Steroids Shmeroids

As I sit here writing this, with an ice pack tied onto my left shoulder with a dish towel, I realize that if I had easy access to drugs that might help stave off age and rebuild muscle & tissue, I'd be scarfing them down like delicious little doughnuts. Chocolate-covered miracle doughnuts...

I read an article a while ago in Elle Magazine about steroids in track & field, how easy it is to get on them and stay on them.

They profiled a sprinter, Kelli White, who resisted for many years until she learned that all the agents treat their sprinters like horses, deciding amongst each other who's strong/fast enough to compete in which races. Some runners won't get the chance to compete, based on an agent's decision.

A talented, successful athlete, she was desperate to make a living and compete in races she knew she could do well in. She agreed to try "supplements" from Balco. She talked about running faster and harder than she'd ever run before, and how quickly she could recover after grueling workouts.

After reading that, I better understood how someone could go down that path. If I could feel that good when training and recover twice as fast, I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing.

Especially now. I've been a distance runner most of my life (off and on) and as I get older, it takes twice as long to get back into shape and twice as long (at least) to recover from harder runs or strenuous workouts.

And during this past weekend I injured my shoulder and aggravated a very old neck/back injury. I feel about 80 years old.

The shoulder will be fine and my neck/back will be fine once I see my chiropractor, but feeling like my active days are numbered is terrifying. I feel old and like it's all downhill from here. I don't really believe that's how it'll be, but it feels like it for the moment.

If I could head down to Shopper's Drug Mart and pick up some growth hormone and whatever else might help, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I don't want to grow testicles or end up with bacne, so that stops me from going that route. I'm having enough trouble with the Portuguese Lady's Mustache.

But you have to wonder - is a small amount of HGH safe? Would just a pinch in my morning coffee stave off problems like this for many years and not cause any harm? Why don't we know the answer to that question?

Why isn't the quest for healthy longevity getting more mainstream research & attention?

What's interesting is yesterday, when the pain was pretty bad, I tried OTC muscle relaxants and Advil. Neither provided relief. Later I tried vitamin C and glucosamine and it seemed like it helped.

Vitamin C is a building block of all our connective tissue - skin, tendons, ligaments - everything. Glucosamine supposedly helps the body to rebuild cartilage. Couldn't hurt to try a truckload of that & see what happens. Lord knows the potato chips in my knees could benefit.

Maybe with the right, natural materials the body can successfully repair itself, it might just take longer than we want to wait. For now, the ice is helping my shoulder so much I don't want to take it off but I'm losing all feeling in my left arm.

Mid-Life Diet

Is it just me, or have other people upon reaching their early 40s had to eliminate foods from their diet due to intolerance, allergy or other reasons? Is this normal?

I swear, the list of what I can eat or drink gets shorter every day. It's down to meat or eggs, starch and water. And bananas. And cookies, thank god.

It all started with the headaches. My head is totally broken.

With so many years of experience, you get to know your headaches - the average low-level annoyers, the sinus-related killers, the full-on migraines and others that are unique, brought on only in certain instances.

I've discovered over the years that BHT gives me a particular, skull-crushing head cleaver. It's brought on by any food containing this preservative - a suspected cancer-causing agent, I might add.

All mass-market cereals use BHT. Your Post, Kelloggs and General Mills-type fare - all your favorites, though plain ol' Cheerios is poison-free. It was a sad day when I had to remove Golden Grahams and Honeycomb from my shopping list.

Another BHT source - Potato Buds and other brands of instant potatoes or packaged dry foods. Caint have none of 'em.

MGS is another headache. It's in almost everything that's processed - soups, chips, crackers, sauces, some stocks - anything that tastes better than it should likely has MSG in it, and a lot of restaurants are using it again, though most of them won't offer that info unsolicited. Ask.

Then there's dairy. All cow products give me horrific headaches, a particular type that also comes with big dark circles under my eyes and a bloated face. Super attractive.

Nothing makes it go away. Well, a glass of fizzing codeine dampens it a little, but it hangs on for almost 24 hours every time. Doesn't matter if it's raw, organic, homogenized, pasteurized or has live active cultures. If it comes from a cow - no dice. So far, goat cheese seems to be OK.

Next on the list, and this one really makes me sad - so sad - chocolate and cocoa. Just in the last year or so these kids started making trouble in my head. My favorite Bensdorp Cocoa and Callebaut chocolate chips [sniff]... no more. Even small amounts are too much. Tragic.

Just about any liquor aged in a barrel makes a fine headache, though good red wine usually doesn't. White wine will almost every time and some champagnes and sometimes beer. Silver tequila on the rocks seems to be OK, but no reposado, no anejo, and no mixer/sugar.

Then there's raw veggies or too much fiber in any one dish. Whoa, Betty, that is an unpleasant experience the next day. I used to love carrot and celery sticks. Now, my lower GI says NO to that. That was an uncomfortable discovery to say the least.

What does that leave me? Steak, potatoes & eggs and Don Julio Silver, the breakfast of champions.

Addicted to the Faux Knife

I think I'm addicted to plastic photoshop surgery. It all started with a passport photo...

I had to get my passport renewed, and rather than go to the trouble to shoot my own, I though it would be faster and easier to have it done at a postal store. Then I saw the photo.

Wow - it's like there are special cameras built with WideFace, BaggyEye technology. We saw similar results in photos taken on last year's cruise. We'd never looked more pasty and bloated, and that was before all those nights of good food.

There was no way I could live with such a terrible photo for the next ten years - yup - I'm totally vain. Back to the "home studio," which entails setting up the camera on a tripod in the bathroom - the only room in the house with a white door that will work for the approved background.

And the nice thing about shooting in the bathroom, aside from the ease of making pit stops at any moment, is the handy mirrors, brushes, makeup, etc. The tough part is getting the focus right, since I don't have a remote cable/control, so the solution is to use a trusty teddy bear.

Standing halfway between the camera and the backdrop, I hold the bear up where my head will be, then press the shutter down (on a timer), and then quickly stand where the teddy bear was just "standing."

It only took about 13 tries, but I got something I could use. Then I did a little post-processing to remove any unsightly blemishes. While I was at it, I realized I still had those pesky bags under my eyes. Hmm...

A few clicks later - bagless eyes. That was easy. Clear skin AND no dark circles and bags, all without surgery or injections, swelling or pain. It's all maybe a little *too* easy...

So, we went from this: to this:

And for the eye surgery, we went from this:

To this:

It's subtle, but I was very pleased with the results. So much so, that I've been doctoring other photos for practice, and now it seems I can't stop.

The problem now, though, is that when anyone compares the real thing to the photo, they're going to think I've been on a three-day bender or it's time for another trip to the plastic surgeon.

Getting Ready - Then and Now

While getting ready to pick up David at the airport yesterday, I realized my pre-date primping routine has changed somewhat.

Years ago:

• Shower
• Shave
• Tweeze brows
• Spend 30 minutes figuring out what to wear
• Comb out towel-dried hair
• Blow dry hair if being picked up - dry it in the car w/ windows down if meeting somewhere
• Apply mascara

Now:

• Shower
• Exfoliate
• Shave
• Spend 30 minutes checking/tweezing mustache growth, tweezing stray eyebrow hairs, trimming stray nose hairs, plucking unsightly grey hair
• Apply high-powered SPF
  
• Carefully apply tinted moisturizer
• Apply Burt's cover up to unsightly spots if necessary
• Spend 5 minutes figuring out what to wear
• Comb out towel-dried hair
• Apply hair-thickening serum
• Blow dry hair to maximize product effect
• Apply de-frizzy serum as necessary to minimize fly-aways
• Apply mascara
  

I can only imagine that in another 10 years I'll be back to the short list, because by that point, really, who am I kidding?

Thirteen Years

Last night I had dinner with friends I hadn't seen in ages. We all worked together thirteen years ago. A whole awkward adolescent child ago.

Funny what you can forget after thirteen years. I heard a story about attending a wedding that I don't remember - thankfully it wasn't mine. Allegedly, my ankles ended up somewhere around someone's neck on the ride home, but there's no definitive proof.

I do remember stumbling into a bar that night long after the reception, noticing that everyone turned to look at us. That's about it.

I've learned a lot since then. Like to keep pouring wine from my glass into the glass of someone sitting next to me so my ankles don't end up anywhere but above my feet.