The Great Race of Mercy
On menopause, mercy, murder and dogs.
Being wise about women
I love food. Even though I avoid major food groups — all the meat and all the fish — I love what remains (all the vegetables! beans! pulses! chips!). And I love to cook. Last night I made cauliflower schnitzel with spinach and a barbecue smoky chilli sauce and even though my smugness at making it was greater than the actual enjoyment of the meal, I was chuffed. I am mostly vegan, a phrase I don’t like but it is the most accurate description of my diet. I am vegetarian but don’t drink milk, don’t eat butter and rarely have dairy unless it’s in a sneaky chocolate chip cookie.
I’m focusing on food with forensic zeal at the moment though and I’m not sure I like it. The reason: in January I was approached by a PR company who represent a new start-up called Womenwise. This start-up, the PR wrote, would offer a scientific analysis for women in the peri- or menopause down to DNA and enzymes, and then offer a detailed plan of action of how to improve symptoms or lifestyle. Or in Womenwise’s words: “‘Your action plan’ takes these insights and makes them tangible. What to eat, a personalised supplement protocol, your best exercise approach, how to build your stress resilience and more.”
An expensive (I didn’t pay but it should have cost £599) and extremely impressive kit arrived with copious but clear instructions. I had to take my own blood, and also take five urine samples over 36 hours. That was the hardest part because I had to forgo coffee and had a blinding headache. You’d think that would make me give up coffee. No. I also had to take my blood pressure with a wrist-based blood pressure reader that was provided. It could have been overwhelming, but it was written clearly and fairly straightforwardly.
I sent the kit off. I learned that wrist-based blood pressure readers can give you wildly differing readings in each arm and not to trust them. Finally, after completing a lengthy questionnaire about my lifestyle and symptoms and moods and food, I got my results, and then an hour-long Zoom call with Sarah, one of the co-founders and a nutritionist, about my results and about what I could do about them.
It was definitely fascinating. I clear oestrogen probably poorly. You need to clear oestrogen because if not, “quinones and free radicals are produced and can damage DNA and cell membranes and may increase the risk of cancer.” Oestrogen clearance is considered so important, you get a whole report about just that. I also hang on to free cortisone, which is bad. My GABA is OK. My habit of fell running a lot did not get any stars: this increases my stress levels apparently. “If you don’t run with a watch and don’t worry about time or competitiveness, it’s probably fine,” said Sarah.
Oh. Maybe I won’t share my Run Brave training plan which is coaching me to run a 45-mile overnight race on the summer solstice.
The food part though was both fascinating and troublesome. My weight to height ratio has got worse since I became menopausal. My measurements now indicate that I have insulin resistance, which does not mean I’m diabetic or pre-diabetic, but that my cells have become “deafened” to insulin, which is essential to sending glucose from the bloodstream into cells, where it can be used as fuel. The only cells that remain receptive to glucose are fat cells. Hurrah. The fat cells convert it and store it as fat. “Symptoms of early-stage insulin resistance include fatigue, brain fog and an increase in body fat.” Oh. Check, check and check.
The report provides a highly detailed action plan that I won’t go into but I will talk about the diet part.
Foods are divided into green (have as much as you want); amber (within reason); red (avoid). But the vegan plan gave me hardly any protein sources beyond soya, and the vast majority of suggestions were of processed or highly processed foods such as vegan sausages, tempeh or tofu. Where were the pulses? What about beans? Quinoa? Some things are bad for insulin resistance, some are bad for my apparently high histamine. Rapeseed oil bad, olive oil good.
I’ve also been reading a bit about glucose spikes, given my waistline. All that means: I have no idea what to have for breakfast any more. I thought porridge with nuts and chia and banana was perfect. Not according to the glucose people. Toast and marmite? Too many carbs for the insulin resistance. Vegan yogurt? I don’t much like it in the morning and it doesn’t have a lot of protein. Not good for my high-protein action plan.
Today I had rye toast with marmite and three hours later my stomach is rumbling. What I dislike is now being uncertain about food, and overthinking things. You’ll say: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. But I do that already.
Anyway. If you have £600 to spare, I heartily recommend Womenwise.
I am a work in progress. But if I figure out my gut and glucose issues, maybe I’ll vanquish the bastard menopause-related hayfever that is making my life a bane and a trial at the moment? As well as know what to have for breakfast.
Make it stop
I read two pieces that tarnished my soul, but are entirely worth reading. First, this by Anna Moore on the appalling pre-meditated killing of Joanna Simpson. Of course it was her ex-husband, and of course he is about to be released despite ample evidence that he arrived with a weapon and planned her death and disposal of her body. I had no idea that there was such a thing as a category of “normal murder,” but both of those facts should elevate Joanna Simpson’s death to abnormal murder, which would mean her murderer would not be about to be released.
Here is Joanna, a mother of two small children, a woman murdered by a vicious man. Yet another woman murdered by a vicious man.
The second piece was this long, amazingly well reported account by Heidi Blake of the women of Dubai’s royal family, and how horribly they are and have been treated. The piece focuses on Princess Latifa, whose escape in 2018 captivated people because of the 007 nature of it: scuba gear! Cloak and dagger!
But her escape was followed by her brutal recapture by armed men sent by Narendra Modi after Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed asked him for assistance. Read the piece for the 007 skulduggery but also for the bravery of a young and terrified woman; and also because of the young women transported to Sheikh Mohammed’s entourage whenever it visited Britain, and who often were returned crying and shivering and distressed. Yet more women abused by vicious men. Make it stop. Let us make it stop.
Here is Latifa.
Animal hero of the week: Togo, and the Great Race of Mercy
Togo was a sled dog. In 1925, the small Alaskan town of Nome was in severe trouble. Several children had developed diptheria, a highly contagious bacterial infection, and they had no serum to treat it. Diptheria can kill you horribly, when infected tissue block airways. Your own body chokes you to death.
Togo was born to sled dog Suggen and a Siberian mother, Dolly. His beginnings were not auspicious: his black and brown coat made him look like a mucky pup. He was only 22kg, not considered heavy enough to be a decent sled dog. He was naughty, and often ill. At the age of six months, his human handler, a Norwegian named Leonhard Seppala, gave him away to be a pet. But Togo escaped and ran back to Seppala, and this time Togo was allowed to stay. He grew up to become an excellent sled dog, and then a lead dog. Top dog of dogs.
In 1925, it was winter. Nome desperately needed serum, but planes could not fly in the weather. The only option was to send it by dog.
From Wikipedia:
In 1925, in response to an epidemic, the first batch of 300,240 units of diphtheria serum was delivered by train from Anchorage to Nenana, Alaska, where it was picked up by the first of twenty mushers and more than 100 dogs who relayed the serum a total of 674 miles (1,085 km) to Nome.
Togo and Seppala ran 170 miles (270 km) east from Nome to just outside Shaktoolik, where they met the serum relay coming the other way on January 31 (Seppala had expected to go all the way to Nulato and back alone). After the handoff, they returned another 91 miles (146 km) to Golovin where they passed the serum to Charlie Olsen's team, having run over 261 miles (420 km) across some of the most dangerous and treacherous parts of the run in total. In total, the team traveled 260 miles (420 km) from Nome in three days. The temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), and the gale force winds causing a wind chill of −85 °F (−65 °C).
The return trip crossed the exposed open ice of the Norton Sound. The night and a ground blizzard prevented Seppala from being able to see the path but Togo navigated to the roadhouse at Isaac's Point on the shore by 8 PM preventing certain death to his team. After traveling 84 miles (134 km) in one day, the team slept for six hours before continuing at 2 AM.
Before the night the temperature dropped to −40 °F (−40 °C), and the wind increased to 65 mi/h (105 km/h). The team ran across the ice, which was breaking up, while following the shoreline. They returned to shore to cross Little McKinley Mountain, climbing 5,000 feet (1,500 m). After descending to the next roadhouse in Golovin, Seppala passed the serum to Charlie Olsen, who in turn would pass it to Gunnar Kaasen and Balto.
Balto became famous (and has a statue in Central Park); Togo did not (and does not). “I resented the statue to Balto,” Seppala wrote in his memoir, “for if any dog deserved special mention, it was Togo.” Balto ran 55 miles. Togo ran 261. But a campaign in recent decades has put Togo on the pinnacle where he belongs. He even became a Disney film.
Think about that. If you are impressed by, for example, Sifan Hassan running sprint pace (5 minutes per mile) for 26.2 miles to win the London marathon (via nearly getting run over by a motorbike and a very sore hip), then be impressed by Togo and his fellow sled dogs. 260 miles in three days! I calculate that to be three miles an hour, through snow and blizzards, without allowing for rest. What astonishing animals. Togo, when I’m approaching Pendle Hill in the wee hours of the morning on the night of the solstice, having hopefully run 43 or so miles by then, I will be channelling you.
Togo was put to death in 1929, because he was blind and in great pain. He was not stuffed but his pelt was put on display in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Headquarters Museum in Wasilla, Alaska.
Postscript: Togo was not named for a small country in Africa. He was, peculiarly, named for a Japanese general, Heihachiro Togo, who fought in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. Big puzzled shrug. Enlightenment welcome.