Eczema Experiment

Start of a new, crazy guinea pig experiment on myself... I'm wondering if there's a correlation between diet and my seasonal eczema which appeared to be held in check, if not cured, by the liberal use of knee socks last year. As a result, I've resolved to go bare (non-sock-clad) legged this year and see what happens. Unfortunately, up until the past few days, the weather has been too mild and uncooperative (development of the condition usually coincides with the arrival of cold, dry air). Now! It has finally gone cold and dry for a spell, so we shall see what happens. : ) *crosses fingers *

Barefoot & hopeless... let's go back to the drawing board.

Yesterday, after figuring that I'd better get a biomechanical check-up (aka chiropractic visit to see if everything's in the right place) before I continue to embark upon a total movement regimen, I went to my Chiro. In addition to the normal re-evaluation, I had them do another foot scan. I know my toes are stronger and I'm able to support myself climbing in VFFs where I wasn't able to two years ago. I also know my ankles are stronger because it took 4.25 miles on semi-rough terrain to get the same old ankle soreness that I got when I started running. As a result, I was hoping I'd see some sort of empirically significant change in my foot structure. Judging from the scans, I'd like to think I see some slight, slight improvement, but I'd have to say it appears to be a wash. There was a pretty colored pressure depiction too, and if you go by that, I've totally slid backward and become completely flat footed, but there is not enough difference between the two scans to validate that, so I'm prone to thinking something in the calibration is off.

This got me to thinking though... the arguments for barefoot training being pro-foot-muscle frequently have to do with the nerves and touch receptors (or whatever you want to call them) in the bottom of the foot reacting to the things you are stepping on and then triggering a muscle response to pull that portion of your tender little footsie away from the sharp rock. I wonder if, while running in my VFFs, I've strengthened my toes and ankles, but not gotten as much benefit in the foot because the sole of the VFFs dampen a lot of the sharp pointy things that I step on. Walking on gravel in VFFs is DEFINITELY more pleasant than in true bare feet. I think I see another experiment in which to use myself as a guinea pig!

Part of this all is that I am a scientist. The concepts and theories behind the arguments pro-bare feet make sense to me in physical and biomechanical sense. I really want some solid evidence to back it up though. I'd like to have a before and after to support my statements of "I believe this to be better for my body." Guess I'm off to go play in some gravel without shoes.... tomorrow... or the next day. Today I just want to run through the woods with abandon again. : )

Figuring Stuff Out

I've been figuring some stuff out and it's feeling really good. I had a "mental" week last week... I got some info early in the week that shed a lot of light on a problem that I've had for going on 2 years now, and it led to a lot of emotional ups & downs while I processed & figured stuff out. In the end, I'm feeling soooo much better, but it led me to figure some other things out as well. For instance, my shoulders started knotting up about 2 weeks ago. I know it was stress related. No matter what, I could not get them to relax out. Then I went mental, and that exacerbated it. Finally, I gave up & went for my first real massage yesterday - it's worth the money to me to get it worked out & relaxed now before I have a 7 hour drive and a maybe stressful/maybe not weekend. Anyway, that worked out he kinks & loosened up my neck and it was wonderful, but today I am noticing that my shoulders are so used to being knotted up that they are trying to revert to that. I'm having to fight my own body today and it's very weird. I keep noticing my shoulders wanting to hunch up near my ears and etc.... Secondly, I discovered, or made the connection rather, that my worst "Mental" days the past month have been days where I am excruciatingly tired. I KNOW I don't handle lack of sleep well... If I stay up too late I get psycho & depressed. Cast parties in Highschool, while theoretically fun, were when I usually scared myself the most by getting into unreasonable paranoias and depression. Needless to say that when I put 2 and 2 together, it made a whole BUNCH of sense that my "depressed" feeling days were when I had gone too long without good sleep. The result of this realization is that I've set myself a goal of trying to get at least 7.5 hours of sleep a night. It's a mid-year resolution? Well, anyway, out of the past 3 days, I've succeeded twice in 3 nights. Not too bad to start.... AND I've been feeling GREAT!!! (even though the weather's sucked & been rainy & I think I'm starting to get mouldy...) If all I need to do to be happier & healthier is to eat better and sleep enough, well DAMN!

Ah, lastly, Joy-of-joys! I can finally have that Peanut Butter Milkshake!!!!!!!!!! I made & have maintained my goal weight for at least a week! Woot! I will officially stop dieting now. I will still track what I eat to manage and maintain what I've done. I will be doing more Rock Climbing soon and keeping up with my running hopefully, so if you see me getting any skinnier from this point (doubtful), it'll only be due to toning. Well, Cheers, everyone!

Experiment Update

Day 1: started with 2 qt. tea, worked 6 hrs., finished off 1-1.5 qt.
Day 2: Started with 2 qt. tea, worked 9 hrs., the 2 qt. was GONE by 11:30 am.
Day 3: started with a little under 2 qt. tea (spillage on way to work), regulated better, worked 8.5 hr. ended with 1/2 qt. left
Day 4: fell off bandwagon due to lack of sleep and went straight for soda. Started with 1.75 qt. tea, at 2:05 PM, I have 1.75 qt. minus 1 mug left.

The adding in veggies thing has definitely worked. Apparently my body loves veggies and hates everything else I put in it. Today I weighed in at 134.5.... the first time under 135. I'll see if i can hold under 135 for a week and if so, PB shake for me!!!! Yahoo! Today I made sure to get green beans with my bison cheeseburger and tonight will be nothing but meat & carbs (i.e. steak pie & scotch, and more scotch). But back to "being good" tomorrow! They had better serve the steak pie with Peas. Every steak pie we got in Scotland came with a side of peas (granted, that was the worst steak pie we had)...

Experiment on self #221

In great quantities, over long periods of time, soda is bad for you. Who knows what the artificial stuff in Diet soda will do really? You know that. I know that. The fact still remains that I am addicted to soda. At work, I drink for one of these reasons: A) I'm thirsty, B) I need caffeine, C) I want something flavored in my mouth, D) because I suck on any consumable liquid put in front of me. With the exception of maybe, MAYBE reason B, There is no reason why I need to drink soda specifically. So why do I? Because I'm lazy and forgetful. Some days I just don't feel like walking down the hall, cleaning and filling my teapot and waiting for the water to boil (lazy). On days that I DO go get water & put it on to boil, I start doing work while it boils and realize 2 hours later that I've never made my tea. I turn the hot-pot back on and then promptly forget about it again, ad nauseum... Really, it's much quicker and yeilds more predictable results if I go pop money in the vending machine and grab a diet Coke. Finally I've hit a breaking point and realized that I MUST stop because the amount of soda I'm consuming disgusts me and the waste from all those bottles disgusts me and the waste of money that is my habit is disgusting.

I've come up witha solution and I will be seeing if I can stick to it.... A big vat o' iced tea. This satisfies both my need to drink and ease on environmental and financial impact while appeasing my lazy, forgetful self. I went out and bought a Thermos Pump Carafe in a 2 qt. size. and made 3 qt of iced tea in my tea maker last night. This morning, pour tea in carafe & off to work with me. I have my stainless steeel travel mug and plan to refil it all day. I dunno if 2 qt. will last all day, but we'll see. If this works, and I strongly suspect that it will once I make it a routine, please don't harass me about bringing my tea with me when I come to visit on long road trips.... It's really hard to find good unsweetened bottled tea in gas stations and 7-11s.

In other health and experiment related news...
I'm always impressed at how well minor home surgery seems to work. I took a spill in a parking lot over a week ago (literally tripped over my own feet, quite embarassing) and scraped up my hand. I must not have cleaned it & dressed it well enough the first time around because after 5 days it was still hurting, a bit red, and raised in one spot. Seemed like beginning infection to me.... So I reopenned it, applied alcohol, HO, and more antibiotic cream and it cleared up by the next day and was completely fine in another 2. Love it when that works.

Also, allergy season is starting up full swing again and I am once again going to try to subject myself to as much fresh air as possible to acclimate to the allergens. Yay! So far, so good.

Lastly, after realizing that I was no longer on a "plateau" for weight loss, but rather the La Brea Tar Pit (yeah, that's me...), I started looking at what I was eating and I've once again dropped all green vegetables, if not all vegetables period, out of my diet. AGAIN. So I've been trying to get 2-3 servings of veggies in per day again. I think it's helping already and that's only been 4 days ago. Wheee.... veggies are so critical.