As I mentioned before, this juice tastes like hell. A number of folks suggested mixing it with juice but for the first week I felt like that was somehow wimping out. The Aloe is supposedly packed with so many good pharma-things that it’ll not only act as an anti-inflammatory for my back, provide needed collagen and other spine-healing elements but it’d help digestion, skin tone, make my eyes brighter and allow me to better manage a small country.

I haven’t noticed many of these benefits yet — but I have noticed that my carpal tunnel syndrome/repetitive stress disorder is not bugging me at all! Seriously, my crappy, weak and usually aching hands — so degenerated by decades of working full time on the computer, years of video gaming with hideously bad controllers and likely horrible seating and ergonomics have taken their toll. I don’t play nearly as many games as I used to as my hands just can’t do it — an hour or two of TF2 and I’m shot. Perhaps not so strangely, since starting to drink this nasty smelling and tasting juice every day — my hands hurt less. The anti-inflammatory agents must be working. A sign I might be on the right track…!

Anyways, regardless how this is helping my CTS, it still tastes like crap. I decided drinking something nasty tasting wasn’t “manning up” when I could mix it with juice. My local market had a special on some Belgian “Looza” juices so I tried their Banana Nectar and Pineapple, thinking those flavors would be strong and cover up the liquid-plumber-esque flavor of the Aloe. Banana Nectar works pretty well! I could barely notice a hint of the Aloe and mostly just got a mouthful of slushy banana-y goodness.

I’m going to keep going with the Aloe. So far my back isn’t noticeably better but nothing leads me to believe 1 week will do much. I’ve largely got the pain in my sciatic nerve to go away and now I am just haunted by worry that it’ll return and a very, very tender lower-back. I’m doing everything I can not to re-injure it and start physical therapy next week.

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I know the best option is to hit the gym and use free weights, but that’s not a good option for me for a couple reasons, primarily because I’m about to start doing a lot of traveling. I might be away from home for a couple weeks at a time. Plus, I hate gyms.

My question is this: Are there any good pieces of equipment or routines I could start with that wouldn’t require buying a set of weights and a bench? Some sort of secret military/prison training routine that uses counterlevered human body for resistance training? Or am I just going to have to put aside putting on muscle mass until I’m ready to go to the gym?

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I’ve been fighting off the tail end of a cold for a few days, so thought the steam and sauna might knock out the rest of the gunk. Or at least the high percentage of steamed chlorine would eat out mucus from my lungs. No dice. But still, after three hours of alternating between sweaty heat rooms and plunging into a cess of ice-cold water, my body was weakly glowing from pleasurable exhaustion.

While another Russian bath house in the Lower East Side is more well-known, I went to Wall Street Bath & Spa 88 down on Fulton Street. It was clean, staffed by slightly-less-taciturn-than-usual Russian help, and was fairly inexpensive—$35 all-you-can-soak. I’d suggest making a day of it—I intend to again soon—by hanging out in the communal lounge area, sipping fair-price bottled beers, watching the big screen TV, popping over to the hot tub for a little human soup time, and then finishing up in the restaurant, where lots of surprisingly tasty Eastern European food can be eaten while you lounge in a white terry robe. (Try the pickled vegetables!) There is also a pool table in a stately paneled room, but no cues were on hand. I’m sure it costs extra to play. There is supposedly a smoking lounge, as well, although I did not find it.

I had a beer, a couple of big bottles of water (you can bring your own bottle which they will fill with tap), and the regular access to the steam rooms and pool. My total was something like $47. Totally worth it for a multi-hour mini-vacation.

A few bits of advice is you head to Wall Street Bath specifically.

• The white robes cost an extra $5 to rent, so you might bring your own, although I didn’t see anyone doing that. Maybe there’s a way to schmooze the attendants.

• There’s no need for a towel. As many as you can use are provided, usually hot from the dryers.

• Hard plastic slippers are provided, but I’d suggest bringing a pair of flip-flops of your own.

• It’s co-ed, so bring trunks. A nice locker room with showers is provided, as is a free place to stash your valuables.

• If you wear glasses like me, be sure to take a little pouch or have trunks with a pocket so you can stash them in the steam rooms, where they will not only fog over instantly, but could even get too warm to wear if the frames are made of metal.

• Don’t worry about how you look, because even the hottest girls look miserable in the sauna. It’s more a family sort of vibe than anything like a ’70s swingers sort of place.

• Do the cold water shocks. They feel amazing once your body stops its uncontrollable seizing, and it’s the alternating hot-and-cold that really gets the muscles (and possible other organs, depending on how much you buy into the theory) to relax.

• It’s okay to say “schvitz” even if you aren’t a Jew.

• It’s okay to pretend you are a Russian mobster making a human slave deal to your friends as you sit with a towel draped over your head, but you will get all the dirty looks from actual Russians that you deserve.

Image: Cannonseat (That’s not Wall Street Bath, but another banya. Same sort of thing, mostly, although you can’t eat or drink in Wall Street Bath’s steam rooms.)

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The ground-breaking study shows that the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in memory, spatial tasks and many other functions, was more than 10 per cent smaller in those whose tipple was wine than in those who favoured beer.

Why? Are they myths about bottle or keg conditioned beer with the yeast left in true? Do the things left in the beer help your brain? I’ve never once seen the “less hang-over from homebrew” rumor to be true — I drink a lot more when I drink my homebrew and I get a massive hangover.

What could be be? Seems the researchers are attributing a substance called homocysteine — which wikipedia doesn’t appear to mention as impacting yo noggin — but certainly shows some cardiovascular and skeletal issues. Regardless it seems the vitamin B producing stuff in beer yeast helps limit the bodies production of homocysteine, which is a nice side-effect of getting a buzz that wine won’t provide.

Researchers found that beer drinkers had the lowest levels of the compound. One theory is that other ingredients of beer – B vitamins and folate – may break down homocysteine.

Definitive proof beer is better for the brain? Doubtful — but relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew!

Wine is worse for the brain than beer, research finds[The Independent]

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Mein Gott! It seems smoking is now forbidden in Germany. Initially I thought the Bavarians would reject such laws in favor of tradition, but no! Even the festival tents will be Rauchenfrei.

Smoking in fest tents will still be allowed in Rheinland-Pfalz, whereas in Bavaria it won’t, although most fest tents can be found at the October fest in Munich

German smoking ban to go into effect[435th Air Base Wing Public Affairs]

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The first, from the Times, a piece by Mark Bittman about the high cost of meat production:

Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

The second, this profile in the Wall Street Journal of Kansas City tight-end Tony Gonzalez, who has gone from a high-meat diet to a vegan one:

Three weeks later, he walked into the weight room at the Chiefs’ training facility and got a shock. The 100-pound dumbbells he used to easily throw around felt like lead weights. “I was scared out of my mind,” he says. Standing on the scale, he learned he’d lost 10 pounds.

Mr. Gonzalez considered scrapping the diet altogether and returning to the Chiefs’ standard gut-busting menu. First, though, he called Mr. Campbell, who put him in touch with Jon Hinds, himself a vegan and the former strength coach for the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. Mr. Hinds suggested plant foods with more protein.

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I’m going to taste, not devour.
I’m going to eat half of everything I order.
I’m going to exercise four or five times a week instead of twice.
I’m going to eat more fruits and vegetables and less pork fat.
I’m going to try and eat more slowly.
It is winter, the season of wonderful citrus fruit. I’m going to eat grapefruit, oranges, and tangerines at least three times a day.
I’m going to try and not eat after 9 p.m.

To Eat or Not to Eat? That Is the Question [Serious Eats]

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Now I’m not expecting to ditch 25 pounds in the next five or six weeks, but I’m going to take my best shot at it, which means I’m following the same routine that helped me lose the previous 25 or so, primarily cribbed from John Walker’s “The Hacker’s Diet,” with an extra emphasis on protein. I’m cutting out beer and booze for a while. I’m restricting calories. Coupled with the exercise I’ve somehow been able to maintain, I might even do okay.

I’ll probably keep you guys updated on my progress, although I don’t know if I’ll regale you with pictures of my pot belly, and I’ll definitely want some criticism of any outfit I put together, if only so I can tell you guys to get bent and wear it anyway. But I do actually have a point to posting this.

I get a lot of generic press release things, especially promoting web services, since that’s the fantastic New Way to Web, but this one I might actually use: Calorie King’s new lightweight, free interface to their calories listings for over 50k food items. It’s just a simple web search into an existing database, but since one of the hardest things to do when keeping a to-the-calorie diet in check is eating out, I’m thinking this might be a useful way to look up the occasional dish.

Mobile.CalorieKing.com

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There were few heavy drinkers. Just 3% of men drank more than 14 litres of beer in a week and just five women regularly consumed more than 7 litres in a week.

All of those questioned also underwent a short medical examination.

Doctors measured their weight and their waist to hip ratio and body mass index, both used to measure obesity.

The scientists found no link between beer consumption and obesity.

They said the findings suggested there is no truth in the claim that drinking too much beer makes people obese.

Of course that doesn’t mean I still don’t have one, but it’s good to know that beer and wine aren’t some sort of magical calories that are more prone to sticking around than any others.

Why the beer belly may be a myth [BBC]

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(Now that Ryan has abandoned his Weight Loss Wednesday updates—does that mean you’re skinny now?—I might even subject you to pictures of my spare tire to brighten your Hump Day work time.)

I’m usually a pretty clean person, taking at least one shower a day if not two, but with the heat that until recently had afflicted Brooklyn, coupled with my attempt to stave off air conditioning use until the last ounce of moisture had been wrung from my underwear, I would find that my post-workout routine consisted primarily of collapsing in a chair directly in front of a fan. The idea of moving to another room, soggy with sweat, and hopping into more liquid wasn’t appealing.

And every so often, I’d cool down, dry off, and forget to shower.

Well, not completely dry off.

I started to itch. You know, my balls.

I’m still fairly overweight and have been for years, so I’m not unaccustomed to my fat white thighs rubbing themselves together during workouts, leading to chapped skin and, occasionally, blood. (How fucked up is that?) I figured I’d just rubbed myself a bit raw and hadn’t noticed.

Except I’ve lost enough weight that my thighs don’t rub together any more.

A few days passed and my balls, as they say, weren’t scratching themselves.

I called in Susie for a consult, as per her duties required in payment for the privilege of being the most awesome girlfriend since Bonnie leaned over Clyde’s glowing taint and pronounced, “It does look sort of…yeasty.”

“My crotch looks like bread?” I yelped. “Wait, are you saying ‘looks like’ when you mean ’smells like’?”

No loaf has ever risen as quickly. I pulled my shorts over my shame zone.

“Oh my god, do I have a smell?”

“It’s probably jock itch,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”

“Jock itch? Really?” I’d never had jock itch or, until now, given it a second thought.

“Holy shit, baby, do you know what this means?” she laughed.

I was mystified.

Susie leaned in.

“Now you’re a jock.”

It was the happiest moment of my life.

…

So I got this creme from the drug store. It smells like a previously unidentified smell from my childhood, when I’d visit my mom at her work in mental health care facilities and retirement homes. Turns out lots of mentally retarded people and retirees have jock itch, or its kissin’ cousin, athlete’s foot. Case closed!

Of course, I got maximum strength. I was delighted by my new-found social standing, but there was no need to keep my little friend around now that its work was done. Besides, it itched like fuck. Never-ending, focus-consuming, abandon-all-hope sort of itching.

Wash up, said the instructions, and apply.

One of the reasons I know intelligent design isn’t true is that the scrotum, perhaps the most important flap of skin on a man’s body, likes to absorb things. As anyone who has smelled a scrotum can testify, it clearly likes to absorb flavor. It also likes to absorb maximum strength jock itch creme, especially when damp from a fresh, hot shower.

And that creme, as it begins to soak into the skin of the ballsack, leeches its way directly into the central nervous system. And jock or not, you will stand bow-legged in front of the bathroom, unable to form a response to your girlfriend’s queries if you might be okay and perhaps should take another shower. You may also get goosebumps when thinking about it days later.

Thankfully, I figured out how to use medicine and the god damn mess is starting to clear up. I’m almost sad to see it go: The ever-present jungle drums of lust that beat every time a beautiful women walks by have been muted by the fact that were I able to somehow lure her into my bed, I’d be too ashamed to show her the wrinkled bag of parched turkey skin that was once my triumphant genitalia. I am nearly at peace.

And if the time I masturbated with conditioner when I was 13 and all the skin on my penis dried up and shed like a snake is any indication, I may end up growing an entirely larger set of balls by the time this is all done. And, I guess, larger thighs.

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“Our research, which used the minimum leg-muscle mass T-rex required for movement, suggests that while not incredibly fast, this carnivore was certainly capable of running and would have little difficulty in chasing down footballer David Beckham, for instance,” said Phil Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester, who worked on the study.

Mr. Manning (who is not bitter at all about Beckham skipping over the pond in favor of the MLS) and I seem to think alike. We would both love to see a football game between the L.A. Galaxy and the Dinosaur National Team.

Study: T-rex could outrun Beckham [CNN]

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Reader “Goophball” sent me this clip of a ridiculously fast free climb up the side of a cliff by Dan Osman. If that’s the sort of thing that would make you say to yourself, “I bet that idiot killed himself,” you’d be partially right. Osman did die in a climbing-related accident when his “rope failed while performing a controlled free-fall jump from the Leaning Tower rock formation in Yosemite National Park.” That’s right: having tired of climbing for thrills, Osman began throwing himself off the sides of mountains, relying on his ropes (and a series of custom pulleys and brakes) to stop him before he hit the ground. Then one day, the rope broke.

Osman was on the phone with his friends when he jumped.

Then, from an angle on the pillar he hadn’t tried before, he leapt. The heavy whisper of the wind through the phone lasted ten, 11, 12 seconds, past what Fritsch and Gambalie knew to be the limit of the rope. The phone went dead.

Terminal Velocity [Outside Magazine]

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From thePersonal Water Craft entry on Wikipedia:

A rider who falls (or is ejected) off the back can land directly in the path of the PWC’s high-pressure jet of water. Unless a rider is appropriately dressed in garments made out of a strong, thick substance like neoprene (as is commonly found in wetsuits), the jet will easily penetrate any orifice it reaches. The consequences include permanent disability or death. For example, in 2006, the California Court of Appeal (First District) upheld a $3.7 million Napa County jury verdict against Polaris Industries arising out of one such incident (which had devastating effects on the victim’s lower abdomen).

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Reports of coffee elevating blood pressure are misleading, because they aren’t done they way we drink coffee: daily. Going from nothing to a triple espresso raises blood pressure; but chronic coffee drinking eventually allows for normalized blood pressure.

For example, the much repeated finding “unfiltered boiled coffee causes a significant elevation in blood pressure, especially in women” is misleading: the study actually found that if you switch exclusively to boiled unfltered coffee from filtered coffe, your systolic blood pressure rises about 4mm Hg. However, switching from filtered coffee to abstinence did not have any effect on blood pressure or heart rate. Another study found a trivial change in blood pressure (-3.4mm Hg) after two months of abstinence (afgter 5 cups/d.)

What Is The Best and Healthiest Coffee To Drink? [The Last Psychiatrist]

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What’s extra funny about this, as the Angry Aussie has discovered, is that the manufacturer implies there is far more than a slight chance you’ll be spraying your underwear crops with inner oil. They nearly promise you’re going to wet your pants with a discharge you might recognize “as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.”

And my absolute favourite (which is to say, the part of the website that horrifies me most):

“You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.”

alli: Miracle diet pill with teeny-tiny side effect [Angry Aussie/Wordpress.com]

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David Smith was a giant fatty, covered in over 600 pounds of loathsome man-cracklin’. Then, amazingly, he lost it all, slimming down to a healthy 230, several pounds of which were unneeded skin. Smith is now undergoing surgeries to have that skin removed.

Which answers the question: better corpulent gravy grub or skinny Hellraiser extra? Looks like taut Cenobite wins this round.

I kid because I love (being an asshole), but hats off, really. I can’t lose my 20 pounds of spare tire that I need to finish it off and dude’s tearing off pounds so fast he has wings. Good job!

This is really the most incredible weight lost story I’ve ever heard [Fugerica]

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After the jump: How enemas work!

 
How enemas work:  The lower segment of the colon, called the rectum, is thicker and narrower and ends on the outside of the body at the anus.  Waste gathering in the rectum causes stretching which sends a message to the brain and the rest of the intestines that its time to have a bowel movement.  Enemas stimulate these same reflexes and in that way exercises them, especially if the reflexes are decreased (due to poor bowel habits) or need to be increased (i.e. constipation).
 
Enema Menu (as served up by Bastyr University Natural Health Clinic):
 
Saline:  Into 2 quarts water add 1 tablespoon sea salt, 1 tablespoon baking soda.  This solution can also be made in 2 quarts of herb tea:  boil water,  steep 2 tablespoons of herbs in a non-aluminum container, cool, add salt and soda.  Suggested herbs are catnip, chamomile and peppermint.
 
Coffee:  Organic, fresh ground, caffeinated coffee (Altura brand) is used.  Brew it with non-aluminum utensils.  Use 2 tablespoons coffee grounds per quart of water (use less if coffee makes you jittery).  Allow to cool before using.
 
Bentonite Clay:  1 tablespoon clay per 2 quarts of water.
 
Glycothymoline:  Edgar Cayce formula for dissolving mucus.
 
Charcoal:  1-5 tablespoons charcoal per 2 quarts water.
 
Goldenseal:  4 tablespoons of crushed leaves per 2 quarts water.  Steep for 15 minutes, strain, cool and use.  This is an astringent enema.
 
Cornstarch:  Do a saline enema first.  Make a paste of 2 tablespoons cornstarch in water, then dilute into one pint warm water and use this as an enema to decrease irritation.

Ed.’s note: Use of image is by no means endorsement of Blink 182.

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While we believe that the variety in poo is, indeed, “bottomless,” these poo minimalists have devised a quick and easy classification entitled, the Bristol Stool Scale. Developed in the 1990s at the University of Bristol (those crazy Brits), this scale classifies stool into 7 categories. While we are a bit skeptical that this limited classification can capture the glorious diversity of poo, the underlying premise is sound.

K W Heaton and S J Lewis (the developers of the scale) determined after considerable research that a poo’s consistency is determined by how much time it spends in the colon. The longer the incubation, the drier and more particulate the stool (this occurs because the colon’s primary function is to absorb water).

The amazing thing about these British physicians is that they actually created a visual scale so that patients could say, “Hey doc! That one, that one…That’s me!”

Bristol Stool Scale
Type 1: Separate hard lumps, like nuts
Type 2: Sausage-shaped but lumpy
Type 3: Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface
Type 4: Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft
Type 5: Soft blobs with clear-cut edges
Type 6: Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool
Type 7: Watery, no solid pieces. Entirely Liquid

If you are so inclined, hit the jump for the illustrated version (although the illustrations in “What’s Your Poo Telling You?” are much more impressive.

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