About 18 months ago, shortly after we gave up our car, I started to get some weird nerve sensations–tingling and a little numbness–along the inside of my legs and pelvic floor. Since I’d been riding my bike a lot more, I guessed that was probably the source of the issue. I got a fitted, more ergonomic bike seat, and fatter tires. That helped, but I was still experiencing some symptoms. I’d been playing a lot of racquetball, so I thought maybe the high-impact running around the court might be part of the problem. But taking a few weeks off from racquetball didn’t make any difference.
Category: Health/Body-hacking Page 6 of 20
For the past few months I’ve been dealing with gastritis and gastric pain, which has put a real dent in my mood, productivity, and general quality of life. I’m recovering, slowly, but this is one of the tougher health challenges I’ve faced.
My gastritis started after a “tummy bug” … some kind of viral or bacterial infection. The more acute symptoms resolved after a few weeks, but despite dietary changes (giving up coffee, booze, and spicy food), I was left with nagging gastric pain. The pain was rarely severe, but it was constant enough to be distracting. My mood worsened, my anxiety increased, and my sleep was often interrupted by burning or even stabbing sensations in my stomach. I tried a number of natural remedies (including turmeric and black seed, both of which have traditionally been used to treat gastritis and ulcers), but nothing was helping much. I’d had similar bouts of stomach pain after a stomach bug in the past, but they’d resolved on their own within a couple weeks, and the pain hadn’t kept me up at night. Time to see the doc’.
Now that I’m bipedal again and regaining strength in my foot, I’m focussing on getting back in shape. Part of that is increasing my exercise (both strength and cardio) and the other part is some dietary modifications to get a bit leaner and improve my general health.
In terms of diet, the more I learn about berries, the more I want to eat them (and the more of them I want to eat).
All berries are high in fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants, and low in sugar and calories. But for today’s post I’ll pick two–blueberries and goji berries–and review some of the research.
Yes I drink spinach now (sometimes while looking at reddit).
One of the peculiarities of keeping a personal blog is that the things you write about yourself diverge from your current state, either quickly or slowly. I feel an obligation to you, the reader, to occasionally provide an update re: how my views or habits have changed from what I’ve previously written. So without further ado …
There are a few supplements I take regularly, including conservative amounts of vitamin D and fish oil (both of which help keep me free of asthma symptoms). Recently I’ve added 25-50mg of niacinamide (also known as nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, similar to niacin but without the flushing side effect) a few times a week to my regimen. Here are the reasons why: