Go Retire Psychiatrist

More Mall Walking for Everyone!

I don’t get out often to the mall to do mall walking, but I did today. I put on a little over 2.5 miles on my step counter. Mall walking is OK for exercise although I have to drive over there. Right next door to the entrance to the mall is the outdoor entrance to Planet Fitness, which is kind of ironic. But you have to pay a membership fee to use the facilities there. You can just walk through the mall for free and it opens an hour before the other shops just to accommodate mall walkers.

I think mall walking does wonders for my lower back. I see a lot of older people who look like they make mall walking regular exercise. They’re my age or older. Some of them have physical challenges that may be the reasons why they mall walk, that is, for conditioning. Their physicians might have even recommended it.

A minority of mall walkers I see are young, so this isn’t just for the elderly. Occasionally I’ll see a group who are challenged in various ways. Today it looked like the guy who was blind and using a cane was right out in front, actually leading the group.

Mall walking has advantages over, say, walking downtown. It beats getting clobbered by an exploding manhole lid, bit by a dog, or mugged.

There are some studies about mall walking, but the authors of a 2015 review mainly noted that there’s a need for more rigorous studies. Their conclusion sounds a little grumpy:

“We found the potential for mall walking programs to be implemented in various communities as a health promotion measure. However, the research on mall walking programs is limited and has weak study designs. More rigorous research is needed to define best practices for mall walking programs’ reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance.”

Farren L, Belza B, Allen P, Brolliar S, Brown DR, Cormier ML, Janicek S, Jones DL, King DK, Marquez DX, Rosenberg DE. Mall Walking Program Environments, Features, and Participants: A Scoping Review. Prev Chronic Dis. 2015 Aug 13;12:E129. doi: 10.5888/pcd12.150027. PMID: 26270743; PMCID: PMC4552141.

Maybe the authors need to go for a walk.

It’s inspiring to see some of the mall walkers out there despite having major disability of one kind or another. I often see a lady who uses a wheeled walker and cannot hold her head up straight. When she sits down for a break, it looks like she’s collapsed. But she just gets up and at it again a few minutes later.

Mall walking may be understudied—but it’s also underestimated as a sign of resilience in anyone young or old.

University of Minnesota CIDRAP Story on CDC ACIP Meeting Next Week

The University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) posted a news report about the upcoming CDC ACIP meeting next Wednesday. Apparently, so far the new advisory committee draft agenda does not include a vote on the Covid-19 vaccine.

Extreme Heat Watch in Eastern Iowa This Weekend!

There is a Heat Advisory forecast for much of Eastern Iowa this weekend. Temperatures could be above 100 degrees with the heat index. Plan accordingly and be aware of National Weather Service alerts.

The Lone Turkey in Our Back Yard

We have this lone wild turkey who hangs out in Sena’s backyard garden. I’m going to refer to it using male pronouns because I think it’s a jake, which I think is proper lingo for young male turkeys.

We saw 4 or 5 turkeys last year traipsing through the yard. I think the winter was hard on the small flock and this guy is the only one who survived.

I’m going to call him Jake for now until somebody corrects me about the gender and thinks of a cooler name. The hens usually have bluish-gray heads and are smaller. Jake’s head has a lot of red in it. He also has a couple of spurs on his legs and I think hens usually don’t. I used this website for general guidance.

You can’t say “never” or always” about the characteristics of male and female turkeys. I see web references that say hens can have beards, which are those hairy things stuck to their chests.

One thing that confuses me is the guidance about the tips of the breast feathers, which says they’re always black on males and brown on females. Almost everything about Jake says he’s male except for the feather tips you see in the video while he’s preening. They look brown.

Jake has a horn on the front of his head, which will eventually become the snood, which is a wormy-looking kind of appendage that dangles off the front of the heads of male turkeys.

Males usually strut, but I think Jake doesn’t because he’s alone and doesn’t have a reason to strut, which is to compete for dominance with other males. There are no other males.

It’s a little unusual for turkeys to be loners. I don’t know if there’s a clear explanation for why some turkeys are loners. I think it’s fairly common for hens in the breeding and nesting season to be solitary.

We saw a big flock of turkeys last year in the back yard of a previous neighbor. They evidently all hopped over their fence and then acted like they couldn’t figure out how to jump back out. I made a YouTube video of it because it was comical.

I don’t know how Jake will find another flock to join.

Sit and Rise Exercise Related to Longevity?

I just read a few news articles and saw a couple of videos on something called the sit and rise or sitting rising exercise. It’s not the same as the sit to stand exercise, which is how many times you stand up from a chair without falling down after drinking several beers. The sit and rise exercise is sitting down and then standing back up in a cross-legged position.

Just to let you know, there are dozens of news stories that claim if you can’t do the sit and rise exercise without using one or both hands or a crane to get back up, you’re marked for death within hours. Make sure your last will and testament is notarized.

OK, I also saw a Snopes fact-check story about the sit and rise thing and it’s a myth that the inability to do it predicts mortality within a few years. It does indicate you have problems with mobility and that could be from a number of factors, including previous joint injuries and not having legs. Check a full-length mirror.

Apparently, there was a study done in Brazil in 2012 that got this story going about imminent mortality if you can’t do the sit and rise cross-legged routine. It looks like there have been news stories about it every year or so since then just to scare old people.

I can’t do the sit and rise cross-legged and wondered if there’s some kind of trick to it. There isn’t and the main problem according to experts are weak glutes. And I’m able to stand on one leg for 30 seconds and I can do 3-4 reps of the single sit to stand exercise on both legs. I also have no problem getting up from a chair from a sitting position without pulling myself up using grab bars or having somebody haul me up with a tow chain.

I can’t remember a time when I could even sit cross-legged, although I guess I did when I was in kindergarten. When I took a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, I had to try to sit cross legged to meditate and I was numb in my hips and knees within a couple of minutes. When I got up, I usually fell over, sustained a minor head injury and was rushed to the ER about 1,200 times (“It’s Dr. Amos again; he’s been trying to sit in that lotus position” “OK, put him in the rack.”).

There’s a web page that gives advice on how to fix a problem with not being able to sit in a crossed leg position for longer than a minute. The author provides a short list of exercises without instructions for how to do them:

Child Pose: I imagine this resembles standing pigeon-toed, holding your crotch and dancing around a little about an hour after drinking a half-gallon of Kool-Aid.

Pigeon Pose: This is kind of like the Child Pose only it’s done while pooping on the head of a statue.

Toe Touch: Self-explanatory but apparently you can touch anything with your toe as long as it’s not something recently expelled from a pigeon.

Vajrasana: It involves contacting extraterrestrials who will assist you by inserting various probes in several orifices while you remain very still to allow the tracking device to be correctly installed.

Lung Pose: I’m not sure how this strengthens your glutes but obviously it involves surgery. Check your insurance.

Bridge Pose: This might tone your glutes if you dive off a bridge without a parachute. Make sure your life insurance policy is up-to-date.

That about does it for the sit and rise cross-legged issue. Remember, it’s only when you do it while cross-eyed that all the trouble starts. Glad I could clear that up.

This essay is satirical.

The Short Story on Kiwi for Health

Sena was at the store yesterday and some guy (a total stranger) in a motorized scooter rode up to her and said, “I have trouble sleeping” and asked her where to find the kiwi fruit in the produce section. It didn’t faze her because this didn’t sound like a pickup line, you know like that joke on the TV commercial: “Why do iguanas reproduce only once a year? That’s because they have e-reptile dysfunction.”

Actually, the guy was looking for kiwi fruit because he had heard that it can help you sleep. So, she told him where it was. A little later, she saw him wandering around and asked him if he’d found the kiwi fruit. He hadn’t so she got a package for him.

It turns out there is a news article saying there are a few small studies indicating that eating a couple of kiwis (remember, this is about the fruit, not the birds) about an hour before you hit the sack can help you sleep. They have a lot of serotonin which your body turns into melatonin which can promote sleep.

You have to be careful about eating kiwis if you have a latex or fruit allergy because you could have a reaction. And if you have diabetes you need to be aware kiwis are high in sugar.

The thing is, you have to eat a couple of them about an hour before bedtime. Often enough I find that I’m napping in the evening in front of the TV long before then—but that’s probably because there’s usually nothing on but reruns and the usual commercials about cannabidiol (CBD) products, total body deodorants, and snake oil for e-reptile dysfunction.

In fact, there’s also some limited evidence that kiwi fruit can just help you feel better in general. It’s mainly about yellow kiwi fruit rather than the green ones. The yellow ones are called SunGold, and they have a lot of vitamin C. Actually, if you don’t like kiwi fruit, you can find other fruits and vegetables containing a lot of vitamin C, including strawberries and oranges—and broccoli. Go with kiwi fruit.

On the other hand, it looks like you might pay about 3x more for the yellow kiwi than the green.

Kiwi fruits are packed with vitamins. You can get 100% of vitamin C from SunGold and they have more than 20 vitamins and minerals. More than a million tons of kiwi fruit are produced every year. You can make kiwi pizza-if you’re on drugs!

And if you eat a couple of SunGold kiwis a day you could feel so good you might be more willing to contribute to the foundation for assisting iguanas with e-reptile dysfunction.

Thoughts on Upping Your Game

Today’s essay by Dr. Moffic was pretty interesting about the role of video gaming in health for men and women. Computer games were emphasized but it got me thinking about hands-on games that you might thing of as being more old-fashioned—like cribbage.

I wrote a post about cribbage already today, but there’s another angle on it that’s readily adaptable to considering its role in promoting mental health for both men and women.

That reminds me that until yesterday and today, I was on a major losing streak in cribbage with Sena. Cribbage wins and losses seem to occur in streaks and I was beginning to wonder if I’d lost my touch.

There’s a cribbage connection with the electronic gaming realm in that we also play the computer video cribbage game Cribbage Pro. There are three levels, Standard, Challenging, and Brutal (the toughest opponent). We always play Brutal, and often win. There’s a way to play internet cribbage on Cribbage Pro, but we don’t. I prefer playing live. I think the popular view of cribbage is that it’s an old guy’s game. I suspect people think it’s a card game old men play on their lunch hour at the factory.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s very popular with women and kids and my guess is that no matter what your gender preference is, there’s a greater diversity of cribbage players out there than anyone realizes.

Playing cribbage promotes and maintains brain health by requiring you to practice basic arithmetic by counting your scores and pegging. You lose a little of that in Cribbage Pro although you can turn on the feature allowing manual counting of scores.

And the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) accommodates internet cribbage tournaments. It’s very popular and competitive. By the way, expanding on my other post today about how to verify your luck in getting a 29 hand in cribbage, you can easily prove it on Cribbage Pro by taking a screen shot of it!

Computer games are fine, but I like to manually shuffle the cards for cribbage. Sena likes to use the shuffling machine—which is very loud but gets the job done. I’ve not yet found a way to “accidentally” lose the shuffling machine (Can’t imagine where it went; must have grown legs and walked downtown!).

We always help each other count our scores. The one time we tried muggins rule, which involves penalizing each other for missing scores by taking them from each other, we just couldn’t seem to get it straight. And it wasn’t as much fun.

There are local cribbage clubs that you could get involved in although they might be hard to find. The nearest one to us is several hours away.

I used to play computer games years ago (although not Nintendo), but nowadays I feel more like Agent K in Men in Black II as he’s trying to quickly learn how to steer a spacecraft using what looks like a PlayStation 2 controller (I used to have one of those).

after K turns on the auto pilot during the chase…

Agent K: It is not automatic pilot.

Agent J: He doesn’t work when we’re in hyperspeed.

Agent K: I could really use a steering wheel!

Agent J: We don’t have no damn steering wheel! This is what we got! [turns off auto pilot] Didn’t your mother ever give you a Gameboy?

Agent K: What is a Gameboy?!?

Thoughts on the Elusive 29 Hand Score in Cribbage

Sena and I were talking about the elusive 29 hand score in cribbage and I wondered how you could ever verify it. Let’s face it, it’s hard to imagine anybody filming themselves playing cribbage in order to catch it on tape.

Just for the sake of completeness, here’s a video of how to count the 29 score. You can see from the comments that it is indeed possible to get the 29 hand in your lifetime—if you’re an extraterrestrial from a galaxy where the typical lifespan is several hundred years.

As noted in the video, the odds of getting a 29-score hand are 1 in 216,580. I have rarely seen news stories that highlight this happening at some hardware store in East Overshoe, name-your-state where a couple of guys are playing cribbage on their lunch break. One supposedly gets a 29 hand. He calls up the local news announcing that and a reporter hustles over to snap a photo of the guy holding up the perfect hand with a nob jack and three 5 cards next to a card deck showing the obligatory 4^th turnup 5 card.

How hard would it be to set that up?

OK, I’m not saying they’re making it up, but it’s not impossible to prank everybody by staging this as an April Fool’s joke. Would it be worth doing? No, not in my opinion.

I’ve never seen a story about anybody making a video of a cribbage game in which somebody gets the 29 hand. That would be interesting! But who would ever do that? You could make video recordings of your cribbage games every day for your whole life and never get a 29 hand. But a lot of people have a “29 hand cribbage” story. In fact, in the video above you can find a few comments about it. Is it just lore or are people telling tall tales or what?

There might another way to increase your chances of getting the 29 hand. You could become a vampire. That’s right; vampires can live for hundreds of years or even longer, provided they don’t get exposed to daylight or take a stake through the heart. Being immortal would give you more time to play cribbage. The only hitch is that you have to let a vampire bite you, making you a loathsome creature only able to get around during the night, when most people are sleeping. And somebody would probably invent cribbage pegs shaped like little crosses and there you go.

There might be another solution. One is to require the person who claims to have gotten a 29 hand to take a lie detector test. Sound good?

But lie detector tests are probably not infallible. You can even find instructions on the web claiming you can learn how to outsmart them. Believe it or not, there’s a Wikihow on “How to Fool a Polygraph Exam.” And even if Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used as part of the exam, everybody knows AI lies! Besides, there’s a bigger problem with lie detector tests. They would take all the fun out of the thrill of getting the 29 hand and telling everyone the story about it!

And after all, it’s the stories about getting the 29 hand that carry the day.

Svengoolie Show “Son of Dracula”Spelling Bee Game!

I saw the Svengoolie show 1943 film, “First Cousin Twice Removed of Dracula” last night. Sorry, that’s actually “Son of Dracula.” You can watch it colorized on the Internet Archive.

It starred Lon Chaney as Count Alucard, and that name didn’t fool anybody because it’s just Dracula spelled backward. The goof everybody already knows about occurs early in the show when Dracula transforms from a bat in front of a mirror and his reflection is clearly visible.

You don’t see that much of Count Dracula and you never see his fangs. He’s well-spoken and mostly polite. He didn’t cry out “Bluh, bluh” even once, but then neither did Bela Lugosi.

Maybe I was just overthinking Dracula’s overall plan for taking over America. Was he supposed to suck the blood of hundreds of millions of people one by one or what? Even with the help of Enirehtak, the Southern belle he hypnotized into being his wife, that would be a long-term project even for the immortal vampires.

That approach is probably what killed the movie “Attack of the Vicious, Loathsome, Depraved but Suave Vampire Anteaters with Denture Fangs from Saturn!” The solution to save the planet was to ban Poligrip. Theater staff had to wake up the audience members, but only occasionally.

In spite of what you might think about the flying bat special effects, there were no strings involved—just a decrepit bat.

There were a few elderly gentlemen in the film, Dr. Brewster being one. He had a great idea about how to protect a little boy from another attack by Dracula. He drew little crosses on the kid’s neck where the fang puncture wounds were. See there? You don’t need to carry a crucifix around! Just cross your fingers at vampires.

And Dracula (no spring chicken himself) suffered a mishap while carrying his bride across the threshold after their wedding. He fell and broke his hip. Vampirism doesn’t protect men from osteoporosis. The action shots got a little shorter after that. Using a walker tends to slow chase scenes down.

On the other hand, Dracula was otherwise well preserved for being hundreds of years old. He got a little perturbed when somebody threw out his bottle of Serutan. Remember, that’s Natures spelled backwards.

Big Mo Pod Show: Music of the People

I caught the Big Mo Pod Show today, “Music of the People” and of course, I listened to his Friday Blues show last night.

Big Mo is a bottomless pit of blues music knowledge (as well as other genres) and that takes me back to my wasted youth when I had a short conversation with one of my former bosses when I worked for Wallace Holland Kastler Schmitz & Co., a consulting engineer firm in Mason City, Iowa.

Ages ago, Ralph Wallace and I got into a short conversation one day about blues music, believe it or not. I can’t recall what actually got that short chat started but it was kind of surreal. He asked me about what I liked about the blues and I brought him up short by telling him I didn’t know anything about it.

I think Ralph thought I would know about the blues just because I was black. I didn’t. He even tried to prompt me by asking about different kinds of blues music, for example 12 bar blues and so on. I’ll never forget his facial expression when he realized I barely knew it existed. He looked puzzled and incredulous. He was a white man and knew more about it than I did. I think it stunned him that a black guy was completely ignorant of the blues.

I could dismiss the interaction simply as a mild form of racism, but I think it was more complicated than that. He was the boss of the company who gave me my very first real job but really didn’t know anything about my background. I was the child of a black man and white woman and my father left home when I was just a little kid. I went to an all-white church. I went to all-white schools, that is, until I was persuaded by a white woman and the black pastor and professor of religion and philosophy to enter Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University), one of the HBCUs in America located in Austin, Texas. I first heard gospel music there and it raised the hair up on the back of my neck.

It’s a little ironic but I also think of John Heim (aka Big Mo) as another white man who knows more than I’ll ever know about the blues. And I’ve been learning from him for years, which is great.

So, the point is that the theme of the Big Mo Pod Show today is “Music of the People.” The blues is music for all people and the songs can have broad appeal.

One example is the song “Artificial” by Walter Trout. It’s a modern rant against the many synthetic artifacts in modern society and that includes something I rail against—Artificial Intelligence (AI). I can relate to it.

One song that didn’t make it to the list of 5 on the pod show but which was on the blues show last night was “Room on the Porch” by Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ (featuring Ruby Amanfu). I got a surreal feeling about it because it’s about being openly welcoming to everyone. I hear a note of irony in it related to the current conflicts in America and around the world which highlight the opposite of openness and welcome. They’re not new.

On the other hand, I don’t think either Taj Mahal or Keb’ Mo’ intended for the song to be ironic. Maybe I just hear it because of all the background noise that has to be called reality because that’s what’s out there.

What if they’re not being ironic? What if they believe it and they’re trying to say there’s a good reason we should think of the blues as the music of the people—all the people? Where could we go from there?

Big Mo said it last night, “The blues can heal you, if you let it.”