Fasciopathy, Viscoelasticity Of Connective Tissues, The Aortically-Challenged Endurance Athlete, And FitOldDog Banned By SlowTwitch

This didn’t strike me as an extremely elastic response by the SlowTwitch computer or person, which I consider to be bad manners. I apologize for any unintended infractions, whatever they were (the road to hell is paved with good intentions), but thanks for getting my mind wandering – it may change my diet for the even better.

Hi folks, welcome to my rambling thoughts on life, and it’s improvement by the efforts of oneself!!

WARNING: this post contains food for thought, not some potted wisdom statement, so if you don’t want to think about it move on and enjoy this lovely day, but try to stay flexible in the process.

If you want to understand viscoelasticity, a property that is essential for your continued existence, just go study your car suspension – classic example.

This really is what went on in my brain over a period of a minute or so after being summarily banned in mid-conversations by SlowTwitch – guess I’m weird (happy weird):

I was recently banned by a great triathlon forum at the SlowTwitch site (which was disappointing, as I was having fun), with no warning or explanation. This caused my mind to drift along the following train of thought – suspension? The suspension system of my car. The role of viscoelasticity (energy storage and loss systems or moduli in Biological fluids), which took my mind on a trip to consideration of the underlying cause of my life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA – second repair surgery pending). Which component of my aortic wall had failed, I wondered?

I couldn’t find a decent legend for this figure on WikiPedia-circulation, but I assume the collagen outer layer of this artery (not as big as but the same idea as the aorta for this demo) is stained blue and the internal and external elastic laminae are red. Think about the strain on the collagen layer if the elastic layers fail – gradual stretching, destruction, and pop! Dead! Now translate that to your car suspension, but it is usually the reverse as the shocks generally fail first. You have to think about the dynamics.

I concluded based on a brief gedankenexperiment (brain fart) that it must be the elastic laminae, failing to store and return the forces induced by those systolic pressure waves, thus straining the energy dissipating collagen-based outer back up layers, which took my mind to a cure, and that led to food, and thoughts of life-saving supplements, such as vitamin-C or some odd amino acid. Then I thought, I have a fasciopathy,  which is expressed as AAA, dyslipidemia (fixed by exercise and diet), diverticulitis, and Raynaud’s syndrome. I wondered if I’d invented a new word, but no, it’s been around for a while.

Then I wondered:

Which foods should I eat to slow the progression of my aortic aneurysm and other aspects of my fasciopathic state, so I can continue to compete in Ironman races until I’m 100 years old?

It also contemplated the peremptory banning of FitOldDog on SlowTwitch, and I decided that (a) I had probably broken some cardinal rule, as I never read the fine print closely enough; for instance I did use F**k in a title due an emotional response to an undeserved rebuke (maybe it was a joke), but you know how the limbic system/reptilian brain overreacts with emotion, and (b) that the person or computer who banned me without warning, explanation, or road to recourse, is extremely inelastic. If you want to see something really viscoelastic, look at this very brief clip from our old (yes, Rory, old) mucus movie, showing mucus flowing across a frog palate – still takes my breath away, thirty years later.

Happy trails!

-k @FitOldDog