Brief Summer Update
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I haven’t posted in quite a while. It turns out that a full-time job takes up a lot of, well, time. Normally, I’d promise to post more in the near future, but I can’t commit to that right now. I can promise that I’ll be back to more regular posts in mid-September. Think of it as a nice summer break from reading my silly thoughts.
July 22, 2011
Leaky Gut: Plain and Simple
Protein Power Lifeplan inspired me to do a quick sketch this afternoon. It’s a simple schematic of the human body and gut.
Here’s the passage from PPL that brought this image to mind (emphasis mine):
The body has two external surfaces to defend: the one that everyone is familiar with, the skin surface, and the other, which few people recognize as external to the body, the lining of the intestinal tract. What may seem to you to be deep, deep within your body – the contents of your very guts – is actually very carefully kept on the outside. So the body, as we think of it, has a tunnel, an external passageway, right through the middle of it, beginning with the mouth, extending down the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the colon, and the rectum, and finally emerging at the far end. What’s inside that tunnel isn’t technically inside your body, even though it goes right through the middle of it.
Obviously, the majority of the passage led right to the sketch, but the last sentence really put my understanding of leaky gut in a new light. Food (and the feces we turn that food into) is never inside our body. That really emphasizes that lots of bad stuff can happen if that food or feces does get into our bodies.
2 comments June 11, 2011
My Summer Plans
First and foremost, I’ll be working as a mechanical design engineer this summer. The company I’m working for has a business casual dress code, which means sneakers (or sandals) get closeted in favor of loafers. All the loafers I currently own feel a lot like foot caskets (with hefty heels). I’m not interested in losing my hard-earned lower calf strength, so I’ll be giving the Sanuk Boardrooms a try. I have a pair of the standards, and love them, so I’m hoping the boardrooms offer a similar experience.
June 4, 2011
Headaches Update
First post on this subject is here. I’ve been having headaches, and my first hypothesis was that it was caused by nitrates in bacon.
Ditching the bacon seemed to help at first, but even as the bacon remained absent, the headaches returned.
The bacon hypothesis relied on exertion; the theory dictated that headaches were caused by a combination of low blood oxygen and high muscular oxygen requirement (exertion), resulting in less oxygen to my brain.
The problem is that sprints, squats and deadlifts do not cause headaches for me, but even warmup sets of chinups and bench press do. The common theme? Compression of the dorsal side of the spine.
Now I’m thinking that the headaches are due to nerve impingement on the back side of my spine, due either to a pinched nerve or herniated disk.
The big breakthrough that led me to this happened during a particularly intense headache on Thursday. I asked The Girlfriend to apply pressure to different parts of my back, and when she pushed on a spot between my spine and right shoulder blade, the headache dissipated. When she discontinued pressure, the headache returned.
I achieved the same effect by grabbing the doorknob with my right hand and leaning away from the door. Both of these actions relieved inter-vertebral pressure on the back side of my spinal column, likely unpinching the affected nerve.
Hopefully I’ll know more after an appointment with a neurologist on Thursday morning.
June 1, 2011
Manic Monday: ADA on Atkins
On Wednesday night, Diane at Balanced Bites (maker of the fine “bacon is rad” tees) tweeted a link to an ADA review of The All-New Atkins Advantage. Wow, that sentence has more links than a golf course, chain mail vest, and sausage store combined.
The review makes perfect “Manic Monday” fodder, thanks Diane!
Without further adieu, I give you absolute garbage brought to you by the very people tasked with telling us what to eat. Great work guys!
May 31, 2011
What’s Being Said