#35 Ageing Disgracefully? – Part Two, Massage Benefits and Oxytocin Boosters

Gimme some skin – huggers and huggees; hugs, kisses and oxytocin; more massage benefits; boosting oxytocin; tend and befriend; happy babies; DIY rejuvenation; lavender lies and self-care multi-tasking; paying for it

I’m a touchy-feely sort of person who starts to wither without physical contact. We’re not all like this, I know. My dad was physically affectionate; my mother not so much. He was the hugger, she the huggee. That’s what it’s like with me and Roy, too. I’m the hugger, he’s the huggee.

boosting oxytocin
Hugger on the left, huggee on the right

Gimme Some Skin

Since hearing somewhere that human beings require at least 15 hugs a day, I’ve started to demand that many from Roy. (Why it’s 15 is anyone’s guess… and probably was.) He’s sensibly acquiescing, no doubt seeing the wisdom of me filling my quota at home, rather than at the beach, the gym, the mall or the train station.

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#34 Ageing Disgracefully? Part One

Ageing disgracefully; how old are you really, and does age matter?; vanity vs honesty; 3 ways to measure age; biological age markers; perceived age; psychological age; skin deep; Pitu will make you pretty!; reversing ageing: exercise, meditation and more; Human Growth Hormone promise; massage, the tender trap?

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”

The Beatles

How old are you, really? And does it matter? That’s three questions already, with more to follow.

As this new year dawned – where did the last one go? – and a landmark birthday* (musically speaking) approached,  I found myself thinking again about age. How significant is the number, if at all? We all know people who are old at 35, and others who still present as physically, mentally and emotionally young into what’s generally regarded as middle to old age.

Reversing ageing
At my birthday lunch last month, taken in fairly good lighting

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#33 Appendix Story

How to go from a gym class to an operating theatre in 2.5 days; not dying from Somethin’ Stupid; Stayin’ Alive in wild, wild WA; Getting Lucky – surviving childhood, plus genetic and geographic lotteries; appendix stories – what’s yours?; appendixes and other vestigial organs; hospital heroes; Happy New Year!

On the first Wednesday morning in November, I’d sailed through my Les Mills Bodypump class with a smile on my face. So, how did I end up undergoing emergency abdominal surgery that same Friday night? It goes to show – looking and feeling healthy is no guarantee that all is well inside the body.

A picture of health - who’d have suspected anything was about to go seriously wrong?
Taken at home shortly before my appendix burst – a picture of health!

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#32 Crazy about Cats? Parasites Lost and Found

Parasite free Milly, our favourite new feline;  parasite toxoplasmosis gondii and crazy cat ladies; neither a cat person nor a dog person; cat ladies and witches; the Victorian tapeworm diet; lazy and not-so-lazy bitches; parasites and the full moon

Our extended household has a feisty new kitten, now almost fully grown. This feline addition to the family glories in the name of Milly (or Bob, or Milly-Bob Thornton). Milly is a contraction of the names of granddaughters Mia and Holly.

Milly, or Milly-Bob Thornton

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#31 How Much Alcohol? The Grape Debate – Part Two

How much alcohol is acceptable? How many drinks are OK? More musings on moderate alcohol consumption – and I call out the WHO for its anti-science propaganda.

“There is no safe level of driving, but governments do not recommend that people avoid driving. Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”

Prof. David Spiegelhalter, University of Cambridge

If it’s lunchtime, it’s rosé-time – St Jean-de-Losne, France, May 2023

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#30 How Much Alcohol? The Grape Debate: Part One

How much alcohol is too much? Should we drink? I’m weighing in on the ongoing debate – both scientific and scaremongering – around alcohol and our health. 

Putting aside temporary blips like temperance movements, Puritans and Prohibition in the US (1920-33), the message has generally been that moderate intake of alcohol is not a bad thing. In fact, it was thought that, if you enjoyed it, the relaxing effect of a pre-dinner drink could be positively beneficial. And that’s the message I received growing up.

How much alcohol
This pic always cheers me up – at least one of those glasses has my name on it!

Prologue: Me, growing up with alcohol

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#29 Picking, curing and brining olives

Born to forage, with flashback to mussel-picking; curing and brining olives from our own tree; benefits of olives; how to choose the best olive oil; the great olive oil scam

I’m back! Forgive my absence – where have the past six months gone? Actually, I know full well where they’ve gone. I’ve been writing numerous health and beauty articles for my long-time employer Expat Living Publications in Singapore: leaving me no time for this blog, which is one of my favourite things to do.

A-foraging we will go

Something else I enjoy doing is foraging, whenever the opportunity arises. The thrill of picking wild fruit and veggies is just one thing I share with my late dad, Mike Maree. Having grown up on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal, he taught me to revel in finding wild berries, and obscure fruit like the one we called “martin-gulus” (a corruption of the Zulu word, whatever it is); they grow on a thorny coastal bush with fat leaves that exude a sticky white sap and tastes like nothing else in the world.

He also taught me to harvest mussels from the rocks on Clansthal beach, south of Durban, where we spent a lot of our childhood … so much so that Dale and I scattered Dad’s ashes in the waves there. He loved fishing, too, though there was seldom anything for the pot.

Harvesting mussels near eMdloti with Jeff – that’s Umhlanga in the background

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#28 Eat right while travelling: Low Carb, No Crap™ goes on holiday

Can you eat right on holiday? Sticking to my Low Carb, No Crap™ plan, or any other healthy lifestyle, may seem impossible. But I believe it can be done. Here’s how Roy and I have been trying to do it… and sometimes even succeeding.

Covid-related lockdowns and other restrictions have had different effects on different people – and brought about varying results. Some turned to so-called comfort food, obeyed the anti-science instructions to hunker down indoors, and naturally put on weight and became unhealthier.

Others – like Roy and me – did the opposite. We’d started on my Low Carb, No Crap™ eating and lifestyle plan just before the axe fell in March 2020.  Over the next 18 months, unexpectedly locked down in Western Australia, we got steadily slimmer (Roy) and healthier (both of us) than we’d been for decades.

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#27 Uric Acid Part 2: Drop Acid!

Uric acid (UA) is the new bad boy on the block… so move over, salt, sugar and cholesterol! High UA threatens the heart, the liver, the kidneys and the brain – not to mention my most favourite organ of all. So, what drives high uric acid, and what can we do to Drop Acid? 

As mentioned in my blogpost #26 Uric Acid Part 1: Gouty Tales (see here), my recent uric acid (UA) blood test came back an optimal 4.7 mg/dL. That bodes well for me living long and strong, but what about my darling husband?

Fortunately, I found out that  coffee lowers UA, and I told him so. It was the best news he’d had all year. Imagine, though, how miserably gouty he’d be if he wasn’t such a coffee-head.

Uric Acid is lowered by coffee
All sweetness and light, as long as he can have his coffee

My new UA Sure II uric acid monitor was delivered a couple of weeks ago, but at the time I started writing this blog I had not yet used it to test Roy. I was wondering how I would manage to pin him down and extract the necessary drop of blood from his craven finger.

Then came an unexpected stroke of luck! – he woke up a few mornings ago with a twinge of gout in one ankle, and immediately demanded that I test his uric acid levels. Right now! I hastened to comply: you don’t argue with a gouty husband.

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# 26 Uric Acid Part 1: Gouty Tales

Optimal uric acid levels are important, as I’ve recently discovered. Roy says, somewhat sourly*, that I love buying gadgets and machines – and I do! But the gadgets I invest in are relatively small and inexpensive, especially considering their health benefits. 

My latest acquisition is a UA Sure uric acid monitor.

All this – monitor, finger-pricking device, lancets, test strips, log book and more – for well under A$160. A modest investment in our health, right?

And here is Roy’s latest project: the house we’re building in Iluka, WA:

I rest my case.

*The sourness could be explained by the fact that I have been going on a bit about the possible dangers of too much fructose (some fruits, honey, but especially the high fructose corn syrup in ultra-processed junk food); alcohol; and purines (found in all sorts of otherwise healthy foods). So it could just be that poor Roy is afraid of being denied everything that has, so far, made life worth living.

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