Russ's Grab-Bag Of Assorted PT Forum Goodness

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 3/03/2009 7:15pm

Originally Posted by AeroChica

Here's my opinion - and feel free to shop it around the women in your life - I'd much rather be with an out of shape guy who can hold up his end of the conversation than a really buff dude who's eyes don't track the same direction and who is easily distracted by shiny objects.

Russ - we're talking brain damage. As in - loss of IQ points, can't hold a job, can't support self and family, possibly significant long term depression, psychological effects and cognitive impairment. Sometimes that **** happens and you can't see it coming, but you know you are prone to this type of injury. Judo is cool and all, but it doesn't really seem worth it.

If I get to the point where I'm convinced my symptoms have lifted, there is considerable quality-of-life calculus for me to work through. Until then, my focus is on getting to that point.

---

One of the problems I've faced thus far is that generally one should keep things (diet, etc.) the same after a concussion as before it. The problem is that for more than a year, there hasn't really been a homeostasis to speak of - I've been making changes throughout the period.

It may be that the high-carbohydrate diet I was on from the day before the tournament to a week or two afterwards compounded the problem. It may be that the very low-carbohydrate diet that I've been on for the last week and a half is compounding the problem. It may be that my diet isn't going to affect things one way or another.

Repeat that line of questioning for all of the other stuff I'm taking (vitamins, ibuprofen, etc.) and the stuff that I'm not (caffeine, creatine, etc.), along with just about every other factor that may or may not affect my recovery.

And repeat it for every other biology-related question that people have, including training ones. Will factor X/Y/Z help or hinder improvement in strength/muscle/endurance/speed/injury avoidance? The answers are always vague, and there's always some ancedotal counterexample, because we're still within spitting distance of the start of the Biological Revolution - where it moves from being a soft to a hard science. We're nowhere near the end, and when we get there, we'll be amazed at how much we were wrong about.

It's hard to give a truly confident answer about any of these training questions, but I'm doing my best to stay ahead of the curve.

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 3/03/2009 8:16pm

Originally Posted by TheRuss

Repeat that line of questioning for all of the other stuff I'm taking (vitamins, ibuprofen, etc.) and the stuff that I'm not (caffeine, creatine, etc.), along with just about every other factor that may or may not affect my recovery.

Speaking of which, I'm not so pleased with the doctor I went to see about said concussion. She recommended I start taking ibuprofen "to reduce swelling in my neck".

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can induce progressive neurodegeneration in association with chronic inflammation. Since chronic treatment with the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), ibuprofen, improves functional and histopathologic outcome in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD), we investigated whether it would also improve long-term outcome following TBI. Anesthetized adult rats were subjected to fluid percussion brain injury. Over the following 4 months the injured animals received ibuprofen per os (formulated in feed) at the approximate doses of 20 mg/kg body wt/day (n = 13), 40 mg/kg body wt/day (n = 13), or control (feed only, n = 12). Sham animals underwent surgery without injury or ibuprofen treatment (n = 9). At 4 months post-injury, a Morris water maze task revealed a profound learning dysfunction in all three injured groups compared to the sham group. Surprisingly, the learning ability of injured animals treated with either chronic ibuprofen regimen was significantly worsened compared to non-treated injured animals. However, there was no difference in the extent of progressive atrophy of the cortex or hippocampus between treated and non-treated injured animals. These data may have important implications for TBI patients who are often prescribed NSAIDs for chronic pain.

-Browne et al., Chronic ibuprofen administration worsens cognitive outcome following traumatic brain injury in rats

Son of a bitch.

**Deadmeat** · Posted On: 3/03/2009 8:30pm

Originally Posted by TheRuss

Speaking of which, I'm not so pleased with the doctor I went to see about said concussion. She recommended I start taking ibuprofen "to reduce swelling in my neck".

-Browne et al., Chronic ibuprofen administration worsens cognitive outcome following traumatic brain injury in rats

Son of a bitch.

I hope that your neurologist wasn't the one suggesting ibuprofen?

Often, following some sort of traumatic injury to the brain anti convulsants such as valproate may be prescribed as a prophylactic measure to ward of epilepsy, which is really the only medication a neuro is likely to prescribe under the circumstances.

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 3/03/2009 8:45pm

Originally Posted by Deadmeat

I hope that your neurologist wasn't the one suggesting ibuprofen?

No, I still haven't seen a neurologist (something else I'm pissed off about right now). This is the doctor who said she'd give me the referral to the neurologist (no word yet).

Originally Posted by Deadmeat

Often, following some sort of traumatic injury to the brain anti convulsants such as valproate may be prescribed as a prophylactic measure to ward of epilepsy, which is really the only medication a neuro is likely to prescribe under the circumstances.

A grab-bag of other stuff that came up in my search...
Modest cooling hasn't been adequately investigated yet, but I've noticed my head feels better when I'm outside in the cold, so I'm going to swap my headphones for an icepack.

Ah, that's nice.

I'm curious as to how things are going to pan out with COX-2 inhibitors and the like, but I'm not about to go out and play amateur pharmacist with this stuff.

Although... Pharmacotherapy for Traumatic Brain Injury: A Review mentions IGF-1 as a possible treatment. Now that's my kind of medicine.

Edit: This study indicating the inefficicacy of cognitive therapy for treating TBI does not surprise me. "Mind over matter" doesn't work that way.

**Deadmeat** · Posted On: 3/03/2009 10:18pm

honestly, the least biochemically disruptive course of treatment possible is generally the best when it comes to mild tbi.

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 3/03/2009 10:25pm

Originally Posted by Deadmeat

honestly, the least biochemically disruptive course of treatment possible is generally the best when it comes to mild tbi.

To be cynical, that's probably because we aren't far enough along in our understanding of:
-what breaks
-when it breaks
-what will help
-what will harm

As such, we can either adopt the leap-of-conjecture approach of "well, the brain gets inflamed, so let's go with anti-inflammatories", or we can keep whacking rats on the head until theoretical and experimental data strongly correlate. If I sound bitter, it's because I am, not because I have any better ideas.

Speaking of leap-of-conjecture, it pains me to hear the incessant "antioxidants good, free radicals bad" yammering. It's chemistry by people who don't understand chemistry.

**Sakmongkol** · Posted On: 3/04/2009 1:29pm

I'm aware this might not work for me and is very individual but after newbie gains (first 6-12 months) which routine did you gain the most size on and which would routine did you gain the most strength on, Russ?

**Deadmeat** · Posted On: 3/04/2009 5:52pm

Originally Posted by Sakmongkol

I'm aware this might not work for me and is very individual but after newbie gains (first 6-12 months) which routine did you gain the most size on and which would routine did you gain the most strength on, Russ?

http://stronglifts.com/files/stronglifts-5x5.pdf

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 3/04/2009 7:35pm

Originally Posted by Sakmongkol

I'm aware this might not work for me and is very individual but after newbie gains (first 6-12 months) which routine did you gain the most size on and which would routine did you gain the most strength on, Russ?

Good question. Unfortunately, I can't give a very good answer to that one. Here's what I can say...

No, I never did Stronglifts 5x5.

In high school, I had no understanding of anything theoretical, and the only goal I really had was to put up more reps than the rest of my football team on bench press at "the next testing" (which never came). The weights and barbell that came with the death trap of a bench I was using only went up to maybe 130lbs if that, so I wound up just putting that up for one set of as many reps as I could. I vaguely recall being able to put it up for a lot of reps in the end. Oddly enough, aside from getting my fingers pinched by the barbell sleeve and bench rests, I think that was the longest continuous run of resistance training I'd ever managed.

Between HS and university, I went to a gym with a bunch of machines. My strategy was to go there about three times a week and do a set on every machine there in sequence, usually three times around. I only did that for a few weeks. Don't remember if I got any results from it.

At university, the strength and conditioning coach would usually give us a weight training program for the off-season. Block periodization kind of stuff - anatomical adaptation, hypertrophy 1, max strength 1, active rest, hypertrophy 2, max strength 2, conversion to strength, and back to football. I usually made it about the middle of hypertrophy before I'd get hurt, sick, or busy with school and gave up.

For a few months after New Year, the team had mandatory twice-weekly "morning runs" - heavy focus on conditioning, with a bit of speed/power and core strength work. I'm quite sure that getting a maximum of three or four hours of sleep per night twice a week for three months offset any benefit I could have gotten out of them, though.

I signed up at a local sports-training place for a summer in there somewhere. It was kind of CrossFit-ish, although I think this was before anyone had actually heard of CrossFit. That's about when I started to get interested in the theoretical end of training. Unfortunately, that was also the summer I first went on creatine after already having put on a lot of weight, and between the added mass and the strain from the training, my body basically fell apart. Sprained ankles from tripping on the sidewalk, etc. An astute reader may be starting to notice a trend here...

Actually, two trends. The other one is that I haven't been able to give too many specifics thus far, which is basically because I didn't start logging my training until three years ago, and those logs are kind of spotty. I'll take a look at said logs when I have the energy to do so.

I can tell you in advance, though... I don't think I've ever managed to train for more than two months without a serious injury (where "serious" is defined as having to discontinue one of the exercises or miss multiple workouts in a row). Frustration with that trend is one of the reasons that I started this thread.

**Dempsy Roll** · Posted On: 3/04/2009 8:08pm

All this talk of concussions has me worried now.

Are they still such a big deal if it's not a 'serious' concussion? I.E. getting your bell rung/dizzied but not knocked out? Should you still take time off after that? Maybe only a few days, as opposed to a few weeks? Is it alright to continue working out, going to class and all that, as long as you're not doing any hard sparring? Does the severity of the concussion make a huge difference? For example, I got knocked out once playing a game of pickup football, but I was awake again just after hitting the ground. Another time, I got into a fairly serious motorcycle crash, hit a tree at some 40-50mph. I was knocked out for at least 30 seconds, and afterwards while I was being driven to the hospital I remember being extremely sleepy, having my vision blurred, colors screwed up, my tongue tasting fuzzy, ect. How do the two compare? Obviously the crash was worse, but is it by a little or a lot?