Having a ball in the fight against high cholesterol
By Steve Brody
Updated Feb 19, 2007 15:52
Even though I was sensible and had it checked a couple of weeks before the pre-Lenten deep-fried depravity, the reading came in: “borderline high.”
Now, the nurse practitioner said that with a low-fat diet and exercise, I should be all right. There would be no need -- yet -- to start popping Lipitor, Crestor or any other medicine that sounds like the name of a comic book villain.
But I took the news hard. It was as if the word “borderline” dropped out, and all I heard was “high” and “cholesterol.” High cholesterol runs deep in the Brody family genes. As my grandfather said, “Our livers just pour it out.” Until now, I was different. My cholesterol levels were healthy, and I felt immune to the family curse and all that goes with it.
Such as atherosclerosis. Add it to the osises you don’t want. Its Greek roots -- athero and sclerosis -- mean “gruel” or “paste” and “hardening.” It means, in plain English, that fat builds up in your arteries, cutting off blood and thus oxygen to your heart or brain, and you suffer a heart attack or stroke.
Cholesterol, the bad kind, known as LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, is in the artery-clogging mix of gruel or paste (Plaque, doctors call it.) Another cholesterol, the good kind, known as HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, helps to rid the bad kind from the body.
My father had extremely high bad cholesterol for most of his life and heart disease. He had his first heart attack when he was 40; his second when he was 53, and it killed him.
So, for a day or two, I contemplated my own mortality, the specter of early death. It wasn’t some impenetrable shadow, some scythe-wielding skeleton laying a bony finger on me. It was a soft, waxy glob of goo, like something out of “Ghostbusters.”
***
Diet and exercise. That is how, without medication or divine intervention, you lower the bad cholesterol and raise the good.
The diet half of this mantra I can deal with. It will mean controlling certain borderline gluttonous tendencies. It will mean eating less bacon -- to which we ought to devote a holiday -- but I think I can do it. (I got a dispensation for Fasnacht Day.)
But exercise? If I must. To fight death, you have to be physically fit. So, I bought a medicine ball. It sounded good. Like a big fasnacht. Plus, it had the word “medicine” in it. I had forgotten they still existed until I saw them in some fitness magazines and on “Seinfeld.” (Jerry was right. They do look as if they belong in a “fitness museum.”)
In my living room, heaving the boulder-sized leather ball, I saw myself as a boxer in an old photograph, sepia-toned, barrel-chested, pomaded, woolen tights yanked up under my armpits. (How did they fight with those wedgies? Must’ve made them mad.)
The telephone rang.
It was my wife, calling from work.
“You’re out of breath. What are you doing?” she asked.
“Playing with my ball.”
Silence on her end.
She doesn’t quite get my interest in the medicine ball. I don’t quite get it, either. She gives me two weeks, then the novelty will wear off, and I’ll be back to my sedentary, atherosclerotic ways.
But I’m still at it -- as of this writing, anyway -- because a rolling stone gathers no low-density lipoprotein.
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The Voices column is written by a rotating team of New Era staffers. It appears Mondays.
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