Grain Brain - Notes Continued

Still reading and taking notes on a book called Grain Brain by David Perlmutter, MD.

Page 61 - "...at the heart of virtually every disorder and disease is inflammation."

After my five years at Logan, the concept of inflammation being an underlying cause of adverse physical situations has taken root in my mind.  I recall writing an email in which I stated my opinion that it isn't so much an elevated level of cholesterol which clogs up arteries but rather, I was looking at an underlying reason as to why the cholesterol and/or other fats would stick to the lining of the arteries to begin with.  In that we looked at inflammation of the arteries as in damage to the arteries and the body would be going about it's business to help protect the arteries with a buildup of plaque.  It's difficult to express these concepts since it has been a while since I've specifically studied these concepts.  All the more reason to keep reading and learning.

Page 62 - "Gluten sensitivity - with or without the presence of celiac - increases the production of inflammatory cytokines, and these inflammatory cytokines are pivotal players in neurodegenerative conditions.  Moreover, no organ is more susceptible to the deleterious effects of inflammation than the brain."

Here's something else that was on a page even before the Table of Contents:

"Your brain...
weighs three pounds and has one hundred thousand miles of blood vessels.
contains more connections than there are stars in the Milky Way.
is the fattest organ in your body.
could be suffering this very minute without your having a clue."

The post grad Internal Health Specialist (IHS) class I took also seems to verify and positively correspond to much of the writing in Dr. Perlmutter's book.  That class started to make clear the importance of fats in the diet for a variety of neurological maladies.

Another point this book made that I failed to jot down were people with blood sugar levels which tested in the normal range.  The book stated that even though blood sugar levels may be "normal" it also mentioned looking into the pancreas as to whether or not it was producing insulin at max capacity in order to maintain this level of normal.

Chapter 3:  Attention, Carboholics and Fat Phobics - Surprising Truths About Your Brain's Real Enemies and Lovers.

I particularly like the quote by George Bernard Shaw, "No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.  Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.

Strong words on page 72 - "Eating high-cholesterol foods has no impact on our actual cholesterol levels and the alleged correlation between higher cholesterol and higher cardiac risk is an absolute fallacy."

Page 77 - "...research in 2008 published in the journal Movement Disorders showed that people with the lowest LDL cholesterol (the so-called bad cholesterol) were at increased risk for Parkinson's disease by approximately 350 percent!"
Subsequent paragraphs indicate that it's not so much the LDL which is the problem but oxidized LDL's which seem to get that way more likely in the presence of sugar molecules that bind to the LDL and change it's shape.

There is a passage in the book by Dr. George Mann, a researcher with the Framingham Heart Study

"The diet heart hypothesis that suggest that a high intake of fat or cholesterol causes heart disease has been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons of pride, profit, and prejudice, the hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientist, fund-raising enterprise, food companies, and even governmental agencies.  The public is being deceived by the greatest health scam of the century." Ch3, citation #8

Another study from the medical journal the Lancet - 724 elderly individuals with an average age of 89 were followed for 10 years.  642 participants died however, each 39 point increase in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality risk.

On page 79, it's noted that patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who had significantly higher cholesterol levels lived, on average, one year longer than patients with lower levels.

On page 80 - in 2010 the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition  did a retrospective evaluation of more than 340,000 subjects followed from periods of 5 to 23 years and concluded that "intake of saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease."
Actual risk for coronary heart disease was 19 percent lower in the group consuming the highest amount of saturated fat.

One thing that keeps coming to mind is a statistic I recall hearing in a research methods class that there was a good 20-25 year lag between research and being accepted by the mainstream.  So, the study from 2010 might make it's way into a standard protocol for physicians in 2030 or later.  However, there is huge money in statins so, it could take even longer.

What will I advise to my patients?  All of these studies mentioned in this book are referenced so it looks like I'll need to dig out all those studies - the actual studies if I am to relate this information to my patients.  I need to make sure everything is legitimate.

The book did acknowledge that trans-fats were bad and the word trans refers to the conformation of the molecule with the alternate form being a cis-fat.  I know I've written about this in previous blog entries.

I think we'll end this session of reading at page 105.

Posting as a Doctor

There are times when I have wondered about posting blog entries as a doctor.  I'm curious about any legal ramifications since I would imagine, posting as a doctor is different than posting as a student.  In many ways, I believe the argument could be made that I am and always will be a student of sorts.  Whatever the case may be, I know I still have plenty to learn.  One of the books I received for Christmas is one called Grain Brain by David Perlmutter, MD.  It is the first book I am reading post graduation which I believe may be beneficial to both myself and patients.  The tag line at the top of the cover of the book reads, "The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar -- Your Brain's Silent Killers"  So far, I've read the entire introduction and the first 26 pages of the book and would like to keep some salient notes

At the beginning of the Introduction is a quote by Nei Jing, 2nd Century BC
"Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom.  To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one feels thirsty, or forging weapons after the war has already begun."

On page 8, 3rd paragraph down we read;
"Beyond calories, fat,protein and micronutrients, we now understand that food is a powerful epigenetic modulator - meaning it can change our DNA for better or worse.  Indeed, beyond simply serving as a source of calories, protein and fat, food actually regulates the expression of many of our genes.  And we have only just begun to understand that the damaging consequences of wheat consumption from this perspective."

At the bottom of page 8 and top of page 9 a report from the "Archives of Internal Medicine revealed that postmenopausal women who were put on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol had a nearly 48 percent increased rise of developing diabetes compared to those who weren't given the drug.  This one example becomes even more critical when you consider that becoming diabetic doubles your risk for Alzheimer's disease."

Page 13 list the Authors website, www.DrPerlmutter.com

Page 23 - "The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around"  ~Thomas A. Edison

On page 33, the book cites two of the biggest myths that people continue to cling to
(1)  a low-fat, high-carb diet is good and
(2)  cholesterol is bad

Page 34 - The Framingham Heart Study is mentioned - started in 1948 and includes 5,209 men and women between the ages of 30 and 62.

Page 34 - Study from Boston University studying 789 men and 1,105 women and followed for 16 to 18 years and given cognitive test every 4-6 years.  Results - people with the highest cholesterol levels scored higher on cognitive test than those with lower levels.

I'll end today's reading at page 50.  A couple other books I got for Christmas that are closeby are Anti cancer - A New Way of Life by Dr David Servan-Schreiber, who is both an MD and PhD. and a book called The Lost Keys of Freemasonry by Manly P. Hall.

That second book on Freemasonry reminds me I had an opportunity to become a 3rd Degree Freemason a couple months back but skipped that ceremony in order to get an extra three adjustments in towards graduation.  Unfortunately, I was left off the original email sent out by the head of our clinics, Dr Wittmer which indicated only 40 of our adjustments could come from our secondary clinic so, it would have been very easy to have skipped the adjustments, obtained my 3rd degree and become a Master Mason and still max out the allotted adjustments.

I still have a hard time understanding why such simple and straightforward things are so hard for some people to understand.  With a secondary clinic, we were allowed to obtain 4 out of 10 or 40% of our new patients from the secondary clinic but were only allocated 20% of our adjustments.  Those numbers don't match and is a gross lack of parity.  I know Dr. Witmer tried to counter this obvious observation by stating that our "education" was to come from our primary clinic however, I only attended the secondary clinic on my days off so it never interfered with any education to begin with.

Back when my brother graduated from Logan in 1996 and even as far up as December of 2007, a semester before I started at Logan, students were allowed to treat patients at any clinic.  These days, the clinic mantra is "Quality over Quantity" which sounds nice with the alliteration and all but doesn't mean a hill of beans.  What should be a concern is experience which keeps getting limited by Logan administrators.

Throughout all of trimesters 8 and 9, a full 8 months, I had a total of 32 adjustments, 16 adjustments per trimester.  In 12 days at my secondary clinic, I had 40 adjustments.

In school we learn that it is illegal to abandon patients however, that is exactly the situation Logan's limitations but me in - once the 40 adjustment limit was hit, I still needed more adjustments to hit that magic 200 adjustment number for graduation so, most all current patients at the secondary clinic had to be abandoned so I could maximize time at a clinic where the adjustments still count.

It's hard to keep track of the number of patients and extra experience that could have been obtained in Logan's outpatient clinic system if not for the limitations.  One couple wanted to see me but didn't like the idea of making 110 miles round trip commutes to clinic and I can't say I blame them.  I talked to that couple since and they went to a locale chiropractor and racked up $1,200 in bills.  Well, Logan could have had a good portion of that money as income and I could have benefited from the experience.
Another mother & son had to be given up due to the similar reasons.  They didn't have a 110 mile commute but did live much closer to two other clinics and thought it was stupid to drive all the way out to St Peters, MO to see me when other clinics were so much closer.
I could have also seen a newborn as well as a 70 year old male patient with shoulder issues.

Honestly, I'm kind of lucky I had 16 adjustments per semester in Tri's 8 and 9.  One intern I talked with at St Peters only had 6 adjustments in Tri-8 and another intern down at my secondary clinic only had 5 adjustments in his first trimester.

I recall hearing about how our clinic (St Peters) had the highest patient retention rate, ie, patients who would show up for the most number of adjustments.  When I first heard that I thought maybe there was something special about the overall protocol at St Peters but, after talking with so many Alumni and even people still in the DC program what I believe to be closer to the truth about those numbers is that the interns at St Peters have the highest propensity for buying their patients.  I hardly fit in that category since I only had two active patients in the last semester, one handed down to me because the intern couldn't find anyone else to take them and a 2nd I procured on my own.

When I first entered outpatient clinic in the Summer of 2011 a rule change went into effect which no longer allowed interns to trade clinics.  Obtaining a clinic is done via lottery so, most people can end up at a clinic which best suits them but, if you're name is at the end of the lottery list then you can end up in a very unfavorable clinic mainly due to proximity of where you may live as a student.  I remember there were three of us in my class who owned their own homes and any of us could have been royally screwed given a bad clinic location.  The other two people both got drawn early in the drawings and picked the Montgomery clinic which was located at Logan so there was no extra driving involved for them.  I wasn't so lucky.  But, I realize now, the whole reason for not allowing interns to change clinics - well, the original reason was because some people were picking favorable clinics and could sell them, often for $1,000 or more to students who got screwed in the lottery system.  But, had the system which had been in place for over a decade before simply been maintained then there would have been no reason for anyone to have to switch clinics in the first place.  It's like Logan created their own problem.

It's hard not to think of the students and administration people I've talked with up at Northwestern who said their interns average 600 adjustments each.  It's hard to imagine.

On a plus side for Logan, I'd have to say their graduation ceremony would be pretty hard to beat and I do believe the quality of teaching as far as their regular classes are concerned are probably about as good as it gets.  They're still struggling and trying to find the right formula for their outpatient clinic which, is pretty evident since the rules for outpatient are constantly changing every trimester.

I Graduated! It took 2,050 Days! :)

My first day of class in the Accelerated Science Program (ASP) was on Monday, May 12, 2008 and the day I graduated was Saturday, December 21, 2013.  From that first day of class until the day I graduated was 2,050 days.

Eat What's Good For You

Eat What's Good For You

You are what you eat - so don't eat junk!

---

Amplifeied

Week 1 - Summer 2013

I noted a 2 month 11 day gap in my last post and today I can note only a 1 month gap since my last post - gotta love progress!  :) 

I don't think i ever blogged about my Minor Surgery class but, it was pretty darn cool.  Had Dr. DeGeer as the teacher and he's always a blast to learn from. 

Currently, I'm taking the last required course for credit which is clinic.  A single 7 credit hour course.  beyond that I'm signed up for 5 different specialized techniques including Advanced Diversified, Graston, Gonstead, Cox & Thompson.

It's Week 1 of this Summer Trimester and I've been to school 3 times but only found one class.  I went to classroom G49 yesterday for a class but nobody was there.  I later found out the class was meeting in a room in the back corner of the library.  Today I went to another class but the room was locked and nobody was there. 
Not sure what's going on.  I haven't gotten any emails indicating any changes for this first week but, normally students do get a spsecial schedule.  Kind of par for the course lately at Logan.  Not sure what is going on.  I had a similar problem when trying to register for classes.  Students received an email indicating registration was starting on a Wednesday so, I was up at school the first day possible only to be told that the schedule hadn't been made up yet and I could not register. 
Today's class had a syllabus for a completely different class uploaded and that wasn't changed until after I'd already been to the book store and spent $56 on a very thin manual

5/18/2013 - Saturday -
I got to indulge in both Advanced Diversified and Thompson yesterday.  I thought Advanced Diversified might have been more about actual adjusting but it looks like it's more of a case management type of course which is not a bad thing.  Dr. Wittmer has a LOT of really interesting stories pertaining to chiropractic and a ton of experience in the field.
The Thompson Method seems pretty sharp and I'm a bit enamoured with the overlap in Thompson and Activator.  Heck, there's even overlap with SOT and what I learned in my IHS class.  I think it's a positive sign when independently originating techniques end up with the same signs.

Obamacare Trip - Ozarks - KC

2 months, 11 days since my last post.  I've had a lot of post ideas ruminate through my head but none have made it here.  The Obamacare Trip was rather interesting, and a lot of fun in many ways especially with a layover at my parents condo in the Ozarks.  The stuff you hear from people after they graduate is quite a bit different and, perhaps, even a tad enlightening than anything you would ever hear from people who are still fighting to get through the DC program.
I've learned there are students who actually have paid strangers to be patients to help meet the 10 new patient criteria.  That idea crossed my mind in the event that I won the lottery or something but it never occurred to me to actually do that from my own funds.
Something else I learned was that our past president was concerned about my blog from way back in ASP because I mentioned something about checking out Parker(?)  I don't even remember that.  It's what I was told anyway, who knows...    These days the school I think about is Northwestern where the interns don't have to find their own patients and end up averaging 600 adjustments each.  Of course, it's kind of late for that now.  I need to get to the school this morning before clinic and get registered for Tri-10 HCP (clinic) for this Summer.
I did manage another YouTube video showing an Interrupted Over and Over suture I learned from a Minor Surgery class that I was able to finish up this past weekend by completing a take home midterm/final which, ended up being 11 pages long ....they're never as easy as you might think.  I know this one certainly wasn't.  This past Sunday morning I was able to complete my research paper for Minor Surgery and send it in via email.  The immediate (same day) feedback I got from Dr. DeGeer was fantastic.  He said he really liked reading my paper and that nobody else had ever chosen my topic before.  I did the paper on Suture Considerations for Best Results.  I liked the paper and learned a lot from it.  He posted my final grade in his class that day and I got an A.  I think the only lagging grade I'll have this semester will be from my somewhat dismal Senior Research Project but, I did get it done and ended up with a C.  The remaining grades should all be either some sort of "in progress" designation, like with HCP, or an A.

Clinic has been OK and it's changed a lot since the last time I was there in 2011.  The Reports that we had to do back in Tri-8 which is what caused me to have to be in clinic 5 days a week have become extremely informal and are done amongst whatever fellow students happen to be around at the time.  Absolutely nothing like the much more formal reports we had to do in Tri-8 when clinician had to be present.

About the only jarring bit of news I've gotten from clinic is that they are supposedly wanting to do away with letting Interns go out and market.  I was told some of the Tri-10s who already had all the patients they needed were going out and having lunch on "their" dime. Their, meaning Logan, of course.  But, it really begs me to wonder whose dime they're talking about.  Logan doesn't pay us anything to be there, we pay them.  We pay them money to earn them money and after we've earned them enough, we might be able to graduate.  I only say earn them enough because it looks like the next changes coming up are to exclude First Responder patients as being able to count as new patients and the only difference with them is that they are treated for free.
Regarding the pending changes to marketing, the same clinician that told me about that also said that Logan has a way of making changes without regard to how those changes might adversely affect their students.  idk - i've harped on that garbage before.

The Ozarks were fun on a lot of levels.  Prior to the trip, I did have my first experience with a pawn shop type situation.  Actually, a local place called the Gold Exchange.  I had to make sure I had sufficient money for gas so I could get to Kansas City and back.  I had an old gold necklace that I used to wear in high school hanging from a trophy in my garage so, I took that in and literally within 60 seconds the piece was weighed, I was told I could get $160 bucks, took it and walked out the door!  :)
That was sweet :)

My favorite part of the trip was sharing a dozen oysters in a bar overlooking the lake with a beautiful girl at my side.  :)

I wouldn't mind replaying that scenario again.  That trip also had me checking out boats.  First boat rentals then boat purchases .....yeah - this coming from a guy who had to pawn a necklace for gas money.....

Which also reminds me that I'll be heading out tomorrow morning to try and secure work with a local grocery store that's starting their cashiers out at $13/hour.  I could really use that money because that $13 is about what I have to spend on gas every time I go to clinic.

It's going to get more expensive at the start of the next semester which starts on May 14th.    .... yeah - 5 years at Logan.  5 years and currently $241,741.96 worth of student loans later.....  ugh... ugh, ugh ugh....

anyway - I've got four specialized techniques I've signed up for which means I'll be back t the 184 mile driving days but, I had to do that before with 19 classes plus clinic 5 days a week and this time, it's only the four pass/fail classes.  I think I'll only have to drive the 184 miles on MOndays and just 120 miles on two other days....let me figure this out  (again...)

Mondays - 184 miles
Tuesdays - 84 miles
Wednesdays - 100 miles
Thursdays - 120 miles
Fridays - 84 miles

OK - that's infinitely better than the unreasonable garbage I had deal with back in Tri-8.
The four specialized techniques I'll be taking are Gonstead, Thompson, Cox & Graston.

oh hell.... Home Owners insurance is due next week ....  eeehhhhh..  hmmmm.  no idea.  I know that has to be paid or I'll be hearing from the bank... again.....

I've had this place for a while (my home) but, the last time I check (fairly recently) the housing values have dropped so much that I'm basically back down to the 20% equity I had when I first bought the place.  The owners of the two condos to my right have been willing to sell their place for some time now - one guy for 10 years but, maybe he's asking too much.  I could never afford to take a loss, I'd have no way of living anywhere else.  One day at a time I suppose.

Oysters anyone?  :)

oh yeah (my mind wondered....)   Probably the most interesting thing to me about that Obomacare conference is that there's one part of the bill called IHS ...I believe that stood for Indian Health Services.   I'd never heard of that portion of the bill before nor has anyone I've talked with since learning about it.  But, that one portion of the bill is 900 pages long!  Makes me wonder how long the entire bill is if such an innocuous portion of the bill is 900 pages.

White coat should be dry by now - off to school then clinic - today.... 120 miles.  however ...there is a Cardinals baseball game I can look forward to going to.
heck, while I'm thinking of it, i'm wondering if I can print off some piano sheet music at the school while I'm there.  I came across some amazing pieces last night and would love to play them.  I guess if Logan can pay for outside counseling they can afford the ink on three pieces of paper.  Right now, piano has been my best and most relaxing at home therapy.

Sallie Mae - Karate - SRP

I was a little miffed the other day when my Dad informed me that a Sallie Mae payment was due this month. I know after talking with the Logan financial aid department at the beginning of last semester that they would be informing my lenders that I wasn't going to be a full time student that semester but, apparently that same kind of administrative efficiency didn't exist when it comes to telling them I am full time again.  

I'm not exactly sure what's going on but, need to notify Sallie Mae myself that I am in school full time so those bills stop while I'm back in school.  I was miffed because it was a bit embarrassing at my age for a parent to have to inform me of my financial obligations.

Kind of bizarre ...the Financial Aid department had me retake a class I got an F in when it was already being passed just a couple weeks before until we had the registrars office changed that grade to an F so I could keep getting financial aid.  Just something that crossed my mind the other day.  Then, I tend to tell myself that God's delays aren't God's denials.  And, who knows what the big plan is here.

I did manage this nifty countdown clock to the date in December when I figured I'd be graduating.  That will be an awesome day.  I've been hitting the gym pretty regularly for the past few weeks to help myself achieve everything as well.  I'm in two different weight loss competitions now.  The first, is the Lose to Win competition sponsored by some local hospitals over in St. Louis which kicked off a couple weeks ago and the second is through Gold's gym and that started last Thursday.
Yesterday, I got up at 4:40 a.m. and took my first BodyPump class at 5:15 a.m.  It was a great workout and unlike anything I normally do and I believe I should get great results from it.  Last night, I finally got back into Karate.  I don't remember exactly when I started Karate but, I do remember my first belt promotion was around May 5th of 1982 and, the last time I was involved with Shorin-Ryu karate would have been in 2007, just before I started going back to school so it's GREAT to be back involved again with something that has been such a significant and important part of my life.  We went through a bunch of kata's last night.  A kata is similar to ...say, a dance.  There are different dances like the Tango, Foxtrot or Waltz and with karate you have different katas which are pre-arranged fighting steps but these are called things like Fukyuata Ich and Pinan Sandan or Naihanchi Nidan.  There are three Fukyuata katas, five Pinan katas and three Naihanchi katas  We went through all ten of those basic katas then got a bonus and was able to work through Ananku kata which is a black belt kata.  We finished up with some sparring (kumite) and then some prearranged sparring (yakasuko kumite)
The karate workout was much harder than the bodypump class at Gold's  :)

I was up again this morning at 4:40 a.m but had already decided last night not to hit the gym this morning.  I'm pretty sore and have severely injured myself before from overdoing it so ...hopefully learning from my past mistakes and want to take my journey from couch potato to supreme athlete a little judiciously.

My Senior Research Paper (SRP) is top priority.  I was told point blank that if it isn't done by Friday, February 22 at 12:30 p.m. that I would get an F.  I can't afford to mess with financial aid.  I already know I have to foot the bill for the Summer which will mostly be covered by selling my motorcycle but, it would be hard to work part time in the Fall while working clinic 6 days a week and make up the $16,000.00 I'll lose by not being able to get financial aid.

Thalamus, an Old Pic & some To-Do's

Thalamus

Yesterday, after I mentioned thinking of the thalamus as a primitive brain, I wanted to make sure I was correct and I found this nifty rotating picture in Wikipedia.  I like Wikipedia and I think the people who voice their opinion against it are uninformed.  The Wikipedia entry for Positive Psychology, for example, cites 151 references as the basis for that particular entry and the entry is litered with footnotes to each of those 151 references.  Also, the wiki entry on the Limbic system shows a self imposed type of warning at the top of the entry from Wikipedia warning that the factual accuracy of the article may be compromised due to out-of-date information as of November, 2010.  Some of the best references I have to use for my Senior Research Paper (SRP) came from the references cited in Wikipedia.

The Hollywood Trainer Weight-Loss Plan By Jenkins, Jeanette (Google Affiliate Ad)

Sweet - I had a Logan Timeline webpage up from yesterday's picture inquiries and noticed a background picture of the first graduating class from Logan (back in the 1930s).  The picture had other pictures on top of it so I could not just drag the picture to my desktop but...I could look into the HTML that was generating the page and grab the picture from a link in the code.
I noticed Logan opened on it's current campus back in 1973 which is a date I cited for when Dr. Goodman first started with the college but, I may have gotten my dates confused.  He did start as the president of Logan in 1993 and I'm pretty certain he taught at the school prior to that time and may have been in the early 70s.

The source code behind that page looks pretty typical and, due to my extra work on codecademy.com I recognized pretty much everything in the code ...javascript, jQuery, CSS, etc.
I lost my 23 day streak of coding at codecademy yesterday because I forgot about it until right after midnight and spent all my computer time on my SRP.  I think I still have my KhanAcademy streak going which, is a little over a month straight of working math problems.  That site has 390 different mathematical skills that one may gain proficiency.  So far, I've been able to demonstrate proficiency in 315 different math skills.  The program starts with basic addition and subtraction and runs all the way through calculus.  I didn't realize I knew so much about math but, I have taken about every undergrad math class ever offered.  thinking ....the site might be a little light in the field of combinatorics - maybe I can help them out in that area by writing some new lessons.  I'll have to have a little extra time in the day to conquor that endeavor.

Need to think about things - get updates out to some people ...most stuff can be jotted down here then copied and pasted into an email.

Clinic - the last thing I noted was my clinic location could not be changed to the Montgomery Health Clinic by Dr. Gould for the purposes of practicing the Internal Health Specialist (IHS) techniques I had learned from Dr. Loomis.  If I end up dying this year it will most likely be related to the excessively long commute I take to clinic (50 miles, one way).  Since I don't regularly have to be at the main campus of Logan then most days will be limited to those 100 miles of driving for clinic.  My first couple years at Logan consisted of 100 miles per day due to road construction on highway 64/40 and, combined with everything else, that was about my limit.  During the time I was back in Minnesota for my grandma's funeral last year I did learn that several of my uncles have a similar situation when it came to driving in that they also, all have a tendency to fall asleep at the wheel.  I have wondered if this could be due to Pickwickian syndrome.   Some, but not all of these uncles are overweight and non of them smoke.
Some of the drives I had back & forth to clinic were downright terrifying at times due to the number of close calls I've had.  Fortunately, the only thing I've lost thus-far is my left sideview mirror when I ended up hitting a reflector pole on the side of the highway.
I've been hitting the gym very regularly since about a week before clinic started and I think that has helped.  I do stop at a gas station every time I have a clinic shift and usually stop at the one closest to the clinic before I head out on the highway.  I'm thinking maybe I can locate another gas station midway through my commute to provide an extra stop where I can get up and move around some, that should help me stay alert and safe.  hmmm, lol - this has me thinking of this past Thrusday's commute home.  My shift went until 3:30 and I had a youngster's basketball game to get to at 5 p.m. back close to where I live.  I think I clocked out around 3:26 and by the time I finally made it to the basketball game I'd already missed the entire first half of the game with only 2 1/2 minutes left before the start of the second half.  It literally took me an hour and 20 minutes just to get to the Missouri/Illinois border.  There were no accidents, just a light dusting of snow on the ground.
I can't really be concerned with that now.  I did call some outside counseling service provided via Logan last week to try and get an appointment to talk with somebody there and see if they had any ideas to help me keep my head in the game and fully engaged so I can eventually graduate.  Any help I can get.  I haven't heard back from them so I'll leave them another message today.

SRP - my goal was to get 20 pages written by Monday.  I need to work on this again today.  I have to work yet so ...I should be able to spend at least four hours on this today to get something written.

Lab Interpretations.  Lab 4 assignment will be due tomorrow (Monday)

Minor Surgery - oh wow - this first class meets this Saturday at 10:30 a.m.  ...good thing I'm doing this little review or I may have forgotten about that entirely.

Marketing - I did get signed up for a Working Women's Survival show being held in St. Charles this month.  I'll be working a Sunday shift from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on February 24th and there is a 6:30 a.m meeting on Thursday morning on February 21st.  That's going to be one of those 184 mile driving days (84 miles to Logan then the 100 miles for clinic)  BUT - I'm off on Fridays, should be anyway unless something comes up so, I need to keep that in mind.  I currently have 7.25 hours of marketing which, is good enough for a C in that class.  I need 15 hours to get an A and that marketing event on the 24th is worth an additional 6.25 hours which will bring me up to 13.5 hours (probably worth a B) then I'll only need one more event to ensure I get an A out of that class.  I should be OK with that driving as long as I stay awake.  I need to keep in mind a lot of the troubles I had before when I did all that driving was because it was every single day and went on for 13 weeks before I could get what should have been a regularly scheduled day off.  I know if I'm going to clinic in the Fall of this year it will also be a daily event but, by then I will have no more classes to deal with at the main campus ...

Internal Health Specialist (IHS) Certification - this went well on Friday.  The hours I need to make up were from the fourth session which will be repeating this year on April 6th/7th.  April 7th is 63 days away and I know that because that is the date of the Go! St. Louis 1/2 marathon I'm signed up for.  Anyway - I'm signed up and registered for April 6th to complete the attendance portion of getting the IHS certification and, will at least be able to treat patients on my days off over at the Montgomery Health clinic.

Financials - ....hmmm, i'm just copying over the headings from my last update I sent out via email.  I did spend a little over $2,000 last week thanks to my most recent financial aid to get caught up on my bills.  At least my electricity and water won't be turned off again any time soon so that isn't something I'll have to worry about, at least not for this semester.  I really wonder why there are zero provisions for financial aid when student drops under 12 hours at Logan.  There's a couple issues here.  One is that taking a 4 hour class, as I did in Tri-8, with clinic is a LOT different than a 4 hour classroom type of class.  It may be listed as only a four hour class but, I had to be there every single day, Monday through Friday as well as the occasional Saturday as well as the volunteer days with the Salvation Army and the St. Patrick's center.  Also, it is not unusual to work an 11:30 to 3:30 shift but not be able to see a patient until after that time.  So, you have to be there during the earlier time slot but then need to stay in order to see your patients and before you know it, the 4 hour shift has morphed into a 6 or 7 hour shift.  Not to mention as a Tri-8 we have to play errand-boy by transferring laundry & x-rays to and from school & clinic.  I'm just not sure how the credit hours are calculated for clinic.  A four hour class like Pathology meets 4 hours per week and is worth 4 credit hours but, a scheduled clinic shift of 12 hours per week year round is also worth 4 credit hours.  I'm sure there's a reason, I'm just not sure what it is.

I think I'm going to relegate the remaining updates to my email.  I need to be more specific with the next steps I have to take in each endeavor and I find myself going off on tangents here.  ;)

New President - Lost Helicopter - Updates

Dr. J. Clay McDonald

Dr. George Goodman

As of March 1st of this year, Logan College of Chiropractic will have a new president.  Dr. J. Clay McDonald, pictured on the left, will be presiding over Logan College after the retirement of Dr. George Goodman, pictured on the right.
Per an email sent out by Logan we learned that Dr. Goodman has been president of the college for over 20 years but, from what I've learned during my time as a student.  Dr. Goodman started with Logan in the early 70s, I believe it was around 1973 which means he's been serving in the field of education for 40 years.  That's quite an accomplishment.

 My girlfriend's parents bought me a really cool remote controlled helicopter for Christmas.  It even has a video camera in the nose of the aircraft and, since my Cessna flying lesson days came to an abrupt halt upon my entry into Logan this helicopter was a pretty sharp substitute :)
Unfortunately, I'm not a very good pilot and the helicopter found it's way into some woods earlier tonight and I haven't been able to find the darn thing.  I'll search again tomorrow and hope the electronics can handle the snowy weather.

Oh, interestingly enough, When I Googled a picture for Dr. Goodman there were pictures of other Logan faculty which came up in the search that I recognized.  I think I saw a new caption feature here so I'm going to try it out...

Dr. Kane

Dr Ralph Baralle

Dr. Norman Kettner

I think that worked.  Dr. Kane is a clinician at the St. Peter's outpatient Health Clinic where I am an Intern.  Dr. Ralph Baralle (not exactly sure of the spelling there) works in the post grad department - at least he was working there Friday and really helped me out with a situation.  Dr. Kettner is kind of a phenom at Logan.  If I had half of Dr. Kettner's knowledge I'd probably be among the top 1% most brilliant chiropractors around.

I spent about 8 hours today on my Senior Research Project (SRP) and mainly gathered up and organized all the data I had collected since my first attempt at SRP 1.  I currently have on hand 42 different references for my paper on the Neuroplasticity of Happiness.  I was hoping to have 20 pages written by Monday but, so far, I just have two pages which consist of all my references but it is a start.  I sort of got hooked in the beginning of my organizing by reading a lot of the articles since they were pretty interesting.  

One particularly interesting article is from a journal called Neuropsychologia called Neuroanatomical correlates of pleasant and unpleasant emotion.  I really had to take my time and made up a new document to help better understand certain parts of the article such as exactly which areas of the brain receive significantly increased blood flow to help indicate which areas of the brain are activated during pleasant or unpleasant emotions as well as distinguishing those emotions from neutral emotions.  I'll have to read through the article again, maybe with a better night's sleep under my belt.  thus-far, it seems like 

neutral emotions activate the medial prefrontal cortex (Brodmann's area 9), thalamus, hypothalamus and the midbrain.

Pleasant emotions - head of the left caudate nucleus

Unpleasant emotions - bilateral occipito-temporal cortex, cerebellum, left parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus and amygdala.

yeah....well....  the amygdala and unpleasant emotions makes sense to me and I'm pretty sure the caudate nucleus is right behind the lateral ventricle.  I think of the thalamus as our 'primitive brain'.  I'm not entirely certain about the occipito-temporal cortex and can't help wondering why the brain would favor the left side for these emotions.  Hmmmm.  I do remember learning about two parts of the visual cortex where impulses of light end up but forgot the names of those two parts (so, I'm looking them up in my Clinical Neuroscience book) ...I feel a bit disgruntled that the names aren't more familiar to me.  I remember drawing these pathways out and it making so much sense to me at one time.  I probably need to find my old notes.  looks like the lower wall of the calcarine sulcus is the lingual gyrus and the upper wall is the cuneus.  guess they could have been called Albert & Fred for all I remember.  But, at least I did remember there were two divisions.  Neuroanatomy was quite a while ago.  Back in the days of bitemporal hemianopsia which, I remember can be caused from a pituitary tumor.  

Anyway, I've got my work cut out for me with this paper which is due in 2 weeks & 5 days.  

I think my mind is back on the Cessna's ....in fact, I'm sure of it because of the Googled image page of airplanes currently to the left of my blog.  Almost trying to recall and recreate the sensations of taking off.  I'm recalling I never used the rudders much on take-off and now I'm wondering if my instructor was doing that part for me.  I just remember having to get to a certain speed to take off - I was thinking it was 80 mph (Google to the rescue again) - OK, for the Cessna 172 it looks like take-off speed is 64 KIAS which is Knot Indicated AirSpeed and a knot is about 1.15 mph so, about 73.6.  I wasn't too far off.  I remember seeing the telephone lines perpendicular to our path and always hoping to clear them - probably newbie type of thinking.  

I don't have my pilot's license nor do I have the Porsche 968 I was in the market for prior to starting at Logan.  hmmm...and, after the 15th of March I'm not going to have a motorcycle anymore either since I'll need to sell that to help pay for the Summer tuition.  

BUT - I may have a realistic countdown to a graduation with a D.C. degree.  That would be something good to Google - When is this coming December's commencement ceremony?  Let's see - this past December graduation was on Saturday, December 22nd, the end of the third full week in December.  So.... I'm thinking the December graduation in 2013 would be on Saturday, December 21st at 10 a.m.

now the fun part - I'll go to timeanddate.com to get my countdown.

321 Days, 5 hours and 40 minutes from now I could be sitting in a seat in the Purser Center awaiting my diploma.  That - would - be - REALLY - cool!  

hmmm, I've stared at that clock so long that I'm now two minutes closer to graduation.

Actually, I need to stay on top of things and really try to make this happen.  About a week ago I sent out an email update to my family and a few others and I was thinking of them as kind of coaches - maybe get any advise or to relay important information.  

I wonder why those particular people showed up on an image search for Dr. Goodman.  The clinician I have at the St. Peter's office is Dr. Hogarth.  This is kind of funny.  When I did a search on Dr. Hogarth to get a picture, a picture of Dr. Goodman came up right next to him.  I suppose after 40 years in the business, Dr. Goodman can have his picture shown twice.  :)  I'll have to get to that update tomorrow, pretty exhausted right now.

Dr. Hogarth

Dr. Goodman

Let's try this again... :)

I'm a little stunned to see the last time I blogged was on Friday, Deember 14, 2012.  I suppose a lot has happened since then.  For one thing, I did end up getting my financial aid reinstated but, in kind of a very odd  and peculiar way.  From my experience at Logan, whenever a student is suspended for any reason they must write an appeal to get back in.  I was put on a financial aid suspension for the Fall 2012 semester but this would appear to be a new area to financial aid since they had a very hard time telling me what I would need to do in order to undo the suspension.  And, by "a hard time" I mean it took them a very long time to tell me what I needed to do.  Apparently, it took them a while to figure it out.  In the end, they said I needed to retake and pass a class I had failed.  This is part of where the irony comes in to play.  I didn't actually fail a single class in 2012 although my transcript would beg to differ.  To be more clear, there were no teachers that actually assigned me a failing grade.  The F's I obtained were changed and entered in by the ladies in the registrars office at the behest of my adviser.  That was the plan set forth by my adviser in order to help me complete my degree quest at Logan.
I distinctly remember expressing concern to my adviser over the inevitable suspensions which would result from repeatedly failing different classes but, I was assured that I had to be suspended three times before anything bad would really happen.  Unfortunately, as I was to later find out by their own admission, the advisers are, in their own words "clueless when it comes to financial aid".
So...financial aid got to wield their big stick and with just a few days before I was to take my Competency Boards last Fall I received an email telling me my financial aid was cut off and I was suspended from receiving financial aid.
The Financial Aid department took so long telling me what I needed to do to get unsuspended that they did so with only a day left for me to register for any classes which, I had to pay out of my own pocket.  One of the problems with registering at the last allowed day for a Tri-10 class is that Tri-10 classes are only 6 weeks long to begin with and the first two weeks were already passed by the time I learned what I was supposed to do to get back in.
Here's another funny part about financial aid ...even though I did what they requested by repeating a class I got an F in, there were still hang ups with them when it came to getting registered for this Spring 2013 semester.
I started contacting my adviser around the same time I last posted here - per an email I'd received there was a week when I could get registered for the Spring but....my adviser kept checking to confirm that I would be able to get financial aid for this Spring and, once again, financial aid wasn't sure.  Apparently they forgot what they had already told me to do.  Almost seems like they're flying by the seat of their pants and figuring things out as they go.
Eventually, with less than a week to go before I was to take Comp Boards, I got an email from my adviser telling me when I could come in to meet him.  It was obvious from the email that there was no solid resolution from financial aid because there was nothing in the email pertaining to those concerns.
When I did go in and meet with him he informed me that the Financial Aid department refused to put anything down in writing and that I should just sign up for the classes I wanted then they would take a look at it.
It's been kind of smooth sailing since registering.  And, almost surreal.  I never did have to submit an appeal. My guess is that they didn't want anything in writing showing that the reason any of my classes got failed last year was because the grades where being changed by the registrars office to F's so those classes could be taken over to allow me to have at least 12 credit hours and get financial aid.  12 hours is the minimum credit hours necessary to get financial aid.  Anything less and you get ZERO.

I know I'm not an isolated case because I talked with the ladies in the registrars office when we first did all this and their attitude was very nonchalant and remarked that I wasn't the first person they had to do this with and you do what you gotta do.

So, I registered for classes and ran a copy of my schedule down to financial aid to get that process started and when I dropped off my schedule not a word was said about it being turned in so late.  Usually, I'm told it's going to take a while as in a matter of several weeks before it can get pushed through but nothing like that was said this time and, wouldn't you know it, in less than a week my student loan was ready to be picked up.  About the only out of the ordinary thing I noticed was the number of page views this blog got prior to me picking up my loan check.  Recently, with the lack of consistent blogging, I'll get about 50-70 page views per day.  In the two days prior to getting that check, I had 875 page views.  I have 562 post as of those hits so, there were definitely enough hits for someone to have gone through every single entry I'd ever made.  I'd be willing to bet it was someone from Logan who might have scanned through all my post to help make a determining decision as to whether or not I'd get my check.  I'll probably never know for certain but, it's still quite odd ...the total lack of standard procedure for everything I went through in that little scenario.

Here's a little snapshot of how obvious the extra hits were on this blog....

That's just from the upper right corner of my blog page.  The detailed stats I get are even more obvious.
To the right and left of that spike in the picture of page views are the normal hits I get and that spike represents the two days prior to getting my check.

I guess that was my little rant to bring us up through the first three weeks of January.  I took competency boards on January 17th and I have to tell you, it is MUCH harder doing all that stuff on your own without any classmates to help you through the process.  The Fall of 2010 was the last time I took those Competency Boards (comp boards) and I only remembered so much.  It had been a couple years since I had my hands on an e-stem machine so, even though I knew some of the academic stuff like using a setting of 80-120 for acute pain and 3-5 for chronic paid I didn't know how to use the machine, which buttons to press & so forth.  It's the kind of thing that would take less than a five minute review with a machine handy and someone to show you the practical specifics but, I didn't have that prior to testing.  Taking those comp boards was a bit of an exercise in humility and a fair amount of embarrassment   I figured I passed a third of the exams, another third could go either way as in pass or fail and the final third was no way I passed.  I was pretty much right in that thinking and passed about half of the OSCE test I took that day but, we had five stations that were taken in the semester before which are certain passing marks for most all students.  Anyway, I did pass those comp boards and got back into clinic.



Last week was my first week back into clinic and the current set schedule has me working 3-7 p.m. on Mondays and 11:30 to 3:30 on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  It didn't take long for the long 50 mile one way commute to rear it's ugly head.  On Thursday it took nearly two hours to get home.  Actually, I went straight to a basketball game that started at 5 p.m. and was about 20 minutes late for.  We had a very light dusting of snow here in St. Louis but, the traffic as you approach downtown St. Louis was so jammed up that it took me 15 minutes to travel the last few miles before being able to cross the bridge into Illinois.

It definitely helps that I don't have any classroom type classes this semester.  I only need to show up to Logan for Minor Surgery and maybe a few times to work with Dr. Haun on my Senior Research project.  Oh, and I have to stop in to see Jennifer Reed who heads the marketing for all our clinics.  I'll also have to show up on April 6th to finish up my Internal Health Specialist program.  That will be nice.  I've already passed all the exams for that program and just need the additional 6 hours of attendance time to be legitimately certified in Internal Health.
I was hoping I might be able to get transferred to the Montgomery Health center so I could work with Dr. Gould and get a bunch of practical experience actually using what we learned in the IHS program but, she informed me there was no way for her to transfer students.  I guess that's something she ended up learning in the past few months because previous emails indicated that she would simply take students from other clinics if necessary.
The stark inflexibility of a few people in key positions in that school can really make things difficult for a person to graduate.  It's bizarre to hear someone say there's absolutely nothing that can be done about a situation such as having two students switch their clinic assignments when students had been allowed to change assignments for as long as there has been outpatient clinics - maybe 30 years or so and, all of a sudden, such a thing is impossible?  Oh well.
From what I heard this past week in clinic there's going to be changed regarding interns new patient requirements.  One thing that has me concerned is that I heard new patients have to make at least 6 appointments.
I'm starting over at zero in terms of my number of new patients since I wasn't able to get the few I had signed off before I dropped clinic back in the Fall of 2011.

One really positive note is that Dr. Wittmer, the head of all the outpatient clinics said the 82.25 hours I had put in the first time I went through the Tri-9 clinic session still count towards the 180 total hours of clinic time I need for Tri-9.  Dr. Hogarth, my clinician at St. Peter's had advised me to check up on this because if those hours didn't count then I would be living at the clinic.  For now, thank god I don't have to.  Not that it wouldn't be good for me but, I have to complete two semesters worth of my Senior Research Project (SRP) in the next three weeks and will need a LOT of time to get that completed.  It will be really nice to get that done.

Once I finish this semester and get through all my current classes then I'll only have a single class left as in my Tri-10 clinic duties.  Other than fulfilling that last requirement, I'll also need to complete all the specific clinic requirements.  I'll get into specifics with that in another blog entry but, I know we need 10 new patients, so many urology exams, I think I have 20 of those and need 25.  We'll need so many x-rays taken and a few other things.  This reminds me - to augment clinic, one of our classes is Lab Interpretations and I have my 4th one due this coming Monday.

This has all certainly been an interesting experience.  One of the interesting parts consisted of going broke last semester after my financial aid was cut off.  That wasn't the only thing cut off.  My power got cut off completely once as well and it took me three days to get it back on.  I got lucky with the second time it was supposed to be cut off because, I was past the date of getting it cut off but the power company just hadn't gotten around to shutting me off.  I was able to set up a payment agreement with them to keep the electricity on.  I ended up missing the next payment in January of that agreement but, fortunately with the financial aid coming through I was able to pay everything I needed to ...I believe that was over $600 to get all caught up but, I should be able to maintain electrical throughout this semester.

Oh, getting arrested was another consequence of my unexpected loss of financial aid.  I had missed a court date for speeding, one of those 10-15 mph over the speed limit deals.  one of those times when I hit the gas to make it through a yellow light instead of slowing down and coming to a stop and a copy just happened to be right at the intersection when I did it.  That court date was the day after my Grandma passed away last year so, I was on my way back to Minnesota for the funeral the day of my court date.  I did learn something though, and that is if you miss a court date then a new court date gets set.  I didn't know that.  I figured a warrant would be put out for my arrest and there would be a fine.  Eventually, I got pulled over for an expired sticker on my car but, when you have to choose between water & electricity or paying for a sticker and settling up a fine ...well, I chose the water & electricity.  Anyway - that's all taken care of now.  Surprisingly enough, the night I got arrested my bail was all the way up to $5,000!  That's when I learned subsequent court dates had been set after my first missed court date and every time a new court date was set the amount of bail kept getting increased.
I can definitely live without any more of those types of experiences.
With the exception of the handcuffs it wasn't a bad time.  I got to kid around with the police officers at the jail and we all laughed and cracked jokes.  The cell I had to stay in had the door to the cell wide open so, there weren't any claustrophobic experiences as far as that's concerned.
My parents bailed me out of jail and I finally appeared for my court date on Jan 24th, got court supervision and went home.
This coming Monday starts week four of this semester and I now have 95.25 clinic hours in towards a needed total of 180 clinic hours so, I'm sitting pretty well as far as the hours are concerned.
It's hard to imagine only having to be in clinic three days per week since my initial introduction to outpatient clinic consisted of a mandatory 5 days per week for the first 13 weeks of the semester in addition to the occassional Saturday shift, and volunteer work we had to do at the Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center (ARC) and the St. Patrick's center.  Oh, and the 17 classes we had to take in addition to all of that.
If I could have had just ONE day off from clinic per week, just a couple days here and there, I'm certain I could have pulled it off but, the schedule that I had was just too much.  Driving a minimum of either 120 or 184 miles per day took it's toll.  Physically, mentally & spiritually I was bankrupt.

But, I'm still around :)
And, it's time to look forward.
I'm a little stunned it's 3 a.m. but, I left my house this morning around 11ish a.m. and didn't get back home until midnight so, there's been a lot of things I needed to get done around here.  Still are.
With the start of this new month, I've been contemplating getting back into Karate.  Saturdays are a good time to start since it's a little shorter class, from 9 to 10 a.m. and the class is usually a bit smaller then the regular Tuesday and Thursday evening 7 to 8:30 classes.
I've been planning out next week in my head and with the clinic hours I have scheduled I would actually be able to make both the Tuesday and Thursday evening Karate classes.  I was involved in Shorin-Ryu karate from 1982 until 2007 - a full 25 years although certainly not consistently.  Something or another always seemed to come up - usually work or school or, I would just get out of the groove and stop going.

I officially have two different weight loss type competitions I'm in right now.  One is called Lose to Win which is sponsored by one of the local hospitals.  I did that competition in the Fall and lost 70 pounds in 12 weeks which gave me a percentage loss large enough to place 3rd out of over 1,000 contestants.  I've been heavy enough though that a single 12 weeks isn't enough time to lose all I need to in order to be really lean or even enough time to get to a healthy BMI.

The other contest I'm in just kicked off this past Thursday night at Gold's gym.  This is a transformation contest and the amount of weight loss isn't as important as simply how good you look at the end of 90 days. I have a decent shot at winning my age class in this competition.  Starting out, I'd say I have a 5% chance at winning.  If I work my tail off over the ensuing weeks then that percentage may go up but, for now, I'd say around 5%.  Really, not bad odds to start out with.  First place in my age group would come with a $6,500 check :)
That check along with selling my motorcycle would cover the cost of my summer tuition at Logan.  Since I had to retake that one class by itself, ...that threw off the entire plan I had worked out with my advisers.  If I could have gotten back in with that class then I would have had enough hours for financial aid for my remaining semesters.  Oh well..   lol

I've been considering and would like to do a video blog or vlog regarding these most recent weight loss competitions.  I'm figuring a video title of "Lose 70 pounds in 12 weeks" would probably garner some attention in the YouTube community.  In my first competition (Fall 2010) I lost 66.6 pounds.  I failed to complete the Spring session in 2011 and in my second completed competition (Fall 2011) I lost 70 pounds.  In this Spring competition I would like to lose 85.8 pounds.  My starting weight was 285.8 so, if I lost the 85.8 part of that then I'd weigh 200 pounds and have a percentage loss of 30% which, I don't believe has ever been done before in the Lose to Win competition.  I have a heck of a good start since I dropped 25.4 pounds in my first week.  Our second week weigh in is this coming Monday and I'll also see, for the first time, how I stack up against my competition.  The prize money has dropped since the first time I entered the contest since they now split up the men & women and only award prizes to the top five of each gender.  It was $500 for first place when the results were for the top 10 regardless of sex and now 1st prize is $350 for the top male and top female contestant.
So...after that first week, I have 60.4 pounds to drop over the remaining 11 weeks.  That's an average of about 5.5 lbs per week.  Usually, with the big first week drops I'll average about a pound a day or 7lbs per week for the first 8 or 10 weeks into the competition.  I'm not really starving myself at this point or anything but, the Gold's competition just started so I wasn't overly concerned about what I was eating.  Still, it's been a lot less than it was before these competitions started.
Which brings me back again to this upcoming week.  If I start karate and go to that tomorrow morning (less than 5 hours from now) then I can also go on Tuesday and Thursday nights.
Here's a kicker - Gold's gym has classes that start at 5:15 a.m. and those are Monday through Friday.  That would be a heck of a combination.  Those morning classes would include Spinning classes and BodyPump classes plus, I would also have my regular workouts with the weights and i'm sure I'd still kick in the treadmill work like I've been doing.  Out of the past dozen days I've only missed one day at the gym.  One goal I have for this 12 week session is to have a double digit drop in weight beyond the first weeks double digit drop.  For my week 2 weigh in I would like to have my percentage of weight down over 10%.  The 25.4 lb drop in week one represents an 8.9% drop which should put me in first place.  We'll see.
The trainer at Gold's who measured me and took my before pictures recommended spinning classes, bodypump classes and Core classes.  I didn't see anything in the schedule for Core but a lady behind the counter at golds said classes like Pilates are core classes.

What else is going on????  KhanAcademy.com and Codecademy.com are two sites I've been visiting daily.  Khan is used by me primarily for math practice and Codecademy.com is for learning to code, basically in HTML5, CSS and jQuery so far.  I've got over 30 days straight at Khan and 23 days straight in coding with Code Academy.

I'm currently signed up for three upcoming runs.  The first is called the Sandmine Challenge or Cave Run, it's a 5k through a series of caves over in Missouri, that's on the 23rd of February.  The next two runs are in April and consist of a 1/2 marathon in St. Louis on Sunday, April 7th and ....the next one is another 1/2 marathon in October - the St. Louis Rock n Roll marathon.

On February 24th, I'll be working at the Working Women's Survival show over in St. Charles.
Feb 23rd - Cave Run
Feb 22nd at 12:30 p.m. my completed SRP is due.

There's 1/2  a chance I may end up staying up throughout the rest of the night and go to karate before coming home and going to bed.  I do believe I've gotten back into karate that exact same way before.

A little over a week ago I sent an email update to some close family members and a few others to kind of act as coaches or, a sounding board.  I was supposed to provide another update this past Tuesday and Friday and I'm thinking i can just as easily blog the updates and email them all a copy of the blog which, kind of kills two birds with one stone.

There's not shortage of activities to keep me occupied and plenty of work to accomplish.  Guess I better get to it!  :)