Turmeric--the next new (or ancient) wonder drug?

I've slept normally for the past 5 days. This is a statement that most people would probably take for granted--for me, it's an accomplishment that rivals any achievement I have had in recent years.

Turmeric--I actually take standardized pills--you would
have to eat 7 tablespoons of this stuff
 a day to get an effective dose

Back in the middle of December, I went in to a new doctor in order to have a lump on my finger assessed--and went through the normal form-filling-out, list all your medications and relevant medical history, and I did what I should have, which was to write down that I was taking Klonopin for anxiety and aspirin for my heart defect. End of story--or so I thought, while sitting in the waiting room. My new doctor greeted me in the exam room, and then immediately voiced his concern about the Klonopin. Recent studies had shown a link between the use of benzodiazepines (the class of drug that Klonopin is in, along with Xanax and a few others) and the potential for development of Alzheimers and dementia later in life. The lump on my finger was a ganglion cyst (or commonly known as a bible bump) and required no treatment, and would only need surgery if it became painful.

I had considered getting off of Klonopin for a while at this point--my pattern of usage was that when traveling, I would take it every night to sleep, and when not traveling I would taper down to something more reasonable. Due to my difficult schedule last year, this turned into basically taking it every night for the time between August and December. The dosage I was on was small compared to heavy benzo users, and larger doses are more likely the cause for concern with the development of dementia later in life.

The science behind the study is questionable--there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to establish a causal relationship between a drug and a condition for a drug that is used as the first line of defense to treat that condition in most cases. The authors of the study suggest they eliminated this relationship by only looking at people who took benzos more than 5 years before their Alzheimers or dementia diagnosis. Other studies point to the development of symptoms of dementia or Alzheimers as much as 20 years before diagnosis. The flaw in the study is apparent to people such as myself, without a medical degree, and the comments to the published studies between people who are obviously medical doctors or medical researchers are as vehement as Facebook posts about the current slew of presidential candidates.

To get straight to the point, I got off of Klonopin partly because of the possibility of this linkage, but more because it left me feeling run down and tired at times--take too much Klonopin too many days in a row, and you're in a brain fog. Take too little and you can't sleep. Take the right amount for too long, and you grow a tolerance to it, requiring more, resulting in brain fog. It was time to be done with it.

The withdrawal period was ridiculous. I did not sleep for 3 straight nights trying to go cold turkey as my doctor suggested. I then decided to taper off of the drug for about 3 weeks. I was encouraged to use melatonin to aid in getting to sleep, starting at 3 mg, and increasing it until I actually got to sleep. I wound up at 9 mg, well under the maximum dosage my doctor suggested of 20, but I was having problems sleeping through the night, often getting 3 to 5 hours of sleep and not being able to go back to sleep. Three weeks after my final dose of Klonopin, I talked with my doctor again, and he suggested hitting myself with another dose of melatonin when I woke up in the middle of the night, which allowed me to sleep a more reasonable amount of time. I was back to my usual 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep at night, even if it was broken up.

My saving grace came from an unusual source. Somebody in my Facebook feed posted an article describing the use of Turmeric as an antidepressant. The study done to prove this pitted the use of Turmeric against pharmaceutical antidepressants in a controlled scientific manner. The conclusion of this study was that Turmeric (when taken at the right dose, with black pepper to aid in absorption) was equally as effective as SSRI meds, but without the litany of side effects. I am still in the middle of the two to four week period that it takes for Turmeric to reach full effectiveness, but I am seeing improvements in my sleep pattern and my mood that rival what I have seen before when on the various antidepressants I have been prescribed throughout my life.

I've had some decent workouts in training for triathlon--but a necessary precursor to heavy training is having the rest of your body and your life in order. I'm getting there--I'm starting to enjoy my workouts again, and I'm starting to look forward to life with some optimism. It's really amazing to me that the solution to the trinity of depression, anxiety, and insomnia may very well be this yellow spice consumed for ages by people in another part of the world.

Take care of your body...nobody else is going to.

The past several months have been difficult for me, to say the least--and training and staying in shape has suffered because of it.

Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel Tower Run

More concerning, though, is what it has done to my overall well-being. Since August, I have traveled to the east coast 3 times, the Philippines, France, and Sweden. The reactions that I get from people that I tell this to range from severe jealousy to statements like "Just think of all those frequent flyer miles you're getting." I'm just going to dispel those things right now. I traveled to the Philippines in the middle of the rainy season--it poured rain for the first 3 days I was there, and then for the remaining time, it rained most of every day except for a few hours here and there. The times when it wasn't raining became a steam bath, with temps in the 90s and humidity hovering around 100%. Mosquitoes came out in droves when it was not pouring rain. My trips to DC weren't nearly as severe as far as the weather goes, but precious little time was available, since every day I was there was a work day. Paris was nice--I flew in one day, had a day's worth of meetings and then flew out the next day. In the midst of trying to deal with a 9 hour time change, I got a couple of runs in around the city, under the Eiffel tower and down the Seine. It was picturesque and scenic--I didn't mind the misery of jet lag for those few days. Sweden, on the other hand, was a trip north of the arctic circle at a time of year when the sun is technically above the horizon for 2-3 hours per day. It was cold, and I worked an insane number of hours. I had committed to this trip long before any of the other trips on my schedule, so I have to say that I don't place any blame on this singularity--I knew it was coming, it was the stuff that filtered in around the trip that really did me in.

Guard at Stockholm Palace

Between Sweden and my last trip to DC, I got sick, and it turned out I got really sick--the likes of which I haven't seen for years. I hacked up and blew out greyish-green chunky crap from my lungs and sinuses, and began having difficulty breathing, at which point I finally called in sick to work and went to an urgent care to get it taken care of. I was very conscious of the doctor in the room backing away from me after examining me, presumably to minimize his exposure to whatever it was I had. He prescribed a z-pack, and it was highly effective at curing me. My sinus infection was much improved after a day, and by the two day mark seemed to be completely gone. My chest took a few days longer to clear.

The net sum of what I have been through resulted in something else that was unintended--I missed a large number of my regular trips to my chiropractor and massage therapist. I had scheduled one of those trips for after my trip to Sweden and canceled and rescheduled it when I initially got sick, for a week later--which turned out to be the peak of my illness, and I had to cancel it again.

I intended to get into the chiropractor and massage therapist at some point in the next week or so, and it so happens that my back spasmed yesterday morning--I managed to make it through a meeting at work, and my chiropractor fit me in at the end of the day. A massage is out of the question in this state--I've got one scheduled for Tuesday next week which should be after the inflammation dies down.

I did a lot of things in the past several months that fly in the face of what I know I need to do to keep my body healthy. Sitting on planes for long periods of time exacerbates my issues with my back. Being away from what I've got set up as a healthy working configuration (standing desk in my cube) makes it harder for me to avoid the things that perturb my back issues. Working long hours takes away from the work/life balance I have tried so hard to achieve, and bites into the precious little time I have to do the extra things to keep my aging body from revolting on me due to the exercise I need to do.

I'm sitting in the middle of what appears to be the new normal at work--and I have to prioritize my life to make the new normal not kill me in the process. Getting enough rest and taking care of my body shoot to the top of the list. Figuring out how to do all of that while maintaining progress toward my goals in triathlon is going to be a challenge, but I think I can figure it out.

I am sure there is more to come on this.

Am I getting up or am I falling down?

This morning's run--good morning, Virginia!

I know that, on the surface, all athletes go through one form of this or another.  It's perfectly normal and logical to have ruts, down periods, and low motivation at times when training and racing.  Several years ago now, I pulled out all the stops, abused the crap out of my body, and got through an amazing day at Ironman Arizona.  It was a year that I recognized to be advancement in the sport of triathlon that was paralleled by similar experiences im my life, like the first year that I went to Pine Crest as a swimmer in high school--the simple reality is that those times as an athlete are not the norm--and the performances should be cherished, along with the rewards that go with them.

Since that performance at Ironman Arizona, I've had some difficulty with racing, training, and injury, but I've also had some very positive signs.  Earlier this year, I PR'd my half marathon on a crazy-ass hilly course.  I PR'd my half-ironman bike split (both by wattage and time) on the way to my second fastest half-ironman ever.  I've identified and am working to corrections in my swimming training that should result in an up-ramp in my speed, and I'm seeing those results in workouts.  In all likelihood, I am probably faster than I have ever been before in triathlon.

The problem at this point is the work/life/triathlon balance.  I'm traveling a lot for work.  Brian and I are remodeling large portions of our house, and I lack time due to commuting and work issues that are somewhat out of my control. These are normal problems, and they are transient in nature.  The key to them is to keep them transient in nature, and not let them become the status quo.  I have witnessed the result of burnout both in my professional career and in my athletic endeavors, and that is not a path anyone wants to go down.  I had a discussion with Joanna, my coach, about this year about my complicated travel schedule, and she has been a strong voice of reason and incredibly patient with me.  The bike workouts are in maintenance mode, and I think I'm harder on myself about missing workouts than Joanna is on me.  That's life--there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much cumulative mental and physical stress you can place on a given person.



And I am no stranger to stress and anxiety--but I've found a somewhat unusual tool to battle with it.  My time spent on the 405 back and forth to work each day was an hour of bumper to bumper traffic each way, and added to the overall level of agitation I had in my life.  Over the course of a couple of years, I found that my problems with depression and anxiety were fueled more by the anxiety side of things, and that, instead of anti-depressants, with their host of side effects, the simpler answer was Klonopin, which is in the same family as Xanax but longer lasting in nature. Until very recently, I had resigned myself to the concept of potentially being on this drug for life.  And then my parents came into town and my Mom inspired me to pick up a knitting project I had left to the wayside a couple of years ago.  And that knitting project reminded me just how therapeutic the process is.  The rhythmic nature of the work is sedating, while the work itself involves your mind just enough to simultaneously distract it while letting it work through thoughts without wrapping your mind in a negative feedback loop.  It's the same place you get to when things are clicking during a good workout, or a good race--and the big difference is that I can do it twice a day, every day, while sitting on the train on the way back and forth to work.

So, I finished a pair of gloves...and I'm working on something else right now--and I'm reducing my dosage of Klonopin, with the idea of getting completely off it at some point in the future.  Klonopin withdrawal is a bitch--and it takes months to taper off it completely and safely. So, this is normal.

And I had a really good run this morning, and a good swim yesterday.  I'd say I'm standing up that eighth time, whether or not I fell for a seventh.

Midlife process check

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been grappling with several aspects of my life that have shifted.  In triathlon, I dropped out of Full Vineman a couple of months before the race due to injury, and also due to my determination that I was simply done with the long version (Ironman distance) of triathlons.  At work, various forces have caused me to move into a different assignment than I’ve had before, and at home, Brian and I have gotten ourselves in over our heads with a remodeling job on the house.

My vacation last week (which was awesome) began with several days of kicking back, relaxing, and decompressing while laying by the pool and hitting a winery or two a day while we were in Sonoma county.  The days away from work allowed me to get some perspective on my life that I don’t think I could have while in the midst of all the daily hustle and bustle.   To put it simply, I could not see the forest through the trees.

I had reached a point where I simply was not enjoying the majority of what I was doing during the day.  Workouts became obligations.  Work was about clocking time.  Home chores were about achieving the bare minimum.  Taking care of our dogs was a “whose turn is it?” scenario between Brian and I.  And the remodel was the overbearing weight on our shoulders that was the last thing we wanted to deal with at the end of the day. 

This conglomeration of symptoms is often a sign that therapists look at as evidence of depression and anxiety.  I think that in this case though, I had simply overwhelmed myself with too many things at one time.

In triathlon, I don’t have a race on the schedule.  I blew off a 5k right before my vacation because I was stressed out of my mind.   I have made the explicit determination not to put a race on the schedule for the near future so that I can work through this and come out of it with a healthier outlook.   I have always been a goal-oriented person, so this is a change of direction for me, but one that I think is necessary.  While training for the last Ironman I did in 2011, I had a very different mentality about the sport than I do now—it was to complete all the training and pull out all the stops at all costs.  I grew to resent a lot of the time I spent on the bike and what was then significant discomfort while running—this likely led to the injuries that I sustained in the season that followed.  

I’m spending time figuring out how to get back to enjoying the building blocks of the process.  This morning, before my 15 hour flight to Manila, I got a bike ride in, and it was rather enjoyable.  I went in the morning in the Los Angeles area on a weekday—which made a lot of the difference.  Bike paths and roads are overcrowded with people in my area on the weekday evenings and on the weekends.  While it’s fine to deal with that, I had set myself up such that the majority of my bike workouts would be in the evening.  Getting home from work, when you’re already tired, and facing what will be a mentally exhausting game of human dodgeball on the bike path led me to choose to skip a lot of these workouts.  From a swimming perspective, I had set myself up to swim at night because of the lure of the Belmont pool—it was the same schedule problem.  Getting from work to the pool for a 7pm workout meant leaving work an hour and a half before the workout, and either sitting in traffic for most of that time, or riding mass transit and then a 20 minute drive from the train station to the pool.   Coupled with a relatively low attendance of people at workout, I had little motivation to keep doing this.  It wasn’t enjoyable and it was stressing me out.  Running-wise however, things have started to turn around for me--I am starting to have days with no foot pain at all.  It makes a huge difference to approach a workout and not have a predetermination that you’re simply fighting a war of attrition with your ability to tolerate pain.

Whoever took this picture deserves a medal

I’ve been a lifelong athlete—and I will always be an athlete.  Sometimes a tweak or two is in order to keep things fresh, to keep yourself interested, and to keep the balance of your life in swing.  That’s all that’s really going on here, and it’s all that should be going on.   So I’m figuring out what works for me without the context of a major goal in place, and then I’ll see how that meshes with a goal in the future.

For work, I’ve landed in a job that is interesting, and more importantly has less daily doomsday water cooler talk.  My first thought when I got to work before was “What time can I leave?” and now I’m back to focusing on the job that needs to be done and not watching minutes go by on the clock.

Brian and I are taking a more sane approach to the remodel as well, and it’s going to take longer, but it’ll be on a schedule that does not overly dominate our lives.

We’ve all only got one life to live, and age-wise, I’m sitting somewhere near the middle of mine.  I think I’m on my way to figuring out what I want the second half of my life to be.

Brava, Caitlyn Jenner

I grew very sad for the state of our world over the past week, and it peaked when I saw that someone had gathered over 10,000 signatures to petition the IOC to revoke the gold medal that Bruce Jenner won at the Olympics, all because 30+ years later Bruce Jenner transitioned to being Caitlyn Jenner.

The people who started this petition are not stupid.  They surely realized that the IOC's policy that was put in place for transgendered competition does not apply retroactively--they sought to penalize Caitlyn because they were lashing out at her for being different than they are.  They do not accept that a person can have issues with their gender identity, and that in some cases, the only way they can live their lives is to transition to the opposite sex. These people sought nothing more than punitive action for someone that has been a public figure and a role model--someone who is having a very public battle with a very difficult set of issues. Nobody who transitions from male to female, or from female to male, does so lightly.

I have to believe that for most of the people that signed this petition, it is simply because they did not know any better.  It is entirely possible that they have never spoken to a transgendered person, that they do not know the pain that has gone on in their lives, because someone who is transgendered does not feel right in the body that they were born with, as the sex that they were born as.  The simple fact of the matter is that the percentage of transgendered people at any stage of their lives is quite small, to the point that the vast majority of Americans have never known someone who has struggled with gender identity.  So, I believe that most of the people that signed that petition do not know that transgendered people are often so wracked with anguish that they decide to kill themselves because of a fear of society not accepting them, and that needs to stop.  We need to educate people on what it means to be different, and get them to stop rejecting things that they don't understand for no other reason than that other people do not fit their mold.

I did say most of those over 10,000 people, and not all.  Some of those 10,000 people are simply intolerant to the point that they will never change their mind regardless of what kind of evidence they see, or who in their personal lives suffers.  Those people, in all likelihood, cannot be reached.  But most people do have the capability to grow and understand, and I applaud Caitlyn Jenner for thrusting herself in the spotlight to cause this discussion to happen on such a public level.

I did not have issues with gender identity at any point in my life.  I'm a gay man that is very happy being a man--I will say that when I was a child, not having being gay as an acceptable lifestyle model caused confusion for me.  What did it mean that I found myself attracted to other boys when I was a younger boy and not attracted to girls?  When I was a teenager, what did it mean when I didn't find myself sexually aroused by the girls I dated?  Did it mean that I was supposed to have been a woman?  I did not have the benefit of a dialog with anyone because I was so hopelessly in the closet until late in my college days.  It hurts children to have a standard that being gay or being transgendered is not normal.  We need to stop hurting children.

If you do not understand what being a transgendered person is all about, please reach out
to someone--the world needs to become a better place, and we will not get there by lashing out at one another.

Worst Triathlete Ever.

I'm going to start this post by saying that I suck as a triathlete.  But I'm ok with that...and I'm not talking about my times--I'm perfectly satisfied with how fast or how slow I've gone in past triathlons, depending on your point of view.  A number of years ago, I set a lifetime goal for myself of achieving a sub 13-hour Ironman, and a number of years after that, I achieved that goal.  That's probably the only concrete goal I ever had in this sport, and I achieved that goal.

So, the reason why I'm saying I suck as a triathlete is that I have just made the decision to stop, and that's something that triathletes rarely do.  I am still currently registered for Full Vineman at the end of July, and I'm pulling the plug on the whole thing.  So, I suck as a triathlete because I'm doing the one thing that the hoards and masses of triathletes who are out there would never imagine--I'm proclaiming that there is more to this sport than just the long-ass version of beating the crap out of yourself for an entire day because those distances were set as the "ultimate test of endurance."  I am....well, I'm done.

Last week, I had three injuries flare up on me--my plantar fasciitis was especially active, I tweaked my knee on my long run, and my back spasmed on me on Thursday--due, most likely, to the stress of 90 minutes of Thursday night traffic on the 405.  Running has evolved into an endurance event of pain tolerance--and I don't enjoy a single minute of it.

Brian hit the nail on the head when we were discussing this over the weekend--I started seeing all sorts of problems crop up when I made the decision to start training for an Ironman-distance event again...and it comes down to one thing--I'm trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.  As a swimmer, I was best at the sprint freestyles and the butterflies--all races that lasted less than 2 minutes (well, except the 200-meter fly...I wasn't that fast).  And as a triathlete, I've been down this path of doing races that last 5, 6, 12, and even 16 hours on a bad day.   Frankly, it's a friggin' miracle that I lasted through 3 Ironman triathlons, and an even bigger one that I did well on my third one.  This penchant toward speed is consistent across all three sports for me--My 5k times are faster than they should be relative to my 10k's and half-marathons--and I friggin' hate running full marathons.  While biking, I can generate all kinds of wattage for short bursts that would seem to indicate that I should be able to hold an effort for a 40k higher than I actually can.

So, I do not fit the mold.  I am no longer interested in trying to fit the mold. Trying to fit the mold causes me to do workouts that break me down to the point that I wind up with tight, weak muscles, and then I wind up injuring myself.  I'm done being on the gravy-train that longer is better, and that a "real triathlon" is a hundred and forty point six miles of unadulterated hell.

So, why is that triathletes all go in this direction of longer is better?  And more is better?  I saw a posting today that 100-milers are the new marathon--what the hell is up with that?  Marathons already break down your leg muscle beyond the point that is healthy for you--so please, people, just stop already.  Running 100 miles is not healthy. Period.

I'm Drew Giacobe, and I say Olympic Distance triathlons are awesome--but they're only awesome if I can back into swimming shape again.

Goodbye, obnoxiously long bike rides on the river path.  I am done with you.  And goodbye my dear love/hate relationship with the long run.  I'm moving on. 

Apparently, it is time to change the name of my blog.

"The carousel never stops turning."

"The carousel never stops turning"--anyone who watches Grey's Anatomy will immediately know where this quote comes from, and what it means.  And everyone will also very likely have their own version of events that seem like life keeps going and never seems to stop throwing punches at you.

Right now, I'm dealing with a mortgage refinance, a solar panel installation, a demanding training schedule as a triathlete, my job as an aerospace engineer, and a check-up on my birth defect of a heart with a hole in it as a result of my annual physical. I've also just finished getting through an appeal of an application for life insurance that was originally denied because of a lack of documentation about that hole in my heart--assuming I am not randomly killed by a comet crashing into my house in the next 3 hours and I survive past midnight today, my husband should be fine to continue to live in our home in the event of my untimely demise.

I don't for a second think that the things that I'm dealing with are any different or larger in magnitude than what most of the world does.  I'm just insanely jealous of people who manage to keep these things in line better than I do.  "It's too bad you grew up--it's horrible being an adult."

Right now, I'm trying to cope with an incompatibility between my commute time, my time working, and my time training for triathlon.  To simplify the description, I was spending between 2 and 3 hours a day getting back and forth to work, and trying to get 2 workouts in most days really didn't mesh with that and my job.

I most recently tried to flip my work schedule to early in the morning and get my training in during the afternoons.  My days consisted of waking up at 4:30, and getting out the door by 5:15 to miss traffic in the morning, followed by working a straight day through without a lunch to 2pm so I could miss the evening rush hour (that goes from about 2:30pm to 7:30pm).  I would arrive home a brain dead zombie, and not really care about the patches of beard I had missed shaving that morning.  I grew irritated with my workouts.  Swimming is 7pm to 8pm, and I had problems winding down afterwards...often leaving me awake until 11:30...followed by a 4:30am wakeup.  I redefined "grumpy." And then I hurt my foot again during a training run.

Your body doesn't heal well or recover well from workouts when you're sleep deprived--and I don't sleep well to begin with, so when I recognize I'm not sleeping well--it's especially bad.  I fell apart on Wednesday and decided I needed to fix something, and I am incredibly fortunate that I'm being allowed to work part of my work week going forward at a facility that is closer to home.  My 1 hour to 1.5 hour commute each way will drop to 5 minutes on those days.  I am hopeful that this change will be the thing that brings my life back into the realm of reasonableness.

I spent some time chatting with my coach about the best way to make use of my new schedule, along with some concern about being 12 weeks out from Full Vineman and not feeling very well trained.   The awesomeness of having Joanna as a coach is that she is a never ending fountain of knowledge about how to deal with any amount of crap that might be going on in your life.  After talking with her and coming up with a game plan, I felt like I had the answer and everything would work out with the new plan.

So, I have this new concept for how to deal with weekly training, and I go to look at my work week and personal life issues for this week, and 3 out 5 days have things that aren't in line with what we talked about.....of course!  Tomorrow, I have a meeting in El Segundo, so commuting happens again--Tuesday, I get to have my heart imaged (yay.), and Friday, I've got to take Brian to the airport in the morning, obliterating when I was going to swim.  The effing carousel never effing stops turning.  And it kind of bothers me that for the screenshot that I took of my schedule, I could not fit the time I have scheduled from morning until night all on the screen at the same time.

It all works though--I've got to reorder stuff during my days, and it will probably take a week or two to get things to fall in line.  I'm just hoping I can look forward to riding the carousel now, rather than feeling like I have to get off of it and run screaming from the fair.