Pain, Pain, Go Away!

How does a skinny guy curl 80 pounds like it's a can of soup? When it's actually 15 pounds.  AI-generated. Picture from Pexels . Fitness influencers might look like they're getting incredible results, but in some cases it's because of cosmetic surgery or drugs--or they might even be using fake weights or Photoshop. Zac has a highlight reel. Link here .

The past few months have found me shuffling out of bed in the morning with stiff, painful achilles tendons. I've never experience anything like it, even when I was lindy hopping a couple of nights a week for twelve years.  I also started getting muscle strain last spring after doing normal chores around the house and yard--so much so that I added a chiropractor's YouTube channel to my feed on this site. I have muscle pain in my lower back and sternum that have improved but haven't gone away despite going to a chiropractor IRL.  Be careful of medicines, even if they're topical. Photo from Pexels . All of this happened after taking Cipro antibiotic drops for an eye infection . Cipro is a fluoroquinolone (a type of antibiotic) with a black box warning about tendonitis and tendon rupture, and another warning about "mental health side effects and serious blood sugar disturbances," according to the FDA. The side effects involving tendons, muscles, joints, nerves an...

That's what the title should have been for my blog post last June about the benefits I'd seen from strength training . Being happily ignorant of the big butt craze, I went on about losing enough fat to need new pants and lowering my fasting insulin. Maybe I should have been clear that my waist size went down and butt got bigger. (Sorry, no before and after shots--I don't take pictures of my ass.) Photo from Pixabay . The closest thing you'll get to a butt picture here. I only heard about the big butt craze a few days ago when YouTube suddenly started putting a bunch of BBL (Brazilian butt lift) videos in my feed. I have no idea why those came up. But some of the plastic surgeons making the videos have said that it's the riskiest plastic surgery--so risky that some of them won't do it--and that implants you sit on all day are going to move around.  Brave AI lists the risks of BBLs as fat embolism (potentially fatal), high mortality rate (1 in 3,000), loss of fat...

No dinky weights! Photo from Unsplash . After years of being frustrated by a lack of energy and carrying around more fat than I wanted to, last year I finally regained enough of my health to start...lifting weights. That might not be conventional wisdom, but it makes more sense than eating less or simply moving more to lose weight and be more energetic. I started in March of last year with a few sessions with a personal trainer who showed me how to work out without hurting my neck. Since then, I've been lifting weights twice a week at home, missing workouts only when I'm sick or doing a lot of landscaping. I use 10- to 25-pound weights and a stability ball. After eight months, I lost enough fat that I had to buy new pants , but more importantly, I've improved my metabolic health and reduced my risk of various diseases of aging. The lab tests I took five months in showed a big drop in fasting insulin--from 4.4 in 2021 to 3.7. Other metabolic markers stayed about the same.  I...

I love working in my garden, but lately it's left me feeling like I've been run over. Pruning an eight-foot-tall rose down to two feet to extract a trellis that the rose grew up through and pulled out of the ground, after I'd lifted weights the night before, forced me to take a day of rest.  Aspirin helped, but chronic use of it can lead to ulcers. I wondered if there was still Bacillus coagulans in the yogurt I make, since one of the other strains in the yogurt could have crowded it out. B. coagulans is a bacteria that helps with muscle recovery. I took some packets of it and added a packet to my next yogurt batch, but bacteria don't work like drugs--it can take more time to feel any effects. What helped a lot were some videos from SpineCare Decompression , a YouTube channel run by Dr. Michael Rowe, a chiropractor who makes 10-15 minute videos showing how to use stretching exercises to relieve pain at home. Repeating the stretches every day has given me a lot more flex...

Are your eclipse glasses fake? The total solar eclipse over North America is almost here, and Indianapolis is in the "path of totality," meaning the moon will completely block the sun here. A lot of people have gotten special glasses to safely look at the eclipse. But the American Astronomical Society says , "counterfeit and fake eclipse glasses are polluting the marketplace." Some of the counterfeit glasses appear to be safe, the society says, but others are fakes that are no more effective than sunglasses. One of the counterfeits they describe matches the glasses someone gave me. I don't know where she got them, and she's not someone I'd trust to perform adequate due diligence. I just got over an eye injury and I don't need another one--I'll try the pinhole method instead to see crescents during the eclipse if it's not too cloudy. Picture from  Pexels .  Heart Centered Probiotic I started getting scary heart palpitations several years ago...

Readers might recall that I started doing strength training this year. I work out with free weights, a stability (Swiss) ball and do some bodyweight exercises so I'll have strong bones and better metabolic health. (Muscle burns energy; fat mostly sits there.) I use 10- to 25-pound free weights. Some women worry that lifting heavy weights will make them look like body builders. ( Here's what actual Olympic female weightlifters look like ; they wouldn't get far in a bodybuilding contest.) In my case, I'll let readers be the judge.  March 19, 2023.  Around December 20, 2023.  It's not a dramatic transformation, but you can see my shirt is looser in the bottom picture. I'm about five pounds lighter and had to get new pants last month. Oh--and I don't look like a lumberjack. Dip! Kroger's organic brand, Simple Truth , has some terrific dips that are less than half the price of Primal Kitchen. The tzatziki is like onion and dill dip that I haven't had in o...

  Link:  https://youtube.com/shorts/7D4hkpGK9Ww?si=M4x_DJI3-3vkErPT

Since I've resumed regular workouts, I thought I'd try a different electrolyte mix called Electrolyte Stix . Mike Mutzel over at High Intensity Health (no affiliation) sells an electrolyte mix with calcium, salt (Redmond's Real Salt from Utah), magnesium malate, potassium citrate, creatine, and taurine. There's no junky ingredients and even though lemon-lime was the only flavor available when I first bought a box, I liked the taste. I usually hate lemon-lime.  Image from Myoxcience.com . The good: When I have a packet of it mixed with a glass of water during workouts, I feel good. I don't end up feeling tired or off, or having a pounding heart. When I feel that way, it's often from a lack of electrolytes (especially salt or potassium). I've also built up a noticeable amount of muscle over the past few months without overly strenuous workouts; maybe the creatine helped. The bad: If I have this every day, my face swells up, which I found out is from too much ...

I'm down to a weight I never thought I'd see again. It's not because I was trying to lose weight, but trying to gain muscle. After a couple of months of lifting weights for two one-hour sessions a week at home, I'm down five pounds and I've had to start wearing a belt. Not me--but those look like the 15-pound weights I curl. Photo from Pexels.com . This is a pleasant side effect of working to maintain strength and bone density instead of becoming weaker as I age. Body composition is something Dr. Davis and others have begun hammering home. A large portion of weight lost on a diet is from muscle--some of it in your heart and organs.  I've been using the weight training method described in the book  The Resistance Training Revolution by Sal Di Stefano. (If you're an Inner Circle member, you can watch a meetup with Di Stefano on the site.) What I love about his method is that I don't feel exhausted and beaten up during or after workouts, even though I use...

Super-bacteria L. plantarum might be as close as your garden. Zucchini is a good source of the bacteria, and by fermenting it, you can up the benefits like slightly lower blood sugar, improved insulin, improved exercise capacity, improved sleep and mood, and many others. Don't give away that zucchini--ferment it! This recipe has a milder flavor than most fermented foods--it's only slightly tart. And of course it's an alternative to yogurt.  Equipment needed 1 quart jar (or 2 pint jars) with lid(s) Canning funnel (optional) Fermentation device (I use an insulated grocery bag, plastic grocery bag and a heating pad)  Ingredients 2 apples, peeled and cored 1 medium zucchini, unpeeled 4 dates, chopped 1 T cinnamon 1/2 T ground ginger 1 t salt 1/4 t ground cloves 1/4 t nutmeg Filtered water 2 capsules or equivalent of your favorite probiotic that ferments at ~95F (I used Biotiquest Antibiotic Antidote) Shred the apples and zucchini and put them in a large bowl. Add the spices, s...

Two Steps to Improved Health Lately I see people overcomplicating their health: they ask (other people) about enemas, their HPA axis, vagus nerve, stool tests, arcane lab tests, data on calcium score reduction, what time to have their supplements, where to get exotic microbes they read about on Google Scholar, and so on. The problem with this is that 1) it's off the map and probably nobody knows the answer and 2) in most cases, they're neglecting some basic steps known to work.  Most low-carb diets have two steps: 1) stop eating poison; 2) supplement what's missing. Dr. Davis's program has the additional step of getting rid of SIBO, but for that, he mostly recommends SIBO yogurt (homemade yogurt with 2-3 strains of bacteria missing in most people).  With step 1 in mind, I whacked back the nuts, cheese and occasional junk food cheats freely available at work. And with step 2 in mind, I've continued taking more iodine and I've been eating more protein to build mus...

Have you shopped for women's clothes lately? Everything either fits like a trash bag with arm holes or looks like what a stripper would wear. Over the past week, I've sent back half a dozen blouses that were low cut, fit like a sausage casing, or were see-through. Even though they were from an upscale store, they looked trashier than any top I've seen on hookers in Indianapolis. I finally found some nice blouses by Liz Claiborne at JC Penney, of all places, and some nice t-shirts I can wear under sweaters or blazers at Land's End. (The U-neck jersey t-shirts are $8 there if you want to stock up.) Another one came from Amazon--it's a brand that's also at Target.  Now that I finally have some nice tops, after weeks of searching, I don't want to outgrow them. I don't want to look flabby in them, either, since some of them are form fitting. To that end, I'm continuing working out a few times a week keeping nuts and dairy to condiment levels.  My new favo...

Some weeks ago, I boosted my iodine dose to 1,000 micrograms a day (over Dr. Davis's program recommendation), and for the first time in several years, I've sustained a workout program. I'm back to lifting weights a few times a week and found a dance exercise channel on YouTube I like. I even overdid my workout one day--I had a pounding heart that night and felt jittery--but you don't know your limits unless you push yourself.  As most readers know, iodine is needed for thyroid function; without enough of it, you can suffer from fatigue, cold, depression, mental fog and weight gain. Meals will be looking a lot more like this. Photo from Unsplash . Despite the extra iodine, I gained some weight. Last week when my pants were uncomfortably tight, I had acid reflux, and my face looked like the moon, I stopped ignoring the fact that nuts and cheese put weight on me. I'd been eating biscuits and gravy and an apple-cranberry tart. These were made using compliant recipes...b...

First, the good news: I'm well enough to exercise. I made it though a 15-minute workout I couldn't get through the last time I tried. The heart palpitations are going away and I don't feel out of breath and exhausted with every little bit of exertion. It's been almost a year since I started another go at getting my health back, and I've come a long way. I've put on about ten pounds (unintentionally) and I'm hoping that adding muscle will increase my metabolism. Now, the bad news. This has not been cheap. It hasn't been ruinous, but my health insurance hasn't covered anything. I can't even use my HSA (health savings account) to pay for my lab tests or thyroid or adrenal medicine. (But I could use it to pay for prescription sunglasses!) So I have over $900 in my HSA that I can realistically only use for sunglasses or an emergency. I'm stuck making more contributions to it for almost another year, since we just made our benefit elections at w...

Readers know I've had a stressful 18 months: family problems, a root canal that took three rounds of antibiotics to clear up, a move across the country, and a job change. My job back in Denver saw me going at ramming speed, spending two hours a day commuting, and dealing with a couple of vile coworkers. House cleaning and repairs took up my weekends and evenings for a few months, my realtor wildly overpriced my house, and I stepped on a nail a few days before I moved. I ate a lot of take-out while my house was for sale and figured I'd get back on track when I got to Indiana. It's taken five months to get back to normal. My stomach and skin were a mess from the antibiotics--I had cystic acne and just thinking about eating a lot of fat turned my stomach. I couldn't stand for long without a backache. I was so exhausted when I got here that it was a few months before I felt like working full-time again. Probiotics really helped my skin and stomach. I started taking two...

I happened to see a video on Youtube that reminded me of my favorite day of Basic Military Training School. It showed an event called Mudderella, a five- to seven-mile obstacle course through the mud. (One difference: I did not end up falling in the water and getting wet during basic training.) It looked like so much fun I signed up for it and started doing the Navy Seal Workout to get in shape. The organization automatically set up a donation page on my behalf for anyone who would like to contribute to  Futures without Violence , an organization that gets four out of four stars from Charity Navigator . This short vacation will also function as a chance to adapt myself to some hardship, something the ancient Stoics recommended to keep your desires in check and appreciate what you have. The obstacle course might be fun, but the training, the three-hour drive and, probably, staying at another hostel-style hotel won't be.

Note to new readers: please note I'm not a health care provider and have no medical training. If you have heart palpitations, I have no idea whether the following will work for you. Over the past several days, I've had a rough time with heart palpitations and feeling physically jittery. I was wondering if I was going to turn into one of those people who can't sit still. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a major lifestyle change. Kidding aside, something wasn't right and I really needed to get back to normal. I tried popping potassium pills like candy. I ate more. I doubled up on my iron dose. I went to yoga and even got on the treadmill at 6 AM yesterday. I tried the nuclear option of eating more carbs to stop peeing away minerals. Most of these things helped, but the problem kept coming back. A comment from Galina made me look up epinephrine, one of the drugs my surgeon used to anesthetize me Friday. First, the assistant at the surge...

Coconut in a Can This can of Natural Value coconut milk from Natural Grocers (fka Vitamin Cottage)... ...looked like this... ...and made a gloppy, eggy mess out of a custard dish I've made successfully many times. (I added 3T lime juice to the custard, which I hadn't tried before, but I don't think that would have ruined it.) From now on, it's Thai Kitchen coconut milk or Sprouts premium organic. Thai Kitchen coconut milk (full fat). Sprouts premium organic is similar. Kale Chips Today I ruined a bunch of lacinato kale making kale chips. 500 Paleo Recipes says to cook the chips at 375; some recipes on the web call for 300 degrees when using lacinato kale. They're probably right; at 375, the chips filled the kitchen with smoke and tasted exactly like you'd expect burnt leaves to taste. Red Russian kale has worked well at at the higher temperature, though. With some salt and dip made of mayonnaise, chives and lemon juice, they were way be...

This post from the USDA's blog brings back some memories. The post is about how grandparents can help their grandkids form good eating and exercise habits. It urges grandparents, Take your grandchildren shopping at a farmer's market and the grocery store. Talk about the choices you are making--choosing the juicier oranges or the fresher vegetables. Help them learn cooking skills, which will benefit them them throughout their lives. Encourage them to be active throughout the day.  Spend time walking in the neighborhood, planting a vegetable garden, or shooting a few hoops. Dance, run, or play hopscotch and soccer with them when they're full of energy... Up until I was twelve, my mother and I visited my grandparents every year in Missouri. After a daylong drive from Colorado, an orange sunset would find us on the dirt road in front of Grandma and Grandpa's house. Everybody hugged, then we dug in to a savory spinach salad Grandma made for the occasion. During our ...