Like many runners, I’m a bit obsessive about data. I love to collect it. I love to analyze it. I love to spend time visualizing with maps, graphs, charts and long lists of numbers. After all of my data is imported from my Garmin 405 and I’ve reviewed the hard numbers from the day’s run, one of my favorite things to do is send the data on over to Google Earth and watch as that big blue ball in the sky rotates and zooms in, aerial spy-like, to view the satellite imagery of my running route.
No, this isn’t a 2,000 word essay on listening to your body, avoiding injury and running safe. It’s just a picture of a silly little sign that I saw today on the drive through the woods to the trailhead. Normally I’d simply consider this a run-of-the-mill “children at play” sign, only, I wa
Last week, a new article over on the Runner’s World website caught my eye. Authored by William Roberts, MD, it appeared in their Ask the Sports Doc section and was entitled The Mechanics of Barefoot Running. I’m always excited to see something on the topic of barefoot running appear over there,
Scott Jurek, vegan ultramarathon athlete and seven-time consecutive winner of the Western States 100 (really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg) just alerted his Twitter followers to a great article about him in today’s New York Times. Diet and Exercise to the Extremes, by Mark Bittman,
By now, if you’ve been following the postings on this blog, you’ve realized that barefoot running is more about the biomechanics of running barefoot than it is about running completely free of all footwear. Sure, there are purists out there who swear by barefoot and barefoot only – skin
[T]here’s enough data for doctors to start thinking of the placebo effect not as the opposite of medicine, but as a tool they can use in an evidence-based, conscientious manner. Broadly speaking, it seems sensible to make every effort to enlist the body’s own ability to heal itself–which is what, at bottom, placebos seem to do. And as researchers examine it more closely, the placebo is having another effect as well: it is revealing a great deal about the subtle and unexpected influences that medical care, as opposed to the medicine itself, has on patients.
via boston.com
Fantastic article from the May 9th edition of the Boston Globe, discussing the growing acceptance of the power of placebo within the medical community. In many cases, placebo is demonstrated to be more effective than pharmaceutical treatments, but what I find particularly interesting is the debate surrounding the ethics of placebo, how to administer them while being “honest”, and the question of whether or not they might still be effective even if the patient knows that it’s a placebo.
Turns out, there’s some evidence that in some cases, despite consciously knowing that a placebo is, well, nothing, the subconscious mind is still convinced that it will work, and therefore it does.
Reminds me of my own work with hypnosis. While hypnosis is not a placebo treatment, the same conscious/subconscious conflict is in action. It’s the very foundation of hypnosis, in fact. For instance, pretend for a moment that you have a habit that you’d like to get rid of, such as smoking. You consciously want to quit, while you’re habit – a subconscious pattern – refuses to die. The subconscious always wins out, regardless of what your conscious mind wants.
In hypnosis, we exploit several key features of the subconscious in order to directly address it – and reprogram it – instilling a new habit – that of being a non-smoker. Hypnosis is used to get the subconscious and the conscious into agreement. We make your subconscious believe that you’re a non-smoker, bringing it into alignment with your conscious wishes.
In the case of a placebo still having effect despite consciously knowing about it, it’s a similar situation. The subconscious doesn’t care what the conscious thinks. If it believes that a treatment is effective – a placebo, for instance – all the “conscious” knowing in the world is not going to sway it.
I love the thought that the reality of an experience has nothing to do with “reality” at all.
While traveling through Pittsburgh, PA on my way toward West Virginia, I decided to take a short detour to Fleet Feet Sports, a shoe store in Mt. Lebanon, just south of the city proper. Nationally, this franchise chain has nothing but the best reputation. They claim to have expert staff that exh
One of the most important weapons in the arsenal of any athlete, be they amateur or professional, is sleep. Regular, deep, quality sleep. In fact, sleep is one of the most important periods of the day for any person, be they athlete or not. It’s when our bodies recuperate, rebuild and repa
Back in the 1990s, it was discovered that a certain type of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricul, had the ability to revert from a mature stage of its lifecycle back into a more youthful one, and to repeat the process indefinitely, thereby granting it an indefinite – immortal - lifespan.
Nature being what it is, this rarely happens “in the wild” as they are likely to die from other causes such as, well, being eaten. But the biological mechanism they employ to achieve this effect – transdifferentiation - is one that current stem cell researchers are actively pursuing in their own search for causes and cures of a wide variety of our own ailments, and stem cells are a major player in the new science of human biological immortality.
Just this past week, the Obama administration announced that it would make 13 additional stem cell lines eligible for federal funding, funding that was once again made available after the administration lifted the ban on stem cell research instated by Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.
Stem cell research, and the therapies that will come from the groundwork being layed by today’s scientists, represents the most significant contribution to the biological sciences and medicine that we have ever seen. Whether we ethically pursue the use of embryonic stem cells, or investigate ways to transdifferentiate adult stem cells into a pluripotent form, therapies that are born of such research will forever change what it means to be human.
From simple healing of wounds to treatment of cancers, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and deeply genetic disorders and diseases, stem cell research has the potential to heal the sick, and perhaps more profoundly, help healthy adults pursue active, healthy, vibrant life well into old age, and if our jellyfish is any example, perhaps indefinitely.
Today was the day. All the variables fell into place, and for the first time since my injury, I went for a run.
Here’s a quick video update regarding the experience.
Continue reading, and watching, on thebarefootexperiment.com
A common complaint about Vibram FiveFingers is that they are difficult to get on your feet. I’ll admit, I found it a bit awkward to get them on my feet the first time in store, but the learning curve is not exactly steep. If you put them on, oh, say, twice, you’ll probably be good to go, hav
A common complaint about Vibram FiveFingers is that they are difficult to get on your feet. I’ll admit, I found it a bit awkward to get them on my feet the first time in store, but the learning curve is not exactly steep. If you put them on, oh, say, twice, you’ll probably be good to go, hav
Maintaining a high-caliber and fairly consistent vegetarian diet for 16 years takes less work than one would think. Yes, you need to think about your food, but we should all be doing that, regardless of your diet-of-choice. It’s true that many people eliminate meat only to eat junk, and call the
A great article appeared in the April issue of Running Times entitled Much Ado About Minimalism. The author did a great job of capturing the goal of minimalist running. A goal that I wish many of the zealots would keep in mind.Away from the hype and the extremes, the minimalist movement is rightly correcting decades of drifting in the other direction when it comes to running shoe design. At its core, minimalism asks the runner to look for the least amount of shoe he or she can safely wear now, and to work toward reducing the amount of shoe necessary through strengthening the foot and improving one’s stride. It assumes that running is a natural movement of the body, rather than an unnatural act that requires pads and braces to perform safely. Putting it plainly (…)