I left my doctor’s office two hours after arriving. I decided to drive to my wife’s work and personally tell her the good and bad news about my health. Instead of just sitting and talking, we go for a walk and talk.
Honey, I have good news and bad news. Let me give you the short version during our walk, starting with the bad news;
I have high blood pressure that is off the charts.
My food intake cannot have more than 1500mg a day of sodium.
Dining out at restaurants is history for me.
Dried spices have sodium so I can’t use them anymore.
I will probably have to take medication for the rest of my life.
This information explains a lot of things that were happening to me, like why I get headaches when I eat certain foods. When I looked back, my blood pressure had probably been high for some time and high sodium foods like chicken wings, burgers with fries, and meat lovers pizza probably raised my blood pressure to numbers as taller than I would dare to imagine.
As a proud man, I have never wanted to be told how I should live my life. Success or failure is something I want to be able to control. Now I must take medicine every day if I want to live. The internal discussion was short. It was almost a monologue, take the pills and live.
Now the good news.
I found out I have high blood pressure before anything really bad happened to me. This will be confirmed by a cardiologist in the coming days.
We can keep the silent killer away for many decades if we get it right.
There are so many restaurants that serve horrible food, now I have a reason not to eat at any of them.
I can keep running and exercising.
When I was eight years old, my mom went away for a girls’ weekend and my dad had to cook. It was the worst week of my life when it came to food. I begged my mom to teach me how to cook. My favorite class in high school was home economics, since all we did was learn about food and cooking. During my college days and work days, food was always on my mind and we ate some amazing meals. All of this was preparation for this chapter of my life.
Cooking food without using dry spices will be a significant challenge. The food will have to be flavored with vegetables, fruits and meats. This will be an amazing way to change the way I eat and taste food.