Umair Yasin

Whole Body Prayer is a fascinating memoir by Yan Ming Li, a Qigong master. It tells the story of his hardships during his upbringing in a working-class family in Communist China during the cultural revolution. He had a natural affinity for Qigong, and it blossomed into healing abilities with some training. He eventually migrated to the West, becoming a teacher and healer in Atlanta. There are some amazing stories of healing in the book. After telling his own story, he teaches his self-healing technique of whole-body prayer. Master Li has ecumenical spiritual beliefs equivalent to the perennial philosophy which many claim are at the core of all the World’s major religions, and this is mentioned throughout the book. Readers who are skeptical of such beliefs may find this a stumbling block, but I liked his clear discussion of this. In a nutshell, his self-healing technique is meditation in a standing pose. It involves visualizing energy flowing towards a part of your body from the...

Health Secrets of a SuperAger A rapidly growing body of research is highlighting the dangers of the typical intake of ultraprocessed, packaged, convenience foods in the U.S., according to the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter . For most of human history, food was difficult to come by and humans battled starvation and malnutrition. The development of food processing helped positively transform the food environment—and health. Canning (and then freezing) made vegetables and fruits available year-round; pasteurization stopped outbreaks of bacterial infection from milk; preservatives prevented spoilage and extended shelf-life; and enrichment allowed refined flour to become a dietary staple without risk of malnutrition. Safe food became available anytime, anywhere, and at a relatively cheap price. Now, the pendulum may have swung too far in the opposite direction. Photo by Alena Shekhovtcova on Pexels.com Processing moved from preserving food, enhancing vitamin content, and impro...

Lorna’s postrun description of her recent Jogle adventure. A great read Lorna Runs After two long days of running on tarmac, I was relieved to see the start of a trail path I would take. The B7078 snakes its way down through southern Scotland criss crossing the M74 every now and again. I stepped onto the stony trail and smiled to myself. There is nothing like that feeling of being all alone on a trail, jogging along at your own pace, enjoying nature. After 33km that day, I had another 7km to run on this path, then 7km on the road until my campsite. Life was good. The path was wide and comfortable to run on. To my right was a forrest of densely packed trees and to my left small mounds of grass, with occasional clearings you could pitch a tent on if you needed to. Peaceful trail path in southern Scotland I came to a section of the path that had… View original post 2,509 more words from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/sz6NxEy via IFTTT

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/meniscal-tear?lang=us I wrote recently that I have been diagnosed with a tear in the lateral meniscus of my left knee. This is causing joint fluid to leak, so I have a cyst on the knee. The resulting persistent bump is what caused me to have it looked into. Yesterday I had a follow-up with my Orthopedic surgeon and he confirmed it is a horizontal tear in the meniscus. He said it is in an area with poor blood supply so there is no good surgical option to fix it. The options are to wait and see or remove the meniscus entirely. For now, we are going with the former. The good news is he says the arthritis in my knee has not advanced too much and I should get more good years out of the knee as long as I avoid impact loading, especially running, and keep the surrounding muscles in shape. So my exercise regimen of cycling, strength training, and hiking (careful on the downhills) is serving me well. I did find a counter-opinion on the web that horizontal ...

This is our last Tuesday ride of the month so my group made it our Halloween ride. We did a rural route Northeast of Morgan Hill then added a visit to Spina Farms for the Halloween part. They have a nice farmstand year round, and this time of year they have a U-pick pumpkin patch plus fall-related items for sale and some rides. It was a very pleasant fall day for our ride. Looking East of the pretty marigold fields Looking northwest With the Santa Cruz mountains in the distance, Mt Umunhum in the center This is more due West, Loma Prieta in the center from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/Ejz9sKI via IFTTT

I’ve reported previously on fellow blogger Lorna Cullen and her run the length of Great Britain (John O’Groats to Land’s End, with the additional 3 peaks challenge). She finished a couple of days ago, as reported here . This took her 48 days, at an average of about 38 km per day. An awesome adventure. Congratulations, Lorna. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/nWj3zI0 via IFTTT

This is good news. I knew exercise improved metabolism through its effect on muscles, but now I know it improves metabolic health by altering fat cells as well, even if you don’t lose weight Health Secrets of a SuperAger Exercise is one of the first strategies used to treat obesity-related health problems like Type 2 diabetes and other cardiovascular disease, but scientists don’t understand exactly how it works to improve metabolic health. To that end, University of Michigan researchers examined the effects of three months of exercise on people with obesity, and found that exercise can favorably modify abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue, the fat tissue just beneath the skin, in ways that can improve metabolic health—even without weight loss. Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels.com Surprisingly, moderate and high-intensity exercise yielded the same positive changes in fat tissue composition and structure, and fat cells shrank a bit even without weight loss, said pri...

The color changes of Autumn come a bit late in these parts, although they’ll make up for it by lasting through November. Some of the local trees and vines were just beginning to show some color on my ride yesterday, as I enjoyed an easy jaunt in the surrounding area. Nice display of pumpkins and gourds at a local farmstand Some Trees Changing on the lower slopes of Barnard Road The vines at Guillelmo Vineyards have some color from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/MNZtTsS via IFTTT

We headed Southeast towards the foothills of the Diablo Range East of Gilroy on our group ride yesterday. It was mostly flat except for some decent climbing when we got into the foothills. The main destination was the little ranch where Alladin the camel lives, but we also took a little side trip to check out the pigs and goats at a small farm. It was a nice ride, a little challenging for me because I didn’t take my e-bike and I forgot about how significant the climbing would be. Also, on the way back we had a stiff headwind for several miles. That worked out OK because I was fairly well matched in pace with another rider, Judy, so we took turns being at the front in the wind, a mini-paceline. I love doing that, it makes it a team effort. Stopping at a little farm East of Gilroy Two pigs (Petunia and Harold) asleep in their shed Some goats next door Aladdin The Camel Lives at an estate further East in the foothills from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/LyCeJ3x via IFTTT

Today for my “hard leg day” ride I took my recumbent southeast towards Gilroy and back. I started out with two hours at a brisk tempo, then finished up with some intervals. The ride was challenging but enjoyable. This was also good mindfulness training- it takes concentration to keep the pace brisk but steady during the tempo portion. Intervals bring up the whiny part of your brain (“I don’t want to keep going, this is uncomfortable!”) and it’s good mental training to just note these thoughts but not give in to them. Two-hour steady tempo ride. I was shooting for an average HR in the range 110 to 120 so 112 is fine. Ideally it shouldn’t show much deviation from the average so my pace was pretty good in that respect too I’ve recently added some longer intervals to my session to better prepare me for challenges like the Llagas hill climb. Interval session. The 16 heart rate peaks are the intervals (4×4 min, 4×2 min, 8×1 min) Center road, a typical country road on the East side f...

https://www.facebook.com/Lornaruns Fellow blogger, triathlete, and ultrarunner Lorna Cullen has finished the 3 peaks part of her Jogle run, with 1537.68 km run so far and 317.44 km to go. She is averaging 38 km a day, or just under a marathon, and has been for over 40 days. I ran 3 marathons back in my running days, and was completely trashed after each one, needing at least a week or so recovery. I can’t imagine doing this day after day. Go Lorna! from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/mKhfgZw via IFTTT

I recently signed up for Strava premium which lets you compare efforts with others in your same age group. Strava tracks “Kings of Mountain” (KOMs) and “Queens of Mountain” (QOMs) for various routes. A convenient local challenge for me is climbing Llagas road, which is only 15 minutes away by bike. The climb currently takes me just under six minutes which is a good length challenge. The blue line shows the segment being tracked, in this case, “Llagas East to West” This places me 87th out of 142 in my age group who have tried this segment. There are a lot of fast old folks in Morgan Hill! I’m not a particularly good climber so this gives me something to focus on improving. Training to get faster at that will require the kind of intervals I’m already doing, but I have to focus on doing them uphill instead of on the flat. This will be a fun challenge for me over the next few weeks. I did this effort first thing yesterday morning. I then went home and switched bikes from my unassi...

I did an upper body workout with resistance bands, body weight, and dumbbells yesterday. I’ve especially been enjoying heavyhands walking, simulating cross-country skiing double poling with hand weights, and simulating kayaking with resistance bands. I followed this up with a pleasant tour of local rural roads and trails on my Vado, which has pretty fat (38 mm) tires and handles rough roads, dirt, and gravel well. Trail Entering Anderson Dam County Park, nicely shaded with oak trees from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/1CvbPym via IFTTT

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/endurance-athlete-heart-health-research-2022/ In his “sweat science” column, Alex Hutchinson reported on some recent studies that give an update on the question of whether there are health issues associated with excessive endurance training. I have discussed this previously ( here , here , and here ) it being a matter of some interest to me as I like to endurance train a lot. The first study is a recent one from Sun-Yat-Sen Univerity in China [1]. This confirms that although people that do a high volume of endurance exercise tend to have higher calcium scores in their coronary arteries (an indication of arterial plaque), it is a benign condition because the plaque tends to be stable. This latest study shows that on long-term follow-up, the high-volume athletes have no greater risk of adverse cardiac events. A second study [2] disputes the “J-curve” that has been previously reported for all-cause mortality vs. the amount...

https://www.eatthis.com/strength-training-habits-that-slow-aging-science/ Clarence Bass covered the results of a meta-analysis of many studies on the benefits of strength training for weight loss in his column this month [1] . Not surprisingly, it helps. In my opinion, far and away the most significant effect is that it preserves or even adds to your lean muscle mass while losing weight. From the study: “lean mass was maintained following interventions involving resistance training and caloric restriction” and “results were consistently observed across age and sex groups”. This is crucial for preventing the “yo-yo” effect of losing weight but also losing muscle mass, which can slow your metabolism and set you up for weight regain. And if you follow the link to the figure above, the article describes how resistance training slows aging. A pretty good return for your effort investment. By the way, I also try to maintain that same kind of serene look on my face while doing planks, al...

The climb up to Henry Coe State park east of Morgan Hill is one of our big local climbs. It’s about 12 miles from the base of the hill on E Dunne ave. to park headquarters, with 2700 ft elevation gain. I did it yesterday with a group starting in Morgan Hill. Our route was a little shorter because we took the steeper shortcut up Thomas Grade. It was about 30 miles total starting near downtown Morgan Hill. I ride with a branch of Almaden Cycle Touring club in San Jose. Our local Tuesday group is the one I usually refer to rides with. I discovered that there are other groups with ACTC that also start in Morgan Hill, that are faster and do more climbing. That was who I rode with yesterday. They were quite accepting of my e-bike and the ride was enjoyable. Park headquarters. This is the second largest state park in Ca, with many miles of hiking and mountain biking trails. The views up here are incredible, my pictures didn’t do them justice. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/wTpuPx8 ...