29 July 2004, 2:07 pm Berlin
hi angelique, hi liesbeth,
sorry, i have been late today. i got up at 11 am – but then i started with everything you told me.
i believe, or it feels like a very healthy diet. usually i start the day with a lots of caffeine and milk – and both aresupposed to be unhealthy. plus i don’t drink much water or tea and i don’t eat too manyfresh vegetable or fish. i made an appointment with my doctor for next thursday to test the natrium level in my blood. it would have been interesting to do it before we started — but now it is like this. i will do another test a week later again...
i thought i could entertain you a bit with spinozas ethics and write down a few ideas and questions every day… so, how can we understand the fact that we regard ourselves as expanded corporeal beings and at the same time as intelligible, thinking beings? is there an internal coherence between our conceptual, intelligible benefits and physical effects? it is not as if both chains would just face each other — both go through me <—>. spinoza gets to the point that both belong together: the mental chain and the chain of physics. the intellect (only) improves the power-to-act, which is already immanent in the body — the power that is already there.
xox
elke

29 July 2004, 11:53 am Amsterdam

Hi Elke
our diet yesterday (per person):
– Breakfast: exactly the same as yesterday.
– Same drinks and amounts of liquid as yesterday.
– Lunch: also the same but instead of the fish soup 225 ml of gazpacho.
– Same drinks and amounts of liquid as yesterday.
– Crisps: instead of 8 grams of crisps take each time 10 grams and put more salt on it than yesterday.
– Dinner: drink 5 glasses of 200 ml water more than yesterday (it was a very hot day and food was very salted), 100 gram of pangafish (white fish) with 2 mushrooms with 50 gram of “zeekraal” (I don't know the word in english, it is a very salted green vegetable from the sea), 1 tiny potato.
The rest was the same as yesterday.
We think it would be interesting to test the natrium in your blood at the last day of your diet. We both have a very low natrium level, very probably because of the amount of water we drink, that is the reason for putting more salt on crisps, but we also like the saltiness especially together with wine. Not only are we curious if your natrium level goes down, it would also be a test since our doctor is not sure what the reason for our low natrium is. He thinks our low weight has something to do with it (what is your weight and length height??). I don't want to scare you, we’ve already lived 15 years like this, but it can be dangerous if your natrium gets too low. Last year A.’s natrium level went down to the limit and she was forced to be hospitilized. I think this gives our whole cooperation an interesting level, since media is stimulating people in general to drink more water without seeing the danger of overstimulating individuals, but also a real proof that to much water is bad has not yet occurred. Since we feel much better with this amount of water, for us it is necessary otherwise we constantly feel thirsty. Let us know what you think!
Cheers and good luck today!
l.a