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Staying Lean
October 31, 2005 09:18 AM
I have said this before, but now I have more personal evidence to buttress the point: it not possible to stay lean, short of living in a concentration camp, without being active. Eating less is not sufficient.
To our dismay, my wife, always slender, has begun to put on more fat than she wants. She doesn't eat much, far less than she usually did over the many years we have been married, because she has lost her appetite with her recent illness. But, now that her balance is unsteady and she is weakened, she is less active than customary.
I have also been eating less because of the high heat of the summer and my diminished activity. I have been reluctant to leave for a day of hiking or motorcycle riding. And it has been harder to get to the gym with all the doctor appointments and other things I have been doing (working too hard on research). So, even though I have dropped to 202 pounds, I am not as lean as I was at 208. This is always my experience. When I am active and work out in my usual intense style, I eat more, weigh more and am more lean.
How can this be and why does it show that dieting alone cannot produce a lean and healthful body?
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (6)
Nuclear Bombs in Suitcases
Don't miss this article.
This is excellent reporting from one of the best in the business. Richard Miniter's Suitcase Nukes from the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal, my favored news source.
His book, listed at the bottom of the article, is must reading for anyone who wants to be in a position to think about the War on Terror (what a name) and what is reported in the media.
I have seen Mr. Miniter interviewed on CSpan. He is brilliant, thoughtful, and has a penetrating logic to his arguments, always critically evaluating the many facts that are thrown about in support of various points of view.
LINK · Everything · Comments (3)
Home Runs: The End
October 29, 2005 05:30 PM
In preparing my home run paper for submission to a scientific journal I have condensed and refined it.
As always the paper is available at the Research link at the top of the page.
LINK · Sports · Comments (5)
Life is Not Chronological
A great insight in this quote from E.M. Forster that I found in a fine paper by Jon Kleinberg titled "Bursty and Hierarchical Structure in Streams."
". . . there seems something else in life besides time, something which may conveniently be called “value,” something which is measured not by minutes or hours but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few notable pinnacles, and when we look at the future it seems sometimes a wall, sometimes a cloud, sometimes a sun, but never a chronological chart." E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927).
Read More »LINK · Uncertainty · Comments (1)
Three Day Food Dairy Reprised
October 28, 2005 01:28 PM
I so often get questions about how I eat or for recipes that I think it is best to just repost the popular Three Day Food Diary that I kept.
Home Runs in Extra Innings
October 26, 2005 07:15 PM
Last night's World Series game ended with a game-winning home run in the 13th inning. An extra-inning play off game that put the Astros in the Series was won by a home run. I once played a 20 inning game in minor league baseball that ended with a home run by our catcher.
I think a lot of extra inning games are won with a home run. By a lot, I mean a dominant percentage of over inning games are won by a home run. It makes sense that this should be true. A home run is, after all, a hit that produces a run for sure. Most other hits do not have that quality. Hence, a decisive hit is most likely to be a home run in late innings.
As the innings wind out, a single run becomes the deciding factor. It may take several hits to produce a run, but one home run does it for sure. I do not have the data to test this proposition, but I have only a small doubt that it is true. Late inning home runs decide more extra-inning games than 9 inning games.
LINK · Sports · Comments (2)
100 Year Old Cool Whip
Have you ever wondered what the trash heaps we leave behind will look to our descendents 1000 years from now?
A lot of what we leave behind will be paper, still the most prevalent substance in the pile. That is ok, because it will eventually decompose as did ancient trees long ago.
But what about our food or semi-food remains? How much of it will last the ages?
Quite a bit, I should think. To me, a corn chip of whatever brand is basically indigestible. I wonder why anyone would eat them. But I know that, eventually, micro-organisms will evolve that are capable of decomposing them. They will exist in our legacy trash-heaps as some kind of strange composite pile of "something?".
So were my thoughts as I cleared out parts of the refrigerator I had not really seen. I have had to take over a lot of our reprovishioning with my wife's illness.
I was amazed and amused with the objects I found. A very old plastic container of Cool Whip, probably bought to make strawberry shortcake for our grandchildren. It looked so old, but strangely, the substance inside the container had not degraded notably. There were many other strange substances I won't go into.
To me, they all had a small likelihood of biodegrading in my life time (long as it will be). If they do, strange new micro-organisms will have to evolve that are capable of metabolizing their contents (they read as long and as strangely as a new periodic table of modern additives would, were one to be made). These "foods" will leave a hard puzzle for future anthropogists.
Now that I have command of the refrigerator, a wife's province in most households, the produce and meat drawers are full and there is fruit to please the eye when you open the door. No plastic containers with semi-biogradable, novel substances that merely resemble food.
Refrigerator Commander, signing off.
LINK · Everything ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)
Arthur Jones Again
Here are some questions regarding Arthur Jones style of training from a reader, Massy.
"I was wondering if you were familiar with the research of Arthur Jones (founder of Nautilus Sports). He spent a lot of money researching optimal fitness and some of his results seem to contradict your recommendations. The most interest are as follows:
1 -- Jones preached that 1 set to failure (seemingly different from your alactic approach) was all anyone needed and that multiple sets was a form of overtraining.
2 -- Jones felt that people do not need to work out for more than 90 minutes or so per week. Moreover, he felt that we should train each muscle group at most 2 times per week (often 1 time will be optimal). This seems to agree with some of your recommendations.
3 -- Jones advocated slow and deliberate speed of movement during each excercise as a way to optimally increase muscle strength, power, and muscle size. The duration should be 2 seconds lifting and 4 seconds of negative resistance. This seems to be very different than your prespription of explosive sets. (Admittedly, Jones' research doesn't seem to focus on the difference between and FT, IT, and ST muscles.) The main reason for the slower cadence is that it produces the same results with lower chance for injury.
I was really curious to hear your thoughts on Jones' approach given your significant research in the field of evolutionary fitness."
My response...
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Home Runs Again
October 25, 2005 07:47 PM
I have had to puzzle out why home runs per game is the wrong thing to look at when it comes to measuring home run hitting in MLB over the years. It is the single statistic most emphasized in published media reports on steroids and home runs, with the AP pointing to home runs per game as some kind of evidence that home runs are different now from years ago.
So, I looked at the problem more carefully in the recent draft of my paper Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball?.
Read More »LINK · Sports · Comments (1)
Genetic Diversity
The gene space idea is moving ahead with new results on craniums and other traits of populations.
Humans are diverse and that is one of the keys to our adaptability. Most wild animals are quite similar compared to humans and this may become important for medical treatment, diet, and behaviors. Now phenotypic diversity, body and cranial measurements, is getting its attention.
Here is a fine piece by Armand Leroi on Human Diversity.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (2)
Protein "Replentishment"
October 24, 2005 08:17 PM
I am not impressed with the research on protein replentishment. "Experts" tell us that we have a "window of opportunity" of perhaps two hours after a work out to load our muscles with protein and stimulate protein synthesis in the muscles.
Most of the studies making this point are based on muscle biopsies. There is too little precision in these measurements to point to any time period for optimal protein intake. There is no way to know when the muscle protein taken in the biopsy was laid down. This means that all this is speculation on the part of advocates of supplementation within the mythical "window".
To top it off, proteins do not absorb as amino acids in the muscle until the protein breaks down. This takes about two hours for whey protein (but your own metabolism may vary), about five hours for soy and egg protein, and about seven hours for casein.
This means that anything other than free form amino acids will be taken up long after your work out is over. No rush to ingest and plenty of time to recharge later.
A bigger problem is that the muscle needs time to degrade the damaged fibers before it is ready to rebuild. It is likely that too early intake of amino acids interferes with the catabolic state that is essential to take out the damaged protein filaments before the rebuilding process begins. Satellite cells must migrate to the site of the damage and no rebuilding can commence until they relocate in the damaged fibers and the damaged fibers are degraded and removed.
So, what is the rush? Nature has its own timing and things must proceed in pace.
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (6)
Fat Mobilization and Antioxidants
Fats are readily oxidized and contain about twice the energy as carbohydrate or protein (9 calories versus 4 calories per gram). You carry far more metabolizable energy as fat than any other fuel. So, why do runners, bikers, hikers, and, well you name it, consume so much carbohydrate? They have their reasons, but I am not so sure they are that sound.
Consuming high carb diets makes one a very poor mobilizer of fat. This is one path through which high carb diets, in excess of energy expenditure, contribute to the accumulation of fat through a decrease in the rate of fat utilization. So, an endurance athlete who is not good at mobilizing fat as energy is in more danger of depleting muscle glycogen. It is also true that carbs are a potent source of free radicals that cause fatigue and tissue inflammation.
Now, it turns out that women are gaining on men in the ultra marathons that are run over several days in Death Valley (fitting in my mind). One reason given is that they are better mobilizers of fat than men. Using fat as an energy lowers their oxidative load and they do not tire so readily. Women probably eat more antioxidant-rich foods than men, though that is not reported.
Another factor is that being low on antioxidants seems to make one a poor mobilizer of fats as a source of energy. A study in Lipids, 2005; 40(4):433-5 suggests that athletes on a low antioxidant diet (low in vitamin C and beta-carotene) had lower circulating levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids compared to athletes on the same diet but high in antioxidants.
From an evolutionary perspective, fat was the prefered endurance fuel. The sorts of carbohydrate-laden foods and drinks modern athletes consume did not exist; in fact, there were no simple carbs 100,000 years ago. Our ancestors ate wild plants that were very high in antioxidants and consumed as much fat as they could, meaning that the lean animals they ate had to be processed to capture all their fat content.
With this perspective...
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (7)
Is Everything Bad?
October 22, 2005 11:09 AM
From Daniel in response to Sports and Spines.
"What activities do you recommend for fun then? I do a kung fu class that I have always been under the impression was good for me. We do a lot of functional exercises, etc and some light sparring.
When you say "sharp moves" I assume you mean the kinds made in sparring.
Aren't there sharp moves in all sports whose actions are performed rapidly and unpredictably? (Soccer, Basketball, Football, etc)
Are you then saying that all of these are bad?"
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (3)
Beyond Physiological Experience
October 20, 2005 07:28 PM
There are many substances and experiences today that are outside the physiological limits of our evolutionary-based genetics and ancestral experience.
One of them may be boredom. I don't know, but I think it is possible to more bored today than ever before and certainly far beyond what a human may have felt 100,000 years ago (my baseline for relevance). A long winter in a cave at a Northern Latitude was probably hard. Depression may have been a coping mechanism that kept our ancestors from killing one another.
There are substances in our world that our ancestors never experienced and that exceed the coping or stress mechanisms that protected our ancestors. We are likely equally adept at handling snake venom as our ancestors, adjusting for our diets and disfunctional physiology and body composition. Give us that one.
But what about addictive substances like rock cocaine? Not a chance that we have any protective mechanisms against that completely novel substance in all of human experience.
What about dense sugar coupled with chocolate? Not a chance that we have mechanisms protective of semi-addiction to brownies or donuts.
These are beyond physiological limits because they were never experienced 100K ago, when our minds and bodies formed.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (1)
Sports and Spines
Take a look at a vertebra some time. It has a vertebral ring with compressive bone inside, with an elastic ring of spiraled bone on the outside. Between the vertebrae are the disks that most people think takes compression loads. Then there is a neural arch behind that protects the spinal cord. Behind the arch is another set of levers and joints. The levers provide points for muscles to stabilize the spine. The joints hold the vertebrae together.
All this is held together like a stack of interlinked washers by the muscles of the back, trunk, and abdomen which are ringed around the spine and pull like guy wires to keep the column upright. The spine is loaded through compression which is necessary to stabilize it. And it is subject to shear forces that try to push it apart laterally.
Every sport loads the spine, the spinal stabilizers, and the mobilizers because nearly all sports movements drive force through the hips and into the ground.
Different sports challenge the spine in different ways....
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (5)
Science and Religion
October 19, 2005 10:09 AM
There need be no conflict between science and religion. I, for one, treat them as separate realms of understanding. And, I do not call the realm of non-scientific understanding religion, just faith or intuition in recognition that there are things that lie outside our understanding, at least in the current state of science.
The Dalia Lama is calling for a bit less conflict between science and religion in his new book, The Universe in a Single Atom. Michael Schermer reviews the book for The Skeptics Society. I qoute small sections of his review (which can be found at www.skeptics.com) that make the points I find interesting.
Schermer: "In my book “How We Believe,” I outlined a three-tiered model of the relationship of science and religion: the “conflicting worlds” model, in which science and religion are at war and one must choose between them; the “same worlds” model, in which science and religion are in harmony and one may have both simultaneously; and the “separate worlds” model, in which science and religion are different methods to deal with different areas of human concern. Since that time, hundreds of books have been published in the field of science and religion studies, which has blossomed with its own journals and magazines, college courses, scholarly conferences, and even an annual million-dollar cash prize for the individual who most contributes to uniting science and religion (the Templeton Prize).
From these encounters, as well as his Buddhist studies, the Dalai Lama found a way to harmonize science and religion, even while recognizing (and respecting) their differences. Both science and Buddhism, he points out, share a strong empirical basis:"
The Dalai Lama:
Read More »LINK · Everything · Comments (5)
Odds and Ends, Part 3
October 18, 2005 06:50 PM
1. The blog went way over 2 million hits a day or two ago; more than 21,000 hits per day from 85 countries. 100,000 hits a day is the max. OK, not a big deal since blog hits are power-law distributed, meaning they have no natural scale. Just a number with no natural limit or size. So, I should not have formed any expectations about hits, but I did and I am still surprised.
2. The latest, greatest and most likely last version of "Has Home Run Hitting Changed in MLB Baseball?" is up under the Research heading at the top of the page.
No, home run hitting hasn't changed and the steroid argument hasn't even been made in a cogent or rigorous way. It won't survive the evidence no matter how it is put. I don't think the proponents know how to make the argument, they are content to put forth meaningless averages without specifying a model. They have a hopeless task because what they have to do is make a model that says, here is home run hitting off steroids and here is home run hitting on steroids. Nobody has a model of home run hitting that holds even a drop of water, so this is not a doable task.
3. Questions about Matt Furey's approach and Hindu squats, push ups, bridges and such. Body weight exercises are great. Spine flexing, as in Hindu pushups, neck bridges, and reverse push ups at high repetitions is not. You will break the pars section of the neural tube, as female gymnasts do from too much flexion/extension.
4. On CrossFit. I like the approach (I think they even drew some inspiration from my earlier writings). But, there is no way I would do the high reps they do. There are two ways to overload systems: high peak stress and high repetitive stress or many duty cycles. I go in between on both and never go to failure on a weight and never go to full fatigue on repetitions. In fact, I prefer slightly lighter weights, natural and standing movements, done at a fast speed. This was how the great Soviet Champion Alexyev trained. The speed strength helped him set many records.
5. On marathoners. These guys are too serious. My post is fun and filled with scientific references. Even the personal cases are to be taken with some weight, for they do have small sample properties that are informative. I won't dream of doing a marathon or training that way. I don't want to be old and slow.
6. John Lott has some great new papers up on his site www.johnrlott.org.
7. Thanks to Tyler Cowan and his great economics blog, The Marginal Revolution, for mentioning my home run paper. He is a former colleague who left UCI for higher pay and better opportunities.
8. Albert Pujols is one of the best hitters in MLB. His home run last night was the perfect stroke; short, quick, with great extension. Coming off a Brad Lidge high velocity pitch that was enough to put it high off the back of the stadium. He seldom strikes out and has a high home run per strike out efficiency, a statistic I develop at some length in the new version of my paper on home runs.
LINK · Everything · Comments (5)
A Proprioceptive Desert
October 16, 2005 10:12 AM
I have long argued that gyms are cognitively impoverished. A long walk on a tread mill is inferior in all respects to a walk over uneven ground at a varying pace. The unevenness tunes proprioception and links the mind and body more closely. The varying gait offers a cyclic loading on the spine, rather than a more uniform loading typical of treadmill walking. Swinging the arms increases the cyclic loading and spares the spine. You are also more cognitively engaged walking outside and over natural terrain, something your mind and body are evolved to do.
Remember, for all the technical stuff we moderns know, all our knowledge is built on the same abilities that hunter gatherers had 100,000 years ago. We have merely adapted the neural circuits to our own modern uses. For example, theories of math learning posit that it is bootstrapped from the understanding of force mechanics encoded in our brains.
So, with this cognitively sterile environment of the gym, I have another complaint about modern gyms. They are also proprioceptively sterile; they fail to engage your body's sense of where the joints are and what the angles and tensions of limbs and muscles are. Why this so is 1. because nearly all the exercise machines involve either sitting or laying down, and 2. the body builder style of working out that is the main style here in the West relies on muscle isolation, rather than whole body involvement.
You are in the proprioceptive desert...
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (8)
Senate Reasoning
October 13, 2005 08:19 PM
A friend and former colleague of mine was a senator for a number of years. I won't say who he is. He has been out in the real world for some years now and facing the real problems and constraints that one finds there. Recently, he went back to meet with members of the Senate and came back saying, "You know, I forget how flakey these guys are. They are wrapped up in how the Senate works and in their next election and can't see the issues the way someone in the real world must deal with them."
As you know, I am working on steroids and home runs right now, and I find that nothing has really changed in home run hitting over the years. The premiere hitters are still rare individuals with talent far beyond what even an average major league baseball player has, and that is saying quite a bit with the very high level of performance we see in MLB these days.
I went through the last Senate hearings on steroids in baseball and had thought that at least Jim Bunning would have some understanding of the issues. He is, after all, a Hall of Fame player from the not-too-distant past.
Here is what he had to say in his opening remarks to the hearings. I quote only part of it.
Senator Bunning's statement puts it this way: "I remember when players didn't get better as they got older. They got worse. When I played with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and Ted Williams, they didn't put on forty pounds of bulk in their careers, and they didn't hit more homers in their late thirties than they did in their late twenties...I'm willing to trust baseball, but players and owners have a special responsibility to protect the game. And they owe it to all of us to prove that they are fixing this terrible problem. If not we will have to do it for them.''
He doesn't define the "terrible problem" but presumably it is the pace at which new records in home runs were set over the 1999 to 2001 period. It turns out that he is wrong on even the simple factual assertions he managed to make, aside from the leap to a conclusion and the speculation he states in other parts of his testimony. Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth did not go into a steep decline; they sustained a high level of home run hitting far beyond modern hitters like Maris, McGwire, Sosa, and perhaps even Bonds, though we have yet to see how his career goes. Nobody, so far as I can discover, put on forty pounds, except players of the past many of whom drank rather than trained as modern players do.
On this shallow basis, he is ready to write laws that dictate how a player may treat his body. A strict violation of the Constitution and the rights that any person should possess, irrespective of profession. For what? Because he feels he must "protect the game."
The other evidence in the hearings was garbage. The Chairman of the meetings, Tom Davis had this to say: "After the 1994 MLB players strike, rumors and allegations of steroid use in the league began to surface. Since then, long standing records were broken. Along with these broken records came allegations of steroid use among MLB’s star players. Despite the circulating rumors of illegal drug use, MLB and the Players Association did not respond with a collective bargaining agreement to ban the use of steroids until 2002.''
He wants to legislate because there were rumors and allegations. That is no evidence. Where is the evidence? There is none in the record of the Committee hearings.
This is Senate reasoning, an Orwellian blend of puffery and demagoguery. If this is how the Senate reasons on a relatively simple matter, the laws they pass in more complex areas and the governance of this country are in question.
No more incumbents.
LINK · Sports · Comments (8)
"Free" Health Care
October 11, 2005 05:10 PM
I used to stun my students with a description of Soviet-style "free" medical care. But, now comes a description far more graphic and personal than I had available to me as a distant observer.
Before I post the link though, I should point out that there were always two observations that apologists for the dictatorial communist state of the Soviet Union made about their health care system. (They also make the claim now, but on behalf of Fidel Castro, the longest-living dictator of this, or maybe any, century. A few also promote these goals as desirable for the health care system in the US.)
First, they claimed medical care was free. True, up to a point. Second, they said that the Soviet Union had a higher proportion of female doctors than in the US. Also true up to a point. (These are common themes of communist apologists in all areas and of weak-minded socialists as well. These are actually to be seen as signs of weakness and ineffectiveness in any system. Universities included. Why this is so is another matter, but note that what all these systems do is put administrators in charge of a centralized system invoking goals we may all value. Pity those who believe in beaurocrats.)
But, the truth inside the system was that if you were ill and not a party high-ranking person or family member, you had to bribe your way through the system to get any care. So, it wasn't "free". There is always some form of rationing in any system. In a "free" system, so many want care, some trivial some serious, that to gain the attention of the overloaded workers you had to bribe them. Or plead with them. Can you imagine that, living here under a stupid but at least partly rational and humane medical system. Not Hillary Care. An underfunded Hillary Care, and it always must be, is the British/Canadian rationing by queue system, or worse, the Soviet system in the end.
So, what about Point Two of the defense of Soviet (Socialist) Medicine? How or why does it depend on how many doctors are females? Well, in the USSR, it mattered a lot. Medicine was an undervalued profession. Why? Because it cared for the expendable masses, not the hierarchical gang of thugs who ran the Soviet Union for their own benefit. (These guys make Saddam look like a second-rate tyrant and self-absorbed idiot.) Doctors were paid next to nothing and only females would take the jobs.
So, finally, here is what it is like to be the recipient of "free" Soviet- or Communist-style medical care. It is a brief article by a Jew of her mother's trials in giving birth to her. Here is Ms. Gorin's story of what it was like to be born in the USSR under free medical care.
LINK · Everything · Comments (7)
Law of Home Runs, Revised
October 8, 2005 09:30 AM
The latest version of my paper, "Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball" is now up. It is here Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball? and now has a permanent location under the RESEARCH heading above.
I take up the matter of steroids more directly and also such possible influences as "hotter" baseballs, altered ball parks, smaller strike zone and find them all to be lacking. They do not stand up to verifiable tests or statistics. And they shouldn't because no explanation is required. There has been no increase in MLB home run hitting. Three home run hitting geniuses appeared in a brief time span and will soon be gone. Enjoy them and don't look for explanations when none are required. The law of home runs and extreme human accomplishment that I develop tell us that we never know when this kind of genius will appear, only that it will be rare and intermittent.
On the matter of steroids, it turns out that body builder muscle hypertrophy induces a change in muscle fiber composition that reduces speed and power. Steroid-aided muscle hypertrophy would be conterproductive to home run hitting. More mass is helpful since kinetic energy is proportional to mass. So, the trick is to add a bit more mass without shifting muscle fiber composition from FTb/x to FTa or ST fibers or messing up swing mechanics and timing. The latter are clearly far more important, as illustrated by Babe Ruth's last home run.
The Babe hit one of the longest home runs of his career in his last game, when he likely was already weakened by the cancer that would eventually kill him 13 years later. (Cancer isn't like a cold. You don't just catch. It evolves for some time in the human body, playing an evolutionary game of deception with the immune system. Many cancers evolve over a more than 20 year period. Others are more rapid. See Mel Greaves, Cancer.) He hit it all the way out of Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, over the roof of the upper deck in right field. No one had ever done it before. I am trying to find out if anyone has done it since. If you know, let me know.
LINK · Sports · Comments (9)
Blood Pressure and Weight Training, Part 2
October 7, 2005 09:19 PM
Just so you know, my blood pressure this evening was 103/62 after dinner and a cup of coffee. Does weight training raise or lower blood pressure? No one knows, not the doctors who did the study I commented on or anyone.
What is the answer? It is not the right question.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (2)
I Believe in Heroes: Lance IV
EPO is a short hand for the hormone erythropoietin. It is a hormone secreted by the kidneys that signals the bone marrow to make red blood cells (that is close enough). My wife gets EPO injections once or twice a month because her kidneys are not doing so well. She gets anemia, low red blood and haemoglobin counts, if she does not get the injections.
But, endurance athletes thrive on oxygen delivery and more red blood cells are just what is required to deliver high amounts. So, they either drain out the fluids in their blood to increase the solids, which would include haemoglobin. Or, they increase the red blood count through training, bearing the associated oxidative stress, or with EPO injections, which just makes it easy.
Lance is under intense scrutiny now (see Lance and EPO Samples from the Past) because some of his frozen blood samples show evidence of (what I suppose are, but don't know) elevated EPO levels. This requires 1. that some one knows what the distribution of EPO levels is so they can say what is elevated, and 2. that they know it was from EPO injections and not from training. I doubt that they know either.
I suspect that Lance's EPO was elevated because no one trained like he did. On the other hand, he may have injected EPO. Sometimes the athlete has a problem imposing his ethical standards on his trainers and sponsors.
I am betting on Lance, but note that the verification of high EPO does not say he was cheating and injecting. His super human training would have the same effect.
I dealt with this in home run hitting (the latest version is now up at the previous link), where the charge is steroids. When people see super-human performances they want to take them down. In the case of home runs it is pure speculation without a shred of scientific evidence to support it that steroids is the explanation. It turns out that no explanation is needed, home runs have not increased. Just a few home run hitting geniuses have been on the scene, the long-term law of home runs says why. But, many want to believe in these external causes because they want to take our heroes down.
I choose to believe in heroes. And my belief is based on the facts and the exotic distribution of extraordinary feats documented in my paper on home runs.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)
Blood Pressure and Weight Training
From Georgios comes this comment and news.
“Pumping Iron May Pump Up Blood Pressure”
http://www.lifeclinic.com/healthnews/article_view.asp?story=507198
“High-intensity strength training may lead to a potentially deadly condition called aortic dissection, in which the heart's major artery tears.”
http://www.hon.ch/News/HSN/516325.html
There are many articles, research, doctors and clinics recommendations etc. such as the above, that suggest low to moderate intensity aerobic activity as the only exercise prescription that can contribute in lowering resting blood pressure.
Art, I would really like to know your thoughts about the potential dangers and effects of high intensity training (such as the “Fast Twitch Threshold Sets” protocol you use) and heavy low rep lifting (alactic training ) on cardiovascular health and on resting blood pressure."
My thoughts on this...
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (2)
Marathoners Again
October 5, 2005 07:59 PM
I think it is no longer necessary to relate further health issues suffered by marathoners. I don't think many who read this blog do marathons, though more than a few did at one time.
Now comes this perceptive recollection by reader Parker Walker of once great marathoners gone bad. The list of problems and diseases suffered by once high level runners is damning of long distance, high volume running.
"Do you remember New Zealand's John Walker? He was a great Olympic distance runner but is now suffering from Parkinson's: Cool Running
Your marathon writing had me thinking about not only Walker but many, many of the distance runners over the past 20 - 30 years who have had severe illnesses:
Steve Ovett (Olympic 1500 champ and record holder in the mile)
Mark Conover (US marathon champ)
George Sheehan (running guru)
Priscilla Welch (marathon runner)
Steve Scott (US mile champ)
...and many others. A close friend of the family is still a marathoner in his 60s but has suffered from, of all things, breast cancer. He's been a distance runner all of his life but here is this lean, mean running machine having 1/2 of his chest cut off.
Former triathlon champion Scott Tinley once wrote a piece noting the human body has only so many races and mileage in it...after that, it no longer is fun to subject yourself to the trials and tribulations of hardcore distance training. Something to be said for that."
I have two further comments. First, if you look at my earlier post on how many heart beats are there in a lifetime, you will see that it is not generally true that you only get so many heart beats in a life. That conclusion is based on faulty reasoning, please see my earlier post for my reasoning and a discussion of the issues.
The second comment is this, and it is more general since it applies to body builders and the obese as well as to marathoners. It is this: our ancestors experienced anabolic and catabolic states intermittently and often. It is the alteration in states that triggers proper gene expression and mild stress responses that keep your body and brain healthy.
Body builders live too long in the anabolic state, with too little variation. Marathoners live too long in the catabolic state, with too little variation. Brief episodes of varying length in either state surely were the norm of ancient human life. We know this because the brain is highly adapted to ketones; the state of ketosis is triggered by episodes of hunger and negative caloric balance. Ketosis is good for the brain, in fact, it is a proven therapy for epilesy.
What I try to do, in a wholly random and unplanned way, is to alternate episodically anabolic and catabolic states. This is done primarily by alternating caloric balance through energy intake and expenditure, randomizing each.
LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (5)
De Vany's Law of Home Runs
October 2, 2005 10:39 PM
This is a picture of my law of home runs, a stable probability distribution with a peak to the left and a long tail to the right, where the big home run numbers are. Using this law and a lot of statistics, I show that there have been no fundamental changes in home run hitting in MLB for over 40 years. For those of you who don't want to read the whole paper, here is the conclusions section.
"There is a lot of speculation about steroid use in MLB, but the evidence is mostly anecdotal, misleading and incomplete. It is surely not an adequate basis for public policy to 1. assume that there is an increase in home runs, and 2. to assume that steroids are the explanation. The first statement is incorrect, there has been no increase. That makes point two vacuous. There is no need to invoke an external explanation like steroid use when there is no change to be explained.
The same law of home runs holds now that held 40 years ago. Year to year differences in home runs require no explanation; they are all within the variation of the outcomes under the stable probability distribution of home runs. The burst of new records does not require an external explanation like steroids; they are part of the pattern that comes from the nature of the law of home runs.
The pace of new records in recent years is due to the extraordinary accomplishments of three prodigious hitters. We have lucky enough to see three Babe Ruth's in this generation. Hitters such as these may never appear again. You cannot take an ordinary player and turn them into home run hitters of the accomplishment of Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa by dosing them with steroids. It may even be harmful. Home run hitting of that magnitude is human accomplishment at its highest, as incomparably rare as the work of Einstein or Wagner.
Even greater performances are possible because the long upper tail of the law of home runs gives them positive and non-vanishing probability. The law of home runs says that the probability that Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs would be broken is 0.0109, about one in a hundred. Given enough time and hitters, it was almost sure to fall. Barry Bonds' record of 73 will be harder to break. The probability that his record will be broken is 0.007206, about seven in a thousand."
Read it all in Arthur De Vany's Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball?
LINK · Sports · Comments (8)
The Law of Home Runs
October 1, 2005 10:19 AM
I have been hard at work on my home run hitting paper. It was fun really, but I had to put in the hours.
The paper will appear here next week.
I was surprised to find that no one has worked out the statistical law of home runs, so I did it. It turns out that my law of home runs applies to other areas of elite human accomplishment and generalizes the Lotka/de Solla Price/Pareto/Murray statistical laws of accomplishment. My law of home runs also corrects and generalizes Moore's Law of processing speed and Hotelling's law of records. Maybe I should call it De Vany's Law of Everything, but that is for others to decide.
With six bills in Congress to "clean up" professional baseball and other sports and new hearings being planned, it is a timely topic.
With that done, I am back to getting those chapters of Evolutionary Fitness out.
LINK · Everything ~ · Sports ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (1)
September Traffic
We had 372,271 hits in September and an average of 12,442 hits per day. Visitors from 87 countries were here. Total hits are 1,680,847.
Who would believe it? I appreciate the interest and the comments.
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