Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Go Hiking Because You Are Built for It

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It is so obvious, but it took the title of today’s Bookish Weapon to really consider this. You have two legs and two feet. Your ancestors walked a lot. Actually, no. They hiked! Everywhere!

So why no do something you were built for? It makes perfect sense. However, any have excuses.

My Back Hurts

You are not using your back when you hike and haven’t you heard the mantra of physical therapists everywhere; motion is lotion! Wim Hof (the Iceman) says BREATH!! I say MOVE. What better way to move than using your legs and feet.

Your back will heal and get stronger as you move. Maybe no pack on your back for now. Just get yourself up a mountain.

But My Knees Hurt

Yes, so do mine. Especially the left one, but both have arthritis. One has had surgery. What is the best medicine for that? Movement!!! After a coupe hours of hiking your knees are gong to feel better (usually). Not so much if you fall down and bang it on a rock.

Make sure you use the Couch stretch after climbing. If you don’t know what the Couch stretch is then look it up online under Kelly Starrett.

I Am Too Old

Unless you are in your nineties, you can’t play the age card with me. I am seventy-five. I don’t listen to people that say I shouldn’t climb mountains at my age.

Remember the cliche that you are only as old as you think you are. Never stop moving. Can you get up off the floor without using your hands? Neither can I, but that doesn’t stop me. It might keep me out of the 100 year old Olympics according to Dr. Peter Attia, but it won’t keep me off a mountain.

Go Hiking Because The Discipline Will Equal Freedom

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Hiking every weekend takes discipline. There are some weekends when I would rather stay home in bed. However, once I am on the trail I feel completely free.

That makes sense. Once you take action you set things in motion and it changes your brain.

Before

This is the time when it feels better to stay in bed. It is when you need to use Jocko’s “Binary Code.” Yes or No! Get out of bed or don’t get out of bed. If you are disciplined you will get out of bed. Your mind will tell you it’s cold, it will be wet, you will be miserable. Not only that but your knees are hurting and you should probably rest them.

It doesn’t end there. If you are old like me then your mind really has become good at messing with you. If the little adversary in my mind is feeling particularly strong it might tell me I’m too old to go hiking. It might ask me why someone my age is doing something that only younger people should do.

During

The battle doesn’t end just because you were able to get out of bed and get ready. No. You get to the trailhead and it is pouring down rain or snow. You sit in your car and the mind starts asking those questions again. What do you think your thing to prove? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you think you are? Why would a reasonable person go get wet on purpose?

But you overcome that. You turn off that part of your mind. You get out of the car, put your pack on your back and move! It is slightly easier now. You have taken another action. But it is hard at first. Just getting going, but it gets easier and easier mentally.

After

No matter how convinced you were you had no business climbing a mountain that day, when it is all over and you jog your last 100 yards down the trail, you have such a feeling of accomplishment and freedom it is hard to describe.

After you have changed back into your street shoes, taken off your pack, and settled into the driver’s seat the sensation hits you that you have done more by 8:00 AM than most people will do all day. So be disciplined about it and go regularly in the rain and in the snow.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Two

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“Falling Upward,” by Richard Rohr is about, as the subtitle says, “A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.” It is a thoughtful book by a well known Franciscan priest.

It is a good book for people who are in the second half of life and are wealthy enough to be able to partake in all that the second half offers. In fact, it is also an interesting book for those that are just old, but are still living in the first half.

First Half

Rohr points out that we are a “first-half-of-life culture,” largely concerned about surviving successfully. I would add, or just surviving. He says, “We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.” Yet, many, will not accomplish the first half of life in their entire lifetimes, clinging tenaciously to basic survival.

“You need a very strong container to hold the contents and contradictions that arrive later in life.” If you don’t have that strong container it’s tough. He says, “In fact, far too many (especially women and disadvantaged people) have lived very warped and defeated lives because they tried to give up a self that was not there yet.”

Tragedy

“The Tragic Sense of Life,” is the title of one of the chapters in this book. I thought it made a lot of sense. He says that the Greek word for tragedy means “goat story.” I thought that was funny because I have been referred to as a “Billy goat,” due to my hiking. The idea however is that we can grow from tragedy. Rohr says, “It all depends on whether we are willing to see down as up; or as Jung put it, that “where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold.” “Lady Julian put it even more poetically: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.”

He says, “I am personally convinced that Jesus’ ability to find a higher order inside constant disorder is the very heart of his message – and why true Gospel, as rare as it might be, still heals and renews all that it touches.” That is a profound statement and it certainly rings true. Order and chaos are a part of life, in constant ebb and flow.

Second Half

“In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us and truly influence us.” What a great way to live! The older I get the less I think I know for sure about anything yet I have met many older men who have set their opinions in stone. Rohr says, “It always deeply saddens me when old folks are still full of themselves and their absolute opinions about everything.”

People who do the second half of life well have combined their occupation and their life so that their “delivery system” is one. He says, “Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore but to love what you have – right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.”

This book continues with a look at the shadow self. Shadow work is a topic in many books these days, but I think this one offers unique insight. So buy the book! You will be glad you did. After all, it is another bookish weapon.

Bookish Weapon Number Twenty-Nine

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Dave Asprey’s book Super Human is the kind of book that gives people hope. At least that is my take on it. He is the rich guy that has said he is going to live until he is 180. Maybe it was only 150 years. That is a long time.

Right now it costs a lot of money to take the supplements, get the procedures done and buy the equipment and devices necessary to prolong your life. For example, recently Ben Greenfield, who also reports on longevity, did a solo podcast where he told everyone exactly what supplements he took every day. One of the listeners added it up and it would cost you over $800 a month. Now Ben doesn’t pay that much because companies send him the product for free or he uses his own supplement company. And Ben probably takes less than Dave Asprey.

So I suppose it depends on your station in life. If you have the money you can do it and it is only going to get better as new things are developed. There are also many things Dave recommends that do not cost a thing.

So let’s dig into Dave’s book and see what you can use now, even if you are poor, to extend your life.

The Four Killers

This is the title of his first chapter. In it, he discusses heart disease, diabetes Alzheimers and Cancer. In his discussion of heart disease, he links mold exposure to it and inflammation. With diabetes, he says, “High blood sugar also causes dangerous nerve damage by injuring the walls of the capillaries the bring blood and nutrients to your nerves. This is called peripheral artery disease and it is especially common in the legs and feet which is why you may have heard of people suffering from diabetes needing foot or leg amputations.” He says that “The risk of diabetes was reduced by 32% in this with even moderate muscle strength.” That is certainly worth considering. Do some lifting and it doesn’t cost a thing.

Dave discusses Alzheimer’s and how inflammation is once again a culprit. He says the earlier you attack this the less likely you will have this disease as you age.

With Cancer, he says it is a “double-edged sword when it comes to anti-aging. Any time you do something that makes your cells grow faster and get younger, you are inherently increasing your cancer risk because cancer cells can potentially grow and rejuvenate along with the healthy ones. Then you end up with this weird dichotomy. You can grow old “normally” with a roughly 40% chance of getting cancer, or you can get younger and maybe as a result slightly increase your risk.” He goes on to discuss the benefits of autophagy. Fasting promotes autophagy and during this process, your body scans for damaged cells and eliminates them. The process also reduces inflammation. Autophagy is why I fast.

What More You Can Do

There is far more here than I can tell you so be sure to buy the book, but here are a few things. Work at lengthening your Telomeres. They get shorter as you age. There is a synthetic peptide called Epitalon. It increases mice’s lives by 13% Dave says. You will discover that a lot of these things work very well on mice. Keep in mind you are not a mouse. Another one Dave mentions is TA-65.

Food is a big topic for Dave. You especially shouldn’t eat the combination of protein and sugar. Not too much meat and be sure the meat you do eat is good quality. However, if you are old like me keep in mind that the risks of over-consuming protein decrease after age 65. That is because old people like me do not absorb it as well. I have read elsewhere you should take in more protein when you are older, not less.

Fasting

I mentioned this above but Dave gets into it a couple of times. He says, ..in 2019 scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology discovered that just fifty-eight hours of fasting dramatically increases levels of forty-four different metabolites, including thirty that were previously unrecognized.”

I have fasted for as long as three days, but typically 15 or 16 hours a day. I think it is worth it and I do feel a lot better afterward. Especially after I eat!

Sleep

Dave has a whole chapter on sleep. He talks about his Aura ring that measures his sleep. I use a Whoop which does even more. Dave says teens need 1.7 to 2 hours of deep sleep per night and if over 18 need 1.5 to 1.8 hours. Oh, before he tells you all this he tells you that if you don’t get enough sleep it will kill you. He makes some cheaper sleep tracking recommendations too. Read the book!

The Brain

Dave says that none of us should experience impaired cognition as we age, but it happens and Dave says, “…we jokingly refer to instances of forgetfulness as “senior moments’ instead of calling them out for what they are – symptoms of dysfunction that are also precursors of Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia.” So do you remember what you just read in the first paragraph of this post?

Dave suggests Neurofeedback for improving your brain, light therapy and avoiding certain foods. He quotes a doctor Bredsen as saying, “the biggest risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease are chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and exposure to toxins.”

“Lights that blink forty timesecome Super Human  a second can break up amyloid tangles in the brain.” Maybe at some point you will be able to get something like this. Right now there are those working to get them in nursing homes.

Dave says that if you stop eating sugar you will reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s dramatically. He says to take 400 to 1000 mcg of chromium picolinate daily with 25 to 100 mg of vanadyl sulfate at the time you eat carbohydrates.

Like I said there is so much more in this book. Read it!

Bookish Weapon Number Twenty-Nine

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This book entitled “Monastic Wisdom” was written in 1999 by Hugh Feiss, a Benedictine Monk. If you find God and all things spiritual appalling you might want to skip this. However, thinking about and applying this wisdom in your life gives you a powerful weapon for dealing with suffering and malevolence.

As I write this it is Christmas Day 2019. It seemed an appropriate book to discuss on this Christian holy day. As Hugh says in the introduction, the Benedictine tradition “…has something to teach men and women of all walks of life about how to live wisely and joyfully, how to budget time, how to get along together, how to walk gently on the earth.” I would add or hike.

Time

Benedict separates the day into three activities. These are work, prayer, and reading. Well, I have two out of three down. Hugh says the “Rule of Benedict conveys a sense of urgency: one must hasten and run toward the goal of everlasting life. The goal is precious; there is no time to waste getting there.” I sure don’t want to rush things when it comes to death, but maybe he is saying something different.

Laced in and between those primary activities it is important to make time for mutual support and help. We all can take a lesson from that and make time to support one another. Hugh says,” …after God, other persons are the most important realities in our lives. If we are too busy to make time for people who need us, whether they are strangers or neighbors, there is something wrong with our priorities.”

Prayer

If you don’t pray you can skip this, but if you pray even once in a while this is a section of the book worth reading. The first thing that jumped out at me was the statement that “…lack of concentration at prayer is a sign that our minds are too cluttered.” I really need some work in this area.

Then he quotes Monks from the past about prayer. They are lengthy and I suggest that you read the book if interested. Hugh suggests that there are three important things to remember about prayer: that it is a means of “self-offering,” and that it is a part of life. He says, “One brings one’s activities and concerns to times of prayer; one slips short prayers into the intervals that occur in working and walking and weeding. In the end, prayer is about awareness of the divine presence, and that presence is everywhere.”

Reading

He says the first thing to decide is whether you will devote yourself to reading and the second is what to read. As a Benedictine, he suggests the Bible and early church writers. Of course, I would add for regular folks that they should read from all disciplines so that their “map of the world” is closer to the actual territory.

Just to give you an idea from the Rule of Benedict regarding the importance of reading, here is a snippet: “ During Lent, they should each receive a book from the library that they are to read straight through to the end.” And from the Life of Wulfstan, “At Wulfstan’s table, edifying books were read. Silence was rigorously kept so that all might listen attentively. When the meal was over and the eating place quiet, he would explain what had been read in their native tongue, so that he could provide heavenly alms for those to whom he had already served bodily sustenance.”

And here is an admonition to me. It was like it was written just for me. It is from “Mirror For Monks,” by Louis De Blois. “Do not imitate those who follow no order in their reading but are content to read whatever reading chances to come their way. They are interested in nothing except what is new and unheard of. Whatever is familiar and everything old, however useful, bores them. Avoid such instability, for it does not build the spirit but scatters it.” He is describing me to a tee! My only defense is that it is better I read than not read and I know many who do not. Yes, a flimsy excuse.

Silence

There are so many wonderful sections on this subject. Silence was important in Monastic tradition. Hugh says, “The principal enemy of interior and exterior silence for most of us is our tongue.”

There is one quote that stood out for me. It is from Esther De Waal’s “A Life-Giving Way.” She says, “ …When God’s voice is drowned out by incessant clamor, whether inner or outer, in whatever shape or form, then continuous dialogue with God becomes impossible. An inner monologue with myself, constant chatter with others, the invasion of the spoken word through the press or television are all the ever-present realities in my daily life over which I need to exercise some sort of discipline if I am to keep any quiet inner space in which to listen to the Word.”

There is so much more in the book on peace, patience, stability, obedience, authority, longing and love. It is a great resource for wisdom in all these areas.

Bookish Weapon Number Nineteen

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This book, “Boundless,” by Ben Greenfield will not be available until January 2020 so no, I have not read it yet. However, it is a way to help promote his book for him and provide me the platform to tell you about some of the things I have learned from listening to his podcasts for several years now. This will be a bit longer than my typical post.

Of course, I recommend you read his book and even his older book called, “Beyond Training.” And don’t forget the podcasts! Yes, I know some of you don’t listen to podcasts or read books, but just things that summarize all of that. So let me jump around a bit and see if I can give you a little bit of everything. But remember, this is really an overview and based on my experience and opinion so please research this on your own. It does give you a starting point.

Anti-aging – The Number One Supplement

It surprises me somewhat that younger people have so much interest in not getting old. I would think that you’re so busy you don’t start to think about that until you are, well, older. Yet, this is a hot topic.

Under this subject there are a whole lot of things to discuss. First, supplements. The most popular and well researched supplement for anti-aging is an NAD precursor called Nicotinamide Riboside Chloride and sold by two main companies, Elysium and Chromadex. Elysium sells a product called Basis and Chromadex sells one called Tru-Niagen. I will let you decide which is best. I do take one of them now and have taken the other in the past. Where did I hear about these two products? On the Ben Greenfield podcast!

Wait, I went too fast. You may be asking what, pray tell, is NAD? NAD stands for Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide. As we age NAD levels deteriorate so the idea behind this supplement which is basically Vitamin B-3, is to increase NAD levels in the body. Research has shown that it indeed does just that. So why is that important? Because NAD energizes your cells so you have more energy. You can climb mountains when you’re 74!

There is another product that is supposed to increase NAD levels, but has no research behind it that I know about and that is Nicotinamide Mononucleotide or NMN. David Sinclair takes it.

The Others

Other Ant-Aging supplements recommended by Sandy Kaufman in the Kaufman Protocol (one of Ben’s guests) include Resveratol, Pterostilbene, Astaxanthin and Curcumin for those over 45 years old. There a slightly different recommendations for other categories of people.

Sleep

This is my favorite subject. So I want to pass on what I have learned from Ben’s guests and Ben’s recommendations. Then tell you my experience.

First, getting to sleep can be difficult for some people. Ben recommends Dr.Parsley’s Sleep Remedy, CBD oil and Quiksilver Melatonin. He also recommends a product called Circadia. Think it is expensive? Well NuCalm is almost $5000. He recommends it too, but Circadia is less than a thousand.

Let me throw my two cents in as well. I have had great results with CBD oil and Dr Parsley’s product, but now I am using a product called Mag R&R which helps me with tight muscles and prevents night cramps from long mountain hikes. It contains melatonin, 5-HTP, Rhodiola, Ashwagandha, Gaza, ad Oasis Flower.

Dr. Steven Gundry in his recent book on anti-aging recommends that you do not eat anything for at least four hours before you go to bed. He claims that in order for your brain to be “cleansed” by something called Glymph, your body can’t be focusing on digestion.

Another recommendation from Ben is a grounding mat. It is supposed to eliminate pain while you are on it. Get it from Ultimate Longevity. Why? Listen to the podcast that features the owner for the answer to that.

Blood Tests

When you get your annual physical your doctor orders the standard blood tests. Pretty basic, but what do you really need to order? Here is Ben’s 11 Best Biomarkers:

RBC Magnesium
Estrodiol
High-Sensitivity- C-Reactive Protein
Tryilyceride to HDL Ratio
Full Lipid Panel
Omega Three Fatty Acids
IGF-1
Insulin
Complete Blood Count with Differential
Iron

Toss that at your doctor next time you see him or her. If you want a lengthy explanation for each one visit Ben’s website and search for 11 Best Biomarkers.

Recovery

Hopefully, some of you the read these posts are hikers or engage in some kind of regular exercise. If so, then you are gong to have times when you tweaked or injured something. Maybe it is just being extremely sore which I guarantee if you go hiking with me.

So it is with that in mind that I am introducing you to something called BP 157. Yes, I heard about first on the Ben Greenfield podcast. You can now take it orally, but before this the only way it worked was by injection. There never was an oral BPC 157 that worked. However, Greenfield had the owner of Dr. Seeds dot com on his show and they discussed their oral product. Ben tried it and said it worked, but that because it is oral it took three weeks before you felt any difference to an injury for instance.

What exactly is this stuff? BP 157 is a peptide and it works with your blood to help heal injuries faster. What I didn’t know was that it also dramatically reduces soreness after a workout or training session. I used it for two months and discovered, to my delight that Ben was right. The stuff is amazing and there are no side effects. Dr Seeds sells the only (so far) oral product that works. He calls it Body Protective Complex (clever, right?). If you decide to try it know that the black bottle is the higher dose. That is what I used.

Other Peptides

Peptides are a huge topic. BPC 157 is only the beginning. There are peptides for energy, better sleep, etc. You can dive deep. However, as far as I know all these other peptides require an injection.

For example, there is DSIP or Delta Sleep Inducing Peptide. If you try this let me know how it works as I have not as yet. I tend to stay away from injections.

Surface Scratching

This post has only scratched the surface of what is in Greenfield’s books and podcasts. I hope you will start listening, because it could have a huge impact on your health.

Now, at least you have a place to start. It is a fast changing world of bio-hacks and everything to make you better so you can go hiking of course.