Delay. Pass the Fish.

Give it a little time, and a new study rolls around. This one is mostly for the women who spend some time here at Kid Wednesday. But men with wives, or sisters, or mothers, might find it interesting too. Essentially, that means everyone. Hop on board. What the heck.

Okay. The new study. It is about Menopause. Let me say, just to get this out of the way, that many people think “Menopause” was the worst name for this thing. Ever. Menopause. I guess if you say it for what how it sounds, “Men. Oh, pause,” it might be right on track. Maybe.

On the other hand, for those of us who never involved men in the entire process of any little thing, this term is ambiguous, at best. Either way, it happens to women. In a very big way. Men are just the casual bystanders.

The study. Okay, I’m getting around to it. But a little more background first. The people who have known me for many years, also know that I had a pat-answer for all these studies. “Eat a healthy dose of white-pasty foods. Mashed potatoes, pasta, grits, rice. Anything white, and somewhat pasty will do. It is the Road to Success, and it gives you comfort, and a warm belly.” A rather long, and involved Mantra, but that was my standard answer.

Finally, a new study has been released which includes the White Pasties. And here it goes.

A diet high in carbs could bring on an earlier menopause, is what this new study is suggesting. The people who do the measuring are saying that eating lots of pasta and rice will bring on an earlier menopause. By about one-and-a-half years earlier! This is measured against the average age of women in the UK of 51.

Yes indeed. So if you want to get the ball rolling, this is the way to do it.

Now many of my friends are older than I. And all my siblings too. They used to chide me as THEY were going through the change, “Oh, just you wait, Baby Polly,” as they fanned themselves through another hot-flash. “Oh, this menopause thing is terrible.” And on. They’d wag their fingers, telling me to turn the heat down, as we sat around the swimming pool in July. Polly shrugged amidst the flashes of hot.

So, I awaited my day of dread, watching them commiserate with one another, as I filled my plate with grits, and potatoes, and saltine crackers. (Polly, DOES, in fact, want a cracker.)

And then something happened to me. But I didn’t notice. My Menopause came and went, but it forgot to tell me. I didn’t even get the chance to blame a bad mood on the thing. I got zip. Zero. Naddo. Not even a Hot-Memo, let alone a full-blown Hot Flash.

I attribute this unnoticed passing to big, big, bowls of grits. Southern Grits at TOAST Restaurant in Charleston, SC, every morning for seven years.

There is a second part of the study. It also found that a diet rich in oily fish and things like beans, and chickpeas, and lentils may delay natural menopause. A delay of 1 1/2 years.

“What’s for dinner tonight honey?”
“Oh, just a little something I whipped up. Oily Fish, with beans, and chickpeas, and lentils, dear.”
“You don’t love me anymore, do you?”

Of course, no one is on the delay mode for Menopause. Who wants Oily Fish, with Chickpeas, for crying out loud?

Yes. Another study for us to ponder. Another knick-knack to place on the shelves of our brains. Something else for us to dust, up there.

This study. About Menopause. Delay or Embark.I cannot give us direction, one way of the other. And who knows what the next study shows?

I can only say this. And it has nothing to do with Chick Peas.

We live. And we learn. It is what we do. No one can learn it for us. The journey is our own. If we like Oily Fish, then we should like our oily fish. And the rest we do as we go.

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“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

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“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”
― Sylvia Plath

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“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

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