Glucose

Glucose is the major source of energy for the brain, nervous system, muscles, and many other body’s processes. When glucose levels are low, decision-making, critical thinking, willpower, and self-control can be impaired. Go easy on simple carbs (especially white sugar, flour, rice, and processed foods made from them) in favor of healthier complex carbs, the preferred source. They can help you maintain your weight in an optimum range as you need smaller amounts to feel satisfied and feel full longer, as compared to foods containing simple sugars and high-fructose corn syrup). Natural food sources of glucose include whole grains, legumes, and vegetables. Examples of high-starch veggies are corn, zucchini, and squash. Low-starch veggies include tomatoes and onions, asparagus and celery, mushrooms, cauliflower, green beans, cabbage, cucumbers, and red and green peppers, etc. 

Glucose vs Fructose

Kathleen Page and colleagues at the University of Southern California, studied the effects of glucose and fructose on the hypothalamus—the appetite control center, which responds to hormones such as Leptin that tell the brain you are full (metaphorically think of leptin as the brake pedal). When study participants consumed a drink containing only glucose, blood flow and activity in the hypothalamus decreased and they reported feeling full. When the same participants were fed a fructose drink, the hypothalamus remained active and they did not report feeling full. The brain still thought the body was hungry.

(Gameau, Damon. The Sugar Book. P. 121. NY:Flatiron Books, 2015)

Proverbs

More Proverbs 

• English proverb: Don't shut the gate after the horse has bolted.
• Albanian proverb:  Mind the goats so that you will drink their milk. 
•  German proverb:  You don’t see the brain on one’s forehead.
•  Arabic proverb:  Arrogance over the arrogant is modesty. 
•  Corsican proverb:  An idle person is up to no good.

Happy Defrazzled Day

Whatever you are doing today, relaxing with loved ones actually or virtually, biological family or family-of-choice, I wish you a happy defrazzled day. I’m having one. Yes, it would be great to be with some of my favorite family members—but defrazzling means that I avoid traveling during these national holidays. We get together at other times during the year. I have chosen to fix dinner for some of my ‘family-of-choice.’ No more weeks of cooking over-the-top meals loaded with traditional foods that went to waist (pardon the pun). Just nostalgic and tasty but simpler and healthier foods. I go with Aesop’s belief: A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. Our ‘crusts’ are always pretty good . . . I hope yours are, too. Our time spent together is always pretty defrazzled . . . I hope yours is, too.

Defrazzled

It’s the day before a big celebration that is ritualized or memorialized or extolled in one fashion or another by at least some groups of people around the globe. How are you doing? What is your track record with celebration frazzle and distress? I figure ‘a rat race is for rats only,’ and although a family member sometimes called me a ‘rat’ because I didn’t meet expectations, I’m way past any angst. It was just that brain’s opinion and has little or nothing to do with mine. I asked the questions about what year-end celebrations really mean to me and how I want to observe or participate in them. I answered those questions, as well, and that has made all the difference. In ‘The world According to Mister Rogers,’ Fred Rogers handed everyone a gift when he calmly reminded children as well as adults: In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers. In fact, there is no answer until you’ve identified the question . . . In the end, living defrazzled is fabulous. It’s De-Lovely.

Defrazzle

“Is defrazzle a word?” I can hear you asking. It is now. I coined that word (at least I couldn't find it in any dictionary!)—along with defrazzled and defrazzling and defrazzlement—when I finally got the picture of how to live a healthier defrazzling Longevity Lifestyle. Defrazzle is a verb that describes the process of becoming defrazzled. Defrazzled is a noun that describes a state of being neither weary nor exhausted nor anxious nor distressed. And Defrazzling is an adjective that describes a style of living. Those three words make me laugh. When I became serious about learning to defrazzle, I bit the bullet with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote: The ancestor of every action is a thought. What were my thoughts? Basically, the critical importance of meeting—or trying to meet if not exceed—expectations, including trying to keep everyone happy. I had to de-link the all-too-predictable outcomes of expectations burnout. And an ounce of think-ahead prevention turned out to be worth 100 pounds of cure later on as I began to defrazzle step by step and bit by bit.

Frazzled, Too

In all honesty, there was a time in my life when I lived, breathed, and slept frazzled, and it didn’t always have to do with year-end events or specific celebrations. A few decades ago, several bouts of post-NewYear’s pneumonia brought me up short (or laid me out short, I should say). Those bouts definitely got my attention. You can only get out of a trap when you figure out that you’re in one—and take steps to change that. I decided enough was enough. (And avoid calling up and telling me that it is impossible to get out of the trap. If I could do it—the way I was raised—anyone can.) In a nutshell, becoming frazzled has everything to do with expectations; yours as well as those of others. It often results from running on the treadmill of life and failing to take time to analyze not only what is really important to you personally but also how you can extract the meaning of a celebration or event without getting immersed in all the merchandizing, decorating, and partying melodrama. The paradox is that celebration frazzle can occur from following ‘traditions,’ giving little if any thought to whether or not they still work for you—if ever they did.