Umair Yasin

“ If you want to fly, you have to give up the shit that weighs you down. ”-Toni Morrison Christine Van Loo, Aerialist, Speaker, and Coach (http://www.christinevanloo.com/about.html ) Christine Van Loo is an elite athlete that started out as an acrobatic gymnast, a sport in which she was a 7-time consecutive US National Champion, female Olympic athlete of the year, and athlete of the decade. After retiring from competition in that sport, she married and settled into a new life that seemed complete, but something also seemed missing. Christine performing acrobatic gymnastics She went through a period of depression before coming up with a new challenge and reinventing herself as an aerialist. She has much to teach about pursuing our dreams and becoming all we can be, and now in addition to being an internationally acclaimed performer as an aerialist, she has a set of teaching dvds for aspiring aerialists, and also coaches the champion’s mindset. She uses the acronym S.O.A.R ...

I decided to do an out and back to the IBM hill since I omitted it from my ride Friday. This follows Dougherty Ave, I nice rural road, then Santa Teresa Boulevard, to Bernal road which climbs the IBM hill. I then returned (with a decent tailwind) to west Morgan Hill, doing seated sprint intervals on the way back. I finished with hill climbing intervals, standing, on the streets on the lower slopes of El Toro. These were challenging, I got up to a max heart rate of 172. Hills keep you honest! I thought I was going hard on the sprint intervals but my HR got much higher uphill. The effect of standing instead of seated might have had something to do with it also. Top of the IBM hill with the gatehouse for the IBM research facility. Part of Santa Teresa Park from the same spot Mt. Umunhum in the distance, from the road to the parking lot of Santa Teresa Park The Route uploaded from my watch I’m enjoying having the new watch for tracking. It is very non-intrusive, I don’t loo...

Now that I’m done with my exercise stress test I’ve decided to focus more on riding. I went out for four hours today, and covered just over 50 miles. The first two hours were standing pedaling, and in the last hour I threw in a bunch of intervals. My old low-end watch recently died so I treated myself to a Garmin Forerunner. It has the nice feature of providing wrist-based heart rate normally, but if it notices I have my heart rate strap on it pairs with it instead . This was my first serious ride tracking with the new watch. I’m pretty happy with it so far, I like how the display is customizable, so I have time, date, and heart rate on the watch face. You can also customize what appear on the main screen during various activities, so I have speed, elapsed time, distance, and heart rate for bike ride. I don’t like to be distracted by tech when exercising, I prefer to peruse the results later. But it is nice to be able to glance at it once in a while, like “that was a tough interval, ...

Dr. Dean Ornish developed his lifestyle program decades ago, which is famous for being the first program to be scientifically proven to reverse heart disease, way back in 1990 [1]. The same program has been shown to reverse (or undo, as Dr. Ornish likes to say), other important chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes, early stage prostate cancer, obesity, depression, and some auto-immune diseases. The program includes healthy eating, exercise, stress management, and support groups. The program has helped thousands of people who have gone through it at various centers around the US. In a book written from 2019 that I’ve just read, Dr. Ornish and his wife Anne (who is also his partner in the lifestyle program work), teach us the details of how to use this program ourselves. I was excited to be able to read about this and review the book below. But first some background. The healthy eating part of this program is a low fat, whole-food plant-based diet. The criticism has been made...

I did my nuclear perfusion stress test yesterday. This is to check how open your coronary arteries are, at rest and under stress. Here’s a quick overview: This is the first part. But in my case it was seated, on a machine that rotates you very slowly, through about 45 degrees. It took about 7 minutes. This is the second part. Again in my case that gamma ray scan was done seated. It seems like this test would go quickly, but it took over two hours, because there’s a lot of waiting in between. First the tech for the stress test puts all your cardiac leads on, and inserts a shunt for the tracer. Then the tech for the gamma camera squirts in the tracer. Back out to the lobby and wait. Then you get the resting scan, top picture. Back out to the lobby and wait again. Then you do the treadmill part. I got more tracer squirted in while I was exercising at 129 bpm heart rate, then had to hold at that pace for a minute, then a short cooldown. Cardiac leads removed. Back out to the lobby a...

One personal anecdote I have is that for the since switching to a whole-food plant-based (wfpb) diet in early 2017 (more than four years ago), I have not had any colds or the flu. I used to get either one at least once a year, even though I’ve always gotten a flu shot. That didn’t dawn on me until recently. I knew from Dr. Greger’s book How Not To Die , that the wfpb diet is protective against infectious disease, he has a whole chapter on it. For one, wfpb boosts our immune systems. Eating less meat also exposes us to possible bacterial contamination from meat (salmonella being the most well known) as well as possible antibiotic residues which can help spread (I’ll discuss that more below). So it had occurred to me to wonder if wfpb eating is protective against Covid19. The answer is yes, but I was blown away by a recent study that shows the extent to which it helps. Thanks to Mic the vegan and his youtube channel which showed me this. Bottom line, eating plant-based instead of a ty...

  There was a time when getting a new video game meant having access to all of its content. You probably had to play through the game and unlock its many secrets, but you usually didn’t have to make any other purchases to “complete” the game. For the most part, that time has passed. There’s still plenty of content in games that are released these days, but you often need to download expansions or make microtransactions if you want to see everything or compete with others. Whether this is a good thing is up for debate. On one hand, it’s always nice to get additional content in your games. On the other hand, a lot of gamers really don’t like the idea of having to pay extra if they want a complete game. To make matters worse, developers use tricks to get you to spend extra money, even on free games. Here are some of the more common tricks you might encounter.   Monetizing Basic Features Some games force you to pay extra if you want certain features, even basic ones that you w...

In his book Fiber Fueled, which I recently reviewed, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz stresses the importance of the gut microbiome generating healthy short-chain fatty acids when consuming plant foods with lots of soluble fiber. One of these is butyrate. This important new study shows butyrate reduces inflammation in the brain, which should help with healthy brain aging. Great post, thanks, Tony One Regular Guy Writing about Food, Exercise and Living Past 100 As mammals age, immune cells in the brain known as microglia become chronically inflamed. In this state, they produce chemicals known to impair cognitive and motor function. That’s one explanation for why memory fades and other brain functions decline during old age. But, according to a new study from the University of Illinois, there may be a remedy to delay the inevitable: dietary fiber. Dietary fiber promotes the growth of good bacteria in the gut. When these bacteria digest fiber, they produce short-chain-fatty-acids (SCFAs), ...

If you want to live life at its fullest, do everything possible to keep your body in vibrant health in order to give back to life a little of what it has given you – Eknath Easwaran ( Words to Live By ) The time spent on some of the things that promote good physical and mental health, like exercise and meditation, can seem self-indulgent. But I like this idea of staying healthy to continue to be of service to others. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3x9BoZu via IFTTT

https://www.parkinson.org/Understanding-Parkinsons/Treatment/Exercise/Neuroprotective-Benefits-of-Exercise Previously I described an inspiring video about Larry, who kept active by using a recumbent bicycle despite advance symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, so I was interested to see a new study that investigated how exercise helps with symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. I learned about it on Clarence Bass’s site, his discussion is here . One of the main issues with Parkinson’s is that special neuron’s in the brain that should be producing the neurotransmitter dopamine no longer do their job effectively. But the brain can compensate by using dopamine more efficiently, and exercise helps with that, as shown in the study, described here . This benefit comes from changing the regions in the brain where dopamine is received. Specific exercises help with different symptoms: “targeted exercises can address specific symptoms for example: aerobic exercise improves fitness, walking exercises as...

I’ll be having a treadmill stress test on June 16, a week from this coming wednesday. Today I did one of my last training sessions “peaking” for it. I’ll do one more in a couple of days, then “taper”, all of which is treating this upcoming challenge as if it were a race. This is looking up W. Dunne Ave, one of the steep local streets I like to power walk up as part of my preparation: And this is the view from the top: It’s been going well, my times on all of these are coming down. It will be interesting to see how this translates to the test, which is a progression that gets harder every three minutes. I’ve tried simulating the progression on my bike by gradually going faster but it’s not quite the same muscles. It’s not easy to simulate walking outside, you’d need a long hill that progressively gets steeper. W. Dunne Ave does get steeper, but isn’t long enough. No matter how well the test goes, at least all this fast uphill walking should help when I rejoin my hiking buddies soo...

  Are you concerned about your protein intake on a diet the limits or cuts out meat? A vegetarian or vegan diet still allows a plethora of protein-rich options to replace your meat. Here’s a list of 5 foods to substitute for meat.   1. Seitan While tofu and tempeh are popular soy-based meal replacements, seitan is a forgotten food. While not gluten-free friendly, seitan has an incredibly high protein count: 25 grams per 3.5 oz. That’s about the same as the same serving of meat. Seitan is made up of gluten, or wheat proteins, extracted from wheat dough. When cooked with the right spices, seiten can resemble a delicious meat dish.   2. Legumes As a long-time vegetarian staple, legumes are a protein and mineral-rich complement to any meal. Highly versatile, legumes are a filling, fibrous addition to your diet. Chickpeas, for example, offer up to 15 grams of proteins per cup, cooked. Lentils have a whopping 18 grams of protein. Others include Great Northern White bea...

A recent study shows that even a little bit of physical activity makes it much less likely we will be physically disabled as we age. “Mobility disability” is defined by the authors as inability to climb a flight of stairs, or walk more more than a block. This would certainly lead to impaired quality of life. But the good news is that for women studied in their sixties, those who commonly performed light activity were significantly less likely to develop the mobility limitations discussed during a six year follow up. Activity levels were measured with accelerometers, and light activity was defined as 1.6 and 2.9 metabolic equivalents (METs). Those who kept up at least that amount of activity (equivalent to slow walking) for multiple hours per day had much better outcomes. This does not mean you have to go out and walk slowly for several hours a day, it is the total accumulated activity, moving about the house, in your garden, as well as any formal physical activity. I think it is ...

I mentioned previously that I ride with a group called “South County Old Goats” that’s part of Almaden Cycle Touring Club. But that has been on hiatus during Covid. We started back up again a few weeks ago and it’s great to be out with friends again. I’ve ridden with some of them for more than 20 years. Today we did about 55 km, mostly flat. I very scenic ride that includes part of Coyote Creek Trail and lunch at the restaurant at Coyote Creek Coyote Golf Course. Today was hot, a high of 88 F (31 C). Fortunately, that didn’t happen till later in the day, it was below 80 for the ride. Regrouping near the visitor center at the southern end of the trail. The flag is at half-mast, unfortunately, due to a recent mass shooting in San Jose at a rail transit yard The View From the Golf Course’s Patio With Loma Prieta in the Background This was about a 2 1/2 hour ride with a nice break for lunch. Great day with friends! From home to the golf course From the Golf Course home aft...