Category: Health

Posts related to general health, may be cross categorized with carnivore

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COVID…oh my

As it turns, I’m not immune. 

Me…on COVID

I managed to avoid COVID since the beginning. Yesterday it caught up with me. 

On Thursday I felt fine and had no known contact with anyone exposed to or suffering from COVID. Yesterday, Day 0 as these things go, I woke up feeling off, a scratchy throat, runny nose, aches and pains, and the start of a headache.

I decided I’d test myself as I had kits around. The results came back positive and strongly so.

I notified my employer and the folks I’d been in contact with. Then I called my doctor. Actually I ended up talking with a nurse twice, then my doctor. The long and the short of it; I was prescribed Paxlovid. I did some research and made the decision that, given my risk factors, it was the way to go. You might not feel that way. That’s okay with me too.

By nightfall my temperature was up to 103F and my O2 had dropped several points. Worse, I had a massive headache. I don’t recall ever having one this bad.

Luckily, I’d shopped earlier in the week. Even luckier, I’d cooked up a lot of bone broth. There isn’t much I really needed, so it was off to bed.

I woke up every two hours or so. This never happens to me. I was always able to sleep again. Thank goodness I was able to breathe as deep breathing, exhaling more slowly than inhaling helped a lot. 

Finally, at my 3:00 a.m. wake-up, I took some Tylenol. I’d been holding off to let the fever do its work. By 3:00 a.m. it had come down on its own.

All of the treatments, Paxlovid taken early, bone broth, sleep, hydration, and Tylenol must have worked because this morning I felt much better.

My temperature is down, my O2 is up, and my headache is minimal. 

I don’t know how long this will last, but I’m encouraged as I don’t feel anything like last night.

That’s it for now!

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Omigosh…so big…so not carnivore

I was chatting with a friend last night about what I used to look like at my heaviest and before my hip replacement (a direct result, imho, of metabolic abuse). I was very active and still am, but that just goes to show that getting a lot of exercise doesn’t necessarily qualify one as healthy. 

The shot on the right is from 2012, I probably weight 260 lbs. and had just finished bicycling down the Oregon coast over the course of a week. I would have that hip replacement a year and half later and go mostly low-carb. I’d lose that weight, then put most of it back on, while remaining mostly low-carb as my sensitivity increased and yes, I cheated from time to time. I did manage to keep my A1C in line thankfully.

The second shot is from a couple of months ago. I’m probably 185 in it, just as I am today. I’d been carnivore for almost a year at the time. And, while I’d had my knees replaced as the damage over the years was just too much, I’m still pretty darn active. 

I love the memory of that earlier picture, it was a wonderful trip. I really, really, really don’t care for how I felt back then or what I looked like. 

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New Instant Pot? Prime Day?

I’ve been using my old Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 since 2015! I didn’t realize I’d purchased it that long ago.

It works great, even after all this time. As I’ve documented on this blog, I’ve been making chuck roasts and bone broth fairly regularly of late.

The problem isn’t this Instant Pot has worn out, it’s that it might be too small for me these days. It’s a six quart model which is the really the standard size. Heck, it’s the recommended size for most folks.

But…

Since I’ve been making bone broth for myself, I’ve discovered that I’m having to make two batches when I might be able to get away with just one. I’ve also had to make chuck roast in two batches as I just can’t fit enough in this one.

So…

With Amazon Prime Days tomorrow and the next, I’m thinking it may be time to upgrade my game. I can definitely pass this one on to my a good friend and I’ll even teach him how to use it. But what should I get?

Since 2015 many companies have jumped on the bandwagon with these multi-cookers. I own a Ninja grill/air-crisper and am happy with it so I suspect their multi-cookers would be okay too.

I’ve given it some thought and I really don’t need a Wi-Fi connected device. It’d be fun, but I want to be sure I have something that won’t need tech updates any time soon. My Instant Pot has been fine since 2015 and I’ve never once thought it would cook better if I could look at my phone.

So it comes down the eight quart models, or maybe the Instant Pot Rio Extra-Wide coming in at 7.5 quarts.

Or maybe the eight quart Pro…

I guess I’ll just have to wait for tomorrow and see what the prices are. And just because I like my Instant Pot doesn’t mean I wouldn’t consider a different brand.

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Bone Broth was fine! Vitamin P was all that was needed!

Well, it turns out all my bone broth needed to get was a bit more Vitamin P; patience.

I’d decided I was going to cook my my friends chuck roast in my bone broth to make it a bit more flavorful. That’s still on the agenda and I’m doing it right now! It’s kind of hard to see in this photo, but when I went to put the broth in my Instant Pot, I discovered that it had gelled quite nicely. I’ve put it in the pot with a grin on my face. I’m also including all the fat as this is going to be therapeutic meat with all the fat possible. If you look closely, you can see that the collagen did gel the liquid in the pot.

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What’s been going on…

Well, I’m back from yet another trip. This time, I took a short journey to Seattle to visit with a friend. As a bonus, another friend was also in town, and I met someone I’ve only known online. You can’t do better than that.

But this blog has been dying for some time now; quite a long time. I’ve been deciding on whether I want to continue it, scrap it, revamp it, or continue ignoring it.

So, I thought I’d mention the various bits and pieces of my life that seem to be dominating these days.

  • Back surgery in May of 2022
  • Carnivore diet since September 2022
  • Bilateral knee replacement in January 2023
  • 7500+ mile road trip in June 2023
  • A quick trip to Seattle just this past week, September 2023

The back surgery was unexpected and was needed as I had a herniated disc between L4 and L5 that was causing drop-foot. I was losing control of my legs as the nerve was being pinched off. Thank you, Dr. Noh, a bit of emergency surgery fixed me right up. The hardest part wasn’t the surgery or the PT. The hardest part was the six weeks I wasn’t allowed to do much of anything: bend over, lift over ten pounds, walk for more than a total of thirty minutes, or even twist.

The results were great, especially the change in my attitude about health. I’d been low(ish) carb for years but gained a fair bit of weight. I decided to lose weight and get strict about carbs again. The weight started coming off, but honestly, I hated figuring out my macros for each meal. And then my weight loss stalled. I ended up moving to a carnivore diet in September 2022. I lost more weight and, within a few months, had a great waist-to-height ratio of 1:2. My BMI is also normal for the first time in decades.

This is good because while recovering from the back surgery and doing more and more, I discovered that my knees, a problem since my twenties, had finally given up the ghost. I had bilateral knee replacement surgery in late January 2023 and started another recovery journey. It was worth it. But that isn’t to say it wasn’t painful or that now, eight months later, I’m completely recovered. I can do much more than before surgery, but I still have aches and pains. It’s not arthritis anymore, the carnivore diet seems to have cleared that up, and it’s inflammation from continued healing. I’m told, and I believe them, that it will be up to a year and maybe some more before I’m entirely recovered…whatever that means.

So, of course, a few months after surgery, I went with my buddy Barry on a 7500-mile road trip. We took in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, including Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, Saguaro National Park, and good friends along the way. Next, we went through some of New Mexico, missing the old nuclear testing areas. And then there was Texas, more Texas, and yes, more Texas. We made it to San Antonio, saw the Alamo, and walked the RiverWalk. Next, we drove to Houston for baseball, New Orleans for music, Tuscaloosa for friends, and Juneteenth. Nashville, Chattanooga, and Owensboro made the list, the latter with the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and RompFest! We then went off to Omaha for steak and one of the final games of the College World Series! Heading north, we saw the Crazy Horse Monument clouded in mist and Mount Rushmore in the clear. Finally heading back west, we took in the Custer Battlefield Monument and learned that the graves of the Native Americans killed that day have finally been marked and honored. The end of the trip included Several days in Yellowstone and some Fourth of July celebrations back in Idaho.

All of that travel meant that I needed to go to Seattle, with the excuse of seeing the Mariners play Houston! It wasn’t completely successful, but I did keep score. And that is something I documented learning here on this blog using a tutorial from this site:

https://swingleydev.com/baseball/tutorial.php

During all of this, I continued to facilitate ten-minute meditation sessions at work, though held online. I may also start posting some of those here, though there are much better ones out there!

Enough for now.