Injuries are Not Cool
This is clearly a before and after of my left clavicle.
Bummer
I guess I need to redefine my goals for the summer. Poof goes my Ironman.
Rehab will be about 8-12 weeks.
Anyway, just thought I’d update y’all on my exciting news.
Ancestral Health Providers
As a medical provider in the traditional Western style, I sometimes feel a bit isolated when trying to teach my patients and fellow providers about living an ancestral healthy lifestyle. My colleagues at my clinic have actually been great in learning and discussing many paleo principles, but I still have yet to convinced any of them to give the lifestyle a full trial.
I really think providers like me need to get organized. We need to get together to form an group willing to advocate for this lifestyle. There are some budding organizations out there to discuss ancestral living in general. But to this point I have not been able to find or join a group that is specifically for medical providers such with degrees such as MD, DO, NP, and PA.
I propose that this type of organization be started. (Or has one already been going and I have just missed it??) Who is with me?? Who wants to help me create such a group?
Here are 5 principles that I see for such an organization:
- Model good health for our patients through living the ancestral health lifestyle
- Apply paleo nutrition principles in conjunction with evidenced based allopathic medicine
- Encourage other trained medical professionals to incorporate ancestral nutrition as both prevention and cure of disease.
- Engage and support research activities to evaluate ancestral health claims
- Advocate for changes in local, state, federal and international policies to promote the ancestral health lifestyle.
Why do we need such a group??
- We need to organize our advocacy efforts
- We need to standardize our assessment and treatment protocols
- We need to coordinate our research efforts
If you are interested or have any information for me then please comment below or send me an email at paleofitmd @ gmail. Plus please come find me at the Paleofx symposium next week in Austin. I think I might try to plan a meet up during the symposium.
Long Break and New Adventures
Wow, well that was a long break!
I guess I just needed a little time away from blogging to think about my life!
The last few months have been a whirlwind. In October, in the space of one week I heard about a new faculty position, applied, interviewed and then was offered the position. What?!? Yep it was that fast. And then for the next 4 months we have been trying to work out details and then get the appointment through the proper channels. I am finally able to announce that I have been officially appointment as a full time faculty member for the University of Utah School of Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.
My key teaching responsibilities will be with medical students with some interaction with residents. I will still be teaching 3rd year medical students as the Assistant Clerkship Director. But in addition to this I will be the Primary Care Track Director for the fourth year medical students. I will be leading the curriculum for all of the students going into internal and family medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry!
In this role I will get to have a close teaching responsibility throughout their entire 4th year. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this position. The 4th year of medical school has traditionally been a rather less than focused year with students basically doing whatever they want. We are hoping to bring some consistency to their year instead. Our goal is to consistently train fantastic students who are all prepared for residency.
Many have asked how this change will affect my clinic, and fortunately for some and unfortunately for others my location is going to change. I will no longer be practicing in the south end of Salt Lake Valley. Instead my clinic will be at the Madsen Family Clinic which is on the University campus. This clinic change will take place in April. My schedule is not currently open yet for scheduling as details about how often I will be in clinic are still under discussion.
Sorry to all of my current patients! I hope some of you will make the longer drive to see me at Madsen. This change was not easy to make, but it will be the best for my overall career. If you cannot follow me out to Madsen then please stick around the clinic with one of our other amazing providers.
Thanks to my readers while I have been away! Sorry for the hiatus, and I hope to back to my blogging. I should have a great year to tell you all about my new teaching experiences.
Low Testosterone?
Robb Wolf just did a fantastic blog post about treating low testosterone. I decided to make a flow chart based on his information. I threw this together in between patients today, so its not great. I do think that it helps give a better flow to the information that Robb was presenting.
I hope its helpful. The picture also links to a PDF I uploaded to google docs. Let me know if the link does not work.
Cyclocross is to biking like CrossFit is to working out
Please stop what you are doing and watch footage from my cyclocross race this past weekend.
Now that my friends is a fantastic video! Here is Grizzly’s video from the first race of the year.
I honestly cannot decide, which of the videos I like better. They both show a great view of the sport of cyclocross racing.
As you can see, we ride what look like road bikes with knobby tires. Here is my new bike that we just built up.
With these sweet machines we ride on grass, dirt, road, mud, rocks, small ponds. But we also have to carry the bikes over barriers, up steps, and well sometimes just carry the bike the whole course if your wheel breaks or something. Check out the guy in the second video at time 3:36. He is carrying his bike without the back wheel. Um, yeah that is pretty sweet.
Me mid-race:
Road bike racing sometimes can be really snooty and stuffy feeling with rules, regulations and egos. Cyclocross is about the opposite of this. It is all about getting around the course, having a grand time, and getting dirty in the process.
This last weekend my race was at 9:30 AM and was pretty chilly, wet, and muddy. It would have been fantastic, but my lower back really tightened up about half way through. This caused some serious pain for about 35 minutes. My bilateral para-spinal muscle groups were not happy at all. I think this was a combination of having too aggressive of a bike fit, doing a bunch of heavy deadlifts the day before, and not doing enough pre-race to loosen up my back. I ended up taking 15 of 21st in the lowest category.
Going over the barriers.
I decided that my body needed a few days of recovery after the race, which has actually been great for recovery. I’m about to get a WOD in, but I think I will take a bit easy still.
Remember folks that if you are having pain, then you need to find out why, and then take some action to correct it. In my case, I have taken a few days off, done some good lacrosse ball massaging, and some nice hamstring stretching.
Long term, I need to improve my deadlift form and fix my bike fit.
Lifting weights makes you more healthy.
Lifting too heavy of weight incorrectly causes injury.
These two statements seem pretty straightforward, and as someone searching for health you should absolutely understand the difference between these two. I think of the biggest misconceptions that many physicians (and their patients) have is that doing certain lifts will inherently be bad for one’s health.
One of our athletes recently went to a Sports Physician, who stated without hesitation that squatting is a horrible movement and that there is nothing good that can come from doing a weighted squat. Needless to say she was none too pleased with him and obviously had trouble trusting anything else the physician had to say.
I’m here to say that he was wrong. Squatting can provide some of the greatest benefits in regards to muscle strength, balance, and bone strength. Now here is the rub. Squatting with POOR form WILL hurt. And will lead to injuries. If you are a beginner then you MUST learn to squat correcting. Take the time to learn to squat. Do not lift too much weight without proper training.
My first 6 months of CrossFit I had an awful air squat. I could not seem to understand how to get my butt to back and down first before bending my knees. It was very frustrating. I would have this weird knee pain after air squats. I was not doing them fast and was not really paying attention to it all.
I did something about that. I subscribed to the CrossFit Journal. Then I read about how to perform the proper squat. In the journal they have the Level 1 trainer guide available to read. In this there is a several page description of how to learn (and teach) to squat. I then spent one full night for like 3 hours going over this form. Then for the next week or so, I pulled this out to review it. And now I will occasionally look over it. Here is the step-wise check list from the journal.
Now I am not here to say that my squat is perfect in anyway, but I do not feel the hurt like I used to. My trainer pointed out a few things for me the other day on how to fix my back squat. I’m always looking to improve my form and movement, which will lead to less discomfort and less risk of serious injury.
What are the health benefits to lifting weights? There are many, but the most important in my mind is the ability to resist injury in daily activities. I see many people with low back pain from trying to lift or do activities but without the proper strength and technique. Being able to lift a 40 lb bag of dog food or something in your 60’s should be a good goal for many people. Lifting it properly will decrease the chance of long term injury including the threat of a fall in our later years.
Happy lifting!What are your health goals?
A few times a year I sit down to think about different goals for the many areas of my life. I usually break these up into the different “roles” that I play. For example, I set goals as a physician, teacher, son, church member, and athlete. My “athlete” goals are usually the most fun to set.
As I wrap up my summer fun and triathlon season, it’s a great time to look at my goals for the next 12 months. There are so many different possibilities of fun and great things I could be doing over the next year. Here are some of the questions I have been asking myself:
1. Do I want to complete an Ironman distance triathlon next year?
2. Should I get more serious with CrossFit?
3. Should I participate in any CrossFit competitions next year?
4. What are my weakness in triathlon?
5. What are my weakness in CrossFit?
6. Strengths in Tri?
7. Strengths in CF?
And some of my answers:
1. Yes, I think so.
2. No. Just have some fun.
3. I think I’ll go to a few local ones
4. Running is by far my weakness
5. Strength and gymnastics
6. Mentally sound
7. Met-con, jumping, being friendly
So, what does that all get me?? Not sure.
I think this mainly means that I am going to do an iron distance race next year. Probably mid to late summer. The race that I would love to do is the Vineman, but this race happened to fall on the same weekend as the CrossFit games, which is obviously a problem for me, because I would love to be there again. The dates for these events have not been announced, so I am crossing my fingers that one changes.
The decision to race ironman next year will greatly impact my training schedule starting about 6 months out from the race. I think that I have a very good base and lung capacity, soI can do whatever I want up until about 6 months out and then I will have to get serious in my training. If the race is on 7/30/12 then that puts me at a training “start date” in February.
This leaves me with about 4 months to play around with.
And with these 4 months I will be primarily focusing on 2 things. Getting stronger and racing cyclocross. Um, yeah, just kind of threw that whole other sport in there. This fall each Saturday there is a cyclocross race, and I plan to do most of them while I am in town. These are short 30-45 min cycling races on a dirt track on basically a road bike with knobby tires (a cyclocross bike). This is a brand new sport for me, so I am quite excited to see how things go. I have completed one race already, and well, it was hard.
The next 3 months until November I will be working on my overall strength. My goal is that by Thanksgiving to achieve a 755 lb CrossFit Total. This will be an increase of 100 lbs since I tested this summer. This fits the definition of a stretch goal well, in that it will be hard to achieve, but still doable.
My question to answer through this fall is about how I plan to train for my ironman. Will I try a strict CF Endurance plan, more traditional, or a hybrid of both?
So, what are your fall plans??
I was on the local ABC station yesterday on a program called “Good Things Utah.” Check out my video! I speak about back to school health for kids includeing adequate sleep, a healthy breakfast, and watching for concussions.
I recently completed my last triathlon of the season. It was a last minute deal with my brother-in-law. He did his first tri a few weeks ago and wanted to do one more this year.
I was scheduled to do one more long-distance tri at the end of August, but I was just not feeling mentally desirous of doing it (burned out in other words). But a nice short Olympic distance race sounded fantastic!
The course was nearby up at Jordanelle Res and was run by the triutah folks. We met in the morning and drove up to the parking lot. I’m not a huge fan of this course, mainly because the accessibility of the course is not great. You have to park in the little town and then bike to the transition area with all of your stuff in a bag. It is all downhill to the start (and uphill after the race) but it really is no fun making this trek right before a race.
The race itself went well for me. I happily swam along in water that was just about the perfect water temp for me in a wetsuit. The sun was a bit into our eyes for part of the loop, but all in all I was happy with my result.
The bike started out with really tight and sore quads. As I was not really planning on the race, I did not taper. Sooooo, the day before the race I did a leg dominant CrossFit WOD. Not really the best idea the day before a race. You would think I would learn my lesson, but it was just for fun right?! My legs loosened up and I did start to get the motor cranking. I had a respectable time coming in for the run.
During the run I was really just having a good time. I was not pushing too hard. Enjoyed the scenary, and passed a bunch of people (which I don’t usually do).
Now that triathlon season is over for me, I have some time to work on some of my CrossFit weaknesses. My biggest limiter is my overall strength. Give me a long bodyweight or low weight with some box jumps and I will destroy it. Increase the weight a bit over my threshold and then I will really start to struggle. I’ve set some goals for the fall, and next post you will hear all about them!
Pot Roast
Hi Folks-
So remember that huge amount of grass-fed cow that purchased. Well, I figured I needed to start using some of it. I received about 4 roasts. For a person not used to cooking for a large family, cooking a roast would seem very daunting. But I decided to give it a shot. I have helped make plenty of roasts at home with my parents, but well that has been a few years.
I borrow my crock-pot from my sister. (Thanks Em and Derron!) And I might just keep it a little longer than normal.
Having never really done this, I called up mom for a few pointers, then I just kinda went to town. I decided to basically chop up every type of veggie I could find. Throw in a bunch of spices. A cup of water. And then well hope for the best!
Here is the whole pot before we started.
I decided to start this right before bed, so that it would be ready to go for the next day. I had a lovely morning waking up to the smell of roast. That was a new one for me…and one that I could really get used to.
Here the beauty in the morning.
I really should have taken a picture of me eating this for the next few days. And yes it has taken a few days for me to eat the whole thing!
Lessons?
1. Try new things out.
2. I love roast for breakfast.
