giles

I’m in the hospital following another bout of surgery, specifically angioplasty and stent implantation. The good news is I got to compare my risk factors with the risk factors recorded prior to my earlier surgery at this same hospital in February. HDL got worse; everything else got better. Terrific improvements in triglycerides, and LDL and total cholesterol. My blood pressure improved enough that they took me off one of my medications.

Except for HDL, my numbers on every one of these are better than the average American’s. One caveat, these targets are conventional targets; for myself I believe I need a much lower set of targets for total and LDL cholesterol. For instance, the standard recommended total cholesterol level is under 200, but the average total cholesterol level in mainland China (which sees virtually no heart disease at all) is 127.

Also these risk factors are not the only predictors of heart disease: the reason for my surgery is that despite these improvements, one of my arterial blockages grew from 20% to 80%. Actually, what probably happened is that this 20% blockage ‘grew’ when a different blockage deteriorated, floated into the bloodstream, and joined to it via fibrinogen. Long story short, eliminating these risk factors prevents future buildup, but the existing buildup is still a problem. So, I’m not out of the woods yet, but these improvements are excellent.

I may have dramatically reduced my blood pressure. I need confirmation on this from a doctor. Here’s the story. A little while back I had heart surgery. In addition to the obstructions in my arteries from cholesterol, the doctors told me that my blood pressure was also high, and prescribed me several medications, including medications to reduce my blood pressure. After taking those medications for about a month, I got my blood pressure taken again, and it was somewhere in the region of 130/90, which is quite high. Tonight I measured it at a little measuring station in a pharmacy while waiting to refill my medications. It was 109/61.

There are really only three differences between the earlier measurement and the new one. First, the earlier measurement was done by a trained medical technician in a hospital, and the new one was done by a cheap automatic machine in a drug store. This is why I say I need confirmation. However, the other two differences are interesting. One is that I switched to a radical vegan diet; the other is I’ve been taking the pills longer. This means either that the pills have some kind of cumulative effect over time, or that the dietary changes caused the improvement in my blood pressure. (Forgot to say: 130/90 is dangerous, 109/61 is normal.)

More news as events warrant.

I don’t know about you, but I’m over Google schadenfreude. I enjoyed being proven right that Google shouldn’t have hired that one dickhead I knew from Silicon Valley who couldn’t possibly have been smarter than me. I enjoyed the irony of “don’t be evil; let’s form a corporation” being exposed. But at this point I’m just tired of it. Google is incompetent at many things. I would happily donate free hours to them just to avoid seeing certain moronic UI problems ever again in my life. For example:

Funny five years ago. Now it’s just sad. Hire UX people already, you slobs.

If you read my main blog or follow me on Twitter then you know I’ve become a vegan and I’m on a strict diet which bans not just animal protein of any kind but also refined food and simple carbohydrates, including bread, rice, and sugar.

I recently made an exception to this diet and bought a bottle of fruit juice at Whole Foods. I had been losing weight at a steady rate of half a pound per day. This single bottle of fruit juice threw off that rhythm for nearly a week. I gained a pound and a half, and only began losing weight again after a couple days.