Tag: health

• My colonoscopy strategies (December 31, 2023)

  Remember to remove all the red and purple candies from the pile before you begin!

• Hemlock (September 4, 2022)

  "I am approaching my fiftieth birthday, Mr. Trout," I said. "I am cleansing and renewing myself for the very different sorts of years to come."

• On the clock (May 24, 2021)

  On the trickiness of making time to write for myself amidst a new job and a new, gadget-enforced fitness regimen.

• Friends, we gotta keep walking (March 21, 2020)

  We can still walk for personal exercise and mental tranquility even as our cities gird into full lockdown.

• Mixing cold medicine with news made me crushingly depressed (January 6, 2020)

  I did not treat the blue bottle with the respect due to it, and had a most regretful couple of days.

• In support of leaving the table (October 22, 2019)

  On the virtue of setting down a video game when you, the player, declare it complete, even when the game itself disagrees.

• Step back, my darling, so I can see your face (October 6, 2019)

  Thoughts on reaching a universal life milestone I somehow didn't know about until I hit it.

• Let’s rename “the 7-minute workout” to “the Klika-Jordan workout” (September 26, 2019)

  Researching the origins of the so-called "7-minute workout" led to many surprises, including a much more sensible name for it.

• Announcing Sweat, a flexible and distracting workout timer (September 16, 2019)

  With pride and pleasure I announce Sweat, a new workout timer that means to distract you from the pain of exercise by reading aloud stuff it finds on the internet.

• I read Under the Knife (July 19, 2019)

  Enjoyed these true stories of historically significant operations, told charmingly if unflinchingly by the surgeon Arnold van de Laar.

• Introducing Brickfielder, a Seven Minute Workout timer (November 18, 2018)

  I have released a simple and highly opinionated timer program for the Seven Minute Workout. It's tiny and free and runs on macOS.

• I had a filling replaced and worried about it (January 7, 2018)

  A chronicle of how my replacing an ancient molar-filling led to some months of worry, eventually resolved.

• I repaired my blood cholesterol, somehow (July 15, 2017)

  My doctor diagnosed me with hyperlipidemia in January. Presumably my blood, run through the lab, resembled the disagreeably pond-scummy claret illustrating that condition’s Wikipedia page. Doc gave me a deadline: If I couldn’t fix this situation through diet and lifestyle changes within one year, then I’d have to accept a lipid-thinning drug regimen. Heart disease crippled my father and killed my father’s father, so I knew that would submit to statins that if I had to. But I would really rather not have to. This cut my work out for me.

• How to make greenut-butter sandwiches (April 29, 2016)

  Moved by my reading How Not to Die, a lengthy plea for those in the Western world to improve their lives through healthier eating, I wish to share a recipe I call the greenut-butter sandwich. While I can’t recall a precise inception date, I likely “invented” this sandwich sometime during the current decade. Prior to that, I did not regularly have easy access to its defining ingredient, mainly because I would never have bought such stuff while living alone.

• Now reading: How Not to Die
  (April 17, 2016)

  Partway through reading How Not to Die by Michael Greger and Gene Stone, which feels like a natural followup to my reading and enjoying Spring Chicken last year. Where that book provided an excellent high-level survey of our current best knowledge about human health and longevity, this book examines the same topic specifically through the lens of food.

• Thinking back on “The Hacker’s Diet” (October 21, 2015)

  It’s been around ten days since I started counting calories via food-diary software. My aim, as stated before, less involves “losing weight” than it does pulling my LDL “bad cholesterol” down to a safer level. I have never before this month attempted to quantify my day-to-day caloric intake, much less journal and analyze it. A week and change doesn’t give me enough data to talk about its effects on my body, but I can start to write about other things that this practice brings to mind.

• Today, I begin watching what I eat (October 10, 2015)

  I received the happy news last month that my blood’s current population of LDL cholesterol, compared to its prior measurement from early 2013, had dropped from 156 mg per deciliter to 136. That’s still higher than the generally regarded “safe” upper limit of 129 mg/dL, but very much suggests a move in the right direction my part. Still, as the son of a man who suffered a midlife stroke that left him significantly diminished for the rest of his days, and the grandson of one who died outright from heart failure, I’d like to keep pushing that number down, far beneath that ceiling. If genetic destiny has handed me loaded dice, then I very much want to counterweigh them in my own favor as much as I reasonably can.

• I read: Spring Chicken
  (May 23, 2015)

  Several years ago, during the height of resveratrol ’s time in the limelight as a possible cure-all for aging and all its ill effects, I wrote about my own experimentation with it (on one of this blog’s previous incarnations). I reread that old article today expecting facepalm-worthy naiveté, but I instead found my past self’s attitude worthy of a bit more credit than that:

• My Kidney Stone Journal (January 31, 2015)

  This week I passed a kidney stone. The ordeal proved interesting at times but quite awful overall, involving a lot of pain, fear, and uncertainty. All told, it monopolized around four days of my time and attention. I hope I never have to do it again. But I got through it all right, and I learned a lot. I’d like to share my experience here, in part to help others who might find themselves facing a similar situation.

• The seven-minute workout: far better than it sounds
  (January 11, 2015)

  I find the seven-minute workout the worst-named best thing I’ve discovered in years. I wish it carried any other name. As currently labeled, it smacks of The Four-Hour Work Week or Learn JavaScript in 30 Minutes or countless other completely disingenuous promises to magically improve one’s life with little to no time investment. It sounds so phony, and as such I always feel self-conscious recommending it to others.