Thank you for this thoughtful essay Janisse. Latley, I’ve been contemplating the idea of plastics and consumerism in general . Why do we have so much stuff? On neurologist Andrew Huberman’s podcast recently, he positioned that the only real currency in the world is our dopamine. This was a huge shift for me - I realize a lot of my consumeristic habits are actually about good feelings of dopamine hits. Simply being aware of this has changed a lot of my buying habits.
Also my tip- bamboo toothbrushes are simple and pleasant switch from plastic.
Janisse, we’re so sorry about your brother. We didn’t know that you’d lost him. Good for you getting the scan. I don’t know how long one can feel safe between glimpses inside our vascular systems. As a way to calculate it unless I can find some creditable opinion otherwise, I’d divide the cost of the scan by the number of years since your last scan, and say to yourself, is that cost too much to feel safe?
Oh, as a by the way, if anyone has any doubts, we recommend getting a CT calcium scan of your heart. That is where you start. A CT calcium scan is not usually covered by health insurance, but it should not cost more than $150-$200 out-of-pocket. If anyplace wants you to pay more than that, look someplace else. Elizabeth had a calcium scan, and she had moderate calcium build-up. She paid $200 at Brigham & Women’s hospital in Boston. If the results of the calcium scan are reduced flows and possibly moderate to severe blockages, then it’s time for an more invasive investigation. This is the best advice that our cardiologist ever gave us. This is a test that should be done before you are placed on a statin drug. We both take a statin to minimize our cholesterol build-up on our vascular walls.
Thank you for this great advice, Jeff. My brother died at a very young age (early 50s) from calcium build-up. I immediately had a scan and am all clear. How often should they be done?
I had shortness of breath walking up the twenty-eight stairs leading to the second floor of our building. Previously, I could run up and down the stairs several times, and I noticed nothing. I was seeing my PCP’s assistant for a routine check-up, and I mentioned the shortness of breath. The nurse said that she wanted to do an EKG. When she read the printout, she said to me, “You need to get an ultra-sound and a stress test. That started the diagnostic journey that culminated with a cardiac catheterization. When the interventional cardiologist could not get his camera probe treaded from its entry point in my groin artery up into and through the arteries of my heart because he kept being blocked by plugs of plaque calcium, he retreated. I was laying behind a screen with some tranquilizer flowing through me, but I was conscious and I could hear the discussion among the staff in the treatment room. The cardiologist walked around the screen and I asked him, “Are you done this quick?” He said, “I’m done, but you’re not. You need by-pass surgery. I was blocked at the five points where I tried to tread my way into and through your heart.” On shit! Off we go into something only old people talked about.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and compliment, and I’m sorry that I highjacked your SubStack posting to rant on about our vegan lifestyle and bitch about raising animals to eat. I started my thought process about micro plastics in our world fish stock, but then spun out to telling about our personal vegan journey. When we learned how much micro plastics is buried inside the fish swimming in our oceans and our own Cedar Key shellfish, we realized that not eating those Cedar Key delicacies wasn’t the sacrifice we thought it was for usa d was a mother benefit of our vegan transition.
Elizabeth is the cook in our life, and she has strived to minimize packaging and plastics everywhere possible. She depends on beans and lentils for our primary protein source getting shipments of Mexican heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo in Napa, CA. We buy these little protein bombs on-line from the amazing entrepreneur owner who supports small Mexican farmers by encouraging them to plant, grow and harvest their family bean treasures which he then purchases and resells to us ail order gringos. Here in Western MA, we try to support the local farmers’ markets and stock our pantry with an assortment of vegan staples. We eat a lot of grains, tofu, and soy based concoctions using our crockpot for meals that can be seasoned with tasty spices. Large batches get broken down into smaller containers and frozen for quick nuked meals that require less immediate preparation.
Over the years, Elizabeth has collected hundreds of vegan recipes. Then we tried them, and if we both want a repeat performance, the highlighted recipe goes into her three-ring binder. If the house caught fire, we’d save this binder and the cat. Pretty soon she had a selection of lunch dishes with great sandwiches and main supper meals of stews and soups.
Breakfast has become oatmeal mixed with raisins, grape nuts, and frozen blueberries sweetened with maple syrup, nuked and then topped with soy or almond milk. Always a fresh grapefruit half or a sliced navel orange to replace what had been packaged OJ and whole grain raisin bread and washed down with fresh ground coffee brewed from Mexican coffee beans bought online. This morning staple meal has eliminated plastics by trading packaged things for the raw products. We get nuts and other sweets and raw foods from Nuts.com or at the bins in Whole Foods.
Like you, we’re pessimistic that our consumer culture will never forsake the ease of plastics for alternative packaging even when more people know they should rid their lives of macro and micro plastics. Everything has been engineered to capitalize on fossil fuel byproducts. Even some of the medicines that we’re told to use are engineered from fossil fuels. It is disheartening, but not completely lost yet. I love the thought of engineered plant based products that are being developed to be grown from cultured cells that mimic the structural consistency of muscle meats. We eat bean burgers a couple of times a week for lunch sandwiches.
I owe you a couple of emails that I’ve neglected to answer because I’ve been organizing my thoughts about the subjects you mentioned. My mind has trouble juggling too many things at one time. Thanks for doing what you do and writing about it so we’ll. Seeing your name appear in my inbox brings a smile into my day.
One of the realizations of getting older is one discovers how slap-happy one has been with one’s own health while growing older. Then, sadly, you discover that there are often no do-overs. But unless you deny reality, you can try. Here’s my vegan conversion tale.
In 2015, a cardiologist discovered that I had five serious blockages in my heart. The docs wanted to begin bypass surgery the next day. I wanted some time to think about having my chest cut open and my heart plumbing rerouted. So, I read - a lot. I won’t bore you with what I read and who, but I postponed the bypass surgery for a long time, and in November 2015 following our last turkey dinner, I became a full fledged vegan. My wife committed to doing the same thing. Without her commitment and partnership, life together would have been close to impossible.
This conversion meant saying goodbye to meats, all fish products including our lovely Cedar Key oysters, crabs, and mullet. Gone were eggs, butter, milk, and all dairy products including cheeses and for my cardiac survival, all cooking oils. Try cooking without any oil for awhile and see what a challenge that can become. My goal was not to add anymore cholesterol to the walls of my vascular plumbing. I had already lost a lot of heart functioning from my ingestion of animal protein, so if I wanted any chance of surviving, I needed to take some drastic measures. No more food with a face.
I postponed interventional cardiac surgery until 2021, and when your non-interventional cardiologist tells you that you’ve done everything you could do to stop the progression of your coronary artery disease, but you were not able to reverse it, and gravely says, “Jeff, I can make you comfortable with the time you have left, or we can arrange for quintuple cardiac by-pass surgery.” For me, that was an easy decision. They cracked open my chest at the Shapiro Cardiac Care Hospital at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, and twelve days later, I walked out of intensive care unit under my own power with my heart restored to normal functioning. But, I was still and I remain today a confirmed vegan. There is no point of return. I only eat plants based products.
Do I miss Stilton cheese, steak tartar, duck confit, a rare rib-eye, an omelette, a grilled cheese sandwich, fried oysters and mullet, fried clams, wonderful butter rich desert pies and cakes? Of course, I do? I’d be more of a bullshitter if I didn’t admit this. But strangely the cravings for animal protein went away in a few months much like I’m told the craving for tobacco and alcohol can if you have the will power to not use those products. It is much easier when you know that not to stop will kill you. That fact focuses your decision making quickly.
We became more interested in the welfare of animals bred to be killed and eaten. We became advocates against factory farming and farm animal welfare. We began donating money to the groups trying to reduce factory farming and supporting those groups’ efforts to stop killing animals in order to eat them. We didn’t join PETA because I dislike their incessant fund raising. They become pests even if their cause is righteous. I read recipes and pass them along to my wife. She’ll say, “Hey, didn’t you see the butter, eggs and oil in that recipe?” I have to admit that I didn’t read the recipe closely.
Is it harder socializing with friends and attending their dinner parties? Yes. Often, we’re the skunks at the dinner party. So, we host more than attending dinners as guests if we want to see our friends. Have we converted many friends into become vegans? A few. We gave away probably a hundred copies of Dr. Michael Greger’s book, HOW NOT TO DIE as our way of supporting his efforts when a friend tells us about needing to take statins.
Nothing about doing the difficult things for yourself and the environment is easy. If it was, everybody would do it without question. There isn’t any money to be made by Big Potato, but a lot of money is made by the meat, dairy, poultry and fishing industry and their lobbyists. Capitalism infects everything. It has infected the medical industry. Democracy isn’t easy to maintain, and capitalism is a product of democracy that requires oversight. But that is another subject for another day.
Thus ends today’s rant. Try a plant based diet and give your vascular system a rest.
And one last question for you: What were your symptoms when your cardiologist discovered blockages? Had you been having symptoms or was it a routine check-up?
Oh, I just realized why you wrote about that. You were looking at the recipe I posted, which happens to be full of animal products. A light just went off in my head about that. I have a number of close friends here in #souega who are vegan--in fact, my job on Monday is to make a vegan birthday dessert for one of them.
How did I never know what a great writer you are? You had me from the first line, and I avidly read every word. I definitely remember when you and Elizabeth became vegan, or at least I think I do. Thank you for this, Jeff. I have one more question for you--Do you think that being vegan has meant fewer plastics? That would have to be true for meat packaging. I'm wondering if there may be other ways. And to be honest, when I look at your diet, I think, "What in the world would I be able to eat?" I know I would adjust, but your diet looks arduous. And I'm hearing you, my friend. I need to pay more attention to what I eat.
Thank you for this thoughtful essay Janisse. Latley, I’ve been contemplating the idea of plastics and consumerism in general . Why do we have so much stuff? On neurologist Andrew Huberman’s podcast recently, he positioned that the only real currency in the world is our dopamine. This was a huge shift for me - I realize a lot of my consumeristic habits are actually about good feelings of dopamine hits. Simply being aware of this has changed a lot of my buying habits.
Also my tip- bamboo toothbrushes are simple and pleasant switch from plastic.
Janisse, we’re so sorry about your brother. We didn’t know that you’d lost him. Good for you getting the scan. I don’t know how long one can feel safe between glimpses inside our vascular systems. As a way to calculate it unless I can find some creditable opinion otherwise, I’d divide the cost of the scan by the number of years since your last scan, and say to yourself, is that cost too much to feel safe?
Oh, as a by the way, if anyone has any doubts, we recommend getting a CT calcium scan of your heart. That is where you start. A CT calcium scan is not usually covered by health insurance, but it should not cost more than $150-$200 out-of-pocket. If anyplace wants you to pay more than that, look someplace else. Elizabeth had a calcium scan, and she had moderate calcium build-up. She paid $200 at Brigham & Women’s hospital in Boston. If the results of the calcium scan are reduced flows and possibly moderate to severe blockages, then it’s time for an more invasive investigation. This is the best advice that our cardiologist ever gave us. This is a test that should be done before you are placed on a statin drug. We both take a statin to minimize our cholesterol build-up on our vascular walls.
Thank you for this great advice, Jeff. My brother died at a very young age (early 50s) from calcium build-up. I immediately had a scan and am all clear. How often should they be done?
I had shortness of breath walking up the twenty-eight stairs leading to the second floor of our building. Previously, I could run up and down the stairs several times, and I noticed nothing. I was seeing my PCP’s assistant for a routine check-up, and I mentioned the shortness of breath. The nurse said that she wanted to do an EKG. When she read the printout, she said to me, “You need to get an ultra-sound and a stress test. That started the diagnostic journey that culminated with a cardiac catheterization. When the interventional cardiologist could not get his camera probe treaded from its entry point in my groin artery up into and through the arteries of my heart because he kept being blocked by plugs of plaque calcium, he retreated. I was laying behind a screen with some tranquilizer flowing through me, but I was conscious and I could hear the discussion among the staff in the treatment room. The cardiologist walked around the screen and I asked him, “Are you done this quick?” He said, “I’m done, but you’re not. You need by-pass surgery. I was blocked at the five points where I tried to tread my way into and through your heart.” On shit! Off we go into something only old people talked about.
LOL. We are old people!!!
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and compliment, and I’m sorry that I highjacked your SubStack posting to rant on about our vegan lifestyle and bitch about raising animals to eat. I started my thought process about micro plastics in our world fish stock, but then spun out to telling about our personal vegan journey. When we learned how much micro plastics is buried inside the fish swimming in our oceans and our own Cedar Key shellfish, we realized that not eating those Cedar Key delicacies wasn’t the sacrifice we thought it was for usa d was a mother benefit of our vegan transition.
Elizabeth is the cook in our life, and she has strived to minimize packaging and plastics everywhere possible. She depends on beans and lentils for our primary protein source getting shipments of Mexican heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo in Napa, CA. We buy these little protein bombs on-line from the amazing entrepreneur owner who supports small Mexican farmers by encouraging them to plant, grow and harvest their family bean treasures which he then purchases and resells to us ail order gringos. Here in Western MA, we try to support the local farmers’ markets and stock our pantry with an assortment of vegan staples. We eat a lot of grains, tofu, and soy based concoctions using our crockpot for meals that can be seasoned with tasty spices. Large batches get broken down into smaller containers and frozen for quick nuked meals that require less immediate preparation.
Over the years, Elizabeth has collected hundreds of vegan recipes. Then we tried them, and if we both want a repeat performance, the highlighted recipe goes into her three-ring binder. If the house caught fire, we’d save this binder and the cat. Pretty soon she had a selection of lunch dishes with great sandwiches and main supper meals of stews and soups.
Breakfast has become oatmeal mixed with raisins, grape nuts, and frozen blueberries sweetened with maple syrup, nuked and then topped with soy or almond milk. Always a fresh grapefruit half or a sliced navel orange to replace what had been packaged OJ and whole grain raisin bread and washed down with fresh ground coffee brewed from Mexican coffee beans bought online. This morning staple meal has eliminated plastics by trading packaged things for the raw products. We get nuts and other sweets and raw foods from Nuts.com or at the bins in Whole Foods.
Like you, we’re pessimistic that our consumer culture will never forsake the ease of plastics for alternative packaging even when more people know they should rid their lives of macro and micro plastics. Everything has been engineered to capitalize on fossil fuel byproducts. Even some of the medicines that we’re told to use are engineered from fossil fuels. It is disheartening, but not completely lost yet. I love the thought of engineered plant based products that are being developed to be grown from cultured cells that mimic the structural consistency of muscle meats. We eat bean burgers a couple of times a week for lunch sandwiches.
I owe you a couple of emails that I’ve neglected to answer because I’ve been organizing my thoughts about the subjects you mentioned. My mind has trouble juggling too many things at one time. Thanks for doing what you do and writing about it so we’ll. Seeing your name appear in my inbox brings a smile into my day.
Jeff
Morning Y’all,
One of the realizations of getting older is one discovers how slap-happy one has been with one’s own health while growing older. Then, sadly, you discover that there are often no do-overs. But unless you deny reality, you can try. Here’s my vegan conversion tale.
In 2015, a cardiologist discovered that I had five serious blockages in my heart. The docs wanted to begin bypass surgery the next day. I wanted some time to think about having my chest cut open and my heart plumbing rerouted. So, I read - a lot. I won’t bore you with what I read and who, but I postponed the bypass surgery for a long time, and in November 2015 following our last turkey dinner, I became a full fledged vegan. My wife committed to doing the same thing. Without her commitment and partnership, life together would have been close to impossible.
This conversion meant saying goodbye to meats, all fish products including our lovely Cedar Key oysters, crabs, and mullet. Gone were eggs, butter, milk, and all dairy products including cheeses and for my cardiac survival, all cooking oils. Try cooking without any oil for awhile and see what a challenge that can become. My goal was not to add anymore cholesterol to the walls of my vascular plumbing. I had already lost a lot of heart functioning from my ingestion of animal protein, so if I wanted any chance of surviving, I needed to take some drastic measures. No more food with a face.
I postponed interventional cardiac surgery until 2021, and when your non-interventional cardiologist tells you that you’ve done everything you could do to stop the progression of your coronary artery disease, but you were not able to reverse it, and gravely says, “Jeff, I can make you comfortable with the time you have left, or we can arrange for quintuple cardiac by-pass surgery.” For me, that was an easy decision. They cracked open my chest at the Shapiro Cardiac Care Hospital at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, and twelve days later, I walked out of intensive care unit under my own power with my heart restored to normal functioning. But, I was still and I remain today a confirmed vegan. There is no point of return. I only eat plants based products.
Do I miss Stilton cheese, steak tartar, duck confit, a rare rib-eye, an omelette, a grilled cheese sandwich, fried oysters and mullet, fried clams, wonderful butter rich desert pies and cakes? Of course, I do? I’d be more of a bullshitter if I didn’t admit this. But strangely the cravings for animal protein went away in a few months much like I’m told the craving for tobacco and alcohol can if you have the will power to not use those products. It is much easier when you know that not to stop will kill you. That fact focuses your decision making quickly.
We became more interested in the welfare of animals bred to be killed and eaten. We became advocates against factory farming and farm animal welfare. We began donating money to the groups trying to reduce factory farming and supporting those groups’ efforts to stop killing animals in order to eat them. We didn’t join PETA because I dislike their incessant fund raising. They become pests even if their cause is righteous. I read recipes and pass them along to my wife. She’ll say, “Hey, didn’t you see the butter, eggs and oil in that recipe?” I have to admit that I didn’t read the recipe closely.
Is it harder socializing with friends and attending their dinner parties? Yes. Often, we’re the skunks at the dinner party. So, we host more than attending dinners as guests if we want to see our friends. Have we converted many friends into become vegans? A few. We gave away probably a hundred copies of Dr. Michael Greger’s book, HOW NOT TO DIE as our way of supporting his efforts when a friend tells us about needing to take statins.
Nothing about doing the difficult things for yourself and the environment is easy. If it was, everybody would do it without question. There isn’t any money to be made by Big Potato, but a lot of money is made by the meat, dairy, poultry and fishing industry and their lobbyists. Capitalism infects everything. It has infected the medical industry. Democracy isn’t easy to maintain, and capitalism is a product of democracy that requires oversight. But that is another subject for another day.
Thus ends today’s rant. Try a plant based diet and give your vascular system a rest.
Jeff
And one last question for you: What were your symptoms when your cardiologist discovered blockages? Had you been having symptoms or was it a routine check-up?
Oh, I just realized why you wrote about that. You were looking at the recipe I posted, which happens to be full of animal products. A light just went off in my head about that. I have a number of close friends here in #souega who are vegan--in fact, my job on Monday is to make a vegan birthday dessert for one of them.
How did I never know what a great writer you are? You had me from the first line, and I avidly read every word. I definitely remember when you and Elizabeth became vegan, or at least I think I do. Thank you for this, Jeff. I have one more question for you--Do you think that being vegan has meant fewer plastics? That would have to be true for meat packaging. I'm wondering if there may be other ways. And to be honest, when I look at your diet, I think, "What in the world would I be able to eat?" I know I would adjust, but your diet looks arduous. And I'm hearing you, my friend. I need to pay more attention to what I eat.