Getting up....

I was visiting my Mum last weekend.  She is getting older.  Still well enough, although the trials of age are catching up with her.  Noticeably in terms of mobility, basic movements.

It made me think of a comment that someone made on a recent post:

I recently got a daily e-mail from John Wood, of bodyweightbasics.com. It is usually a little sales pitch for an old time strongman book or some cool equipment, but sometimes it's training tips, routines,etc. This days was about the get-up. Not the Turkish get up, just the get up. Lay on the floor, front or back, and stand up. Do this 50 times. Try to make each one a little different. Alternate laying on your back and front. He uses it as a finisher on his workouts. I am terribly out of shape, and I tried it. It did give me a workout. Given what you have noted the importance of being able simply rise from the floor can mean, especially in old age, I am not sure I can think of a more simple, basic and safe exercise that may provide more benefit. Just thought I might share, and who knows, if you revise Hillfitt again, maybe add it to your list of exercises. 

There is something to this, the idea of floor living that I've mentioned before.  You don't need to be doing 50 reps of this, just being capable of getting up from the floor.

In terms of functional training, this is what counts.  I am all for basic, accessible, simple and safe strength training to build muscle and strength.  You need to use that strength though in basic real life moves.  As you get older what will be important is not only the strength to be independent, but the preservation of the skills of independence:  sitting, standing, walking, getting up and lying down.

Saturday silliness: Astrology & Abuse.

Now there's a curious mixture of subjects.

Piss-keys or Pie-sees?

John Cassis said:- "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."

I'm Piscean and Pisceans don't believe in astrology ;-) My logical brain tells me that it's a load of cobblers, but when I read an astrological assessment for my birth date, my mind was blown by how it had my personality down to a T. I asked a friend to read a print-out. When she'd finished reading, I asked her what she thought. She said that it was accurate in terms of personality and likes. How does that work?

A Piscean trait manifested itself last Wednesday. A blogger (who I'm not going to name) posted a status on his blog's Facebook page, calling a female science blogger a fat c*nt, along with a link to an edited sound file of an interview she did years ago in which she was nervous, lampooning her.

I commented, saying that he wasn't qualified to judge people on matters of science and that the woman's physical characteristics were irrelevant to science (the ad hominem fallacy). He commented, telling me to f*ck off. I commented, saying that he was funny when he was drunk. A while later, he blocked me from leaving further comments on his Facebook page. Hmph!

To cut a long story short, I de-liked his Facebook page, blocked him personally on Facebook, blocked all email addresses containing his website name or surname on my ISP's email server and blocked him from leaving comments here. I removed him from my life.

This time, it's forever. No hard feelings, it's how I roll.

Update: The offending post has been removed. If you ever read this, thank you for doing that.

It's not Friday the 13th, but... Part 2

In It's not Friday the 13th, but..., I had a picture of my then new Solar PV installation.

1.35kWp Solar PV using Kyocera 135W panels + 2kWp Solar thermal using 100W Thermomax tubes.

As the Solar thermal tubes were no longer heating the hot water much (they were installed in 1991), I decided to upgrade my system. It now looks like this...

3.5kWp Solar PV, using Hyundai 250W panels.

Of the twenty 100W Thermomax evacuated heat-pipe solar collector tubes, only one still worked.

The limescale-coated bulb at the bottom is very hot!

Hot water is now heated by the immersion heater in the tank in the airing cupboard, using spare electricity that's been generated but not used. This is controlled by a gizmo called an immerSUN. See below. The immerSUN is at top left. The inverter is at bottom right.

The current-sensing transformer is the black thing around the red wire, sitting on the black fuse.

The water from the hot tap is now hot enough to make instant coffee!

As the company that installed the upgrade had previously only installed systems to properties previous without Solar PV, they thought that I would receive the current Feed-In Tariff rate, which is 16.56p/kWh, including 50% export Tariff. This is much lower than the Feed-In Tariff rate that I was receiving for my 1.35kWp installation, which was 47p/kWh, including 50% export Tariff. They suggested that I phone ScottishPower (my energy supplier) for clarification.

The good news is that I will receive 47p/kWh for 1.35kW and 16.56p/kWh for the additional 2.15kW, making a net Feed-In Tariff of 28.3p/kWh, including 50% export Tariff. That's 71% more than I thought I'd get.

Based on PVGIS data (postcode-dependent), the system should generate 3,210kWh/annum. That's £908/annum in Tariffs + ~£240/annum in saved electricity consumption + ~£50/annum in saved gas consumption = ~£1,198/annum. The system cost £7,700 including VAT, so ROI is 15.6%. Feed-In Tariffs increase by ~5%/annum and energy prices increase by ~14%/annum, so the system should pay for itself in ~5 years.

Another plank world record

I think I featured this guy in the past, but he has gone and broken his own world record for the plank with a stunning 3 hours, 7 minutes, and 15 seconds.

The full story is here.

Resistance is useless!

...said the Vogon guard. If that means nothing to you, watch this...


You probably know all about Insulin Resistance (IR) if you've read my blog for some time, as I may have mentioned it once or twice ;-) There's also Leptin Resistance (LR) in the brain, which reduces the amount of appetite suppression that leptin is supposed to produce. Robb Wolf's just written about Adrenaline Resistance (AR?) and chronically-high serum cortisol seems to induce Cortisol Resistance (CR?) in the hippocampus, resulting in poor short-term memory.

When the level of "X" in the blood is low most of the time, "X" receptors in the body up-regulate, so when the level of "X" in the blood goes high, it has an effect. When the level of "X" in the blood is high all of the time, "X" receptors in the body down-regulate, so when the level of "X" in the blood goes higher, it has a reduced effect.

The above suggests that regularly "grazing" on food is not a good idea, as this results in a fairly constant slightly elevated serum insulin level. Eating a meal, not eating for a few hours then eating another meal results in high serum insulin while the meal is being absorbed and low serum insulin for the rest of the time.

Paleo diet: Dr. Loren Cordain's rebuttal to the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Loren Cordain is considered by many to be the founder of the Pal(a)eolithic diet.

From http://thepaleodiet.com/dr-loren-cordain/

He wrote this:- Rebuttal to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences June 2013 Papers

"In summary, recent comprehensive analyses (1-3) of δ13C values in the enamel of African hominins from 4.1 to 1.5 MYA support the conclusion that plants of C4 origin were ultimately responsible for this isotopic signature. Nevertheless, when the isotopic data is triangulated from archaeological, physiological and nutrition evidence, it is apparent that the C4 signature in ancestral African hominin enamel almost certainly is resultant from increased consumption of animals that consumed C4 plants."

EDIT: Hat-tip to Robb Wolf.

Why: blogging is great, my brain is like Kefir and you don't have to be slightly insane.

I'm Torn between two images from Google Image Search, so here's both of them.

From bloggersinspiration.com

and

From www.corephp.com

Blogging is stimulating. Someone blogs about something. That gives me a new idea, so I blog about that. That gives other bloggers a new idea, so they blog about that. And so on, ad infinitum. It's great!

Kefir takes hard-to-digest milk proteins and ferments them into something more easily digestible. My brain takes hard-to-digest concepts and "ferments" them into something more easily understandable.

Another blogger said "You May Think I'm a Nutter. But I'm not the only one." You don't have to be slightly insane to be a blogger...but it helps! ;-)