dwenius

It's been a few months now with the latest 2 additions to the supplement rodeo.

The first addition was a Carlson's fish oil. "Bottled in Norway! Pleasant lemon flavor!" Right. It is like drinking the void. It lubricates your taste buds and throat on the way down, so you taste the front of the wave, then...nothing. A sort of lemony afterglow with a hollow center follows. Lately I've taken to swigging it straight from the bottle like cheap hooch.

The second is 1500mg of Niacin. I do not recommend this strategy for the uninitiated. I ramped up to this amount over the course of a month, and every increment was oooh, unpleasant. These days, it's almost tolerable; I take them on my way out the door in the morning, turn a little red, itch warmly during the 15 minute walk to the carpool or train, then apply eye drops to my parched peepers. God help me if I skip a day, though.

Put together, the niacin dilates all my capillaries (hence the flushing) so that more than the usual 1-2 red blood cells can pass at a time, and the fish oil gives them a teflon coating so they fly around all low friction and such. Bulk niacin, according to the literature, has other HDL/LDL balancing actions that I don't claim to understand. Next blood test is in about a month; we'll see for sure then.

On the more trivial side, the diet seems to have stuck and is working. Even with the usual holiday overindulgences, and a shocking lack of exercise, I'm still staying under 145 lbs. It's funny how slight the balance is, though; if I have nigiri instead of sashimi, boom, an extra pound or two that takes a few days to go away. I could gain 10 lbs just by having a sandwich for lunch every day. Luckily, a sandwich every day is just not what I want. Now about that exercise...