Remember my ongoing issues with mysterious somnambulant injuries?  I reported on my demonic back scratches here and here.  Well, they’re back.  The most recent mysterious and bloody injury is the following gash and bruise on my right bicep, which greeted me yesterday morning:

I will remind the gentle reader that my fingernails are bitten down to nubs, so are poor tools for unconsciously inflicting this sort of injury.  As well, my separated shoulder makes the angle quite painful.  Spoooooky.

In other news, the most hilarious and embarassing thing happened to me recently.  As a professor, I must write frequent research papers and submit them to journals for publication.  The journals send them out for anonymous peer review before deciding whether or not to publish.  I send out a fair number, so some get accepted and some get rejected.

Recently I sent an admittedly poor one to a big name journal.  It was rejected.  But the best part was the external reviewer’s comments.  To paraphrase, he/she said that the paper was poorly written, but that the topic was important.  Therefore, he/she recommended that though the paper should be rejected, the journal should solicit its rewrite from a true expert on the topic.  Then he/she recommended that that expert be…. me.

As a friend commented, it’s a lot like Charlie Chaplin coming third in his own lookalike contest.

In even more news, in response to a special request from a neighbour who has always been curious about the form, I have agreed to put together one last game of Dungeons and Dragons, a good 27 years since the last time I played.  Yes, this is the darkest heart of hardcore geekotry, and not for the even marginally cool.  In preparation for said game, I took a trip to Toronto’s Silver Snail gaming shop and scoped out some of the figurines.

What I found were figurines for UFC fighters:

Then it occurred to me… why not have actual UFC fighter characters play the game?  One’s party could be made up of Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture and Anderson Silva, all choking out kobolds and trolls, and eventually each other.

Hmmm.  Time to pitch this to Hasbro….

Penultimately, as an author, I know how crippling it is to see one’s own books on the bargain shelf of a bookstore.  So this is not meant as a dig, but as a celebration.  My friend Andrew from DC once wrote a great book featuring satellite images of the Earth, called The Earth From Space, which was unfortunately priced rather highly.  I recently saw it on sale.  All this means is that more of you can now afford to own a copy:

Lastly, I copped this article from The Hindustan Times in India (June 4, 2011), relevant to this post.  I don’t agree with a lot of it, but some of it rings true.  Just throwing it out there (click to enlarge):

As I’ve thoroughly documented here, I have a couple of herniated lumbar discs which are the bane of my upright existence.  But I’m doing everything I need to do to stabilize my frame.  One of the most important things is doing a slew of specific lower abdominal exercises to fine tune the stability of my core.  My excellent physiotherapist constantly re-jigs my program and usually draws me helpful diagrams so I know exactly what she wants me to do.

However, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at her drawing of “pop-up” crunches, which involve placing a 5-pound weight on one’s lower abdomen and doing extremely rapid crunches while alernating touching the ball.  Here, take a look for yourself and see if your brain is as pervy as mine:

The quest to reverse/cure/control my degerenerative lumbar disc disease continues. Last time I talked about my experience with Bowen Therapy. I haven’t tried anything new yet, but I’ve been poking around for other options. Among them is non-surgical spinal decompression therapy, using a device called the DRX-9000.

I’m quite skeptical of medical claims made my companies with no formal association with recognized clinics or hospitals. However, this therapy appears to have no negative downside, so I am considering it. My physiotherapist is rightly skeptical of its claims, as well, but agrees that it cannot hurt me. The worst that could happen is that I experience no change, and would be out a chunk of change.

Well, it’s more than a chunk of change. From what I gather, the DRX9000 programme requires about 20 sessions, each costing about $200. It’s essentially a system of controlled, sustained traction. Sounds rather comfortable, actually.

Being a medical scientist, I first turned to the published literature to see what studies had been conducted on the device’s efficacy and safety. I’ve only found this one so far, “Treatment of 94 outpatients with chronic discogenic low back pain with the DRX9000: a retrospective chart review” by Macario et al at Stanford. Here’s the abstract:

The chart review study –which is not the most rigorous design, admittedly– indicates cause for optimism with respect to the DRX9000. So I’m a tad excited.

Further research led me to a product called NuCore:

NuCore is essentially an artificial gel that is injected into the disc as part of a surgical procedure. The gel hardens into a consistency comparable to that of the natural disc, providing support for the otherwise hardening and shrinking disc. Its trials are making the news in the USA, as this Fox News broadcast indicates.

As far as any reputable research goes, I’ve only been able to find this study from Switzerland:

The long and short of it is that this study is also optimistic about NuCore’s potential, but only as an adjunct to the traditional surgical procedure of microdiscectomy.

The plot thickens. Stay tuned, my droogies.

I got my MRI results back this week for my chronic lower back issues. Ready? Apparently I suffer from multilevel degenerative disc disease, which essentially means that several of my intervertevbral lumbar discs have slipped out and are impinging on nerve roots and even the spinal cord. There may be physiotherapeutic solutions, or maybe some more exotic surgical interventions, but the likely eventual path in the long term is spinal fusion surgery.

So of course I freaked out. My condition is likely the result of both genetics and a history of abusing my body through decades of high impact sports. Some people want to blame my recent reliance on chiropractic treatment. But I started those well after symptoms had already appeared. Maybe chiropractic adjustments worsened my condition or maybe they made it better or maybe they did nothing at all. Hard to say. I will agree, though, that my various chiropractors should have better diagnosed my condition earlier on.

The bottom line is that I immediately started looking for other options. Spinal decompression therapy looks interesting, both non-invasive and surgical. A discectomy might be an option, as well. I’ve already tried traditional massage, acupuncture and Tui Na massage, with negligible results. And I’ve made an appointment with an osteopath, but from what I gather he won’t be doing anything more than what my excellent physiotherapist already does. (So stop emailing me, you osteopath zealots!)

Today I took a stab at Bowen therapy. This youtube clip summarizes the “scientific” rationale underlying the Bowen approach. I tried it mostly because there’s no possible down side, no contraindications, and it was a good way to spend a morning.

I arrived with curiosity but trepidation, given the therapy’s popularity amongst the sandal-wearing set. My fears were not allayed when the therapist started using that most detested of lazy words: “energy”. Zod knows I hate it when New Age types use that word in a non-physics context. The therapy involved some extremely light touches followed by minutes left alone for me to contemplate the touches. The therapist then returns after these intervals to ask about my sensations.

When I say “light touches”, you must understand that it was so slight and seemingly meaningless that it was like being tapped on the shoulder or accidentally brushed by a passerby on the bus. This was supposed to be physical therapy?

To be honest, I found the process sort of silly. But I decided to give it a fair shot and enjoy the time alone and horizontal with my thoughts and odours. Surprisingly, things started to happen. In response to the “treatments”, I had some random muscle twitches, then my pinkies went numb, and my left elbow just spasmed outward! Somewhere along the line, my breathing patterns shifted noticeably. I even stopped breathing entirely at one point; but didn’t find it alarming at all, just interesting.

Then a really weird thing started happening. I started to hallucinate! With each “treatment” –which, remember, just involved some light poking on the knee or scalp or something– I received a vivid waking dream. At one point I was staring intently through a window and could not look away. At another, I was following a long thin tube intensely through a building’s ventilation system. In another “vision” I was –get this– wrestling a giant wooden duck. Immediately afterwards, I was swimming in an ocean of wooden fish. In the final and most intense hallucination, I was falling towards the right. I hope the last wasn’t a premonition of an upcoming political shift.

I don’t know what it all means –if anything. Maybe I was dehydrated from my morning workout. I do know that this particular drug trip was cheaper without drugs. For that reason alone, I will try it again. I still don’t believe in any New Age “energy” nonsense. But I do believe in neurology, and I believe the neurological explanation offered in the video above might –just might– have some credence.

I will also add this: it’s now 3 hours later and I’m mostly pain free. Mind you, I haven’t moved or stressed my body at all, so who knows what that means.

Well, I broke my carb embargo in spectacular style today, as Ed and Meiling Wong once more stupefied us with unbelievably delicious (and a tad fattening) brunch food. The lady of the house makes something particularly yummy and life-shortening called “monkey bread”, which we devoured with such voracity that I’m pretty sure we’ll all need insulin shots within the week.

That means I lasted about 6 weeks of an extremely low carb existence. Mind you, I’ve been sliding slowly back to the land of breads and sugars this past week, with the unavoidable Christmas drunkenness and the occasional bite of cake. But otherwise I’ve been pretty strong. I feel pretty gross right now, though, and need to wash it all back with a litre of Metamucil!

The gastric adventure coincided with my first exposure to an episode of The Biggest Loser, that American reality show in which a bunch of fat people compete to lose pounds. I found the show ver very troubling. Here are a few observations:

• The show advances the belief that most fat people are just mentally weak. While I certainly subscribe to the school of thought that most people lack discipline, and that discipline is one of the surest paths to success in almost all aspects of life, there is a bit of wiggle room when it comes to extreme weight gain: mental health issues, metabolic diseases, poor nutritional education, insufficient access to proper foods and scheduling demands that prevent proper shopping and exercise among them.
• I suspect that the show deliberately selects for contestants whose weight issues are discipline based, allowing them to promote their boot camp mentality and further propagate the above belief.
• The show promotes weight loss as the end all and be all of fitness. This is perhaps the most dangerous of its failings. It’s easy, for example, for a large muscular man to lose weight quickly. If he focuses on aerobic activity and ignores hydration, he will drop muscle mass and water weight very quickly. This is not healthy weight loss. There are many more acceptable metrics of progress:

1. Inches (or centimetres) around the waist.
2. Pinchable fat at the belly, hips and triceps.
3. Body tissue electrical resistance, a proxy measurement for body fat ratio.
4. Body mass index.
5. Energy levels and psychological disposition.
6. Serum cholesterol, blood pressure, arterial inflammation and cardiac enzymes.
7. Clothing size!
8. Physical fitness benchmarks

So far, I am not impressed by this show. Maybe I’ll give it a few more viewings.

I’ve got so many things I want to blog about –the ascension of Michael Ignatieff to the leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party, the possibility of military intervention in Zimbabwe, the misuse of the word “sarcasm” on dating profiles– that the possibilities are endless!

But, see, I gave away my TV to my mother last week and I suddenly find myself unable to properly procrastinate tonight. Gasp! I feel like working! So that’s what I’m going to do.

In the mean time, I want to alert you to four things. First, is this ridiculous CBC “show” called “Being Erica“, which masquerades as a video blog. Man, I hate stuff like that.

Second is this video from The Other Ray of a 67 year old dude demonstrating a work-out regimen that would make you and I vomit and pass out. He’s my new hero:

Third, from EK Hornbeck comes an expose about the prevalence of fake university degrees.
Um…uh…. no comment.

Finally, I leave you with a video of a lecture I attended two years ago by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen… just to prove I’m not all about just old man work-outs and dead pin-up models. To access the video, click here.

Headline from the Times: Obestity fuels growing “boy-boob” problem. To my brothers in moobishness, I feel your pain. If I were to abandon my regimented programme of bench presses and push-ups –an eventuality of age!– I fear that what pass for my pecs would quickly transform into the dreaded “man boobs”, as well.

Fans of Seinfeld know that Kramer had a solution: the “manzier” or “bro”:

Personally, I prefer the term “pectacle” for a male sports bra. And no one can steal it now, ’cause I’ve mentioned it here and it’s date stamped!

In other news…

Brother Bhash sends us news of a new device that can turn waste heat into electricity. He likens it to “green glue“.

Today’s Daily Perv Links (TM) are twofold, one fanciful and the other disturbing. The latter is news that a Calgary child molester had also had his way with victims of the canine persuasion. The former is news of a New England play that features illegal dog-loving in a character-affirming way. But the question before us still persists: are these stories indicative of the mainstreaming of this particular illicit activity?