Coronavirus masks

A friend in China is asking me to send her some masks... Found these good links straight from the CDC on which ones are effective on what:

• CDC - differences between these: 
1. Surgical masks: basically protect the patient from the wearer's infections. I.e., if population wear these, they may protect a bit themselves, but they protect mostly the people they interact with.
2. N95 respirator: filters small particles. May be effective against virus/bacteria (more than #1) but has to be worn properly and it is tough. This is usually for industrial use but can be used by medical personal in these days (in fact that's what US gov. is buying by the millions).
3. Surgical N95 respirator: N95 respirator + protection against liquid splashes (blood from surgery, etc.) and flammability. You don't really need this for Covid-19.
• CDC on Influenza and protections against it 
• CDC - List of respirators

Update (11/13/2020): was wondering about the PM2.5 masks. Probably don't help much with Covid (they filter 2.5um particles or above).

Protein in a Greek Yogurt

Just as an exercise to understand nutrition labels, I decided to check how much Greek yogurt would contribute to a protein supplement. Let's start by how much protein they recommend for increasing your muscle mass...

Checking the Naked Whey label looks like in one serving size (2 scoops, 94cc=6.4tbsp=19.1tsp, 30g) you get 25gr of protein (50% of the daily value):

Notice how adding the grams column adds up to the grams in the serving, while the % column (the one to the right, DV%) obviously does not add up to 100% as it is the % of recommended daily value that one serving has on that category. Actually according to this nice article, DV recommendation sets kind of a minimum. Not an optimum. In this case, they assume 50g DV. Nevertheless, again, according to the same article, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends that to increase muscle mass in combination with physical activity, you need to consume between 1.2 and 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, or 0.5 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. In my case, with 68Kg, I would have to take about 100g of protein per day (about 2x the DV).

From my experience, when I was going to the gym and taking one shake at the food stand, the lady was adding one scoop, and that was already making some effect. So, that would be only 12gr (of course, had protein also from the meals).

So, back to the Greek yogurt... The 0% Fage label shows: 

The serving according to them is 1/4th of the container. But I do not eat that much in the morning. Probably two large spoons which I measured to be about 100g. So, that would be about 10g of protein. In other words, maybe equivalent to the whey protein on the shake.

We will see if it makes any results... The main thing I noticed that over few months I gained about 2-3Kg of muscle, which I eventually lost when I stop taking it and exercising for a month. Muscle seems to be coming back without the extra protein just by exercising, so, it may not be that easy to distinguish the effect of one or the other... but anyhow, let's see.

Cheers!

PS1.: Watch with the products that add soy lecithin. The protein from the gym's bar had it and I was getting some weird effects. Maybe one day will put a post on that, but it looks like it is due to the weak estrogens on soy binding to your cell receptors and blocking the body good estrogens from doing their work (!).
PS2.: Greek yogurt upsets my stomach so I limit it to the days I go to the gym and I mix it with other yogurt.

Curing dry eye with exercise?

For long time I felt my eyes were getting drier... It started maybe 15 years ago with small symptoms, like red eye on airplanes or itchy eyes in the morning, and it was getting worse. About 5 years ago, I went to the doctor when the eyes were really itchy and he said that one of the 3 types of eye glands (the one that segregates an oil to avoid that the tears evaporate) wasn't working. Eventually he said it had no cure and I would just have to use eye drops the rest of my life. And these were kind of fancy ones. I know that they can be much much more expensive but these were about $10 for a week if I had used them as often as he said... Sure, the drops worked great but after few months I decided to try to work the eye out of them. So, I started with the cheapest ones and yeah, certainly they were not the same. I had to use them much more often (the others, with 4 times a day was enough). Somehow it looked like it was going pretty bad so I used the good drops again, once or twice, and then, somehow, my eyes were fine. For good. No need for more drops for weeks. Sure, eventually I was back on drops, but I did the same and again fine. This time much faster recovery. Some thoughts:

1. The glands are obviously not dead or gone. Otherwise I couldn't recover I guess. But they do have some trouble....  
2. I do have a bit of rosacea. Really mild. Doctor isn't even sure. But his initial theory is that the rosacea ("bacteria"?) affected the glands. So, he did give  me antibiotics but didn't help. But assuming it is true, it could be that the glands are able to keep it away sometimes, but some just lose. Why?
3. A theory is that we do have good bacteria in the eye (this seems to actually be proven) and some of that bacteria fights the bad one. But bad things happen, some imbalance in the body, and the bad ones take over unless they get some help. Antibiotics may actually not help as they harm also the good ones. Kind of gut bacteria theory.
4. The other is that I am not drinking enough water. This is something that I am trying to check/correlate to, but haven't been constant doing, so, can't prove it yet.
5. Another thought is some kind of eye strain. I think this is actually proven in my case. I do have some series of eye exercises that I can do when things get bad and do improve the vision instantaneously. Basically, when the symptoms are there (things like dry eyes which translate in blur vision), I close one eye and I blink the other. You have to do that without pressure. Just close the eye lead, and you got to search for that point where you feel like relieve, almost like when you stretch your leg and suddenly yields. Like a warm feeling. It takes few minutes to get to that point and you may feel even like chills. Actually when you start sometimes it feels that you can't even do it. That the eye that is supposed to be opening and closing can barely open. But then boom. Blinking with a slight push at the end seems to help too. So, with that in mind, I looked for some exercises. I never did any of these but may be in the same direction... (?)

Anyhow, adding a drop of the bad ones every few weeks and doing 5 seem to keep the problem away. I got to try #4. But now I go in 16hr flights and do not get red eyes! Although to be fair, I try to keep the laptop away (I do watch movies, though).

Knee injury

This is to post about a new small injury I just had on my left knee but before that, I would briefly talk about another knee injury that I never documented, for what it may help.

In few sentences... One day snowboarding I felt on my face and let my board hit my butt. Basically one foot went straight to my butt, but the other, as tight by the board, swung to the side of my hip and sprain my MCL (yeah, I wasn't very flexible). The thing was not recovering for 6 months although I was not doing anything to it (no medicine...). Then I thought about applying heat. I did, for a weekend, and it got totally recovered in just that!

Anyhow, that was a hint, as I said, in case it may help somebody... Now I got my knee hurting. I don't remember doing anything special to it when I felt the pain. Basically went down the car and felt it was hurting. Got a standing meeting with somebody for an hour, and it just got worse and worse.

The only thing I can think of is the following. Since the episode above, I try to stretch the MCL in the knees. Usually I kneel down, separate a bit the fit and then just sit between them. I am at the point where I can sit comfortably... Another stretch I do is squatting, trying to stretch my calfs (remember my issue). I always do these and I am fine (I just bring them in for the record as it still may happen that one day, one of them hurts you and I just don't know). Nevertheless, over the last week I introduced a 3rd one to stretch my gracilis and adductor lungus (and the groin area). Usually I do this by squatting in one leg while stretching the other to the side. But this time, besides that, I did one where in the squatt position you open your knees and place your elbows between them, while your hands are in the floor, in front of you. By pushing with your elbows out, you can feel the groin stretching. To put more force I leaned forward, on my tip toes, while the elbows push open on the knees. Anyhow, while doing all these, I felt a tiny sharp pain inside, behind the knee, a bit centered to the left (on my left knee). See Note 1 below. Very fine but I decided not to run for few days (also because of the calf issue) although I kept stretching this way at the gym. And after about a week, the car incident happen... 

Now, 3 days later, after applying 2 or 3 times ice and taking maybe a total of 600 mg of Ibuprofen (I know, that is little), I still feel I haven't improved much. Haven't been standing a lot but still normal life...

The pain is not behind the leg (where I felt the sharp pain) but feel more on top, under the kneecap. This also reminds me to some pain I used to have if I took off running without warming up. Now, after I regularly run, this does not happen anymore, but this time the pain is similar to that. On those cases, after 3 days I was fine. Doctor said once it may be a tendinitis. But this time, as I said, still not good...

Looking around squatting position type injuries, I found this article which mentions this type of injury may be due to pressure to the patellofemoral. This I guess can be many things. There is a book which seems very complete on a chronic problem, which is not my case (it just happen suddenly and hopefully won't stay long). Unfortunately only a partial intro is displayed and you got to pay for the rest. The references at the bottom of the page may be interesting, though.

Note 1: that is a point close to where the soleus reaches the knee. I wonder if it has anything to do with the calf sprains...

Note 2: reading this, I realized that they have something like that for teenagers. I did suffer a similar pain in both knees when I was a kid. Finally I pinpoint the reason to sliding forward on the seat of my class desk all the way till the knees hit the front legs. They were bearing the pressure and things got worse over time, for weeks till the point I couldn't run. One day I finally realized the cause and stopping that position went away (yeah, tell me about it!).

Note 3: Also, he mentions that running is good for your joints, which is what I have been saying that happened to me...

Update: By Monday (4 days after the injury), pain seems to be gone. I don't want to squat or test it on any way, so, can't be 100% sure, but the icing worked out pretty well. Tip: I didn't use ice per-se, just put the Sac-Gel bag in the refrigerator (not the freezer) which allows me to "recharge" faster. Used it like 5 times over a Sunday and did the deal. Won't come back to this post unless I get injured again @@

For the next, in case I need it, an old paper which seems pretty complete.