Category Archives: Health

First Full Day Home

April 1, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Bee Hiving Moon

Naps. Not possible when driving long distances or engaged in workshops all day. But I had one today. The first time I’ve felt fully rested in two weeks. Home is where the nap is.

Realized while waking up that I may not be able to keep bees this year. I promised grandson Gabe last year that I would be at his birthday party. That happens on April 27th. We’ll leave sometime that week. Right now the new package arrives April 12th. That would make hiving and checking the colony 7-10 days later to see that it’s queen right just possible. Even then, leaving them just after I’ve hived them? Not the best plan.

This would be a good year to skip, too, since we still have almost 70 pounds of honey from last year. Probably doesn’t make sense this year.

I was unable to keep up my exercise on the road, though I had planned to. The cold, then inertia. That means I’m starting back today after a little over two weeks off. Like the football players, I have to knock some rust off. Will be good to get back it. I missed exercise this time.

Health

Finally

March 15, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Hare Moon

Finally. A combination of resistance and aerobics that feels good, burns calories and tests my balance. It’s taken a long time to find a good fit, but here it is. I do 4 high intensity intervals at 1.5-2 minutes each. The first two are on the treadmill right away and take about 15 minutes with the cool down to 110 bpm and then backup and then back down again.

After the second interval cool down I do half of a half of a p90X workout. They’re designed to go just over an hour and to work all the muscle groups of the day several times. By doing half of a day’s workout I get in roughly 30 minutes of varied resistance work. I cut it in half to do the third interval. Then, when I’ve finished the resistance work I do the final interval. Takes a little more than an hour altogether, but it’s so varied it doesn’t seem like much. Burning 550 to 650 calories a time, 5 days a week.

The non p90x days I do an aerobic only day at around 130 bpm for 45 minutes.

I like this because it’s intense, varied, helps me gain and maintain muscle mass and maintain my aerobic fitness. It’s taken a lot of experimentation, but this is a keeper.

Health

Running through my brain

March 13, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Hare Moon

After my workout, I turn on the steam bath, come into the study and check e-mail, look at newspapers, and clear off my desk. Often, I’ll turn to writing here because the endorphins are flowing and I feel good.

That’s true right now. Even though the combination of ending the climate change course and submitting Missing has left me a bit directionless, the workout pushes me to a more positive place. Exercise induced biotherapy.

Anyhow. Time for supper.

GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Health

Keep Time the Way Nature Intended It

March 8, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Hare Moon

It’s a scourge. It’s unnatural. It’s Daylight Savings Time. Aside from being an obvious oxymoron, this idea forces us to change our sleep patterns every six months. Sleep is important and habits are important to sleep. Ergo.

(Plus, trees don’t change time.)

Here’s a link to a NYT room for debate piece on the subject:

“For days after “springing forward,” many of us feel a little jet-lagged and cranky. And the research is piling up to show that the time change affects more than our mood. It changes energy use, health, worker productivity and even traffic safety.

Does daylight saving time do more harm than good?”

Health, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Body and Mind

March 3, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Hare Moon

The latin today was a brainbuster. At least for me. In the first sentence there was a passive periphrastic with its dative of agent and gerundive plus an imperfect subjunctive. Now if you think that sounds confusing, well, it was to me. Not sure I got it either. Two steps ahead, a step or two back into Wheelock to check the grammar, seeking help from the commentaries.

(how I felt after the Latin)

Workout today though was good. I’ve switched it up a bit, doing high intensity intervals (4 of one minute to one and a half minutes) combined with sections of the P90X workout. The P90X is the resistance work, the intervals the aerobics. Seems to be a good fit.

Maybe not what Tony Horton intended, but it’s gonna work for me. That means two lower intensity days on the treadmill between the three interval workouts.

Health, Third Phase

Healing

February 27, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

After two + weeks of constant pain in my right pec, it’s begun to recede. Made an appointment with my doc, as I wrote earlier, but couldn’t get in to see her until next week. Now it seems that by then, I won’t need the appointment. As long I can tell an injury is healing, I’m ok with it. My desired result. Self-care wins every time in my world. (I did have advice from the concierge doc here at 153rd Ave. NW.)

(me at the end of P90X)

Workouts have begun to get more intense again and I can see myself back in the P90X full bore after the Tucson trip. My original hope was that I could finish the P90X (90=90 days) before Tucson, but the injury and my learning curve on the more complex moves combined to slow me down. No big deal. I’m going to continue learning the moves, doing high intensity aerobics alongside that, until I can work it fulltime.

GeekWorld, Health

Data

February 26, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Gadgets. Yes. I like them. My latest is my birthday present, a Basis watch. The basis keeps track of my steps (not so many in these winter days), calories burned (not so accurately for reasons I’ll make clear) and, most interestingly my sleep.

Not quite sure how the sleep sensors work, but each time I nap or sleep at night the Basis records my sleep with several different variables: time in deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep. It also records turns and turnovers and what it calls, interruptions. At 67 you can imagine what my interruptions are. These are done up in a neat graph that wouldn’t copy, but the overall data stream for last night is below.* (above is from their website)

But that’s not all. Overtime the Basis learns your patterns and gives you a sleep score based on length of sleep and all those other data points. It also measures, helpfully, heart rate during the day, in particular resting heart rate which is a good measure of fitness.

I initially thought it would record my heart rate during exercise and give me feedback about my workouts, but it doesn’t do that. I wanted to be able to upload my exercise data to the computer and save it, track my progress over time.

Though I’ve always exercised with a heart rate monitor (or at least I’ve done it so long I don’t recall when I started), the technology I had was only good for in the moment readings. That was good, but I wanted better data. When I found the Basis wouldn’t do what I wanted (I was not the only one who made this mistake as the forum on the Basis website demonstrated), I went to Polartech.

They make a great, inexpensive watch and chest band (transmits heart rate to the watch) which, when coupled with a data synch plate, transfers a great deal of relevant data from the watch to the Polartech personal trainer website. BTW: I have the FT7 which the link displays and explains, but I got it for $73, not $119.00.

This means I don’t wear my Basis during exercise. It didn’t do much helpful then anyhow. That means its calories burned per day reading is not accurate because it doesn’t reflect my workouts. Still, it’s sleep monitoring and throughout the day heart monitoring give it a place, too. Oh, and it tells time and the date, too.

Now I can monitor my sleep accurately, my resting heart rate and the intensity of my workouts. With the workouts I see calories burned, maximum, minimum and average heart rate, training load (call it intensity), time in various training zones and I get graphs over time plus a calendar/diary that records each workout in a calendar format. I like it.

*91%

Sleep Score

19 times

Toss & Turn

1 time

Interruptions

REM 25%

1 hr 48 min

Light 54%

3 hr 56 min

Deep 21%

1 hr 33 min

Health

Owee

February 22, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Back on the treadmill. No, I haven’t started going off to work again. I mean, I’m back on the treadmill. In what I consider an ironic situation my right pectoral is so painful I can’t do the P90X workouts. Why ironic? Because in the fall that injured it, I landed on my back. Must have really torqued that left arm, which I’m pretty sure hit first and absorbed most of the fall. Why didn’t that hurt my left pectoral? I have no idea.

Sent a note to my doc telling her that this is two weeks past the event and the pain interferes with my workouts and general getting around. Maybe I’ll head back to Dave, the bicycling Lancastershire man who helped me get past my shoulder pain last fall. I’m going to let Corrie decide.

I don’t mind the treadmill since I watch movies and TV while I’m doing it, but about a year ago I decided I wanted a more robust workout, one that included resistance work, too. I developed my own, which seemed to plateau.

Then Kate saw an article for P90X and I did the fitness test for it. And passed. Barely. It’s fun and I was just beginning to learn the moves of the various workouts, showing some progress, when I fell off the door jamb.

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, Our Land and Home

A Letter To Saudi Arabia

February 22, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Brother Mark, within a hundred miles of the Rub al Kahli, the empty quarter, asked me about the winter and the garden. Here’s my reply:

It has been our most severe winter since 1978-79, which was only 8 years after I moved up here. We just got 10 inches of snow and the temperatures are headed back down. It’s 2 right now and we have -15 for a low forecast this Thursday. Snow in our front yard is as high as my hip. The raised beds in the vegetable garden have disappeared.

All the dogs are good right now. Gertie gets around much better since she had the surgical crimp removed from her left rear knee.

Kate’s away at quilting retreat with her sister Anne. Just me, the dogs and lots of snow.

Last year I began using products from International Ag Labs and they increased our production even though I used them for only part of the season. The broadcast fertilizer went down fall and this spring I add nitrogen. There’s also a transplant formula to use when planting. These products improved the microbial life in the soil and add minerals found missing through soil tests. I tested the vegetable garden and the orchard last fall.

International Ag labs moves gardens and farms toward sustainable agriculture by creating healthy soil. This has always made sense to me and I’m pleased to have found them. Bill Schmidt found them.

Over this weekend I plan to place my seed and plant orders. Once I’ve done that I can order nitrogen in forms specific for specific plants. This means I will no longer have to rotate my crops because I’m building soils designed optimally for each plant type.

Tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, melons, bush beans, sugar snap peas, leeks, greens, herbs and peppers. The garlic’s already in the ground. This fall I’ll plant scallions at the same time I plant garlic.

The orchard is part of the program this year. That means I’ll be spraying the trees as well as the vegetables. These are foliar feedings, not insecticides. That’s a weekly, sometimes twice-weekly job. There, are, too soil drenches every other week.

Aren’t you glad you asked?

Garden, Great Work, Health, Latin, Politics, Sierra Club, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate, Writing

The Week Ahead

February 17, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Weather has warmed up over 40 degrees from the last few weeks and it’s still cold. That’s about where we live. No volcanoes erupting to interfere with our lives though.

Today or tomorrow I’ll finish reviewing the edits made by Bob Klein to Missing. Then it’s off to the agents. I’ve probably taken more time getting to this point than a novel of this type warrants, but I’ve wanted to produce as good a book as I can. The first two or three books sold can determine success over all (that is, being allowed to continue publishing) and I want to present clean, focused stories.

Also tomorrow I’m going to resume my P90X workouts. I’ve taken a week + off to allow my chest to heal and it seems mostly calmed down now. Dave Scott, the handy-man I mentioned a bit ago, has installed the new pull-up bar, the Stud Bar (Tm). It will not pull out of the ceiling studs (aka Stud Bar) and I will not drop unceremoniously onto the concrete anymore. This last makes me happy.

When Kate and I discussed my attendance at an Ira Progoff workshop, I initially wanted to go to an event in early May. It was in Asheville, N.C. and the thought of contemplative work in the Blue Ridge mountains appealed to me. But, she rightly observed, this was soon after our Colorado trip for Gabe’s birthday and at the beginning of the growing season. Other dates and places I liked were either in the middle of the growing season or at the time of the honey harvest. That’s how we chose the end of March. No planting, no bees. And I can make Denver on the way home, wishing an early birthday to granddaughter Ruth.

Another way of saying Tucson was not on the top of my list for places to go.

The polishing begins on the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha this week. Back to the beginning with careful attention to commentaries, dictionaries and other English translations. The goal: as well spoken a translation as I can muster plus commentary notes.

(st. jerome, patron saint of translators. and yet another great beard model)

It’s also week 7 of the Climate Change course. This course has proved as influential for me as a weekend Kate and I spent in Iowa City with PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, a conference on climate change. That one propelled me into my work with the Sierra Club. Just where I’m headed now is not yet clear to me, but I’m for sure going to increase my activity level on adaptation.