Part 7 in our continuing series….
Surely others have noticed this resemblance? If the Survivor dude were more buff, he’d totally be the P90x dude. Wait… someone else did notice. Never mind.
CATEGORY / exercise
21Dec
2011
Separated At Birth, part 7
20Jul
2011
Not Winning Your Own Lookalike Contest
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):
18Dec
2010
Core Exercises…?
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:
20Sep
2009
Spinal Therapies
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.
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