Return to the Emerging Runner
For some reason, a collection of impressions congealed into a group and I thought, “this could be a genre”. Well, of course, it already was. I was looking at a customized (modded) earphone that had brass, wood and gears attached to it. The impression made me think of the unusual communications devices used in the SyFy show WAREHOUSE 13. That made me think of some of the devices featured in the HELLBOY movies. Which in turn made me think of some stuff in the movie THE BREED. Common devices, appliances, and furniture constructed of old-school materials, such as varnished dark wood, brass, copper and cast iron, but to perform functions that only came to be in the age of plastics and alloys, like computer mouses (mice?), laptops, walkmen, time machines.
SM was reading in Time for Kids, in an article about the “Coolest inventions of 2009”, that scientists had successfully connected a micro computer to the brain of a beetle. This device enabled the scientists to make the bug fly or stop on command. Setting aside the fact that I could accomplish the same outcome with a thumbtack, some string, and a piece of duct tape, what to think about all this? Where are we heading? Logically, the next step would be to make the beetle do more sophisticated things, like fetch a (very small) newspaper, prepare hot cocoa, or trim your toenails. Then on to bigger creatures. Who wouldn’t want a friendly, furry squirrel to change channels for you on the remote; a raccoon to read stories to school children; a chimpanzee conducting weddings at the Las Vegas “Chapel of Love”?
"And what about the ultimate killer app? The human brain interface. Hand Ahmadinejad this technology and watch how quickly those unruly students fall into line!"
But wait a sec. We’re talking about humans here. That means we are just as likely to have parakeets death match fighting with tiny parakeet weapons; calico cats with built in camera eyes for pervert spying; dogs playing cards (why does that seem so familiar?), braying jackasses drafting legislation allowing guns on our trains (oh wait, we already have that). It won’t take long for some pretty ugly applications.
And what about the ultimate killer app? The human brain interface. Hand Ahmadinejad this technology and watch how quickly those unruly students fall into line! You’ll see a lot fewer heretics once the correct religion has been determined and proper programming put in place on the chip sets. There is much money to be saved as well, what with one party, unanimous elections. As long as there have been people, there have been people who want to make other people do what they want them to. Giving people like that this type of power might be ok, if they were always right about everything. Bud I guess, even if they were wrong, who would ever know? Just go with the flow. After all, resistance is futile.
Throughout my adult life, I have had this dream from time to time. It usually takes place in a school setting – at one of the universities that I attended. In this dream, yours truly is naked as a jaybird, and completely mortified by the circumstance. I prance around, hands covering my private parts, looking for escape. I run into people and don’t know what to say or do. I run down long hallways with no apparent objective. When I wake up, memories of the extreme embarrassment are curiously fascinating. The dreamscape, I realize, inhibits my normal ability to strategize, to deal with the ludicrous situation. I don’t pause to analyze how I came to be naked in so public a place. I can’t seem to figure out that I can borrow some clothes. It’s as though my subconscious wants me to be as embarrassed as possible; taking away any tools that might provide respite – like a scientist holding all variables constant to get a clean, controlled result. "If someone has no ability to be embarrassed, is that harmful? Perhaps he or she would do more stupid things than otherwise."
But why? Think about embarrassment for a moment. It’s a powerful emotional reaction to circumstances having certain characteristics – something stupid happens that you are responsible for and that is being witnessed by people who matter to you (nobody’s embarrassed by burping loudly in front of a farm animal). So what function does the embarrassment perform? If someone has no ability to be embarrassed, is that harmful? Perhaps he or she would do more stupid things than otherwise. Perhaps some stupid things are life or reproduction threatening, suggesting a Darwinian process. More broadly, embarrassment may be a lubricant that, by promoting a degree of conformity, helps societies run smoothly. I can only assume embarrassment serves some useful purpose, or we wouldn’t all have the capability. So if it does have some benefit-giving role, does the dream machine occasionally decide that it is in need of a recharge? Maybe. Dreams are valuable in all sorts of ways – resolving internal conflicts, giving vacation to the cognitive engines, providing the a-ha moment to the odd inventor or engineer. Why couldn’t they also be helping to keep the embarrassment muscle toned?
My recurring dreams don’t always work this way. I have another one sometimes, although not so much in recent years, about messing up in school. It’s about college again, and typically I have signed up for a class and then never attended it. It’s finals time and I feel helplessly screwed. Now in real life, I would have either 1) gone to the darn class or 2) withdrawn as soon as I had realized that I was going to fail it. But again my subconscious will have none of it. The controlled experiment thing. I always thought of this set of dreams as somehow reactive. Getting through college is stressful at times and dealing with the stress creates a big oil slick on your cognitive ocean. The dream machine is just nodding to this bruise in the sequences because it almost has to: like an author including elements of his own life in a novel.
These dreams, though recurring, are rare or at least my remembering them up on waking is rare. Even more rare are the super cool dreams that are so fascinating that you are supremely disappointed to wake up and dissipate them. I remember hanging out with Billy Joel (when he was cool) in one. And running a sub-four minute mile in another (fitness!). I dated Dolly Parton, platonically, and did hilarious stand up comedy for adoring crowds. I can’t guess what role if any these types of dreams play. I just hope they keep on coming. Now excuse me, I need to throw some clothes on.
I asked my doctor if Requip was right for me. He said that I didn’t have restless leg syndrome so that, no, it was not right for me at all. (Was that good news or bad?) I said to him, as long as I was there, could I ask about Cymbalta? I was thinking I should take it.
He said, “Why, are you depressed?”
“Oh, is that what it’s for?”
Furrowed doctoral brow.
“How about Chantix to help me stop smoking? It causes suicidal behavior and blackouts. I worry.”
“Are you having suicidal thoughts?”
“Not when I’m blacked out.”
Looking through his folder. “Are you even taking Chantix? Why would you be taking Chantix? First of all you’ve never smoked. And second I haven’t prescribed this medication for you.
“I’m just saying, if.”
#
“Part of me is saying, yes you might need that. But the part of me that went to medical school says you do not have schizophrenia.”
#
Frown. Folder down. “What are you here for today?”
“You’re my doctor, so I’m asking. Look, I don’t consult you when symptoms persist like it says on the boxes. But, I am getting a lot of disturbing advice about prescription products and I felt it was time to check in. Can you say for certain that I don’t need Abilify? I mean right now?”
“Part of me is saying, yes you might need that. But the part of me that went to medical school says you do not have schizophrenia.” Looking at his watch. “You know if you are here to bullshit me for some reason… well I don’t think it’s too funny.
“I may have had an erection lasting four hours.”
“Still not funny”
“You’re my personal god. Some of these ads, I can’t even tell what the problem is – why do you need to take the stuff? Who’s going to sort this out for me? Do I wait until I have some ghastly condition and then ask my doctor if whateveritis is right for me? Isn’t it too late if I’m having blackouts or a sudden decrease in semen?”
“John,” (he calls me John sometimes) “I have over two thousand patients. Some of them are hypochondriacs, some of them have manageable problems and some of them are practically dead, but you’re the only one treating a doctor visit like some little thought experiment. You know goddam well how this works. You notice something wrong and you come in. We do some tests to figure out what it is and them get you some pills. Don’t pay any attention to the TV commercials.” (now pointing at me with two fingers, like a gun) “And don’t waste my time with bullshit.”
“Doctor Chandra, you’re upset and I get that. And I know that our three minutes are almost up. Can we talk about Flomax for a minute? If I’m going three times between morning coffee and lunch, is that too much? Could Flomax be an answer at this point?”
Walks out, closes door. On the back of the door is a poster describing nasty things that happen when your blood is too thick. “Ask your doctor about Plavix” the poster advises. Maybe next time.
SM was watching a TV series last night called “Brick City”. It’s about the city of Newark, NJ and, most especially, about that city’s Mayor, Corey Booker. Newark, for those less familiar, was once the de facto capital city of New Jersey: the hub of commerce, politics, intellectual and social life in the state. It has, though, for decades been a city in serious trouble: rampant crime, chaotic and ineffective schools, compromised public health, broken families and sickeningly pervasive, unbridled corruption infecting its public officials. Some believe that this last item has been the primary cause of the items above it. Most of the Newark mayors of the last half-century have ended their public life in prison or facing the prospect.
"More seriously, this story is dramatic proof of what an individual can accomplish though sheer will, sheer single-mindedness, sheer focused energy. "
Enter Corey Booker, Mayor since 2006 and probably the first true, positive change agent since the 19th century. Stanford, Rhodes scholar, Yale Law. No dummy. But there are lots of smart people around. What separates Booker is his courage, energy and single-minded devotion to the betterment of his adopted city. Before becoming mayor, he did things like live in tents in the most dangerous parts of city to deter drug traffic. He went on a 10-day hunger strike to protest violence and drug dealing. He became an assassination target of the Bloods street gang: a reward for pledging to improve law enforcement and reduce crime in the city.
After winning election as Mayor, Booker started the really hard work: actually improving the city’s institutions, starting with public safety. Using modern data analysis techniques, Booker’s team has reduced crime rates to 1950’s levels. Strengthening the business base of the city, its housing situation, and its schools are next on the docket. There exists the possibility that Newark, a cesspool of urban problems, could actually pull out of the quicksand it fell hard into last century. And mostly due to the efforts of one man.
How does this all become a Sedentary Man column? First a technicality. Brick City opens with Booker on a fitness run through the streets of Newark at 4am. There: it’s something to do with fitness. More seriously, this story is dramatic proof of what an individual can accomplish though sheer will, sheer single-mindedness, sheer focused energy. Whatever it is you want to do, you can probably do it. Just ask Corey Booker.
I opened a carefully prepared brown paper bag containing the entirety of my 2009 crop – eight angry green tomatoes. Deer had eaten anything close to ripe during the summer months. I’d placed these last survivors in the bag along with a banana and an apple, and stowed them in the warmest area of my house – near the furnace. I dropped an S bomb upon seeing that the green was still, pretty much, green. S**t is my work-a-day swear word, good for all sorts of dismay. The old stand-by. When the going gets tough though, I turn to the higher yield F-bomb. If you are not sure what your go-to swear word is, try this. Kick your pinky toe fairly hard into the corner of a sleeper sofa, perhaps with the lights off. Whatever word comes out of your mouth is your swear word anchor man.
"He found a robust link and offered this nostrum: 'I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear.'"
I could not live in a world without cussing. Like diet soda and reality shows, it is one of life’s essentials. And people almost have to swear. It’s built into our DNA, a close cousin to the other fight or flight bodily responses. It has even been found to relieve physical pain. Psychologist Richard Stevens of England’s Keele University, undertook a study about swearing and its relationship to pain. He found a robust link and offered this nostrum: "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear." Not sure what his advice is when other people hurt you, but I suspect a crisply delivered !*/#@%&?$ will work fine there too. But don’t overdo it. Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist points out that the therapeutic benefits of swearing diminish with use. Like anything else, if you go to the well too often it can run dry.
I find that my compound swear words evolve over time. This is mostly the hardball, hammer smashes the finger, use cases. I will use some combination of swear words for these must-have situations for about six months to a year and then I tend to come up with something new. A recent favorite, F**ing M**ther F**er, worked beautifully for a period of time before being replaced with F**ing S**T F**K. I think it has to do with Dr Pinker’s observation. F**ing M**ther F**er began to lose it pain killing mojo for me with extended use.
Not sure how much of this will make it past editor’s censoring finger. I’ll listen for a !*/#@%&?$ or two when he reads it. And I’ll keep you posted on those !*/#@%&?$ !*/#@%&?$ green tomatos!
Some while ago I wrote about my newly acquired kettle bell. A 15 pound beauty that I began using in the office to tone up my arms during office hours. I started with repetitions of 10 of each of three movements, done three times for each arm, 180 reps all together. As my muscles got used to that I increased the number of reps and decreased the number of sets. I got to where I was doing 45 curls, 30 well bucket pickups, and 70 behind the head pull ups on each arm. This was in keeping with my original strategy of having a lot of reps at low weight to minimized the chance of injury, and more importantly, to emphasize tone over getting all ripped.
"I fell in love with a single piece 20 pounder for just $18. The thing was a solid hunk of metal with meaty hexagonal lobes at each end and a knurled handle in between."
But the numbers were getting too large. For one thing, what had once been a 10-minute obligation had stretched into 20 and I found myself skipping days sometimes because I had run out of time at the end of the day. The solution was pretty clear: buy heavier weights. I went over to a big-box sporting goods store (Dick’s) over on Route 1, looking for kettle bells. They were nowhere to be found. My disappointment was assuaged by the memory of how aggressively priced my first one was (like, 50 bucks). So I moseyed over to the old school dumbbells. I fell in love with a single piece 20 pounder for just $18. The thing was a solid hunk of metal with meaty hexagonal lobes at each end and a knurled handle in between. It felt good in my hand and I enjoyed slinging it around with me as I took a quick inventory of the latest gewgaws in Dick’s golfing alcove. My arms are built up to the point where carrying a 20-pound weight felt good rather than uncomfortable as I made my way around the store.
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When I got my new friend home, I did 3 sets of 20 curls on each arm. That produced a pleasant burn and enlarged biceps that I flexed and unflexed for the rest of the day. An occasional narcissistic mirror checkout made it onto the menu as well. All said it was a good investment, and as I plan to use it at home rather than work, the missing kettle bell advantages will be less important.
The sedentary one participated in a world wide cultural practice this weekend while at a college football game. Caught in the grip of a momentary sugar jones, he purchased and consumed a churro, a Mexican fried dough stick coated with cinnamon and sugar. There is apparently no culture on earth that has not taken it upon itself to hurl a lump of dough into a deep fryer and eat it. If they have grease, and a heat source of some sort, they be makin some kind of doughnut or another. Right here at home we have the doughboy, funnel cake (pancake batter squirted into at deep fryer in a spider web pattern), Elephant ears, frybread (native American), fudge puppies (a tubular waffle slathered with caramel, chocolate, etc.), sopaipillas (a puffy pillow of calories native to New Mexico), and a daring new departure, fried coke – coke (the drink!) - flavored batter deep fried and then bathed in thick coke syrup. Yes, America has much to be proud of.
"Taking the prize as the most unpleasant sounding entry is Norway’s smultring. If the English translation, “lard ring”, doesn’t win you over, you are not alone"
But we are not alone. Elsewhere in the hemisphere, Canada has beaver tails, a flattish fried bread, and Peru has its picarones, pumpkin dough fried and slathered up with molasses. Mexico’s bunuelo, a cookie shaped doughnut joins the churro as that country’s contributions to the fried dough pantheon. Moving to the old world, try a zeppole, a fried knot of rich dough, after you’ve had enough of the Italy’s healthier Mediterranean fare. Her German neighbor to the north beckons with it’s own Berliner – a ball shaped calorie bomb impregnated with sweet jam. Sweden offers the rosette, an ornate confection fried using a hot iron implement, at what must be significant danger to the chef and nearby observers. Taking the prize as the most unpleasant sounding entry is Norway’s smultring. If the English translation, “lard ring”, doesn’t win you over, you are not alone.
The middle east and asia offer such entries as the Indian Jalebi, a bird’s nest look-alike infused with sugary syrup. If your sweet tooth kicks up while admiring the caldera in Santorini, loukoumades, a Greek fried ball marinated in honey and cinnamon might be the ticket. Travel to China and your reward can be an Ox-tongue pastry. The name is off-putting, but refers only to the shape of this confection, not it’s contents. Sedentary men in South Africa will be pleased to offer you a twisted sister. No, not their deranged siblings, and not the hair band either. Koeksuster (say it three times fast in front of your mother) are fried doughballs which are dipped in sugar syrup while still hot, soaking up the sweet liquid like a sea-sponge. The result is perhaps the world’s most carbohydrate intensive snack. Carry on boys!
Went to a wedding yesterday and lost about 15% of my hearing.The sedentary man is not a fan of weddings for a variety of reasons, the leading one being the loudness of the music offered at the typical reception. Here’s what happens. At the beginning of the affair the DJ (we’ll talk about bands later) plays old favorites at almost background level volume. As the evening wears on, the selections become more fast-dance oriented. The volume is increased at intervals until just below the point where blood and viscous fluids erupt spontaneously from your ear canals. When a band is featured the same process happens, except the starting point is louder. I will grant that younger guests do enjoy themselves on the dance floor to the thunderous accompaniment. But then again, younger guests are invincible and will not need to think about hearing loss for a good 20 years.
"I grant my significant other 5 or so dances at each one of these hoedowns to avoid bitterness and silent car rides home"
Loud noises come in two flavors, impulse noise and continuous noise. Impulse noise is like a gunshot and can cause instant hearing damage. Continuous noise exceeding 85 decibels causes damage over time. Scientists have various theories as to how this takes place. What’s definitely known is that tiny hair-like cells, scilia, in the inner ear are damaged with excessive exposure to either kind of loud noise. These hairs play a pivotal role in translating sound waves into something your auditory nerves can absorb and take to the brain. 85 decibels is a level that is not hard to reach. Leaf blowers, shop tools, motorcycles, chain saws, even heavy city traffic, can easily exceed this level. At this weekend’s affair, I am certain that the DJ was cranking at a level of 120 or more.I couldn’t hear or be heard at my table and when I was on the dance floor (I grant my significant other 5 or so dances at each one of these hoedowns to avoid bitterness and silent car rides home) there was actual pain in my head.
The Sedentary Man was chatting with editor the other day about a promotional advertising piece that will soon appear in Entertainment Weekly magazine. The device is a small display, about 2 inches square, which plays a video when the magazine page is opened. The video is smooth, in color, and of reasonably good quality. A separate speaker provides decent audio. Buttons will allow the user to manage the presentation, and the thing will be rechargeable, so we’ve heard. The whole unit is contained in a 1/8th thick package, which is the same length and width as the magazine. The unit is less expensive than you probably think, and would be even less so, one supposes, if it were to be produced in larger quantities.
"Think about the comparison of 1940 versus 1975, and then contrast that with the comparison 2009 versus 1975"
What strikes me as remarkable about this item is its modest cost and the possibilities of other applications. You could develop disposable movies on this platform. Or at some point, have yourself a five dollar iPhone. Editor and I were reflecting on what that would mean and about what has happened in technology in recent years. Think about the comparison of 1940 versus 1975, and then contrast that with the comparison 2009 versus 1975. 35 years in each case. The most recent period has brought heart transplants, personal computers, networked computing, digital recording, cellular telephone, appendage reattachment, Windows, email, Photoshop, personal navigation systems, iPod, iPhone, the Segway, bar code scanning, video games, automobile CPUs, the internet, 3D printers, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, laparoscopic surgery, Lasic eye surgery, genetically engineered plants, military stealth technology, cloning, brain machine interfaces, 32 gigabit thumb drives, online banking, nanotechnology, computer graphic imaging in movies (Spiderman!), and Dippin' Dots ice cream. The 1940-1975 period brought the jet engine, color television, harnessing of the atom, the transistor, space travel, and the Pop Tart. Of course more items can be added to each list, but the 1975-2009 period is still going to blow away the earlier changes.
One of the (several) reasons that the sedentary man would like to see old age is just to see what’s going to happen next!
The Sedentary Man got a kick this weekend out of a commercial he saw for the “Back2Life” back pain treatment machine. The device, pictured here, is designed to help people with lower back pain. The sufferer lies on his or her back with the back of the knees draped over the two leg supports. The height is adjustable to accommodate different sized people. There is a motor of some sort (the device plugs into the wall), which rotates the upper leg-rest portion in an elliptical motion, something the Back2Life scientists call “continuous passive motion”. A series of motion graphics shows how this causes the spine to get very comfortable and all aligned up, so the user feels like he’s 15 years old or so. After 8-12 minutes on the machine the average back pain sufferer can go out sling a chain saw around, play volleyball, or pick up 40 pounds of groceries.
"My only complaint is that it might interfere with your sight line to the TV, but I guess only for 8-12 minutes"
The commercial fascinated me on a few of levels. First, this thing is so Sedentary Man! A device that you don’t even have to expend any energy on! I don’t have any back problems, but it I did, I would sure consider one of these suckers. My only complaint is that it might interfere with your sight line to the TV, but I guess only for 8-12 minutes. Second, it looks like a “Little Tykes” plastic toy for toddlers. What were they going for there? They should have probably put some black or silver on it, or at least made it all white. Finally, what an amazing value! Apparently these items have been selling in Europe for $600 or however many Euros (€?) that is. Even so, they can be had here, if you call immediately, for just five payments of $39.95. Not sure how they get away with charging three times as much to the poor Germans, French etc. I guess our back pain sufferers are much more savvy consumers and probably wouldn’t fork over $600, or $400 or even $300!
This thing reminded me for some reason of the devices they had in the 1950’s which looked like a parking meter with a canvas belt loop hanging out of it. The user would stand in front of the machine with the loop around his butt while it oscillated back and forth like a shoeshine rag. No idea whatsoever what benefit this device was supposed to convey, but I think the passive nature of its use is what attracted those mid century sedentarians (my lifestyle ancestors!).
Be sure to wear a cap while exercising!
I was watching the New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox baseball game earlier this evening (won by the Yankees 5-2 to complete a four game sweep of the Beantowners). It caused me to reflect on the widely differing natures of various sports. I think there may be more differences than commonalities among them. I’m talking mostly about team sports played in the USA, so apologies right off the bat for a lack of treatment of sports not popular here – I simply don’t have to expertise to talk about them.
"[A] baseball player, especially a pitcher, can get by with being in far less impressive shape than the average soccer player."
Lets talk conditioning. I think soccer leads the way in endurance conditioning required. These participants play in games that last 90 minutes, they don’t come out for breathers, and they spend a significant portion of that time running. Not surprisingly, games tend to be played with at least several days rest in between. Players need good hand to eye to foot coordination, but not as much as baseball, wherein a 31/2 inch ball traveling at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour must be struck by a 3 inch cylinder of wood. Fantastic athletes have failed miserably to perform this task. But a baseball player, especially a pitcher, can get by with being in far less impressive shape than the average soccer player. And it’s not uncommon for a team to play baseball games for a dozen consecutive days.
American football is unlike soccer or baseball. Played once a week, this games consists of explosive movement and contact with significant rest in between each play. In fact, a 60 minute football game really only has about 20 minutes of actual athletic activity. But football players are, depending on the position played, among the fastest and strongest of all athletes. Injuries abound: you must have a week or so off after a football game, no exceptions. Successful football player careers last only 4-5 years on average, versus 12-15 for baseballers. I believe soccer, at the highest levels, is somewhere in between these two, limited by the critical importance of speed, which deteriorates in the early 30s.
"What you need to be a pro golfer is the ability to get a lot of moving parts of your body working together in a highly repeatable way."
For total athletic ability, it’s hard to top basketball. These athletes must have coordination of hands feet and body. Both speed and athleticism are paramount for most positions. Games tend to be played with a day or two off in between. Strength is helpful, especially for rebounding, but it’s not nearly as critical as it is for football. Careers last 8-10 years, like soccer, declining as speed does.
I have to talk about one non-team sport – golf. Speed? Not required at all. Hand to eye coordination? Well, you have to hit a little ball, but it isn’t moving. Strength? Not really. Athleticism? I don’t think so. What you need to be a pro golfer is the ability to get a lot of moving parts of your body working together in a highly repeatable way. You also have to be able to maintain a high level of concentration over the course of a four-hour game. I believe it requires more practice than any other sport, to support the repeatability requirement. Interestingly, golf is probably the only professional sport where a halfway decent middle-aged amateur could actually compete in a professional event without risking injury or immediate humiliation.
"They metamorphose from the sleek and beautiful creatures that we admire on the side of a country road, into a tick-ridden, mangy plague"
But the deer cultivate a very special disaffection in my heart. Invading my property and eating my tender darlings, they metamorphose from the sleek and beautiful creatures that we admire on the side of a country road, into a tick-ridden, mangy plague. I fantasize about inflicting a violent death on these beasts, but then worry about what to do with the rotting carcasses on my lawn. Not to mention the “what a monster!” looks that I would surely get from my shocked neighbors. Hey, it was just a fantasy, ok?
"I have an uneasy feeling that the pepper spray, once diluted by the passage of time, actually enhanced the dining experience for my little friends"
To give you a flavor of the helplessness of my plight, I will describe one of the techniques I employed to stem the wildlife invasion. It was one of many, but the one that I considered the cleverest. This was for my battle with the rabbits. I purchased about of pound of habanera peppers, the most potent hot pepper commonly available in the USA. I ran them through my juicer (that’s the clever part!), coming out with about a quarter cup of very, very potent liquid. The fact that I nearly succumbed to the fumes right there on the kitchen floor and burnt the hell out of my fingers with the volatile pepper extract only heightened my conviction that this might be the answer. I mixed the stuff with some water and filled a spray bottle. Squirt, squirt onto the rudbekias and hosta in the front yard. My property immediately smelled like a sulfury, burning tar pit. There was toxicity in the air. Some of the targeted plants took on a stench of their own: death. The bunnies stayed away for a few days but soon all was back as it was (except for the dead plants). I have an uneasy feeling that the pepper spray, once diluted by the passage of time, actually enhanced the dining experience for my little friends.
I could take you through a litany of other offensives: garlic spray (salad dressing!), rubber snakes, fake owls, wolf piss spray etc etc. But the story is always the same. I guess I’ll just have to buy my tomatoes from the farmer’s market. I’ll probably save money in the end, but I’ll sure miss the frontiersman-like self-sufficiency of growing my own food.
"The town, birthplace of the potato chip and the club sandwich, is one of my favorite places in the galaxy"
The town, birthplace of the potato chip and the club sandwich, is one of my favorite places in the galaxy and here’s why. There are more than 100 restaurants, many of them excellent. What is perhaps the most brilliant bakery on the continent, Mrs. London’s, lies smack dab in the middle of town, and features many formal French confections (try the canelets if you ever make the pilgrimage). The town itself is lovely and very prosperous from, one supposes, the elaborate horse racing season in late summer. An unfortunate fact is that you may not want to be in Saratoga during racing season (late July to early September), as prices for rooms in the hotels become unaffordable for the non-wealthy. There are many lively watering holes if you like that sort of thing, and spiffy and comfortable hotels abound. One can pay a modest amount to soak in heated spring waters at the spa, something I’m told is muchly worthwhile. I guess if I had splurged on one, I could have made this column more closely resemble its health and nutrition mission, rather than the rambling travelogue it seems to have become. (Hey, go read Adventure Girl if you have a beef). There are also museums of antique cars, dancing and horseracing, and a surfeit of golf courses, driving ranges and shopping opportunities. Fun for the whole family.
"I convinced the proprietress that while I was not old enough, I was certainly infirm enough to qualify."
Oh yes, the golf. Some research led me to the Galway Golf Club (see above), a most informal layout about 22 miles from nowhere. It was drivable from the Saratoga area but my time was short. They reserved motorized carts for senior citizens, which I was mildly pleased to learn did not include me. I convinced the proprietress that while I was not old enough, I was certainly infirm enough to qualify. The cart allowed me to complete 18 holes in less than three hours, which was all the time I had. The course was something I had often imagined but thought did not exist: a track for poor players. It featured no sand traps, no water hazards, short holes and unelevated greens. I was able to work on various aspects of my game and enjoy glorious weather at the same time.
Saratoga Springs. Do it.
I tend to look at most human behaviors in terms of evolutionary biology, because it is such a robust analytical framework. I think about this when I observe that a lot of people are exercising these days but most are not. Obesity and other physical problems seem to be on the rise in the U.S. but why? Evolutionary biology might suggest that behaviors so inimical to survival would not be in evidence, and yet there they are. "Steven Hawking would not have made it to adulthood in ancient Babylon. But in this era he was able to pass his genes on to Lucy Hawking. "
I think there are a couple of things going on. First “survival”. What does it mean? It does not mean living to 100. It means living long enough to produce viable offspring. You can have kids and then die prematurely due to heart disease and still have survived in an evolutionary sense. So, many maladies that kill but only later on – prostate cancer would be another example – can survive the evolutionary weeding out process quite easily because its victims live long enough to pass along the susceptibility gene. In cave man times, life expectancy was probably less than 30 years. So, things that killed early in life, like not being afraid of saber tooth tigers, were weeded out quickly. A propensity for contracting skin cancer, however, not so much. So that’s one thing.
Second, just as evolution has become understood, we are leaving it behind. Medical advances enable us to prolong life and preserve harmful susceptibilities and unlucky genes left and right. You can debate whether medicine these days is too “heroic”, but you are probably glad it is when you have a kidney stone. So saving a child from leukemia permits him to pass his genes, including the leukemia affinity, to another generation. That’s fine by me, we’ll work on a cure in the meantime. Another departure from the evolutionary way can be seen in modern societies’ protection of people with disabilities (a wonderful development) where ancient ones were quick to toss them under the chariot. Steven Hawking would not have made it to adulthood in ancient Babylon. But in this era he was able to pass his genes on to Lucy Hawking. I think it’s worth noting the emergence of nobility like that in between laments about the less gracious aspects of modern society.
Evolution, it’s not just for survival anymore!
I read a book today, or parts of one, and I want to tell you about it. It’s called “What to Eat” and it is by Marion Nestle,, a professor of sociology at NYU. Nestle writes from a sociologist’s point of view about foods, nutrition, and the food industry and its politics. Her bonafides: she has a PhD in molecular biology and a masters in Sociology, both from Cal Berkley. This book was valuable to me because I have lived with many unanswered questions about food and nutrition and it nailed a few of them. I will talk here about two."As fish get bigger, they eat first small fish and then larger fish. So it is not until it is mature that the salmon is eating it’s full measure of PCBs."
Start off with fish. OF COURSE we should eat fish a couple of times a week for its cardio and circulatory health benefits. OF COURSE we should avoid farm-raised fish because of the toxins concentrated it its flesh. OF COURSE line-caught fish is very, very expensive. That’s two to one against, so even though I love the stuff, I don’t eat much fish. Is this the right decision? Lets ask Marion. Fish in the wild, let’s say salmon, eat different types of things as they grow. Baby fish eat plankton and krill – tiny, short-lived creatures that do not live long enough to pick up large amounts of toxins. When I say toxins, I am mainly talking about PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls), which concentrate and persist in the environment. As fish get bigger, they eat first small fish and then larger fish. So it is not until it is mature that the salmon is eating it’s full measure of PCBs. Farmed fish by contrast are fed, right from the get-go, fish meal that is made up of by-products of large fish – oil, bones, heads etc. So the farmed fish are subjected to larger amounts of PCBs sooner than their wild cousins. And they have more PCBs in them when they arrive at your dinner table. Bottom line: avoid the farmed raised fish if at all possible – go with herring and sardines, which are lower on the food chain and thus absorb less toxins. If you must, try to find certified safe farmed fish (Whole Foods claims this for all its farm-raised fish) and avoid farmed fish from Europe, which has higher levels of PCBs than farmed fish from the Americas."I would skip drinking from that bottle of Desani that has been rolling around in your 100 degree trunk for three months."
Next plastic bottles of water and other stuff. Does the plastic leach off dangerous chemicals (plastisizers) into your beverage? Are your sex organs and reproductive health being compromised by the leachates? Well, yes, to the first one but probably no to number two. Thing is, the quantities are so small, measured in billionths of a gram, that they seem unlikely to be causing any trouble. Go ahead and drink up, but more leaching occurs the hotter the liquid, so I would skip drinking from that bottle of Desani that has been rolling around in your 100 degree trunk for three months. I would also generally avoid drinks including water that have been sitting for a long time (months) in plastic bottles. The more time they have to leach the more leaching they will do.Check out “What to Eat”. It was published in 2006 and should be in any good library if you don’t want to pony up $16. http://fora.tv/2008/08/14/Marion_Nestle_What_to_Eat is a very engaging lecture Nestle gave a while back. She also has a good website http://www.whattoeatbook.com/ in which you can also find a lot of this stuff. Her attack on the confusion we face in our food choices is a great service. Check it out.
The SM has taken another step toward self-improvement. No, it’s not a new exercise regime, or a special lo-something or hi-something diet. It’s more improvement for the mind, spirit, and professional well-being. I joined the Toastmasters organization. This is a loose confederation of clubs, scattered across the country and dedicated to the betterment of public speaking skills. It’s fun and worthwhile.At the beginning of this year I committed to improving my public speaking. I can write pretty well and communicate effectively in small groups but have never been satisfied with my performances speaking to larger ones. I was casting about for a means to accomplish this end when I remembered hearing about Toastmasters. I checked it out on the web. Turns out that they have a group right here in Manhattan, and it meets in my very own building. Karma."I was terrified when giving my first table talk, but have now done four of them and am starting to relish the challenge."
I have to admit; I thought the group would consist of people with real communication issues. You know, people who could never hope to speak to a group. This was not the case at all. Sure some members have more innate communication skills than others, but the group consists overwhelmingly of intelligent, successful, confident people. They really are folks that are sharp and want to get sharper.The meetings go on for two hours and take place every two weeks. The first half of the meeting consists of “Table talks”, impromptu speeches of 1-2 minutes. Each attendee has to do one and the topics are given to the speaker just as he or she stands up to speak. You have to think on your feet. The second half consists of four formal speeches of 5-7 minutes apiece. Various attendees have administrative tasks such as timing the speakers, counting the, ah, ums and ahs, and evaluating other speakers. I was terrified when giving my first table talk, but have now done four of them and am starting to relish the challenge. I have given my first formal speech and learned a lot about my own capabilities. I memorized the whole thing, for example, and gave it without having to refer to notes at all. Since I have never been able to remember anything, including what I had for breakfast, I was surprised and pleased. The group is very supportive, a key strategy of Toastmasters, and friendly to boot. I enjoy the meetings and can feel myself becoming a better speaker after each one. Speaking skills are not physical or mental ones, but a combination of both. Improving them is just one small part of creating a whole new me.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this myself. Platoon golf. Golf as exercise. I love the game, even though it leaves me harshly unrequited as often as not. But I have always secretely thought that it comes up a bit short as exercise. Oh, I will note that walking all that distance while swinging the club 80 or 90 times (ok 100) has got to do something. But I never thought there was much cardio pulmonary benefit. Well here is the answer. Do exercise while you are playing. Platoon golf is an offspring of Platoon fitness, a Philadelphia area fitness program. Platoon fitness promotes fitness using military training principles and incorporating bits and pieces of other fitness regimens.“I can’t guarantee anybody that I can lower their scores — I’m not the golf pro”
Mike Smaltz is the Director of Operations and Training at Platoon Fitness, and he’s a golfer.“I can’t guarantee anybody that I can lower their scores — I’m not the golf pro,” says Smaltz. “What I can do is eliminate the physical ailments that are holding back progress.” So what does he recommend? Well first and most obvious, ditch the motorized cart. Walk the 18 holes and you will indeed get some fitness benefit. Not just from walking the 5 miles, but even more if you plunk your drives off course and have to walk even further chasing them down. Second, he recommends using the dead time between sinking your put and teeing off on the next hole to do stretching type exercises – toe touches, jumping jacks and the like. Of course, you can’t be rude to players behind you by slowing things down, so timing is everything. Finally Smaltz says, “speed things up”. Play your round in three hours rather than 4 and a half. This is significant. It means jogging to your ball rather than walking. Now you are talking exercise. I find that I am quite worn out after just walking the 18 holes. Add jogging in, and a little jumping jack action and I’m going to be all in.I’m going to give it a try. Well, at least part way. I don’t thing Sedentary Man, at his present fitness level, is capable of jogging a golf course and playing, or even just jogging a golf course (“or even just playing” I know you are thinking it). If nothing else, the stretching aspects will be well worth it. I tend to stiffen up on later holes in a round, particularly if the weather is on the cool side. Hey, I lift weights while working in the office. Bottom line: you can find fitness opportunities in many walks of life other than just the traditional ones. Now GET MOVING, you miserable pukes!
My name is Sedentary Man and I am an addict. There, I feel so much better already. The first step in dealing with addiction is admitting you have a problem. The only thing is, I do not want to be cured of this addiction. You see, the narcotic is Bpop, a game app that I purchased for my iPod. I can control the urge to play it (never turning it on at work, for example) but I give it free reign in situations like my railroad commute. Bpop is fairly simple in concept. It is a square matrix of 100 colored squares, 10 by 10 on a side. The only thing you can do to manipulate the squares is click on a cluster of two or more, at which point they disappear, with squares from above falling down to take their place. New squares do not appear at the top – this is not Tetris. Nor are you pressed for time – there is no game clock. What you have to do is think spatially so that you can plan your future moves, dependent as they are upon your current one. The object is to garner as many points as possible. The longer the chain of same colored squares that you click off the screen, the more points you get. It’s geometric, so clicking off a chain of four squares gets you more than twice as many points as clicking off a chain of two squares. You also get bonus points at the end of each round – the fewer squares you leave standing the more bonus points you get.
So, why don’t I want to be cured of this? Anything that becomes obsessive gets to be a drag, right? Well, yes, except when the addiction may be keeping dementia out of your cranium for a few extra years. I’m sure you have read that challenging the mind is beneficial in keeping it sharp in old age, a status that SM will be staring at in another decade or two.
from Living Older, Living Better! by Katrina Gwinn, MD:Engaging in leisure activities that stimulate your brain may help you lead a
longer, healthier life. These activities can even help prevent disorders like
dementia, including Alzheimers disease.
• Do Crossword puzzles
• Play Scrabble
• Play chess, checkers, cards or bingo
• Memorize a vocabulary word daily. Make a point of using the daily word in your conversation. One fun way to do this is to subscribe to the word of the day service, provided by dictionary.com for free, in which a vocabulary word is sent to your email every day.
•
Participate in some other mentally challenging games to sharpen your wits. A recent study showed that elderly people who did crossword puzzles four times a week or more had a markedly (47 percent) decreased risk of dementia than those who did these puzzles once a week or less.
Well Bpop certainly qualifies. To play well you have to really concentrate and plan your moves. In spite of the fact that you can only click off squares, there is considerable strategy involved. A well-played game can take you through 25 or 30 screens and last an hour and a half. The demands are significant enough that if I am playing with distractions, or insufficient sleep, my scores suffer noticeably. I go through computer games from time to time. They usually last a month or so before I become bored with them. Bpop is keeping a strong hold so far but will succumb eventually, and then I will find something else. In the meantime, my best score is 110,000 and I think I will go play a game right now.
Over the last five months Sedentary Man has shared his perspective with Emerging Runner readers. He may claim to be sedentary but with his devotion to the Kettlebell he's making some great progress. You can read his past columns below.
Sedentary Man Archive
The original 10 Sedentary Man columns are below. To see more recently archived columns please click Older Posts here or directly above.
The Column
Kettleballers high
By Sedentary Man
I was doing some weight work with my kettleball in the office and decided to push a bit harder than I’d been doing up to now. I continued my reps until I was feeling pain. Each new set, I repeated the drill – push until pain. Curls, reverse curls, over-the-heads (if that’s what they’re called), all continuing until actual pain was felt. Interestingly, the point was reached at about 25 to 27 reps for each exercise; I would’ve thought there would be more variability in the pain threshold, but not. After I was done, I carefully set the weight down on my desk (it took both hands to handle it at that point). And then came the pleasant glow that arrives after the burn. It was great! Which brings us to today’s topic – serotonin, melatonin and other feel good substances drawn out by various human behaviors.
I’m talking about runner’s high, methamphetamine high, caffeine, puppy love, chocolate, alcohol, red hot chili peppers and probably quite a few other things. All these cause some sort of euphoria when introduced to the human body and some sort of distress when withdrawn. It’s all about the release of brain chemicals. My general take on it is that your brain/body (I don’t know where the stuff is actually stored) has a replenishable but finite supply of these substances which are brought forth to euphoric effect when stimulated by exercise, drugs, or whatever. The process leaves the cupboard bare and hence the associated body in some distress (withdrawal) while replenishment happens. I think in the worse cases, say meth addicts, the supply is constantly depleted, resulting in derangement and other gruesome outcomes.
In the best case – exercise high, the sensations dissipate slowly and there is no “withdrawal”, except perhaps a desire to run to experience the high again. I think the benign aftereffects of the runner’s high may have also to do with the fact that the brain response is to a natural stimulant and not some external drug that has been introduced into the body. Somewhere in between meth and runner’s high is falling into and out of love, I suppose. And hot pepper sauce, or the capsasin(*) within it, is pretty close to runner’s high, in terms of being benign.
When I was a freshman in college we had resident advisors in the dorms (RA’s). I think they are still in widespread use today. One of their functions was to review your grades after first semester and offer advice. We all lined up with our report cards and showed them to Brad, our RA. Brad’s advice, in all cases, went like this: “Good job on those A’s. Try to bring up those Cs”. If Brad were here today I think he would advise you to go ahead and enjoy the exercise high, but stay away from the methamphetamines. Thanks Brad.
(*) I know a lot of you will be asking, so for those record, capsasin’s chemical formula is CH(CH2)4CONHCH2C6H3-4-(OH)-3-(OCH3)
Previous Columns
Working Those Guns
By Sedentary Man
The sedentary man is focusing on his upper body these days. His fitness had been maintaining at a just barely acceptable level due to 1 mile walks each day, train station stair-climbing (78 steps every morning!) and the occasional exer-cycle workout. But little was being done for the uppers. That’s where the kettle ball (aka kettlebell) came in. I picked up one of these things (see picture) at an exercise equipment store. It is a 15 pound model and it cost the better part of fifty bucks. I was surprised at how heavy 15 pounds seemed. I could have gotten a 25 or 45 pounder, but I am at the age where I am more concerned about injury than getting awesomely ripped. They also had a 10 pounder, but I just didn’t think it provided enough challenge.
This thing is basically an iron ball with a handle fastened to the top. It’s dipped in some sort of plastic coating, which makes it easier on furniture and nice to look at as well. I find it easier to use than a dumbbell, mainly because you can let the handle rotate in your hand, keeping the iron ball part pointing down. For whatever reason, this makes the exercises easier and more pleasant to do.
I made up my own routines for the thing, and do them all at my desk during the workday. I do 30 reps on each arm in three different modes – 180 reps all together. The sets consist of curls (to work the biceps), reverse curls (extensors) and picking the thing up from behind by head (triceps). This weight and number of reps is just right for me. After doing the routine my arms feel warm and energized, and I feel generally great. And as you can see from the before and after photos below, my appearance has noticeably improved.
I highly recommend this item for those who want to get some weight work in at the office.
Previous Columns
The Real Heroics of the Old West
By Sedentary ManI watched the Academy Award Winner, Unforgiven recently and got to thinking about health and healthcare in the old west. I have often thought about this topic, wondering how anyone survived into adulthood in those times. It’s sort of a litmus test for me as I go about my job of looking after myself. Like if I find myself sitting down to a restaurant meal without recently washing my hands, I might say “well Abe Lincoln probably didn’t always wash his hands either.” They survived in the old days despite some pretty severe obstacles. Think about it: filthy living conditions (sewage in the streets, etc.) contaminated food, precious little shelter from brutal weather conditions, rampant violence, trampled human dignity, bizarre medical practices, and on and on. That people did survive is a testament, I think, to the great resilience and adaptability of the human organism.
And let’s face it; a lot of them didn’t survive. Most accidents were ultimately fatal, if not sooner than later. Childbirth killed women off in droves. Doctors were idiots, not even realizing that washing hands could help matters until the latter part of the 19th century. It was at this time the “heroic” approach to medicine took hold. It is still with us today (think cancer treatments) but we at least have some viable tools with which to conduct the practice. The quote below, written in Flowers In The Blood by Dean Latimer and Jeff Goldberg, is a punch-in-the-face summary of the practice of medicine in the 19th century:
“Their techniques were rooted in the notion that the way to exorcise one set of
afflictions from a patient’s body was to subject it to a considerably more
violent set of afflictions. The heroics were entirely on the part of the
patient: for even the mildest ailments, one could expect to be bled, leeched,
cupped, blistered, amputated, sweated, trepanned, scourged, and purged and
flayed to the fare-thee-well."
Scourged (I think) means beaten, and trepanning, for those readers who may not be aware, is the practice of drilling holes in the skull to release demons or negative humors from the head. You don’t see much of that anymore (although those of you who enjoyed my column on colonoscopy may have a tough time contrasting the two practices on the fun-ness scale). Possibly like you, I had not realized that the sometimes-overwrought practices of modern medicine are a structured approach that gestated in the 19th century. But when you think about it, less invasive approaches, like holistic medicine, acupuncture, and chiropractic get a much shorter shrift than our modern day medicine man, brandishing his bone saw.
Best bet in any era, stay as healthy as possible, and leave the heroics for someone else.
Stairway to Heaven
By Sedentary Man
The limits of cardio pulmonary endurance were tested by the Sedentary man this past weekend. He was found wanting. SM’s daughter, a sophomore at NYU, moved from her dorm to an apartment. Not so bad, except that this two bedroom charmer is found at the top of eight flights of stairs. Again, not so bad, if you are just going up once, and not carrying anything. If you are going up 17 times, and carrying things like TV sets and air conditioners well, that separates the men from the boys.
The apartment is lovely, situated in the lively and energetic lower east side of Manhattan. It has an exposed brick wall, decent sized kitchen, bath and the aforementioned two bedrooms. The cost is a major commitment, as is all apartment living in the Big Apple. But so, too, are the NYU dorms. Monetarily, it’s roughly a wash. The neighborhood is a fun one, with wine bars, restaurants of every stripe, convenience shopping and a youthful vibe. Plenty of trees dot the narrow streets. Character abounds.
It’s just those stairs! The SM was totally gassed each time he reached the apartment floor, holing up and gasping for breath for a minute or two before heading back down for another load. Perspiration flowed off of my head like melting Himalayan snow in the grip of an early thaw. No chest pains or anything scary, just a profound windedness. By the evening, my hips were bruisy lengths of pain. All I wanted to do was lay down on a couch somewhere and whimper. SM was forced, harshly, to take inventory of his physical condition. I came to realize that the occasional workouts I’ve been doing on the exer-cycle are palpably inadequate. Following the weekend ordeal I did workouts on three consecutive nights and plan to continue this rigorous schedule upgrade. At a minimum, I want to be able to comfortably move my daughter to her next place, whenever that happens. Got to stay focused!
Music man
By Sedentary Man
This is about music and brain function. Brains are part of the body and are related to mental health, so this topic is likely to pass muster with Editor. I can’t think of anything (having to do with muscles) to write about right now.
I have trouble playing music in the car. Fact is, I listen to music far less than the average boomer, no matter what the venue. Music processes, for me, through the front door of my brain. I can’t have music going and do anything else. That includes reading, driving, sleeping, talking, working, watching ball games, and a lot of other things. About all I can do when music is playing is eat and maybe shop. And since I like to read while I eat, that leaves shopping, which I do not do very much. All this is because music takes over my attention and it doesn’t let anything else intrude. So I cannot really enjoy music while driving, as most normal people can. This is especially true in tense driving conditions, like trying to find an unfamiliar exit off of a crowded interstate, or tooling around in downtown New York City. I am able to listen during the five minute drive from my home to the train station and back, I think this is because I have made those trips so many times that I don’t need to think to repeat them. I would be curious to know if others experience these afflictions. I suspect not so much, because I see people doing all kinds of things while listening to music. My daughter does schoolwork (effectively!) with music playing – an anathema to me.
In a related development, I am also extremely vulnerable to ear worms. You know, when a song gets into your head and you just can’t get it out. For me, most songs that I have most recently heard have the potential to be ear worms. So it’s not just “It’s a Small, Small World”. It can just as easily be “Africa”, “Land Down Under”, “Kiss Like a Rose”, “I’ll be Watching You”, “Eye in the Sky”, or dozens of others. Interestingly, I can cure any earworm by simply listening to another song, any song (thank God for that). Another interesting phenomenon with me is that my brain has a pause button for music. So if I am listening to a partially completed song as I park my car at the train station, I have a tendency to sing that song during the day, beginning with the exact point, the exact syllable that the song left off on in the morning. If anyone reading this has similar or related propensities, I would love to hear about them.
Doctor MedicusBy Sedentary Man
The Sedentary man had a not-so-sedentary day today, playing 18 holes of golf. As typically happens, the SMster walked the course, eschewing the motorized cart option. This was quite an endeavor, as the mercury flirted with 90 degrees and a fearsome sun forced its will upon us. By the end of the round, I had developed a staggering headache and clammy skin. Dehydration. This despite drinking close to 100 ounces of water during the round. I ordered a coke, “in the largest glass you have” from the grill room barkeep. As I disposed of the sweet liquid in mammoth gulps, I thought about how dogs drink. It’s actually something that I have often thought about because it makes no sense to me. A dog laps up water by sticking his tongue in and out of the water source, drinking whatever meager amount happens to stick to his flailing licker. What I can’t understand is how this method of taking in so vital an ingredient has survived Darwinian selection over the eons. I would think it would be a big survival disadvantage to need to take 5 minutes to drink a cup of water. But then, what do I know?
I actually wanted to talk in this blog about a true miracle product that has improved the daylights out of my golf game. It’s called the Medicus Driver. Now, let me start off by saying that I have nothing to do with the company that sells this learning aid and am being rewarded in no way whatsoever for endorsing it. In fact, I would be quite surprised if they even know that I am endorsing it. It just happens to work, which is more than I can say for any other golf-learning device that I have ever seen. It works like this: the club resembles a golf driver (aka a #1 wood) in every way except that it has a double hinge about 2/3rds the way down from the handle (see above).
The genius of this thing is that the hinge bends if you do anything with the club other than make a perfect swing. This includes the direction, speed and swing path of the maneuver. In case you didn’t know it, it is very difficult to make a perfect golf swing. The pros do it almost all of the time but amateurs and duffers such as me are lucky to accomplish the feat, say, 15% of the time. Well, since this thing gives you instant feedback, you can learn quickly what the swing has to do to avoid bending the hinge. You start by taking very slow swings with it. The DVD they give you tells you where to look for problems in your swing. As you come to know what a good swing needs to be, you can increase the speed. This process does not take long at all – a couple of 15 minute sessions did the trick for me, although I continue to work with it to reinforce the things I learned.
The true test was out on the golf course. My improvement was jaw-dropping. In my last round before purchasing the Medicus I had only one good drive in 18 holes. And by good, I only mean that my shot went reasonably straight and reasonably long. The first round I played after the purchase, I had only one bad drive all day. And that success was repeated today, my second trip out, post-Medicus. My drives are now consistently very long and reasonably straight (some still do veer off a little, but not enough to leave the field of play). I just can’t believe how helpful this thing has been. If you play golf and are having trouble with the drives, I recommend you give this thing a try. The cost for a new one is about $160, but you can probably pick a used one up on eBay for less.
Mind and Body
By Sedentary Man
The sedentary one watched a piece on 60 Minutes this weekend regarding progress on the development of a functioning artificial arm. A couple of different flavors were discussed. One of them relied on muscle contractions from what remained of a man’s amputated arm to send messages to a very functional forearm and hand. The other, designed for people with no stumps or very limited ones, relied on commands from the user’s toes and foot to operate what was again, an amazingly functional hand. By amazingly functional, I mean the guy was picking and eating grapes with it.
When I was young I read some science fiction stories and novels that explored the mind versus body relationship. In one, people were able to exchange bodies depending on their jobs or travel plans. Space travelers, for example, didn’t need legs while they were floating around in zero gravity. Before lift-off, they fastened on interchangeable bodies that didn’t have them. They put legs back on when they returned to earth. Another novel explored a civilization that lived millions of years longer than we had. They had evolved to a point were they just sat and thought about things. Nourishment was provided by automated machines (If you’re thinking I should have probably spent more time with the classics, you are probably right). Perhaps as a result of these readings, I felt at an early age that the body was not very important; it was the mind that mattered. As I grew older, I have deviated from this belief – the body and mind, given today’s level of technology at least, are inextricable. The mind isn’t much good at generating happiness if the body is in sad enough shape. More than that, the health of the mind is directly influenced by the health of the body in profound ways. Post partum depression is one obvious example. The well-documented mental health benefit of regular exercise is another.
Science fiction aside, the 60 Minutes story really resonated with me -- there was something wildly uplifting there; technology alleviating human misery. And highly functional limbs may be only the beginning. How great would it be if Stephen Hawking could be freed from his failing frame and its demands, so he could concentrate on more cosmic things? And, like me, didn’t you desperately hope that Christopher Reeve would succeed in his quest for mobility and health before the ravages of his injuries overtook him? For now, and for the next several hundred years, we should nourish, exercise, and take care of what we have below the neck for all we are worth. But for the cruelly disabled, I wholeheartedly welcome technological assistance. And someday we might need to redefine the definition of a body and its role. Now excuse me, I need to implant some flippers – a bunch of the guys are going scuba diving.
Remembrance of things forward
By Sedentary Man
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to spend some time in a New York City hospital emergency room. My daughter, a student at a university in the city, had a minor medical problem and was taken to the ER where I joined her from work. There began a carnival of human interaction that could probably only happen in a New York emergency room, or on television. My own emotions traversed the spectrum from hilarity to humility. I feel wiser from this brief but extreme view into the human condition.
Things began when I arrived at the triage window. A friendly young guy asked me if I needed help. I told him that I was looking for my daughter and he disappeared and returned a couple of minutes later. Apologizing for the delay, he took me down a couple of hallways to the ER. My first impression was the degree of crowdedness as I came upon it. Gurneys side by side, stacked up in the main room and ringed around various hallways. Visitors, doctors, nurses, orderlies and patients milled about in various states of waiting. I located my daughter and set up camp at her bedside. My butt was impinging into the space of the patient next door, but he appeared to have more important things to worry about.
An apparently homeless person was wheeled in while we waited. She had a couple of shopping bags which the orderlies were attempting to relieve her of so that the medical folks could get to work on whatever her problem was. As we waited her voice elevated and became bellicose. There was a difference of opinion on just what her problem was, with her complaining of a shoulder injury and the doctors coming down on the side of psychiatric treatment. If I were polled, I would be a heavy lean toward the latter. She wasn’t having any of that and demanded to be released or she “would sue, that’s what I’ll do”. I didn’t see any attorneys lining up for a shot at representing her.
On our left was a 60 something who had been experiencing cardiac symptoms. A clutch of doctors questioned him on a variety of his personal behaviors, the answers to too many of which were “yes” it seemed to me. I felt bad for him and for the gentleman on the other side of our curtained cubby who seemed in even worse shape. Most of the room, in fact, contained older folks in distress. It made me reflect on the convergence of age and frailty that I sometimes lose sight of. Life for most people, is a series of things to look forward to – vacations, promotions, children’s arrivals and achievements, ceremonies, visits etc. When you are 78 years old and lying on a gurney in a cacophonous ER in pain, confusion and fear, there can’t be much left to look forward to.
I think I’ll enjoy a walk at lunch today, and savor my upcoming vacation.
It Was a Very Good Year
By Sedentary Man
When I was 17 (and not very sedentary), I lived out of state for the summer with my uncle Don. I needed a place to stay while working at my summer job, and Uncle D. was gracious enough to provide me with one rent free. It was a time of discovery for me, since Uncle D was a man of the world and, one might add, a bit of a party animal. Needless to say, I had great fun. In between more damaging pursuits Uncle D and I did some physical recreation, usually basketball. Sometimes it was a game of H-O-R-S-E, wherein one player takes a shot and if successful, forces the other to follow suit. Each miss by the shooter gives the initiative over to his opponent. Each miss by the follower, causes him to take on a letter. The first player to have enough letters to spell out horse is the loser. I tried to coax Uncle Don into games of one-on-one, a much more strenuous form of the sport. He complied from time to time but usually lost and often begged off, claiming old age (he was 36 at the time). Another pastime was punting a football back and forth to each other. You had to kick from where you caught the opponent’s punt, placing a premium on 1) catching the punt on the fly, and 2) kicking as far as possible. When too much territory was lost, a winner was declared. Uncle Don succumbed in this contest as well. Although I was in marvelous shape at the time (6’3” and 193 lbs), I was only a marginal athlete. What I had on Uncle D was youth.
Curious to me from all this was what it revealed about the toll that age, and hard living as well, took on people. Uncle Don was a pretty good athlete in his younger days but the years following high school had seriously diminished his athleticism and stamina. I have cogitated ever since on the tribute exacted by the march of time and on how much influence one could exert over the process. A couple of thoughts: (1) Carl Yastrzemski, Red Sox hall of fame performer, pioneered off season conditioning for baseball players. He remained an effective player well into his 40’s and made the hall of fame, as much for his longevity as for his accomplishments. Now players routinely condition in the off season and routinely play well into their late 30’s. In Yastrzemski’s time, the early 30’s marked the beginning of the end for major league players. (2) A childhood school chum of mine, Kent Bostick, did things differently than the rest of us at our New Jersey high school. Kent rode an exotic bicycle, what we called a “French racer” and rode it a lot. While we snacked on Hostess Twinkies, Kent ate something he called “gorp”, which we now call trail mix. I grew up to be sedentary man. Kent grew up to represent the United States in the 1996 Olympics in cycling at age 43.
As average life expectancy has gone up over the years, so too, has quality of life lengthened. In the 1950’s, a 62 year old man was considered flat out old. Now, many 60 year olds run marathons. Yes, advances in medicine and in our understanding of nutrition have played a big part. But increased physical activity has probably done its bit as well. In the end, we probably have quite a bit of control over our aging process. Probably the only thing that kept Uncle Don from kicking my ass on the basketball court was inactivity, Schlitz beer, and 2 packs of Marlboro’s a day. And not enough gorp.
18 Holes of BlissBy Sedentary ManSM played golf today, the first outing of the year. It was a bracingly cold and windy affair, but no matter, the outing was sublime. Cool weather causes golf balls to travel shorter distances and muscles to get stiff, but it also minimizes fluid loss and makes for a comfortable experience generally. Beginning a few years ago, SM has always walked the course, so there is some exercise benefit. Pulling a set of clubs on a handcart while taking approximately 100 swings and walking about four miles on hilly terrain has to add up to something.
For those of you who do not participate in golf, the rewards are many. Just an inventory of personalities that you meet makes it a worthwhile pursuit. Golf personalities express themselves mostly when a bad shot is made. I have one friend who unadvisedly shouts “w***e” (synonym for call girl) at the top of his lungs after a missed putt. Another yells “snap hook, Alabama” whenever he hits a hook (shot that veers wildly off to the left for a right-handed golfer). Yet another takes so many mulligans (do-over after a bad shot) that I have suggested to him that he hold extra balls in his hand when swinging, like a tennis player, so as to save time on the re-do. Then there are the club throwers, individuals whose rage they cannot contain on the course. These guys usually lack a sense of humor and are not that funny during the game but are funny to talk about later. One of them once threw a club in my direction when I was seated in an electric golf cart. The thing went under the cart and clacked there repeatedly like a spoon fallen into the wheelhouse of a dishwasher. I responded with a constricted anus and a state of instant alertness. I don’t know how this instinctive fight or flight response aided the passing along of SM genes by my distant ancestors, but here I am.
An unwanted side effect that I received today was a strained latissimus dorsi. The problem crested at the 14th hole; my back simply refused to rotate enough to make golf swings after that. I needed to confine my activity to walking alongside my non-afflicted friends from there on. I believe it was to do with the coolness of the day and am hoping that the problem subsides, because we are talking about going out again next weekend.
Next: Yoga and other things I don’t do
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Sleep Issues
By Sedentary ManHad a great workout today – felt strong and really got into it. I think it was due to adequate sleep. SMs normal routine on weekdays is to arise at 5:15 am, travel to work in the big city, work, and travel home, arriving normally between 8 and 8:30 pm. I then eat, workout (if solstice is occurring), watch some TV or read and hit the sack between 10:30 and 11:00pm. If you are good at math, you calculate that I get 6 to 6 ½ hours of sleep on weeknights. This is not optimal, of course, and leads to a multitude of not great effects: poor short and long term memory, stimulated appetite, grouchiness, puffy eyes, oozing wounds, and spontaneous combustion (ok, maybe not the last two). On Saturdays and Sundays, the SM sacks in and gets 7 to 9 hours. It makes all the difference.
I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of sleep to general health. It’s not just uncomfortable to under sleep, it’s dangerous. The body produces extra protein molecules during sleep, according to http://www.bettersleepbetterlife.com/ (this website name helps reassure me that we will never run out of names for websites). These extra molecules help repair all kinds of damage to the body, including muscle tissue damage, and reduces general inflammation. I am convinced it also helps you exercise more effectively.
But the importance of sleep goes beyond good workouts, and can occur even if adequate time has been allotted for sleep. For example, if you snore a lot, accompanied by fits and snorts, you may have apnea. This is a serious condition wherein the soft tissue in the throat collapses during sleep, obstructing breathing. Because the body is deprived of oxygen constantly throughout the course of the night, the condition threatens major organs, which are put under stress all night. It’s likely that many catastrophic illnesses were caused by or worsened by untreated apnea. SM does not suffer from this condition, but he knows people who do. The warning signs are heavy snoring, general tiredness during the day, exaggerated need to urinate (a defense mechanism of the body in response to oxygen deprivation), and chronic low-grade sore throat. If you have these symptoms, treat it like a serious medical problem, because it may be. Have it checked out, because SM loves and needs his readers!
Next: That’s called running.
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Alexander and LucindaBy the Sedentary Man
When what’s left of the crops have rotted on the ground and all the leaves have fallen, my furnace, Alexander, kicks on and dries the air in the house to the edge of scientific possibility. I wake each morning with lids glued, throat hacking, nose running and skin itching. A fitful stagger to the shower for moist relief is about all the intelligent action I can muster at 5:15am, but it’s enough. Life slowly returns under hot rivulets and I emerge hydrated once more.
I have a humidifier, Lucinda, which tries to offset the crimes of desiccation that Alexander commits each day. She steals water from a copper feed pipe and dribbles it across a porous membrane in the path of Alexander’s dry exhaust, hoping to add life-giving moisture to our forced-air environment. Lucinda fails, and hangs forlornly from Alexander’s plenum, like a barren womb of non-humidification. By mid November, I feel as though I cannot live one more day in this man-made Gobi.
But then something happens, or more accurately, stops happening. I go days at a time without noticing the dryness, and then, not at all. Has Lucinda turned the tide on Alexander’s assault? Has the old boy somehow found a way to deliver the heat we need without the corresponding dryness? No to both. What happens is that I and my various mucous membranes become used to the dry environment and adapt. Adaptation can be a great thing in many contexts. It’s what lets us recover from the pain of loss, the pain of change or even the pain of pain.
All this has to do with exercise. Adaptation allows us to make do with the same body over time. My friend the emerging runner now does eight-minute miles where he once could only manage ten-minute miles. His painful first efforts have been replaced by a forceful pace and runner’s high. As I think about exercising more myself, I am drawn back to my decades-earlier states of extreme fitness and long for that rewarding feeling of adaptation once more. I plan to work on this angle and see if I can use it to increase my exercise participation level. My diet is still in fairly decent swing (another pound gone this week) and perhaps I have that to thank for this fresh look at working out. I’ll keep you posted on developments as they happen.
Next time: Pancake batter is not a beverage.
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Pokings and ProddingsBy Sedentary Man
Sedentary man was reflecting earlier today on the many invasions made by the medical profession upon his person. Understand that I am very much pro modern medicine, even with all its faults. We think nothing of getting treatment for ailments that would have felled a healthy man in his tracks just a couple of hundred years ago. I mean, what would Abe Lincoln’s doctors have recommended if he came to have a mitral valve problem in his heart? Or an ulcerated lesion in his intestine? An infected appendix? I doubt they’d even attempted to open him up. If they did he’d have likely died of sepsis from the dirty hands of his surgeons, or the bacteria-laden catgut thread they’d have used to sew him up. What if he’d had cataracts? The treatment for that would have been dark glasses and a tapping cane. Depression? Actually I think he did suffer from that particular malady, which was at the time probably unrecognized as a disease. If it was anything, Melancholy was probably the diagnosis. Suck it up was probably the treatment.
Not so for the sedentary man. Although I have never overnighted in a hospital, I have sojourned in many a medical lab for shorter periods. Endoscopy, nuclear medicine, radiology, treadmilling with electrodes, I’ve seen much and felt even more.
Start with colonoscopy. There is probably little to add from what you’ve read or heard – semiconscious on a gurney, with two or more medical folks pushing a hose up your nether orifice and watching the resulting show on a monitor. Sometimes they externally massage and assist the hateful thing in a memorable and unpleasant way around the hairpin turns of your intestines. All this is preceded by a day or so of chemically assisted purging of the entire alimentary superstructure, a process which makes the exam itself, and probably any disease that it might be looking for, into a joyous romp by comparison. I’ve had two trips down this path, and for all its horror, I was pleased both times to have done it and gotten a clean report.
Then there is the various heart checking that goes on. One version has the nuclear medicine doctor shooting you up with a radioactive substance that lights you up inside like downtown Hong Kong on New Years Eve. They take pix to see if anything is leaking, pooling, ballooning or squirting. The radioactivity somehow disperses (sounds good to me) and you’re on your way. Another deceptively unpleasant one is the heart sonogram. It has some more official name, but it’s essentially a thingy that pings different parts of your heart and uses the returning sound info to make a picture. It makes a sound like a sperm whale mating call and although there is no pain or discomfort, you find yourself wanting to get out of there. The stress test is you running on a treadmill with 12 or 13 electrodes stuck to various body locations. I got some jagged readings from that one but the cardiologist said I was “just out of shape”. I was offended and happy at the same time.
All these heart tests came from SM’s ongoing bouts of PVC – premature ventricular contractions. These funsy things are premature firing of one of the heart chambers, which makes you feel like you are missing a heartbeat. My doctor (who has them himself, small world) says they are completely benign as long as they are not a manifestation of heart disease. I have no heart disease, so no problem right? Well yes and no. It is f—king disquieting to have your heart miss beats. And if you miss too many in a row, the diagnosis passes from benign pvcs into tachycardia, a serious condition. The pvcs can be aggravated by caffeine, alcohol, overtraining, undertraining, overeating, inadequate sleep, steroid medicine, stress, and stomach upset (Laying in a sensory deprivation tank is probably ok). It’s an ailment that encourages you to live healthier, so for that I’m grateful.
SM diet progress – another 2 lbs lost this week, despite a couple of restaurant meals that I would just as soon forget. I have now lost all of the holiday season weight. Onward and downward!
Next time: Just be glad there is a next time.
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Number 136By the Sedentary Man
Sedentary Man started his diet this week. Not a big event, really. SM has been on approximately 135 diets in his life, losing from nothing to as much as 80 pounds. The most successful were those I invented myself. I am hopeful that this one, which I call the “I’m sick of being fat” diet, will be a good one because it is my own invention. It has the components of a good SM diet – a triggering event, a repetitious menu, a modicum of exercise, and no weekends off. This diet comes with a mantra, which is something new for me. I have high hopes for success, as I do for all of my diets.
The weekday menu:
Breakfast
1 South Beach© meal replacement bar (peanut butter chocolate – always)
Lunch
Salad from salad bar, containing:
Variety of lettuces and greens
2 tablespoons Edamame
8 Kalmata olives
Slivers of red pepper
½ hard boiled egg
1 tablespoon bacon bits
2 tablespoons black beans
2-3 tablespoons creamy ceasar dressing
Dinner
2 slices of thin sliced deli ham
1 slice Finlandia Swiss cheese
(roll the ham up inside the cheese for a breadless sandwich)
One can Slim Fast© optima meal replacement shake (vanilla)
So far there are 7 lbs less of SM and counting. This weekend will be a big test, but I continue to repeat the mantra “I’m sick of being fat”. So far it’s working. Gotta do some exercise this weekend as well. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
Oh yes, the triggering event? Saw myself in an unflattering mirror. Yes, I’ve used this one before, but it’s an effective trigger, and one I can keep in my minds eye.
Next time: McGyver liposuction
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Laying on of HandsBy the Sedentary Man
I’m trying to alleviate my stiff neck but flexibility is an issue for sedentary man. A back scratcher held backwards finally provides some relief. My neck problems stem from improper mousing: my pointing device sits too far away from my shoulder. I have my right arm extended all day as a result and this causes pain and stiffness. Why not move the mouse closer you ask? My workspace is a delicate balance of convenience and ergonomic compromises, worked out over a period of decades. There will be no changes.
To address the neck problems, I have tried professional therapy, and there’s the grist for today’s blog. My encounters with massage are two – one with an inhouse masseur here in the building, and one in Vegas (baby!). I’ll get the in-house guy out of the way first. Mike’s a soft-spoken guy of about 40 who started giving massages on the side before growing it into a living. The company provides space for him in exchange for the presumed well-being he provides for the staff. He gets paid: I think it was $35 for 20 minutes. I have always thought that a massage would be the height of sybaritic indulgence but it wasn’t that way. Damn painful was what it was. Mike’s signature move was grinding his elbow between my ribs and vertebrae. He also had a maneuver with his thumbs that seemed to lift and separate my shoulder blade from its holster in a gruesome and painful act of cruelty. By the time he finished I felt arthritic.
My second experience was in a fancy hotel on the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. The spouse and daughters all signed up for spa treatments and succeeded in talking the old man into a walk on the wild side as well. My therapist (that’s right) was Monique. She asked how hard she should go on me and, remembering the experience with Mike, I requested medium soft please. She told me to strip down to my skivvies and climb on the massage table, and then she stepped out. I complied, lying nearly nude on a blanket of some sort. Monique stepped back in and then quickly hustled back into the corridor. Her voice muffled by the closed over doorway, Monique requested that I lie under the blanket, not on top of it. Now she tells me. To calm her perv-radar, I let her know that this was new stuff for me, but things were starting off badly. She put on some new-agey music, oiled her hands and began to work me over. It felt pretty good, especially on my feet and hands, but we didn’t have much rapport. In fact she hardly said a word. My guess is they don’t like to do fat guys but hey, there’s a gratuity at the end. Suck it up. You have to tip her, the towel boy and various other hangers-on. The whole thing came to about $175. I think I’m done with the massage thing.
Next time - Oprah’s secrets for staying under 300 poundsClick here to send comments to The Sedentary Man
Thoughts from the Depths of WinterBy the Sedentary ManWell Sedentary man is hunkered down for the frigid core of the winter season. My weekend workout is complete – 45 minutes on exercycle while watching Battlestar Gallactica episodes off of a DVD collection. By the fire, in the quiet of a comfortable reading chair, a man is inspired to write about all that he has to be thankful for. Instead, here are some things that I really hate:
Turn down service - I’m going to call somebody to come to my hotel room, just to pull down the covers on my bed? WTF? It’s less work, by a lot, to pull down the covers than it is to make the call. I would rather have somebody come and brush my teeth for me – that’s a more strenuous task.Telephone information dialing - When you call information for a number they ask if you want them to dial the number for you for an additional buck. So for a dollar, I won’t have to push my finger 1/8th of an inch, 11 times. Who finds this an amazing value?
Valet parking - This saves people from parking their car and walking, like, a hundred feet. Instead, you get to carry around a cardboard chit all night, which you give to some juvenile delinquent while you wait around for him to go get the car and bring it back, with the seats and mirrors at different settings. All this for only a 5 buck tip.
Rain sensing windshield wipers – I particularly hate when people think they know what I want. OK, so this bit of technology tries to figure out if there is rain on your windshield and, if so, runs your wipers at a speed it deems appropriate to your visual needs. The car computer is so smart that it knows how much wiping you need to see comfortably. Never mind that everybody has different wipe-for-vision versus need-for-non-wiping-peace-and -quiet ratio. If the computer were that smart it wouldn’t be working in a car, it would be in some Japanese robot toy or working in NASA with really smart computers.
Menu customization – While we are on the topic of technology, how do you like it when your computer operating system decides what menu items you will want to see? It does this by keeping track of how often you have called upon menu items and then puts your most popular choices at the top of your drop down menus. To add an additional touch of convenience, it completely obscures from view items that you haven’t called upon lately. This would work well if you were a serial killer and it was a list of people you wanted to kill, because you might not need to see people you have already killed anymore. Since I am not a serial killer and do need to find menu items, even if I have perhaps not used them in a week, this heuristic doesn’t work well for me. I know you can customize away this feature, but it still annoys me.There’s your list for now. I’m actually feeling better; spring is just around the corner. Pitchers and catchers report in a few short weeks.
Next time: Treadmills and wound care.
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FAMILY FOODBy the Sedentary Man
My buddy, editor, is starting to irritate sedentary man, just a little bit. He runs some number of miles a day (three or seven or something), eats tofu, and is starting to look vaguely aristocratic. He has some sort of electronic chip in his shoe (that perhaps sends an electric shock through his calf when he slows down?). Newly limp shirts and pants flap a bit when he walks by. He compares resting pulse rates with other fitness nuts. Disturbingly, people listen to more of what he has to say instead of staring through his head like they used to. I’ve been waiting for him to start eating ring dings again but it’s looking less and less likely. He’s so full of energy that it’s sometimes hard for me to nod off during our meetings. I love the guy – he really is a good guy – but my mother taught me that I should always hate people who are doing well, so we will have to see where this goes.Speaking of my mother, some of my eating habits surely trace their origins to her atypical practices. Ice cream was her major vice: Neapolitan, eaten in small bites with an iced tea spoon. Nobody knows why the long spoon. I suppose in the end it improved her dexterity, but I don’t think that was a goal as such. Mom also exposed me to Weight Watchers. Her favorite WW recipe was a mixture of green beans, tomato soup, busted up Ritz crackers, and some other crap. It was only one or two ingredients shy of being a serviceable homemade Ipecac. “It’s just like eating spaghetti” she would say. “No thanks, mom, I just ate (yesterday). Food historians credit my mother with inventing the grilled cheese sandwich submerged in tomato soup (sorry, the dish has no name). One might suspect it of being a creative offshoot of French Onion soup or some other respected culinary mainstay. I don’t think so. I think a grilled cheese sandwich fell into some soup at one point, et voila! Like Madame Curie holding a piece of radium in her hand and noticing later that her hand fell off, it was sheer accident.My brother deserves his own chapter in the SM cookbook. Most people know him for holding the Guiness Book record for consecutive days eating nothing but ramen noodles, but as the inventor of the spoon sundae, Sedentary Brother falls somewhere between the Chef Boy ar dee and the guy who came up with pimento loaf on the list of notworthy 20th century food inventors. The recipe is almost as short as the title. Take one soup spoon, add one squirt of chocolate syrup, about 1.5 seconds of Rediwhip, and top with a maraschino cherry. Eat in one gulp. Have another – it’s portion control and then some. By the way, if you check out whatscookingamerica.net (I was trying to find out how to spell “maraschino”) you will learn that “absolutely no formaldehyde is used” in the manufacture of maraschino cherries. Not a drop! For anyone who used to eat a half jar of them at a time, this is welcome news indeed. Next time: Fungus, we hardly knew ye.Click here to send comments to The Sedentary Man
January is Weight Watchers Month
By the Sedentary ManInto a dishwater gray day steps a tousled sedentary man, numb from cranial disuse and stiff from couch sitting for over 40 hours of Orange, Holiday, GMAC, Meineke Car Care, Poinsettia, International, Outback Steakhouse, and various other bowls. Awaiting him on the train platform is a brutal reintroduction to the first non-holiday workweek in more than a fortnight. All systems struggle to regain a foothold after the disquieting amounts of fat, salt, sugar, and meat that passed through his plumbing these past weeks. Like a great Roman God arising out of the sea, January is here and he’s demanding his due.
January is, of course, Weight Watchers month. If there was no January, I don’t think there would be any Weight Watchers. Ads blanket the airwaves. Classes start up in high-rises. Join up fees are waived. Food is measured in points. Oh, Sedentary Man knows the Weight Watchers. SM has done the church basement class with 40 overweight women. More than once. A key is recording everything that you eat in entries in a journal. You loose weight for awhile then bail out. That’s how it works. But it’s cheap and it’s better than gaining more weight.
Here’s a sampling of my typical WW menu:
Day 1
Breakfast:
Lettuce leaf with vanilla extract
Half cup of warm water
Mid morning snack:
One serving Weight Watcher’s© brand chocolate walnut flavored eating substance
Lunch:
½ plum tomato with seeds removed
½ cup Weight Watcher’s© brand artificial chicken broth
Grapefruit or orange segment
Afternoon Snack:
7 pistachio nut halves
Black coffee
Smell 1 slice of cheese (don’t eat!)
Dinner:
1 Tablespoon strained tuna fish
½ cup Weight Watcher’s© brand artificial beef broth
Four grapes with skin removed
1 Weight Watchers Frappa-dappa-chino!© beverage packet with warm water
Day 12
Breakfast:
Lettuce leaf with vanilla extract
1 pint Haagen Daaz Dulche Deluxe ice cream,
spread on 4 belgian waffles, with ½ cup peanut butter and honey mixture
Mid morning snack:
½ cup Weight Watcher’s© lite clam broth
Eleven Dunkin Donuts© buttercrunch crullers
1 Napolean
32 oz coffee with ½ cup half and half
Lunch:
½ slice Weight Watchers© YouGoLean© Superlite Rye crisp toast
One Pizza Hut© 16” meat lovers pizza
6 pack of Cinnamon Dessert Stix with vanilla dipping sauce
72 ounce serving Coca Cola Zero© beverage
Mid Afternoon Snack:
Three hot dogs from street vendor
One Chili dog from street vendor
One 12 oz can Mountain Dew© beverage
Dinner:
One Weight Watchers© SmartOnes Steamed Broccoli with Chicken Bitz© 4 oz serving
Two 12 oz Peanut Butter SlimFast© shakes
Gulp of heavy whipping cream (from carton)
Two Tablespoons all purpose flour
11 slices Oscar Meyer© Bologna
One box Sunshine Hydrox© chocolate sandwich cookies
1 finger full Raspberrry Preserves
One 24 oz package baking chocolate
Day 13:
Recording ends here.
Next time: No gain, considerable painClick here to send comments to The Sedentary Man
INGESTATIONSBy the Sedentary ManEach morning I have some Tylenol or Advil (whatever’s around) with strong coffee, just to help me figure out what other meds to take. I have decided to put fish oil on the team, It prevents cancer or strokes, one of those I think, and I kind of like the feel of the gelatin capsule as it slithers down. I want to bite it but I'm afraid of getting fishy mouth. My doctor has set me up with a whole salad of preventative (miraculously, I have no heart disease yet) pillseys – statins, baby aspirins, blood pressure meds. Those last work by somehow stretching out blood vessels (veins?) in your legs wide enough to pass a whole Polish sausage through. Your heart has so little work to do it can finish a Sudoku before it has to beat again. Prunes (recommended by the American Dried Plums Council), are the policeman food – keeping everything moving along, there’s nothing to see here. As one ages, managing your "evacuations" becomes an increasingly demanding (and important!) project. I sock down three prunes after each meal, right out of the bag. This prevents me from having to take Metamucil, which is made from some sort of weird space dust that expands like those dried animal-shaped sponges you buy for children. Alright I looked it up; it’s psyllium, which is a plant. Now the American Psyllium Society is going to be all over me. Wikipedia advises people to not confuse psyllium with Cilium, a substance that causes extreme constipation. Not really, but that would be pretty funny, wouldn’t it? Wikipedia also says that psyllium soaks up cholesterol like an $800 German vacuum. So there, the APS loves me again.One thing I stay away from is tobacco. I have enough risk factors without adding that. But I do keep a bag of RedMan Chewing tobacco lying around. I don’t chew, but I am somehow drawn to the product, defiantly racist and threatening to your health, all in a squeezably fresh foil pouch. It smells good enough to eat (please don’t do this). A nod to the other big vice: After a few blackout episodes, the odd polite beer is the last remaining faded love letter from my once ardent affair with ethanol. I can’t prove this (I already looked one thing up for you!) but I believe that being fat is better for you than being a heavy drinker/smoker. The American Wine Council strongly disagrees, but you know, I think the only thing drinking two glasses of red wine a day is better than is drinking three glasses a day – just my opinion, not necessarily echoed by Editor.Next: chewing on straws and other little things with big cardio vascular payoffs.Click here to send comments to The Sedentary Man
GETTING STARTEDby the Sedentary Man
Well, I want to introduce myself. I am columnist #1, friend and co- worker of Editor. Editor has spent the last several months getting healthy – eating better, running, elipsing, and so on. I have been following his progress with interest but not really matching him stride for stride. About the best I can say is that the rate at which I have been gaining weight has been decreasing. Baby steps, as they say. Anyway Editor and I were talking recently about his little storefront in the blogotropolis. We thought it might be interesting if I were to provide periodic updates in Emerging Runner, aimed at readers who are emerging more out of their size 38’s than out of inactivity.
So then, since we have to start somewhere, how about a few tips for developing a “less intense” fitness program:
Baseline caloric intake: Using a written journal, take note of all the food and its corresponding caloric value that you eat in a typical day. Don’t leave anything out – a peanut butter and banana sandwich after dinner or that turkey leg that you munched while cleaning up the kitchen need to be recorded just as much as the plate of gravy cheese fries you had with breakfast. Now divide this calorie total by 5. This will give you a rough estimate of how many calories you should be taking in per day.
Consuming type: What type of eater am I? This can vary by person – do you eat 5 large meals per day or 9 smaller ones? Would you eat a second whole meatlovers pizza from Pizza Hut if it was available in a “second one for half price” deal? How about if you were told that the second has just as many calories and fat grams as the first? Here’s a simple test you can try on yourself: Eating 70 munchkin donut holes equates to eating how many fully formed donuts? Most people don’t realize that the answer is 22 donuts, depending on type (so you see, just stopping to think about food intake can lead to smarter decisions!). Classify yourself as either: 1) an impulsive eater, 2) a compulsive eater, or 3) the subject of a Science Channel documentary.
Exercise profile: Short quiz:
1)When you come to a staircase and an escalator do you a) take the escalator or b) find an elevator?
2) How long has it been since you actually ran (had both feet off of the ground at the same time)? a) Clinton administration, b) Carter administration, c) not sure.
3) Does talking leave you out of breath? a) False b) True.
4) Which of these activities do you participate in most often? a) watching comedies on TV, b) watching sports on TV, c) watching something else on TV.
5) How much fat can you pinch around your waist? a) 10 inches, b) can’t reach waist, c) can’t find waist
Multiply every answer a by 70 lbs. Add them up and the total is your exercise weight loss goal.
So, we’ve got some background for our program. Next time: Overeat this don’t overeat that.Click here to send comments to The Sedentary Man
Loud noises come in two flavors, impulse noise and continuous noise. Impulse noise is like a gunshot and can cause instant hearing damage. Continuous noise exceeding 85 decibels causes damage over time. Scientists have various theories as to how this takes place. What’s definitely known is that tiny hair-like cells, scilia, in the inner ear are damaged with excessive exposure to either kind of loud noise. These hairs play a pivotal role in translating sound waves into something your auditory nerves can absorb and take to the brain. 85 decibels is a level that is not hard to reach. Leaf blowers, shop tools, motorcycles, chain saws, even heavy city traffic, can easily exceed this level. At this weekend’s affair, I am certain that the DJ was cranking at a level of 120 or more.I couldn’t hear or be heard at my table and when I was on the dance floor (I grant my significant other 5 or so dances at each one of these hoedowns to avoid bitterness and silent car rides home) there was actual pain in my head.
The SM has taken another step toward self-improvement. No, it’s not a new exercise regime, or a special lo-something or hi-something diet. It’s more improvement for the mind, spirit, and professional well-being. I joined the Toastmasters organization. This is a loose confederation of clubs, scattered across the country and dedicated to the betterment of public speaking skills. It’s fun and worthwhile.
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