Half Life

46 with a body of a 92 year old

Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.

― Sebastian Junger

Reflecting

Things fall apart quickly.  It is embarrassing to write as I like writing up my health and fitness ideas and my health and fitness have just collapsed.  Do everything you can to stay as fit as possible – and as safe as possible – so that you stay out of our healthcare system.  I’ve been out of it for decades and then in it more than full-time for the past week.  0/10. Zero stars. Would not recommend. The ratio of procedures to unintended consequences has been 1:1 and the ratio of procedures to discoveries of newly needed procedures has been 1:3.  Not clear if/how one escapes this death spiral.  The week in a sentence: Jiu jitsu knee injury exacerbated by weightlifting put me in knee surgery, knee surgery lead to blood clots, blood clots caused three pulmonary embolisms which killed part of my lung.  I’m learning all about the different medical specialties with daily doctor visits, tests, and getting rushed in and out of the ER. 

No profound takeaways.  I realize how much of my happiness is tied to usefulness when I become 100% useless.  If/when I recover, I’m curious to see how experiencing breakthrough pain for the first time impacts my behavior.  I could see it going in one of two ways.  I could laugh at sore legs from squats having had total leg cramps for multiple days >10x as intense; this reset could make me harder.  Or I could conclude that nothing is worth this and give up on power and settle for a bookish, safer existence.  Hopefully the former but TBD.

Training

I can row only 1-legged after my knee injury.  First effort was a 9 minute 2k meter and I’ve gotten it down to 8:30 (7 is my 2-legged norm).  Can’t wait for this rowing movie:

Due to increasingly grim health problems, my whole adventure calendar will get delayed, revised, and in some cases abandoned, but this Alaska field course is one I want to do, most likely in 2025.  I was asked to join someone on it and wanted it to be one of my instant “yeses” but that had to be tweaked.

Fueling

Internal meat thermometers make cooking in the smoker utterly foolproof.  We haven’t ruined a single steak since using them.  Here’s a favorite that I found out about via Traeger. 

Supplementing

Off everything while dealing with my post- and also pre-surgery.  If/when I recover, one to consider is phosphatidylserine, here reputed to lead to higher T and lower cortisol.  H/t as per usual to Dr. Cam Sepah. 

Measuring

Resistance training for four months improves (/lowers) blood glucose, HbA1c, total and LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides and improves (/increases) HDL in type 2 diabetics.  Aerobic training make almost no difference. 

H/t P.D. Mangan

In another study resistance training was shown to reverse signs of aging in skeletal muscles.  A lot of what’s called aging is simply the decision to let yourself get sicker and weaker.  And in yet another, resistance training (this time the results were especially acute for intense training) alleviates anxiety.

Recovering

Here are the exercises I’m most glad to have consistently done to manage one-legged for now: core exercises to be able to sit up and stabilize without two legs, pistols, and Turkish get-ups.  If you do those now, you’ll be glad you did after a leg injury. 

Closing

I am my own worst enemy.  The people I generally most enjoy reading and listening to are almost comically ill-suited for my current moment.  I get through my days with intensity, tenacity, and an almost violent sense of urgency.  I want to be quantifiably winning at some metric – making money or running miles or lifting pounds or reloading to do it again.  I can’t do that now and everyone I turn to is in the “get after it” genre of advice.  Believe me, I want to but literally can’t.  It is a good podcast, but How to Avoid Death by Comfort is really not my current problem.  I have felt more pain in the past week than in the preceding 46 years.  Every time I stand it is like (actually precisely like) removing a tourniquet.  Paul Taylor is wonderful and I love his ideas on training, temperature, and comfort, but as far as Nietzsche, Christopher Hitchens was right.  “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” sounds good, especially in the original German, but it wasn’t true for Friedrich Nietzsche, Christopher Hitchens, or Chris DeMuth Jr.  There can be no silver linings.  I already appreciated what I had and was abruptly torn away from all the activities that I love.