Christian's Blog

Hey Everyone, 

Midterm season is upon us--as Cardio with Dr. Bill Hogan was this morning featuring a 60-question variety of heart, EKG and interpretation problems. If you've ever watched a medical drama (and chances are good you have), you will probably find yourself staring at the monitor trying to pick out abnormal P waves, a spiked T wave, or a depressed ST interval. I know I was excited when we learned about atrial fibrillation and later that night I was watching a show where a patient was crashing and the doctor yelled some combination of A Fib and STAT! (sick life bro..)  

For those of you who don't know Dr. Hogan--well, he is an interesting man. He comes across quite 'militant' and 'in your face'. My tip is: DO NOT BE LATE TO HIS CLASS, or he will yell at you and call you out right in the middle of lecture. He yelled at my buddy going to restroom and told him to sit back down. What I do appreciate about Dr. Hogan is that he is a very passionate lecturer; he practically yells out during the lecture and provides quality analogies, which maintains my attention throughout lecture. On top of that, the cardiovascular system in general fascinates me so I enjoy the material.

Me teaching how to palpate a sacrum in club.

The following is a recipe I'm passing on after RJ Burr recommended I try it.

Paleo Cookie Dough (no wheat, added sugars)

• 1 jar of garbanzo beans
• 3-4 tablespoons of almond butter
• 1 scoop of chocolate whey protein powder
• Stevia
• 85% dark chocolate crumbled up
• ¼ cup coconut milk

Ideally, blend all ingredients in a food processor and let sit in the fridge. I don't have one so I added coconut milk and garbanzo beans in a blend until smooth and then took it out and added in the almond butter, chocolate whey protein powder, stevia, and folded in the pieces of dark chocolate. Throw it in the fridge and chill and eat it as is. No baking. Test it out. I thought it was delicious.

What my friends and I noticed was the longer you've been eating healthy and paleo, the better it tasted. My friend who eats McDonald's a couple times a week hated it. My friend who ate decently healthy thought it was 'pretty good'. RJ and I who are strict paleo eaters absolutely LOVED IT. Funny, eh? Just an observation...

Peace,
CC

Hi Everyone!

Hope everyone had a great past week and enjoyed St. Patty's Day. I had a different reason to celebrate on Thursday, I got my completed "after" blood work back. I'm happy to report the possibility of man boobs, a higher voice, and emotional roller coasters are all OFF the table! My testosterone is successfully back to normal at 607!

Just a quick recap of the events, my "before" blood tests revealed that my testosterone was 615, which was a very good number. Thirty days later, and 20 lbs. more lean mass, my levels dropped to 298? (FYI, Normal Range: 280-900) So technically, I was "within normal" BUT I was in a downward spiral that raised some alarms. My hypothesis was my over-consumption of flax. So, I cut out flax and 2 weeks later my levels went back to 607! That's a doubling in 2 weeks, which is pretty epic in itself, unless the lab test was faulty (another plausible, but less likely scenario).

I will report that I feel much more grounded, if that makes any sense. It's hard to describe but I feel like I have my "will power" back, and when I need to pull a long day of studying I can now, whereas 2 weeks ago I felt "funky" and "unmotivated." Whether or not that is just a placebo will remain a mystery, but I'm just happy I got my T levels back to normal because I could really use it gearing up for the next 27 days leading into final exams.  

Dunk Contest

On the bucket list front, my buddy Kendall, who played Div 3 college basketball, has put together a 10-week plyometric workout to see if I can jam a volleyball! Jamming anything has been a goal of mine since I quit basketball in the 9th grade because I was 5'0" tall. I have, of course, grown since then, but my maximum jump ever is just clipping the rim. In short, this is going to be an athletic performance experiment and come the beginning of next tri I will attempt the "impossible" and try to jam a volleyball for the first time in my life - not long after I thought jamming was going to be one of those things that stay permanently on the list. Cheers to zero gravity!

March Madness, Adjusting, and Dave's Birthday

On the social front, this past weekend was really fun. On Friday, a bunch of us got together and played a little Texas Hold'em (I placed second behind Steve). Steve = GOOD. I haven't played poker since high school, back in the days when Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event and catapulted everyone and anyone to think they could play at a high level with little to no previous experience (if you played poker in high school you know what I'm talking about). My only good poker skill is that I can read people pretty good, but the one skill I've lost is figuring out the odds and combinations of hands that the other players could have based on the flop and turn. Either way I was happy to double my money as it will pay for tutoring next week!  

I'd also like to give a shout out to Canadian Dave! Happy 25th Birthday! We celebrated his birthday on Friday after poker and then laid low all day Saturday and watched March Madness and practiced adjustments for the better part of 5 hours. 

That's it for me this week. Hope everyone starts enjoying the somewhat warmer weather! 

- CC

Hola! Hope everyone had a relaxing week because mine was all over the place. By now my head has been spinning like a top for 48 hours since Friday's 'after' blood tests came in. Before I get to that I wanted to talk about Tri Games.

So what are Tri Games?

Every trimester National has a friendly sports competition between all the tris. In the fall, it was flag football; but on Friday it was DODGEBALL! I was so excited to find out that we were going to play a school-wide organized dodge ball tournament! Our trimester had not made a good showing in the fall tri games by getting knocked out in the earliest round, so this winter we were up to avenge our pride.

How did we do this time? We rocked! We steam rolled our way to the finals proudly sporting our tri colors (yellow) only to lose against the superman dressed Tri 5's (blue). The whole thing was run in the gym and there was plenty of laughs, sore rotator cuffs, (I couldn't feel my arm after the finals), and Dr. Darby? Yes, even Dr. Darby (our neuroanatomy teacher) made a surprise visit and cheered us on. Perhaps it was because she had just graded our neuro written midterms and wanted to see our smiling faces before we saw our actual grades! (perhaps not ;) Nonetheless, the whole event was an absolute blast and a wonderful excuse to throw out your shoulder trying to establish top tri dominance! 

So what about those blood tests?

Well, my 'after' blood tests came in this week and I was expecting great results considering my bio-impedance came back rather phenomenally. At my meeting before with Dr. Anderson, he spilled the beans by saying I was going to be "surprised." I was rather dumbfounded until I got to read my 'after' testosterone. It had PLUMMETED in HALF (I can't recall exact numbers but 600 to 300 something)! I was shocked and nobody in clinic knew how the heck that would be possible. I gained 20 lbs. of muscle and lost fat and did it on half the testosterone? You're running a fun joke aren't you? Apparently not. 

So I left the clinic with a rather strange taste in my mouth. The kind of taste you don't know whether to be excited or scared. Had I miscalculated my diet? Had I not consumed enough fat? Had I eaten too much for my body? Had I taxed my endocrine system? Was the trend to continue downward? My mind was absolutely (and still is) spinning. My cholesterol, despite eating a pound of grass fed beef and 4 eggs a day stayed about the same (within a point or too difference), which defied some conventional cholesterol theory. I had been comfortable with that, however, more and more research is now showing that saturated fat and exogenous cholesterol (dietary) are not the bad culprits of heart disease and hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol) as once thought (refined carbs are). 

However, this made the previous finding of lowered testosterone even more plaguing. I had eaten PLENTY of fat (60% of my diet) and protein (25%) to have PLENTY of building blocks for hormone precursors but something happened along the way that screwed that up. What could it be? 

Flax: A Misunderstood Male Nightmare? 

About 10 minutes after I got home from the clinic, I went to make a shake and low and behold grabbed a jar of my favorite almond/flax seed nut butter from the fridge. I ate A LOT of this to increase my calories, fat and protein to hit the lofty goals I set for my food intake over the last month. I looked down at the jar and did one of those grossly exaggerated double takes. Flax seed! WHOA. What's the matter with flax seed? 

It's estrogenic! Apparently VERY estrogenic. It contains phytoestrogens not unlike soy, yet the research isn't as clear as it is with soy on the ill effects of flax when over-consumed. It seems I became a guinea pig for flax seed consumption warnings. I did a couple pub med searches without a whole lot of findings until Dr. Anderson found one that said 30g/day of flax didn't have a 'statistically significant' drop in testosterone levels. The problem? I was consuming on AVERAGE 150g and up to 240g a few times. It wasn't all flax (mixed with almond butter) but at those levels who knows. Another cited study confirmed it was possible.  

Next Order of Action? 

Well, if you want your manhood to stay in tact (I assume you do) and not grow breast tissue (I assume you don't) it's time to rethink how much flax you want to consume as a male. If you were to read the benefits of flax you'd think it was a super food that should be consumed all the time for its omega 3's that fight inflammation and speed healing time. However, if you take things to the edge, which I have, a weird knack for doing, then you may want to reign in the "everything in moderation" button. 

So, will I start losing my hair and libido? No. Will I be cutting flax out of my diet and retesting in a month to make sure I'm back on track? Heck, yes.

Sooo much fun is there! 

Christian