Blood Values

After getting back my comprehensive blood panel, I discovered that all of my blood values are on the bottom of normal or slightly below normal. Next time I go to the neurologist I'll have to question him about that and if that is the fault of the anti-seizure medication.

Under normal condition you can get enough oxygen on a normal breathing regiment while climbing and the like, and the trouble is that you can't get rid of CO2 rapidly enough to make room for more O2 in a breath-full. This is why there are these practices of exhaling hard during hard climbs.

With me the problem is getting enough O2. My lungs aren't the problem but carrying the O2 from the lungs to where it's needed is the problem apparently.

Anyway, it doesn't seem to be my fitness level decreasing but something else. I can climb almost anything in a 34-28 when I've had a good sleep. Even on a bad day I have to stop only once on a bad climb. While young guys continue to run me down I can only pass it off to old age.

On Friday, September 27, 2019 at 12:39:30 AM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
After getting back my comprehensive blood panel, I discovered that all of my blood values are on the bottom of normal or slightly below normal. Next time I go to the neurologist I'll have to question him about that and if that is the fault of the anti-seizure medication.

Under normal condition you can get enough oxygen on a normal breathing regiment while climbing and the like, and the trouble is that you can't get rid of CO2 rapidly enough to make room for more O2 in a breath-full. This is why there are these practices of exhaling hard during hard climbs.

With me the problem is getting enough O2. My lungs aren't the problem but carrying the O2 from the lungs to where it's needed is the problem apparently.
Anyway, it doesn't seem to be my fitness level decreasing but something else. I can climb almost anything in a 34-28 when I've had a good sleep. Even on a bad day I have to stop only once on a bad climb. While young guys continue to run me down I can only pass it off to old age.

None of us is immune to the direction of the arrow of time -- it doesn't make any return journeys. A point comes, in ever-increasing additional exercise (to established norms) merely to retain some fixed level of fitness, where age overtakes the relationship between exercise and fitness. For instance, I have a mandated upper heart rate limit which in the end is sure to lead to a decline in fitness.

My cardios recommended a tilt-test. It's what it sounds like, a table that tilts you head-down, after which they stand you up in a frame and time how long it takes you to faint, and to recover. From that certain conclusions can be drawn about what your respiration system processes enough oxygen for. I took one of my own doctors with me to the tilt test at an outlying hospital and he simplified it for me: I can eat or I can ride. So I take light meals before cycling or exercising in my gym, the light meal at least an hour before the ride or the workout, and I eat less at all meals but take a snack in between meals, which I never did in days gone by. And I started paying more attention to the heart-rate limit, and to my cardiologist's insistence about warming up and "warming down" before and after cycling.

I was interested in your reference to a good night's sleep. I've always understood that old people have difficulty getting a decent night's sleep, but if it is true, I must still be young, for I have no problem sleeping eight or nine hours, and I do find the effect beneficial in a measurable way, that I feel better, can undertake more activities, and think better and for longer.

I take it that you know that the fall in your heart rate back to normal or by some specified percentage after exercise is a good indication over the years of how your entire respiration system is coping.

AJ

On Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 6:49:26 PM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Friday, September 27, 2019 at 12:39:30 AM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
After getting back my comprehensive blood panel, I discovered that all of my blood values are on the bottom of normal or slightly below normal. Next time I go to the neurologist I'll have to question him about that and if that is the fault of the anti-seizure medication.

Under normal condition you can get enough oxygen on a normal breathing regiment while climbing and the like, and the trouble is that you can't get rid of CO2 rapidly enough to make room for more O2 in a breath-full. This is why there are these practices of exhaling hard during hard climbs.

With me the problem is getting enough O2. My lungs aren't the problem but carrying the O2 from the lungs to where it's needed is the problem apparently.
Anyway, it doesn't seem to be my fitness level decreasing but something else. I can climb almost anything in a 34-28 when I've had a good sleep. Even on a bad day I have to stop only once on a bad climb. While young guys continue to run me down I can only pass it off to old age.

None of us is immune to the direction of the arrow of time -- it doesn't make any return journeys. A point comes, in ever-increasing additional exercise (to established norms) merely to retain some fixed level of fitness, where age overtakes the relationship between exercise and fitness. For instance, I have a mandated upper heart rate limit which in the end is sure to lead to a decline in fitness.

My cardios recommended a tilt-test. It's what it sounds like, a table that tilts you head-down, after which they stand you up in a frame and time how long it takes you to faint, and to recover. From that certain conclusions can be drawn about what your respiration system processes enough oxygen for. I took one of my own doctors with me to the tilt test at an outlying hospital and he simplified it for me: I can eat or I can ride. So I take light meals before cycling or exercising in my gym, the light meal at least an hour before the ride or the workout, and I eat less at all meals but take a snack in between meals, which I never did in days gone by. And I started paying more attention to the heart-rate limit, and to my cardiologist's insistence about warming up and "warming down" before and after cycling.

I was interested in your reference to a good night's sleep. I've always understood that old people have difficulty getting a decent night's sleep, but if it is true, I must still be young, for I have no problem sleeping eight or nine hours, and I do find the effect beneficial in a measurable way, that I feel better, can undertake more activities, and think better and for longer.

I take it that you know that the fall in your heart rate back to normal or by some specified percentage after exercise is a good indication over the years of how your entire respiration system is coping.

AJ

I am wondering why all this does is make me slow. I'm still climbing 17% sections but I'm in low gear. I only have labored respiration when I'm trying to maintain a rather high speed though tough sections.