90 days

I wrote a very short book with the title 90 days and published it on Amazon. As I write this I have completed two 90 day cycles.

The first cycle saw me adapting to a ketogenic diet. This is not easy and is very stressful for the body. However, I completed the cycle and my body has changed significantly. The headline figure is body weight down from 175lb to 150lb. Other potentially relevent numbers are five feet eleven inches and fifty years of age.

The second cycle had me implementing Eugene Sandows light dumbell system. I did expect to gain muscle but far more than I did. The key problem was my joints and tendons. These were in a far poorer shape than I could ever had imagined. I have had one tendon or another aching for 3 - 4 days each for almost the entire 90 days.

The third cycle is about to start and with my tendons no longer being a problem, the expected muscle gain can begin. Although, I was expecting this muscle growth to begin 180 days ago. Perhaps if I had been twenty and not fifty things would have been different.

However, world events are presenting us all with a fresh challenge. A new strain of flu against which we have no immunity yet. The young appear to be very resilient but the older ones less so. Building muscle involves giving the muscles a training stress to adapt to. This does slightly or massively impact upon our immune system, depending upon how hard we train. Instead of muscle building, I have decided to build up my immune system.

Washing hands and following government sneezing guidleines is all well and good but this only slows the flu down. Which means that government and private health systems can cope with the slight increase in demand. Instead of most people getting the flu within the next 90 days, we could extend this out to a year or two.

We all already know how to boost our own immune systems but we don't really bother. We know that physical and emotional stress reduce our immune systems. We may not know that meditation can readily be used to reduce this stress and so boost our immune systems. Certain foods (sugars) cause our bodies, over many decades, a great deal of acccumultive stress culminating in diabetes and worse. We just need to consider our own circumanstances and determine what we can do to reduce our 'stress' and how we react to stressful events.

As you may have guessed, my books cover all this and provide a certain level of help. You may percieve this level of help to be massive or worse than useless. You need to determine what works for you as I have determined what works for me. (Writing helps me, whatever my writing does for you is your concern but I do hope it helps, at least a little.)

My first 90 day cycle saw me succesfully implementing a healthful way of eating.
My second 90 day cycle saw me conditioning my bodies structure to more better handle physical exertion.
The next 90 day cycle was to build muscle and stamina but now will be used to boost my immune system.

That was quite general but I don't see what I do has any impact upon how well you recieve my books. The value of my books, to you, is all your own responsibility.

However, I can be specific. I have a polar ignite watch which gives me a HRV measurement when I wear it during sleep. During my second 90 day cycle, when I bought the watch, my HRV number fell to 18. Currently, it is showing a 28 day average of 35. Now, from my own experience, I know this number indicates two things, how hard I am training and how suppressed my immune system is.

I need to be very careful how I word this but most of you won't be reading it very intently anyway. I am not a lawyer or Doctor so I will just give you a rough idea of my basic honest opinion.

As a society, we do not age graciously. Our HRV numbers fall from a high value to a low one as we age. We really ought to attempt to slow this decline down. The very best of our young could easily have a HRV number of 90 or more. The elderly, those most susceptable to this new flu virus could easily have a HRV number of less than 20. Therefore, let us assume that this is correct. That there is a direct correlation between our HRV number and the risk of death to any infection that the young would just shrug off.

After around two weeks of not training and a couple of days not drinking whisky my HRV was 51 yesterday and 59 today. It was less than 20 and less intense training allowed this to increase to 35. How easy was that? Train less hard for a 50% improvement. Have a two week break from training and not get drunk at the weekend and I have another 50% improvement.

The higher the HRV number the less risk I have of dying from a respiratory infection. If my underlying assumption is essentially correct.

From my last 90 day cycle I know that I easily get a cold when my HRV is less than 20. I can get sniffles and feel a little off with a HRV of 35. With a HRV of 50 - 60 I hope to easily fight off what would be a minor infection for a teenager.

A low quality diet, poor sleep, strenuous activity and being forever easily annoyed, upset or angry all reduce my HRV number. The opposite increase it.

This should all be obvious and this post unnecessary. My senses report back to me that this may or may not be common sense but that if it is common sense then currently common sense is a very rare commodity.

During this third 90 day cycle, I expect to do some light training and perhaps ride my mountain bike in the coming warmer weather. However, this won't be for exercise it will be to use my body in the way that God / Mother nature intended. Sitting down eating snacks, watching people shout at each other on the TV is unlikely to increase your HRV score any time soon.

Any questions? Does the comment thing work? Please discuss this amongst yourselves and determine a reasonable plan of action that you can readily execute.

I really do hope that this post does help you determine a direction in which to travel and give you an idea on choosing the path which is most beneficial to you. In terms of this current flu thing, if you boost your immunity such that you don't get it then you cannot give it to those it would kill. By benefitting yourself (increasing your HRV score / optimising your immune system) you benefit everyone else too.

One final thought, worrying about this 'health scare' diminishes your bodies ability to fight it. Wearing a mask whilst food shopping will massively reduce the transmission of flu and flu like viruses. I suggest making your own, researching how to do this and how to use them properly to will be life saving.

(I am fifty and have just got my first pair of varifocals, which are at work. Writing this, at home, without the odd typo is not something I can reasonably expect myself to do. So forgive the odd error or rage against it, your choice. One suppresses your own immunity and the other increases it. I could have incuded graphs, charts and pictures. As well as citing sources and explaining why others are wrong. I could have. Perhaps I should have. My educational background is not well served with this layman approach but there you go. All the knowledge, understanding and analysis resides within my head and detailing it out in the proper manner would take a great deal of my finite resources. I could do it but I have chosen, at this time, not to do it. Accept this or do not accept this. It is always a choice on how you react to anything.)

You take care.

David

PS I could not find the spell checker either. Not within the few seconds I allocated to finding it. As our Australian friends would say, no wucking forries mate. or some such like.

PPS I could not log into my account and make the 90 Day book free for the next five days either. Not within the five minutes I allocated to this endevour. I believe that it is fairly inepensive anyway or potentially free if you sign up for 30 days and then cancel. Anyway, these are all things for you to consider. I wrote the book and have a number of physical copies which I did buy. What you have or don't have is your own affair. Anyway, this blog post was free, so there's that.

TTFN

The 90 Day book will be free to download for the next few Monday's, including my 51st birthday when I will be 36 again. 😁