Getting Older Beats the Alternatives! An Anti-Aging and Longevity Blog by Joseph C. McDaniel

Free Supply of Human Growth Hormone (HGH)!

2011-08-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article suggesting that at the end of a 24-hour fast (fasting means no food, and only water as a beverage; fruit juice fasts are not fasts), men produced 2,000% more HGH, and women produced 1200% more HGH, than when they were free-feeding.

I will try to track down the study referred to in that article, so I can link to it; but today, I am fasting.

Just in case the article was accurate!

Because HGH is apparently pretty good for you, and free is My Favorite Price. So if I can produce plenty of HGH notwithstanding my advanced age, well, I'm down with that!

Remember, before you consider fasting for 24 hours or more, talk to your doctor first!

Chantix: What Are You Waiting For?

2011-07-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

There is no question that smoking will kill you, eventually.

There's a reason that cigarettes are called "cancer sticks" and "coffin nails", and have been called those things for roughly forever.

But there's a new, interesting and far more scientific way to go: a smoking cessation drug called Chantix".

And when I read about the life-threatening side-effects of Chantix, I have to wonder what the FDA is thinking when it limits access to life-saving alternative medicines, and approves expensive and dangerous medications like Chantix.

Putting it a different way, when a medication makes you so nutty that truck drivers and air-traffic controllers are forbidden to take it, why should soccer moms be taking it when it's their turn to car-pool all the kids to the game?

And putting it another way, not everything built in a laboratory is good for you!

An Early, Violent, Ironic Death: Protest Against Motorcycle Helmets Reaps Grim Result

2011-07-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

Riding a motorcycle, I'm told, is the best thing next to flying with your own wings.

That's because of the wind in your face, the sun on your back, and a lot of horses between your knees, and the feeling of freedom that goes with riding a big bike.

Sadly, I've lost several friends who should never have taken early check-out. They were riding bikes, and they weren't wearing helmets.

I can understand not wanting to wear a helmet. Frankly, I kinda like the idea of far, far less government intrusion into our lives, so I'm uncomfortable with a mandatory helmet law. And if I had the huevos rancheros (which, ironically, is the name of a dish made with eggs) to risk my life for that feeling of flying, I know I'd enjoy it far more without a helmet.

But I'd probably wear a helmet, because I'm a belt-and-suspenders, bullet-proof vest, seat belt, and stay indoors at home anyway kinda guy! Actually, if I had a bike, it would probably sit in my living room, and I'd start it every now and then to listen to the patented throaty roar, and then shut it down and polish the polish on the polish.

But a bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts have staged a helmet-protest ride for years, and this time a rider was thrown, hit his helmet-free head on the pavement, and died. Doctors indicated a belief that he would have lived had he been wearing a helmet.

Now, I don't much care what other people want to do for fun.

And I'm glad the rider died without extended suffering, because there's too much suffering in the world.

I expect that there will be many more fatalities on bikes over the next few years; some people ride bikes, not because they're fun, but because of fuel economy.

And if they're not riding for fun, then I'd much rather see them wearing a helmet!

Because I don't like losing friends to early check-out!

p.s. you may wonder what a discussion of motorcycle helmets is doing in a health and longevity blog. But if you give it some thought, you'll remember that accidental death is one of the top ten ways to go to heaven ahead of schedule. And that makes accidents, and the prevention of death from accidents, fair game.

Right?

And I know I've promised it previously, but soon I'll talk about bug-out bags, because analysts believe that the upcoming scheduled Zombie Apocalypse may make fatality statistics from auto accidents look trivial! So if you want to survive that Zombie Apocalypse, stay tuned!

p.p.s. I had lunch with a good and beautiful friend recently; she had gotten rid of the bike and the leather because of a small ooopsie that had resulted in a leg shattered into a thousand pieces or so. She said that it was relatively painful, and gave rise to a moment of clarity: she said she'd prefer a longer life, and less exciting.

Of course, if Cu Chulainn had made that decision, where would world literature be today?

Inversion Table by Teeter Hang Ups; Threat or Menace?

2011-07-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

After I experimented with lifting eight hundred pounds a few years ago, I reached this experimental conclusion: don't lift eight hundred pounds, you idiot!

I'd been reading a neat book about short range heavy weight lifting, as opposed to full range of movement-type lifting; the advantage of short or static contraction is that your can lift much more weight.

The disadvantage of it is that you can lift much more weight!

As a result of my eight-hundred pound lift, I developed a little tiny bulge in a little disc. Next to my little bitty sciatic nerve. And then I learned the meaning of pain.

Long story short, I recovered completely, except that occasionally I'll sit for too long, and get a twinge, and that makes me more than anxious, because I have some traumatic memories of sleeping on the floor with ice-packs and ibuprofen for company.

And so I went to the local Relax the Back Store in Phoenix at Camelback and Central, and picked up a Teeter Hang Ups Inversion Table. If I told you I was the model in the pictures with the washboard abdominals, would you believe me? Yeah, that's what I thought.

I experimented with it in the store, and I loved the ease of use.

Now it's at my house; and I'm about to experiment with the I.Q. Test that is the assembly instructions.

They sent along written instructions, in three languages, which already ticked me off.

But my next project is to watch the instructional video to get a living color explanation of the assembly process (which had better not be in three languages; I don't want to spend three times the needed time watching the darned thing!).

And the theory of inversion tables is pretty simple; it's to provide traction in an opposite direction from the usual pull of gravity to give your discs a chance to move back to their normal, non-squashed shapes. And away from nerves like the ever-popular sciatic!

By the way, many folks have herniated discs, and no symptoms at all! If the bulge doesn't impinge on a nerve, well, there you are!

And that is just another example of words to live by: it's better to be lucky than smart!

And am I smart enough to assemble this bad boy?

I'll let you know!

p.s. I also have buddies who swear by their inversion tables, telling me that they actually gained height after use, as well as shedding pain. If it works for me, I'll tell you! Bear in mind, of course, that there isn't any guarantee that if it works for me it'll work for you, because bodies and pathologies differ.

And always talk to a doctor instead of a Phoenix, Arizona Bankruptcy Lawyer about your health issues, especially before you strap yourself into ankle shackles and hang upside down like a bat!

Who Says There's Nothing Funny About Dementia?

2011-06-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me this yearly dementia test.

It's funny, unscientific, and it's a little trickier than it looks!

Enjoy! And remember, this one is only for fun. If you think you have an issue with dementia, talk to your doctor, not some bankruptcy lawyer in Arizona!

Our Yearly Dementia Test-- only 4 questions

Our Yearly Dementia Test

It's that time of year for us to take our annual senior citizen test.
Exercise of the brain is as important as exercise of the muscles. As we grow older, it's important to keep mentally alert. If you don't use it, you lose it!
Below is a very private way to gauge how your memory compares to the last test. Some may think it is too easy but the ones with memory problems may have difficulty. Take the test presented here to determine if you're losing it or not.
The spaces below are so you don't see the answers until you've made your answer. OK, relax, clear your mind and begin.

1. What do you put in a toaster?

Answer: 'bread.' If you said 'toast' give up now and do something else..
Try not to hurt yourself. If you said, bread, go to Question 2.

2. Say 'silk' five times. Now spell 'silk.' What do cows drink?

Answer: Cows drink water. If you said 'milk,' don't attempt the next question. Your brain is over-stressed and may even overheat. Content yourself with reading more appropriate literature such as Auto World.
However, if you said 'water', proceed to question 3.

3. If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a green house made from?

Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass. If you said 'green bricks,' why are you still reading these??? If you said 'glass,' go on to Question 4.

4. Without using a calculator - You are driving a bus from London to
Milford Haven in Wales . In London , 17 people get on the bus.
In Reading , 6 people get off the bus and 9 people get on.
In Swindon , 2 people get off and 4 get on.
In Cardiff , 11 people get off and 16 people get on.
In Swansea , 3 people get off and 5 people get on.
In Carmathen, 6 people get off and 3 get on.
You then arrive at Milford Haven ..

Without scrolling back to review, how old is the bus driver?

Answer: Oh, for crying out loud!
Don't you remember your own age?
It was YOU driving the bus!!
If you pass this along to your friends, pray they do better than you.
PS: 95% of people fail most of the questions!!

I'd Like a Favor, My Fellow Hope-Ridden Geriatrics!

2011-06-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers will recall that my day job, when I'm not blogging about canaliths and Vitamin C, is practicing as a bankruptcy lawyer in Arizona.

My SEO Advisors (can anybody explain what SEO actually is?) have told me that it would be good to have my buddies go to my Arizona Bankruptcy Lawyer site on Facebook, and click "like" when they arrive.

So that's the favor I'd like from you: if you have a Facebook page, go "like" my Arizona Bankruptcy Lawyer site.

And thank you!

Wanna Be a Star? Have You Been Downsized Lately?

2011-06-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a bankruptcy lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona. Because of that, I'm contacted by a lot of people in the insolvency industry for lots of reasons.

I seldom dance around much with Hollywood, but I guess it was bound to happen, what with my videos, and my remarkable profile.

But if you think you qualify, and you want your fifteen seconds of fame, there's a show that's in casting; and it's a companion to the series "Downsized".

Here's the email I got from Lauri:

Name:
Lauri Lannan

E-mail Address:
lauri_lannan@pietown.tv

State:
California

ZIP:
91607

Phone:
DID NOT RESPOND

How would you like to be contacted?
E-mail
Phone

Brief description of your legal issue:
Hello Joseph,

I am the development coordinator at Pie Town Productions, a high volume, Emmy-nominated production company with more than 47 series under its belt. We’ve produced programming for networks such as Discovery, TLC, A&E, WE, Lifetime, The Food Network, HGTV and OWN. Some of our current shows include House Hunters on HGTV, Meat & Potatoes on Food Network, and Downsized on WE.

I am reaching out to you in regards to a current casting of a companion show to Downsized.

Downsized is our critically acclaimed docu-series on WE that follows a large, charismatic family that has been downsized in the recession and documents their challenges and successes of adjusting to new financial constraints.

Here is a link to information about Downsized on the WE TV website:
http://www.wetv.com/shows/downsized

We are now casting for a companion series to Downsized, and are specifically looking for a large and compelling family who is no longer bringing in the big bucks, is having to adjust their lifestyle, and would like some assistance getting back on track. The ideal family is fun-loving, honest, emotional...and willing to “put it out there”.

While we understand that you can’t share personal contact information, we do hope you will pass along our information to clients, and anyone else you feel could potentially benefit from a series based around their situation.

Any interested persons may apply here: http://www.pietown.tv/Shows/downsized_ourstory.php

We are happy to answer any questions you may have, please feel free to contact me any time. And please check out our website which will give you a greater understanding of our programming: www.pietown.tv

I look forward to hearing from you.

Many Thanks,

Lauri Lannan
Development Coordinator
Pie Town Productions

Lemmie Get This Straight: You Can Make a DOG'S Joints Work Right Again.

2011-05-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Hmmmmmmm.

I read an interesting article about the use of specialized cells from a dog's fatty tissue; the specialized cells taken from the dog are exposed to magical fairy dust (sorry, a particular sort of light source) and then injected back into the dog.

And the pain and inflammation in the joints goes away.

Well, I found out about Glucosamine initially when I was reading up on joint problems in dogs (I sure loved my Airedales!), and it's worked very well indeed for me.

This stem-cell procedure to make a dog's joints work better costs $2,000, and the news article left me with just one question.

If I wear a dog suit with floppy ears, can I sneak into the clinic and throw myself on a gurney?

p.s. dogs and humans are not very different in terms of their fundamental biological processes. I wonder why such a simple procedure wouldn't work well on humans? That's assuming it actually works on dogs, of course.

The Most Boring Way to Increase Your Risk of a Heart Attack by 70% !

2011-05-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

Drumroll: the way to increase your chances of a heart attack by 70% is to brush your teeth less than twice a day.

Once again, your mother was right, right?

Magnesium; It's not Just for Poop Anymore!

2011-05-21T16:30:00.000-07:00

Milk of Magnesia has long been a staple medication for relief of constipation, a topic about as attractive as...well, constipation!

By the way, remember that if you're going to go under general anesthesia for a surgical proceedure, you'll want to take milk of magnesia soon after you wake up, and until you successfully move your bowels.

That's because general anesthesia will just plain stop the activity of your digestive system, and you may wind up with poop that's dehydrated, and about as hard as kryptonite, and as large as the planet Krypton!

That's not our topic for today; I just wanted to remind you not to make the mistake I made before a minor surgery a few years ago, when I spent far too many hours in the reading room, praying for death, or for the passage of that large kryptonite meteor sitting inside of me. Either way!

You have been warned!

And remember: if your friends won't tell you, who will?

But Dr. Whitaker believes that supplementing with moderate amounts of magnesium is a pretty good idea for just about everybody. He figures that it improves the electrical system in the heart that makes it run like a Mazda Engine, and prevents it from needing a defibrillator, which is a good thing, right?

He's also noted a relationship between adequate intake of Omega 3 fatty acids and a tendency for your heart continuing to pump properly.

I don't buy every conclusion that Dr. Whitaker makes, but I think a lot of most of his suggestions.

And some studies have appeared to show a relationship between higher magnesium intake and a failure to die of sudden heart stoppages, you know?

Now, with either Vitamin C (which you need to take in divided doses for this very reason), or magnesium, or fish oil, you need to increase your intake sloooooooooowwwwly, so you don't desperately need Depends during a business meeting or afternoon tea.

So go and find some magnesium and fish oil and Vitamin C, and take it every day, after you discuss the issues of supplementation with your doctor.

And live!

With or without Depends!

Dead for an Hour and a Half. A Nifty Lazarus Story.

2011-05-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

I was delighted to learn that people can come back after much longer than previously believed.

Apparently, if you're lucky, and they don't give up on you, you can come back to life with no brain damage after your heart has been on vacation for an hour and a half and more!

And that's a lot of Jimmy Buffet Time for your heart, you know?

On the other hand, here's a question: if your electrolites are in balance, and you take Vitamin C and fish oil, will that reduce your risk of sudden cardiac death?

Well, I'll keep taking my Vitamin C, fish oil, magnesium and potassium, and I'll let you know in another sixty years! My Vitamin D may help me avoid the flu, as well.

We'll see!

The Most Boring Thing You Can Do to Live Six Years Longer!

2011-05-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

It's flossing. No kidding.

Standing in the bathroom, in your bunny slippers, trying to get that skinny little string between your teeth.

And is it worthwhile? Well, yes.

While precise numbers are the subject of some dispute, six years more on the right side of the grass has been bandied about as a benefit of flossing.

If you don't floss, use a Sonicare Toothbrush; that's reputed to give you a lot of the benefits of flossing, without the string. There are studies!

And there are some studies that say that swishing Listerine Mouthwash (the kind with the old-school ingredients) between your teeth for sixty seconds also gives you many flossing benefits, without the string.

My suggestion: do all three. Doesn't cost you much, might help you a lot.

Does a Belief in God Make You Live Longer?

2011-05-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

Maybe.

There are studies suggesting that it does. There are studies suggesting that it doesn't.

Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn. If you go to Church because some study said it might make you live five years longer, you're missing the point!

Going to Church is its own reward, and those who try it as a medical therapy might well hate it, experience more stress, and therefore go earlier to their just reward!

During Mass this morning, our 95 year old priest, Father Tom, needed to take a bathroom break just before the Consecration of the Host. He tottered out of the Church on his little walker, clearly embarrassed that his physical shortcomings had interfered with his work, and came back a few minutes later to a thunderous ovation from everyone in the Church.

My best guess is that being loved, and feeling valued, is one of the reasons he's still up and moving when most have taken early check-out.

Longevity Studies: Threat or Menace?

2011-05-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Studies are interesting, particularly this longevity study.

And when I get a Round Tuit, I'll order the book based on that study, and page through it, sifting for information I can turn into action.

But aside from the unsurprising fact that unmarried guys have the life spans of mayflies (because we need keepers), and the unsurprising fact that women don't need to be married to live long (because Nature loves women, and tolerates men), I didn't run into a lot of information that was useful to me.

Now, some studies get my attention, and keep it. The study published in the 2001 Issue of The Lancet, which told us that the folks in the highest quartile for Vitamin C lived, on average, nine years longer than those in the lowest quartile...that study was useful.

Because after you read that study, you knew that you were going to go and get a vat of Vitamin C, because the precise mechanism of the life-extension is not important when you can get that many years on the right side of the grass with a pill that costs essentially nothing, and that has no adverse side effects unless you take so many at one time that you get benign osmosis-related diarrhea (although you won't think it's benign if it happens during a business meeting, I suspect).

And all of the studies since 1935 on the life-extending effects of caloric restriction without malnutrition were useful as well. The action plan is obvious: don't eat a bunch of empty calories, and if you feel like it, reduce caloric intake some moderate amount, while you pay close attention to make sure you're getting your vitamins and minerals.

And the studies out of Harvard on the life-extending effects of exercise have an action plan built right into them: find something you like and get moving, and stay at it!

So I'll keep you posted if I find a useful nugget in the longitudinal longevity study that was published recently, and if I do, we can both live longer!

Mother's Day, and My Health

2011-05-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Your mother brought you into this world, so if you're reading this, go give her a call and thank her.

When I was a kid, many years ago, my snot-nosed generation had no idea what our parents had done to keep us safe and alive during World War II, and we thought our parents were boring and knew zippola.

My mom was a cryptographer during the war, and my dad was Coast Guard. Other parents of my buddies made James Bond look like a wuss, but we had one thought for all of 'em: ordinary.

One characteristic of growing up in a family that was formerly military trained was this: while I was certainly permitted to think and believe anything I wanted, I was required to display respect and obedience. My mother (and father) believed that they were my parents, and not my friends. That changed a bit as I got older, although either one would have cheerfully knocked me through a wall if I'd showed disrespect to them, or used the language I acquired while digging ditches or at the University, in their home.

My mom was a nurse after the war, and she was smarter than doctors, as nurses must all be (I finally figured that out when I was on an ambulance crew, and watched more than once when an alert, focused, steely head nurse slapped a cardiac needle-tipped syringe into the hand of the sleepy, befuddled doctor). She was also trained that if a doctor entered a room and she was seated, she should immediately stand and give him her chair.

She never really adjusted well to that imperative.

Note: if you want to live, make sure your hospital has a very good nurse-patient ratio; the better the ratio, the better your chance of surviving your hospital stay.

My mom also wanted to make sure that we kids went to a Church; she never cared which Church, and we usually went without her, because she worked nights and Church Services were typically held during the sunny, sunny days, but we went or caught hell. I learned, by memory, a fair chunk of the King James Bible at various different Sunday Schools, and still believe that it contains inspired language. Some people don't like that translation, but the bland, committee driven language of many modern translations sounds to my ear like pablum, not the Word of God.

When I was still a kid in early primary school, my family was rear-ended by a drunk without insurance, and my mother's life was shattered.

Her neck was never the same, and ultimately she developed torticollis; the pain was extreme, and the head tremor was so extreme that she was never able to read for pleasure after the accident, which she regretted greatly. She was also embarrassed by the uncontrollable head tremors, so she began to withdraw from her social network after the accident, and that was sad to watch.

She ultimately took graveyard shifts working as a psychiatric aide at Arizona State Hospital, and I was periodically invited to the "Fair" that was occasionally given by the patients there; and back then, restraints were used frequently on particularly violent patients, and electroshock therapy, because psychotropic drugs had not yet reached their current state of development.

So the docs there used talking therapy on the patients who were able and willing to talk, and the rest spent a fair amount of time watching television. And everybody was well fed, and they were kept clean and safe, although they would have a difficult time of it if they attacked the caregivers.

Today, of course, we are more enlightened, and the chronically mentally ill wander the streets of large cities, and they make useful targets for predators of all kinds.

Progress is a wonderful thing.

After a while, my mother became semi-retired, and spent a fair amount of time doing what was called "registry work", which meant that she would sort of baby-sit rich folks who had puny parents. And because she had a sunny personality, she had all the work she wanted.

Ultimately, she destroyed her health by the simple expedient of her awful nutrition and her cigarette habit and her nocturnal employment preferences; no vitamin d will turn your bones to chalk, and that was one of her downfalls.

But given that she survived exclusively on caffeine and nicotine, and the occasional chunk of protein, she lasted a very long time, suffering extensively during her long decline, which was punctuated with heart attacks and mini- and maxi- strokes. She was a devotee of Jack LaLanne, and would fit exercise into her days in increments that she could tolerate, and her lifelong, dogged determination to exercise kept her alive long after she stopped having much fun.

Her iron will to rehabilitate herself was something I admired, although I wished she had been a little more skillful about her nutrition.

But my mother taught me the value of exercise and supplementation, both directly and indirectly, and she was a fanatical believer in the value of education, which she passed along to me.

All in all, she was exactly the right mother for me, and I miss her very much. I look forward to seeing her again, when Our Father calls me home.

Modern allopathic medicine is wonderful stuff, in its strong areas.

Alternative and complementary medicine have areas of strength, also.

But modern "mainstream" medicine is so clueless in some ways that it's always made nurses laugh.

Today's headline about honey, which has made the rounds of the media, is that honey kills germs.

While it's a news flash, all right, it is about 4,000 years late to be a scoop.

p.s. I'm not quite as dumb as I look. If you've been in an airplane crash, and every bone in your body is broken, you'd better be taken care of by an allopathic physician, because otherwise you'll die. If you have a head cold or a backache, there's little in his toolbox that's helpful.

Generally, for chronic conditions, I prefer folks trained in chiropractic, or naturopaths, or D.O.s, rather than M.D.s.

For acute conditions, get thee to an emergency room staffed with medical docs!

Sitting, Lethal? And Squatting the Best Exercise EVER?

2011-04-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

There were two useful articles in the New York Times recently about exercise.

One involved a discussion of sitting for long periods and its effect on, well, conditions leading to death; and another involved asking a lot of experts what was the single best exercise, period.

The anti-sitting article was straightforward and full of studies and statistics; but it wasn't terribly useful, although I loved the title (Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?), because it told us what we already knew.

If you are really, really inactive, you die sooner, and your life will be less nifty while you're on the right side of the grass.

In that sense, the article was like articles telling us that smoking would make us die; we already knew that, you know?

The article by Gretchen Reynolds about the single best exercise of all had more practical application, and I agreed with the expert who said that the single best exercise was the squat. Sort of.

The intellectual framework of the exercise article was nifty; one of the useful pieces of advice was that an exercise, to pass muster as "the best", needed to be sustainable. That let out a series of exercises that were painful and difficult.

One of the exercises that was the subject of fewer objections than others was the squat, which is a lot like its name.

I prefer a variation of the squat that is the preference of many serious martial artists (which I am not; I work at it, but I'll never be good at it). That variation involves standing in a squat position with no weights. For a long time. Practicing slow breathing exercises.

The most amazing martial artists of my acquaintance swear by it, and at it, on occasion.

On the other hand, the issue of the best exercise you can do in the least time to get the biggest bang for your time and effort is one that comes up frequently, and I've written about it myself.

And the squat made my short list, also.

So Why Doesn't He Just Eat AS THOUGH He Had a Bypass?

2011-04-10T16:07:00.000-07:00

I recently had a great conversation with a great guy who was as smart as a whip and highly sophisticated about medical issues.

He also weighed a little north of three-fifty, and he had more co-morbidities than a dog has fleas.

He also knew exactly how, given his particular genetic makeup, he could lose tons of weight; he'd already been on a carbohydrate restricted diet during one of his many hospital stays, and he'd lost body fat during that entire stay.

But the solution (and he'd give it a lot of thought and deliberation) that he'd come up with involved going to a center of excellence and getting a Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass, and living for the rest of his life on very small amounts of blender puree.

Now, is that ever a good idea for anybody?

Well, probably.

I have another buddy who's digging his grave with his teeth, and I worry about him because on some day, without any particular new warning, he'll wake up some morning dead of diabetic ketosis. Or a heart attack. Or a stroke.

And waking up dead is a bad way to start a day, you know?

Now, one of the problems with a gastric bypass of the sort that my buddy is contemplating is that you lose the ability to absorb some vitamins and minerals and other nutrients along with your reduced ability to absorb calories, which is a primary reason to have the surgery.

And if you stop absorbing Vitamin B-12, for instance, you may get to have a variety of senility that looks and sounds a lot like Alzheimer's, and that's a bad thing, particularly because I understand that reversing it is not easy.

Now, losing fat is a big pain in the behind, and I get that. I'm genetically gifted in weight loss, and I found the key for me when I saw the Hawaiian Vacation Photos; I just have to cut the beautiful Ms. Carbohydrate out of my life, no matter how seductive she is, and spend my time with her homely sister, Ms. Protein. And maybe cheat on her with Sally Spinach, which is sort of like a carbohydrate, but a carbohydrate that has so much fiber and so few calories is really not much of a carbohydrate at all, for purposes of my dumping fat.

And even though I finally figured out how to dump fat, every now and then I don't pay attention and pick up an additional fifteen pounds of fat, and then I pipe general quarters and get serious about the dumping project.

For me, if I've gotten sloppy about weighing every day, the warning signal is simply that my trousers are too darn tight.

And that makes it an emergency, so I do whatever it takes, and get it fixed.

Some people have more trouble than I do losing weight, and I feel for 'em; that's got to be a big pain in the behind, as well.

But if I needed a bypass, I think I'd want to try going first to the fasting farm at TrueNorth, or trying Atkins for a few months.

Or even getting my hands on a bypass patient's diet book, and living on that; and I'd ask myself, if I hate this a lot, do I really want to stay on this diet for the rest of my life?

But I'm not as stupid as I look; if I had a dozen co-morbidities and was a few weeks from a meeting with Mr. G. Reaper, I'd let 'em give me the gastric bypass, which would cause my blood sugar to normalize, and which would by necessity make me lose weight, which would make my heart work better, and then my arthritis and my gout would improve, and...you get the idea; everything would work better.

But first I like to think I'd get a book with a title like "Eating Well After Weight Loss Surgery" and see what eating in exactly that way tasted and felt like, and then I'd see if I could trick myself into pretending I'd actually had the surgery; so I'd get most of the benefits, with none of the detriments!

p.s. recently I've heard announcers on the radio pitching gastric banding as an easy, certain, cool and hip way to lose weight. I was horrified. Surgery can be a miraculous tool in appropriate cases; but it shouldn't be Plan "A"!

p.p.s. I run into some folks every now and then who are "more healthy than thou." They think that because they have good health habits, they're better human beings.

They are not, by the way, morally superior human beings. They are also not necessarily smarter (both of my morbidly obese buddies have genius-level I.Q.s).

On the other hand, folks with good health habits often have a little more energy at the end of the day, and tend not to wake up dead with quite as much frequency, which is a good thing.

And more importantly, people who have the entire collection of nifty health habits tend to feel better during the course of each and every day they're on the correct side of the grass.

On the other hand, some of us just decided to get to a healthy weight because we saw the darned Hawaiian Vacation Photos.

Never underestimate the power of simple vanity. Especially when those darned high-school reunions keep coming around!

p.s. I loved this story about a woman who lost over a hundred pounds by following four simple tips from her doctor.

Trader Joe's All Natural Toothpaste with...Fennel, Propolis and MYRRH?

2011-04-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

I like it when I see a place where I can buy a "natural" toothpaste, because I hate sodium lauryl sulfate, and that's a component of "unnatural" toothpastes, one and all.

Essentially all mass-produced toothpastes contain the stuff, even though many folks (like me) are sensitive to it, and it may increase the frequency of canker sores, which are not nearly as much fun as their press agent say they are.

Enter Trader Joe's to the rescue: their all natural AntiPlaque Toothpaste with fennel, propolis and myrrh, which is the weirdest prescription for a toothpaste I ever ran into, doesn't have the offending goo.

It does have fennel, propolis, and myrrh.

Why?

Well, fennel is an herb, and it kills germs. Something that kills germs in your mouth is presumably a pretty good thing, because germs there cause gingivitis, tooth decay, and bad breath.

Propolis is made by bees, and kills...germs. Do you sense a trend here?

And myrrh, which you all remember from Vacation Bible School, isn't just for breakfast anymore.

Now, I don't want you to fall too deeply in love with this product, as I have, because Trader Joe's sometimes stops making or selling an item if it doesn't sell well.

Myself, I bought four tubes. Just to be on the safe side.

Reading Your Own Obituary Is a Surprisingly Sobering Experience

2011-04-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

I think about health and longevity a lot; not quite as much as I think about bankruptcy, but a lot, in any case.

And whenever a buddy of mine has another heart surgery, or goes through chemo, I think again about health and how to stay functional as long as I can; because I love a lot of people, and I want to keep them in my life, and to help them as much and as long and as well as I can.

And that last paragraph discusses keeping people "in my life", which presupposes...life!

Now, Google has an interesting tool that provides "alerts" when your name shows up on the internet.

And I recently received an alert telling me that my name showed up someplace new on the internet! Naturally, I thought it was a press release about my being named to "Arizona's Finest Lawyers", or a comment on another bankruptcy blog, or maybe a wikipedia reference (footnote 3) to my Shotokan Karate Blog (I ran into one of those recently and realized that I was now officially famous!).

It wasn't any of those things. Instead, when I clicked on the link to "Joseph McDaniel", I saw this; I decided to light a candle this Sunday for my namesake, who I never met, and to make sure I get in my vitamins and exercise today, and to tell everybody I love that I loved them, today:

Obituary

Joseph L. McDaniel

FLORA - Joseph L. McDaniel, 72, Flora, former owner/co-operator McDaniel Transit, died Wednesday (March 30, 2011). Graveside services: noon Saturday, Golden Cemetery, Louisville. No visitation. Arrangements by: Frank & Bright Funeral Home, Flora. Memorials: Clay County Cancer Support Group. Send condolences: www.frankand bright.com.

Published in Decatur Herald & Review on April 1, 2011

Sinus Rinse by NeilMED Should Win the Nobel Peace Prize. Really.

2011-03-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

I've written previously about the use of saline solutions to rinse out sinus cavities using a gravity feed approach.

But there's a better mousetrap in town, and it looks like nothing special, but it rinses sinuses like a loving, supportive, non-irritating firehose.

It's totally cool!

The product is simply called "Sinus Rinse" by NeilMED, and it is a Godsend to those of us living in Pollen Central.

Now, a lot of people who have never had allergies make fun of allergy sufferers, and that's okay. We know where you live.

But really, if you have allergies, you need this product!

It's nothing more remarkable than a medium sized translucent plastic bottle, with a nosepiece attached to a fairly wide tube that goes down to the bottom of the squeeze bottle.

You put a pre-mixed "sachet" of salt and baking soda in the bottle, fill it to the mark, and then put in the tube/nosepiece combo and screw it down.

Then you put the nosepiece up to your nose and squeeze.

The results are dramatic. The saline solution travels up one nostril, and out the other. In one glorious rush of salt water.

Note: the correct sequence is lean forward over the sink, and then squeeze. Don't think about squeezing and then leaning. You'll only get it wrong once, of course.

Then you repeat with the other nostril.

The effect is to get everything out of your superficial sinuses that doesn't belong there, and to do it quickly and easily with no muss and fuss.

It is so simple that it's hard to explain why it's so much better than a cup full of salt water sniffed up your nose and spit out your mouth.

You'll just have to take my word on this; it's an amazing product, and my current plan is to buy about twenty of 'em, just in case they ever stop production.

Does Exercise Keep You Young?

2011-03-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

I always enjoy it when common sense becomes front page news.

For instance, we recently saw a lovely article saying that a scientist had discovered that mutant mice aged far more slowly if they exercised.

Let's give that a moment of thought.

This is news how?

Does anybody remember things called "cigarettes"?

They used to be very popular.

And everybody with half a brain knew perfectly well that they would, eventually, kill you. Hence their sobriquet.

"Coffin Nails."

Remember?

In the same way, exercise has always had a series of nicknames, including the fountain of youth. Which it's not, exactly. Even if you exercise, you will still die.

You'll just die a lot farther down the line, and you'll look a lot prettier in your coffin.

Remember Jack LaLanne?

Now, can you think of anybody else who looks great at an age when most folks would fit right in for a "People of Walmart" Photo Shoot?

How about one of my personal favorites, Lillian Muller?

How about Sly Stalone?

Or Suzanne Somers?

Or Sensei Shojiro Koyama, who is only about 73 in this clip; he's had a few birthdays since this video.

I worked with a personal trainer who goes by "Sarge"; he's an old black guy who looks like a young black guy, and after his stint in the military, is awesome at teaching old guys how to reestablish muscle without awful side-effects, like soreness, joint issues, and hernias.

The technique he uses is simple, because he doesn't want to drive away clients by making them cripples for days after a workout: he starts people with a weight light enough that they can do a lot of repetitions. When they are able to do 100 repetitions, he moves up the weight by the smallest possible increment, and then keeps that as the goal until they can do 100 repetitions with the slightly larger weight. Rinse, repeat.

Another trainer (and advanced martial arts instructor) in Arizona is a gentleman named Mack Newton, who runs an exercise class that is not for the faint of heart, but which has been known to work miracles in difficult cases. His approach to exercise emphasizes body-weight exercises like mountain-climbers. Lots and lots of mountain climbers.

Now, don't go to a gym and put yourself in the hospital by working out without getting clearance from your doctor.

And start gentle, because you don't want to give yourself an excuse to quit.

Recruit your emotions and your vices, and use them to get leverage on yourself so that you don't quit.

For instance, find a belt. Take a look at it. If your belt is like most men's belts, it has a wear pattern that shows how much you've gained since you bought it.

Think about how long it's taken to gain the weight, and plan on taking it off over the same time period.

And monitor everything you do to see if you're getting results. Remember to use a Tanita Scale, because you want to have a baseline when you start, and to know that you are 40% body fat, and you want to get to watch as you move to 15% body fat. Hard to tell without your Tanita!

And take your time; be gentle with yourself, and bribe yourself with mental pictures of how young you're going to be, and how happy, when you reverse your own aging process!

p.s. after you do exercise for six weeks or so, you'll be lighter, stronger, and more functional. You'll be younger in a lot of different ways. And you're going to want to keep it up for your entire life, because that's a good idea. You'll need to develop workarounds, of course, because eventually you'll get a hitch in your gitalong, and you'll need to find a different way to exercise that bundle of muscles.

The Maltese Falcon and "The Fat Man"

2011-03-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

There is a brilliant book, which was turned into a brilliant movie, called "The Maltese Falcon".

The acting is brilliant, the camerawork is better, and the dialogue is snappy.

It speaks to an earlier, simpler time when cops sweated your story of you overnight, everybody smoked cigarettes as a matter of course, and guys knocked each other out with one punch just because they could.

But there was one aspect of the movie that reminded me of modern times; when Bogie was ratting out the bad guys to the cops at the end of the movie, he referred to Gutman and said, "You can't miss him. He must weight three hundred pounds!"

And in 1941, when people worked more with their hands, walked more, and knocked each other out with frequency, people didn't get as fat as they do now; after all, they didn't have high-fructose corn syrup or hundred-ounce thirst quenchers, sometimes called "liquid candy".

Note: do not try practicing to knock people out; it's not as easy as it looks, and people don't take it as lightly as they did in 1941. Besides, they may knock you out, and that could result in chipped or missing teeth, and that's a serious health problem! And don't even get me started on concussions!

Back to obesity: there is a series of photographs, called "The People of Walmart", which depicts a number of interesting clothing choices, in connection with a lot of obesity.

But it is clear that simply suggesting, today, that you can't miss somebody because he must weigh three hundred pounds is an inadequate description.

What are the reasons for the huge obesity epidemic?

Well, my personal favorite villain is high-fructose corn syrup; it's just not something that most people process very well, and for some folks, it triggers fat conservation that's remarkable. And makes "Gutman" from The Maltese Falcon look like a ballerina.

Surprisingly, cigarettes will kill you, but you will probably weigh less in your coffin; note that people have known approximately forever that cigarettes would help keep your weight down, and that cigarettes would kill you eventually (hence, "coffin nails"). Note that I DO NOT suggest smoking as a way to reduce weight.

There are also antidepressant drugs that have, as a side effect, massive weight gain. I've seen people change from ballerina to Person of Walmart status in as little as a year, with an upper weight of more than Gutman on a five foot frame; this is not a good thing.

Another reason for obesity is the fairly crazy conviction that spaghetti and other pasta meals are good for you. Since they tend to spike blood sugar, they tend to increase fat formation and retention.

Putting it a different way, if you tend to eat spinach, for instance, with meat, or chicken, or fish, you tend to lose fat. Or green beans. Or any other green vegetable with zip calories and lots of fiber.

And I intended to say fat, not muscle; one of the things you want to lose on a fat loss program is fat, not muscle. So check what you're doing while you're doing it with a Tanita Scale, so you know whether you're losing water weight, fat, or muscle.

I would avoid a juice fast (which is really a juice orgy) with as much enthusiasm as I would avoid smoking. Because both of 'em are very bad for you! An ordinary water fast seems to be a useful tool for some people, and a once or twice a week fast day has been a fixture in a number of world religions. My guess is that fasting while drinking plenty of water, if approved by your doctor, could be a helpful way to dump fat.

And I know someone who fasted for a month under medical supervision, drinking only water, and they were a good deal healthier thereafter; but that's the sort of extreme solution that really, really has to be undertaken only under medical supervision.

And recently I've heard reports of folks who have been defeating their lap banding procedures, simply by eating all the time, and specifically eating liquid ice cream.

Sorry, that just seems silly to me; why spend money on a stomach stapling or banding procedure, and then defeat the result by changing your eating habits to get around your reduced stomach size?

Oh, well. Everybody needs a hobby.

Gutman's was the Maltese Falcon.

Texting is Very Dangerous to Your Health

2011-02-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

Particularly when you're driving!

So there I was, waiting for the light to change. And it changed. And, as my driving instructor had told me those many years ago, I didn't jam my foot on the gas, because that's a bad idea.

And those driver's ed classes just paid for themselves again, because as I was easing my foot down on that gas, a nice gentleman (the "pre-corpse") zipped through the intersection at high speed, after the yellow, and after the red was quite red, thank you very much.

Was the nice gentleman merely stupid? Yes, and no.

He appeared to be about thirty-five, well-dressed, well-nourished and bilaterally symmetrical; and well-focused on the telephone in his hand, upon which he was texting.

Now, if a hot blond had just sent him a spicy photo by electronic transmission to his cell phone, I could understand his distraction.

But it was still stupid.

If the bank had told him that they'd accepted his offer to modify his mortgage, I could understand his distraction.

But it was still stupid.

IF you are going to take early check-out of this particular life, that's jake by me; I can't stop you.

But don't do it in a way that may take other people with you!

That's just poor planning.

p.s. I absolutely get it that being constantly in touch by way of emails and text messages and cell phones is addictive; and I don't care if you're simply rude, talking loudly in the restaurant or texting like a demon there. We'll all talk about you, of course. But if you are texting when you are driving, you will get squashed as you deserve, like the bug that you are.

And if you're driving a so-called "smart car" that weighs as much as a toaster?

God help you!

Arizona Group Collects for Organ Transplants; Public Service Announcement

2011-01-30T06:20:00.000-08:00

A group of heavy-hitters in Arizona, some of them former organ-transplant recipients, has formed a group to collect dough to fund organ transplants in Arizona. It's called the New Life Society.

And here's an article about the group.

Here's their facebook page; I'll be joining as soon as I get finished with this post.

Okay, I'm back. Now, go and join this thing, because why not? It doesn't cost to click; in fact, joining their facebook page is just a nice thing to do. And if you can kick 'em a couple of bucks, well, it might count as a contribution to a charitable organization and help you pass the Means Test so you can file a bankruptcy! Check with your attorney, of course; I only practice in Arizona. And I never guarantee that the sky is blue.

Why do I care whether people contribute to a group that helps people get transplants? Well, I have a buddy who walks around with another guy's heart in his chest, and the world is a better place with him in it.

I just wish I could convince him to stop smoking!

Niacin for High Blood Pressure? And CANCER PREVENTION?

2011-01-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

I already knew that niacin had some nifty effects.

For one thing, it increases the amount of good cholesterol more than any other drug, according to Mayo Clinic! It also reduces BAD cholesterol!

And note: I called it a "drug" because that's what the Mayo Article called it; but remember that while you can call it a drug if you want, you can also call it a...vitamin!

Now, when you take a gram of the stuff, you'll probably experience an interesting side-effect, which is an intense flush that spreads over your neck and face, and makes you look as though you're...blushing. It's transient, and it goes away over an hour or so, and it's more intense in some people than others.

Some people hate it, and some like it. A lot. Like me. It reminds me of the point in my life when I had something called "circulation".

But I was surprised to hear the following story from a good friend: he had very high blood pressure, and he was on pills for that condition.

He wanted off the pills for high blood pressure, because even though he didn't want to have a stroke, he also wanted Willy to be Free! Many of the drugs for high blood pressure have a side effect that men, in particular, hate and fear.

So, without talking to his doc, he substituted niacin for his blood pressure meds every other day for a month, and monitored the results with a home blood pressure cuff every six hours or so.

That worked fine for him, so then he substituted niacin for the blood pressure pills on the alternate days as well, for a month.

Then he went to the doc, who said that his blood pressure was now fully controlled; and then he fessed up to the doc. His doctor was smart enough that he knew about niacin, and the doctor pointed out that the niacin would help his cholesterol issues as well as his high blood pressure.

BUT DO NOT DO IT THE WAY HE DID IT; THAT'S JUST STUPID!

Instead, if you prefer the HDL-increasing, flush-promoting effects of niacin to the stuff your doc is currently giving you for high-blood pressure, talk to your doc about it.

Take your doctor copies of studies showing that niacin makes HDL go up, LDL go down, and blood pressure go down.

Since all of those are good things, your doc should be more than willing to let you take a shot, because it may get you off of both your blood pressure meds and your cholesterol medicines!

And if your doctor is unwilling to talk to your about it, well, track down a doctor who knows about this stuff, and is willing to talk to you about it.

Mind you, the doc won't be able to spend much time talking to you about it, because a general practitioner needs to "visit" with eleven patients an hour to make enough dough to buy beanie-weanie, but you and the doc can talk fast, you know?

p.s. there's an interesting recent study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which says, generally speaking, that folks with higher levels of HDL (good cholesterol), there were lower levels of cancer. That is, as the HDL amounts increased, cancer rates dropped.

Now, that's the sort of study that makes doctors say, "More studies are needed!" It's the sort of study that makes me say, "Where's the niacin, honey?"

Vitamin D Cuts Your Chances of Flu in HALF!

2011-01-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

When I talk about vitamins, I often hear the paid-for propaganda of Big Pharma: "these are not the Droids you are looking for. You do not need to take vitamins if you eat a healthy diet."

On the other hand, when Yale University speaks, many people listen. And according to Men's Health Magazine, a study at Yale University showed that the folks with the highest blood levels of vitamin d had half the chance of catching the flu, and that the flu was less severe if they did catch it!

Which, if you think about it, is the reason that winter is flu season (normally, humans can generate some vitamin d when their sun is struck by sunlight, but in the winter the sunlight is weaker, so less gets generated; and remember that some places are cold enough that everybody with survival instincts stays indoors in a parka!).

p.s. that study reminds me of my favorite study of all time, published in The Lancet in 2001, which said that folks in the top quartile for blood levels of vitamin c lived, on average, nine years longer than those in the bottom quartile.

p.p.s. when I talk to people I love about taking vitamins, and they laugh and start talking about expensive urine, I still love them. I just know they're still hypnotized.

p.p.p.s. the reason that the Lancet study is my favorite is simple; it avoids any controversy over the mechanism whereby vitamin c extends life. Maybe Linus Pauling was right and vitamin c cures the most common kind of heart disease. Maybe it prevents the spread of cancer by making tissues stronger, so the tumors stay isolated longer. Maybe cancer cells suck up more vitamin c than healthy cells and go kaboom in the night. I don't care why vitamin c makes people live longer! I just know that I'll keep taking a couple of horse pills (grams) of vitamin c every morning, night, and whenever else I think of it.

I want to average at least five grams a day, and much more when I'm sick and my bowel tolerance level for vitamin c goes up.

And yes, that topic is quite gross, but far less gross than death from heart disease, or cancer, nine years earlier than it needs to be.

Jack LaLanne Finally Ruins His Image.

2011-01-23T21:52:00.000-08:00

Jack LaLanne was famous, among other things, for saying that he can't die because it would ruin his image.

Well, so much for his image. He only made it to 96.

On the other hand, there is no question in my mind that St. Peter is going to be in much better shape from now on.

Along with the entire Harp Section of the Heavenly Marching Band.

Artificial Will Power and Synthetic Determination!

2011-01-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

I recently read a very interesting book that spent a lot of pages describing in detail how helpful it is to do one-armed push-ups and one-legged squats.

As of today, by the way, I do not routinely do one-armed push-ups and one-legged squats. Putting it another way, I'm sixty, and I've never trained for those in the past; if I develop the ability to do them, you'll be the first to know.

The book I read was written by Pavel Tsatsouline, and is called The Naked Warrior. It also contains advertising for other materials by the same author, but that didn't bother me in the slightest.

In fact, I liked the book quite a bit, even though it taught, with a lot of fanfare, exactly two exercises, and variations on that theme.

But there is great value in that motivational approach; after all, there are a lot of great exercises, and there are a ton of magnificent exercise machines.

And in general, exercises of all sorts aren't practiced, and exercise machines, from Nordic Tracks to Bowflexes, are used as coat-racks. Kettlebells aren't usually used as coat-racks. If kettlebells are not used as exercise devices, those are better suited to life as door-stops. And if they are coated with an anti-rust surface, boat anchors.

Now, any of the above exercise machines and devices, and many more, are wonderful for building many kinds of fitness. Just wonderful!

Old-time strongmen had to improvise, and often had accidents involving gravity, which is a harsh mistress. Or accidents involving cannons (note to self: do one-armed pushups; do not do the trick with the cannon).

There is, however, a somewhat extreme option to force yourself to exercise, and I have used it in the past, and I will use it in the future.

It is called a "personal trainer".

Now, everybody I have trained with was the best. Not because I'm smart. I'm just lucky.

I found "Sarge" by blundering into his gym after I went to the doc for the sniffles. And he, after all that time with raw recruits, was very helpful in providing motivation. And, since I'd paid him, I was darned if I was going to miss a session. And since I liked him, I wasn't going to miss a session, and thereby disappoint him!

And beside, I certainly didn't want to make him angry!

The same sort of analysis worked for me and Sensei Shojiro Koyama, who is extraordinary. Actually, there's not even a word to accurately describe his remarkable qualities. But that's a topic for a different blog.

Now, not all of you are as lucky as me, but there are personal trainers where you live.

What are the critical characteristics of a personal trainer, from your perspective?

Well, it might be nice if they knew how to use the machines in their gym. You know?

More importantly, they need to know how to gradually move you up the food chain; if they push you so hard that you are injured, or excessively sore after Day One, you might just quit!

The third item, and by far the most important, is that you like them. Some.

Because in a commercial gym of the most common sort, a personal trainer is half-trainer, half-salesman. His job is to make you feel guilty if you don't show up, and to make sure you don't quit. Training or paying.

So you will, more often than not, show up!

As Woody Allen said, Ninety per cent of life is showing up!

And I tend to agree with that statement.

Now, don't sign up with the first gym or personal trainer you find in your neighborhood. Do some research, and actually read whatever agreement they want you to sign; if your answer on the contract has to be today, a good answer is "no".

But once you're wired in to a series of classes that cost you money, and that you schedule with your trainer, you're likely to actually show up at the gym, because you know that your trainer will otherwise lose income which is important to him.

Which is why the likability of your trainer is really fairly important to you.

Actually, really, really important. In effect, the eeevil gym says, "Show up or the fluffy pink trainer starves!" And that functions as a substitute for will power and determination for you, until you grow your own.

Now, is there a reason for you to show up at the gym and do a conventional workout there?

Absolutely.

Is the conventional workout you get at a gym with your trainer likely to be a perfect workout for you?

Well, of course not. You are probably not yet an expert in the entire range of exercises available in the world, and you don't know from experience which exercises work best for you, and you don't know which exercises will tend to correct your particular weaknesses.

Fortunately, if you are a complete couch potato, you are a complete and integrated bundle of weaknesses.

Is your cardio lousy? Check. Is your upper-body strength miserable? Check. Is your lower-body strength missing? Check. Is your flexibility inflexible? Check.

So almost anything the trainer has you do will be of great benefit for a year or so! And after that, your car will know the way to the gym by heart, and so will you.

And workouts will become a habit for you.

Habits are often good, if they don't involve nicotine or alcohol or heroin or pizza.

Now, a fairly common way a trainer might work with you after the first few weeks is the following: sticking you on an exercise bike or treadmill of some sort for half an hour, just to get you sweaty and warmed up a bit.

Then a tour of the machines around the gym, with a stop at the machines that work your biggest muscle groups.

The way "Sarge" worked with me was, I thought, pretty smart. He had me work with a series of exercises, and the resistance was set looooooooow! His goal for me was to get me to a point where I could do a hundred reps on all of the major muscle group exercises, and that worked pretty well for me.

When we got to a hundred reps on any given exercise, we moved the weight up by the smallest possible increment, and the number of reps nosedived, and then we started toward a hundred again.

That's a pretty good approach for an old guy like me, because the chances that I was going to hurt myself (and quit training) were about zero, and the chances that I would experience improvement in a number of vectors (body fat percentage, strength, muscular endurance) were about 100 per cent!

The curve of improvement was also very fast, so that was a good thing!

Now, do I want you to do exactly that?

Nope.

Do any sort of exercise you want!

But prepare yourself for success. Read ten books on exercise, and on the specific sorts of exercise you want to do.

You'll feel overwhelmed by information, but just let it wash over you.

Because if you currently do zero exercise, and move to any exercise whatsoever, you have made a huge improvement.

And monitor your results!

Be especially careful not to confuse weight with body-fat percentage. When you start to work with resistance exercise of any sort, you will lose inches, and not lose pounds, at first.

That's because you will be building muscle (which weighs more than fat). Because you will at first be building muscle and losing fat, your weight won't go down much at first; but your inches will, because muscle takes up less space than fat.

Also note that you want to start to monitor (don't try to change it yet) the food that you eat.

And is there a reason that you should do some sort of exercise, so you become stronger, more flexible, and breathe better?

Well, to steal a phrase from a hair color commercial, you're worth it!

p.s. I have watched many people age, as you have. I have a number of friends who are further along the aging path than I am. All are walking schoolbooks. Some are cautionary tales: do not smoke five packs of cigarettes every day of your life, because you will need to drag an oxygen tank behind your muscle-wasted, smelly, yellow-tooth-stained self, right?

Some are exemplary tales of The Physical Culture Saints: do resistance exercise and aerobic exercise and monitor all you are, even if your self-monitoring is just refusal to grow into the next larger size!

I know folks who look and feel three decades younger than their chronological ages, partly because they continue to exercise, and that's a good goal!

And I know you can do it!

p.p.s. I have written previously about the quickest, easiest way I could think of to keep the Demon Sarcopenia at bay. Any version of progressive resistance training is a remarkably good idea for those of us who plan on passing over only after St. Peter has dragged us to heaven, kicking and screaming and dragging the ground behind us with our fingernails, when we are 120 years old. And after we have died of precisely no particular cause whatsoever.

Remember that sarcopenia is one of the easiest to read biomarkers of aging, and that if you can maintain your muscle mass with any sort of progressive resistance training, you will be, effectively, younger than if you...well, waste away!

So Which New Year's Resolution Did You Make? Perfect Weight for Longevity, or Vitamins for Longevity? Consider BOTH!

2011-01-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

Now, my personal New Year's Resolution is to watch the calendar more closely next year, so I have time to MAKE some New Year's Resolutions!

But a lot of people resolve to reach their perfect weight, without having a clue how to determine their perfect weight.

And others make a resolution to take vitamins and supplements, without having a clue which vitamins to take so that they feel better and live longer.

So here is my input on both topics: perfect weight, and vitamins!

Do X-Rays Cause Cancer? Should the TSA Force X-Ray Exposure on Frequent Flyers?

2010-11-29T08:40:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, x-rays were discovered, and x-ray machines were adopted as a diagnostic tool; after all, without the x-rays, how you gonna set that broken arm?

But besides being diagnostic, they were also declared to be healthy, so they were used to cure all sorts of diseases and conditions, sort of like an electromagnetic Lourdes.

X-rays were also pressed into service for big stuff (x-raying girders to see if the welds were good), and little stuff, like the shoe-and-foot x-rays that were in so many shoe stores when I was growing up.

Then somebody figured out that x-rays caused cancer, and the party was over.

There is a fairly clear risk-and-benefit calculation associated with diagnostic x-rays these days, and in particular there are rules for determining how much radiation pregnant women should endure.

The calculus of safety is an interesting calculus. Apparently, any increase in x-ray exposure will result in an increase in cancer rates, so the next interesting question is this: how much safer do the TSA x-ray machines make U.S. Citizens, and how many absolutely predictable cases of cancer will result from increased exposure to radiation?

There is another variation of the question: how many air travelers will simply avoid U.S. travel, and how much will that cost industries that rely on those travelers?

It will be interesting to watch statistics shift over time, as more folks are exposed to more radiation. Apparently, it will take ten to fifteen years for new cases of cancer to show up after x-ray exposure, or any radiation exposure, so politicians ten or fifteen years from now will get to explain to unhappy survivors or unhappier families exactly why these x-ray machines were the best tools for the job.

Myself, I'd rather see more dogs; dogs are nice, you know?

And since some dogs have been trained to sniff out cancer, we could reduce death rates from cancer by cross-training Airport Detection Dogs to find both explosives and cancer!

And folks could lower their blood pressure by petting the dogs!

A Tri-fecta!

The Top Ten Multivitamins Available in the United States

2010-11-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

I recently ran into a bundle of well-meaning health articles; some of them said that there was little evidence that taking multivitamins did any good, some said they might do some uncertain scary damage to you, and others had an opinion that many people taking multivitamins didn't really need them.

And I agree; many people don't need multi-vitamins and minerals, particularly if they don't care whether they live or die, or about the quality of their lives.

This one drives me a little crazier than most, because the cost/benefit analysis of daily vitamins and minerals is so obvious! And there are a million studies showing benefit from multivitamin use, but they tend to sink beneath the waves without a trace. Here's one, for instance, and here's another; did you ever hear about these studies?

On the one hand, what happens if you take a multivitamin/multimineral that you don't need?

Well, you just wasted four pennies, and your urine is that much healthier.

And what happens if you are among the sixty percent of U.S. Citizens who are deficient in Vitamin D during the winter? Or the sixty per cent who get inadequate Vitamin C every day? Or the many who get inadequate selenium?

Well, let's look at it.

Statistically, you are overwhelmingly most likely to die of heart disease (first) or cancer (second).

After that, it's the also-rans.

What would happen if you could take a pill with an ingredient that reduced your risk of most kinds of cancer by almost half?

What would happen if you could take a pill with an ingredient proven to make you live nine years longer than you would otherwise?

Well, you know the answers to those questions already. And the price of those pills would be amazingly high! And doctors and hospitals would be sued, routinely, for failing to prescribe them, or failing to administer them.

Now, here's the funny part.

The ingredient in multivitamins/multiminerals that will make you live nine years longer is Vitamin C. There's some of that in a multi; probably enough to move you into top quartile of folks who live nine years longer, all according to the brilliantly conducted study reported in 2001 in the Lancet.

And you say you'd like to reduce your chances of cancer of almost all kinds by almost half? That was the result in the study conducted in Arizona, and the mineral was selenium (200 mcg per day). Selenium has been heavily studied for cancer prevention. It doesn't work against skin cancer, by the way.

And have you heard that most folks are Vitamin D deficient in the winter, and that's why epidemics of influenza take place in the wintertime? Of course, people in northern latitudes tend to be Vitamin D deficient year round, and folks who work indoors and live indoors all of their lives. Oh, and folks who wear clothes over essentially all of their bodies.

Now, there's a chance that you're not currently deficient in Vitamin C, although not a big chance. Essentially zero chance, if you're a smoker, or around smokers.

There's a chance that you get enough selenium to cut your chances of cancer in half. Particularly if you eat brazil nuts, and if those brazil nuts come from the correct part of Brazil. If.

And there's a chance that you aren't deficient in Vitamin D, if you eat a lot of lightly cooked liver, or a very small amount of polar bear liver.

So, do you drink a giant glass of orange juice every day, along with your brazil nuts and tiny portion of polar bear liver?

Now, I'm sometimes a betting man, especially if I'm playing Zynga Poker, because the stakes don't mean anything! I can afford to be a wild and crazy guy, and take Agent 007-level risks!

But if the states are death, never go in against a Sicilian! Sorry. Princess Bride moment.

But sometimes the stakes are death. And there are people I love, and I want to be with them as long as I can manage, and not become an excessive burden.

Do you feel lucky?

I don't, particularly.

And so the very least I do for my health is supplementing with multivitamin/multimineral pills. And if I'm traveling and I don't have easy access to the bunchapills I normally take, I feel pretty safe if I double up on my multi. Or triple up.

Now, what's the very best multi you can take?

And that's a pretty good question, but not a perfect question.

A better question is, what's the very best multi-vitamin/mineral tablet that you are likely to pay for, and that is immediately available to you as you blindly sprint through the drug store or the Big Box Everything store?

And that is a pretty good question. But I don't need the very best multivitamin multimineral on the planet, because I'll be changing brands every time I run out of the gigantic, inexpensive vat of multis that I take, and that I jam down the throat of anybody in the vicinity.

Can you find a lousy brand of vitamin, and can you pay too much for your vitamins?

Sure, if you work at it really hard. But bear in mind that the one area where the money you pay the feds is not entirely wasted all the time is in the Food and Drug Administration; if they could find a vitamin pill being sold that wasn't good for you, they'd take it off the market and brag about their heroism until you died. Of boredom.

And that's confirmed by the Consumer Reports study of the contents of vitamins. They didn't find harmful stuff, and most of 'em dissolved properly, and one of 'em had about 25% less of a nutrient than was listed on the label.

Recap: most multivitamins dissolve fine, and contain most of what they say they contain, and don't contain excessive levels of plutonium.

So here are my requirements for a multi: I want as high a dose of Vitamin C and Vitamin D as mad scientists can jam into the thing, and I want to get close to 200 mcg of selenium. After that, it's all gravy. And my preference is for a one pill package, although I'll buy Trader Joe's Super Crusade Vitamins, because they have around 200 mg of Vitamin C, even if I have to pop two pills.

But if I find Centrum Silver, I may grab that, even though they don't have nearly as high a dose of C as I'd like, or selenium. On the other hand, if I pop four of 'em, I'm covered!

Or if I find a Kirkland House Brand Multi, I may well buy that. The Vitamin C level is a little better, although the selenium is still low. But the price is great, and it fills in any major deficiencies.

Or a OneADay Product on Amazon; I like convenience as well as the next guy!

What is the Function of a Multi-Vitamin Multi-Mineral?

I'm glad you asked.

It's to provide a cheap, easy insurance policy.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that you have multiple sub-clinical vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and that you function pretty well right now.

On the other hand, a car will go a long, long way without an oil change.

And then the engine dies, and you get to buy a new engine.

Buying a new engine after you drive your body into a ditch is not as smart as it could be, in a number of ways.

How Would I Know If I Had A Vitamin Deficiency?

Well, you probably wouldn't. Until your transmission fell out.

Once you are fully deficient in a particular vitamin, bad things happen; but you can limp along, in very bad shape, for a very long time, before the baling wire and duct tape gives way.

Think Columbo's car, right?

You don't want to be Columbo's car, do you?

Conclusion: Take Your Multivitamins and Multiminerals and Eat Your Veggies!

If you eat a perfect diet, as set out in a book like The 120 Year Diet by Roy Walford, you probably don't need vitamin supplements. If the food you eat was grown in soil rich in selenium, and several other minerals. Do you eat a perfect diet?

I don't! I can't do a bin-packing math problem that complex!

p.s. you may have noticed that I didn't give you a list of the top ten mulitvitamin and multiminerals available in the United States. If you want to compare 'em, go see the Consumer Reports comparison of 21 products. And you'll notice that comparing the amounts of vitamins and minerals in each product makes watching paint dry seem very, very exciting.

Meet Me Halfway, Okay? Take Your Vitamins and LIVE!!!!!!!!

2010-11-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

I still read articles suggesting that it's a good idea to try to get all your vitamins and minerals and trace minerals from your food.

Turns out that it's entirely possible; it's what the numbers guys call a "bin-packing problem".

For instance, there's no difficulty getting all your required vitamins and minerals and trace minerals in a meal every day.

As long as that meal weighs sixty pounds, and contains six zillion calories.

If you read The 120-Year Diet, you'll understand the focus you have to bring to the party to meet your minimum nutritional needs within any conceivable healthy caloric limit.

And you aren't that focused, and neither am I.

So if you do nothing else, take a muscular multi-vitamin/multi-mineral every day, okay?

Is that really going to help you any?

Uh, yeah.

Watch how I get there.

Apparently, sixty per cent of the population doesn't get even the pathetically small rda of Vitamin C.

The folks in the highest quartile for blood levels of Vitamin C live, on average, NINE YEARS LONGER than the folks in the lowest quartile, according to the study published in the Lancet in 2001.

A serious, heavy duty vitamin/mineral will provide at least the rda of Vitamin C that you should be taking every day.

Perhaps enough to move you from the bottom to the top of the quartiles, and therefore enough to get you the extra nine years on the correct side of the grass that you deserve so richly.

So, yeah, take a vitamin every day.

And eat your veggies.

p.s. some good multi-vitamins/multi-minerals require you to take two per day; read the bottle! You can only jam so much goodness into so much space, right?

Brain Fitness Made Easy

2010-11-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

Sure, you believed "made easy", didn't you?

Well, at least it's not as bad as digging ditches in the hot, hot sun, which is pretty far from easy.

There are several approaches to keeping your brain working as you age.

One is nutritional. In general, if you eat only noodles with salt, you may have a problem. All the salt will often contribute to high blood pressure, and all the noodles will contribute to diabetes. Both are bad for brain function.

Then there's Vitamin B12; if you eat only vegetarian foods, there's a good chance that you're missing out on your B12, and that can lead to pseudo-senility. In fact, I wonder how many cases diagnosed as Alzheimer's are really B12 deficiency cases.

If the number is one, of course, that's too many.

Short version: eat low-glycemic food and take all the vitamins I've discussed, but if you can't be bothered to take anything else, take a multi-vitamin every day of your life, and thank me when you live longer.

Then there are the approaches to brain fitness that suggest you exercise your body in order to exercise your brain.

And there's a lot of scholarship to support that approach.

Exercise will tend to keep you alive longer and better, and depending on the sort and intensity of the exercise you do, it will also tend to hold sarcopenia, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure at bay. And that's good, because those tend to be bad for brain function.

Now, you know that smoking is a bad idea for brain health, even though addicts say that the nicotine helps them think-at least, the new Sherlock Holmes character says that, and uses multiple nicotine patches to infuse his blood and brain with nicotine.

Note: DO NOT use multiple nicotine patches to help you think. The television version of Sherlock Holmes is a TV actor, not a human. Multiple nicotine patches won't help you think, they'll help you die. NO KIDDING!

Nicotine is remarkably poisonous, which is the evolutionary explanation for its presence in plants; it tends to kill off the bugs that eat the plants. So don't use nicotine in an effort to help you think, if you want to do your thinking on this planet, in this life.

There are also a lot of folks who advocate the use of puzzles, "brain-teasers", and lifelong learning to assist in keeping your little gray cells perky.

If you decide to go that direction, there are two sources you might want to consider.

One has received none of the accolades from academia that it deserves; it's just the source of choice for memory development techniques that actually work.

I've watched people (I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, and some of my friends are litigators; one of my litigator friends has a fully trained memory, and he uses it to confound his opponents and to win cases. No kidding. Works like a charm.) use the techniques in The Memory Book and other works by Harry Lorayne to develop a, well, super-power memory!

Recall that in pre- and non- literate cultures, like my ancestors the Celts, and my collateral ancestors in India, and our cultural ancestors in Greece, very long pieces of cultural inheritance (to them it was entertainment) were memorized, not written.

The Odyssey, for instance, was performed by human nickelodeons who entertained at social gatherings in Ancient Greece; similar events occurred in India and in Ireland, with different pieces of literature enshrined in cerebellums.

If memory is your issue, The Memory Book will help you. If you apply yourself, you will amaze yourself. If you apply yourself a little, you will have a much, much better memory, as I do. Mine isn't perfect, because I only applied myself a little. But I'm not dead yet, and I still cherish the hope of fully mastering memory technology.

Note that if you are an academic, you will hate Harry Lorayne with some intensity. He has a funky accent, not a posh accent. He doesn't have advanced degrees or spiffy academic credentials, or peer reviews. He's just a guy.

But he's the guy for teaching memory systems, and everybody else is.....not Harry Lorayne.

Another way to make your brain work better is to give it something to chew on.

That's called a dangling participle, by the way.

The fastest way to shove information and thought into your head is to read. You can listen to the spoken word at the rate of a couple of hundred words a minute, and if you don't go to sleep, you can learn a little that way.

You can read a couple of thousand words a minute, and you can learn a lot more that way.

Your choice.

But if you're going to read, you might as well do it well; there's an old system called Evelyn Woods Speed Reading, which was at one time the gold standard of speed reading. Advertisers of the system bragged that you could double your reading speed with one lesson.

And they were absolutely correct. I wouldn't kid you, and I don't get a kickback.

There were other speed reading systems (one of which I was taught in grade school) which used a tachistoscope.

In general, unless you plan to keep a tachistoscope with you at all times for the rest of your life, the Evelyn Woods system probably makes a little more sense.

Now, that leaves us with another question; if you read at 2,000 words a minute (and yeah, you can; takes a month or two to get there, but I have faith in you. It's really simple, and ultimately it will become a habit, and you will love to read, and you will be bored stiff by lectures because they don't give you information as fast as you've learned to absorb it) the next question becomes, what will you read? And note that you may wind up reading 4,000 or 6,000 words a minute; depends on whether you apply yourself. You already know that I apply myself. A little.

I'm not at all sure it matters, from the perspective of brain health, what you read. Seems to me that Sookie Stackhouse Books, detective novels, and western novels would all work just fine in keeping your brain engine running smoothly.

But suppose you want a project? Well, I've got one for you!

If you want a great education before you die, and you will most certainly die someday, you may want to read some actual good stuff.

I ran into this list recently when I was googling, and I was struck by its depth and power.

So my next hobby, when I get a Round Tuit, will be to pretend that I want to work on brain fitness, and use that as an excuse to brush up on my speed reading and memory techniques, and then read these books (the list shows up on Wikipedia; it's not my list, although I've read a few of 'em).

And since the hard part of everything is getting started, here's one way to fool yourself: find a book on the list that you think might not make you vomit. Then tell yourself that you're going to real ONE PARAGRAPH from the book when you get it. That gets you past the hard part, which is always the starting part.

The following is an example list from How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. (1940, 1972)

Homer: The Iliad, The Odyssey
The Old Testament
Aeschylus: Tragedies
Sophocles: Tragedies
Herodotus: Histories
Euripides: Tragedies
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
Hippocrates: Medical Writings
Aristophanes: Comedies
Plato: Dialogues
Aristotle: Works
Epicurus: "Letter to Herodotus", "Letter to Menoecus"
Euclid: The Elements
Archimedes: Works
Apollonius: The Conic Sections
Cicero: Works
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
Virgil: Works
Horace: Works
Livy: The History of Rome
Ovid: Works
Plutarch: Parallel Lives; Moralia
Tacitus: Histories; Annals; Agricola; Germania
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic
Epictetus: Discourses; Enchiridion
Ptolemy: Almagest
Lucian: Works
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
Galen: On the Natural Faculties
The New Testament
Plotinus: The Enneads
St. Augustine: "On the Teacher"; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
The Song of Roland
The Nibelungenlied
The Saga of Burnt Njál
St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
Dante Alighieri: The New Life (La Vita Nuova); "On Monarchy"; The Divine Comedy
Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
Leonardo da Vinci: Notebooks
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
Desiderius Erasmus: The Praise of Folly
Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Thomas More: Utopia
Martin Luther: Table Talk; Three Treatises
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel
John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
Michel de Montaigne: Essays
William Gilbert: On the Lodestone and Magnetic Bodies
Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote
Edmund Spenser: Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
Francis Bacon: Essays; The Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum; The New Atlantis
William Shakespeare: Poetry and Plays
Galileo Galilei: Starry Messenger; Two New Sciences
Johannes Kepler: The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Harmonices Mundi
William Harvey: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
René Descartes: Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
John Milton: Works
Molière: Comedies
Blaise Pascal: The Provincial Letters; Pensées; Scientific Treatises
Christiaan Huygens: Treatise on Light
Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics
John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Jean Baptiste Racine: Tragedies
Isaac Newton: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Opticks
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding; "Monadology"
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
Jonathan Swift: "A Tale of a Tub"; A Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; "A Modest Proposal"
William Congreve: The Way of the World
George Berkeley: Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Alexander Pope: "Essay on Criticism"; "The Rape of the Lock"; "Essay on Man"
Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu: Persian Letters, Spirit of the Laws
Voltaire: Letters on the English, Candide, Philosophical Dictionary
Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones
Samuel Johnson: "The Vanity of Human Wishes", Dictionary, Rasselas, Lives of the Poets
David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature, Essays Moral and Political, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, On Political Economy, Emile, The Social Contract
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations
Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace
Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography
James Boswell: Journal; The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison: The Federalist Papers
Jeremy Bentham: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust; Poetry and Truth
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier: Analytical Theory of Heat
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit; The Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History
William Wordsworth: Poems
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems; Biographia Literaria
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice; Emma
Carl von Clausewitz: On War
Stendhal: The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love
Lord Byron: Don Juan
Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism
Michael Faraday: The Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology
Auguste Comte: The Positive Philosophy
Honoré de Balzac: Le Père Goriot; Eugénie Grandet
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative Men, Essays, Journal
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America
John Stuart Mill: A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography
Charles Dickens: Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times
Claude Bernard: Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
Henry David Thoreau: "Civil Disobedience"; Walden
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Capital; The Communist Manifesto
George Eliot: Adam Bede; Middlemarch
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick; Billy Budd
Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary; Three Stories
Henrik Ibsen: Plays
Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger
William James: The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism
Henry James: The American; The Ambassadors
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals; The Will to Power; Twilight of the Idols; The Antichrist
Jules Henri Poincaré: Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
George Bernard Shaw: Plays and Prefaces
Max Planck: Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
Henri Bergson: Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
John Dewey: How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic: The Theory of Inquiry
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Alfred North Whitehead: An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
George Santayana: The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
Lenin: The State and Revolution
Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past (the revised translation is In Search of Lost Time)
Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy; Principia Mathematica; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain; Joseph and His Brothers
Albert Einstein: The Meaning of Relativity; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; The Evolution of Physics
James Joyce: "The Dead" in Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses
Jacques Maritain: Art and Scholasticism; The Degrees of Knowledge; The Rights of Man and Natural Law; True Humanism
Franz Kafka: The Trial; The Castle
Arnold J. Toynbee: A Study of History; Civilization on Trial
Jean-Paul Sartre: Nausea; No Exit; Being and Nothingness
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle; Cancer Ward
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Philosophical Investigations

AVVO.com Is the Greatest Advance in American Medicine Since Penicillin!

2010-11-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

You all know about AVVO.com, right?

Where have you been?

AVVO.com permits you to find the best attorney for your particular legal issue anywhere you may live in the United States; it lists all the lawyers in the U.S., and lets you compare them just like books on Amazon, with client reviews, lawyer endorsements, education, credentials, and experience.

So why is this a critically important advance in health care in the United States?

Keep watching.

AVVO.com now helps you sort, compare and select medical doctors just like they were books on Amazon!!

And that is just huge!

Historically, it has been darn difficult to tell whether a particular doctor was any good; you could always ask your friends, but that only goes so far.

Trust me on this one: it is better to have more accurate information about doctors than less.

Really!

And AVVO.com is also easy to use.

And it's My Favorite Price! FREEEEEEEEEEE!

The best bargain in medical information in the United States is AVVO.com.

p.s. No, I'm not a doctor. I'm just a simple back-country bankruptcy attorney who knows that consumers of medical, as well as legal, services can use all the accurate information they can get!

Better Living Through Gummy Bears!

2010-10-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful pill.

It made severe allergies vanish.

That's right, vanish!

It had three ingredients, one of which was belladonna, which dries you up pretty good; one was an old-fashioned antihistamine, and one an effective decongestant.

It even had "tiny time capsules"!

It was called Contac, and it was wonderful. Just wonderful.

But it would have cost too much to prove to the FDA that it actually worked, so the company had to take it off the market.

I'll write more about that someday, because laws sometimes have unintended consequences, and those of us on the ground floor get to experience those consequences.

But a buddy of mine recently had some surgery (gallbladder; it's much less agonizing than before, but any surgery is still surgery, and it's the general anesthetic that you need to worry about).

The surgery went well, but she caught a cold.

Now, what do you do if you have a cold? Well, you shouldn't have gotten it in the first place, because you should be full of vitamin d and vitamin c and your multi, but she was off of all her vitamins at doctor's orders prior to the surgery.

But if I get a cold, God forbid, I've had moderately good luck in reducing severity and duration by sucking on zinc lozenges (get what we might call actual zinc lozenges, rather than homeopathic zinc lozenges, which have no zinc to speak of!), vitamin c every hour, vitamin d, and chicken soup (if it was good enough for Maimonides, it's good enough for me!).

But my buddy couldn't take vitamin c and keep 'em down, because she was having trouble with her tummy after the surgery.

But when I was at Trader Joe's that day, I saw the solution: they sell Trader Joe's Orange Gummy C Vitamins!

There's even a Gummy Multi!

Now, this isn't rocket science, but neither is Contac or chicken soup.

And even though the dosages may be low, I love the delivery system for anybody who is off their feed (for instance, I know one pregnant mom who throws up all her prenatal vitamins, and it makes me sad; maybe she could handle some Gummy Vitamins!).

Better living through Gummy Bears!

Mini-Fast, Maxi-Fast, Midi-Fast, and Fasting

2010-10-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Does anybody remember the Midi?

Ugly dress!!

What you had there was a dress that was longer than a mini, of course, and also longer than most of the other dresses around. Hit a lady on the middle of her calf, and it looked awkward, goofy, and silly.

How ugly was it? It was so ugly, it got a protest button all of its own.

Which is why you've probably never heard about it.

But we got a perfectly good prefix out that fashion disaster!

Now, there are three kinds of fasting, each with its own adherents.

There's fasting: that's water, not fruit juice, and no food. Got it? We'll talk more about that, but that's fasting.

Then there's what Dr. Julian Whitaker likes to call a mini-fast: you skip breakfast, do some exercise to rev up your metabolism, and then eat normal sized lunch and dinner.

And then there's my personal fave: a midi-fast.

And it works pretty well for me on some days.

I eat no breakfast, and just drink my sludge (coffee, cinnamon, cocoa, and artificial sweetener of some kind). The cinnamon is useful in terms of insulin resistance, the coffee itself shows well against Parkinson's in some studies, and the cocoa reduces blood pressure (I know it sounds crazy; read the studies, right?).

Then lunch is some sort of protein or meal replacement bar, for around three or four hundred calories. Which also saves a lot of time, which I generally don't have, because I'm a bankruptcy attorney!

And then dinner is as big a hunk of protein as I can gobble down, after a giant helping of green beans, asparagus, or sawdust.

With gallons of iced tea. Which appears to be good for everything that ails ya.

Now, the consequence of that is that approach, which works well for me, is that I've been able to keep off the fifty pounds I lost after I saw the infamous Hawaiian Vacation Photos.

Here's the deal: your body is sort of a laboratory, and it changes over time. It is unique. Nobody has a body exactly like yours, unless you're part of a pair of identical twins.

So relax as much as you can, and experiment with yourself to see what works best.

Since the actual, factual experts, chock-full of credentials and advanced degrees, are all at each other's throats about what works best, all that non-experts like us can do is to read all we can, review as many studies as we can stomach, and experiment.

On ourselves.

Now, experimenting on yourself is a lot easier these days, because the feedback is faster than it used to be.

You have access to tools to measure results that scientists a century ago couldn't have dreamed up.

The Tanita Scale, once you figure out its dashboard, will let you see tiny incremental changes in your weight, your body fat percentage, your body muscle percentage (which is useful in terms of protecting yourself against the scourge of sarcopenia, a bad thing that happens often as we age), and other stuff.

And a cheap blood sugar monitor will help you with figuring what diet keeps your blood sugar inside the limits that you decide are healthy, not those that are just semi-, demi-, or midi-diabetic!

So TRY the All-Spaghetti Diet, if you want. If carbs are so good for people, what do they do to you, personally? If you have a very favorable genetic profile for carb metabolism, maybe you can do it and not suffer much.

But laboratory test the results! If you eat all carbs, all the time, with some sugar, measure your weight (it'll probably go up, I expect). And if you're like me at all, it'll spike your blood sugar, which is not good. And your body mass percentage will go up, and your waist size will go up, and your body fat percentage will go up.

And those are easy to test, so test, and figure out what works for you!

The All-McDonald's-All-the-Time Diet was made popular by a very smart, very funny, very serious young man named Morgan Spurlock in a movie called "Supersize Me", which had remarkable effects on the fast-food industry. And that movie sets the standard for using your own body as an experimental laboratory.

Now, most people find something that works adequately for their laboratory, and then stick with it, while their laboratory changes; that is, while they age.

And that's why I was the 200 pound studmuffen when I was twenty-five, and the 200 pound muffen man when I was forty.

But in the picture in my head, I hadn't changed because I was still the same weight! So until I had the proof of the pudding-body in the form of photos I couldn't ignore ("Who's the fat guy with the beard standing....aaaaarrrrggggggghhhhh! IT'S MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!"), I didn't even think about experimenting to get a different result.

Getting the result you want is mostly a matter of paying attention, if you have a moderately normal body (mine is someplace in the middle of all the possible outcomes: middle height, middle-size frame, moderately this and moderately that, with a tendency to put on fat because my ancestors included famine Irish and Cherokee, and a few other folks who needed the ability to store food on their bodies).

Some folks have bad luck in the genetic sweepstakes.

Sorry. Better luck next time.

But anybody can improve their odds in the Survival Sweepstakes.

Vitamin C helps remarkably, and seems to keep you alive and kicking an extra nine years longer; read my blog for the studies. Vitamin D helps a lot; ditto. Moderating your body mass index and your body fat percentage, ditto. Selenium helps reduce your risk of cancer, according to studies from Arizona that I believe. A multivitamin on top helps reduce risks of other deficiencies.

Building some amount of muscle helps deal with the scourges of aging, because one of them is the muscle wasting condition sarcopenia; Sly Stallone doesn't need to worry about that one.

Decent sleep is important, and so is dental care. Including the kind you do yourself. By the way, I also like Sonicare Toothbrushes, and I'll put some of their videos next to my videos of the Tanita Scale, because those are useful tools for me.

And now I feel like a big cup of Sludge in my Superman Cup and a huge, 250-calorie meal replacement bar.

Enjoy your spaghetti!

p.s. If I have a healthy body weight, that doesn't make me smarter than you, or a better person than you. But I like people, and don't much like pain. So if you can reduce your body weight so that your knees don't hurt so much, you'll feel better, and the world will be a happier place, you know?

I have a fair number of friends in chronic pain, and if one of 'em reads this and gets the message, that will be a good thing. Heck, if you're a friend I haven't met yet, and you read this, and you feel better, great!

Do the Loco-motion With Me!

2010-10-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

A lot of new semi-dances came into existence when I was in school. They included The Twist, which I now see as more of a chiropractic intervention than a way to pick up girls.

But moving from one place to another with reasonable speed is one of the defining characteristics of youth and health.

When researchers are doing studies on the effects of resveratrol or caloric restriction on flies, for instance, one of the bio-markers of aging they often test is walking speed.

Young flies, like young humans, walk faster than geriatrics in both species.

On the other hand, when something goes wonky with one of your major joints, or your back, you get sort of a preview of old age.

It's not awful, but it's not optimal, either.

"Please hand me the bedpan again, dear!", caused by a walking disability, has doomed many a old-rich-guy, hot-young-girl relationship. Sorta takes the magic right out of the moment, you know?

Right now I have three friends who have short-term issues with walking: one has a hip issue, one has a knee issue, and one has a back issue.

And all three are "walking" this week as though they are 120, not sixtyish. And I put walking in quotes because they aren't really walking. Dragging, staggering, limping, lurching, sure. Walking? Not so much.

Now, there is no particular moral to today's discussion, except this: you should take good care of yourself. Consider taking glucosamine, and fish oil, and Vitamin C, and ginger (yes, I said ginger; helps reduce inflammation). Bromelain is also quite useful for me for in reducing pathological joint swelling wherever it shows up, and it has the advantage of being cheap and non-prescription and, well, it's just a digestive enzyme found in pineapple stems!

Who woulda thunk it?

Now, if you weigh three times your design specifications, you will incur tons of additional wear-and-tear damage on your joints, and you will then be sad. And I know you know that; you're smart enough to be reading this, aren't you?

Docs can work miracles on joint replacements these days, but a titanium knee just ain't the same. It's better than suffering like crazy when you try to stand, but it still ain't the same as the knee that God gave you.

So be gentle and good to yourself. Think about that world, the Land of Old Age, where you are a visitor every now and then, when something goes funky on you.

And plan for your retirement there!

Don't you want to be the Hottest Babe at the Rest Home? Or the Coolest Studmuffen who ever raced a walker, vroom, vroom?

Sure you do.

You just never thought about it!

So think about making yourself happy by buying a Tanita scale, and using it every morning without fail, and gradually moving into a body weight range (and a body fat percentage) that'll make it easier for you to Do the Loco-motion with Me.

Unless, of course, my back is little funky on that particular day.

Then you're on your own.

.

Pity the Poor M.D.; It's Not Easy Being a Doctor!

2010-09-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

A buddy of mine recently called a great local doc and tried to get into see her on short notice.

The notice wasn't short enough for my taste, and I complained to a nurse I know.

She pulled my head right off of my body.

"Do you know that those poor docs are having to see 11 patients an hour?"

I admitted that I did not fully understand their plight, and simmered down. Easy to do, without a head, after all.

But that made me think about the progression of doctors up and down the food chain in the United States.

For a long time in the U.S., and elsewhere, doctors were just tradesmen, and nothing special.

That was because they didn't have the best possible tools to fix medical problems.

All that changed with penicillin. Penicillin stopped many of the Horsemen dead in their tracks, so that most people stopped dying of pneumonia, septicemia, and ordinary old dental abscesses (which claimed many a Viking and Pharaoh, surprisingly).

Since licensed doctors were the only folks who could dispense and administer the miracle cure (and it really, really was a miracle cure, make no mistake), the status of doctors in public opinion went through the roof overnight.

And then doctors and their buddies came up with a great idea: medical insurance companies! They thrived, because if your patients were insured, you got to pretend you didn't care about money, or haggle about dollars (or chickens), and that's always a good thing.

Insurance companies were like Aladden's Lamp for doctors.

But wait! It got better!

During labor shortages, health insurance was offered by big companies as a relatively inexpensive inducement to obtain workers without paying them a lot more money. Good deal!

And then it got bad.

Because insurance companies started ratcheting down the amounts that doctors could be paid for visiting with patients.

And the short version is that the Genii in the Lamp became the master, and the doctors became the servants of that same Lamp.

Kinda sad, really.

And especially sad is that you will get to see a doctor for a rushed few minutes these days, and I don't see that getting better anytime soon.

The way medicine works for pets seems better, somehow. Has anybody else taken a pet into a pet hospital for a procedure?

They take all the time they need, and treat the puppy with all the love and time in the world, and do the best they can with fairly sophisticated tools.

Interesting that different economic models generate very different results.

And I still feel sorry for Doctors. I think things may continue to spiral downhill for them over time.

And I hope I'm wrong.

Stallone Training for The Expendables: What 62 Years Old Looks Like!

2010-07-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

Here's the deal, and you know this because you went to the high school reunion: there's about a 28-year swing in normal aging by the time you make it to sixty years old.

Take a look at the website RealAge.com, and you'll see, after you do the number-crunching, that a 60 year old who's obese, with high blood pressure, and an alcoholic, and diabetic, and smokes, has a real age of 74. And his opposite number, who works out a lot, takes vitamin c, and doesn't smoke, has a real age of 46 or thereabouts.

Now, I don't pretend that everybody has the same genetics as Sly Stallone, because that would be silly.

But here he is, working out; and take a particularly close look at his abs, which are remarkable.

Tells me he's been eating a lot of beef, chicken, fish, and green vegetables, because nothing you can do by way of exercise will give you abs like that without eating healthy.

Now, I know he's done a lot of hormone replacement therapy, and I'm sure he takes prescription testosterone, prescription HGH (human growth hormone), every vitamin and mineral and supplement known to mankind, and whatever else his anti-aging medical doctor thinks will help him.

And it looks like it's done him a world of good.

And here you go with the video, and don't try this at home, kids, unless you really know what you're doing! I sure want you to exercise, and I sure don't want you to do too much, too soon (and always check with your doctor, of course, before you exercise):

There Are Many Health, Longevity and Alternative Medicine Magazines. Then there is "Glutes"!

2010-07-09T09:05:00.001-07:00

So I get done with my workout last night, and I head to the drug store because I'm out of chewing gum. And one of my next health blogposts will be about the other rocks in your head, your teeth.

But I walked past the magazine rack, and there was a cover that caught my eye.

Both of them, actually.

Now, in my youth, nice girls did not let photographers zero in on the place where they sat down. In fact, they would normally have avoided such a thing with serious intent, unless they were far over the legal limit.

But the nice girl-next-door on the cover of this magazine looked extremely healthy. And fit. And she had the muscles and body-fat percentage that come only from working out a lot and eating few carbs.

But she was mostly showing off her backside to the camera, and grinning about it.

And, to be fair, she did have a world-class backside.

Am I going somewhere with this?

Maybe.

Oh, yeah. I am.

Vanity is a sin; but it can be a useful sin, because it helps combat sloth, which is a far less useful sin!

And I recall that the Hawaiian Vacation Photos were what it took to make me dump fifty pounds of fat, thereby preserving my knees and my back and my heart and my life.

So if the prospect of being on the cover of a magazine named "Glutes" that focused in on her backside made that nice girl do healthy things like diet and exercise, more power to her!

And here's a video featuring the nice young lady on the cover of Glutes Magazine:

The Most Interesting Man in the World Does Talk About Aging and Death

2010-07-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

The beer commercials featuring "The Most Interesting Man in the World" are among the funniest things I've ever watched.

Donno why. Maybe it's because I'm the most boring human on the planet. But I laugh at those beer commercials until I'm nearly unconscious.

And the Most Interesting Man in the World does have something to say on the subjects of aging and death, even if its only indirectly; here is a compilation, and eventually you'll hear him talk about The Obituary.

Your Perfect Body Weight for Longevity and Reducing Morbidity and Mortality

2010-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

This is not a complicated question, although it can seem complicated if you consider reading everything you find when you Google a search like: "optimum bmi or body weight for longevity and reductions in mortality morbidity and study".

Now, the reason I know it seems complicated is that I did that search, and a lot more like it. Confused the heck out of me for a long time, especially because you'll see a lot of articles out there, and even studies, that suggest that being fat is healthier than being skinny, which is simply dumb.

Also note: there are a lot of articles suggesting that there is no perfect body weight or bmi or waist to hip ratio, and that it's mean to suggest that some things are better than other things.

Horse-hocky, he said politely. There are answers out there. Sometimes it takes a little digging to find 'em, but they're there, buried in the research.

One of the cool things I found during my search was an ideal body weight calculator conjoined with a body mass index calculator that I liked because they both made sense to me.

I also found a study concerning the perfect weight for guys, and I liked that study because of the methodology, and the lack of "spin" in the results.

The optimum body weight study just followed a lotta guys, having obtained their body weights and heights so they could calculate their body mass indexes, and then saw how frequently they became diabetic, had heart attacks and strokes, and died. Just so you know, death appears to be a "combined end point".

There is, along with that study, a nifty graph that shows the range that appears to be the healthiest in terms of, you know, that death thing; according to the graph, if I read it correctly, a body mass index of anywhere from 20 to 26 looks pretty darn good in terms of avoiding the Grim Reaper.

But read the entire study, word by word, because that would be a good thing!

If you think I want you to read a BMJ article in full, you'd be right!

Or you can just internalize the conclusion: a bmi of about 22 appears to be close to ideal for men who would like to stay on this side of the grass.

Note also: it's fine by me if you want to dig your grave with your teeth. There is no legal or moral imperative that says you must want what I want (to die at 120 of absolutely nothing whatsoever) or that you are not permitted to live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse.

That is entirely up to you, and may happiness follow whatever decision you make!

.

Bicycling: Beating the Reaper, or Chasing the Reaper?

2010-06-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I had a bike.

I rode it on the sidewalks, as I was taught to do in the safety classes at Emerson Grade School.

Once I was stopped by a policeman, who explained to me that I was driving in the wrong direction on the sidewalk; the policy had changed, no more facing the traffic, now the rule was with the traffic, on the sidewalk, and walking the bike across the street.

I thanked him and called him sir, because I was raised right, and rode off.

Today I saw somebody I envied, at least briefly.

His hair, under a really cool plastic helmet, was the color that mine used to be; and he had admirable bicep, pec, and thigh development. He was riding a bicycle that didn't appear to have been built on the same planet that built my old grade-school bicycle.

And he wasn't riding on the sidewalk, either.

He was riding in the stream of traffic, or what would have been a stream if drivers weren't swerving wildly in an attempt to avoid turning him into a 180-pound bag of raspberry jam.

See, when I was a kid, if anybody had told the policeman that he had an absolute right to be a responsible member of the stream of traffic, he would have first gotten the 72-hour observation period, and after that he would have lost interest in the bicycle, after the Thorazine kicked in.

So here's the deal; if you believe that a little plastic hat will preserve your life with you collide with a six-thousand pound SUV, that's a religious belief, the same as a belief that Atman is identical to Brahman, and that rebirth in a cycle is and always has been.

And I applaud most religious beliefs; I'm particularly fond of Catholics and Sikhs, and Buddhists. Zen Buddhists have produced some of the most entertaining takes on the plight of existence that I've ever read. And Tibetan Buddhism has a pragmatic take on meditation that I find especially comforting, and comfortable.

But some religious beliefs (the Ghost Shirt beliefs, for instance, or the Martial Arts Religions that fueled some folks during the Boxer Rebellions) tend to limit your life expectancy.

So if you believe that you can catch or block or deflect bullets, or you believe that a particular kind of shirt will stop bullets while you fire arrows, or you believe that a plastic hat will stop a 6,000 pound SUV, you probably want to avoid situations which would produce objective proof of your beliefs.

That is, you might want to avoid jumping in front of the targets or bicycling in front of the SUVs in Phoenix when the temperature is 117 degrees (a balmy, breezy summer day in Phoenix).

This is not an order, a command, or a criticism.

There have been many martyrs of the Catholic Church, for instance, and martyrs are important to every Faith.

And if your beliefs in the God of the Plastic Hat causes you to seek martyrdom, you will, not may, find it.

Not at the wheels of my SUV, I devoutly pray, but I'm a young geriatric. My cataracts do not impair my vision, says my eye doc. And I can hear grinding brakes as people try to avoid squishing the hapless bicyclist.

But there are a lot of folks who come to Arizona to retire.

Or in the witness protection program.

And remember what car Tony Soprano drives.

And if there actually is rationing of medical services in the future, do you think anybody might ever have to wait for cataract surgery?

Let me put it another way.

Here in Phoenix, if the price of gasoline goes to twenty bucks a gallon, I won't be riding a bike.

I'll be walking.

I Figured Out How to Add Videos To My Health and Longevity Blog!

2010-06-13T22:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, this business of working with blogs in the computer age is very, very easy for youngsters, because they pick it up through osmosis.

For folks my age, less easy.

But today was a breakthrough!

I've just added a couple of videos to my little health, anti-aging and alternative medicine and healthy aging blog.

One is by Julian Whitaker, a doctor who knows a lot about alternative and complementary medicine. If, God forbid, I ever need high-dose intravenous vitamin c therapy, I would probably go to visit his Health and Wellness Clinic. I'll write more about him presently, because he's a very useful source of valuable information, and I agree with him more than I disagree with him.

I also added a video about the only fasting clinic in the United States that I know about; and since fasting is a useful thing, and best done under medical supervision, and I know somebody who fasted for a month and lived to tell about it, I wanted to give TrueNorth a little exposure.

One of the most impressive uses of fasting is the remarkably predictable reduction in blood pressure to normal, healthy levels. Folks with very, very high blood pressure apparently benefit the most.

I don't know why, and as far as I know, neither does anybody else. But there are some impressive studies on the TrueNorth website that document clearly (to me, anyway) that if you have high blood pressure and need to lower it fast, and you'd rather not have a lot of awful side effects from blood pressure drugs, this might be something you'd want to look into.

But now that I know how to do this, I'll be shopping for the best examples of fast and easy exercise, as well as discussions of health topics that seem useful, and posting those videos here on my health and longevity blog.

Note: I don't particularly go for a vegetarian diet, or vegetarian theories of health, and TrueNorth pushes that approach fairly enthusiastically. I myself figure that if God designed me to need vitamin B-12, and if virtually all the sources of vitamin B-12 are, you know, in meat, the vegetarian lifestyle isn't for me. But for medically supervised fasting, I don't know anyplace with half the experience that TrueNorth has accumulated over the years.

This Is Memorial Day

2010-05-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

This is the day we honor our fallen heroes.

And General George S. Patton was a tough, smart guy, who said: It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

When to Go to the Emergency Room? Well, One of These Would Do It!

2010-05-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

I recently talked to a good friend who knows a ton about medicine, including complementary and alternative medicine.

He told me that he'd recently had a little scare.

One day he had a little zit at the base of a hair on the inside of his thigh.

He squeezed it, wiped it off, and forgot about it.

The next day, it had turned into a silver-dollar sized red area with a very high temperature, and filled with fluid.

For a day, he took high-dose broad-spectrum antibiotics.

The next day, the spot was bigger, redder, fuller, and hotter.

He zipped over to a local emergency room, and was immediately admitted.

He was pumped full of antibiotics that you can only get intravenously, and which have the effect of cooking a vein per day.

The abscess was drained at the hospital, and a "wick" was placed in the wound so it could drain properly and heal from the inside out, because the alternative would have been bad.

He was diagnosed with a MRSA infection (antibiotic-resistant bug) when they did a culture and sensitivity test; fortunately for him, they'd been able to to kill it off pretty well with the super-duper intravenous antibiotic with all the side-effects.

So take lesson by this, all you folks who have any body hair, or skin, for that matter.

If you see a red-hot silver dollar sized presentation on your skin, move your skinny, fat or intermediate behind over to the emergency room RIGHT NOW, because death is much less fun than life, and septicemia is less fun than sex, even though they both start with the letter "s".

P.S. I love complementary and alternative medicine. Love, love, love. They are wonderful for supportive roles in my health, I think. I get sick much less frequently and have fewer heart attacks and strokes because I take more vitamin c and d than Carter has pills. And every other vitamin, mineral and supplement known to mankind.

But if you have a heart attack, and your heart muscle is dying, or if you have a MRSA infection, get yourself to the emergency room and don't kid around. Our system of medicine in the United States is very, very good at dealing with acute medical emergencies.

Just my opinion, of course. And I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, so you probably ought to get your medical information and advice from a medical doctor or a D.O., you know? Not some bankruptcy lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona.

Will I Live to be 120? Just a Silly Joke, with a little Truth to It.

2010-05-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

I received this gag from a buddy who's aged better than just about anybody else I know. If he were asked the questions in the joke below, his answers would have been dramatically different, I think.

Note to my readers: this is just a joke. No need to get out your notepad for health information or healthy aging tips.

And here it is!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will I Live to see 80?

Here's something to think about.

I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age. (I just turned 60.) A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?' He asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer or wine?'
'Oh no,' I replied.. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then he asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?
'I said, 'Not much, my former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
He asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?'
'No,' I said.
He looked at me and said,... 'Then, why do you even give a shit? '

Healthy Aging is NOT All in your Head!

2010-03-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

There are some folks out there who like to believe that if you maintain a particular attitude, or a specific mind-set, you'll always be healthy, you'll never be sick, and you'll live forever.

I do not entirely agree with that assessment.

Neither does Banshee.

Banshee is a wire-haired fox terrier with whom I share the house; from her perspective, she shares the house with me. Great little dog, with much more courage than discretion.

When she was a pup, she kept going after my gigantic Southwestern Airedale Terrier, with horrific consequences. But when she got back from the doggie hospital, she went after him again!

And him weighing a hundred pounds and more!

Banshee does not know the meaning of the words "self-doubt", although she does understand a lot of words.

But recently she started limping, and after a very comprehensive, fast and compassionate diagnostic visit (and we could fix all the healthcare issues in the United States by simply letting vets treat humans; they have to be good at diagnosis and they have to have compassion, because their patients bite. And they're not very expensive, because folks won't pay excessive amounts on pet health problems, although there are exceptions),I got the diagnosis.

And the limp was caused by doggie arthritis, with an overlay of what seems to be something like doggie gout.

I consider this comprehensive proof that a perfect attitude does not produce a perfectly healthy body. Banshee has the attitude, and she still has the arthritis and gout.

And now I get to see how well glucosamine and fish oil and tumeric work on dogs.

I'll keep you posted.

And it'll be difficult at first to distinguish between the effects of the fish oil, glucosamine, and tumeric, and the effects of the doggie non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, but I want to keep the use of that to a minimum, because those will eat Banshee's stomach as much as they will a human's stomach.

So for acute phases, it'll be the entire group of goodies, and for chronic administration, as much fish oil and tumeric and glucosamine as I can get the little dog to chow down. Maybe some ginger.

Now, once I met somebody who claimed to be a veterinary acupuncturist; but that's a story for another day.

You Have Rocks in your Head! or When Canaliths Attack!

2010-03-13T10:40:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, the scientific advances associated with political correctness had not yet progressed to their current high level.

So when I said something stupid, my mom would say, quite reasonably, "You have rocks in your head, stupid!"

To which I would reply, "Yes, ma'am!" Because I'm not as dumb as I look.

Turns out that my mother was correct about the rocks, just as she was about the Vitamin C.

There are, in fact, little tiny rocks in your head. They're called canaliths.

The purpose of canaliths is to let you know whether you're upside down, sideways, or backwards.

They do that in a simple way. They roll around and bump into tiny little receptors in your inner ear, and they send signals to your brain, which coordinate the information with information from your eyes, and send back a message to your central processing unit that you are upright.

That feedback loop takes place in your operating system, and you aren't even aware that it's taking place.

Until it breaks.

Then, because you weave like a drunk, and vomit like a drunk, and have headaches like a drunk...is there a theme here? No, actually, but the effects of misplaced canaliths are a little like the effects of a long conversation with your buddy Jim. You know, Jim Beam. Or Jack. Daniels.

The people who name diseases and syndromes must have a sense of humor. That's because they call it "benign paroxysmal positional vertigo".

Take it from me; it's not very benign at all.

Now, fortunately, I haven't had to deal with this issue, yet. Although getting old is not for sissies, and I expect my turn to come.

But I've watched a buddy, who is tough as nails, deal with the issue, and it ain't pretty.

Now, here's the good news. There's a treatment.

Here's the better news: it doesn't involve a chainsaw.

Here's the bad news: it may well make you project your cookies while it fixes the problem.

The treatment for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is a manipulation. That is, your doc gets you in position, and moves your head around like you were one of those kid's toys with a maze, and bbs you needed to get into particular holes by rolling around the bbs inside the plastic dome until they came to rest into the little holes, and you won.

Okay, you're too young to remember those.

But the essence of the procedure is simple: the doc is simply trying to reposition the rocks in your head so they aren't telling your brain that you're upside down and backwards.

And when the doc is successful, after a few visits, the little rocks settle down and you can walk without doing your drunken pirate imitation.

Trauma can induce the dizziness (and the word dizziness doesn't begin to describe the intensity of the sensation), so car accidents and left hooks in martial arts classes can cause the problem.

So can turning over in your own warm little bed.

It all depends on how frisky those little rocks decide they are on any given day.

Now, the Eply maneuver is not so easy to do, nor so easy to teach. But you probably want to ask your doc about it so you know who to call...when canaliths attack!

p.s. I found a website that talks about the maneuver, and shows pictures of a self-administered version of the technique (insert dumb joke here). As always, I advise that you get all of your medical advice and information from a doctor who is authorized to practice in your jurisdiction, and not from an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer!

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, or Jelly Donuts? What Do You Use to Modulate Your Internal State?

2010-02-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

Everybody uses something or another.

Some use jelly donuts, and some use fasting.

Which is almost funny, if you think about it.

Some use sex, some use abstinence. Also almost funny.

The interesting part of changing your internal state is that everything you do to accomplish that goal has an effect, which is sometimes a side-effect, and sometimes a planned effect.

Smoking, for instance, has several specific effects on the brain, and internal states, particularly in those addicted to nicotine (which I understand is one of the most addictive substances on the face of the planet, and pretty poisonous at that). The SIDE-effect, however, is developing all those little wrinkles around the mouth, which nobody really wants. Oh, and that thing with Willie. Who will be free less frequently.

Some folks are addicted to exercising, and have feelings of moral superiority in connection with that addiction. And the side-effects of that addiction includes damage from overuse and repetitive use. And a somewhat extended life-span to enjoy the damage to the joints!

Some people use prayer and its close cousin, meditation, either with or without the addition of breathing exercises. The Philokalia discusses those from the perspective of older Christian meditative practices. Tibetan Buddhism has more different kinds of meditation than you can shake a stick at, because there were no internet games in ancient Tibet. And it was hard to play soccer on the sides of those mountains.

A lot of people use food, most often carbohydrates, which will generate a happy, sleepy stupor, and a body weight of four or five hundred pounds.

The use of sex as a modulator of internal mental state is well documented; men, especially, will do anything to modulate, as indicated by the reaction of David when he saw her bathing on the roof.

And, like overeating, sex has side effects; as Pancho Willis has said, "Boyfriends will beat you up. Husbands will kill you." Hence, David's instructions about Uriah; David may have been a little overwrought after he saw her bathing on the roof, but David wasn't going to have a cranky Hittite in the house!

There are a lot of different kinds of exercise that people use to affect their feelings, including Shotokan Karate, dance, Tai Chi and Tai Bo, and lifting weights and lifting glasses.

A lot of people make the decision that alcohol is the best short-term solution for fixing a troublesome internal state; that is, they self-medicate. And as a friend of mine once said, "There is no trouble that alcohol can't make worse."

Others use prescription drugs; the death rate from prescription drugs in the United States suggests that it might be safer to keep five or six guns around and shoot them randomly through the house at random intervals. But perhaps not.

Love is an internal state that almost everybody likes. There are Tibetan and Christian practices designed to help generate and maintain love for all mankind.

My guess is that there are few repetitive stress injuries associated with universal love; if I attain it, I'll let you know.

Hiccups: Threat or Menace?

2010-01-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

There's not a lot that's serious written about hiccups.

That's because it's hard to take them seriously.

On the other hand, for somebody with a pretty decent case of hiccups, they're really a pain in the behind.

That's because they can keep you awake, and interfere with talking, which for some people can interfere with their livelihood.

I recently had my first adult bout with a serious case of hiccups, and found them much less than amusing, because I'm smart for a living, and I talk for a living.

No sleep, which is a side-effect of hiccups, interferes with the state of being smart, and hiccups interfere with sounding smart, partly because hiccups are associated with drunks and comedians who are imitating drunks.

There is only one nice thing about my bout with the hiccups; it was self-limiting.

There was another nice thing about my bout with the hiccups; nothing whatsoever.

I did get to read a bundle of websites with interesting hiccups cures.

I had cure-resistant hiccups.

Now it's better; the hiccups have gone away.

Thank God!

And if I'm a very lucky young man, this is the last word I will ever write about stinking, miserable, keep-you-awake-at-night-sleep-on-the-couch hiccups!

What NOT to do When Your Back Goes Out, If You're Me

2010-01-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

As I've said before, our bodies would be a lot easier to care for if they came with owner's manuals.

Now, I've read that the two most common reasons for a visit to a doctor's office are colds and back pain.

I was happy to read that they called it back pain, rather than the more common back "discomfort", because it is pain, you see.

What an engineer would call "tolerances" are pretty tight in the back, because there are a lot of components to fit onto the spinal cord, while at the same time supporting it against the pull of gravity.

And when we get a little older, those tolerances are put to the test, because the dimensions of the discs change (they shrink), and the dimensions of the spinal components themselves may change as they sort of, you know, crumble slowly.

That brings us to an event that many of us get to experience: a misalignment of some part of the spine, giving rise to what laymen refer to as "pain" and doctors refer to as "discomfort", unless the doctor is experiencing the pain himself.

I know a really neat way to make my back pain last longer.

Here's how it works: I take to my bed, and lie on top of a heating pad.

I can make the pain continue unabated for about three weeks at a time! That was my record, anyway.

And it made sense to me at the time. Once I had made it into bed, I wasn't moving, so the pain mostly stopped temporarily, unless I did something stupid, like breathing or coughing or hiccuping. And the nice warm hot pad was nice and warm.

The heating pad also increased the tissue swelling, so the pain lasted much, much longer.

Now, to SHORTEN the period of agony, I use a somewhat different protocol.

I take to the floor, not the bed. The floor is mostly flat, and it provides great, if uncomfortable, support for my personal back.

Yeah, I cheat. I actually take to the carpet, which is a little less hard than the floor, but still pretty flat.

And I use ice on the lower two-thirds of my back, more or less continuously, until the inflammation has reduced itself enough that the spinal components go back home, and the pain ceases.

I don't like ice packs (really, gel packs that are cold as ice). It's uncomfortable when I slide 'em under me (make sure there's at least one layer of thin cloth between you and the ice whatever, so you don't burn the skin). But when I use them, the pain goes away faster.

I also fill up my stomach, to reduce the ulcer that will probably form anyway, and take four ibuprofen every four hours, to reduce the inflammation.

And I smear a buncha Aspercreme all over my lower back, to reduce inflammation, as well.

And I found a pretty cool addition to the treatment protocol recently: it's a digestive enzyme made from pineapple stems called bromelain, which is cheap, readily available, and reduces pathological swelling all over the body. At least it does for me.

Once the back is fully supported, so that trauma to the soft tissue stops, and the ice, ibuprofen, Aspercreme and bromelain can work their magic, the hard tissues slip back into the places God intended them to occupy, and the pain vanishes.

But I walk carefully for several days, because, no kidding, I don't like pain as much as you might think.

And I've canceled my annual bungee jumping appointment for tomorrow, as well.

Now, depending on how much I've abused my poor little back, it may go a full year or two between these little parties. But now, at least, I know what should have been on page 37 of my personal owner's manual.

And I can reduce the screaming from three weeks to two days or so. If I'm religious about all the elements of the protocol.

And there's nothing like pain to make me meticulous.

Recall that sciatica is a little different, and I've talked about that in prior posts.

UPDATE: I was a compliant patient of my own, so the back pain resolved itself over the course of about three days. Sure beats the three weeks when I tried the old approach. And I still say that life would be easier if you were issued an owner's manual for your own personal body when you were able to read.

You Didn't Like That New Year's Resolution? I've Got a Million of 'Em!

2010-01-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

So what if there were ten magic things that you could do to make yourself live twelve years longer and twelve years better?

Well, we know already that you simply won't do them. Diet and exercise, for instance, take a fair amount of focus and effort.

But what if the magic activities were easy and cheap?

What if they were more fun than hot sex?

Okay, they aren't; I was just checking to see if you were paying attention. Although there is an interesting study out of Wales that suggests that men who make love more frequently live longer, on a dose dependent basis.

I'll come back to that, of course. Often.

But according to the Pareto Principle, or the 80-20 Rule, if there are Ten Top things that'll make you live better and longer, there should be two that kick tail, all by themselves.

As is often the case, there are two cheap, easy, simple things you can do that will make you live at least a decade longer, and much, much better.

And they are also idiot-simple. No great amount of training required (which is good; if you needed to study Tai Chi for twenty years in order to live longer, I'd save my breath. Or lift lots of weights, or stop eating cheesecake altogether. You know?).

Turns out that you are most likely to die of a heart attack or cancer. Don't take my word for it; look at the Center for Disease Control statistics. So maybe you want to find something that'll increase your odds of surviving heart attacks or cancer, right?

Now, there are a lot of studies out there, and many have both method, and statistics, and conclusions skewed, because scientists now live and die on their next research grant. And a scientist who discovers that a best-selling drug is not needed is as popular as a leper at a Handshaking Convention.

But one study is now a part of my personal religion, because it made it under the radar of Big Pharma. I knew it before I read the study (because I'd already read Linus Pauling), but the study confirmed it for me. Just so you know, Linus Pauling says that if you take adequate Vitamin C, you won't get heart attacks. I tend to believe him, because he was much, much smarter in the field of chemistry than, oh, anybody else at all since the beginning of time.

According to the study published in 2001 in The Lancet, a major peer-reviewed medical journal, people who have blood levels of Vitamin C in the highest quartile live, on average, 9 years longer than people in the lowest quartile.

My guess is that the primary reason is that the longer surviving quartile simply had fewer heart attacks than the faster dying quartile.

THINK ABOUT IT FOR, OH, SEVENTEEN SECONDS.

Then look at similar studies showing a benefit of three years for folks who take supplemental Vitamin D.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

Look at the study from the University of Arizona Medical School demonstrating that folks taking 200 micrograms of selenium (a trace element) had HALF the deaths from cancer in the control group.

SO LEMMIE GET THIS STRAIGHT.

Yeah, that's it.

You take a couple of horse pills of Vitamin C with breakfast (not ten, because you'll get a benign case of the trots, caused by a mechanism called osmosis) and a couple of Vitamin D pills.

And here I break with the Pareto Principle. To get the full benefits of the lazy man's life extension program, you'll want to find a multi-vitamin/mineral that'll give you about 200 micrograms of selenium a day.

Then take the three of those right after breakfast, every day of your life.

Now, with NO WILLPOWER to speak of, because you deprive yourself of NOTHING, you just bought yourself an extra twelve years on the right side of the grass.

Gives you a little more time to make memories with those you love, which is a good thing.

Not a bad result for a few pennies a day and no willpower!

And, as always, before you make any changes in your daily life for health, talk about it with your doctor, and see if he or she think that taking a couple of vitamins will hurt you. See which studies he bases it on. And make your own decision.

A New Year's Resolution You'll Actually Keep!

2010-01-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

So, how well has that whole "will power" thing worked for you in the past?

My personal experience is that when my will power is faced with the cheesecake, the cheesecake wins.

I suspect that some other people share my peculiar psychological makeup, and that they too can resist anything except temptation; hence, the current epidemic of life-style related illness in the United States (type two diabetes, obesity, smoking-related lung disorders, and the rest of the happy gang).

For those of us for whom temptation is kryptonite (and I love you one and all, because you're just like me), I have a few suggestions.

The first is, QUIT TRYING TO USE WILLPOWER TO CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOR!

One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.

I tried to use willpower forever, and seldom got the results that I desired.

So what to do, if willpower...won't?

Turns out that I'm not the first guy who struggled with the Cheesecake Demons, and lost, again and again.

So there is a massive body (no, I'm not about to make an obesity joke) of information and wisdom out there about how to change your behavior. And most of it doesn't work, because it's a variation of using willpower.

So I suggest a range of other psychological devices, rather than a focus on deprivation and punishment (what some people would call "diet and exercise").

For instance, if you get hungry, do you think it would be easier to convince yourself to eat more, or to eat less?

For me, that's a no-brainer. Eating more is much, much easier for me when I'm very, very hungry (note: getting very, very hungry is probably pretty dumb by itself, but one thing at a time).

So when I saw the Hawaiian Vacation Photos, and stopped screaming, I suddenly realized that it was time for a change.

Note: perfect happiness is the enemy of change. If you feel great all the time, and are happy with the way you look and the way people react when they see you, and you sleep well and are never sick, don't bother reading this. In fact, you write, I'll read, okay?

But if you aren't perfectly happy, here's what you do to eat less: you eat more.

Kind of like steering into the skid when you hit ice on the highway.

But you get to trick yourself, because the muscular part of your brain is dumb as a stump; that's the "lizard" part of your brain. Been around in your little green forefathers for a lotta years. Has a lotta behaviors that work well if you're a lizard and want a lotta baby lizards. Eat a lot; have a lotta sex at every opportunity. Kick any rivals in their long green tails. Dominate, dominate, dominate, NOW!

And if you're currently a lizard, congratulations on your reading skills.

But I assume that you've moved up the food chain, and that your drive to eat has made you consider reading health articles. If so, hold on. I'm getting to the good part.

EAT MORE! I'm mad, you say. Hey, you aren't the first to suggest it.

See, your lizard brain isn't as smart as the human part of your brain; but when the lizard brain and your human brain fight, your lizard brain tends to win. We'll discuss why when I get a round tuit.

So you're going to let the Wookie in your head win! Much easier than fighting. Because if you get hungry and use willpower to deprive yourself of happiness and joy from jumping into the grub, it'll work. A little. Once or twice. And then you'll go to The Cheesecake Factory and ask 'em how quickly they can produce cheesecake in their, you know, factory.

So in a hypothetical perfect world, you are going to eat more, and that will cause you, magically, to lose weight. There's more, of course, but this technique alone will do it if you focus, and you won't be fighting with yourself nearly as much as if you are arm wrestling with yourself over the cheesecake.

So FIRST THING, EAT THE GREEN BEANS! OR THE BROCCOLI! OR THE ASPARAGUS! Or the sawdust. You get the idea. When you hit a restaurant and you're ravenous, all you really need to do to save yourself is simple: tell the waiter that you're dying of hunger, but don't want to eat everything on the menu.

So first you want the biggest plate he can give you of green beans, broccoli, and asparagus. Or your green, low glycemic, zero calorie food of choice.

Now, some folks suggest that even prior to the green sawdust that you eat a giant bowl of clear soup; that's a good idea, if you can pull it off. Note that the soup probably has more salt than the Atlantic Ocean, which is a consideration. But a giant bowl of clear soup along with your green food orgy isn't a bad idea at all if sodium isn't a big consideration, which it is if you have congestive heart failure, for instance.

Still, let's not complicate this. If you eat a bushel basket of green stuff, you'll jam food in your stomach, along with a lot of vitamins, minerals and fiber, and start to take the desperate edge off of your hunger.

Now just order a HUGE mass of protein. Steak, fish, shrimp, or chicken. And eat it.

All. All. All.

Still hungry?

I thought not.

Now you have an opportunity to think straight (which I, personally, don't do very well when I want to digest Cleveland).

You've just had a mass of food, and it's taken your a while to eat it. The green veggies, or salad, or clear soup, or all three, have filled up a lotta space in your stomach. That's job one.

Then the huge mass of protein has nourished you. That's job two.

Then you get to calibrate rather precisely how much fat you want to retain, by deciding whether you want any dessert or none. Or half.

Or two servings of the sugar-free jello.

HERE'S THE FUNNY PART: it's exactly as simple as that.

How do you get yourself to do it? Well, what's it?

First, you need to believe at an intellectual level that it'll work, or you won't make the attempt.

Second, you need to give it a decent trial period, AND MONITOR YOUR RESULTS. I suggest a Tanita scale in your bathroom. They cost a little more than a regular spring scale, but they'll give you a pretty good estimate of your body fat along with your weight, so they're well worth it.

See, if you don't monitor the results that you're getting, you won't keep up any project that requires even a little extra work.

But give it a month.

Will it work?

Well, it'll work a lot better than willpower!

POSTSCRIPT: the more acute among you will recognize that there are popular books which discuss similar techniques. For instance, The Atkins Diet, which is written in inflammatory language, suggests something similar, and so does a book called The Paleolithic Diet, with a good deal less intellectual rigor and courage, because they want to throw carbs in there to avoid being murdered by spagetti fanatics.

Seems that diet theories are now religious dogma. Let me say it a different way. Theories of diet are not being pushed with so much fervor that they take the place of religion for some folks.

And, in my personal experience, the folks who are the most critical of Dr. Atkins and his theories, like those who sneer at Linus Pauling, have simply never read his stuff. They've heard somebody else who talks about what his theories are (but really aren't). When you have a little spare time, actually read Dr. Akins on diet and Linus Pauling on Vitamin C and heart disease. My belief is that you'll live longer.

But here's how to decide which dietary theories cut the mustard for you personally: try the one that makes the most sense to you. MONITOR YOUR RESULTS ON A DAILY BASIS. DAILY. DAILY.

And, yes, I'm a little dogmatic on daily monitoring. See a nifty little movie called "Supersize Me" and you'll understand why; you can mess yourself up in terms of body fat and ten other variables very, very quickly with bad food, if you're a "heavy user".

And give your favorite theory (the cheesecake diet, the rice diet, the spagetti diet, the Atkins Diet, or the Paleolithic Diet) a decent test period.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, IT DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU!!!!!!

REMEMBER THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY!!!!!!!

See, I have a body of beliefs about the sorts of food that make me fat, and the sorts of food that give me ten-per-cent body fat without needing to exercise.

And the reason I don't have a lot of doubt about what works and what doesn't is that I've tried a bundle of different eating approaches and monitored my blood sugar, body fat percentage, body weight, and blood pressure during those different approaches. And I've worked out with very heavy weights over short ranges and no ranges and full ranges of motion, and one set and three sets and five sets. And cardio and Shotokan Karate and Yoga and ballroom dance and Tai Chi.

And monitored the results.

Now, it should be easier, I agree. You should have been provided with an Owner's Manual for Jimmy or Matilda when you were born.

I will discuss this with God when we talk next. Sometimes I run out of suggestions for Him. Not often.

In the absence of an owner's manual, you need to experiment, and create your own.

In fact, just building your own owner's manual is not a bad idea.

See, most people do build such a manual, but it only has one topic: what makes me feel really good right now? And that's because your lizard brain is running the show when you're on autopilot.

Sadly, what makes you feel really good RIGHT NOW probably includes nicotine, alcohol, cheesecake, and ice cream, in gigantic quantities. And burping and farting a lot afterward. Maybe some tooth-picking while you drift into a beautiful diabetic coma.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to feel good. But (this phrase is stolen and modified; thank you, Mr. Robbins) if you want to feel good for a very long time, you probably want to feel good, just a little, right now.

I'll explain soon.

p.s. the intellectual component of changing your own behavior is just plain interesting to me. Some folks work best using one technique, some a different one. But the intellectual component is useful when you have a belief. For instance, "Sewer rat may taste like punkin' pie, but I'll never know, because I'll never eat the filthy thing!" That's from the movie "Pulp Fiction", and I hope I quoted it correctly.

And even if you thought that cyanide tasted better than anything else on this planet, would you really be tempted to drink it?

So if you can figure out which foods make you fat as a pig (for me that's pizza, for instance, and spaghetti, and mashed potatoes, and the rolls at the start of a meal at many restaurants), and you come to believe fully that those foods will make you, you know, die, you may find that it's easier to control your cravings.

It All Depends on your Perspective

2009-12-31T10:44:00.000-08:00

You remember the gag about cats and dogs.

The dog notices one day that he's being fed, housed, and cared for in every possible way by a human. He thinks, my human must be...a god!

The cat notices one day that she is being fed, housed, and cared for in every possible way by a human, and the cat thinks, I must be a god!

So it is with cataracts.

Cataracts show up as we get older. The crystalline lens of the eye gets cloudy, sort of like the white water that shows up at the bottom of a waterfall or cataract (get it?), and blindness ensues.

A similar process happens when the white of an egg become opaque when it's cooked.

Either fortunately or unfortunately, if you live long enough, you'll probably get to know about cataracts on an up close and personal basis.

Mine started a decade ago. A tiny ring around the very outside of the eye. Been there for a decade or so. So far, no effect whatsoever on my visual acuity.

When I saw one of the best eye docs in Arizona recently, he told me that there was exactly no way in the world to tell me how quickly the process would progress; maybe another three decades until opacity hit, or maybe next week.

Now, is that good news or is that bad news?

Depends on your perspective.

Turns out that the surgery to replace an opaque lens is quick and effective. A plastic lens of some sort or another gets dropped into the slot out of which the old lens was pulled.

TINY little incision on the eye is used to pop out and pop in the new lens.

Here's where it gets good.

There are all sorts of cool lens replacements now.

Some have zones for long distance viewing, medium range and very close up.

So in effect, as we age, we get to purchase the gift of perfect sight (assuming that you have an otherwise healthy eye, of course).

Note: there are studies that suggest that taking a bunch of vitamins like Vitamin C, a couple of the B Vitamins, and especially Vitamin E may slow the progression of cataracts.

Naturally, I am aware that living in Arizona, with it's INTENSE sunlight, is responsible for my cataract development. And I credit the potful of Vitamin C, the B Vitamins, and especially Vitamin E for the decade of continuing clear sight that I've enjoyed. I also collect sunglasses as a hobby, and the black hole in my house eats sunglasses as a hobby.

I am sort of looking forward to having ultimo-perfecto vision with the implanted lens, but I'll wait.

So When You Work Your Behind Off, Do You Get Younger, Or Does It Just Feel Like It's Taking Forever to Die?

2009-12-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

There's an old gag about caloric restriction; it doesn't make you live longer, it just seems like it takes forever to die when you're hungry!

Well, caloric restriction never has to involve hunger, but that's an issue for another day.

Today's topic is working your behind off, and the effects of that work on your...well, behind. Or front. Or top or bottom.

See, there are a lot of celebs and rich folks who do a lot of things because...they can! One is Madonna. One is Lillian Muller. One is my high school buddy who married well and eats PERFECTLY (because custom-designed meals are delivered to her door daily) and works out perfectly (because every other day the Pilates instructor shows up at the mansion for her personal class, and then there's the Yoga Instructor, who show up on days the Pilates Instructor is elsewhere).

And she looks better than she did in high school, and she looked good in high school. No kidding.

Stunning.

But wait! How old is she? I don't know, but I was in her class and I'm sixty.

So she's stunning, and...something or other. And looks thirty, but a really, really GOOD thirty.

But how about folks who are just plain working folks. How do they fare?

Well, depending on this and that, pretty well.

Another buddy of mine, older than me, has been a friend of mine since we were kids. He was a few years older than me, and probably still is. I met him because he was dating my gal pal Darcy, and I only envied him a lot, him being a sophisticated older man and all.

On the other hand, he's worked since then, and not behind a desk. He's a handyman. And busier than he needs to be.

Because during a depression nobody buys a new washer if they can get it fixed. And he can fix it.

He can also fix a broken lock, because he's also a locksmith.

And when he came over today to fix the lock to the patio, I noticed that he is in exactly the same shape he was when he was about forty-two years old. Same stride, same balance, same weight, same muscle tone, same energy.

Now, this is not a guy who takes great care of himself, or a guy who has great genetics. Although I was delighted and surprised to find that he takes several grams of vitamin C per day, which will buy you an extra nine years on the right side of the grass.

But he's done very, very well indeed in the aging sweepstakes, because his functionality appears to be identical to that of a young man, not somebody older than me (by definition, ancient).

So don't feel sorry for that guy you see swinging a pick or wielding a hammer. He may beat you out in the aging sweepstakes, particularly if his job (or her job) involved multiple functions: lifting, walking, twisting (to swing an ax, a hammer, or a lever), prying, squatting, stretching, and so on.

Seems to me as I think about it that a single type of exercise (say, using an ax righthanded, would probably not develop a symmetrical balance, and over time would probably give you repetitive use injuries. Or cut off your foot, depending on your levels of attention).

Now we call it exercise.

Formerly it was called work.

Note: Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates to rehabilitate wounded soldiers after some World War or another. The funky gadgets he developed for exercise weren't the best that could be built. They were just the best he could build with the junk he had to work with! His exercise system was adopted by a bundle of modern dance teachers, which is why Martha Graham modern dance classes bear a remarkable resemblance to Pilates classes without apparatus.

It's a small world, you know?

P.S. I didn't answer my own title question. Apparently, when you're twenty years old from the neck down, you're happier than people who are sixty-five years old from the neck down. You heard it here first. Also note: some people are just born cranky. Getting older just gives 'em more to complain about.

Sleep Well, Live Longer, Live Better!

2009-11-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

First, sleep is important to your health. Once again, you heard it here first.

Second, as you age, sleep becomes less automatic, and if you want to continue sleeping well, requires some amount of planning.

This post is absolutely optional. I know that some folks get older, and still sleep like babies. They have my admiration, and my envy, and my permission to ignore this post.

For the rest of us, sleep presents interesting challenges as we age.

Why is sleep important?

Well, duhhhh.

Has anybody EVER had a wonderful day on no sleep?

I'm sure it's happened sometime to somebody, but seldom to me.

Now, science tells us several reasons that sleep is useful and needed, including the fact that most human growth hormone (HGH) is released about two hours after you enter deep sleep, and that short-term memory turns into long-term memory as we sleep.

No deep sleep for two hours at the front end of your sleep cycle, no HGH. No HGH, and you automatically get, in effect, older than your chronological age. And that's because one consequence of getting older is a gradual reduction in the ordinary pulse of HGH that happens when we are young, and we sleep.

Obvious consequences of little HGH are a less good ratio of muscle to fat, and thinning and sagging of the skin; if you look at folks who are older, you'll see both as ordinary consequences of aging.

When researchers pumped a little extra HGH into quite old, frail folks, the old, frail folks immediately gained muscle and their skin thickened. In many ways, the old, frail folks became younger and less frail. From very short term administration of HGH. And while various other researchers want to pooh-pooh those results, my guess is that if drug companies could make a lot of money off of HGH, that would be prescribed every time somebody sixty and over went to the doctor, and the old folks would be far better off.

Because frailty sucks.

But they can't, and it isn't, so you can either find an anti-aging doc who understands that sort of supplementation, and pay the obscenely overpriced dollars for HGH which is pooped out by germs in giant tanks (and would be cheap as poop if it weren't for monopolistic drug cartels, or you can find other ways to release your own HGH.

This post isn't about HGH, but one way to AVOID producing HGH is simply to eat a lot of sugar prior to bedtime; that'll drive up your insulin and blood sugar, which will block release of your HGH for that evening.

If you routinely eat a bowl of ice cream at night, consider whether eating that for breakfast might be better for you.

If you go to be a little hungry, there's a better chance that you'll release HGH.

If you fast for a few days under medical supervision (fast=water and no food. Fast does NOT equal drinking fruit juice, which has sugars, drives up your blood sugar levels, and BLOCKS release of HGH) you will create a situation where your blood sugar is very low, and you'll produce a bunch of HGH.

Which suggests that several thousand years of fasting for medical reasons may not have been as dumb as it sounded. If you don't have penicillin, fasting may be as useful as anything else for a serious condition. And even if you do have penicillin, and you're old without an infection, a course of fasting may be equal to a course of HGH injections, and you MIGHT live longer and better than if you didn't fast.

Regular fasting may also work wonders for autoimmune diseases, and chronic inflammation. Which is why I'll be doing regular water fasts when I hit fifty.

BACK TO SLEEP AS A TOPIC!

Sleep gets harder as you get older for most folks because they have more owwies somewhere on their bodies, and therefore need better and more gentle support for their bodies, which have owwies.

This is not rocket science.

On the other hand, rocket science may have given us one solution to the problems of elder sleep, which is the material used in Tempur Pedic mattresses. I'll link to their websites when I get a Round Tuit, but until then, learn to use Google!

That sort of foam seems more useful to me than the happy hippie waterbed, but either one or both may be useful to older folks who want to sleep in something approaching comfort.

My feeling about Tempur products is that they may be wonderful, but they may also be overpriced. I have heard, but not investigated, that identical sorts of foam may be available on Overstock.com; go check if you like. I don't get a commission.

Something else that may make sleeping more difficult is soggy tissue/goo.

Don't eat when you read my blogs; some physiological processes are sort of, well, gross.

As folks get older, everything seems to get worse. That means snoring, and that includes autoimmune disorders like sinus allergies.

There's a dumb, low-tech device that may or may not help with either or both.

It's a firm foam wedge that takes the place of, or supplements the function of, a pillow.

Here's the deal as it applied to me: with a big ol' firm foam wedge under my back, my allergies and my snoring are lessened. And my tendency to sleep on the dreaded bad right shoulder is lessened, because of the way human bodies (or at least my body) bends.

Another low tech device that may help you sleep is simple; a white noise device of any sort you like. Loud noises can wake you and interrupt your sleep cycles; either earplugs or white noise may be useful to you.

Note: if you live in a neighborhood where there are frequent burglaries, kidnappings or home invasions, you might want to ignore the suggestion about earplugs or white noise. And take my suggestion to move to a safer neighborhood!

And there's one last tool that some people like a lot, myself included.

That's melatonin.

Melatonin is a chemical produced by your own brain (actually, mostly produced by the pineal gland) to make you sleepy; it goes about it's work when darkness falls.

Some older folks, myself included, find that we sleep a lot better if we supplement with melatonin a couple of hours before we hit the rack. Time-release melatonin is even more effective for me.

There is a very interesting book which discusses the most interesting experiment in modern times; that book is called "The Melatonin Miracle". Read it and let me know if you also wonder why that line of research has been ignored.

p.s. Duhhhh again, only this time it's my duhhhh. If you want a wonderful night's sleep, knock off your caffeine intake earlier in the day. Putting it another way, some stuff is so obvious that even I don't think to write about it, and I'm the King of Obvious. But the FIRST thing you get to do if you want to sleep better is to cut off your caffeine intake earlier in the day and self-monitor the effect on your sleep for a week or two.

You may want to cut off caffeine intake at noon, as I do, or earlier or later, depending your brain receptors for caffeine.

So folks hate caffeine and think it's awful, but I know that coffee has health benefits, as does tea, so I simply balance my intakes to get the results I want.

And if you go cold turkey on caffeine of all sorts, you may well experience the world's worst headache for a while. Once again, you heard it here first, from the King of Obvious.

p.p.s. my friends know that I'm an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer, and have been for about thirty years. One of the side-effects of terror about economic issues is the dreaded sleepless night. Have I ever heard that from a client? Well, yeah. Once or twice.

That being the case, every technique for stress-reduction is also a good idea if you think that stress is one of the problems that is keeping you from enjoying a good night's sleep.

Oddly, alcohol is probably not the very best stress-reduction technique for getting a good night's sleep. While if you drink enough you'll become unconscious, that's not exactly the same thing as sleep. And drinking enough to become unconscious is a health risk from the perspective of both long term liver failure, and short-term side effects including very unpleasant and fairly short term death.

If you become drunk enough to knock yourself out, you stand a fairly decent chance of vomiting and inhaling the vomit, a condition known medically as "aspiration", and among non-medical specialists as "Aw, c'mon. Knock it off! Really."

While there are many health benefits claimed for mild drinking, including some statistical correlations with a longer life span than that of non-drinkers, serious drunks die like Mayflies.

So do NOT confuse that gallon jug of Jack Daniel's with the small bottle of time-release melatonin; the results could be bad.

p.p.p.s. Do NOT EVER take ANY pills, liquids, hypnotic techniques, or relaxation exercises, and get really groggy and then hop behind the wheel of a car. That's why God invented cabs!!

Don't Live Next To An Active Vocano, or Play Stickball in the Freeway!

2009-11-10T10:27:00.001-08:00

This entry is a slight departure from my usual discussions of Vitamin C and exercise; eventually, I'm going to point out that if you live long enough (and remember, I'm trying to turn you into a longevity hobbyist), you'll see a lot of excitement.

For instance, if you were 120 years old today, and you looked back at your life, you would have lived through epidemics of cholera, polio, influenza, a time when tuberculosis and pneumonia were major causes of death, famines, several wars, depressions, riots involving loss of life, potential invasions by foreign powers (Japan decided not to invade after Pearl Harbor because their high command figured that too many households in the U.S. owned rifles, and invading a country of snipers wasn't appealing), volcanoes, locust infestations, dust bowls, forest fires, earthquakes, fires that destroyed entire cities, and other interesting times.

I've always preferred boring to interesting, by the way.

Different people draw different conclusions from historical data.

Some people believe, for instance, that most bad things haven't happened much in the United States in the last twenty years, so those bad things will never happen anywhere here again.

I look at the last 200 years, and see many interesting times involving earthquakes, famines, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and potential invasions, and reach a somewhat different conclusion.

My conclusion is that if you live long enough, you'll see interesting things that you'd rather not see.

And that the future is going to be somewhat like the past.

So if you plan to live to be 120 years old, you might want to consider whether you really want to live on the side of a volcano, flood plains, or on top of an earthquake-rich fault, or in a place so famous for hurricanes that the drinks there are called by the same name. Also, avoid fist-fights with Chimpanzees.

You'll also want to use your seat belt (ALWAYS!), in the way that the sweet girl working for me twenty years ago did not. I still miss her, and she was a very nice girl, so I expect her folks still miss her, too. Note that statistics seem to say that heavier cars, when in wrecks, provide better protection for their occupants than tiny, wispy cars. You heard it here first, folks!

Also note: while we will see each other again eventually, when our father calls us home at last, it's probably more fun to make memories in this life, for as long as we can.

More on this later, but planning for boredom is something that takes some amount of foresight, I think.

And I like boredom a lot.

Compared to the alternatives.

p.s. as this post develops, I'll tell you to wear your seat belt, to avoid kicking in the doors of biker bars and talking about their mommas, to keep eating your vitamin c, d, and selenium, and to keep a supply of anything you MUST HAVE TO STAY ALIVE, like food, water and metformin and thyroid, just in case anything funky happens to our just-in-time inventory system.

Don't go crazy; but some folks routinely keep a one-year supply of food (I believe that's one of the practices of the LDS Church, for instance), and it sure seems to make sense to me.

Repeat after me: better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

New Technique for Aging Well: Don't Die!

2009-10-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

According to the Center for Disease Control, the top ten causes of death in the United States in 2008 were (drum roll, please!):

* Heart disease: 631,636
* Cancer: 559,888
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
* Diabetes: 72,449
* Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
* Septicemia: 34,234

Now, when you look at that list, what you want to do is to take up my current hobby. You want to schedule dying at age 120 of absolutely nothing in particular.

Obviously, dying of nothing in particular at age 120 requires NOT dying of anything specific PRIOR to age 120.

The specific ways you want to avoid are posted above; I'll throw in the numbers for suicide and homicide sometime soon, but avoiding those is something you also want to do.

The easiest one to deal with is not on the list, and it's suicide. Don't ice yourself. If you do, we'll muster you out of the "Live Until 120 And Then Die of Absolutely Nothing in Particular" Special Interest Group on Yahoo. Your estate will be required to return your tie tack or scarf pin.

I'm going to beat this particular post to, well, death. And in subsequent visits, I plan on linking to my other blogposts that discuss ways to avoid dying of heart disease (Linus Pauling says Vitamin C and maybe some lysine do the trick; and indeed, I'm not as dead from a heart attack as my family history would suggest, and I also credit Vitamin C) and cancer (remember when I discussed selenium, and the study from the University of Arizona Medical School suggesting that 200 micrograms of selenium daily cut your chances of dying from cancer in HALF? And turmeric has shown interesting results in some cancer studies, particularly cancer of the colon).

Stroke strikes me as one of those multi-topics. On the one hand, you're going to want really, really sturdy arteries so they don't go "blowie", so Vitamin C comes to mind. And you also want to have normal or lower than normal blood pressure, so cocoa comes to mind, along with all the other goodies that get your blood pressure into normal ranges. And in the past I've also discussed claims that some folks have made for a hand-squeezing device that's supposed to normalize blood pressure, and some other approaches that sounded interesting.

And whatever you do, PAY ATTENTION! Your body often yodels its distress LONG before it finally throws up its metaphorical arms and gives up. So self monitor for all the stuff that you can monitor at home, including blood sugar, body weight and body fat percentage, blood pressure (do NOT die of a condition related to high blood pressure, because you are simply smarter than that!) If you have high blood pressure, FIX IT, and fix it now, even if you have to fast for a month, or use a hand squeezer, or do breathing exercises, or dump fifty pounds of fat, or exercise, OR ALL THE ABOVE AND THEN SOME!!!

The most obvious "PAY ATTENTION AND MONITOR" yourself disease on the list is diabetes. You need to know what your blood sugar is on a regular and frequent basis. Period. The lower the better, as long as you aren't fainting frequently. Because high blood sugar will, among other things, make Willie far less free. Ditto Wilhemina. And diabetes provides a pretty good model of accelerated aging, so don't have it: fix it! Remember the long list of things that may help you cope with increasing insulin resistance as you get older, many of which I have discussed.

Remember, however, that some of you may get better result with your blood sugar with exercise, some with caloric reduction, some by eliminating carbs and sugars from your diet, some by supplementing with cinnamon, or chromium, or taking vinegar before or after meals, or eating bitter melon. You need to test yourself and frequently to see what works best for you; you may decide to do everything, twice! Read everything you can get your hands on, and experiment with yourself to see what works, because it's silly to waste money on bitter melon when your particular body responds best to cinnamon in your coffee and two hours of walking a day.

And remember, doctors get paid to know how to fix things, so read all you can about these topics, and experiment with yourself to see what works well, and talk to your doctor.

Avoiding accidental death is important as well; that's often a car accident, so make sure your car is safe and you wear a seat belt. I've read that the heavier the car, the less likely you are to die in a car accident, so my car weighs six million pounds. That may be a little extreme for you (my gasoline bill is pretty high every month), but maybe not.

I also plan to set out a specific list of "Don't die from These!" for different decades of life, because the causes of death change. Most eighteen year olds who die do not have heart attacks. You'll see that Alzheimer's Disease makes this list, but it won't make the list for twenty-to-thirty year folks. As to Alzheimer's, remember that study I talked about suggesting a reduction of risk that was pretty remarkable for folks who routinely ingest turmeric, a common spice.

But this is the start of the next phase of my health blog. It's not very systematic, but the price is pretty good!

Note that the idea here is to monitor for and prevent the high-ticket causes of death. Unless you have a genetic predisposition, there's not a strong reason to work very, very hard at preventing death from falling pieces of Skylab.

Heck, if you just avoid the obvious, easy to avoid baddies, you should be able to race past me and live to 120 even faster than I do!

Finally, get all of your social interactions out of the way prior to your wake. The turnout at your wake will be very, very small.

Because you'll have outlived everybody you knew. And yeah, that IS a good thing. If you're a part of our Special Interest Group on Yahoo!

On the other hand, it would be just like Eddie to outlive you, just so he could irritate you that much more. So when you're 119 and 11 months and 27 days old, get Eddie drunk, and walk him over to the big "X" you drew on the ground.

You know. The Skylab landing platform.

Make sure he has binoculars.

How Much Time Should I Spend Working on my Health Every Day?

2009-09-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well, not very much!

Look at it this way: pretend that you have a 1950 DeSoto hemi head engine two-door in pristine shape. But that car was built in, you know, 1950.

So to keep it in great shape you need to monitor it at regular intervals, inspect it at regular intervals, and add and subtract components on a regular basis.

You need some specific tools: air pressure gauge for the tires, gap tool for the spark plugs, funnel for the oil, a different funnel for the transmission fluid. Flashlight to see into the dark places. Lug wrench for the...lugs.

And there are things you can do to make you happier with the car that won't make it run longer or last longer, like making the whitewalls shine. But they'll make you happier!

And it won't hurt if you detail it with wax and a toothbrush six hours a day, but it won't make the car last longer or run better. All of that you can do with, at the very maximum, five minutes a day and an hour a month.

Naturally, if something like a new road noise (a loud thump, thump, thump, for instance, or a snapping, squealing, grinding noise from under the hood) comes up, you go to your mechanic NOW! You don't wait for your next scheduled appointment.

So it is with a body built in 1950 or so.

You need some rather specific tools, including a Tanita scale (to check both your weight and body fat percentage without spending an hour getting measured in the gold-standard, which is a water-displacement body-fat measurement. The Tanita is faster and cheaper and you can run the test in 15 seconds a day), a blood sugar monitor, a blood-pressure monitor, and the belt you wore in college. You may need other specific tools. Consult the owner's manual.

Another useful tool is a smart, helpful doctor who listens to you. Once you have one, make sure they take Vitamin C and D so you won't lose them prematurely. You need such a doctor to prescribe whatever specialized motor oil your owner's manual demands.

So here's how it goes: you monitor stuff as often as it seems like a good idea, using the part of your body called a brain. If you don't like the results, get that part fixed!

So if the Tanita scale tells you that you have a body fat percentage of 50%, FIX IT, DUMMY! Otherwise your transmission will wear out prematurely, and the rest of your drive train.

If the belt you wore in college doesn't fit around your waist today, FIX IT, and now. You know how. If not, read my blog.

If your blood sugar is high, stop eating spagetti, and sugar, and bread, and high-fructose corn syrup! Eat eggs and turkey and beef and fish. And don't bread 'em. And take all the things that help your blood sugar work right, including chromium and cinnamon. Ditto with your blood pressure.

The doctor is required because you'll want to get a blood draw and every test in the world every year, or even every six months. You may be able to do that through Life Extension Magazine for less dough.

I get to write this post because of such a blood test. It showed Hashimoto's disease, the most common form of thyroid problem, and now I take thyroid supplements.

Sidebar: have you ever seen anybody whose thyroid stopped working? It's not pretty. Hair falls out. Gut blimps up. Dumb as a stump. The word cretin is a technical term of art for somebody whose thyroid quit working. No kidding.

Second Sidebar: turns out that some people appear to do just fine with a synthetic thyroid supplement. I do not. I am something called a "non-converter", which means that I can take synthetic thyroid supplements all day long, and my hair will still fall out, and so will my brains. I used to believe, as the pharmacutical companies told my doctors, that non-converters were rare. Not so much, apparently. Both your writer, and two of his closest friends, are non-converters. And found out about it when the hair started falling out. NOT GOOD! Only by the grace of God was I lucky and smart enough to know what to do about it, and only by the grace of God did I have a smart and cooperative enough doctor that I did not need to commit violent acts to have my scrip changed. TAKE WARNING BY ME, and have sophisticated thyroid tests (not dumb thyroid tests) frequently, and if you don't like your doctor's explanations or attention to your problems, CHANGE DOCS! Your life depends on it.

If you catch thyroid issues soon enough, most of the brain function comes back.

I'll come back and finish working over this blog. I kind of like the car metaphor. Feel free to brighten up your whitewalls by bleaching your teeth; it won't make you last longer, but you may be happier with yourself, and that's a good thing.

Taking care of your body should take fairly little time. But you have to read the owner's manual, and you have to have the tools, and it's a lot better to take care of regular maintenance before the transmission falls out.

A transmission repair is expensive, and the car stays in the shop until it's done.

p.s. I've written about the quickest varieties of exercise for maintaining your muscles, and walking is great. Both of those can be handled for a high level of benefit in relatively short periods of time. You can be as healthy, in my opinion, with twenty minutes of exercise a day as with six hours of exercise a day.

You cannot be fully healthy without some exercise, or without taking several grams of Vitamin C and some Vitamin D every day. So build in five minutes a day and get up to fifteen minutes a day of exercise, and take your vitamins after you read some more. Read my blog for a discussion of five minutes of strength exercises that work well for me. Walk for cardiovascular fitness, or swim, or row, or dance, or take Shotokan Karate or Tai Chi.

p.p.s. Listen to your doctor, and read everything you can about whatever condition you may have or think you may have, so you can ask good questions of your doctor. It's not exactly like a car. Opinions differ.

What's the LEAST Exercise I Can Do for Great Results? Exercise and the 80/20 Rule

2009-09-05T11:36:00.001-07:00

Exercise will keep you young.

Okay, exercise will keep you younger.

All right, already! Exercise will keep you less horribly old than you would have been! Sarcopenia is the pits. It's one thing to need to ask your grandkids to open a jar of peanuts. It's entire another if you're having trouble tearing open the cellophane package!

You already know from my other posts that the most important single exercises that you can do for longevity are curling the bottle of Vitamin C and taking a gram with your meals, and pushing yourself away from the table when you're about half finished with your meal.

The Vitamin C curl and the table press are the two most important exercises for staying on the right side of the grass.

But perhaps you're greedy. Maybe you want to keep walking on that grass, for instance. You Overachiever, you!

And maybe you want to feel good and look good.

Okay, what's the very, very least you can do so that when you get to the next High School Reunion you get to say "You're looking great, Sally and Jimmy!" and know in your heart of hearts that you look...BETTER!

One answer is that you go back to the exercises of your youth, that you knew well and loved well. Maybe gymnastics, maybe Shotokan Karate, maybe ballet, maybe weightlifting, maybe yoga, maybe Pilates.

But many people, I am told by reliable sources, have lives, and do not have an hour a day to devote to exercise.

So here are five exercises that take about five minutes, TOTAL, per day, that will get you a huge benefit as you age. These are five that are obvious to me.

But what do I know?

Anyway, after you check with your doc, feel free to give these five a shot, and if you don't like them, find your own five!

My criteria for these exercises was simple, by the way.

1) must be of short duration;
2) must hit lotsa muscles, not just a few small, specialized groups;
3) must not require specialized training or an expert teacher;
4) must provide benefit even if you do one repetition of them, while building up;
5) must be progressive enough that if you get with the program, you can increase the benefit to you by just doing more, better, faster.

Those criteria eliminate a ton of exercises.

Now, when I say exercise, I'm not talking about walking. Naturally, I want you to walk, a lot, in well-lighted, safe places. Walking is wonderful.

But as you get older, or as you sit at a desk, you will lose muscle. And walking will slightly slow that process, but it won't stop it. It will also fail to generate pulses of human growth hormone, which you want because of the effect it will have on your appearance at the High School Reunion.

Mind you, if you're doing nothing at all, starting a program of mall-walking and GRADUALLY working your way up to an hour a day is magnificent, and it's also My Favorite Price. But walking will get you a substantial extension in your personal years of life; it just isn't the entire answer, because you can walk, live a lot longer, and still have to live with the scourge of sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia happens, and it's mostly reversible. In 1999 the CDC recognised Sarcopenia as one of the top 5 major health risks facing the US population.

And now that I've used it in a sentence, I'll define it: sarcopenia is the muscle-wasting that happens as you get older. It can be reversed and to a large extent fully prevented by doing strength exercises.

And DO NOT do what I did. DO NOT see if you can do a short-range of motion deadlift with 800 pounds. I have written in this blog about the pleasures of sciatic impingement pain, and it's probably less fun than more fun. Probably.

AND REMEMBER: talk to your doctor before starting any exercise program of any kind! And use your head. Don't keep going if you experience massive chest pain, or massive back pain, or any massive pain at all. Use common sense. Do NOT pour hot coffee on your lap during exercise. Do not attempt push-ups while in a body-cast or a halo! Or do anything else stupid!

Okay, here are the big five, one-minute-each, once-a-day, exercises:

1) Push-ups. These are wonderful exercises that hit at least half of all the muscles in your body. If you can't do a push up, do a yoga variation of a push-up called a Plank: that is, lie down and get into a sort of push-up position. Then stay there for a while. Extend the length of time you can stay there. Then slowly, slowly, bend your arms and let yourself down flat on the floor.

Letting yourself down very slowly is sort of a "negative" push-up, and if you do a dozen or so (after you work yourself up to a full 60 seconds holding "the plank"), you'll build muscle. After a few weeks, you'll be able to do an actual, factual push-up!

Hooray for you! That's a big deal! Now gradually add to your push ups until you can do twenty-five. Then do three sets of twenty-five. Then do as many as you can in a minute.

YOU'RE DONE!! You have reached the point of diminishing returns on that exercise. Now that you can do lots and lots of push ups for a minute, or twenty very slow push ups in a minute, look at your next exercise.

2)Squat. Sounds pretty and romantic, doesn't it?

All you need to do to start is to stand where you can see a clock with a second hand. Now stand with your feet about as wide as your shoulders, and bend your knees a little. Depending on how decrepit you are, keep a hand hovering over a sturdy support when you bend your knees.

Keep working on this one, by tiny, gentle increments. Eventually, you want to be standing with your knees bent a lot (with your thighs almost parallel to the ground) for a minute.

Feel free to do stuff with your upper body while you squat. You many decide to double up on the minute in the squat by squeezing rubber balls with both hands, or doing curls with very light weights, but the squat is the important part here.

And YOU'RE DONE with exercise two now.

3)Bicycle.

Remember, use your head. If you're lying in bed with tubes coming out of every part of you, exercise is probably best left to signing your will. Don't make your last minutes sore.

But for those of use who talked to a doctor first, the next exercise is lying down on your back and pretending you're on a bicycle; pedal your feet in the air at a steady pace as though you are demented and really believe you are riding a bike.

The benefits for your knees in non-weight bearing exercise have to be experienced to be believed (in rats with bone-on-bone contact, this sort of non-weight-bearing exercise encouraged the re-growth of cartilage. I don't have any idea if it works in humans. I believe it caused regrowth of my cartilage, but I'm not a human, I'm a lawyer.) (That's a lawyer joke, you see.)

At the same time, the bicycle exercise does a fine job of activating and working your abdomen while you are not working too darn hard.

Work your way, GRADUALLY, up to a minute. Now you're three-fifths done!

4) Bridge.

It's about as simple as it sounds.

And you're on the floor anyway, from doing your bicycle.

So now you're going to make a gentle little bridge, for a very short while. And if it works out for you, you'll gradually increase the time you bridge by a few seconds a day until you make it up to a minute.

I don't suggest that you do a full wrestling bridge.

Just lie down, looking up at the acoustic tile. Pull your heels close to your butt.

Push your pelvis toward the ceiling.

Leave your head on the floor. Your contact points with the ground will be your shoulders and your feet. Your body makes a little bridge.

This is not a bridge like wrestlers do; they bridge with their heads and their feet as the only points of contact, so they develop super-duper necks. That's a little too intense for most people, and I don't suggest you even attempt it.

So when you work your self up to doing the gentle bridge, which is a major developer for your thighs and butt, for a minute, YOU'RE DONE!! So you can go on to the next one!

5)Superman.

That's the exercise, not the comic book hero. But the exercise gets it's name from Kal-el, the Last Son of Krypton, and my personal favorite in the D.C. Comic Book Universe.

Lie down on your stomach. Extend your arms above your head if you can do it without pain.

Now, fly.

Just kidding!

But it's kinda close. You're going to gently engage your muscles to lift your upper body and legs off the floor, using your back muscles.

Some people have chronic back issues. If you do, or even if you don't, ask your doctor before you do this, or any, exercise.

Now do a few Supermen. Up with the legs and arms. Down with legs and arms. Slowly and gently.

If it hurts, stop, for heaven's sake.

Over a period of as long as it takes, work your way up to twenty or so of these guys. Then quit.

YOU'RE DONE!!

Recap:

In the morning while the coffee is cooking, before you load up the fake sweetener and the cocoa and the cinnamon, and the milk so it doesn't eat your stomach, you have a few minutes.

Use those five minutes to do all the above exercises.

A minute each.

You'll feel a lot better, I think.

I sure did!

p.s. if you have any questions about the best way to do a squat, or a push up, go find a book with pictures. Makes it easier. Or watch some free online video about exercise. I'll link to one next time. When I get a Round Tuit.

Vitamin C is the Single Most Important Thing You Can Take To Help Me Maintain a Healthy Weight

2009-08-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

I've written a little about Vitamin C in the past, and this is ultimately going to be a very long post, because I'm going to set up links to the best articles I can find about Vitamin C on the web.

Why?

Because I don't want to gain weight.

And if I keep going to wakes like the one I attended yesterday, I'm going to have to get a new belt.

How are the two related? Connect the dots: if you all start taking at least four grams, but preferably six or eight grams of Vitamin C a day (IN DIVIDED DOSES DURING THE DAY so you don't poop your brains out), I won't have to go to so many wakes and funerals. And I won't pig out at the wake, and I won't gain the weight I don't want to gain.

Practice pointer: start your Vitamin C project slow. Start by taking 250 milligrams four times a day, at meals and at bedtime. Then take two of those little puppies, and so on. Graduate ultimately to a big boy dose of 1,000 milligrams (which is a gram)four times a day, and then gradually work yourself up from there as you desire.

Simple? Sure. You're going to live fifty years longer as part of my weight management plan, and I appreciate your cooperation.

You'll be living longer because you're taking enough Vitamin C, and I thank you for that, because tailors cost money, and I don't want to have to pay them to let out my trousers!

So are we clear? Take your Vitamin C!

Yesterday's wake was for Larry, one of the best guys I've ever called friend. And while I thought he was a good guy, the turnout at his wake amazed even me.

I want your wake to be a social disaster, not a social success.

Because I want you to outlive all your peers.

So here's your technology: Vitamin C.

Is that it?

It's close. The 80/20 Rule applies in health, too. And chances are that if you take a bunch of Vitamin C, and then a remarkably good multivitamin and mineral, and eat very well indeed, and walk for half an hour a day, you can skip much other medical stuff.

And of those items, Vitamin C might well be the most critical.

Why would Vitamin C be so important?

For that, you'll want to read everything out there on the Linus Pauling Theory of Heart Disease, and also read the evidence that he was right, which is impressive.

Here's the strongest single piece of evidence that he was right: the 2001 study published in the Lancet about Vitamin C, where those in the highest quartile of blood levels of C lived about nine years longer, on average, that those in the lowest quartile.

So who you gonna call? That would be Vitamin C.

And here's the very shortest version of the Linus Pauling Theory of Heart Disease, which is a part of my religion, because I'm still on the right side of the grass even though my parents both had their first heart attacks before fifty:

-if you take in no Vitamin C, you die in a few weeks of scurvy;

-if you take suboptimal amounts of Vitamin C, you develop little tiny cracks on the inside of your main cardiac artery because of repeated stress from your pumping heart. You don't die right away because of a genetic "band-aid" called lipoprotein a, which glugs up to the crack and sticks there and helps keep the artery from going kabloooie (a technical medical term).

-over time, the lipoprotein a, which was the rescuer, becomes the persecutor, because you get a big ol' band aid on the inside of that big artery, and the space inside the artery gets progressively smaller and smaller as more lipoprotein a and ordinary old bloodstream junk gets stuck to the interior of that band aid.

-then you throw a tiny clot, and it plugs the tiny tunnel that now is your tiny little cardiac artery, and you have a heart attack (note: fish oil reduces the number of clots you're likely to throw, so it reduces heart attacks by way of postponing the clot).

Here's the good news according to Linus Pauling (and there's a doc named Rath who also pitches Vitamin C, and thank you, Dr. Rath!): if you take a bunch of Vitamin C, over time, the blockage inside the artery starts to diminish.

In fact, Linus Pauling believed that if you take an amino acid called Lysine while you were also taking Vitamin C, the blockage in the artery would go away very quickly indeed. It's chemistry. Don't expect me to explain, much less understand it.

Linus Pauling was a board-certified genius, and is the only guy to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. That doesn't mean he's right about Vitamin C and heart disease, but it does mean that he had better intellectual tools available to him than most folks.

So my next projects will be linking to a buncha posts about

-the Linus Pauling Theory of Heart Disease;

-the "kill the guinea pig with a heart attack resulting from Vitamin C restriction" project;

-link to the Gorilla heart attack epidemic because of reduced Vitamin C ration articles (I couldn't make this up!);

-the Vitamin C retinal artery comeback study (with pictures!);

-the study published in the Lancet in 2001, which showed the nine-year survival advantage;

-the other discussions of various sorts about Vitamin C and its other health benefits.

And it's cheap! Which is almost My Favorite Price, but not quite.

I'll also be linking to a study that appears to show that smokers who take Vitamin C suffer less blood flow restriction than those who do not; this is not an invitation to start smoking, but it is an invitation for smokers to take Vitamin C.

I'll also link to a study showing that some mean scientist bred rats that couldn't produce their own Vitamin C (that's a condition that those specially-bred rats share with human beings). The Frankenrats aged about 75% faster than normal rats.

NOTE: the folks who talk about Vitamin C and heart disease seem a little fanatical and sometimes even nutty as fruitcakes. My guess is that they really want to avoid wakes and therefore get a little pushy.

Think about it: if you were absolutely convinced that just by getting your friends and family to take a few Vitamin C tablets a day, you could keep 'em on the right side of the grass, on average, about nine years longer, wouldn't you start getting a little...pushy?

Just a thought!

P.S. I just rejected a comment from somebody who was trying to push an Amway Vitamin C product. I rejected it because this isn't a blog for commercial gain, mine or anybody else's, and because as far as I'm concerned, Vitamin C is Vitamin C is Vitamin C. I get the biggest, cheapest vats I can get because I believe that it's effectively all the same.

That said, some people have easily upset tummies. There are a bunch of buffered Vitamin C products on the market; just make sure the dosage is high enough to do you some good!

My Buddy Made a Joke About Vitamin C, and I'm Going to Miss Him A Lot

2009-08-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

I just got a call telling me that a buddy of mine (I've known him for twenty years or so) just keeled over and died. He'll be missed more than most folks, because he was smarter, funnier, braver and better than most folks.

He died of a massive heart attack at age fifty or so.

So, because I can't bring him back, let me try again to keep you here.

Take your vitamins and minerals like a good kid. I'm especially fond of Vitamin C, because of the study published in the Lancet in 2001 (short version: higher levels of vitamin c are better, and the folks in the highest quartile blood levels of vitamin c lived about nine years longer than those in the lowest). I take between four and ten grams a day, depending on whether I'm trapped at the office and forget.

I tried to get my buddy to take Vitamin C. He made a remarkably funny, insightful, entertaining joke out of it. That's another reason I'll miss him (and so will all of his friends, and anybody he talked to was his friend).

Vitamin D is another big one, and I've read studies that suggest that supplementing with D gets you another three years on the right side of the grass. I'm currently taking about four thousand international units a day.

Note: watch this space. I'll be blogging about the Linus Pauling Theory of Heart Disease, which is a major part of my religious belief system. Feel free to look around the internet for discussions of the topic, using the search term Linus Pauling Theory of Heart Disease.

Preview: how do you give a guinea pig a heart attack? Cut off its supply of dietary Vitamin C. Guinea pigs are one of four classes of animals that don't produce Vitamin C inside their own bodies, and so must obtain it from dietary sources, or die. The four include fruit bats (they eat of lot of fruit, you see), guinea pigs, monkeys and apes, and humans. Oh, my!

A doctor named Rath discusses the issues of Vitamin C and heart disease a lot. I'll be linking to his sites and other posts soon.

Also note: I don't care who else believes the Linus Pauling Theory of Heart Disease. It gets little publicity because nobody gets rich off of generic Vitamin C, and that includes me. But I take it because the risks are remarkably low, and the benefits are stupidly great.

Take a good quality multi-vitamin and mineral. Won't hurt much, might help a lot.

Dump your gut. My buddy was a big guy, and his belt was far too long. I dumped fifty pounds about twenty years ago, and I've kept it off. It was the Hawaiian vacation photos that did it. I just didn't want to look like that!

You know how to dump fat, and it doesn't need to involve a gym. All you need to do is this exercise: push the table away.

There is a plethora of stuff you can buy that promises weight loss.

Forget it. You know enough right now to dump your gut, and you have the tools. Just eat half as much at every meal as you eat right now. And gently, very slowly, start doing some walking.

If it's too hot to walk outside (I live in Arizona and it's been around 106 degrees lately, but last month it was really hot) then go to a mall.

You don't need expensive equipment that will function as a clothes rack. Just walk.

After your tolerance for exercise has increase, find something you like and do it. Maybe Yoga. Maybe Shotokan Karate. Maybe ballroom dance (don't sign a contract). Maybe swimming. Maybe just more walking. But do it. The failure to exercise is about as bad as smoking, in terms of health risks.

And get your head straight.

You aren't depriving yourself of food by eating on little plates and eating slowly. You're letting yourself enjoy food for another 50 years. And you aren't wasting time by getting in a half hour or hour of exercise a day. You're maintaining your vehicle so it can drive you around and you can have fun! For another fifty years!

The stuff you're doing is just a gift to yourself; and it lets you love and support the people around you for that much longer.

WHAT IF YOU DO EVERY SINGLE THING RIGHT AND YOU KEEL OVER ANYWAY?

Well, you won't be around to worry about it, after all. So no harm, no foul.

And prior to keeling over, your knees will hurt less because you'll have dumped your gut, and brought yourself closer to your design specs, so everything will work better.

Finally, you'll enjoy your time on the right side of the grass more.

Finally (really finally this time) ask yourself if you'll be missed if you go early. If so, you REALLY need to take your vitamins, so you can tell your friends and family you love them, longer.

Because you may not get a wake-up call.

Fasting: It's not Just for Breakfast Anymore!

2009-07-20T16:38:00.001-07:00

This will ultimately be a long post, with a bunch of links to sources and studies.

The short version is this: fasting has therapeutic benefits, particularly when practiced under medical supervision. I forget the name of the only "fasting farm" in the United States, but it might be True North. I'll get back to you on that.

NOTE: only fast under medical supervision.

One of the things fasting fixes, for reasons that nobody understands, is high blood pressure. I'll post the studies here. Some folks need to fast once a year to get that effect, and as I said, the studies will get posted here. But the effects are so pronounced that some insurance companies will pay for the fasting farm!

Note that a juice fast isn't fasting. It's a juice orgy. Nothing wrong with some juice, except that it'll drive your blood sugar through the roof, ditto your insulin, if it's all you take in for a few days.

I think (my opinion) that a "juice fast" is as dumb as a stump. If you want to drink juice, say you're drinking juice. Don't say you're fasting.

Fasting is pretty simple. You don't eat, you drink water.

My wife fasted for 30 days. Lost about fifty pounds. Under medical supervision. Put her rheumatoid arthritis into remission.

Will it do the same for you? No clue, much less a guarantee.

It appears from a few studies that alternate day fasting may have life-prolonging effects similar to the Roy Walford sort of caloric restriction.

I plan to experiment with alternate-day fasting when I hit 60.

If I live, I'll let you know.

Here's my theory about alternate-day fasting and it's effects on lifespan: if you fast, your body starts dumping out human growth hormone. After a few days of fasting, lots of human growth hormone. That's because your insulin levels and blood sugar levels are in the basement. That increased level of HGH, I suspect, is the primary mechanism behind the life-extension effect of alternate day fasting.

And that's why a "juice fast" doesn't have the same effect as a fast.

When you fast, your blood sugar levels and insulin levels drop; your body can then access it's stores of fat.

When you pig out on juice, your blood sugar and insulin levels guarantee that your body cannot access it's supply of fat.

That means it gets to burn muscle instead.

RealAge is a Nifty Concept! Go there, and Discover your Real Age!

2009-07-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of measures of age. There's cool book called Biomarkers, for instance, that I've posted about in one of my other blogs.

There is also a really cool website called RealAge out there; it's sort of a calculator that asks you questions, and when you pick a,b,c or d, it moves a running tally of your real age, as opposed to your chronological age, forward. And at the end of the exercise, it will give you a plan to make your RealAge younger. For free, which is My Favorite Price(tm). Unless they've raised the price since my last visit.

Here's an example: a heavy smoker who drinks a bottle of scotch and eats twenty Big Macs per day as his exclusive diet may have a chronological age of 50, but a real age of 90. A chronic exerciser with a chronological age of 50 who monitors his blood sugar, body mass index, body fat percentage, and takes vitamins may have a real age of 30 (that is, he's as likely to die as an average 30 year old).

Now, I don't agree with absolutely all of the judgment calls made at the RealAge site, many of which are backed up by good studies.

For instance, I don't think whole-wheat products are good for you. I think they're just LESS BAD than white flour based products. And I know darn good and well that RealAge doesn't suggest the amount of Vitamin C that I believe is needed for good health; ditto Vitamin D. And the last time I checked it, it didn't register any benefits for coffee or cocoa (as I recall; but remember, my chronological age is pretty far up there; maybe I forgot!).

But most of the judgment calls made in the online RealAge calculator are, in my humble opinion, more correct than incorrect.

And it's a fun exercise.

And if you're a beginner to the hobby of Doing Stuff to Stay on the Right Side of the Grass, then the RealAge calculator is a great place to start.

Because it has a ton of information in an easy to pick up format, and because it gives you sort of a fun way to play with your RealAge; that is, if you change behaviors number 37, 43 and 82, your RealAge will go down by twenty years!

And that's a pretty decent way to motivate people to take care of themselves.

And nobody cares as much about your health, happiness and well-being as you do, except your mother and father. And they can't be there every minute. But RealAge can give you the advice you ignored when Mom said, "Take your vitamins and eat your vegetables; and french fries are not a vegetable for the purposes of Mom's advice!"

Shameless Plug for a Great Hospital and Nurse

2009-07-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

Today was a project day; the project was taking my wife over for a 50,000 mile checkup on her pacemaker. It's pretty straightforward; they knock her out and set off the pacemaker, which apparently has a kick like a mule when she's awake.

Actually, they said, it kicks like a mule when she's knocked out as well; but she doesn't notice it as much.

The pacemaker was pursuant to congestive heart failure which was a side-effect of the chemo. But that's another story.

Because no matter how much Vitamin C, Vitamin D and cocoa you ingest, you're going to get older and you'll eventually require a hospital stay.

Over the last few years I've had friends and relatives and classmates and clients who required hospitalization for heart attacks, kidney stones, broken bones, cancer, and assorted surgical procedures. This getting older is not for sissies.

I'm now officially a connoisseur of hospitals.

The physical plant inside a hospital is important; helps if it looks clean and it's well lighted.

Most hospitals are as noisy as horror movies, and there's noise all night, to make absolutely sure you can't get sleep no matter how much they dope you up.

But today's hospital field trip was to one of my big favorites in Arizona, the Scottsdale Healthcare Shea Hospital at 9003 E. Shea Blvd. in Scottsdale, Az.

First, it has valet parking.

Yes, I said valet parking; this is Scottsdale, after all.

Is that important? Only if it's 116 degrees and 90% humidity. Like now. And if the patient has congestive heart failure and a titanium knee that wants to swell up like a pumpkin if it only gets the chance.

The staff is also important.

And everybody there is just plain wonderful, from the volunteers, to the nurses, to the cafeteria workers, to the...you get the idea.

Everybody there had good morale, and seemed to genuinely like their jobs.

Nobody sings in their chains like the sea, of course. They call it a job because they have to pay you to do it.

But I've never seen a happier, more efficient hospital staff.

And they may well put something funny in the water. Even the DOCTORS are helpful.

Here's something you won't notice, because you're not a connoisseur of hospitals. Shea has a great staffing ratio. There are enough nurses per patient. Just so you know, that's a critical element in hospital quality. You're much less likely to die in a hospital with good nurse/patient ratios.

But while nursing ratios are important, so is the quality of the nurses.

And Scottsdale Shea is lucky enough to have great nurses, including Allison, the world's best nurse(tm). If ever there were a nurse more sensitive to patient needs, more helpful, compassionate, nicer, sweeter, more careful moving the gurney or sticking in the needle...well, you get the idea. On a scale of 1 to 10 in nursing ability, Allison displays about a 17. And the other nurses in her department are also remarkable, if not quite ready for canonization. But close!

Whoever does the hiring at Scottsdale Shea is a treasure.

The acoustics at the hospital are decent, not wonderful like a library, but not goshawful like an ordinary hospital. And the areas where family is herded off to await the results of surgery or examinations are as comfortable as a good quality airport, if not a good quality Starbucks. Much better than an average hospital!

Heck, even the cafeteria at this hospital is pretty good!

So the next time my left leg falls off, or I wake up and discover that my nose is upside down, I know where I want to recuperate.

Although, to be fair, I wish I weren't becoming such an expert on the care and feeding of hospitals.

Seriously.

Sludge: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore!

2009-07-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

So we know that coffee has health benefits, because studies (to which I'll eventually post a link) tell us that it's protective against Parkinson's Disease.

And it's also full of caffeine, which is not the component with the health benefits, although there's also a study demonstrating that caffeine greatly increases exercise tolerance among highly-conditioned cyclists.

There are also studies that tell us about the blood-pressure lowering effects of cocoa (although oddly, you want to use the ordinary cocoa, because the dark cocoa has fewer polyphenols-whatever those are).

Then there's cinnamon, which in ordinary dietary amounts increases insulin sensitivity. And that's a good thing.

Has it ever occurred to you that it's a little difficult to find a way to take in all the healthy stuff that people tell you about?

Well, one of the ways I get a little extra benefit out of my morning coffee is simple; it also gets a big spoonful of cocoa, and I stir in some cinnamon, too.

Makes it a little thicker than ordinary coffee, but not too bad.

First time I tried it I went a little overboard.

Thick as cement.

And no matter what, by the time I make it to the afternoon, I switch to green tea.

Because the smell of hot coffee works for me in the morning, but by the afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona, where it's currently about 116 degrees and thirty per cent humidity, I switch to something a little less like thin cement.

Iced green tea is surprisingly easy to drink; and it's so good for you that it's absurd.

And yeah, both the healthy sludge and the iced green tea took a little getting used to.

Why Don't These Celebrities Age Like the Rest of Us?

2009-07-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Simple. They sold their souls to the devil.

I saw it in a movie called "Death Becomes Her."

Actually, it's almost simpler that that.

Most celebrities are loved by cameras; they're genetically photon-augmented. Some people just plain look better than others on camera, even if they're nothing special in person.

Then there are those who take VERY, VERY good care of themselves, and in that way celebrities could be good role models, and seldom are. But if you work out for an hour a day, in yoga or Pilates or ballet or karate, that extends your lifespan about as much as not smoking. And many, like Nick Nolte, are determined to deal with decades of hard-living with a serious approach to exercise, vitamins, minerals, and bio-identical hormone replacement.

Then there's the fact that ordinary old eating less (caloric restriction without malnutrition) extends life term in most animals, and there's a healthy side to the tiny waistline craze.

Then there's the fact that celebrities know that their income is related to their appearance, so they have been early adopters of dental veneers, plastic surgery, hair coloring and replacement, lasik eye correction to get rid of glasses, and lasers to deal with sun damage, and injected goo to plump out wrinkles.

And then there's the professional quality makeup that gets smeared all over celebrities before they go on television or onto a movie set.

Oh, yeah. Celebs often have dressers who decide for them what they will be wearing, so even bad taste gets factored out of the system.

And you all know people (maybe you know them VERY well!) who dropped 30 pounds and got new clothes for a 40 year High School Reunion.

But taking care of yourself pays dividends in healthy lifespan whether you're a celeb or a regular schlub like me.

Note: celebs were famous for phrases like "live fast, leave a pretty corpse", and drinking heavily and smoking on stage. Now their challenge is to appear wild and crazy, and then sneak home to take their vitamins where nobody can see them!

Mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup, and Vaccines for Baby?

2009-07-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

Do you know that the Environmental Protection Agency believes that Mercury exposure is responsible for damage to the nervous systems of the fetus and the baby?

And do you know why the Food and Drug Administration permits the use of Mercury in the many, many vaccinations given to babies?

Well, neither do I.

Oh, yeah. Apparently Mercury is very, very dangerous to humans in all contexts, unless you put it in vaccines for babies, or in high-fructose corn syrup for general human consumption. Because it shows up in both of those places, big-time! And apparently the FDA is fine with those facts, because baby vaccines are full of Mercury, and some half of commercial samples of high-fructose corn syrup were also full of Mercury.

One might ask, why would the FDA be so hostile to vitamin supplements, and so cuddly with Mercury? I wouldn't, actually, because my head would explode if I actually gave it any thought.

There are theories that Rome fell because Greek cooks made sauces in lead cooking vessels, from which the sauces made with vinegar absorbed lead, which gave rise to heavy-metal poisoning in the Roman Elite (the only folks who could afford such expensive cooking vessels and cooks), which made them crazy as bedbugs.

It would be interesting if future historians concluded that the United States committed slow-motion suicide by heavy metal poisoning. Using Mercury as the poison of choice.

Sciatic Pain Can Be Really Interesting, to the Exclusion of Everything Else in the World!

2009-07-06T01:10:00.000-07:00

Ever have sciatic pain?

You would cheerfully talk about troop emplacements and tank locations to make it stop.

Since the pain is caused when a bulging disc presses against your sciatic nerve (the biggest nerve in the body), you can't get a position that makes the pain stop, or even slows it down.

Sleep is difficult, and the pain is remarkable in its intensity. That's remarkable, spelled "AAAAARRRRGGGGGGGG!"

So there I was, experimenting with a new machine in the gym. I'd read a lot about static hold exercises to build muscle, and I knew that I could lift remarkable amounts very short distances in my strong range in the bench press and leg press.

I wanted to see how much I could lift using the strength of my shoulders and back and legs. The machine was really designed to work the calves. The pads went on the shoulders, and you stood upright, and you could set your feet so that the calves were stressed. But I set my feet so they were planted, and set the arm of the machine so I was almost fully upright.

And then I stood, and moved the capacity of that machine (800 pounds) about a quarter of an inch, and felt like a real studmuffin.

About a day later, the disc next to my sciatic nerve bulged.

And I learned things I never wanted to find out about pain.

Long story short: after several go-rounds with pain medication, I ran across a study using an old-school steroid, prednisone, in a 9-day declining dose.

My doctor read the study and said, that looks promising.

I went through one such cycle, and then one more.

At the end of the second cycle, I was in pretty decent shape, as opposed to completely incapable of functioning as a human being in any important way, and I didn't need any pain meds because the pain was now a pale shadow of its former self.

I won't be lifting huge weights in the future, but the bulging disc and swelling and inflammation have reduced themselves dramatically, and now I do pretty demanding exercise workouts a few times a week, and seldom have more than a twinge.

I am never tempted to repeat my experiment with the 800 pounds.

Ever.

Note: there's a food supplement called bromelain, made from pineapple stalks. It is quite useful in reducing swelling, and if (Dear Lord Forbid!) I ever have a sciatic episode again, I'd try that in addition to the prednisone, and cold applications as well.

My feeling is that any old thing that reduces inflammation (which occurs when the disc herniates or ruptures or just bulges too much) and swelling is a good thing with sciatic pain.

Also note: if you're tempted to experiment with bromelain, which has been useful to me, don't take it at the same time as your other meds; it's a DIGESTIVE enzyme, and you don't want it digesting your other medicines, after all.

Sure, High-Fructose Corn Syrup is Natural. Just like Tobacco.

2009-07-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

Let's talk.

In the 1950s in the United States, obesity was uncommon.

Morbid obesity was very, very rare.

Ultra-crazy obesity didn't exist.

There was no need for stomach reduction surgeries, or bypass surgeries.

Now all the above are common, everywhere in the United States.

Why do you suppose that might be?

Well, a bunch of the so-called "foods" we eat today didn't exist in the human food supply in 1950. They are "Frankenfoods", and have quite simply contaminated our food supply.

I could make this a very long blog, but a great deal has already been written on the dangers of eating lots of high-fructose corn syrup.

For instance, there are studies in which rats are fed on high-fructose corn syrup.

They die in ways that make you feel sorry for rats. And it messes with reproduction, even in rats; makes the rat mommies-to-be REABSORB their litters. Apparently, one good use of high-fructose corn syrup might be rat poison!

Now, rats are tough, and rats are hardy. Rats have lived in close proximity with humans since cities came to be, and probably before we lived in cities.

So if rats, which thrive on foods that I couldn't write about without gagging, will die horribly if fed a diet of high-fructose corn syrup, what will hfcs do to humans?

Well, I'm not absolutely sure of that; I expect that high-fructose corn syrup will make a lot of people seriously obscenely fat. Before it makes them seriously obscenely dead; and if high fructose corn syrup makes pregnant rats reabsorb their litters, is it even possible that it's good for pregnant human mommies?

Now, the food made with high-fructose corn syrup may taste wonderful, and it may not.

But paraphrasing a character in Pulp Fiction, "High-fructose corn syrup foods and drinks may taste like punkin' pie, but I'll never know that, because I'll never eat or drink the filthy stuff!"

Note: there's a nice piece of food propaganda that says high-fructose corn syrup is "natural", and it's made from corn. Well, that may be true. But if I hollow out a corncob and fill it with tobacco, I've got a perfectly natural product. And it will kill you very nicely, if slowly. If I blend high-fructose corn syrup with flour, that seems similar to me.

Final Note: eating some corn on the cob or some creamed corn every now and then won't do you a bit of harm, unless you're allergic to it. Or unless it's genetically engineered corn with a human contraceptive built into it, and it jumped the fence. I don't know what that would do to humans. Now, I like corn and I eat it once a month or so, although I'll avoid hfcs whenever I can.

Really Final Note: suppose I'm wrong, and you avoid food made with high-fructose corn syrup. You lost nothing, because you'll simply eat real food instead. If I'm right (remember the horribly dead rats), you gain a lot by just saying no.

The Finalest Final Note of Final Notes: ran into an interesting story about a study finding MERCURY in half the samples of high-fructose corn syrup tested. Aw, c'mon! It's not bad enough that it kills RATS? It's got to have Mercury in it, too?

Sounds like a health food to me, all right.

Curcumin Beats Plaques that Cause Alzheimer's?

2009-06-10T08:47:00.001-07:00

I've been reading a lot about a study that concludes that, in rats, curcumin stops the formation of the plaque that causes Alzheimer's Disease.

And in rats in which the plaque has already made its appearance, the curcumin makes the plaque go away.

There are some things in life that have a very good risk/reward ratio.

One is NOT gambling in Las Vegas. They didn't get to build those gigantic palaces on the backs of those who WON in Las Vegas.

One is certainly taking vitamin C and vitamin D and selenium. No risk or expense to speak of, and potentially huge reward.

Looks like eating a lot of curry may also fall into that category.

Sometimes Business is Enough to Make You Sick!

2009-05-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

Especially if you own the business.

Especially during a recession.

I have a little blog about bankruptcy, because I've been a bankruptcy lawyer in Arizona for about thirty years. My Arizona bankruptcy blog is located here.

Worrying about your business is a pretty good prescription for getting sick.

Not worrying about your business at all is a pretty good prescription for going bankrupt.

Burning out fully and completely is a pretty good prescription for getting so sick and tired of your business that you stop worrying about it at all and then watching in depressed horror as your business falls apart. That's one of the messages of The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber, a very good book about starting and running a business and it's available on Amazon.com, here.

I'll be blogging about businesses failing and jobs disappearing, and the effects that I've seen it have on people and families, but as a preview remember that health trumps wealth every day of the week.

Nobody who has a billion dollars would keep the dough if by getting rid of it he could cure himself of his terminal pancreatic cancer.

Nobody who's counting the little holes in the ceiling because he's fallen down from his first (and last) heart attack wishes he had more dough. He wishes he had more life, and that he'd told more people that he loved them, and more often.

So a preview of my next series of posts is simple: I'm going to suggest a bunch of cheap, easy things (some vitamins, some minerals, some exercises) that other people say will make your life longer and better.

I'M NOT A DOCTOR. NEVER TAKE HEALTH ADVICE FROM ME, BECAUSE YOU'LL PROBABLY DIE BADLY. OR DIE WELL. IN FACT, IF YOU TAKE ANY HEALTH ADVICE FROM ME, I GUARANTEE YOU THAT YOU'LL DIE EVENTUALLY. ALWAYS WITHOUT EXCEPTION ASK YOUR DOCTOR WHAT TO DO ABOUT ANY HEALTH ISSUE OR HEALTH CONCERN OR HEALTH PROBLEM, BECAUSE THEY'RE A PROFESSIONAL, NOT A HOBBYIST!

That said, ask your doctor whether worrying about your failing business 24/7/365 is likely to improve your health. If he says yes, feel free to keep worrying. If he says no, think about which stress reduction techniques you can use, and then ask your doctor about those.

There's a nifty little book called The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson and Miriam Z. Klipper, available on Amazon.com. In short, the Harvard Medical Boyo who wrote the book described his experiences with folks who practiced a particular sort of meditation, and then tried to reverse-engineer meditation so anybody could practice it for stress reduction without having to spend years studying with a Guru or Roshi.

Now, that's for stress, and I'll talk about that more as I blog about this topic.

There are a lot of stress reduction techniques out there, and I've tried a few, because sometimes I've experienced stress myself (really? stress?), and some work well for me and some work less well. I'll talk about those to save you a little time as this blog develops.

Remember: Will Power Won't Work

2009-05-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

There's nothing wrong with will power. It's very good, I suppose.

Sure doesn't seem to work well for anybody I know.

So if you're trying to eat less, make sure you eat more.

That is, remember to start meals with a bunch of clear soup.

Then go to a gigantic serving of green beans or asparagus or broccoli or cabbage or whatever green, non-caloric, vegetable you can stand. I used plenty of butter and bacos to help me get those down when I was a beginner.

Then go to lots and lots of chicken, tofu, beef, shrimp or whatever other protein rich food you like, that doesn't drive up your blood sugar; breaded meats need not apply.

Then on the weekends, give yourself some fruit. Not a lot, and at the end of a gigantic meal (see above).

That way, the glycemic index of the fruit won't be much of a problem. Eat half a tangerine, not a bushel basket of bananas.

Remember to check with your doctor before you start working out, dieting, or making any other behavioral changes. Or you may do something wrong and die, which is bad.

Note: if you read every expert on the issue of diet and health, you may reach a conclusion like the one I did, which is that the the experts all disagree like crazy. That suggested to me that for me, the way to approach the issue was to read all the experts, and then experiment on myself like the hero of "Supersize Me."

On the other hand, the whole point of monitoring what's going on with your body is so you can change course when it starts getting wonky, rather than continuing doing stuff that makes you fat, raises your blood pressure, closes off your arteries, and so on.

Mother's Day Longevity Thank You!

2009-05-13T10:19:00.001-07:00

Your parents have a profound effect on your health.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, parental chi is the most important factor in your lifetime health.

And genetics is recognized to have a profound effect on your health (and the fact that you grew up to be a human being and not a chicken).

Your parents can teach you good health habits, or bad ones. And they can be good examples, or bad ones.

My guess is that in the real world, it's a little of both.

In my case, my mother was a nurse. She generally worked the night shift, so she was vitamin D deficient all her life.

She was apparently the child of mutants from Krypton, because her primary source of nutrition was black coffee and cigarettes, and she kept on ticking even though she was in constant pain from a neck injury suffered when she was about twenty-five. Rear-ended by a drunk driver without insurance.

I don't ever expect to be seated on a jury involving a rear-ending by a drunk driver. Mr. McDaniel, do you think you can be unbiased in reaching a decision based on the evidence? YOU BETCHA, YOUR HONOR! BUT I HAVE ONE QUESTION. IS THE DEATH PENALTY AVAILABLE IN A CIVIL TRIAL?

But my mother taught me more about health than almost anybody else, and sometimes she taught me lessons that were in the nature of a positive example, and sometimes negative.

If I'd ever thought about smoking, my mom's emphysema would have worked its cautionary magic, along with her heart attacks.

On the other hand, my mom had read about the effects of a starchy diet early on, and passed her dietary beliefs on to me; she wasn't obese, and I used her no-starch diet to dump fifty pounds at one point in my life.

She didn't drink much, which was probably because of her fat phobia as well as the realization that drinking to dull the pain when you're always in pain is a recipe for disaster.

She was a lifelong exerciser, which is one reason she was the cutest babe at the rest home, and all those geezers (those who could still see) wanted their walkers close to her walker at the rest home social events. That exercise was certainly one of the things that contributed to her longevity.

Working at night is bad for your health. The statistics are fairly clear. And nobody fully understood the need for levels of vitamin d that were similar to those that your body would produce if exposed to summer sunlight for a period of time.

And my mom hated milk. She was born a blue baby, and the doctors said she probably wouldn't make it, so her parents refused to give her a name until she'd been around for a few months. And her parents gave her coffee mixed with milk in her bottle, partly as a stimulant for her grade-B heart.

She survived, but grew up hating milk and milk products, and loving coffee.

The combination of zero vitamin d and zero calcium in her diet gave her bones like chalk, and her feet and neck gave her problems all her life. She also insisted on wearing high heels all her life, which couldn't have been good for the bones in her feet.

On the other hand, she'd read Linus Pauling at an impressionable age, and believed that everybody else should take serious amounts of vitamin C throughout life. She sporadically took Linus' and her own advice, which is another reason she survived as long as she did.

So thanks, mom. You taught me not to work nights, and to take vitamin d and c, and to keep exercising. And to just say no to the mashed potatoes and whiskey.

For the record, for about a year before my mother died, she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to her brothers and sisters.

Those were very, very long distance calls, because heaven isn't a local call on any network.

But I know that now she can talk to them as long as she wants, and it won't cost a penny for the long, long distance.

So Happy Mother's Day, Mom! Whatever you did, it worked!

Vinegar as a Wonder Drug

2009-05-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

So if you want to lose weight, one of the studies you want to review involves a dietary mystery.

Why did group A lose weight when group B did not?

Answer: group B ate pickles at the end of their meals.

So why, asked the researchers, did the group B pickles help that group lose fat?

Answer: because pickles are soaked in vinegar.

So why does vinegar have that effect?

Well, apparently it makes the stomach empty slower, and that reduces the spike of blood sugar and insulin that makes people get fatter.

So how effective is vinegar at reducing the spike of blood sugar and insulin?

According to my reading of the study, about as well as the prescription drug metformin, and metformin is a very effective drug.

Don't ever take medical advice from me; talk to a licensed health professional before doing anything.

But that's interesting, yes?

Buck Rogers as a Role Model for Weight-Loss

2009-05-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

There was a silly little tv show called "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" that aired in 1979, and the star was an actor named Gil Gerard. A few decades ago when the show was new, Gil Gerard was a tall, strong guy and he looked like, well, a tv star!

That same Gil Gerard recently showed up on what was, in essence, an infomercial for stomach reduction surgery.

He'd been fighting obesity all his life, and had finally ballooned into a hugely obese guy who couldn't tie his own shoes without squishing himself into a pretzel on the staircase. And as to his blood pressure, blood lipids, arthritis, and diabetes...don't ask!

Fast forward through the infomercial, and Gil gets a stomach reduction surgery.

And during the rest of the show, he loses weight and gets healthier and happier.

By the time we get to the end of the show, Gil is at a healthy weight and has dispensed with the huge mass of prescriptions that were needed to keep him animated, and Gil felt a bunch better, exactly as though he had gotten his life back. Tennis and scuba, for instance.

So what lessons do we learn from Gil's experience with weight loss?

First, weight gain, even massive weight gain, is reversible. That's a good and important lesson.

Second, you feel better when you hit your healthy weight. Good lesson.

Third, you look better when you're healthy; that was an implicit lesson, but it was pretty obvious.

Finally, you have the opportunity to lose weight very quickly indeed if you have your stomach surgically reduced in size.

These were the lessons that were not discussed in the show about Gil's surgery:

-stomach surgery on a fat guy is as dangerous as all get out, and people die a lot in such surgeries and soon thereafter;

-if folks don't eat as instructed by their doctors after the stomach surgery, the small pouch that was created by the stomach surgery will grow and so will the pre-surgery obesity;

-if somebody gets the stomach surgery, and doesn't take vitamin supplements, they can develop pseudo-senility from B-12 deficiency (happened to a friend of mine, who currently wears grown-up diapers and can't remember his own name; gack).

Here's the worst part: some folks apparently aren't able to reduce their weight without surgery, so they have to have bariatric surgery or they get to die.

I have a buddy who is about four hundred pounds at six feet, and I know he'll die thirty years ahead of schedule unless he gets his stomach surgically reduced in size; and that's disturbing.

Bottom line: take a look at the Gil Gerard tv spot about his stomach surgery if you're thinking about it. It's pretty informative. And if you have the stomach surgery, please listen to your doctor about the eating plan your doctor prescribes, and take your darn vitamins as your doctor instructs.

Or you get to wear a diaper.

p.s. apparently, some people do well with a less-intrusive surgery involving putting a band around the stomach; one advantage of the banding technique is that if it doesn't work perfectly, the band around the stomach can be made tighter or loosened up, as needed. Or even removed, as needed.

And I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on television; get advice from a doctor.

p.p.s. I have a prejudice about weight loss, and that's because I found a technique that worked for me; eat vast supplies of green veggies (low calorie type green veggies) prior to eating adequate protein, which doesn't have much of a glycemic index, because it's digested pretty slowly. And one thing I know for sure is that while that (along with some push-ups and situps and chinups and squats) worked pretty well for me (no, I'm still not Tarzan, one of the major disappointments of my life), it won't work at all for some other people.

I suspect that's because some people have different taste buds and absolutely hate foods like low-calorie green stuff (because it tastes bitter to them), and also because some folks, especially those whose ancestors were famine people, may have stronger cravings for cramming in food than folks who weren't starved in the Highlands. If you are descended from people for whom a powerful appetite was a survival characteristic, you may well hear a louder siren song from the chocolate cake.

And that'll make it much harder to just walk on by the chocolate cake. Not impossible, but more difficult.

The Benefits of Vice for Longevity

2009-05-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

One of the seven deadly sins was vanity.

But vanity may have saved my life.

Remember, I saw the Hawaiian vacation photos, and recognizing the old looking fat guy with the beard as myself caused me to find ways to dump fifty pounds of fat.

And that, along with all the vitamin C I've taken since then, and my exercise classes with my old Sensei, probably saved me from all the heart attacks and strokes that were my genetic expectation (both of my parents had heart attacks starting early, and my mom had a long series of mini-strokes).

So you might say that the vice of vanity saved me from the consequences of the vice of gluttony and the vice of sloth.

Sort of an anti-vice vice.