Curcumin Doesn't Work

It's been almost 3 weeks since I returned from the 2nd skiing trip. And I have settled into the familiar one-day-up-one-day-down pattern once again. Carry 20 lbs laundry or walking to the coffee shop craps me out the next day and I can't do much other than minimal ADL or Web surfing on my phone lying on the couch. It may be that I'm still under the weather from the last skiing. 3 weeks in the penalty box should be over in a few days, so maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

In any event, that means curcumin did not help. So I'm calling the curcumin trial a failure.

I'm still waiting for a break in the weather for my next skiing expedition. It did break last week  but no lift deal was available. So I'll have to catch the next break. The atmospheric river is running again and we'll be wet into the next week.

Skiing Aftermath, #2

There was no bouncing up and down this time. The elevation lasted 4 days and I held up remarkably steady.  After a day of rest I was on my bike pedaling 2 x 1.5 miles fast enough to slightly run out of breath at the end. Another day of rest, and I took care of 20 lbs laundry without struggling.  It sure felt like a recovery. So much so that I was imagining hiking up Angel Island and biking 20 miles.

Then the struggling followed. Walking 4 blocks to Starbucks was enough to bring about a nasty ache and fatigue the next day.  The struggle lasted for 5 days.

I will back to skiing next week  if I can find another $30 deal. This time I'll stick to 3x5 bunny runs and see if I get the elevation without the ensuing struggle. The weather may not cooperate though. The "atmospheric river" has stopped running, but they are still forecasting snow next week. This has been quite a wet season and the snow bases were over 10 feet before this storm. It must've been a delight to skiers. Me, I'm just delighted to be back on the slope.

Skiing #2

Soon after Colfax snow started to appear on the ground.  By the time I got to Kingvale, the walls on the sides of the road were 6 feet high and then turned into 10 feet in Soda Springs. The storm must've really dumped.

I woke up yesterday with ache from 2 x 50 m run I did three days before. It was the tail-end of a post-exertional malaise. But the lift ticket was already paid for, so I went on. And
my score this time: 5 bunny run; 2 x ( bunny + blue); 2 x (bunny + blue) + blue + 3 bunny run. 

It was about twice as much as I did the last time, and almost as much as I used to manage on the first day of the season when I was healthy. Yet I didn't cramp this time. And I stayed up all evening when I got back playing with the phone that arrived from a eBay dealer. Today I'm wallowing in a happy fatigue just as I should, unlike the last time when I was phlegmatic rather than wallowing. Don't know yet what coming days will bring. I think a funk will set it tomorrow when happy chemicals dissipate and then everything will be back to the routine after that. We'll see.

Curcumin Trial

I bought curcumin phytosome from Amazon and started on it a few days ago. This is the same brand used in the CFS trial for its anti-inflammatory property in reducing fatigue. The trial resulted in 15% improvement, so it's not much to write home about. I am not trying it for anti-inflammatory property though. I am more interested in microglial deactivation via TLR4 receptor inhibition and curcumin is supposed to be one of the antagonists.

This paper  claims that curcumin significantly deactivated microglia in concussion fatigue patients after in vivo injection.  Taking orally is not the same thing obviously. Curcumin is famous for low absorption rate and it's not clear how much of what's absorbed actually gets to the brain. But I figure it's worth the try. If nothing, 15% improvement is still nothing to sneeze at.

Back on My Feet Already

Well, that wasn't too bad. I struggled for only a few days, not 3 weeks. The struggle was over by 1/31, 7 days after skiing. Today I went out for a morning ride to the river and ended up pedaling fast in the shower on the way back. And that was on top of 1.5 mile walk yesterday.

Amazing that the struggle was over so quickly given that the intensity of skiing was way more than biking. I was cramping all over for crying out loud. Maybe it's got to do with the fact that skiing down the bunny slope takes less than a minute and then you get to rest for 5 minutes on the chair. It was an interval training.

So I'm going back to skiing next week after the storm is over. It is supposed to dump 8 feet of snow by the time it is done. Not that it matters since I'll be on the bunny slopes mostly. But fresh power will be nice still.

I went back to my log for the Oregon trip last August to see if I struggled long like the trip to So Cal in 2016. I didn't. I was biking 4 days after we returned and I did the "ordeal" 6 days after. And they were comparable trips.  So, I''m concluding that I am making a progress indeed.

But the cross-country trip in 2017 did result in a couple of 3 week post-trip struggles, one in NYC and another when we returned. And so did the trip to Paris. So the post-trip struggle is still alive and well; it's just that the exertion threshold went up.