Mellow yellow
I’m still hypothesising as to what the ‘good thing’ is that you ‘can never have too much of’? It certainly wasn’t pawpaw. God only knows the sheer volume of pawpaw I have consumed in the past few months. It would almost qualify for a Guinness World Record I reckon. Lucky for me, the damage (mainly to my vanity) can be reversed. Or so the ‘doctors’ say...
Dr Google has diagnosed me with ‘carotenaemia’ – too much beta-carotene. I had suspected that my pawpaw intake was on the verge of ridiculous, and the ‘signs’ began to show too, so I cut down and switched fruit. Lucky for me, it is mango season.
What Dr Google failed to mention though, was that mango is also in the red end of the beta-carotene spectrum. (Or maybe it was that I just didn’t want to hear, or rather read, what he had to say). Lucky for me, I got a second opinion.
So in toddles Dr Wikipedia, full of free information *citation needed* with a complete list of foods that one should avoid so as to reverse the effects of ‘carotenaemia’. I don’t think he quite understood though that when he listed pawpaw, mangoes, pumpkins, beetroot, corn, milk, tomatoes, pineapples, sweet potatoes, cabbage, eggs and even bloody cheese (!) he was describing 99% of my diet. It would have put me over the edge if he’d said tea...
After the vanity-rupturing, diet-destroying, medical-jargon-rich diagnosis I’ve drawn my own conclusion. These doctors have clearly never volunteered their services in (let alone visited) the tropics, so they earn no stripes with me or my ‘condition’.
Lesson 25: People might laugh at you from time-to-time (or think you’ve been meddling with explosives... or have hepatitis...), but it has to be said it would almost be a sin not to feast on the abundance of wonderful, tropical fare and risk coming down with ‘carotenaemia’. After all, having yellow palms isn’t the end of the world.
Dr Google has diagnosed me with ‘carotenaemia’ – too much beta-carotene. I had suspected that my pawpaw intake was on the verge of ridiculous, and the ‘signs’ began to show too, so I cut down and switched fruit. Lucky for me, it is mango season.
What Dr Google failed to mention though, was that mango is also in the red end of the beta-carotene spectrum. (Or maybe it was that I just didn’t want to hear, or rather read, what he had to say). Lucky for me, I got a second opinion.
So in toddles Dr Wikipedia, full of free information *citation needed* with a complete list of foods that one should avoid so as to reverse the effects of ‘carotenaemia’. I don’t think he quite understood though that when he listed pawpaw, mangoes, pumpkins, beetroot, corn, milk, tomatoes, pineapples, sweet potatoes, cabbage, eggs and even bloody cheese (!) he was describing 99% of my diet. It would have put me over the edge if he’d said tea...
After the vanity-rupturing, diet-destroying, medical-jargon-rich diagnosis I’ve drawn my own conclusion. These doctors have clearly never volunteered their services in (let alone visited) the tropics, so they earn no stripes with me or my ‘condition’.
Lesson 25: People might laugh at you from time-to-time (or think you’ve been meddling with explosives... or have hepatitis...), but it has to be said it would almost be a sin not to feast on the abundance of wonderful, tropical fare and risk coming down with ‘carotenaemia’. After all, having yellow palms isn’t the end of the world.
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