Posts Tagged ‘health’
When I pretend that I am a NASA astronaut
NASA astronauts on the space station exercise 2.5 hours daily, six days a week. I am finding myself in a similar predicament. They do it to counteract muscle atrophy. I do it to manage pain.
I have had an on-again off-again relationship with pain my entire life. It has been in an on-again for last several years as I started the fifth decade. My hips hurt when I walk horizontally. My knees hurt when I walk vertically. My shoulders hurt when I go to bed. My back hurts when I garden. My joints are stiff when I wake up in the morning. My head hurts when there is too much noise. My neck hurts I have spent time staring at the monitor. Over the years, I have realized that my aches and pains are best managed with a balanced activity regime. Part one is bones and joints. They need to be treated roughly – jump up and down, run etc. Part two is muscles, they need stretching and strengthening, lift weights, do yoga. Part three is nerves and fascia, they need unclogging with QiGong. And finally, part four, the balance that improves with dance or slack line. Then there is rest – for the brain, the conductor of the daily orchestra, the one that gets stuck in the circle (link). It needs quiet moments, a bit of star gazing or watching the hummingbirds. Too much of one and too little of other throws the system off balance and recovery takes days.
On days I feel annoyed with all the refurbishing, I think about astronauts. In case you wondered that they are up to, fitness wise, here is a normie testing out astronaut’s exercise regimen (link). Thoughts of them stuck in a smelly tardis, where globs of sweat coalesce on their face, to be eventually sucked in by the ventilation system to be converted into next day’s coffee is guaranteed to make you feel good about your workout routine.
A body scan
Very recently, I read the book “When Breath Becomes Air“. It is a slim book written by a young neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi, during the terminal year of his cancer journey. What I heard is a doctor explore the question of identity – how it changes when significant health related events happen. He talks at length about his own identity, the one that is inseparable from his vocation, when he is weakened by cancer and can’t be the neurosurgeon any more. The book made me question how my own identity has shifted in time, with changes in my health after five decades of trodding on this planet. I have already lived longer than Paul, much longer. I am healthy. A little worn out perhaps, but who isn’t. Today, I invite you to join me as I undertake a body scan meditation, to observe this health-identity relationship.
Meet my other half
To learn a little more about the MicroLab Marvels, start by imagining a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Everything you send down the belt, gets gobbled up by the little guys who work on the laboratory floor. The floor is no more than 10 meters long, but the little guys are really little. There are a 1000 times more bacteria in my gut than there are stars in our galaxy. Now imagine these quadrillion tiny scientists busy at work in the factory. What they are doing is processing the the food and converting them to metabolites. Metabolite are small molecules. Most drugs are small molecules. Are you starting to see why this chemical factory matters?
There are as many of our own human cells with my DNA as there are theirs. Hence, my other half! Sorry, husband. You are my soul’s other half. Besides, when people live in close proximity, they share the biome heavily. So, my half is your half too…
For the longest time, I had associated gut microbiome with nutrition – mentally limiting their role as a food processor that helps breakdown the food we eat into accessible macro and micro nutrients. But it is only recently that I have started to pay attention to their role in chemistry, and how that chemistry impacts our biological pathways like immune, hormonal and neurological systems. Yikes! I used to think of fiber as bulk – didn’t matter whether you got it from a diversity of plants or from a psyllium husk capsule. It turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Long story short – after 6 months on a plant based diet and seeing its impact on chronic health issues, I am a convert. I still sneak in a can of sardines here and there and rely heavily on deliciousness of eggs to jumpstart my day. And thank goodness, coffee, chocolate and cocktails are integral parts of any plant based. But, I am trying to pack as many diverse plants as I can in a week, in a day, in a meal. I registered with a CSA (hello, Freedom, CA…) and got my vegetable garden started.
Locomotoring 