Mail is SLOWWWWWWW

since upgrading to leapord and running the latest update to 10.5.1. Mail has become unusably slow. the problem is when i create a new email message and start typing. I type approximatly 60-70 words a minute. and mail is displaying what i type at about the rate of 5-10 words a minute. I did this with activity monitor running. and as soon as i start typing the cpu skyrockets to 50-100% until it catches up with what i typed....email is rather import and its impossible to work like this. any insight into this issue would be greatly appreciated.