First of all I am not the on who is spreading scare stories here. and rules every thing to be tossed. Neither do I. But then I don't accept the "do whatever you want, everything's fine" attitude either and I, for one, will take issue with it every time. Second: I said foaming occurs in pressure cooker(when cooking meats ..). But then immediately I added that this should not happen in Canner. So since this post isn't about cooking meats and there is no concerns with foaming it isn't relevant to the issue. Why post it? How does that help? When someone is trying to learn pressure canning and already worried the last thing they need is someone dragging their focus off on an unrelated tangent. Third: I was talking about the principles of weight system and manufacturing tolerances in general. I did not talk about the specifics as how EXACTLY they are machined. It is up to the manufacturer. And there could be variations from one to the next. Vent pipe diameters aren't relevant unless they are plugged...""" is absolutely incorrect. The combination of the hole diameter and the amount of weight determines the amount of pressure held inside the cooker/canner. So if the hole diameter also has a tolerance as well. And any deviation from the nominal can make a difference. Yes that's all well and good info for the mechanical engineer that designs the equipment and oversees its manufacturer. It has no relevance to the person using the canner at home. Milling to tolerances isn't our problem. We aren't going to dig out our calipers and mic the ID and OD of the steam vent and adjust it accordingly. So the info is of no practical use to us and only confuses the issues under discussion. Dave

Hi Harriet--ah, I'm glad you remember. I would definitely suggest getting seen soon, although it's not an emergency situation (or even urgent care). But I would make clear at the earliest possible opportunity that you want meds to get your bp down to 120/80. Every day that it's high does permanent damage to your organs :(. If you exercise and get it lower, and you find you can go off the meds, that's great. But IMO (and of course this isn't official medical advice, just my experience and what I've read, so do more research--I'm just a lonely data point : )), getting it down as early as possible is what's important. The meds may very well knock you for a loop until you adjust to them, too. The docs said no driving for a month but I was back behind the wheel of a car, no problems, in a week and a few days. terri, that was another odd thing - my cholesterol is beautiful. I'm not the highest in HDL, but my LDL was *quite low* (blanking on the #s) at the time of the heart attack. As much as I believe in taking bp meds (within reason), I was *staunchly* against statins, and got out of it only by digging my heels into the ground and saying I'd take red yeast rice. I took that for a while and then stopped. My LDL isn't bad enough for me to worry about. There's also debate over what numbers are o.k. and what are worrisome wrt cholesterol anyway. But this little lonely data point would encourage you to take action on the bp as soon as you can (non-rush).

None. None at all. One day, about 6 years ago, I was waiting in the supermarket pharmacy for someone to get a prescription filled. they had one of those free BP machines. I sat down and tried it. The number was waaaay too high for normal...so I assumed the machine wasn't working properly. Because,I felt fine. A couple of months later, one morning, I had horrible dizziness, nausea, and very short of breath. I thought I was having a heart attack, was afraid to drive, and called 911. I walked into the ambulance,sat on the cot, and as a formality...the EMT took my BP. He yelled to the driver to turn the siren on, pushed me down on my back, dialed the hospital...and then started giving me these horrible little pills (nitroglycerin). My BP was 250 something over 180 something ! Turns out I didn't have a heart attack, but whle I was in the hospital the next few days...I lost count of how many people came in to see the woman who was walking and talking with the highest BP they had ever seen, and without having an MI.

I've had tinnitus for about a year as a result of fluid in ear and subsequent nerve damage and partial deafness in that ear. I have been on Neurontin for a couple of weeks. It is an anti-convulsant but has a lot of off label uses. A friend with severe rhumatoid arthritis told me about it. It lessened her pain and brought her out of a severe depression in 24 hours. I noticed that my tinnitus was much more bearable after a day or so on 300 mg of Neurontin. I asked the doctor to let me increase the dose but got tired and depressed so I quit for a few days. Am now back on 300 mg a day and feeling good. the ringing in my ear is no longer distracting and I am functioning better at work and at home. My mood is brighter too. Tinnitus and hearing loss tend to make one feel withdrawn and down. There is a lidocaine patch under development that may offer hope for tinitus. Lidocaine works IV and eliminates tinnitus in most subjects but has to be injected every 30 minutes so isn't a practical cure. If it works as a patch behind the ear that would be great.