Musings from the Abyss
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| Allison Redford: "a sociopath with empty eyes and no soul" |
Thyroid, Caloric Flux & Healing
One thing I've been coming across recently in my forays through the information field is a prevailing reductionist mentality. People are endevouring to make themselves as small as possible in every way. I blame much of this on the social conditioning people receive. The whole "environmental" scene is an especially pernicious corruptor of the human image. People are trying to eat less, weigh less, pay less, have a smaller carbon footprint and generally reduce themselves in any way possible. Not only is this incredibly stupid and arrogant (do you really think that even with all of human industry we could EVER produce enough of the MINOR greenhouse gas CO2 to change the planets atmosphere? do they know how much CO2 a volcano puts out? or rotting leaves?) but it is without merit and totally counter productive to human development.
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| *defensive* "well you sir, lack merit" |
We must balance catabolism with anabolism, but not by switching from one to another. While driving, rapidly switching back and forth from right to left is a really good way to lose control or flip your vehicle. We should keep our anabolism checked with catabolism and then, when required, we judiciously strengthen or reduce one to achieve a given objective.
Let us use this principle of combined or balanced opposites for healing the body, increasing energy, increasing lean mass, decreasing fat and improving intelligence all at once. Most dummies would have you believe that, much less having all the things I just listed, you can't increase muscle and reduce fat at the same time. They are called dummies for a reason: they can't talk for themselves because they don't have a brain so who really cares about them anyway.
Enter: Metabolismo
This is really a very simple concept and works the same as smelting (kind of). One charges a furnace (body) with a whole shit ton of mixed fuel and ore (calories and nutrients) and then forces air (exercise/activity) into the furnace to accelerate the combustion beyond what it would normally perform given static atmospheric conditions (homeostasis). In short: eat a shit ton of food, then burn it.
Many people argue that you are wasting food. No. They are wasting food because they're feeding a mentally retarded, gutless waste of humanity: themselves. Anyway, the reason that this is a really good idea is manyfold.
Fold one: the more fuel/ore mixture you burn then the more gold (or whatever) you get from it. The more food you eat, the more nutrients you get (conditional upon the type of food you eat of course). The more nutrients you get the healthier you can potentially be which is conditional upon your ability to use the nutrients effectively. Which brings us to:
Fold two: effective nutrient use is conditional (so many conditions) upon two major factors, metabolism and instructions. Both of these, not surprisingly, are hormonal with thyroxin from thyroid controlling the metabolism and a slew of others (estrogen, progesterone, somatropin, testosterone etc.) controlling the information. You can think of hormones as being like scripts or sets of blueprints, they instruct the cells what to do.
By metabolizing (burning) calories there is, of course, waste. Metabolic waste signals a huge and incredibly diverse array of chemical changes. Firstly it breaks tissue down, this is good, it can be likened to bulldozing an old decrepit house. Secondly it triggers the release (re-lease, housing, get it?) of human growth hormone that essentially orders the construction of a newer, better house. So your old weak tissues are broken down, recycled and combined with new material and reconstructed into new, more robust tissue.
People age because they become more sedentary, I proved this(correlatively) by comparing graphs of rates of inactivity with graphs of age related physical decline as measured by key hormonal markers and lean body mass in a paper I wrote for a physiology course I took (I was bored). Along with this decline in activity people also experience sleep and digestive issues that compound the problem, these sleep and digestive issues are usually caused by malfunctioning hormonal systems that are not producing the requisite hormones and neurotransmitters due to low overall metabolism.
Fluxing the Furnace
Into the above mentioned furnace one must load a quantity of flux. Flux (usually green glass, like the Heineken bottles) forms a molten barrier between the liquid metal pooling at the bottom of the furnace and the still combusting fuel/ore/air mixture. It keeps the metal from oxidizing which it is very prone to do in the very reactive environ of the smelting furnace. Our bodies must also protect themselves from the reactive environment of metabolism, our flux comes in the form of anti inflammatory omega threes and anti oxidants. These are critical in mitigating any potential damage from having a relatively high metabolic state.
I should point out at this juncture that "prehistoric" skeletons studied by archeo-anatomists show absolutely massive tendon attachment points. What does this mean? It means that the bearer was of what we may now call superhuman strength. Oh, did I mention that the particular skeleton I am mentioning was from an anatomically modern female? They figure she would have been able to out bench Arnold. People of that day ate huge amounts of food, rich with omegas and antioxidants and performed huge amounts of physical exercise (okay, you've killed a mastodon, now carry it home!). We can't hope to match this today because we eat slave rations from the food dispensary and it isn't very good as food goes, but we can do so much better than we are.
Setting it All Alight
The last thing you should do is run out and start cramming every bit of foodstuff you see down your throat. You must first work to earn your appetite. Work (or exercise) is like the work order that sets the machinery of metabolism in motion. You should, like prehistoric man, perform a great deal of different types of activities. There is no one answer here.Split wood, lift weights, do calisthenics, jump up and down, run, sprint walk, flip tires, throw kettlebells, climb, do everything, all the time everyday. If you have a job that doesn't allow you to: do it before and after work and on your breaks; pushups, squats, jumping lunges, you can do these anywhere anytime and you can do them. The long and short of it is move. Do you know what happens to joints you don't use? They calcify, it's disgusting, don't be that person.
To be explicitly clear: you can not have a healthy metabolism unless you A) move, a lot and, B) eat tons of food. If you do do this then you will reverse age and gain powers and abilities you didn't know you had.
Rutilus Vir
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| "14 karat gold!" |
If you want your body to function like a well oiled machine then you must build that machine and oil it. It is not free. You must master the force of the elements. You mast have blueprints and must have the will. Will, contrary to popular belief, is not a dirty word. It's not even hard, you just do it.
The benefits of increased metabolism are like leveling up in any RPG, it makes all of your attributes better. If you' prefer a different analogy: it's like having an old car with a busted alternator, your power windows, radio and dash lights don't work, you think it's normal or that your car doesn't have these features: then you get a new alternator and voila! Get a new alternator!
Or don't, you just make me look better by comparison : D
