Legalize all drugs Sep 12, 2017
I think all drugs should be legal.  I'm kind of surprised people are opposed to this idea.  I mean I get that drugs are sometimes dangerous and addictive and tend to ruin people's lives.  But here's the deal: 
  1. Making something illegal doesn't reduce consumption or usage.  The fact that our country is in the midst of an opioid epidemic proves that people use drugs regardless of their legality.
  2. Legalizing drugs wouldn't cause everyone to use them.  If heroin was legal, would you use it?  If you haven't already, you probably wouldn't start.  Drugs can maintain their level of dangerousness regardless of their legality.
  3. The war on drugs is widely regarded as a failure, both in terms of usage reduction and crime prevention.  It has cost an inordinate amount of money and imprisoned countless people needlessly with mandatory minimum sentencing.  America has the largest prison population per capita in the world, and taxpayers pay for that, both economically and sociologically.
  4. We already have legal drugs:  caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.  Smoking cigarettes is a near-certain death sentence, and alcohol causes all kinds of health and societal problems.  Drawing the legal line after these drugs is arbitrary at best, racist at worst.
  5. Drugs can be dangerous, and we should treat them the same way we treat alcohol:  use it responsibly, don't drink and drive.  The same guidelines can and should apply to all drugs.
  6. Illegalizing a product that people desire creates a de facto black market.  Removing those restrictions should essentially remove the black market.
  7. Black markets thrive on secrecy, secrecy breeds misinformation, and misinformation is harmful, especially when it involves putting foreign substances into one's body.  A legal open market would provide consumers with information necessary to make an informed decision.  Plus the federally regulated sale of drugs would ensure ingredient purity and dosage.  These things are all sorely lacking on the black market.
  8. Drugs could cause an economic boom.  There's money to be made in farming, chemical manufacturing, taxing, and shipping.
Maybe we could change the name of the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Drug Enjoyment Agency. #health
Stressed about not working out Aug 22, 2017
I guess I'm a gym person.  I go to the gym, I lift weights, I run or do other cardio things.  I never used to think of myself as a gym person, and my physique certainly doesn't suggest it, but I like to be active.  Going to the gym is one of the easier ways for me to maintain a healthy level of activity.  I'm pretty good with self-motivation, so I go to the gym regularly. 

What I've found, however, is that when I'm unable to work out, I get stressed about it.  It's like an addiction.  It's an additional component of the psychology of exercise.  It's not that I really enjoy working out, but I certainly don't enjoy not working out. #health
Don't drink after 8 Aug 17, 2017
I've found through trial and error that if I drink a certain amount of alcohol, I'll later wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat and with my heart pounding.  I don't know why this is, but my hypothesis is that it has something to do with my body processing the alcohol and raising my core temperature.  The weird thing is that it happens pretty reliably at around 2 a.m.  I don't have an explanation for that part. 

Obviously this effect is undesirable.  In addition to alcohol already affecting sleep quality, it seems to have this additional effect on me, causing me to feel like shit the next day.  It's like that scene from Family Guy where Lois says to Peter, "You're drunk again!" and he responds with, "No, I'm just exhausted 'cause I've been up all night drinking."  It's not a hangover per se, I'm just exhausted. 

But recently I've found, again through trial and error, that if I cease alcohol consumption by around 8 or 9 p.m., it appears to give my body enough time to process most if not all of the alcohol, and I can get a decent night's sleep.  This is probably something normal people learn in their 20s.  I'm a late bloomer. #health
Sinus infection Feb 15, 2017
I got my first sinus infection last year, and it was quite an experience.  I usually kind of tough it out when I get a cold or feel sick; it doesn't really matter if I'm sitting around with a runny nose at home or at my desk at work.  I don't interact with a lot of people at my job, so I can usually maintain my regular levels of activity when I'm sick.  I even try to go to the gym to sweat it out of me.  I'm sure there's science that contradicts that idea; I don't care.  It's at least partially a mental game:  Pretend to feel better, proceed to feel better. 

But a sinus infection was a whole other ballgame.  I had a meeting scheduled for that day, and I went to bed the night before feeling kind of crappy, but oh well.  So I toughed it out and went to work and proceeded to lead my meeting successfully.  But after an hour, I was really hurting, so I told my coworkers I was leaving.  My commute home takes me over some decent-sized hills, and the blinding pain I felt in my face and skull was something memorable.  I purchased some pseudoephedrine, which thankfully didn't cause me any negative side effects.  For the next few days, I was nonfunctional.  And we happened to get a pretty big snow storm the following day, so I was outside with the snowblower, trudging along blindly, trying not to make any sudden movements that would disrupt my relative stasis.  It was brutal. 

Since that experience, whenever I feel even a hint of sinus pressure, I fear for my general well-being.  It was such a unique type of pain, it's something I'd rather avoid in the future.  Thank science for drugs! #health
Capitalism vs. healthcare Apr 5, 2016
I've felt for a while now that capitalism is inherently harmful to healthcare.  Right from the get-go, I think it's morally wrong to profit from sickness and death.  That seems pretty clear to me.  I don't think everything should simply be free; doctors and medicine cost money.  But profitability, especially for publicly-traded companies, shouldn't be the thing that prevents people from affording medicine. 

Pharmaceutical companies are harmed (in a sense) by capitalism in two key ways:  (1) In seeking a profit, a company will only develop drugs that have the largest market and/or the lowest development costs, and (2) due to the arguably deleterious patent and trademark system, a company can and will charge as much as they want regardless of the actual cost to develop and produce a drug.  The standard rationale is that the company needs to recoup research and development costs.  But a simple web search shows a number of pharmaceutical companies perform quite well for their investors, which we like to separate from the idea of profiting from sickness and death. 

Health insurance companies are a necessary evil because they allow large groups of people to afford unexpected, large expenses.  But when an insurance company is publicly traded, which many are, their mission changes from providing a necessary service for humans to providing a profit for investors.  This, again, is an idea we like to think of as free market capitalism producing profits, instead of corporations profiting from people dying. 

I think capitalism is largely a good economic system, capable of incentivizing great ideas and allowing class mobility.  But unregulated free market capitalism, especially with regards to the healthcare industry, directly profits from disease and death.  This is a bad thing. #money #health
Keto diet experience Mar 26, 2014
I've been on a "diet" for the past few months.  I say "diet" because most diets include cutting calories, which mine didn't.  It was basically some version of the ketogenic diet, which consisted of replacing almost all carbohydrates with fat and protein.  As with any diet, it took a little getting used to.  And it was sometimes inconvenient.  But it didn't take long to figure out what I could eat: 
  • Meat
  • Nuts and seeds
  • Eggs
  • Cheese
  • Vegetables
The goal was to reduce carbohydrate intake as much as possible, so some things on the above list were avoided (cashews are relatively high in carbs, as are carrots and a few other vegetables).  But essentially my food choices were fairly simple and fairly good.  Bacon and eggs in the morning.  Heavy cream in my coffee instead of milk.  Cheese and nuts throughout the day.  Meat and vegetables for lunch and dinner.  Not too complicated, and not too extreme. 

I think it's important to understand why a person would want to change their diet.  Usually it's about losing weight.  Other times, it's about changing blood chemistry (cholesterol, triglycerides, sugar, etc.).  I started my diet for a few reasons: 
  1. It's "the right human diet".  This is certainly debatable.  But that whole paleo idea sounds reasonable to me:  Humans used to be hunters and gatherers; maybe our current diet should reflect that.
  2. I wanted to see if I could do it.  I dabbled with the South Beach Diet a few years ago, but it felt like I was substituting a lot of fake foods for real foods.  Fake sugar, fake snacks, etc.  Keto is real food, which doesn't automatically make it good, but it helps.
  3. Muscle growth; fat loss.  The science behind ketosis sounds good, so if I could get my body to burn fat, that would be cool.  And since I do some weight training, it would be nice if the added protein helped my frail body build muscle.
  4. Blood chemistry.  This was at the bottom of the list for a reason.  I've already determined dieting doesn't lower my cholesterol, not to mention the fact that I started a new cholesterol medication on the same day I started this diet.  But hey, if it helped, all the better.
Overall, the results have been mediocre and hard to quantify.  I lost 8 lbs right away, but that's because I had been eating crap.  Really any change in diet would've resulted in a loss of weight.  I might've gained some muscle, but it's hard to say one way or the other.  I feel like I look more muscular, but I'm biased.  Plus I changed some of the exercises I was doing, so that could be it.  I haven't gotten my blood tested, so I can't comment on that. 

As far as other effects, there weren't many.  I didn't feel like I had any more or less energy, though it was interesting to learn that my body doesn't require carbs to do physical activity.  I didn't sleep any better or worse.  My skin and hair didn't become smooth and luscious (also I'm mostly bald).  One major side effect was my apparent inability to absorb water.  I was constantly drinking water, and it instantly went through me.  I started taking electrolyte pills and they seem to have helped. 

One additional thing to note is that eating copious quantities of bacon, cheese, and stuff like that doesn't feel healthy.  Maybe that's a psychological thing caused by the debate about good fats and bad fats.  It certainly tastes good, but it feels like it might catch up with you in the future. #health
Reverse smoking Mar 21, 2014
People in rural villages in India have a high incidence of oral palate cancer because of their practice of reverse smoking, which involves smoking with the lit end of the cigarette inside the mouth.  So at least I don't do that. #health
Exercise psychology Mar 15, 2014
I think working out is almost as much psychological as it is physical.  The physical benefits are obvious:  increased strength, stamina, circulation, etc.  And then there are the non-obvious benefits like endorphins and attractiveness.  But I think an important aspect that's often overlooked is the psychology, both in terms of achievement (being able to lift more or run longer) and self-fulfilling prophecy (believing something, acting as if it were true, watching it become true).  If I believe I'll achieve the benefits of working out, and then I work out and achieve those benefits, I'll be happy with what I've achieved, and I'll be happy that my beliefs were right.  Conversely, missing out on an opportunity for a workout means I'm not achieving my goals and not reaping the psychological benefits, which feels twice as bad using the same logic. #health
Paleo/keto diet searches Jan 24, 2014
I'm trying a version of the paleo or keto diet, and the things I Google are kind of funny: 
  • Does bourbon have carbs?
  • Is there a limit to how much fat a human can consume in a single day?
  • Can I drink heavy cream straight?
A lot of the searches have to do with "how much [X] can I eat" and what I've found is that the only real limit is the volume of my stomach.  If I don't die in the next couple of weeks, I'll report my results. #health
On running Dec 19, 2013
I have an unusual relationship with running.  I enjoy running, but I often hurt myself by running too far, too fast, or incorrectly.  But if I could, I would run more.  Here are some reasons why running is awesome: 
  1. It takes no talent.  No one has to be taught how to run.  Sure, there are ways to improve and become faster or better.  But the first movement children make when they stand on two feet is some combination of walking, running, and falling.  Watch people on treadmills or at a race:  Everyone runs different, and that's ok.
  2. It requires no special equipment.  Sure, running shoes are helpful, as are quick-drying clothes, pedometers, heart-rate sensors, and GPS devices.  But none of those things are essential for running.  Barefoot running is a thing.  Though you should probably at least wear clothes, because otherwise you'll get arrested.
  3. It can be done pretty much anywhere on earth.  You can run on paved roads, dirt paths, grass fields, concrete cities, tracks, treadmills, beaches, mountaintops and underwater (to some extent).  Every other form of locomotion has at least some sort of geographic limitation; you can't ride a bike on snow (usually) and you can't swim on land (usually).  You can run anywhere.
  4. It's free.  There's almost no way you can be charged money to run, aside from a race or a gym membership.
  5. You can do it forever.  There's a common belief that running is bad for your knees, but that's not entirely true.  If you've ever seen an old person run, it's clear there are no age limits.
Run, rabbit, run. #health