The relationship between cholesterol and writing.

Did my husband’s cholesterol problem help me with my writing?  According to him it did.

In 2008 I, as well as, my tall, thin, husband underwent a wellness assessment.  Fully expecting to hear that I would have to make some sort of lifestyle adjustments as a result of my increasing weight I was pleasantly surprised to hear of my good blood work numbers.  Other than being told to shed a few pounds, I was in good shape.  Now the tall skinny guy standing next to me was not so lucky.  His cholesterol was too high and they wanted to put him on medication.  He refused. Rather, he took the bull by the horns and changed his eating habits.  That said, my eating habits changed as well.  Within six months of our change of diet, which began the second he walked out of the doctor’s office, my husband had dropped his bad cholesterol 77 points, nearly putting him in the range the doctor wanted.  In one years’ time he had his cholesterol under control, and as I result I lost nearly 40 pounds.  He lost weight as well, but his weight wasn’t an issue when he started.  Here we are, over four years later, still holding good cholesterol and weight levels.

So how did this help my writing, you ask?  Well Omega-3’s is the answer.  Anyone with cholesterol issues knows that Omega-3’s help keep blood platelets from clinging to one another, which defends against blood clots that can trigger heart attacks or stroke.  With our diet change, we increased our Omega-3 intake, mainly by adding Salmon to our diet more regularly; thereby, decreasing our intake of other fatty red meats. Recently I’ve read several articles about how Omega-3’s fatty acids are important for building highways within your brain for carrying information.  If you don’t consume enough Omega-3’s your brain will use other food nutrients to build these brain highways but the problem is these other nutrients are less effective.

Since I’ve been eating more Salmon/Omega-3’s I’ve completed three novels and two novellas, one of which, Cookies for Santa (FYI – I can only write about cookies now…we can’t eat them), was released by Melange Books last November, and one of which, Craving Vengeance, a Nick Spinelli Mystery, is scheduled for release in October of 2013.  I guess my Omega-3 superhighway is open for traffic.

End result, Rick feels he’s ultimately responsible for my recent publishing success.  His logic, if his cholesterol hadn’t been bad, we wouldn’t have changed our eating habits to include so many Omega-3’s, and my brain highway wouldn’t have been engineered properly, allowing me to write my books.  Hmm, it seems like a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?

Salmon

Dinner last night!

Fishing

Rick and I catching dinner!


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *