Bittersweet Season for the Obese: Holidays Bring Mixed Blessings

Those who endlessly ingest sweets in the name of festivity are indulging in first-class folly.

(SALEM, Ore.) - There an old maxim that states, "One man's bread is another man's poison". Regardless of your gender, this aptly applies to the Holiday Season which definitely proves a very mixed bundle of blessings.

Ingesting sweets can be bittersweet to good health. It can be the nutritional equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot, only the consequences are not quite as immediate. Self-inflicted wounds to oneself will surface.

Most visible are the obese who least need fodder for additional weight. This is not simply a matter of looks or sex appeal but a prelude to poor health. The heavier the body becomes, the greater the strain on the heart to continue pumping blood and circulating it to even more territory. All of which invites a heart attack or other cardiac ailments, costly both to the pocketbook and our energy level.

Diabetics certainly need to avoid sweets to keep their blood sugar levels stable. If the amount of insulin goes haywire, the system starts to collapse. Why feed of forbidden sweets and endanger yourself.

Let's not overlook the high-cholesterol consumer, for to him or her the intake of excess glucose can begin to unglue sane circulation. Those artery walls will cake up and eventually clog. Why push our luck to the extreme and take unnecessary dietary risks?

Out there lurk sugar-coated Gremlins of Darkness, poised to pounce on us as the days grow shorter. It is naive to believe that stoking your insides with sweet stuff will work miracles. The reality is probably that you've chosen the bitter path to ultimate martyrdom. Is that not dumb in itself?

Those who endlessly ingest sweets in the name of festivity are indulging in first-class folly. And those who aid and abet their downfall are no less than accessories to this gluttonous crime!

Salem-News.com Community Writer Barry Lee Coyne brings to our readers stories from his combined career of journalism and gerontology, and explains that these paths shaped his values. Lee Coyne once worked for The Civil Service Leader in NY State and covered the Legislature. He has also done features on mediation and arbitration, and believes in healthy skepticism. This writer-therapist often views the world as the masks of comedy and tragedy placed upon the scales of justice. For him, optimism inevitably wins. "Lyrical Lee" has traveled to 30 nations aboard and was once a press intern at the UN. His first published article was in The NY Daily News in '59, dealing with the need for integrity in public office.

He also launched the nation's first tele-conference on health education for shut-ins, created the Eldermentors project in VA to pair retirees with immigrant students needing role models, and was the main catalyst behind CCTV's "Public Public" panel show here in Salem. Lee received his BA in International Relations and an MSW in community organization. He currently serves as a member of Salem's Library Advisory Board. To send Lee an email, please write to this address: luckycoyne@yahoo.com