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Metsmerized.

Meh Detective Work ...

Three days off of everything. Fish oil, vitamin D, niacin, baby aspirin, all dropped for three days. Gum and cuticle bleeding has completely resolved. Should add that the finger bleeding is greatly exacerbated by the judo, fingers take a horrible beating.

Played some basketball and very sore the following day. Granted it was 4 - 5 hours worth of basketball (forgot how much fun shooting hoops can be). The soreness is a bit on the severe side though ... The diet, and I should clarify, this is a severely restricted diet -- no dairy, no red meat, no processed meat, no processed anything, minimal gluten -- may be behind some of this lagging recovery. It's basically a rice and fruit and bean and nuts and non-fat yogurt diet with mad avocados and 6 oz. of lean fish or chicken every other day. So although I do eat lots of olive oil I think I'm running a "starvation level" deficit in the soluble fats
dept ... I need to find a good source of frozen mackerel and stock up on those oily cans of sardines. I love those ... Anyway, so the diet is fairly stringent and it's triggered a kind of induced myalgia similar to the statin side effect, but it is more acute (24 hours or so following rigorous activity -- which one could argue is normal "at my age") as opposed to the chronic persistent statin myopathy.

So I'm going to slowly reintroduce the above supplements starting with the vitamin D (which I do not suspect at all as I've been on it before without the weird bleeding) for a few days, then the baby aspirin, then the niacin, and lastly (my prime suspect) the fish oil. I'm like Sherlock Holmes.

A Happy Wolf Can Still Be Run Over By A Tractor Trailer

I came across a depression study involving mouse drowning. What I didn't realize is that drowning mice is quite a thing in the behavioral sciences. There is a whole, how shall I say, tradition, of mouse drowning. I imagine there are schools where you have to take mouse drowning 101, held in the old gymnasium with the leaky roof. And it's so deviantly easy to "accidentally" drop a mouse in a bucket of water and watch what it does for the next 20 to 30 minutes or however long it takes.

And what does all the mouse drowning get you? A loose fitting mammalian paradigm? More questions? Mice on anti-depressants showed increased intervals of "escape behaviors" during the first 5 or 10 minutes (of said drowning) than mice who were not (on anti-depressants) ... arguably. So the take-away I guess is that depressed mice tend to give up easier, which is quite the epiphany from a bunch of guys in lab coats shooting rubber bands at drowning mice ... It works for the drug companies who pump out more anti-depressants for all the human equivalents out there. People who suffer from being chronically thrown into the deep ends of swimming pools by a giant hand.

No, I think more significant are the questions these studies raise. Like "who came up with this?" And  "why didn't their parents teach them to be nice to poor defenseless animals?" And "why are there persistent contexts within said paradigm where the non-anti-depressant mice survive longer than the anti-depressant mice?"

By entertaining this question of course you perpetuate the mouse drowning game. It's like trying to convince a neighborhood bully to stop throwing rocks at a chained up dog and as you talk to him you throw a few rocks ... Anyway, so it turns out that the Prozac mice fought to escape longer and in doing so exhausted their poor little life-stores faster. I know, another bombshell revelation ... Apparently they deduced in their mouse drowning observations that quitting the anti-depressant-fueled "escape behaviors" delayed the inevitable drowning because they survived longer just floating there with just their little noses above water.

Now if we can put aside all the "what kind of person does this for a living?" questions, it brings up all kinds of possibilities ... If you are depressed because an invisible free floating hand hovers around your head slapping you hard every time you blink ... and someone says "why don't you go have some fun instead of complaining all the time?" You can say, "I am going to quit this mind-drowning conversation so as to entreat with imbeciles another day!"

Who knows, with a little polish and panache "quitting can save you from imminent death" can be the new "hard work and perseverance can make your dreams come true."

But the really really important question in all this carnage is weather a predisposition to depressed state can confer evolutionary benefits, i.e., can depression itself be an advantage? We are so quick to denounce depression as a disorder ... a sickness you address with pills, strong mind-altering and personality altering pills ... But depression may simply be a natural rest and regeneration phase as we see with the drowning mice. A wounded wolf will hide and sleep a lot to presumably effect healing -- does a moth messenger fly into her den offering her wolfie-Prozac maybe causing her to cheerfully and prematurely leave her den and die? Of course not.


So then, why do we stigmatize depression? Why is it ok for a wolf to be depressed but not a human?

The Hermit Diet

I read this story about a guy who wandered into the woods and lived there for 27 years. Now I grew up in NY in the 70’s and 80’s and this dude basically sounds like a homeless person. He’d walk around and pilfer camp sites and refuse bins … How is he not just another homeless guy? See when you’re homeless and lucky enough to be living in rural Maine, they write stories about you in GQ.
Now I want you to notice something about the picture above, look at how trim our wilderness vagrant looks in his prison scrubs compared to just about everyone around him. And they’re accusing him of stealing? So you have this community of over-eaters who don’t get enough outdoors exercise and they arrest this poor guy living in the wilderness who’s only trying to save them from their penchant for marshmallows and pop-tarts? Sad.

This supports my theory about optimal body weight. Your body naturally wants to be at that range of no visible body rolls to carry around. It reminds me of a conversation I once had with this obnoxiously condescending bicycle-shop owner who went on for about 10 minutes about guys who’ll pay an additional thousand dollars to trim 6 ounces from a bicycle frame and meanwhile are 30 lbs overweight. He had a point. There is a reason why every couple of pounds in carrying-weight trimmed from a 4 man tent (below the 15 lb. Walmart behemoth weight) comes roughly with about a hundred dollar increase in price and even more when you get down to those “elite" equipment snob weights. There’s a difference between weight that you can drop and not worry about (like firewood) and weight that you have to carry around, that’s why people will pay $500.00 for a four pound tent and eight grand for a bicycle and even more for a divorce!

So your body wants to be where you don’t have this very expensive weight hanging off your belt. And while an Italian bicycle designer isn’t going to track you down and write you a check for three thousand dollars every time you drop 8 ounces, the motivation is clear. I still brace myself for pain that isn’t there every time i stand from a sitting position … that’s motivation. I end up wondering whether I should go off into the wilderness like this guy. Being homeless in Northern Minnesota would be a lot easier than being homeless in Manhattan …… lots of lakes to fish from … And, you don’t have to worry about pizza stealing subway rats, or the C.H.U.D. threat, or sharing your steam tunnel with a cat lady. I’ve heard grouse is delicious and not that difficult to catch. I’d have to wait for the kids to be a little older, and with my luck the wife would tag along and convince me to stop at the IGA convenience store for jerky (she’ll never admit she likes the stuff so I have to buy it) and corn nuts.

You can call it “starvation weight” or your personal “cave-dweller” weight — that optimal efficiency weight where you are not carrying around any excess baggage, a boxer’s weight.

In getting there (lately) my energy has been down and I’ve been bleeding more from my gums and cuticles but I’ll get my cholesterol tested in a couple more weeks and I’ll know more. I will at least have a true baseline reference. Getting as close as possible to my homeless-person weight should hopefully help get my cholesterol numbers down as I don’t think the homeless suffer from hyperlipidemia any more than the normal population, at least those not residing near major pizza establishments. I figure once I get down to 160 or so I’ll get my blood drawn and then I can hopefully start packing on some pounds. I don’t like how it appears to be a lot easier to throw me around in the dojo compared to when i was 185 or so … Ideally I’d like to pack on 10 to 15 lbs of muscle, which is not easy without the aid of steak and cheese …

Steak and cheese … mmmm …

 One punch man is still going two or three days a week (although I’m limiting the squats to once a week) … The foot injury is all but resolved, running pretty much free, which is nice. Noticeable disadvantage in some aspects of ne-waza (groundwork) at this lower weight but am quicker on my feet and far less prone to injury. Been having some distorted thinking but nothing out of the ordinary … the squirrels are still monitoring my movements.

Opening day tomorrow!
Atlanta Braves @ New York Mets, Monday, April 3, 1 p.m., ESPN (Julio Teheran vs. Noah Syndergaard)
HAPPY THORSDAY EVERYONE!

Meh Injury Update

My ankle is refusing to heal. I think it's just a sprain but in my disastrous ideation it's the beginning of the collapse of the Roman Empire. After a run last Thursday I was walking down a flight of stairs and I feel a pop in my foot. It aches a bit, not too bad, but the ache sets in and I remember how in baseball a pop coming from inside your body is never a good thing.
The ache worsens into an arthritic nag ... How? I think the initial injury, which wasn't that bad, heals slowly because I'm drained utterly of soluble fats (because of my almost zero fat diet). The injury triggers an inflammatory response which in turn sets off a generalized autoimmune reaction that I feel primarily in my joints. I suspect the low fat diet may be interfering with protein metabolism. I'm healing almost as slowly as I was when I was on statins, which was not fast enough to keep up with my injuries, which was a problem.
In one recent study there was an association between low fat diets and increased risk of injury in female long distance runners. So I'm eating lots and still losing weight, down to 171, but I'm creaky and stiff again, tired, more early morning blurred vision, my gums hurt, and minor cuts are taking forever to stop bleeding. Oh and I'm having some warped "end of the world" thinking where I finally succumb to a slow painful death after a few miserble years as a broken down old man -- all from what amounts to a sprained ankle ... SMH.
I managed to hobble through Judo on Saturday but bowed out of the partner leap-overs and no rondori. I ran a mile on Monday and it hurt like heck afterward but (strangely) not during the run. I've also been doing one punch man three times a week on average. Ran again yesterday (Wednesday), 1.5 miles and again ok during the run but sore afterwards (and before for that matter). So I'm pulling out all the stops. I've added a half an avocado a day, boosted my olive oil, took a bunch of calcium today and an extra dose of vitamin d to see if I can kickstart some decent recovery. I also consumed 30 extra grams of protein via some nifty Garden-of-Life vegan protein powder from Mississippi Market here in Saint Paul. I also had a six ounce serving of white meat chicken, a second weekly serving. I'm even going to see if the old ball and chain might be so kind as to show me some of her magic healing yoga tonight. Fingers crossed that after a decent night's rest the foot will turn a corner. A cock will crow at dawn reckoning nothing of wizardry or war and the horns of Rohan will ring out and I shall walk with pain no more! Or it may take a few more days ... Which is also ok ... Perspective right?

Brain Infused Baked Alaska ...

So I get into an argument over the phone with my daughter about who is the bigger narcissist and she mentions that we’d been talking about my shoes for the previous 10 minutes. I concede her point with “well, as an artist I kind of have to be something of a narcissist, aren’t all artists somewhat narcissistic?” And she walks right into it with “Oh give me a break you’re not an artist … “ So naturally I retort “Yeah but I pretend to be one … it doesn’t matter, It’s all a farce -- we’re just two no-consequence carbon based life forms on an insignificant little planet in the middle of a vast nowhere universe! BAM nihilism!” After a pause she says " ... I would literally rather talk to anyone other than you right now."

Anyway, that’s how these “will you at least buy me a pair of Rockport shoes if you ever strike it rich as an eco-lawyer?” conversations usually resolve. And I would never wear Rockports, it would just make me feel better about my selfish self because all I ever got my dad was a size 10.5 EEE pair of Rockports … that’s how much of a narcissist I am. Ha HAH!

Now getting back to me.

I’ve managed to drastically cut cholesterol from my diet because I really would like to not be on medication. Especially since statin medications make me feel like I should be suspended in traction in some 50’s black and white hospital ward listening to Metalica.

Things were going swimmingly with running and my One-Punch-Man workouts and judo until a couple of weeks ago when I was walking through the market with my wife. I had to restrain myself from taking a bite out of a raw brisket. 

My wife says, “that’s like the wife from Santa Clarita Diet,” and for a second I wondered if I was turning into a zombie. That would explain a lot of other stuff … like my toenails and my media preferences. But no I still had a heartbeat and brain matter would only appeal to me in some sort of baked Alaska infusion with layers of butter …

Eating all these grains and greens I start to feel like some sort of vegetarian goat-monkey being led around the supermarket on a leash. Only I’m NOT a vegetarian goat-monkey, I WISH I could have that slab of liver or some tripe to chew on. This can’t be normal, I thought, why would God make all this delicious stuff and then make it so if you eat it, it will clog your arteries and cause horrible pain and death? This must be some sort of test maybe. Like maybe God noticed I’ve had things pretty easy so far and figures he’d mess with me. Like Job only with food … Cream-of-wheat made with whole milk and butter for instance, most people love fancy desserts and delicate meats ... not me, one of my absolute favorite things in the world is a little cream of wheat with a tab of melted butter mixed in. Well wouldn’t you know it, at some point in my middle age it became about as toxic to me as the tomato soup Top Job mixture from The Sixth Sense. Why does cream-of-wheat do me like that??? I haven't the faintest.

So I’m starting to fall apart and I think it may have something to do with cortisol levels and the absence of soluble fats in my blood. You need cholesterol, not only as a catalyst in protein metabolism and tissue repair, but in the production of cortisol -- the hormone that manages blood-glucose concentration … cortisol is like cholesterol on steroids, or I should say cortisol is a steroid. The odd thing about cortisol is its immunosuppressive effects and its inhibition of muscle repair mechanisms … it’s initial punch in effect reconfigures body systems to function optimally in a fight or flight response with repair and storage systems relegated to back-up. Blood pressure, high glucose levels in the blood and a litany of other changes to effect a quick motor response to a perceived threat.

So the reduced cholesterol in my blood disrupts protein metabolism and repair mechanisms, this results in a “pop” in my foot after a run the other morning (which has been killing since), the pain sends messages to the brain which dispatches cortisol which pumps glucose (energy) to the affected area and constricts blood vessels and further impedes repair mechanisms (and immune function). So when does the repair happen? I hope soon because between the lame foot, the hand injuries the increased blurry vision creaky joints and an overall ornery disposition, I keep wondering about the zombie thing …

There’s a stabilization period after cortisol spikes where the repair apparatus comes back on-line. I feel as if that stage is slow to trigger in my body and for this reason is failing to properly assimilate the raw metabolic materials to enable repair fast enough to keep up with damage (largely incurred at judo). So, I need, desperately, to eat more healthy soluble fats, and maybe scale back on the exercise? It’s just that healthy fats are so damned hard to come by, you can only drink so much olive oil before you start to gag.

Oh, and HAPPY HARVEY DAY METS FANS!
I know it's early in spring training, but Mets look scary AF.