Peter Beck Kim

Had been looking forward to Christmas open mat but a kidney stone had other ideas. What is it with end of the year goodness?
Pain meds helped off and on, mostly off around 5 AM. Tried to minimize to reduce unsteadiness and constipation. 4-5-7 breathwork dropped the severity 1-2 notches, but like riding a horse or mule all day, super sleepy when the waves let up.
7/10 feels like a pine cone up in there, sideways. 8/10 = 7 + can't get comfortable, writhing. 9/10 = 8 + sweating, shaking, and other autonomics firing. 10 = 9 + can't stop vocalizing, 10+ = 10 + restraints please.
Getting comfortable with discomfort. Looking forward to 2024 😂🙏

Open mat win: 1 hour, .
After, rubbing hand sani gel on the foot abrasions.

Peloton isn’t BJJ. Or rucking to prep for bowhunting. Or strength training isometrics.

But when it’s 102°F in the midst of the hottest heatwave in 40 years, I’m grateful for the chance to grade my return to activity after a week of viral yucks, asthma, and home masking/isolation to protect at-risk family till I reliably tested negative. Goal of the day: talking and breathing without working at it, yay.

Short version: felt 👍, but HR went immediately to Zone 2, in a low intensity class, at 40% reduced Output wattage. Apparently lungs are important, and no, good feels is not an accurate read on physiologic reserves (body getting to training zone within seconds: “What reserves?”) .

My history is brittle. If I don’t emphasize daily-but-ridiculously-easy, my gotchas tend towards the catastrophic. Your history is hopefully more resilient, and we all can go farther than we think at need.

Still learning to go light on the mat so can go more often. For me, THE training Prime Directive will always be consistency.

.0 .kreiswirth .strong
**kasthma

Because while de-glugging, a man does not live by silicone rings and BJJ instructional videos alone.
Though had zero packing in the Amazon box, it arrived miraculously unscarred.

It was after a private lesson. Gathering my gear, Coach A came over, bumped fists, and over the background music mouthed *Open mat?* Grin and eyebrow wiggle, eh? It’d be my first time.

I missed class last week, but had been attending, no major malfunctions besides a shoulder bursitis, so no good reason not to.

“Sure, why not?”

This has a happy ending. No bits broke, and I got to several 3-minute rounds in, including with Coaches J and A. I got to practice key guard concepts (sit back, sweep, or submit, and fight for grips right away), spider guard and a scissor sweep, plus top mount, half mount, and an Americana.

No broken bits. More training, working fundamentals, and rolling with high-level folks. My lizard brain was basking in the proverbial sun.

Which is critical from a training consistency standpoint: whenever possible, reward the lizard brain for moving towards training, rather than making excuses not to.

https://drpbkim.com/coming-up-on-a-year-back-on-the-mat-went-to-my-first-open-mat-session-and-it-was-cool/

Choose wisely.
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Choose wisely.

Sugar used to be a luxury: a ripe fruit in season, the rare honeycomb. If you could find sweetness, you could make it into a treat for a special celebration. Sugar-rich foods were a very small part of the diet for our ancestors.

Today, nearly every processed item we drink (and eat) DAILY, has an added sweetener in it. And in liquid form like soda, fruit juice, energy drinks, sweetened coffee/tea, and now flavored alcohols, the resulting sugar followed by insulin spike is more than our bodies can handle.

Even if you’re not overweight, this continuous surging causes the body to develop a tolerance to the blood sugar lowering effect of insulin, and the blood sugar rises. The body then ramps up its insulin secretion to compensate, but excess insulin leads to obesity, fatty liver disease, pre-diabetes, and eventually diabetes.

A great way to reduce your sugar spikes is to cut back on sweetened drinks. These sugar bombs are loaded — about 10 teaspoons of sugar in a can of soda — and the liquid form enters your bloodstream all at once. It’s an excellent place to start when trying to figure out what to do to improve health outcomes.

Poké bowl on a base of salad greens and broccoli, 2 scoops of salmon, plus onions, wasabi, ginger, masago fish eggs, and a dusting of furikake and dried onions.
Low enough in purines and oxalate, if you’re watching that sort of thing. Pretty , and very unlikely to trigger an insulin surge. Eel sauce is usually , as is spicy mayo.
Just watch the wasabi.

I'm convinced it's no coincidence that the Hydra was a serpentine mythical beast reminiscent of a bowl of noodles. Cut off one head, 2 grow back. The Beast That Wouldn't Die.

Cutting back on starchy carbs is like that, for me as a doc as well as a patient. Saying goodbye to bowls of noodles, plates of pasta, brioche bread on the doggone breakfast sandwich it took me 10 minutes of staring at the menu to turn down. And that's before all the back-&-forth on white rice vs. brown rice vs. all the pseudograins like quinoa.

Even Hercules needed help to defeat the beast.

There are tons of reasons, including historical and anthropological, to rethink a grain-heavy diet (DM me if you're curious).

My point is, it's firmly entrenched in nearly every culture on Earth for a a reason. And if you decide you're going to consistently cut back, much less eliminate grain-based carbs and gluten, your best tools for personal behavior change may not be good enough.

How Do You Say Goodbye To Rice, Bread, Pasta, Tortillas, And Every Other Carb That Has Nourished Us? https://drpbkim.com/how-do-you-say-goodbye-to-rice-bread-pasta-tortillas-and-every-other-carb-that-has-nourished-us/

How Do You Say Goodbye To Rice, Bread, Pasta, Tortillas, And Every Other Carb That Has Nourished Us? No sudden moves. They react to motion.

Hard to really tell without a continuous blood glucose monitor. But on a bed of mostly broccoli wit just a small scoop of brown rice, it’s hard it beat a poke bowl for a nutrient dense, inflammation reducing, immune supporting meal.

Tape job over a finished plate of barbecue beef tongue. The X goes over the part to protect — preventing hyperextension on the palm side — and buddy taping uses the food middle finger to prevent rotation.
Tongue counts as an organ meat, the most nutrient dense (including collagen) animal protein out there.
Liver takes a little work to build up to; tongue not at all.

Note to self: second week doing no gi, don’t try to block his thighs with your 4th finger. Particularly the one hyperextended back on the day doing kali stick passes.
Better yet, don’t EVER try to block large churning extremities with skinny little digits.
🙄🤤.

Real boats rock, Frank Herbert said.

The Metaverse will never be the universe.

Although…like the end of Shang Chi: "Unless…"

Cut to an alternate reality, where personal growth is as painless as a well-executed Apple iOS update. It could happen.

BUT UNTIL THEN, wetware upgrades cause discomfort. Physiology requires that change be initiated by a force causing an adaptation. To pull a heavy bow, start pulling slightly heavier bows. To get better at BJJ, study and play more BJJ. To be more successful in business, hang out with successful entrepreneurs.

To grow, you must stretch.

And physiologically, mentally, and spiritually, hanging out beyond the edge of your comfort zone is uncomfortable.

That's kind of the definition of uncomfortable: outside your comfort zone.

Without some discomfort, there's no stimulus to change things up. It was a lightbulb moment for me, why with his BJJ background has training to momentary failure as a key part of his isometric programs. Discomfort is not sufficient for growth — you can get smoked, quit training, and stop growing — but it is NECESSARY.

And huge as it is, that's not the crux of the biscuit.

The kicker is that we are hardwired to avoid noxious stimuli.

And in today's increasingly digital world, it's getting ever easier to take the easy way out.

I've Been Beat Up Before https://drpbkim.com/ive-been-beat-up-before/

I've Been Beat Up Before Real boats rock

If you're going to recommend cutting back on beloved foods doing the Autoimmune Protocol, it pays to know why.

All grains. That means cereals, breads, ramen and pasta, rice, corn and corn chips, and pseudograins like quinoa. If you're Asian or Italian, got your disbelieving attention right away, unless you're already Paleo.

All beans and legumes. No peanut butter, black beans in your burritos (no burritos — tortillas are wheat or corn, right?), humus (garbanzo beans), or lentil soup. Sorry, slow carb folks.

All nuts and seeds, yikes. No almond milk or almond butter. Coffee rarely — Paleo folks are finally sweating.

All nightshade vegetables. Tomatoes, chilies, all peppers including bell and paprika, eggplants, and POTATOES. Sweet baby Jesus, no grains was bad enough, but TOMATOES? There went the chili, beef stew, and marinara anything.

The goodly Paleo and AIP folk will answer the MY GOD MAN, WHY?? with biochemistry, microbiology, and immunology. Agglutinins, saponins, and prolamins disrupt the gut barrier, allowing leaky gut and gut dysbiosis to occur. Leaky gut hamstrings the immune system, 80% of which is in the gut. An off-kilter immune system can mess with any organ system in the body, like the Joker caressing your DNA.

But since science influences Vulcans and everyone's a little Han Solo right now, I'd like to propose a different angle.

"Change your food choices, because that ONE THING fights THE WAR on multiple fronts simultaneously." What war? Any war that matters to the individual.

Premature death from chronic disease. Physical and mental suffering. Dependence on multiple and costly prescription drugs. Brain fog, future neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, and *tdifferentday.

Eating right is a cornerstone to being clear-thinking and unhobbled by disease, depression, anxiety, and ADD. And being less reliant on the kindness of strangers who would benefit from a dependent, easily misled populace. The Romans gave the mob bread and circuses, not salmon and circuses.

ANY goal that someone has, I can name a handful of health problems that will sideline them, including the ability to even think about goals. Proper nutrition is KEY to making those roadblocks go away.

Then you can recommend checking the science for details.

AIP Part 4: Starting To Cut https://drpbkim.com/aip-part-4-starting-to-cut/

AIP Part 4: Starting To Cut The big cuts: AIP food categories to avoid, and why

If you’re perfectly satisfied with where you’re at, there’s no need to change it up.

But every biohack, self improvement program, new diet and piece of workout gear is based on a single idea:

What you’ve been doing ISN’T working for you, and you possess a new understanding to get where you want to be.

It wasn’t clear before. That’s why you were doing what you were doing: if there had been an obviously better way, you’d already be doing it. You were happy with your results, or thought you were on track to get them.

But then you realized something.

Things weren’t so good after all, or you weren’t progressing. *You saw what was previously invisible: things kinda suck, and there’s a better way forward.*

You thought you were eating well, but you weren’t losing weight and your health was unchanged, so you learned about nutrition and adjusted your dietary focus.

You thought you were exercising enough to be “functional” or “tactical” but then you got injured doing basic workouts, learned about physiology and practical strength training, and retooled your activities.

Sometimes we get lucky and stumble into a better way. But usually, we’re stuck in holding patterns, wondering why we’re having the same arguments or not going anywhere.

Until we get some insight. Why what we’re doing doesn’t work. What’s really going on under the surface. And knowing that, how to move ahead.

This is how human progress works: don’t understand = repeat old patterns; underlying mechanism gets revealed = clearer path forward. I’m talking about functional medicine and nutritional foci like Paleo and the AIP, and how we know much more about the immune system, leaky gut, and the gut-brain axis. And how we can adjust malfunctions using nutrition and lifestyle modifications, to significantly complement conventional treatments.

One other thing: think you’re onto the Secret Of The Universe? Test it. History is full of grand ideas that hurt people, cost too damn much, or caused surprisingly negative outcomes. Real insight isn’t about what SOUNDS good and makes your nostrils flare. It’s about what WORKS when you’re cold, wet, and lonely because it really works.

I’m skipping the blue filter on these pics, because colors that POP are kinda the point — colorful edible real foods correlate to high micronutrient value — plus a shot of organ meats would be a rectangular slab from .

There’s a crap ton of crap to excise from your diet, if you want to sidestep chronic illnesses. But deprivation is a hard sell, and there’s important stuff you can eat MORE of.

So start with that.

Stuff from the water world. The best food source of omega-3s and immune supporting minerals often depleted from their land-based cousins.

Organ meats presented with head bowed. Traditionally reserved for the great hunter or honored royalty, the most concentrated and bioavailable form of B and fat-soluble vitamins, plus collagen. Tongue from Japanese restaurants like Gyutan Tsukasa counts!

And the rainbow. Vitamins and cofactors galore.

Link to post in bio.

If you want to chase health, there are 10,000 paths you can take. Or if you’re busy as frak, you can focus on the high percentage targets.

Nutritionally, that’s cutting back on the stuff we food hoover in that’s silently messing with our immune systems.

Sweets and sweeteners. Refined “vegetable” oils. And grains.

All healthy diets — Paleo, AIP, Whole 30, Pegan, Keto, even Carnivore — call foul on these.

Lots of goodies you can and should eat, of course.

Next time.

I see the faces of family members, and their conditions: stroke, kidney disease, cancer, dementia. Being from Korea and one generation away from a civil war backed by world powers, they had a fatalistic view of illness: “You grow old, you get sick, you die.”

For different reasons, that’s pretty much our attitude in America.

No one *wants* disease for Christmas, but if Uncle Harry has a stroke, gets ulcerative colitis, or starts repeating himself at 60, no one is really *surprised*.

Bodies fall apart, and accepting the inevitable has become badass.

But we don’t accept that it’s OK for cars *to just burst into flames* in low speed collisions, or for son-in-laws *to just naturally* manhandle our daughters once in a while.

It’s time to put accepting disease and premature death in the category of Things Not To Put Up With Any More.

Most everyone you love is going to be hit by chronic diseases, which are mostly autoimmune based. Clogged arteries, cancers, Alzheimer’s or brain dysfunction, even succumbing to infections (_cough_: COVID) all involve a misbehaving immune system.

The immune system heals your injuries, combats infections and cancers, and keeps a stink eye out for anything that isn’t *you*. It’s your most trusted bodyguard, babysitter, personal assistant, financial advisor and confidante all rolled into one.

And one day it no longer likes you, AT ALL. It has access to every cell in your body, every organ, and every hormonal system. And it starts messing with you, letting other things mess with you, or both.

THE GUT IS THE GATEWAY TO THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: 75% of the immune system lives here. What foods we stuff into our pie holes can definitely help or harm its function.

You don’t have to go gently into a long dark night. You can if you want — most people do — but you don’t have to be grateful for a ladle full of decrepitude with a side order of suffering.

Start by cleaning up your diet.

People have been doing Paleo for about a decade, for decent but macroscopic reasons. Good for leaning out, better energy and focus, more like how our ancestors ate, less of the modern processed shizz.

Our understanding of the science has gone so far beyond this level, it's...firehose of data time.

Authorities like thepaleomom can cite cellular biochemistry pathways and inflammatory chemicals, like interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha, affected by our inclusion of grains or beans in our diets.

Why eat this and not that? Out come the whiteboards, squeaky markers, and cascades of formulas and linking arrows. A theoretical physicist would be impressed, how much time do you have? try to keep up.

It's enough to choke a horse, and that's a good thing.

Eating AIP, or Keto, or Paleo, is no longer just about what makes you look more shapely, or what the cool influencers are doing.

It's about everything happening at the cellular and molecular levels — the stuff you cannot feel or detect but that can make, break, or kill you. And how eating certain ways can pump the brakes on the crazy clown car that is inflammation in our bodies, starting with leaky gut, that is the root cause of nearly all modern chronic diseases.

High BP, obesity, diabetes or pre-diabetes, eczema/asthma/allergies...fatty liver, cancer, neurologic disorders? The odds are excellent that you or someone you know has one or more of these.

I'm not saying it's ALL about the diet. But it's pretty much all about the diet.

Why Do The AIP, Or Any Healthy Diet? https://drpbkim.com/why-do-the-aip-or-any-healthy-diet/

Why Do The AIP, Or Any Healthy Diet? There's enough hard science behind the benefits of AIP and similar diets to choke a horse. Here's the good parts version.

My pride and joys.
belated

Surprised tonight 😬. 2nd month, no broken bits…and I hope to see more of these tape strips.

This week marks the 1 month anniversary of returning to the mat without breaking off any bits (shhh).

Since previous restarts led to ligament and muscle tears near the 2 week mark, doing a cautious happy dance. Restarting BJJ classes in my 6th decade is something I've been building up to for the past 6-12 months.

The past month has been the litmus test — the previous months of specific prehab appear to have worked (again, shhh).

Each class was roughly equivalent in energy output to a week's worth of prehab work, so 2 classes plus a private lesson each week took the place of all the previous exercise sessions. Still have training wheels on, but every class without a sproing! goes in the win column.

Tiny training group. Household fully vaccinated. Math about as good as it will get.

Dr. Kim’s Weekend/Early Week Update: Back From Hiatus, Back On The Mat, Learning The AIP https://drpbkim.com/dr-kims-weekend-early-week-update-back-from-hiatus-back-on-the-mat-learning-the-aip/

One of my first posts about the basics of getting back to high intensity training in your 5th+ decade.

Because "just go slow for a while" didn't prevent this 50-something sports med trained physician from spraining an MCL and tearing a calf muscle. The risks are GREATER if you think you know what you're doing and have a sports background: your brain and CNS remember how to go 110%, but the rest of you is somewhere around 40% if you haven't kept rigorously training. One moment of inattention when your brain goes SQUIRREL! you lunge, and POP goes the connective tissue.

Give yourself months to ramp up, avoid uncontrolled movements, train comprehensively (not kettlebells only, sorry Pavel), build recovery days, and make deposits in the consistent training bank.

6 Ways To Restart Exercising Without Regretting It https://drpbkim.com/6-ways-to-restart-exercising-without-regretting-it/

6 Ways To Restart Exercising Without Regretting It 11/20/20 original newsletter post date; the first essentials of getting active without breaking off bits.

9:04 PM. Not sweat: spilled mat cleaning disinfectant. But spilled by me.
#

There are 2 great articles that I want to share: a "dang, I wish I'd written that" update on COVID booster shots complete with an inline reminder of the medical science, and a "damn, I'm glad I didn't have to write that but I can relate" op-ed by an infectious disease specialist, working full-time in a COVID ICU.

For the majorly immunocompromised, booster jabs are here; and starting next month with those at the highest risk, boosters will start becoming available more widely.

The op-ed is subtitled "As a doctor in a COVID unit, I'm running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. Get the shot." She's done, not with caring or caring for, but with arguing.

Arguing only works when the other side can theoretically be convinced.

Hardliners won't concede any debate, and Rona Delta doesn't care.

The time for arguing is done. Sharing, caring, showing, and taking care of business — every day, all the way. But we are way past the "oh, snap/I'm right/you're wrong" phase of things.

COVID Update, 8/22/21 https://drpbkim.com/covid-update-8-22-21/

COVID Update, 8/22/21 Links to 2 great articles: a hot update on Covid vaccine boosters, and an op-ed by a doctor who's done but not really. And why it's time.

There's a concept you may recognize, if you're a science fiction geek: the Amtal Rule, from Frank Herbert's Dune. Pressure test something until it fails, to assess its worth.

If you have a system of multiple components and the whole thing repeatedly breaks down because of one part, that's a clue.

When I was taking a self-defense course and had to be held up and told, "Breathe bro, you can keep going but slow down," that told me that my intense endurance training had been lacking. When I was going all-out in grappling and my thumb ligaments tore, that told me that my connective tissue resilience needed work.

I ran across a YouTube video last night by , on not getting injured doing BJJ. He advises enjoying the journey and being selective with your training partners, but regular strength work and daily jiu-jitsu practice have served him well. Ditto for Paul Sharp ()...who insists he's not superhuman. but rather that he's consistent and persistent.

Doing everything daily seemed like a crazy recipe for more sidelining injuries. Now I'm not so sure.

You can do it all too hard too soon and crash, raising my hand here. But you can also work on just the little corners that you THINK are the problem...and crash and burn when something unexpected gives out (raising my hand again).

To cover all the bases, all the parts that can give out when it's show time — toes, fingers, hammies, knees, cardio, elbows, back, and more — you have to train the entire system BY DOING THE ACTUAL ACTIVITY.

In BJJ that's grappling on the mat. In archery, it's slinging arrows downrange with a real bow. Doing the activity calls upon all the necessary parts.

Because of my own injury history, I've not been a fan of "just get back into things but, um, take it slow." I thought I was taking it slow, but I wasn't and things tore.

There is a time for specialized, patient rehab and prehab. If you KNOW things need fixing, you fix them, especially if you can't start at a basic level of your game without the remedial work. You'll always identify things that need work, and devote special attention as needed.

But the stuff you don't know can go south? When you think you've got The 7 Critical Things nailed down but there are actually 116 moving parts? The only way to keep all the connected parts challenged is to do the activity. Slowly and progressively, absolutely. But the actual activity, for sure.

How To Stop Breaking Off Little Bits https://drpbkim.com/how-to-stop-breaking-off-little-bits/

How To Stop Breaking Off Little Bits "Just take it slow to resume BJJ" they said. Bah, I said, ya gotta seriously prehab. But they had a point.

Don't bring the proverbial knife to a gunfight: Delta changes everything, even if you've been vaccinated. 1000x and R0=8 geeky gibberish to you? Look up "Cape Cod Delta." And "chicken pox Delta."

Buffing up your immune system is great, but you can still be catchy. And if "plugging your vulnerabilities" means anything to you, Delta is pressure testing us all like nuts.

This Week’s CDC Update On Masks, Vaccines, and Delta (or “I Told You So”) https://drpbkim.com/this-weeks-cdc-update-on-masks-vaccines-and-delta-or-i-told-you-so/

This Week’s CDC Update On Masks, Vaccines, and Delta (or “I Told You So”) Don't bring the proverbial knife to a gunfight: Delta changes everything, even if you've been vaccinated.

I recently said Don't Stop Training, Ever. But I've cut back on my jiu-jitsu training, with what I know about the Delta variant.

At least until all members of my immediate family have been vaccinated for Covid.

Back To Masking, And Training Cautions I just said Don't Stop Training, Ever. But I've cut back on my jiu-jitsu training, with what I know about the Delta variant. At least until all members of my immediate family have been vaccinated for Covid.