Comments on: Random, Mostly Polyphasic, Stuff

By: puredoxyk

puredoxyk — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:50:59 +0000

Wow, Count D, I am in awe of your incredibly useful comment that ends with the phenomenal line “Don’t try pig blood, tastes horrible.” In awe, I say. Thank you!!

I should probably bet on some short-term inflammation, because I can definitely feel it right after a class, and icing helps; but then again, I cracked a knee years ago and have always had some crackliness in both kneecaps that I’ve been told is congenital inflammation / pre-arthritis. Warm/hot soaks with epsom salts tend to help that. And thank you for the reminder about fish oil — that’s been on my list for too long; I need to get some now.

Thanks again for the incredibly awesome advice!
PD

By: Count D

Count D — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:00:06 +0000

If the knee pain is reoccurring, you should have your knees x-rayed or otherwise examined.
If they feel hot after training, it’s most likely a short-term inflammation which can be counteracted by simple cooling (long-term inflammations on the other hand need to be warmed).
Avoid large amounts of short-chain carbohydrates as insulin peaks lead to increased synthesis of arachidonic acid and therefore the pro-inflammatory type of eicosanoids.
The latter are also a reason to increase the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in food (= to supplement fish oil).
Lastly I’ll recommend nettle tea, which inhibits cytokine synthesis and thereby can prevent cartilage damage.

Regarding to cooking issue I can’t give much advice without further information. I usually just chop&steam some vegetables in a pan whenever I don’t want to spend much time in the kitchen.

Parsley, brewer’s yeast and millet for example contain rather much iron. Another option would be to eat blood products. Cattle blood contains ~50 mg of iron per 100 g, daily req is 10 mg; so theoretically 20g of cattle blood sausage should be sufficient. Don’t try pig blood, tastes horrible.

By: Chad K. Park

Chad K. Park — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:26:45 +0000

Icy-hot and capzaicin (sp?). I know you’re supposed to use one or the other. However, I’ve used both once or twice. I start off with the capzaicin and give it a good 15-30 min. and if it still hurts I add some icy-hot & an ace bandage. Usually, the cazaicin does the trick.

By: puredoxyk

puredoxyk — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:44:05 +0000

I’m much better at rocking sleep and exercise than food, so no, not really. I mean, it sounds great, but it means I have to shop and cook and…yeah. I’m poor and busy, which means that if I’m being really good, I’ll manage to eat some organic food and some vegetables every day (which is going better now that I’m growing some, granted). I’ve tried to go vegetarian, but in spite of buying several books and whatnot, I can NOT find anything that doesn’t require you to either be a good cook or spend a crapton on expensive prepared hippie-foods. On top of all that, I have ridiculously high-iron blood, and have been warned repeatedly by doctors that I’ll need a very careful diet indeed if I’m going to try eating less meat. To which I always think, “Yeah, and I barely managed my goal today of not eating more than one bowl of ice cream….” ;)

Luck, though! Looking forward to hearing how it all works out.

By: Aximilation

Aximilation — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:22:55 +0000

Hey thanks for the link! Hopefully it can help clarify things for many would-be-polyphasers (or would-not-be-polyphasers…) and dispel some of the rumors/myths.

In other news, I should be receiving my copy of the Shaolin Workout this week, it was supposed to be last Wednesday, but Amazon screwed up my order and didn’t tell me until the day it was supposed to be *delivered* (rant rave and whine)
I’m looking forward to it, I’m working on trying to get two friends to join me with it for an early morning pain fest in addition to also adopting a partially raw food diet. Have you looked into that much?