Ozark Oddments: Red all over...

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Red all over...

Had something of a scare this morning... but it was just a scare.

Although my overall total cholesterol level is very good, the ratio of good cholesterol (HDL) to bad cholesterol (LDL) is very bad. To try to fix this, my health care provider put me on a regimen of niacin -- starting off at 250 mg once a day for about a month, then to 250 mg twice a day for about a month, and then 500 mg twice a day.

I was tolerating the 250 mg at breakfast and at dinner fairly well -- just a bit of flushing in the face, but not bad at all. Yesterday I began the 500 mg twice daily -- but I spread it out over four doses during the day. Again, not a problem.

This morning I took two 250-mg capsules at breakfast at 7:30, and within an hour I was sporting a prickly, blotchy red rash on my arms and my knees. By the time I arrived at church at 10 am, it was just about gone -- fortunately.

I think perhaps I will not be taking 500 mg of niacin at once any more.

1 comment:

Oklahoma Granny said...: Were you itching like crazy? That's my husband's reaction to taking Niacin. To counteract the itching he takes Ibuprophen (per his doctor's instructions.); 7:26 PM

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"