tiedyedave (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiedyedave) wrote2007-07-26 05:17 am
tiedyedave) wrote2007-07-26 05:17 am
it's a hindrance to my health if i'm a stranger to myself
It's about time to post again.
There has been a lot going on in my life that I would like to talk about, but I can't field it here, since it touches on issues I don't talk about over insecure channels.
No longer entirely vegan, but only in a small way: taking fish oil gelcaps (a double whammy) for omega-3 needs, specifically DHA and EPA. I know of a Swiss company that makes this type of supplement in vegan form (using an algal oil derivative), but the supplements are less than half as strong and about six times more expensive, even before shipping.
I've been very self-centered for the past few months. I use this term almost neutrally: it's just a fact that I've had a lot of internal analysis to do, a lot of identity questions to consider. However, this has had some undesirable side effects. I've noticed myself taking up more space in conversations, being me-me-me, which is an almost necessary consequence of the way I change myself and take on new identities, but it's not something I want to make a habit of. I want to be a listener again, though it seems so very odd to say that in a livejournal.
I have begun to overcome an idea that's burdened me for essentially my entire life: that for whatever reason, I am not actually living my life yet, just setting things up so I can live it later. I blame the relentless progression of school for part of this: middle school prepared me for high school, which prepared me for college (I went to an aggressively college-prep high school), and then college was preparing me for a job or for graduate school, and now graduate school is preparing me to be a professor or researcher of some kind, which will have its own stages of preparation (tenure track or seniority). By the time I'm 'ready' in this sense, I will have readied myself to retire and then to die.
Saw Ratatouille, and it was delightful. Highly recommended.
There has been a lot going on in my life that I would like to talk about, but I can't field it here, since it touches on issues I don't talk about over insecure channels.
No longer entirely vegan, but only in a small way: taking fish oil gelcaps (a double whammy) for omega-3 needs, specifically DHA and EPA. I know of a Swiss company that makes this type of supplement in vegan form (using an algal oil derivative), but the supplements are less than half as strong and about six times more expensive, even before shipping.
I've been very self-centered for the past few months. I use this term almost neutrally: it's just a fact that I've had a lot of internal analysis to do, a lot of identity questions to consider. However, this has had some undesirable side effects. I've noticed myself taking up more space in conversations, being me-me-me, which is an almost necessary consequence of the way I change myself and take on new identities, but it's not something I want to make a habit of. I want to be a listener again, though it seems so very odd to say that in a livejournal.
I have begun to overcome an idea that's burdened me for essentially my entire life: that for whatever reason, I am not actually living my life yet, just setting things up so I can live it later. I blame the relentless progression of school for part of this: middle school prepared me for high school, which prepared me for college (I went to an aggressively college-prep high school), and then college was preparing me for a job or for graduate school, and now graduate school is preparing me to be a professor or researcher of some kind, which will have its own stages of preparation (tenure track or seniority). By the time I'm 'ready' in this sense, I will have readied myself to retire and then to die.
Saw Ratatouille, and it was delightful. Highly recommended.
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Bah.
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Five Tons of Flax!
In the Principia Discordia, "Five tons of flax" is given as the answer to the question, "Is there an essential meaning behind POEE?" (This is a reference to a Zen story about "Three pounds of flax.") Discordians have since taken "Five tons of flax" as an absurd slogan or as a universal answer to philosophical questions. "Flaxscript" is also depicted as a genuine form of scrip, serving to avoid the use of government-issued currency.
Re: Five Tons of Flax!
A monk asked Dongshan Shouchu, "What is Buddha?" Dongshan said, "Three pounds of flax".
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There are three problems:
1) It's difficult to find ways to use flax seeds in food on a daily basis, so one turns to flax oil pretty quickly. I'm aware of their efficacy as an egg substitute in baking, but I don't bake very often.
2) Flax oil can be used instead, but one would again have to put it in food, because every single genius who's selling flax oil supplements is selling them in gelatin capsules. Fucking brilliant. I know it's an oil, so gelatin is the default approach, but there must be other ways to go about it.
And the third is the most important:
3) Flax only contains alpha lineoleic acid (ALA). This is technically an omega-3 fatty acid, but it is not what the body needs; DHA and EPA are the correct substances. The human body can convert ALA to DHA and EPA, but the conversion rate is pretty dismal, like 5-10%, to get from ALA to either one or from each to the other. Additionally, there is a resource shared for the conversion steps for omega-6 fatty acids as well, so an excess of those in the diet can reduce omega-3 conversion. And it gets worse: apparently when the body is ill or under stress, omega-3 conversion drops substantially.
So the verdict: one needs at least 10x the DHA/EPA need in ALA, which is a lot of flax oil a day. I was actually doing this for a while, putting about a tablespoon of flax oil in oatmeal. It worked out all right, but the taste is a little odd, and one gets tired of it quickly. Furthermore, I wasn't convinced that it would actually do any good, due to the factors that could affect the conversion rate.
So I just gave up and went with fish oil caps instead. DHA/EPA deficiency seems an important enough health issue that I don't want to chance it.
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http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/3/640S
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I tell you what, failing out of grad school makes it much easier to stop waiting for my life to start.
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I do mean that seriously; if I just drop out of my own accord, it's going to bother me for a long time, maybe for the rest of my life. But if it happens due to circumstances even slightly outside my control, it relieves me of that burden.
At this point I think I really just have to go all-in and finish. I have a good project with lots of potential. The real difficulty is what the hell I'm going to do afterwards.
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