Category: Health

2025 Day 11: 4 miles in 44:26

2025-0111S-1515 Austin, TX

Over the holidays my cousin was in town with her husband, who happens to be a runner. Five years ago, I took up his challenge to run 3 miles with him. I blogged about it then: 2020 Day 10: 3 miles in 27:20. When I was writing yesterday’s Day 10 post, I reread the one from five years ago. I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t run in a while. This morning, when I awoke and began getting dressed, I chose a running t-shirt. This was despite that it froze last night and was still quite cold outside.

Bird Bath Reflections of Sun on a Wire, 2025-01-11, Austin TX (photo credit: surfingtheuniverse.com)

“Am I really going to do this?” I thought. I don’t remember the last time I ran – maybe a couple years ago. Swimming has been my recent exercise of choice. Today is not the ideal day for swimming. Then I remembered my post yesterday: 2025 Day 10: Roll the Dice! So, I decided to just do a quick 15 minute run down to the neighborhood park and back. I rolled the dice. When I got to the park, I saw about 25 people all running around the park. My naturally running path led me into the middle of them. They were all spread out. I continued running with them as I noticed they were all exiting the other side of the park.

“Am I really going to do this?” I thought again. I rolled the dice again and continued running with them out the other side of the park. A man with a one-year old in a stroller ran up next to me and said hi. We started talking and I learned this was a running group like I suspected. They had started at a coffee shop and were running a total of 10 kilometers. I ended up continuing to run with him all the way to the coffee shop (Praxis, I think). My left knee started hurting around mile 3. As I arrived at the coffee shop, I stopped my watch timer and it had been 4.01 miles.

After 10 minutes of yoga, and grabbing some coffee, and meeting new people, I walked back home in the crisp sunny weather. I’m grateful that I decided to roll the dice multiple times today. It was a good reminder of the unpredictability of life. It also felt good to do some cardio. My recent focus on computer work has not been good for my physical health. After the run, I checked my bp and decided to just take a half dose of bp medicine and monitor it. I have a theory that daily cardio might be a healthier substitute than medication.

2025 Day 6: Memory Problems with Humans and AI

2025-0116M-0830 Austin, TX

This morning I was started my day listening to a Robert W.B. Love podcast with Dr. Dale Bredesen about Alzheimer’s Disease.

Actually, my day started earlier with a short clip from this Nate B Jones (@nate.b.jones) video about AI having a half-trillion dollar memory problem:

Both of these topics are on my mind right now as I struggle myself with memory and focus. So, starting my focus practice this morning by not watching these videos now and instead writing.

One of my first thoughts on watching the AI half-trillion dollar memory problem was to buy more Micron Technology ($MU). I was apparently not the only one with this idea. The market cap on open rose over 9% from $100B to $109B. I bought some more anyway to remind me of this moment. My stock portfolio of mostly technology stocks is up about 58% over the last three years. It looks now like it’s either about to fall off the cliff are shoot higher. Learning to hold both of these conflicting possibilities and be with them is my practice.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day in silence. I ecstatic danced with a few hundred people and shared a few hugs. I talked to brother B for a while, breaking my silence for the day. I also talked to a couple other friends. Otherwise, I stayed focused on trying to solve a programming bug in a toy program I created for my learning.

I hesitate to go into it. But then, maybe it will be helpful for anyone who reads my blogs to help them sleep. I’ll say this much. I had spent over 12 hours the prior day pleading with OpenAI ChatGPT-4o to help me fix my code. When I finally put AI to bed and wrote the code from scratch myself, the code worked. Of course, as all programmers know, then I uncovered a new bug! But, at least I had the fundamentals working. The new bug seems to be beyond my current abilities to debug. Actually, I have the abilities to learn, so that statement is not really true. I feel like I just finished a 2048 piece puzzle and want to wait before starting the 8192 piece puzzle.

Going Deeper: Here is an analogy for the puzzlers on my struggle to add tiling to my matrix multiplication code. My current code is a naive approach. A family of four with each family member working on their own corner of the puzzle. Everyone is grabbing a random puzzle piece from a single shared box of pieces. They check if it fits in their corner and either place the piece or put it back. Everyone can work independently but it wastes times because many pieces are grabbed repeatedly by different people. The new code I am working on is a tiling approach. The analogy for the new code is the family of four work together. They all focus on a smaller section of the puzzle and first find the pieces for that section. Then they finish that section of the puzzle and repeat for new sections. This is more efficient!

20210903F Day 612: Depletion, Tears, Rebirth, and 2.49 mile run

20210904S-1612-AustinTX

Dog Beach Rebels at Flamingo Cantina, September 3, 2021, Austin, Texas

Yesterday, a couple of my friends, A&Z, and I celebrated a birthday. We shopped, ate, danced, and satisfied our sweet tooth craving with some ice creme on Congress. We had quite a bit of fun and kept celebrating until midnight. By the end of the night, I was feeling quite depleted as I dropped them off at their car. I started crying, which is rare for me. They asked what was wrong, and I didn’t have the words. All I could gain access to was my feeling of depletion in terms of my ability to give and a strong desire to receive accompanied by a belief that A&Z were also feeling depleted and unable to give right now either. I’m not used to feeling depleted. Last night I cried myself to sleep for the first time in I don’t remember how long.

In the morning, I awoke with some clarity. During dinner, one of my friends had been talking about their recent breakup and how hard it was to not be in intimate connection with their ex-partner. I had had a similar conversation with another friend earlier in the day at Barton Springs. The energy of both of these conversations was resonating within me at the end of the night and I was subconsciously feeling my own sadness that I was no longer in communication with my ex-beloved, Yana. It required me sleeping on this to realize this in the morning. I never really grieved the end of my relationship with Yana, although she has been on my mind the last 3 months that we have been out of connection. It felt like last night I was able to grieve, and also able to feel deeply my sadness and express these emotions. While difficult for me, I welcomed my tears.

This morning, I felt gratitude, strength, and optimism that I now have an enhanced ability to feel and express my emotions, especially ones of sadness which I have tended to avoid in the past. I felt reborn. I wondered what else might be different in this new universe in which I awoke. I decided to run for the 5th time since I started running again. My first run, I had run 2 miles in 20 minutes. My best run so far was my 3rd run at 2.31 miles in 20 minutes and 20 seconds. This morning, I shattered that record and ran 2.49 miles in 20:22. I’ve set a horizon goal of running 3 miles in 20:20, which is my lifetime fastest time that I ran in 1980.

20200331 Day 91: How Chloroquine affects Viruses in the Multiverse

 

1-s2.0-S0924857920300881-gr1
A composite of some of the ways Chloroquine acts as an antiviral in the multiverse. From Devaux, et. al. Mar. 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105938

Since I’m posting a day late and trying to catch back up, I wanted to make a short post about this recent journal article which summarizes past research on the antiviral properties of Chloroquine. Since the COVID-19 pandemic is such a big effect on the world right now, I was curious if ripples of this event could be felt in the past. I found the following:

1. Effects of Chloroquine on viral infections, an old drug against today’s diseases, Savarino et. al., Nov. 2003

We raise the question of whether this old drug whose parent compound, quinine, was isolated in the late 19th century from the bark of the tropical cinchona tree, may experience a revival in the clinical management of viral diseases of the era of globalisation.

and also this quote seems relevant due to possibility that SARS-CoV-2 induced cytokine storm is being seen in some COVID-19 patients:

The chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine-induced suppression of the synthesis of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNFα may be beneficial in decreasing the inappropriate immune activation characteristic of HIV infection.

and this suppression of the synthesis of pro-inflammatory cytokines is also given as a hypothetical mechanism of action in SARS cases.

gr3_hypothesis_chloroquine
Hypothetical model for the potential effects of chloroquine (CQ) on the immunopathogenesis of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Proinflammatory cytokines are thought to be important in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). We hypothesise that chloroquine (black arrow), by inhibiting TNFα and interleukin 6 (IL6) production, might block the subsequent cascade of events, which leads to ARDS. (https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(03)00806-5)

and this final summary of the paper deserves special recognition:

Finally, we want to share with the scientific community the speculative hypothesis that chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine, due to its antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, may have some effect on SARS. We emphasise the need of testing in cell cultures infected with SARS coronavirus the effects of chloroquine, as well as those ofother substances possessing in-vitro activity against members of the coronaviridae family. We should remember that the possibility of new outbreaks of SARS cannot be excluded. In the absence of effective inhibitors of SARS coronavirus, the possibility of an inhibition, at least in vitro, of the replication of this virus would represent a breakthrough in the knowledge of SARS.

2. Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread, Vincent et. al, Aug. 2005

We have identified chloroquine as an effective antiviral agent for SARS-CoV in cell culture conditions, as evidenced by its inhibitory effect when the drug was added prior to infection or after the initiation and establishment of infection. The fact that chloroquine exerts an antiviral effect during pre- and post-infection conditions suggest that it is likely to have both prophylactic and therapeutic advantages.

3. New Insights into the antiviral effects of chloroquine, Savarino et. al., Feb. 2006

The broad spectrum antiviral effects of chloroquine deserve particular attention in a time in which the world is threatened by the possibility of a new influenza pandemic, and the availability of effective drugs would be fundamental during evaluation of an effective vaccine.

 

2020 Day 23: My longest run 5.47 in 53:33 and Life Coach business plan

Being now in Santa Cruz I thought I’d check to the status of my old and new habits in this new location. My old habit of checking stocks is still not present. I did talk stocks with friends. My new habit of running is still present. I just ran 3.33 miles at a 10-minute mile pace, 5 miles in 49:19, and 5.47 miles in 53:33. My experience with universe surfing is to increase your chance of moving to a desired universe, it is helpful to change as many things as your have control over. It is also especially helpful to give energy to each cell of your body. I find that running causes a lot of cells in my body to replenish themselves. I can imagine old cells being recycled into new cells. From a universe surfing perspective, I am moving to a universe where I’m more fit, strong, and healthy. And by moving universes, it is likely by random chance that other things will be changed, especially things which are correlated with the primary things changed (in this case, the running habit and removal of stock checking habit).

In 2020 Day 21: Surfing Universes – Life Coach – 60 Needs that Healers Have, the first need I mentioned was the need for a business plan. Your first business plan should be realistic and serve as a guide for you to get clarity on the goals, risks, and priorities of your business. Before you invest much time and money into your passion project or business idea, you should convince yourself that your business is worth this investment. Your business plan only needs to be a few pages long. Here is an example one:

Life Coaching Business Plan Example 2016-12-01