One of the more amazing features of the human body is that you do not need to be fit to be alive.

Think about it. It's true. We have no fitness alarm, nothing that zaps us up side the head when our body fat creeps up or we lose 5% muscle strength or our blood pressure is up ten points. There's only the steady plodding of life most of which takes place in a chair or some other seated position.

Fitness slips by us until we finally get the wake up call. All of sudden, it seems, we can't do something we once did easily. Or, some body part hurts with a simple thing like climbing stairs or trying a short jog. We've chosen a sedentary path from the inertia of inactivity. This isn't a morality issue. There's no right or wrong about a choice to be sedentary. It's a quality of life issue. It depends on what you want to have in your life and be able to do over the course of your life.

Muscles, to be healthy, must be used and pushed to their limit regularly. It's a choice. A lifestyle choice. This is especially true as you get older which is when many people slow down and do less. They think they're too old to "get in shape" or feel it's too much effort. So, they slow down, do less, get weaker. They outlive the usefulness of their muscles.

Push your muscles to do more and when you need to do more, you can. Choose to move.

You don't need to be fit to be alive but you need to be fit to feel alive.
DK

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Some new information on smoking and breast cancer has surfaced and researchers now feel comfortable saying that smoking causes breast cancer in pre- and post-menopausal women. And, as if that's not enough to get your attention, second hand smoke causes cancer in pre-menopausal women.

You can read the article here.

Reader Meg points us to an article in the NY Times about the rising number of injuries among people playing Nintendo's Wii.

So, do Wii injuries need Wiihab?

Force is force. Swing a virtual baseball bat or throw a simulated bowling ball hard enough or long enough and you can end up with the same types of injuries (rotator cuff tendonosis, tennis elbow, ankle sprain) as if you were actually playing the sport and potentially go through similar rehab (but if it's sport specific I guess it really is Wiihab).

Might want to be a Wii bit careful.
DK

No, I didn't have a gardening injury over the weekend although I may be over-training.

Injuries from gardening or yard work happen, most of the time, because of a mismatch between your true fitness level and your perception of your fitness level (remember that fitness is being suitably adapted to the demands of an environment). Usually, a good chunk of time has passed from your last yard work event and unless your training regularly, your body is a little less capable when spring rolls around. But, there is no fitness sensor or alarm to alert you; to let you know that you're not quite as strong, quite as flexible as last year.

So, you heartily dig and rake and lift, push, pull, and carry and then wake up the next day feeling as if a truck parked on your back all night.

Over - training doesn't necessarily result in injury although it can. It can also be things such as:

• Weakness
• Chronic soreness and fatigue
• Moodiness or Irritability
• Depression
• Lack of enthusiasm for training
• Increased resting heart rate
• Loss of appetite
• Persistent muscle aches
• Difficulty sleeping
• Increased incidence of illness and/or injury

Why does this happen? Usually because a person who is often competitive and actually quite fit, if you examine the metrics, believes that they are not fit enough; not strong enough, fast enough, etc. So, he or she trains hard and a lot and has I-Will-Win attitude. That person is then at risk for over-training and may get injured as well but usually before the injury, the other signs of over-training appear.

I like things like Venn diagrams, relational graphs, etc. because they make me think; use my brain and establish neural connections that are likely weak and need a boost which is why, from time to time, I send out a post like Errors in Judgement.You may or may not enjoy those types of posts. That's ok. Just trying to help you keep your brain fit.

So, am I over-training? Here are my answers:

• Weakness: Not by the metrics at least.
  
• Chronic soreness and fatigue: Yep.
  
• Moodiness or Irritability: Hmm...maybe. Ask Elle :)
  
• Depression: No, don't believe I am (but I've been in denial before so who knows)
  
• Lack of enthusiasm for training: Lately, last couple of weeks, yes.
  
• Increased resting heart rate: If you consider elevation to be from 58 to 68, yes.
  
• Loss of appetite: Mild.
  
• Persistent muscle aches: Yep. Spine related.
  
• Difficulty sleeping: Always.
  
• Increased incidence of illness and/or injury: No.

Out of ten categories, I have six. I would say that I'm over-training. Well, I would like to say that I'm not over-training but the evidence suggests otherwise. I've changed my routine, reduced the intensity and frequency.

If you look at my metrics, many of them are very good. I am fit in many domains up to a relatively moderate to high level of force. But, I am that competitive person who is driven to be better, win, etc. It's in my DNA. It's not going to change...much. So, I have to learn how to use it for my benefit and others' and how to recognize when that trait is working against me. Often times, the very thing that makes you successful in one arena is your what undermines you in another.

Now you know what was in my head.
DK

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New to the View? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top left hand corner of my blog and then share this blog with your friends.

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You might recall the recently voiced suggestion that it's something of an accident of history that the cryonics movement is the cryonics movement versus the plastination movement. Plastination is plausibly just as good a way of preserving the fine structure of the brain into a future where a patient can be restored to life as low-temperature storage.

Twenty years ago, Charles B. Olson published an article called "A Possible Cure for Death" in the journal Medical Hypotheses. In it, he favorably compares methods of chemical preservation to cryogenic preservation. Unfortunately, this article provoked no wide discussion or attempts at implementation. As the author notes on his website, other than requests for reprints, "nothing more came of it." And yet the arguments in it are still sound and just as persuasive today as they were then.

Not so long ago on the Cryonet list, a fellow asked: "How can we help those who cannot afford cryonics?" This is a valid question, given that the high level purpose of cryonics is to offer some alternative to oblivion for those who die before the advent of working rejuvenation medicine. While cryonics is very affordable if you plan ahead and take out a low-cost life insurance plan, there will always be those who get caught short through no fault of their own.

Here, plastination steps forward as a possible alternative that would cost little more than what is already spent on the disposal of remains. Plastinate the brain for the cost of an embalming, and cremate the rest. You're now set for a good number of decades in any very low-cost storage facility.

The way we do it is chemical preservation with the option to convert to cryopreservation. ... A hospital pathologist can remove the brain and submerge it in fixative. It would be shipped after 1 week in fixative. Permanent storage could be in fixative for the truly indigent. But a better option for those who could afford it would be to convert to cryopreservation. The cost might start at about $20,000, but could get down to about $12,000 after the first few due to economies of scale. The brain would remain in fixative until the full cryopreservation cost was paid for, and only then go into a dewar.

The economic advantages are considerable due to cutting out the need for a standby team to prepare a patient for cryopreservation - though as noted in the past, open questions remain as to how important it is to act quickly and whether and to what degree different types of preservation strategy affect the preservation of brain structures important to the mind's data.

But all of the above discussed options are better than no plan at all, a path that leads to oblivion and the grave. This is just another of the many ways in which the world we live in is a madhouse of waste, death, and destruction compared to other plausible worlds - such as the one in which people generally chose to have their brains plastinated and stored at death for the past few decades, allowing hundreds of millions of the deceased a shot at living again in the future. But in this world, they are all dead and gone, lost forever.