Literary Hypertrophy

As this rare 1926 photo of James Joyce on his way home from the local Zurich gymnasium shows, literary mastery and muscular hypertrophy were once considered inseparable traits.

In his non-fiction work The Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway not only defends his (at the time) controversial decision to join PETA, but states unequivocally that "any writer worth his salt should be able to wrestle a full-grown cape buffalo to the ground and bench at least twice his body weight."

Sadly, gone are the days when fifteen hundred pound bench/squat/deadlift totals were a requirement to win the Nobel.  I mean, just take a look at this Swedish National Archive photo of poet Pablo Neruda pulling 650+ pounds in Stockholm...

These days it seems like every writer is just sitting on their ass or (worse) running marathons.  Sure, Michael Chabon still brings his A-game to the gym...

 

But what about the Jonathans (i.e., Lethem, Safran Foer, Frazen, Selwood)?

Maybe if we can all stop Twittering on our iPhones and get back to the basics--to the 22-inch biceps of writers like Mark "The Machine" Twain--we can make literature MATTER again.

Hell, look at this recent picture of J.K. Rowling.  It sure worked for her...

Why Cardio is Worse Than Mussolini

"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general." - Mark Rippetoe

 Dr. Kurt G. Harris has a wonderful post showing that "Cardio" Causes Heart Disease.  In a study comparing 102 marathon runners with 102 sedentary controls:

What do you think they found? After all, these were a bunch of completely asymptomatic runners. Conventional wisdom, the New York  Times and MSN will assure you that only eating copious fiber and making turds like a gorilla could make you healthier than being a serious runner.

Would you believe 12% of asymptomatic marathon runners had evidence of myocardial damage on LGE?

Would you believe that among the sedentary controls only 4% had abnormal LGE?

So, basically, running marathons appears to not only not help your heart but damage it.  (Read the article if you want the specific medical info.)  Of course, the fact that THREE RUNNERS DIED during the last Detroit marathon also suggests that this sort of activity is not really contributing to health or longevity.

While this does seem to go against "you've gotta do your cardio" conventional wisdom, I don't really find it surprising.  A couple years ago when I decide to get back in shape, I started Googling around searching for the "optimum" amount of cardio for health.  To my surprise, I found nothing.  The only info I found was on how much cardio you need to do in order to lose weight (which, as you've probably heard, is utter bullshit, anyway).

Now, it's possible I'm wrong about this--if so, I beg someone to set me straight (and not with more "correlation equals causation" crap)--but as far as I can tell from the research, WALKING is all the "cardio" you need for optimal longevity.  Sure, a few marathoners live to a ripe old age, but this is probably despite the fact that they run marathons.

I've got nothing against the sport of marathon running, but if another person tells me that they're training for a marathon to "get in shape" I'm going to bent press them.  This is "in shape?"

Even for people who want an extreme level of cardiovascular endurance for their jobs (e.g., military, police, firefighters... etc.), marathon training--and the resulting emaciated twig arms--is not the way to go.  You probably want something more general and high intensity like Crossfit.  But even then, there's no evidence (at least that I can find) that such cardio training is healthier than simply walking.  And, of course, the injury rate for Crossfit is HIGH.

So if "cardio" is bad for you, is there some other form of exercise that has proven health benefits?

Yes, it's called STRENGTH TRAINING, bitches.

The Vitamin D/Mercury Link

Why didn't somebody remind me I had a blog?

Anyway, now that the piggy flu is truly pandemic (almost half my son's school is out sick), I thought I should update on the Vitamin D issue.

So far BOTH of the Portlanders I know who've gone ahead and had their Vitamin D tested were VERY low, and were told to immediately start supplementing.  At least one of them had H1N1 (tested) and the other might have had it (untested).

In contrast, none of the people I've managed to nag into taking Vitamin D (such as Gigi) have come down with H1N1.  Now, I realize that my scientific method might be a tad less than rigorous, but I still think the results entitle me to click my tongue, wave my finger, and tell all of you TO TAKE YOUR GODDAMN VITAMIN D, MOTHERFUCKERS!

[Okay, in full disclosure, I should add that my four-year-old son does seem to have a cold despite taking daily Vitamin D drops.  It's mild, but there is some congestion and the occasional cough.  So Vitamin D may not actually END DISEASE AS WE KNOW IT, but it's still pretty freakin' awesome.]

As for the Vitamin D/Mercury link?  There isn't one.

My father did recently test very high for mercury, though, and is now "off the fish" for a few months.

Is mercury poisoning the new Vitamin D deficiency?

Probably not.

Blathering On Pt1

I first saw Magnus Zeller's "The Orator" at a LACMA German Expressionist exhibit back in high school. Yes, it does foreshadow--ahem--Hitler. But it also captures the flat-out awesomeness of public speaking when you're good at it. (Just click on the image to make it bigger.)

I was not good at it. In fact, I was terrified of it. And as far as I can tell, MOST people are terrified of it. In many surveys, it even ranks above the fear of death.

(I should also note that at least half of the small minority of the people who aren't terrified of public speaking seem to be oblivious to how others perceive them and therefore SUCK at public speaking--but do it anyway.)

The only time I managed to even stand up in front of a class and give a presentation without terror was for a few months after I returned from a college semester in Spain. The immersion exchange program I'd been on required the students to speak Spanish and only Spanish during the entire semester. Since Spaniards aren't shy about laughing in your face every time you make a slight linguistic mistake, I had become more or less desensitized to public humiliation.

However, it didn't take long before I became "re-sensitized" to the fear of public speaking.

By the time my first novel sold and my book tour loomed, I realized that not only was I terrified of public speaking, but this fear had kept me from actually doing any public speaking. Thus, I not only feared it, but sans practice, I sucked at it too.

My first step was to start going to as many author readings as I could, and see how other writers managed to do it. If you've ever attended random author readings, you won't be surprised to hear me say that most authors are actually terrible readers. First, like me, they spend most of their time writing in private, and freak out when they have to engage the public. Second, many if not most writers chose to be writers BECAUSE they felt more comfortable hiding behind a keyboard than, say, doing a stand-up routine at the local comedy club.

If I could have pulled a Pynchon and gone into hiding instead of going on the book tour, I would have. Instead, I was forced to take a rather drastic step and enroll in an improv comedy class.

Yes, improv comedy.

You see, I could think of NOTHING more terrifying than improv comedy. Not only do you have to stand up in front of a crowd and try to be funny, but you can't prepare at all. I figured that if I could force myself to stand up in front of a crowd and improv, doing a public reading would be a piece of cake.

And it worked.

[Full Disclosure: Alright, so it was all I could do not to puke before my first reading at Powell's, but it did get easier after that. And the important thing is that I now actually LOVE public speaking.]

continuing...

Don't Be a Swine

Every time I try to stop prattling on about Vitamin D, they pull me back in.

Dr. Kurt G. Harris over at the PāNu blog has written an excellent article on how Vitamin D may help prevent the dreaded H1N1.

"So higher D levels make you less likely to get infected.

With higher D levels, if you do get infected, you are much less likely to get severely ill, and more likely to be able to breathe on your own.

With higher D levels, if you do get infected, you are probably also less likely to spread the virus to others."

Hey, I don't know about you, but I'm all for breathing on my own. He also shows the specific physiological benefits of different levels:

Prevent rickets 10 ng/dl

Suppress parathyroid hormone 20 ng/dl

Maximize intestinal calcium absorption 34 ng/dl

Maximize muscle strength 50 ng/dl

The blog is also a great resource for anyone interested in the concept of paleo nutrition. It's far more science-based than most paleo blogs.

Also, I've found that Carlson's makes Vitamin D3 drops (in coconut oil). It has no taste and solves the problem of trying to get your toddler to swallow a gel cap. You can even add it to food if need be.

Vitamin A and How to Plot a Novel

So now that you're taking your Vitamin D, I thought I should tell you not to neglect your Vitamin A or K2.

These three fat soluble vitamins work together to...

Fuck it. I'm sick of writing about nutrition.

Every now and then, I go back through some of the old books on writing I have lying around and try to refocus my brain on the basics.

Since I'm 38 and a published novelist, reading books like "Fiction First Aid" or "Writing Screenplays that Sell" is a tad embarrassing. Even worse is reading through them in a coffee house like I am now. Honestly, I'd rather be caught reading porn.

But it's worth it. For example, Michael Hauge's advice on how to write a screenplay in one easy lesson:

Enable a sympathetic character to overcome a series of increasingly difficult, seemingly insurmountable obstacles and achieve a compelling desire.

Obviously, this is the "Hollywood Happy Ending" version (after all, the book is called "Writing Screenplays that SELL"). But if you want the more literary (i.e., box office flop) unhappy ending, all you have to do is add "fail to" in front of "achieve."

Yes this is unbelievably basic stuff, but it's this very basic stuff that writers continually fuck up. That I continually fuck up.

Hauge goes on to explain that any story idea can be expressed in a single sentence:

It is a story about a ______ who __________.

Obvious stuff, right? Well, in my experience, MOST aspiring novelists can't formulate that sentence--or at least not without using a run-on.

Vitamin D PSA

As school has started again and the rains won't be far behind (at least here in Portland, Oregon, USA), I thought it time to bring up Vitamin D supplementation.

The last few winters, I've suffered from what seemed like a never ending series of colds. From the beginning of November all the way through about March, I was constantly sick. Since I have a four year-old and was under a great deal of stress, I just chalked it up to that.

However, January of last year, I started reading about Vitamin D, and began supplementing with around 2000 units a day using a combination of cod liver oil and D3 oil gel caps (both the specific type of Vitamin D and the specific type of pill turn out to be important). This is actually much less than the Vitamin D Council recommends, but much more than the RDA, so to be cautious, I decided to split the difference.

Lo and behold, I haven't been sick since. And I'm not alone. Cardiologist Dr. William Davis hasn't been sick once in the three years since he started supplementing with Vitamin D.

If you think about Vitamin D in terms of evolution, this all makes perfect sense. We've gone from running around outside in loin cloths all summer long to slathering on SPF 5000 before venturing out to watch the sunset. The older you get, the more you use sunblock, the farther you live from the equator, and the darker your skin color, the more likely it is that you aren't getting enough Vitamin D.

Vitamin D deficiency causes many more problems than just an increased susceptibility to the common cold and influenza (i.e., cancer, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, and periodontal disease).

But isn't the thought of NOT GETTING SICK AT ALL this winter enough?

If not, check out the Vitamin D Council. Actually, check it out anyway. Here are a few quotes to get you started...

"Because vitamin D is so cheap and so clearly reduces all-cause mortality, I can say this with great certainty: Vitamin D represents the single most cost-effective medical intervention in the United States."

~ Dr. Greg Plotnikoff, Medical Director, Penny George Institute for Health and Healing, Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

"I believe [vitamin D] is the number one public health advance in medicine in the last twenty years."

~ Dr. John Whitcomb, Aurora Sinai Medical Center

"This is like the Holy Grail of cancer medicine; vitamin D produced a drop in cancer rates greater than that for quitting smoking, or indeed any other countermeasure in existence."

~ Dennis Mangan, clinical laboratory scientist

Okay, I admit that I have no clue who these people are, but still...