james nunn | blog

Who knew when I started my 30-day challenge, that I’d be writing more on my blog (we’ll see how long it lasts).

So last night, I decided to go the gym. I get there, did 40 minutes on the elliptical at a pretty steady pace and felt good, did a short row on the machine (found out, I am not a rower), and then did a 10 minute cool down walk on the treadmill. I was feeling good, and decided that I should do my stretching and avoid the mess of waking up in the morning with the inability to move.

On my way home, I stop at the store and encounter a checkout guy who skipped the “polite conversation” class and unloaded on me about the troubles he is having with his car. I feign total disinterest, but this is lost as he holds my groceries hostage.

So I get home, grab a snack, and wash off the gym. Then I settle down to catch up on Doctor Who. Good episode (end of a two-parter) and then I notice my heart is racing a little. Then a lot.

So I go to our trusted home blood pressure monitor and strap in, and get my first reading (169/79 with a 94 “resting” pulse). I think to myself – through a veiled panic – that is a little high, but I had just climbed the stairs, so decided to relax some, do my breathing, and take it again (155/86/98). One down, and two up.

So I’m willing myself to relax, breathing more, and listening to the pounding in my chest. A short time later, I notice a pain in the left side of my chest and thought this is not right, so took the BP again. 168/96/96 – so two up, and one down and at least I have a matching pair. So then I start to freak out – as one does, and lay on the ground and really try to relax.

As I listened to the house reverberatng with the beating of my drum, breathing in, breathing out, I pressed the BP button again: 171/93/126. So at this point, I’m really freaking out. I head downstairs, get changed, called a friend to see if they were awake to drive me to hospital (they were snoozing as they should), I jumped in the car and drove to the hospital. Much of the trip is a blur – for reasons that I shan’t go into for concern of law enforcement reading this, but as I’m driving my left arm goes numb and I try to get to the hospital quicker (again, no details).

So there I was at Centennial Hospital in a wheelchair being driven to a room to get checked out, and then the pounding starts to slow down, the pain starts to dissipate, and I realize that this was more mental than physical. (Side note, Doctor Who is pretty good, but even that episode that I was watching was not THAT good that it could have triggered this reaction.)

So about two hours later, after a few tests, a pep talk by the ER doctor, and a realization that I can get a little overwhelmed at times, I got back in my car and drove home.  The ER doctor reminds me that the body can deal with a lot, but sometimes the mind can overwhelm the body into thinking something is happening when it is not (you know the speech about “fight or flight”). Minds a fantastic creations, but mine sometimes terrorizes me.

I didn’t watch the remaining part of the Doctor Who episode, but I did calm down (thank you little white pill) and headed of to sleep. And sleep I did.

What he said

Over the past few months, I’ve been taking some medications to deal with a couple of issues, and overall I have to say that this treatment has been a success. Last week I paid a visit to my doctor and found that my blood pressure was higher than it should be (under the medication). The result was an increase in the medication which appears to be working now, but it got me thinking: why would it increase if I have been doing most of the things I should to control it?

Apart from the obvious (more exercise), there is another element that I started to research that could contribute to this increase. This is drug interactions.

I found a great site (drugs.com) that lists many of the more commonly available drugs on the market, and each listing provides you with major, moderate or minor interactions with other drugs (including supplements).

I was surprised to find that the tummy fixers (like Rolaids, Tums, etc.) have a moderate interaction with my BP medication. These fixers are based on calcium product, and the BP medication is a calcium blocker, so by taking these fixers, I am making it more difficult for my BP to work. My multivitamin is also a moderate interaction, as it includes calcium (it’s important to note that it is the amount of extra calcium that may cause the problem, not calcium itself).

So I went through all my supplements and cold/flu/allergy pills to find out which ones work with no interaction or minor interaction, and I was actually relieved that my daily allergy pill is fine, as is the DayQuil that I took a few weeks ago when I thought I was coming down with a cold.

It’s worth checking out if you are on any medications, or just want to see what interactions exist with the common supplements that you may take.

URL is here: http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html

It seems that it’s not just the North Texas region that is seeing an increase HIV infections among mid-life men (35-49). According to this article, the increase could be explained by a number of reasons:

• having survived the HIV pandemic, urban gay men in mid-life may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of decimated social networks
• the methamphetamine epidemic that has swept through urban gay communities also contributes to high levels of new HIV infections
• gay men in mid-life are at the center of a ‘perfect storm,’ in which multiple problems converge to create a very high-risk environment

I couldn’t agree more with this comment from the article, “We urgently need to create programs that directly address the real reasons that gay men engage in high-risk behavior.” It’s not always just about remembering those we’ve lost to HIV/AIDS, but sometimes the fight has to intervene and prevent more losses.

Source: Gay News Blog

Recently I read an online article that discussed the practice of barebacking (generally an unsafe sex practice) and the increase that appears to be occuring with this activity.

“What we are seeing now is about 60 percent of the population is practicing safe sex most of the time, and about 40 percent of the population are barebacking or not practicing safe sex,” Zians said.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Well I thought I might do a weekend recap.

Friday night I did the usual coffee gathering with Frisco Pride members, and was suprised to see six new members in attendance (the largest we’ve had in a long time). Later we did a salad at Cotton Patch Cafe and then headed home to watch Boys Briefs 2, which was hosted by Danny Roberts. It was really enjoyable. Sometimes with these short films, you can get some depressing movies that overwhelm you. This series of shorts, didn’t have any of those.

Saturday, as I was loading the dishwasher, I pulled a muscle in my back. Talk about a great way to mess up weekend plans. I tried to recover, but it gradually got worse, so I ended up laying down and napping. The worst part of this was the reality that I was not going to be able to head to a Frisco Pride cocktail event that evening. I’d been looking forward to it for a while, and here I was moving about like an 110-year old. I did manage to cook some pretty tasty fried rice for dinner, and then proceeded to watch the two remaining films I had from NetFlix: The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and FAQS.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye was really good, and actually quite educational. I was suprised to learn some of the history of evangelical television, and the fact that Jim and Tammy Baker were responsible for starting “The 700 Club”, “Trinity Broadcasting Network” and “PTL.” I was also suprised at the involvement of Jerry Falwell into the destruction of both Jim and Tammy’s lives, not to mention the apparent deceit that he manipulated to push Jim and Tammy out of PTL.

FAQS was less educational, however provided a great deal of eye candy … if you are into that kind of thing. Adam Larson (from MTV’s Road Rules) appears as a gay basher, who discovers his sexuality. The lead character, Joe Lia (India) is a little unbelievable, but has some cute naked scenes which make up for the mediocre acting. The ultra-hottie of the show is Spencer (played by Lance Lee Davis) … talk about a nice chest

Most of Sunday, I watched mind-numbing television while trying to “click” my back into place. Sunday evening we had Bobby, Ian and Kean over for dinner, and enjoyed cooking some kebabs on the new grill (the old one needed a part replaced that didn’t seem to be availble *sigh*). Chris was very happy with the new acquisition.

We finished our weekend by watching Comedy Central’s roast of William Shatner. It was okay.

Earlier this week while looking at other people’s blogs, I found this link (courtesy of danah @ apophenia). It provides an insight to how different drugs affect our behaviours and our abilities to function, through the use of animated mice. It really is a very cool tool if you want to understand what actually happens to the brain when drugs are used.

Here is another cool tool created for the folks that use OS X. (SIGH)

WikiMania Conference 2006 kicked off yesterday, and here is a good recap of Day 1.

Rolling Stone’s most recent cover story is titled “The Worst President in History?” Guess who this might be about? (Source: Chris)

It seems that someone out there is trying to address the ongoing health of our younger generation … finally! The people over at Life for Kids have developed a system that measures the level of physical activity that kids undertake each day, and then transfers that “activity time” to television time. It’s called the “Physical Activity Rewards System” and it doesn’t appear to be available yet. One wonders how successful it could be. (Thanks to Paul for posting this.)