Fields of Ice
Dave captured this shot out at Ladder #1 today:
As you can see, while Ladder #1 is clear the swim area most definitely is not!
New OWC Gear: Custom Made Lake Monster Shirts!
For those of you who have already joined the Cult of Cool, you can now order custom made shirts that feature your very own, hard-earned Lake Monster number! Here’s what they look like:
And for those rare and intrepid souls who did 1/2 mile or more in sub-35F water temps, you can get your Lake Monster Elite (a.k.a. “Ice Monster”) number on the back instead:
Just send me a quick note at srhernan [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll get back to you with pricing and sizing options.
And finally, for all the rest of you who haven’t yet made it out to Ladder #1, you can always check out the OWC store where you can buy a whole bunch of really cool OWC stuff!
But until you actually come out and swim with us, you will have to gnash your teeth in silent envy and/or caterwaul with rage whenever you see one of us sporting our ultracool Lake Monster numbers!
How to Really Make Smarter Cereal Purchases
This one was a “gimme.” The health and fitness blogger at the Chicago Tribune recently featured a piece called “How to make smarter cereal purchases.”
Among the strategies you can use to make wiser cereal purchases are the following:
- Watch the sugar. Look for cereals with less than 10 grams of sugar per serving and beware of code names such as honey, cane juice and high-fructose corn syrup. It helps to know that 4 grams of sugar equal 1 teaspoon.
- Call it “dessert.” It’s best to think of kids’ cereals as non-fat cookies,” says NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle. “Is that what kids really should be eating for anything other than dessert?”
I’m surprised there wasn’t any mention of how important it is to choose the “most fortified” cereal:
I have a better and much simpler strategy:
Don’t eat it yourself. And for God’s sake, don’t serve it to your kids.
Diet, Exercise, and BDNF
A great deal of contemporary neuroscience research focuses on identifying and developing “neuroprotectant” compounds that help insulate the human brain from the deleterious effects of aging and disease. In this respect, there is substantial interest in compounds that increase the levels of the protein brain derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF.
BDNF is essential for the survival, growth, and differentiation of new neurons and synapses within the brain, particularly to areas involved with learning and mental performance. So it makes sense to target anything that enhances the levels of BDNF in the human brain.
At least within reason…
A group of scientists at the Emory University School of Medicine are working on a compound that mimics BDNF, called 7,8-dihydroxyflavone, in hopes of developing a pharmaceutical product that enhances human brain development and insulates us from the ravages of time. But what I find especially salient about this new potential “wonder drug” is the following:
7,8-dihydroxyflavone is a member of the flavonoid family of chemicals, which are abundant in fruits and vegetables. The compound’s selective effects suggest that it could be the founder of a new class of brain-protecting drugs.
It would seem as if the simple practice of eating less processed foods in favor of more natural state fruits and vegetables would bolster BDNF levels without having to rely on a nicely-packaged chemical agent with unknown long-term effects. And if you combine this with the right physical exercise – which has been proven to raise BDNF levels as well – you might not need an artificial agent to keep you sharp in your later years.
Just a thought…
You Are Born to Sprint, Not Run
Dr. Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard professor of evolutionary biology and an avid runner, recently published a study that concluded that running barefoot is more healthy for you than using running shoes. And while I agree with the barefoot part, I’m not too convinced about this part of Dr. Lieberman’s beliefs:
Lieberman has looked at the evolution of long-distance running; 2 million years ago our pre-human ancestors used that approach to wear out prey during prolonged hunts.
Many people – especially hardcore marathoners and long distance triathletes – misunderstand my views on running. I am not anti-running or anti-endurance activities. I am, however, strongly critical of a health/fitness industry that overemphasizes heavy endurance training as a way to optimal health.
And I am especially critical whenever I read some body of work alluding to the belief that humans somehow evolved as marathon runners (In fact, if you want a good counterpoint to the “persistence hunter” argument, be sure to check out Mark Sisson’s great piece, Did Humans Evolve to Be Long-Distance Runners?)
The bottom line is that heavy marathon and endurance training takes a pretty hefty toll on the human body – especially if that’s all the exercise you do. Granted, it’s better than being sedentary, but there’s a lot of evidence indicating that there’s a point of rapidly diminishing returns involved with endurance training.
And, unfortunately, and many people far exceed this point.
It’s Not the Body Weight, It’s the Body Composition
Be sure to check out the piece The Scales Can Lie: Hidden Fat in today’s Wall Street Journal. It discusses a recent Mayo Clinic study on normal weight obesity – i.e. having a BMI within an “acceptable” range but still having unhealthy amounts of body fat.
This article is especially salient right now as legions of Americans hit the gym to keep their New Year resolutions to “shed a few pounds.” The problem with this approach is that being fit and healthy has very little to do with losing weight and everything to do with developing and maintaining an optimal body composition.
But don’t tell that to most gyms and personal trainers:
Still, body-fat assessment is a common feature at many gyms. At Equinox Fitness Club, a national chain based in New York, members get a body-composition test as part of an initial assessment before they begin a training regimen. “This is a culture obsessed with weight, but very little attention is paid to the composition of that weight,” says Geralyn Coopersmith, an exercise physiologist and senior national manager for Equinox’s training program.
The key is, throw away your scale and focus instead on consuming the right foods and engaging in shorter-burst, higher intensity activities that stimulate the growth of lean muscle tissue. In fact, the Mayo study zeros directly in on the latter point:
The findings of the Mayo study, which was published in November in the European Heart Journal, suggest that reducing heart risk requires increasing the percentage of lean muscle mass at the expense of body fat. That underscores the importance of exercise in maintaining cardiovascular health—including weight lifting and other resistance training, which helps build lean body mass.
Remember, only caged rats run on treadmills – and they tend to live sick and die young.
The Perils of Data Hyper-Analysis
As a quick supplement to my prior post, check out The Minds Behind the Meltdown in today’s Wall Street Journal. Scott Patterson’s column highlights the key themes of his new book, “The Quants,” which documents how a small but very influential group of people essentially eschewed reality in favor of digital data only to “analyze” away billions of dollars.
And for those of you interested in learning more about the history and key factors that spawned this rampant data-driven and hyper-analytic mentality, be sure to check out the excellent NYT piece, Risk Mismanagement, by Joe Nocera.
Your Brain on Digital Data
First, a few disclosures. I make my living as an analyst. This is why the content that occasionally makes its way onto this site is a bit, well…analytical. I’m also a neuroscience geek who thinks that interviewing brain scientists is a lot of fun. This is why I will sometimes include topic areas that touch on the inner game of health and fitness – especially evolutionary or “primal” fitness.
But the overall goal of Open Water Chicago remains consistent – namely, to provide you with valuable information to optimize your overall health, and to inspire you to swim outdoors (hopefully at Ladder #1). And while at times these posts may seem tangential, they are ultimately produced with these ends in mind.
So now to today’s piece…
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Your Brain on Digital Data
Nature has provided us with an advanced frontal cortex which gives us an extraordinary capacity to simultaneously take in, process, and make sense of all sorts of data emanating from our immediate environment. In other words, we are better equipped than lower mammals to analyze what’s happening in the present moment and to make changes in our behaviors based upon expected or desired future outcomes.
This critical advantage has enabled us humans to literally predict and shape our futures, thereby achieving a complete dominion over all other sentient species. However, our analytical and predicative prowess has historically been rooted in our ability to gather and find meaning in sensory data from our immediate physical environment.
Fast forward to 2010, and we see a completely different scenario.
Most of us reside in a world defined by several structured layers of comfort, security, and predictability, and a great deal of our human experience involves interacting not with real-world sensory data, but with artificial “digital” data. And digital data is highly sanitized information that’s been truncated or rounded into neat little “bits” that line up perfectly in a digital medium such as a computer screen, a smart phone, or a television set.
The problem is that the human brain is not designed to process information in such neat and perfect little bits.
Instead, our advanced cortices evolved to take in and to make sense of highly dynamic – and often quite chaotic – sensory input from our natural environment. And the only way to thrive in this setting would be to effectively filter out the useless sensory “noise” in favor of those essential nuggets of imperfect data that could mean the difference between surviving or not surviving.
Which brings us to our current dilemma. We have fallible, imperfect brains that evolved to pare down imperfect data – but we’re constantly trying to process and find meaning in limitless amounts of essentially perfect digital data.
Is it any wonder that people are overwhelmed these days?
The key is, at a fundamental level your brain is hardwired to filter out any data that isn’t essential to your immediate survival. And contrary to what you might think, most of your e-mail exchanges, text messages, and Twitter streams have no impact whatsoever on whether or not you will survive and thrive as a human. Conversely, most of it is just neatly packaged but mostly useless artificial “noise” that serves little purpose other than to overwhelm your brain.
Remember, data overload leads to paralysis. And “back in the day” paralysis led to extinction.
