SOME CREAM IN MY CHOLESTEROL

By: Steve Lewis

"Steve, your cholesterol level is still too high," the good Dr. G muttered from behind the lab report in front of his face. "Now I have to insist that you go on medication."

My inner teenager slumped in abject failure. Despite more than ten years of unsatisfactory blood panels I had somehow managed to successfully dodge the doctor's prescription pad and the heart-rending notion of taking a pill every day for the rest of my life.

At each annual physical, generally held every two to four years, I had cholesterol readings in the 250 plus neighborhood (a place one doesn't live too long). Nevertheless, at each appointment I had solemnly promised to eat better and exercise more. I knew I could reduce the cholesterol levels through diet and exercise. I reminded the good doctor that I actually did it once back in ‘98. Further, as a father and health educator, I had explained to the increasingly skeptical physician, I had an obligation to my children and my students to be a role model of healthy living. Not a passive pill popper.

Unfortunately, as my thickening file full of red-flagged lipids profiles demonstrated beyond any shadow of an artery clogging doubt, I hadn't been good to my word.

The doctor was already writing on his prescription pad when I realized that I had used up all my excuses, including the classic, the dog ate my tofu. "And please fill it," he intoned, glancing ominously over his glasses as he extended the slip of paper in my direction. Before he actually let go of the paper to my grasping thumb and forefinger, he proffered a cautionary tale about a former patient "generally in good health, like you," eyebrows raised, "and with similarly high cholesterol readings..." who had been putting off the medication question for years.

Of course you know where this is going ... my LDL brother apparently folded and slipped the small note into his breast pocket, but never actually made it to the pharmacy. Then some unspecified time later the unlucky or unwise or cavalier sap dropped dead, face down in his lobster bisque.

I'm sure the doctor assumed I was standing there shuddering with intimations of my own mortality. Or at the very least I might have been grateful that the doctor had grabbed the invasive menace-and my attention-before I clogged all my arteries and fell to the pavement like a lump of chopped liver.

Not I. I may be the walking embodiment of everything that is wrong with this culture. I was menu planning. Despite the fact that I'm New Age enough to recognize a good clump of tofu when I see it-and I even sometimes teach courses in health philosophy-I am also a red-blooded American and with a pound or two of sugar I can turn any number of lemons into lemonade.

So, there I was pushing through the heavy medical office door, barely able to contain my glee, much less my urge to grab a light pole and dance. After wrestling for years to find the mystical 200 cholesterol level through various half-hearted commitments to jogging, biking, carrot sticks, sprouts, rice cakes, herbal potions and more turkey sandwiches (with mustard) than the USDA recommends for small countries, I was hungry for the magic pill. Freed from the psycho-sclerotic notion that natural remedies are best and that personal responsibility is the hallmark of good health, my unrequited love of mayonnaise, bacon, pastrami, egg salad, prime rib, deep fried anything and mucus producing dairy of all kinds had me drooling.

Loaded for bear fat-or fat of any kind-I headed straight to the local drug store to double check about potential side-effects that the doctor might not have mentioned (or known about). And once satisfied that I was not trading food for other worldly pleasures, I popped a tablet into my mouth and headed straight to McDonald's dreaming of a scrumptious Big Mac, super-sized fries and a large Coke. And a big Ahhhh. And a cosmic Ohhhh.

As you might imagine, the drive to the Golden Arches was fueled by powerful primitive urges-and their drooling counterparts. And much like the predictable period of sexual promiscuity normally associated with recently divorced men and women, I left McDonalds and went on to live the dream of the insatiable doughnut glutton, the chip ‘n' dip hedonist, the all-you-can-eat fast food slut. With this daily chemical additive supposedly cleaning out my arteries like a can of Liquid Plumber, I quickly became the self-satisfied, waddling embodiment of everything the Federal Reserve asks of all loyal Americans: Consume! Consume! Consume!

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a great few weeks of complete nutritional debauchery. You name it and I ate it-and loved every bone-sucking, sugar-swilling minute of it. Yet I'd be also lying if I didn't tell you that within a couple of days of my non-stop grease diet I grew as gassy as the family dog-and a few days later I started to feel too loggy to climb up on my bike for a ride into town-and then, insult added to dietary injury, three weeks after I began my binge I began to feel too achy and tired to get off the couch when I heard my oldest grandsons, Clay and Devin, race through the front door looking for their Chief to shoot some hoops. I held out my arms and invited them on to the couch with me. And they turned and looked for their grandmother who had cookies for them.

Thus, it came to pass a mere three weeks after I inhaled that first Big Mac with such unrepentant gusto, I had my first super-sized revelation about the links between post-fifty nutrition and maintaining healthy relationships with one's grandchildren: my lack of energy could be linked directly to the excessive sugars, salts and carbohydrates in each bite of my super-sized Big Mac Meal ... and the scrumptious chalupas from Taco Bell ... and the extra crispy chicken from the Colonel ... and the three Sabrett's hot dogs from a street vendor in Manhattan ... and the resulting lack of exercise ... and the subsequent lack of sleep ... and the extremely windy and sulfuric consequences of what our parents' generation would have politely called irregularity.

As a younger man, I guess I could get away with poor dietary health habits and still lead an active life. But there right in front of me was a stark fact of life: At fifty-six, much less sixty-six or seventy-six, you can't be stuffing your pie hole with all sorts of empty, gooey, pointless calories and expect to be an alert, involved spouse, parent, or grandparent. Not any more. Not any more.

So, give me that big V-8 slap on the forehead ... there really is a lesson in all this: After age fifty, it's no longer just about being healthy for the sake of being healthy (which is not a bad idea, but it seldom works). It's about being healthy enough to enjoy your life, your pleasures, your grandchildren-to be a real presence in their lives, not just be a snoring overstuffed pillow on the couch-or God forbid, a sigh-inducing chore or burden.

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