eliminating the processed junk is a major contributor. In addition, I have minimized the acidic producing foods and try to go with the more alkaline producing foods to eliminate inflammation.

I don't like to preach, but I tend to see a lot of repeat offenders. Stop eating the crap, eat smaller portions, quit smoking, drink water with lemon, exercise, and take your probiotics daily. Remember we have to eat to live, not live to eat.

Greek Yogurt Pancakes

My girls wanted pancakes today, but only yummy pancakes. I've been searching hi and low looking for the perfect recipe and I finally came up with one. Actually it is a variation of several recipes.

Here's my take on Greek Yogurt Pancakes:

3/4 cup Greek yogurt (plain or any flavor) = ~6 ounces
1 egg
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon almond milk (or any liquid; omit if using all purpose white flour)

Mix yogurt and egg until smooth and creamy. Add flour and baking soda and mix well. Add almond milk and stir. Pour onto hot griddle. Flip when bubbling. Remove from griddle when cooked.

This makes approximately 12 slightly larger silver dollar size pancakes or 8 moderate size pancakes.

Today we used strawberry Greek yogurt which gave it a sweet taste drizzled with pure maple syrup. To add your own twist, you could use vanilla in the batter or a sprinkling of pure cane sugar or honey. Personally, I like mine plain without syrup.

These were certainly a hit with my family. I made two batches and they were just about gone before I was finished making them. I had to scoop pancakes off their plates in order to get this picture. They were perfectly moist without being floury or cake-like.  It is always a great feeling of accomplishment when there is nothing left!

I believe this will be our new go-to pancake recipe. Next time I will certainly double it instead of having to make two batches. The great thing is that they are full of protein.

10 Year Wedding Anniversary

November 30 we celebrated ten years of marriage. That is a decade! Part of me thinks the time has gone so quickly and part of me thinks it passed appropriately. 

We have three beautiful girls to show for the past 10 years. Reflecting back, we sure have experienced a lot of life together. We have had many firsts, wonderful travels, sadly several family losses, hurricane evacuations and renovations, many highs and a few lows, and all in all a great life. 

I planned on posting pictures from our wedding with both of us, but I don't have any. So, it is just me posing. I want to give credit to the photographer, but can't think of the name. If I do, I will certainly put their name up.