my bone density test wasn’t so great. not totally horrible, my bones aren’t going to snap like twigs any moment, nor are they going to turn to jelly so i’d have to just sprawl around like protoplasm on the floor or something.
but not so great. the bone density measurement in my spine was good, but the measurement in my femur, not good. to be normal, the reading has to be -1 or greater. mine was -1.1, which is the least amount of osteopenia you can have. osteopenia is what you get before you get osteoporosis. weak bones.
now i wish i’d been eating even more cheese, drinking even more milk. tomorrow i’m going to the doctor to see if there’s anything else i can do besides becoming crazy about getting enough calcium.
in my quest to research everything about calcium, i took the real age test. you can find it at realage.com, i believe. you answer lots of questions and then it gives you your real age vs. your biological age. it didn’t ask any questions about my bone density, though.
i then found out that i need more potassium. they recommend 3,000 mg of potassium a day. and then i found the USDA National Nutrient Database, which lists pages and pages of food that have whichever vitamin or mineral or nutrient you’re looking for. 25 pages of potassium, for example.
i’d have to eat about five bananas a day in order to have 3,000 mg. of potassium. that’s a lot of bananas. but on the other hand, that would solve the problem of ripening bananas. they’re not ripe, they’re not ripe, then the next day suddenly, POOF, they’re all ripe and they get too ripe. so if i had to eat five in a day, that would take care of the ever-present overripe banana problem in our house.
i also need more vitamin E. kevin took the test tonight and he needs more lycopene. TOMATOES, that’s the answer there, preferably cooked ones because cooking them makes them have more lycopene.
perhaps i should become a nutritionist, because all this nutrition stuff is pretty interesting to me.
i started reading barack obama’s “the audacity of hope” earlier this evening and i will NOT stay up all night reading it, because my doctor appointment is fairly ridiculously early in the morning.
it’s a very good book. i’m fairly sure he’ll be president. kevin bought us obama t-shirts, which i’m quite excited about.
i have to go eat a banana – or five – right now.
ok then,
grace on wednesday night.