Here, hours after viewing a local fireworks show that DID happen on Independence Day, 2020; I jot some thoughts about big numbers and personal declarations of independence from MetS, obesity, and normalcy.
If my fellow party-goers want to surprise me with sparklers, trick candles, or someone svelte jumping out of my 90th birthday cake in February 2043 – I declare that I’m all for that! As Crowley and Dodge wrote in Younger Next Year, declaring, then pursuing a “kedge” can be life-extending. I think of diggers of the Anzac who returned to Gallipoli 75 years later. I think of nonagenarian “Boys of Pointe Du Hoc” who survived D-Day on June 6th, 1944, and returned annually to those Normandy cliffs – until this year when COVID nixed their Greatest Generation travels. I hope that you declare milestones, personal best performances, and stamininety because you CAN.
Ten Thousand
You may first think of daily STEPS when that number 10,000 is mentioned. There isn’t any mystical or magical tag associated with striding ten thousand steps from your sunrises to sundown. Dr. Yatano, the 10K-step originator, had his reasons, I suppose. What is important is the habit of moving at your proper intensity, perhaps 4-7 miles of “cross country” striding, depending on your stride length, naturally. Did you know that your system responds to the gentle weight-bearing movement of walking to decrease appetite? Swedish researchers coined the term gravitostat to describe this favorable sense and respond loop for regulating body fat.
Here’s another 10,000. Your lungs take in about 10,000 liters of air every day they are respiring. That’s about 2 gallons a minute. Our cardio-respiratory system taps oxygen in those breaths to absorb 5% or ~ 550 liters of pure oxygen each and every day. We are aerobic machines, if trained and maintained!
10,000 – Adult hearts pump about 10,000 liters of blood through those cardio chambers daily.
21250 – That the approximate number of gallons of blood that your kidneys filter every year. And those amazing kidneys produce about 530 to 730 liters of urine a year, assuming that you are properly hydrated and healthy, that is.
Circling back to Independence Day and big numbers, Mr. Coney Island, Joey Chestnut, gobbled > 21,00 calories from 75 (!) nitrate Nathans hot dogs and buns in just 10 minutes yesterday. As each “tube steak” has 280 calories, and 18 grams of unhealthy fat plus almost a gram of sodium, I wonder aloud how long Mr. Chestnut wants to live? As reinforcement for my query, sbnation also cited Chestnutt’s record for downing apple pies on a different day:
Record: 4.375 three-pound pies.
Time: 8 minutes
Calories: 26,040
Equivalent to: 44 Big Macs.
Now, that is a gross Fast Food Nation statistic! As Time Magazine reported about champion “binge” eaters, “don’t do this at home.”
Here’s to rational eating for stamininety! What’s your declaration of healthy independence?
/s/
Koach Dave
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