Health Advices and Longevity

And, unlike where I live, I assume that your tap water is clean and won't make you ill if you drink it?

When I first took my now-wife, Indian, to the house I then had in London, I said, "watch!" and drank a pint of water from the tap. But a friend there buys bottled water for her cats! And it is not as if she has heaps of money

And if you are not even pissing, or if and when you do, it is orange... Not good news, and should never get beyond that point. The day I mentioned, I did not pass out, but felt truly dreadful, with fever and, oddly, diarrhoea too. Indeed dehydration risks are real. And, curiously, they are probably the last thing that the every-day-life water health fanatics are even thinking about.

My extreme was the work after our house was flooded, and it was a normal tropical (30-centigrade-ish) December day... not anything like the temperature it is now and nothing like the artificial extremes of working near a forge all day. That is not something I would want to do, although I admire the skills.

 

Yeah, but that San Peligrino......I love that stuff. I'll take that over a Coke any day.

 

Too salty. Not trying to be a connoisseur here, you drink bottled water all day every day for 35 years you become an expert no matter what.

That depends. There's places in naples that have running water 2hrs a day, and it's been that way for decades. I ain't drinking that.

As for here in sunny Rea Pallus (bad swamp, the Romans were all about truth in advertising) the sewers can't really cope with summer tourism.

Tons of chlorine in the water in summer to make do, as in cracked skin and itching if you wash lots, and given the amount of hygiene freaks in Italy and the fact the we use the bidet nearly more than the sink, well ...

Also lots of the water infrastructure here is OLD. Like dating back to the first roman emperors old. It's cool that there's places (like Rome) that have been using the same aqueducts for over 2000 years but super duper clean it ain't.

 

Has anyone else experienced a major shift in sugar preference with age? I used to love sugary stuff and had a metabolism that handled it well, then about a year ago found that I couldn't stand the taste of anything overtly sweet. Can't even do sugar in tea or coffee these days.

I'd also recommend looking into the Starting Strength program. Starting Strength and Stronglifts have similar origins and the routines are quite similar. Off memory the main differences are SS is 3x5 and ditches barbell rows, SL is 5x5. SS is highly strength oriented, SL has a tad more mass gain emphasis due to higher volume. Their respective forums also have very difference characteristics to them and are worth looking in to.

Ah, London tap water. Distinctly weird tasting stuff! It was also a bit odd looking into a kettle and finding all the precipitated mineral content. These days I'm in Hong Kong and still get a kick out of shocking people by drinking unboiled tap water- local superstition is that it'll kill you. When asked about this, some people think the problem is dissolved metals, then can't answer why boiling would help with this.

 

Hey hey hey, don't make fun of us glutards. I jumped on that train nearly 10 years ago, after reading a book called 'Wheat Belly', written by an MD. A lot of his assertions have since been shown to be unproven or actually incorrect, but I recognized that I most frequently overate things like good bread, crackers & baked goods. I have no problem tolerating wheat, but behaving as if I have Celiac disease is mentally very helpful. Oh, sorry, I can't eat that, I'll have some fruit instead.

I was already migrating toward eating things I prepared myself as much as possible, and it just helped me reduce things I might have mindlessly eaten. I've come around to the notion that boxes and bags that can be opened and eaten are gonna put on the pounds, so I avoid as much as possible. Things I make myself are much easier to balance against my activity level (which is pretty high), because you see how much meat, rice, vegetables, etc. you're adding, and you know there's nothing else hiding in there.

 

To a lesser extent than you, but yes. I am no longer a chocolate addict and rarely eat it now. Indian sweets, which looks so tempting, are often so sweet that I can't take more than one bite.

But I still drink Indian tea (very milky) with sugar, and, one mug of cocoa with sugar a day. And I still fear that, if I had to do it, completely giving up sugar would be hugely harder than any other things I've given up. Harder than nicotine!

I have lost my cast-iron stomach, and am no longer able to process large amounts of fatty or dairy products. I could eat thick (eg Cornish clotted) cream literally by the pound. Now I cannot. Well, I can... but I suffer for it.

In the kitchen, I was once called the Cholesterol King. But I long since realised that one does not ridiculous amounts of butter to make a source, and that pastry does not need to drip! It was not a health concern: just a move to more sensible cooking.

In my part of the world, the staple stomach filler is boiled white rice. There is a lot of diabetes. Chatting with a doc friend about this, he said, "yes: I wish I could persuade my elderly diabetic parents that they should worry less about an occasional coffee with sugar, and more about the every-day mound of rice on their plates."

 

I've never been a huge sugarholic except the occasional (1-2x month) bowl of ice cream or bar of dark chocolate. Usually if I'm at a dinner and there is a dessert a bite is good and then it's too much. But I've always been that way. Unfortunately I get sugar from my love of a decent beer, or I could probably give it all up with no problem.

I like salt. I don't add salt to anything at the table but I've always chosen salty snacks over sweets. My Doc says that salt is fine but it should be the Pink Himalayan Sea Salt variety. The regular table salt is no good....and that's whats in snacks, along with other bad stuff.

But when I go to restaurants, I normally find the food to be too salty. Or processed food tastes too salty. I don't eat out much, and I normally try to avoid the convenience foods.

 

Listening to this podcast at work, Re: importance of sleep, has completely changed how I look at and value sleep. 100% worth the 2 hours to listen.

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker

 

Yeah i listened to it too, bought his book as well. Haven't gotten around to it though. But his tips for sleep certainly helped, i sleep earlier, longer and better.

If you're interested in keto then this one is good too:

 

@Riotvan , could please summarize your daylong keto diet?
Sleeping good its mandatory for good health. I will search a very interesting study about sleep and cognitive deficits.

 

Sure, i wake up early and drink some water. Then walk the dog and go for a run after. Do some work and then it's noon and time for my first meal.

I did away with dinner and breakfast with respect to what you eat and when. And i mix it up, usually i have two meals between 12pm and 6pm. Maybe some tea with coconut oil or chocolate in the 6hr time period as snack.

Anyway one of my meals could consist of fatty fish, bacon or some other meat. With that some cheese or kwark(dunno what it's called in English its basically a high fat dairy product), mayonnaise, nuts, grass fed butter, Himalayan salt, low carb vegetables, nuts and a tiny bit of low sugar fruit.

Basically i try to keep a ratio of 70% fat, 20% protein and 10% carbs. But i am not very strict i know when i am in ketosis and then it's good enough for me. You can do tests if you want and some are more effective and expensive then others.

Like urine, breath and blood. Last one is best but it's the most expensive. You can take some exogenous ketone supplements but i reach ketosis easy enough without it. For others it might be harder though.

Edit i forgot eggs, i eat tons of those.

 

03 of many articles about sleep

https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-sleep-7876/
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/21/5263 -just the abstracted already gives good info about sleep
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-night-day-swiftly-key-blood.html

 

Thank you, David!

Here’s a well written synopsis of the podcast in bullet points for “skimming” (though I still heartedly recommend listening to it in its entirety):

http://podcastnotes.org/2018/04/29/why-we-sleep/

Crazy stats like:

• Short sleep predicts all cause mortality

• If you’re getting 6 hours of sleep or less, your time to physical exhaustion drops by up to 30%
• Residents working a 30 hours shift are 460% more likely to make diagnostic errors in the intensive care unit, relative to when they’re working 16 hours
• One study sleep deprived individuals for one night (to 4 hours of sleep) – they experienced a 70% reduction in critical anti cancer fighting cells

• Insufficient sleeps is the most significant lifestyle factor for determining whether or not you’ll develop Alzheimer’s Disease

• One study documented a school which shifted school start times from 7:35am to 8:55am – this resulted in 70% reduction in car crashes the following year
  • For comparison – anti lock breaks dropped accident rates 20%
  • One school shifted start times from 7:25am to 8:30am, average SAT scores rose 212 points

• After 20 hours of being awake, you are as physically and cognitively impaired as you would be if you were legally drunk
  • “You don’t know you’re sleep deprived, when you’re sleep deprived“

The list goes on and on...

 

Whyohwhyohwhy...

What madness is it that torture by sleep deprivation is part of a doctor's training. Not only is just cruel, but the risk to the patients is just crazy.

 

They actually touch on that in the podcast and where that started....essentially following in the shoes of a quasi-cocaine addict who could stay up for days and "function." Now it is a rite of passage one needs to accomplish such that, "I did it and so do you." However, France, Sweden and New Zealand, iirc, restrict to 16 hour shifts and yet have better continuity of care.

Dr. Walker's knowledge of anything related remotely to sleep is mind boggling.

 

Is it just me, or does the North American medical industry (specifically, doctors, nurses, and those training to be) seem almost willfully blind to the dangers of overworking? Sleep deprivation being almost treated as a badge of honor in some situations.

eg; https://nurse.org/articles/nurses-three-days-a-week/

"12-hour shifts aren’t going anywhere, and nurses will continue to want to work only three days a week. The hours are long and the work is exhausting but nurses continue to do it, first and foremost for the patient."

I don't think medical errors are being taken into account with that statement. Even a cursory glance at Google shows lots of research suggesting that shifts beyond 8 hours are just a bad idea and lead to error prone practice.



More to the topic though: There's a lot of free sleep tracking apps out there if you folks are interested. I've been using Sleep as Android for years now, and I don't know any ones for Apple devices off the top of my head, but I'm sure they're out there.

If you're struggling to maintain a healthy sleep schedule (like I was, and still am), having something that helps you monitor, correct, and remind you of that is invariably useful.

 

I have always thought that this practice is insane. After 20 hours one is as impaired as if they where drunk. So a very drunk doctor is treating you in intensive care. Brilliant idea. Would you let a dentist work on you after being awake for 30 hours? Hell no. This shouldn’t be legal, let alone required.

 

I haven’t listened to the podcast yet or read the referenced material, but the sleep sweet spot for me is about 7 hours. After that it seems like too much. Below 6 and I can tell. I’m usually in bed by 9:30 or 10 and I wake up without an alarm between 4:30 and 5. I don’t think I’ve slept past 7:30 in the last 30 Year’s. Even in the rare occasion that I’m up until 3 or 4, I just can’t sleep if it’s light outside.

 

Odd thing is that I can take a nap almost anywhere, any time of day, any amount of light, but my actual sleep has to be in the dark.

 

That sounds like you'd be a great Firefighter.