Ok class, time to pay attention.....

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." -Eleanor Roosevelt-
Here, then, is my mistake gift to you:
Daily, I take medication. The why isn't important. (no, not hormone pills for my upcoming gender change....) (wait! i'm not having a gender change. i'm not even due for an OIL change in my car...)
Anyway, I should have said that I am prescribed to take medication daily. To say that I actually take it every day is a bit of a stretch, but i would say that i miss maybe 4 doses a month. I am mostly ok with that, because a year or so ago i would be lucky to TAKE 4 doses in a week. But things changed a few weeks ago.
Remember when Irene hit, and I was stuck out of town for 2 days? That's when i started to forget. I missed a total of TWELVE doses. The medication warns NOT to stop taking it suddenly, and NOT to do so unless under the close supervision of a Doc. (MD, not PhD.) In reality, when people are taken off of this med, they are tapered down to nothing. Huh? Let's say that the dose is 20mg per day. You might taper down to 10mg per day, then every other day, then every 3rd day, etc., but you SHOULDN'T go from 20mg per day to NOTHING. Why did I do it, then?
Because I am forgetful. I have discovered that keeping the pill bottle on my headboard, next to where i put my coffee in the morning, has helped me to remember to take it. Apparently I knocked the bottle off of its place, and therefore didn't see it. No visual cue, no med. Dumb.
Then last week (remember the tweets about PVC's?) i started to experience Premature Ventricular Contractions. In a nutshell, your heart is supposed to beat like this: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. MINE was going lub-lub-dub, lub......lub-dub, lublubdub, etc. Not constantly, but probably twice every five minutes. Very annoying, very scary. Very fun, actually, to watch on an EKG while you are having them. Totally cool.....See?



http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3430-200/image/figure9i.jpg

 It wasn't until i received an email warning about a high dose complication for the same med I take. The warning stated that people should NOT be given more than 30mg per day,  "as higher doses have lead to abnormal changes in the electrical activity of the heart". Hmmm....my inquisitive mind started to wonder that if high doses caused this, might not suddenly LOW or non-existant doses cause the same? Well, the literature from the drug companies doesn't say that, but I can personally attest to the fact that it does. Common listed withdrawl symptoms include: "dysphoric mood, irritability, agitation, dizziness, sensory disturbances, anxiety, confusion, headache, lethargy, emotional lability, insomnia, and hypomania". Good times!
So I found the bottle and started taking it again. After 4 days, the PVC's have all but stopped. As for the other things, well, i THINK that they are better.
Why did I tell you this? Because I don't want you to make the same mistake that I did. Yes, after i came back from being stranded I should have started taking the med again. I would have only missed 1 day, and not experienced any withdrawl effects. But i completely blew it off. dumb, dumb, dumb.
I promise that my next post will be more FUN!
Be Well,
Gene

Humidity and Hydration

Hotter temps are here, all over the place. Well, unless you are reading this from the Southern Hemisphere. In that case, you'll have cooler temps, but perhaps drier weather, which still plays a vital part in hydration status...Hmm. Only took me TWO sentences to get off track....
Alright. We've all heard it: drink plenty of water! drink more water! thirst is often confused for hunger. drink water instead. Drink, drink, drink! Never be more than an arm's length away from some refreshing water! Drink smart water. Drink skinny water (seriously?). Drink vitamin water.
Ok. Not really. that smart, skinny, and vitamin stuff is just BOGUS. One of my favourite commercials on tv now is one where there are a buncha girls playing soccer and the coach tries to get them to drink some sugary crap-laden beverage. one smart alec says something to the effect of "if we lose water when we sweat, why not just drink water?" GENIUS AWARD!!!!!!
except that it isnt' that easy.
we've all heard about dehydration. who has ever heard of over-hydration, known medically as 'hyponatremia'? Although not as big a problem with the general population (think: chip eaters), athletes can be prone to this condition. Let's take some time here to learn a bit about it, how it can impact you, and what you can do to help prevent it. (short version: balance).

The most basic definition of hyponatremia is 'low salt levels in the blood stream'. Salt is essential to live. It serves many purposes in the body from transporting water into and out of cells to nerve conduction. Water 'follows' salt, too. What? Yep. If salt leaves your body (urine, sweat), water goes, too. If you take in too much salt (Chinese food, bar snacks), you drink more (or at least your body wants you to drink more). This is one reason that people with high blood pressure are often told to limit salt. It willlimit water (fluid) retention and thus lower blood pressure.
Let's assume that you, as an athlete, eat the 'proper' amount of salt for YOU. With your normal intake of nutrients and water, your body enjoys a nice balance. Now you workout/run/whatever. Sweat your thorns off. Just drippin' wet all over the place. You drink water. Lots of it. But then you don't feel so good later. Kinda spacy, maybe a little clumsy, disoriented. Not a dehydration headache (ouch! been there!), but just not right. So you drink more water. Why not, right? Welll.....
If you replace water without replacing salt (and other electrolytes like potassium), you run the risk of hyponatremia. You create a dilution in your blood that has a very low concentration of (let's say) salt. Not good.
I learned about this the tough way. I was on a training exercise with the military at Ft. Somewhere, and we got a call for a medivac for a soldier who had gone down in the field. We all suspected dehydration, so we pumped him full of IV fluids. FAST. he was disoriented, slow to move; we were getting a bit nervous. then after we found out that he hadn't eaten ANYTHING yet that day, and had been drinking water by the gallon....we put the two together. yikes. a tough lesson all around, but especially for that Joe. he'll not make that mistake again in a hurry.
So how do we avoid or prevent it? Balance. Experiment. There are almost as many 'sports drinks' out there as there are readers of this blog. ok. wait. maybe that should be reversed. anyway, there are only a handful that are actually WORTH anything to your body. Mostly they are worth something to the company's bottom line, and not to your health. shame, but true. I am not going to badmouth any specific brands (Powerade would get really mad at me if I did. So would vitamin water.) (whoops).  and they aren't the only ones. Here's my most basic tip. READ THE LABELS. Electrolytes are important to replenish here, NOT things like HFCS, SUCROSE, SUCRALOSE, ORANGE DYE #5, etc, etc....just DON'T do it.
I have found that a product called NUUN works well for me. My son (5), loves it. I dilute it a bit for him, but he really likes the lemon lime and triberry flavors. I don't work for Nuun, but i do like their product, their company, and their engagement with amateur athletes, so i don't mind talking them up.
I also like GU Chomps, but if i eat while running, i tend to choke, so.....i need more practice.
CLIF Bar makes a CLIF SHOT that is pretty good, too, and comes in all sortsa flavors.

Optimize your intake for maximum output. Simple. The more you know about the way your body works and what works for your body, the better off you will be. I welcome suggestions for other topics as well.

If you want to watch a video from Web MD on the topic, click here.
Thanks for reading.
Be Well,
Gene