Geeks and health

[Giles Orr]

Clifford's presentation was on a subject I consider very important,
and I thought I might have a few words to add ...  It turned out to be
rather more than "a few."  Forgive my verbosity.  Skip through and
look at the headings to see if there's anything of interest to you.


    MY HISTORY

I quit high school gym the instant I could.  I had a bad knee, and I
hated swimming and wrestling long before the latter brought out my
knee problems.  I was a science/math geek and didn't need to stay fit.
 A decade later I found myself in Montreal for a few months not
knowing anyone, so I thought it would be cool to try Karate down the
street at the Y.  I really enjoyed Karate, so I stuck with it.  A few
months after I started I noticed the lack of something: I had been
prone to mood swings, and the occasional random depression.  Gone.  I
had heard that as you get more fit, you feel better: it had seemed a
rather nebulous promise, but it definitely made good for me.
Essentially (feel free to look this up, you can find a more accurate
description) your body generates a better grade of chemicals and
hormones when you're fit, and it makes you feel better.  I continued
to practice the martial arts in one form or another for quite a few
years.  I got into weight training, initially to protect my bad knee.
Never liked the actual exercise, but it did help my knee and I really
liked the improvements in body shape.

I would recommend that those over about 35 approach martial arts
(other than Tai Chi) with considerable caution: I tried to return to
Kung Fu a couple years ago and found that, while I still love the
sport, I bruise, strain, and sprain much more easily than I did 20
years ago, and it also takes me a lot longer to heal.  By the same
token, you need to be more cautious and warm up more for any sport as
you age.

    FOOD

One topic that's interested me over the years is our relationship to
food.  Nature programmed us to over-eat when there's an abundance of
food: the extra is stored as fat, which protects us against the next
famine.  Unfortunately, Nature never programmed us to stop over-eating
when we had stored enough reserves: it would have happened so
infrequently that evolution didn't have an opportunity to weed out the
constant over-eaters.  And in the last fifty years or so we as a
culture have found ourselves with abundant and cheap food, and a "get
value for money" attitude that's dictated massive plates of food and
64 oz. Slurpies full of HFCS.  We eat far too much.  And this is why
we've developed an obsession in roughly the same time period with
"reducing fat."  For eons, we ate fat in our food without problems.
The main problem is more portion control than fat.

We also have a fascination with refining or concentrating things: we
take coca leaves, a gentle stimulant, and create cocaine from them.
By the same logic, if caffeine is good, Red Bull is better.  Refined
sugar was a pretty bad idea too - as was refining whole wheat to white
flour, and brown rice to white rice.  And one of our worst ideas was
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS): read up on it, it's in incredibly
wide-spread use and a some nutritionists refer to it as a poison (and
the rest don't exactly think well of it).

I believe very deeply in moderation.  I try to eat less refined foods,
but I do drink a can of soda most days (with my dose of HFCS).  What I
hope you're getting from this is to know what you're eating and reduce
over-use of bad stuff.  A lot of people attack their fitness issues by
going cold turkey, or overdoing something ...  Small changes over a
long period will work much better for most people.

    EXERCISE

If you're going to start exercising, the best advice I can give is to
find an exercise you like.  Or at the very least find a way to make  a
boring exercise palatable.  Karate isn't great aerobic exercise, but I
loved it and stuck to it - which is more important than its aerobic
aspects.  A few years ago my only real option was stationary bike: not
exciting.  I found what worked was to park the bike in front of a big
TV with surround sound and use the library as a constant drip feed of
movies.  Worked great.  Another alternative is to create unavoidable
exercise.  Distance from work has been a factor in the selection of my
last two apartments: my previous apartment was selected in an area
that would have me a half hour bike ride from work, and my latest
place is a half hour walk from work.  I deliberately don't ride my
bike because the ride is too short to offer significant aerobic
exercise.

Don't go cheap on exercise equipment - whether it's a stationary bike,
treadmill, or stairmaster, do your research and get a good one.  But
don't use the cost as a motivator either: "I paid $2000 for that
treadmill so I have to use it" doesn't usually work.  Use a short term
gym membership to try out various types of equipment, then get your
own.

    WORKING AT A DESK

Clifford talked some about the problems of the computer geek work
conditions.  Look up the basics of ergonomics: that science exists for
a reason.

- get a good, comfortable chair
- adjust the chair height so your thighs are parallel to the floor and
your feet rest flat on the floor
- the pointing device should be close, so it's not a stretch to reach it
- adjust the keyboard height so your forearms are parallel to the floor
- adjust the screen so the top is at your eye level
- these are probably the most important things, but do your own research

I've had back problems and I found the Herman Miller Aeron chair to be
a big help.  They're very expensive, but I own two: I paid out of my
own pocket for my work chair.  It's very unlikely you need a chair
that expensive, but don't put up with an uncomfortable chair: get
another one, because the uncomfortable one is almost certainly causing
you damage.

Clifford talked about "Why sitting for extended periods of time is
killing you slowly."  The best chair in the world won't save you from
the problems of posture, muscle tension and muscle imbalance that he
discussed.  What he didn't cover is some relatively recent science
that shows that some parts of our body (sorry, I can't remember which
exactly: I think the lymph nodes) rely on our movement to power their
transport system.  One more reason to get up and move frequently.  As
was mentioned so often last night, "There's an app for that."  For
Linux there's the very simple and old-fashioned xwrits (which I use at
home), and for Linux and Windows there's the much larger (but mostly
better) Workrave (which I use at work).  I look like a prairie dog,
popping up every fifteen minutes for a short walk around my group's
desks, but I have less problems with stiffness and eye strain.

    CHRONIC INJURIES AND PAIN

In all sports, but weightlifting in particular, you learn to recognize
certain types of pain.  There's "the burn," which is good: your
muscles are approaching exhaustion, meaning you're achieving your aim.
 You're likely to learn to work through it and finish the exercise.
And then there's the pain of pulled muscles and other forms of
physical damage.  This becomes a difference that you'll recognize
instantaneously ... but until you get to that point, proceed with
caution and treat all pain as a reason to stop IMMEDIATELY.  Anyone
who advocates "working through the pain" without knowing your level of
experience is an idiot - and endangering your health to boot.

     DIET VS. EXERCISE

If you want to maintain or lose weight, you have to control your food
intake.  Exercise is unlikely to be enough.  Here's why: when I was in
my best shape, my stationary bike would tell me I was burning 700
calories in an hour.  Since 3200 calories is roughly equal to one
pound, I worked off less than a quarter pound in an hour.  Your scale
will tell you otherwise, because you also lost about two pounds of
water - but I hope you'll drink that back up right away (stay
hydrated!).  Exercise will improve your physical and mental
well-being, but is the smaller part of weight control.  Diet is the
larger part: as Clifford said, "80% diet and 20% exercise."  You can
do one without the other: it's better to do both, but again, do what
works for you and what you can stick to.  You'll see benefits from
either one.

And do your research.  Educate yourself: this is your body and your
life you're messing with.  Clifford and I are giving advice with the
best of intentions, but no one can judge better than you what will
work for you.

Good luck.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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