HitPoint Health Weekly 8/6: Hydration Tips, Exercise Guidelines, Fasting, What's Our Problem, and more

Good morning and happy Monday! I hope that you've had a good weekend and didn't miss me yesterday. I had this all written up and ready to go, but I forgot to put a release time on it! So I hope that this makes your Monday morning start of the work week a little better.

Stuff I Did This Week

What's Our Problem

I have been a big fan of Tim Urban's blog for a while, so when I saw his new book, marketed as a self-help book for societies, I was sold. The book aims to provide a new framework for understanding our complex political environment, our group dynamics, and our own minds. It introduces dozens of new terms and concepts, accompanied by over 300 color drawings (that are very fun and cute, just like the blog) to help readers understand the current state of society and how we can steer it towards a brighter future.

It gets really deep into politics, and the relatively new political divide between the United State's right and left sides. This gap seems to be growing every year, and Urban gets into detail about both the origins of the gap, how it has been getting worse, and what we can do about it.

One of the key concepts in the book is the "Ladder of Thinking." This concept describes the conflict between our primitive mind, which is concerned with immediate urges like eating, reproducing, and surviving, and our higher mind, which controls our ability to think objectively, analyze the world, and learn from experience. The author uses this concept to explain how our decisions and beliefs are formed, and how they can be influenced by whether our primitive or higher mind is in control. This is esentially the baseline of society, and it seems that the struggle between our higher and lower minds are generally still in control.

Baldurs Gate 3

It's here! And of course, it has been my preferred way to spend any extra time, I've been enjoying this more so than any game in recent memory, even though I already quite loved Divinity 2, Larian Studio's most recent game, excluding Baldur's Gate 3, of course. And boy, does this game deliver on nearly every front that we were promised in the open beta, which I also spent a lot of time in.

There has been a lot of talk about whether or not this game should be the standard for which RPGs, especially the CRPG genre should be held to, most people and companies saying no, that this project was a miracle to exist and that there will likely be a good amount of time before anything like it comes into existence again. And I agree with that, to an extent. I also think that this game genuinely came to push forward what is possible and known in the genre, like Mass Effect did many years before.

So, if you have been contemplating getting this game, I fully recommend it. I'll be putting in hundreds of hours into it and replaying it, myself. The game is very replay friendly, I spent 50 hours on the beta alone, which is just act 1, and found new things every time I jumped in. So please, if this speaks to you at all let me know. It's 4 player as well, and supports 2 player split screen! If you do end up purchasing this game, reach out and we can start a campaign. It's like being able to play a premade D&D game with your friends.

HitPoint Hacks

Simple Strength Training Guidelines

The following are things that have been helpful and important to me throughout the years when it comes to strength training.

Progressive Overload: This principle states that in order for muscle to increase in size, strength and endurance, it must be regularly challenged to produce an output that is as much as it is capable of. This means gradually increasing the amount of weight and the number of sets in your workouts over time. This is arguably the most important aspect of strength training, if you want to build muscle and strength.

Specificity: This principle implies that to become better at a particular exercise or skill, you must perform that exercise or skill. To be a better runner, you must run. To be a better weightlifter, you must lift weights. Pretty straightforward, I think.

Recovery: This principle states that after a workout, the body needs time to recover. This is when the real growth happens. Without proper recovery, progress can be slow or nonexistent, and injury can occur. Typically, when exercising hard and consistently, the body requires more sleep.

Reversibility: This principle means that if you stop working out, you will lose the gains you made. This is often summed up as "use it or lose it." But the opposite is also true, with "muscle memory", where if the muscle is starting to be lost, exercising consistently again will bring the muscle back into form much quicker than before.

Variation: This principle suggests that varying the type of exercises, the order of exercises, the weight and volume can help prevent a plateau. Consistency is important to ensure that the numbers you're pushing are going up, but changing it up every few months can be a good thing.

Hydration

Hydration is something that has always interested in, as I always felt that there was something that isn't right about being supposed to drink a gallon of water, or whatever the exact math is, based on a percentage of your body-weight in liters. Instead, what has helped me both stay hydrated in the Florida summer heat, as well as reduce the amount of bathroom breaks that I need.

For me, what works is thinking about how the body hydrates. The liquids that we consume, for example, plain water, would need the body to contribute sodium, and some glucose in order to properly absorb and use that water. So, why not add those things into the water? Now, you might be a little skeptical of this at first, and for good reason. Sugar is often very demonized by today's diet culture. And, mostly for good reason. It isn't exactly a necessary nutrient by any means, and can cause far more harm than good, especially when in processed foods. However, a little bit of sugar when used in hydration can actually go a long way in an intense Florida summer. The rule of thumb is a pinch of sea salt, or Himalayan, or any other type of quality salt that you can find, and about .5-1 gram of sugar for every 100ml, so take about a 20ml bottle, a bit bigger than a water bottle, this would be about 2-5 grams of sugar. Personally I'd keep it on the lower end, around 2 or 3. This combination of water and salt can be found naturally in things like coconut water, although not in as optimal a ration that you'd be able to make yourself.

One last thing to note here, I suggest that after you make this concoction, with or without the sugar, you should be adding salt, that you sip on it throughout the day. Taking smaller but more frequent sips  of the water is more optimal for hydration than a few times a day drinking large amounts of water.

And that will do it for this week. Thank you again as always, and keep those HitPoints up!