Flirting With Hypothermia, Part 3 - When the Water Only Hurts

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I made it.

I made it to the lowest temperature the water will be this winter.

I’m damn proud of myself for that. Of course, I am. 39° is no small feat. Especially in the absence of neoprene.

Bathing suit, water shoes, swim cap with or without goggles – that has been my go-to for these swims.

When I started doing this, I wasn’t sure I would be able to go all winter.

Cold water swimming is a different animal once the water dipped below the 50° mark. Once the water falls down into the 40’s, it hurts. Like a lot.

I stay in for about 20 minutes when the water was in the upper 40’s, and about 15 when the water was in the lower 40’s.

Then it fell to 39.

From getting in to my waist to dipping my hands to fully submerging to swimming to getting out of the river, I stay in that water for anywhere from 8-11 minutes, and I’ve done that at least 3 times.

Except for adding a swim cap to keep my hair dry enough and keeping my head and face out of the water most of the time (no brain freeze), I made no other change to my routine other than staying in for shorter swims.

I’m impatient for the water to hit the 50° mark again. The water is starting to go up, but it’ll be a while before it’s in the 50’s.

There is no pleasure at the edge of this pain.

The best I can hope for is enough numbness to make the hurt tolerable. I can only acclimate so far to water this cold.

My swim buddy handles the water differently than I do. She rushes in, fully submerges, and shrieks as she stands waist deep and waits for me.

I still do the walk. I stop at my waist and wait for the torment to become bearable.

Cold burns.

How odd is it that the polar opposite of hot burns as much, yet without frying your flesh?

The lower half of my body – legs, hips, and waist – feel the sharp pricking of invisible pins and needles. My bathing suit provides some layer of relief for my pelvis, but not much.

It hurts so bad that I scream “WHY?! Why am I doing this?!”

As much as I’ve heard and read that cold-water swimming is good for me; at this point, I’m in it for the ego probably more than my physical and mental health.

Sometimes I’m tempted to get out. But I’m already here. Besides I can’t lose face with my swim buddy, and it’s only 10 minutes of torture.

I grit my teeth until the pain is tolerable and my legs are almost numb.

Then I thrust my hands in. Of course, I scream again.

I can feel my heart pounding from the stress and fear of it all. This is completely counter-intuitive for modern day humans accustomed to the easy comfort of a thermostat.

I struggle to regulate my breathing and my hands hurt like hell.

Finally, the pain is tolerable. I psych myself up to go under. Then I start swimming.

My breath comes in short gasps and all I can say is: goddammit motherfucker shit this sucks oh fuck Fuck FUCK!!!

The water burns at the edge of my neck between water and air. Sometimes I submerge to give myself some relief. I know it’s bad when I have to go into the cold water to rid myself of the pain at the edge of water and air.

My swim buddy is flailing and shrieking a few strokes away. We’re in this together, yet alone. We are each immersed in our own relationship with endurance of something so wretchedly uncomfortable.

I’m counting strokes to determine how many minutes I have to keep doing this. Counting distracts me.

Breaststroke is agonizing, so I switch to side-stroke. I don’t know why that gives me relief from the agonizing numb. Maybe it’s because I have to switch sides and that small change makes it somewhat bearable.

Shit goddammit shit fucking FUCK!!!

My swim buddy and I screech and holler and laugh.

I submerge fully again, and the gesture is bizarrely soothing.

When the water is this cold, there is no workout. I can’t swim as far or as fast in this temperature as I could before. My hands never fully get used to the stinging pain, and they stiffen quickly.

I never reach an easy breathing pattern. There is no euphoria while in the water. That comes later during the rewarming.

At least that’s the way it works for me.

At last, we’ve done this long enough and it’s time to get out of the river.

We’re more conservative and careful in water this cold. We don’t stay in so long, and I don’t feel like I’m tripping on mushrooms when I get out. I’m sure I would if I stayed in 5-10 minutes longer.

But this water could kill.

So the magic mushroom trippiness can wait until the water is back in the 50’s and there’s a more generous margin of error.

We rush to our cars to change clothes and start the process of rewarming.

We have our rhythm down.

My clothes are lined up in the order to dress in, so I don’t even have to think about it.

Wool hat on before peeling down the top half of my suit. Once the struggle is over and the first layer is on, I’m relieved.

My flirtation with hypothermia will not end in tragedy. At least, it won’t today.

I like soft wool that fits close. My swim buddy has made life easier with a large sweatshirt and pants that she can throw on without precise coordination from her hands.

This is the moment of reward. The endorphin rush is phenomenal now that it’s over.

Instead of sitting on the beach, my swim buddy and I sit in one of our vehicles with the heat on full blast. We sip hot tea, bullshit about our personal lives, and laugh at the sheer lunacy of what we do. What we just did yet again.

The laughter is the best part.

Maybe that’s why I keep doing this.

Well, that and the bragging rights, of course. Who doesn’t love getting mad respect for doing something crazy?

Update February 13, 2021

I spoke a little too soon when I wrote this piece. Due to the latest snowpocalypse in Portland, the water has dropped to the low to mid 30’s.

My swim buddy and I hit it at 35 degrees yesterday, after walking barefoot across the snowy beach. It was agony, and I didn’t even last 3 minutes.

But I still did it.

If anybody would like to read “Flirting with Hypothermia, Part 2 - Riding the Edge of Pain and Pleasure,” click HERE.

Flirting With Hypothermia, Part 1

So my latest hobby is wild winter swimming. The Rona pandemic has a lot to do with that. But I think Wim Hof may also be partly to blame.

Then there is the endorphin rush. That definitely keeps me hooked. Fortunately, the high of happy hormones hits while swimming, and that matters a lot.

Right now, the water hurts bad. So bad.

Because all the pools are shut down in Oregon, as well as most of the dance events that have kept me sane, I started swimming in the lakes and rivers in the middle of summer.

That got interrupted with the fires that gave Portland the distinction of the worst air quality in the country. After the air was breathable again, I went back to swimming at the end of September with the intention to see how far I could go into winter swimming.

So far, so good. 

I go swimming in the Columbia River that cuts the border between Washington and Oregon. The water was just under 41° the last time I went swimming. With water that cold, the best I can hope for is numbness that makes the brief swim tolerable. 

The water is supposed to be between 40-41° today and just over 41° tomorrow.

As I write this, it’s New Year’s Eve and I have yet to do my dip.

I’ll probably go right after writing this draft because I’ll be too f*cking cold when I’m done, and will need a couple of hours to rewarm.

I’ll also go again on New Year’s Day to start out 2021 with a fresh freezing baptism to christen and cleanse myself.

I like to approach certain occasions with rituals. Rituals add richness and depth to the mundane; I would even say they add meaning.  

But back to winter swimming because this is not a blog about New Year’s resolutions.

By wild winter swimming, I refer to swimming in “the skins” as people say in the wild swimming world. I wear a bathing suit, bathing cap, goggles, and water shoes.

Thus far, I have not utilized neoprene to protect me from the cold.

Although I must admit I’m tempted to get gloves because the water really hurts my hands. Dunking my hands is the worst part. It’s harder than walking in the water to my waist, and it’s harder than fully dunking and swimming.

Unfortunately, the hands are a vital source of information. Through the hands and fingers, I can determine how cold it is. The basic test is tapping thumb to each of the fingers for dexterity.

Once the cold is too much, one can’t do that – and it’s definitely time to get out of the water ASAP. I don’t go that far. I get out once my hands start feeling stiff. I don’t think it’s wise to push it beyond being able to touch my fingers at all.

It’s too easy to stay in too long.  

My sense of time – which is excellent in normal conditions – goes awry in the cold water. 10 minutes often feels like half that much.

And believe it or not, once the endorphins hit, I want to stay in that freezing water.  

One day, I stayed in a little too long and my lips were blue for about 15 minutes while rewarming.

I only need to go once a week to keep my body acclimated to the cold. And sometimes, once a week is all I can manage. I have to go today (December 31st) if I want to stay acclimated because it’s been a week since the last time I went.

It’s an incredible way to cleanse off the chaos of this past year. 

But why am I doing this?

1) I actually enjoy feeling a little uncomfortable. My life is soft, so filled with comfort and convenience – even now, with the pandemic. There is something about subjecting myself to the elements and the brutality of nature that puts the edge back in.

2) And there’s the pandemic. This is what the Rona has brought me to after the entire world has been shut down. Most of my favorite things to do – like Ecstatic Dance, Contact Improv, and travel – are off the table until Covid-19 is under control. So I started swimming in the middle of summer, and got a wild hair to see how far I could take it into the winter 

3) That endorphin rush I mentioned earlier. The mental health benefits can’t be beat because they are immediate. It is absolutely impossible to feel mad, sad, or scared once I step into that water. I’m too busy screaming and cussing as the cold cuts right through me as I make my way in to feel anything else. Everything disappears but the present moment. There’s no room for depression, anxiety, rage, or sorrow.

4) It’s pretty damn good for the physical health too. First, cold water builds up brown fat. The cold transforms white fat to brown fat. Brown fat can be used for heat, energy, and our metabolism. Wim Hof has an exceptionally high amount of brown fat in his system. Second, cold water helps build up the immune system – again pandemic! – which protects us from all the usual viruses including the Rona.

5) I love me a good challenge! I question my sanity every time I go into that water, because it’s so harsh. It makes me feel invincible and I feel like a bad ass every time I do it. Isn’t building confidence and a sense of self good for psychological well-being?

6) Because there’s not much else to do.  All the pools are closed in Multnomah County. All the swimmers hit the rivers and lakes this summer. Many have continued into winter with their wetsuits and neoprene.

But bad asses swim in our skins. Again refer to #5 above.

These are the ways the Rona has forced me to grow.

Reversing Diabetes - Letter to my Aunt, Part 2

Image by marijana1 from Pixabay

The is the 2nd half of a letter I wrote to my aunt about reversing pre-diabetes without medication to prevent the onset of diabetes.

However, these are the methods to reverse diabetes as well.

If you would like to read the 1st half about supplements and exercise, head to the blog tab on Monday, August 31st or click HERE.

1)  Food.

My suggestions are a more relaxed version of the ketogenic diet or the LCHF (low carb-high fat diet). Personally, I think the usual standard 65-80% fat – even healthy fat – is a bit over the top.

Of the 3 types of food – protein, carbohydrates (including fruit and vegetables), and fat – fat has the smallest effect on blood sugar and therefore, insulin.

So as I said, healthy fat is your new best friend. These suggestions are only a basic framework. Experiment and see what works for you.

As your blood sugar normalizes over time, play around. But a good rule of thumb is to increase your fats and lower your carbs to get your blood sugars down.

40-50% Fat,

30-40% Protein,

10-20% Carbs.

Healthy fat keeps you full and cut down on sugar and carb cravings. Avocados, nuts, olive oil, coconut oil, cheese, butter.

Try to eat at least 1 avocado a day. For your needs, this is a super food. The healthy fats and nutrients in avocados are excellent for blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides, and bone health.

Go nuts for nuts. Nuts are both healthy fat and a protein source. They are also excellent fiber – and again, the nutrients are high.

Careful with the overdone and over-salted nuts. And of course, honey roasted nuts are not the best choice.

Nut butters are also good, but check the labels to avoid sugar. You’ll be shocked how much sugar is added to a lot of things you find in jars and cans.

Don’t cook with safflower oil, canola oil, or any vegetable oil.

Extra virgin olive oil is good for salads and low-heat cooking. Butter is good for high heat cooking, so is coconut oil if you want to try it.

High fat milk products – like cheese, cream, half and half, and whole milk – are good in standard servings. The rule of thumb with milk is the more fat there is, the lower the milk sugars.

However, I do find when I eat too much cheese – and I’m talking about A LOT of cheese, my blood sugar is higher the next morning.

And now for Protein.

This is important: START YOUR DAY WITH PROTEIN! You can have fat with your protein. But no carbs. At all.

Animal protein is excellent - Eggs, chicken, hamburger patties, steak, pork chops, pork tenderloin. You really can have bacon and eggs at least once a week and be fine.

I’d be conservative with ham, though, because it’s often made with honey or maple syrup.

This leaves Carbs. You should have some carbs and the best carbs to have are vegetables – like your greens – and fruit. It comes down to balance.

Be cautious with high sugar vegetables like carrots and beets.

Dark leafy greens are excellent, have as much as you want. The nutrients in dark greens – like collard greens – really help with insulin sensitivity and lowering blood sugar.

Okra is good because it’s excellent fiber. So is cucumber and celery. Celery goes well with nut butters.

Beans like black eyed peas and lima beans and white, black, and red beans are carbohydrate, but also protein. They spike blood sugar, but they are also excellent fiber, which helps with both blood sugar and cholesterol. They also process quickly, especially if you exercise right after eating them.

My suggestion is to check your blood sugar after you eat beans and see how you do. If your blood sugar is high 45 minutes after eating, go for a fast 30-minute walk.

Be very conservative or avoid as much as you can:

Bread and all things wheat, like crackers and pasta,

Rice,

Corn,

White Potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are starchy, but they often do well with blood sugar. Again, experiment. Check your blood sugar after eating these and see how it is.

With fruit, you have to be a little careful and not eat too many. Berries are the lowest in sugar and high in antioxidants. Green apples are also fairly okay.

Eat sparingly of high sugar fruits like watermelon, cantaloupe, honey dew melon, mangoes, and pineapple.

Citrus fruits are good because of vitamin C, but grapefruit and lemons are preferable to oranges and tangerines.

2)  Water.

Drink so much, you feel like you’re drowning in it.

Aim for at least a half-gallon (8 8oz glasses) to a gallon (16 8 oz glasses) a day. It flushes the excess sugar from your system, and your liver and kidneys will thank you for it.

If you need taste, squeeze some lemon into it. Or slice some cucumbers and crush some mint and infuse it in a pitcher of water in the fridge for 2-5 hours. Sieve the water and extract the cucumber and mint. Water will have a refreshing taste, and plenty of electrolytes.

3)  Sleep.

Get your 8 hours in, preferably at night. I suspect you’re a nightowl like Mom and Mimi, but plenty of rest does the body good. This is also a crucial part of getting to your fasting morning blood sugar.

4)  The bonus tip of Intermittent Fasting (IF).

This is one of the newest trends in health and wellness. It sounds a lot fancier than it is. But what it comes down to is eating only within a particular window of time, and don’t eat outside of it.

The most efficient way to bring down excess insulin in an insulin-resistant body is through not eating. All food stimulates insulin. To not eat gives your digestive system a break.

12 hours on when you eat and 12 hours off when you fast and don’t eat is the minimum. The other windows are 10 hours on and 14 hours off, or 8 hours on and 16 hours off.

This definitely cuts out mindless snacking late at night or early in the morning, and skipping either breakfast or dinner.

Intermittent fasting works quite well over time, but…

It is possible your morning blood sugar will go up initially. When the body is low on sugar, the liver will dump its stored sugars into the blood stream. In the long run, this is good because then those stores are depleted, but it can be startling at first.

Intermittent Fasting may not be necessary for you, but I think a 12/12 or 10/14 eating schedule would work well for you.

Try Intermittent Fasting with caution and see how you feel.

                                      *******

So these are my tips, and what has been effective for me. I hope this helps you too.

Again, do what you can. And be kind to yourself whenever you splurge and indulge in treat. You can always go for a walk afterwards, and know that your blood sugars will come back down in a day or a few once you get back with the program.

Either way, to have made it to 80 without full-blown diabetes is damn good.

If you feel more comfortable running all this past your doctor, go ahead. If he would like to know who/what my sources are, I’m happy to tell him.

Love,

M

Reversing Diabetes - Letter to my Aunt, Part 1

Image by Tesa Robbins from Pixabay

This is the first half of a copy of a letter I sent to my 80 year old aunt on ways to reverse pre-diabetes. Since diabetes runs in the family, she’s done very well to only be pre-diabetic at this age.

Since I’m on my 3rd - and last - round of reversing diabetes, I have consolidated years of research, practice, and experimentation on what worked for me.

However, it occurred to me that a lot of people have issues with diabetes and pre-diabetes. So why not go ahead and put it on my blog, even though this is - technically - outside of my “niche.”

For the record, I have never taken any medications - like metformin or insulin - to manage my blood sugar.

Reversing any chronic health condition is worth writing about. This also applies to cholesterol issues, weight loss, and heart health.

So for any random person who comes to this site, who already has diabetes, or just got diagnosed, here are some helpful tips and advice on today 31st, August 2020 and Wednesday, September 2nd.

Hey Aunt Sally,

Good news is pre-diabetes is much easier to reverse than diabetes.

 Bad news is even after you reverse pre-diabetes, your pancreas will never work as well again as it once did.

You’ll have enough wriggle room to be able to have the ice cream again, but not as blissfully ignorant as you once were, or as often. Because there will be consequences if you do.

I speak from experience. Those consequences are why this is my 3rd rodeo in reversing diabetes.

I included copies of my daily fasting blood sugar that I take every morning since early June.

As you can see, the numbers vary even as the blood sugar is coming down. Since I started at 213, I’m ecstatic to be where you’re at now and it took me 2 months to get there.

I’m hoping to hit consistent normal morning blood sugar in the next 2 weeks to a month.

The HbA1C – likely the blood test that determined your diagnosis of pre-diabetes is the sum total of your blood sugar for 2-3 months.

But these are the daily values you can check for yourself.

Normal Fasting (morning) Blood Sugar: less than 100 or 70-99. This is what you want to get to.

Pre-diabetic Fasting Blood Sugar: 101-125. I imagine this is where you are most mornings right now.

Diabetic Fasting Blood Sugar: 126 and up. Where I was 5 years ago when I first found out. I think 196 was where I was at.

Over 200 – that’s bad. That’s where I started on this go round.

1)  First thing you’ll need is a glucose meter with lancets and test strips to check your blood sugar daily. Without a prescription, the test strips can be expensive. I heard WalMart has a brand and the test strips are much cheaper. Have your doctor or a diabetic friend show you how to use it.

By “fasting” blood sugar, this is the blood sugar you take first thing in the morning when you wake up.

If you want to experiment, you can also test your blood sugar after eating – about 45 minutes later – to observe how certain foods affect you.

If you think of your body as a science project, this process is actually kind of cool.

Anytime your blood sugar is over 200 – this would likely be if you splurged on some ice cream and cake or even a lot of fruit or sugary fruits - go for a fast-paced walk for at least 30 minutes if you can. If you can’t, your sugar will come down every hour.

Which brings me to…

2)  Exercise is your medicine.

Exercise as much as you can within safe and reasonable parameters. For example: a 30+ minute walk every morning before you eat anything and a 30+ minute walk every evening after your last meal.

The reason why is because exercise makes the body more insulin-sensitive, and it helps reverse high blood sugar much faster than diet alone.

Insulin is the hormone secreted by the pancreas to process everything we eat. We count on insulin to push the sugars into the cells for energy. So anything that processes to sugar quickly – like carbs – spike insulin the most.

With a sweets and carb-heavy diet – which most Americans have, the pancreas gets over-worked to exhaustion and the body becomes insulin-resistant. After some time, this leads to pre-diabetes, which eventually becomes diabetes – with insulin-resistance getting worse.

In insulin resistance, the demands for insulin are high and more insulin is produced. But it is no longer as effective at pushing the sugar into our cells.

So the excess sugar stays in the bloodstream and blood sugar goes up. Also, there’s too much insulin in your system, which increases fat storage and affects the “bad” cholesterol.

How exercise affects insulin-resistance is the increased heart rate and circulation of blood and lymph increase insulin-sensitivity, and the sugars are pushed into the cells to be used as energy as they should.

Sounds like walking is your go-to, and you can do that whenever you want. At night, when you’re done eating. In the morning. After meals. Whenever you splurge.

 

Whatever you do, go at a fast pace to get your heart rate up.

 

Check out the pics of the mini-trampoline rebounder I also sent. That would be a great way to mix up your exercise, and it’s great for your bone health and immunity.

 

3)  Supplements:

 

All of these increase insulin-sensitivity and decrease blood sugar. The Omegas and CoQ10 are also good for cholesterol. Deficiency in Vitamin D screws up everything including blood sugar and insulin-resistance, as well as cholesterol.

Chromium Picolinate 300 mg; 2 tablets 2x/day;

Alpha Lipoic Acid 300-350 mg; 2 tablets 2x/day;

Magnesium 200 mg; 1 tablet 2x/day or 2 tablets 1x/day AT NIGHT.

Omega-3 fatty acids 2 capsules 2x/day.

CoQ10 1 tablet 1-2x a day.

Vitamin D – 2000-5000 IU daily.

Keep taking your cinnamon supplement.

You should see a change within a few weeks.

Check back on Wednesday, September 2nd, for specifics on food, water, sleep, and fasting tips. Cheers!