Welcome to my boring life...

Today was a recovery day.

I looked at the calendar yesterday and saw that I had not done any dead-lifts for six days. Ooops!

This is the second week at 180 pounds. I will do another 40 reps tomorrow and then add another ten pounds. Since I weigh 193 pounds I am getting pretty close to my body weight. Being a fan of round-numbers, I hope to get to 200 pounds and then maintain that level.

I changed out a couple of wall-switches for overhead lights. It was a double switch and one of the lights activated when the door next to it was shut. I eliminated the power-outlet that shared the box and went with two, separate flip-switches.

Mrs ERJ and I went for a walk. I was reminded why I don't like walking on public roads when it was windy. I cannot hear traffic sneaking up behind me. I become paranoid and keep looking around.

The "Buzz" in Mrs ERJ's circle of friends is osteoporosis. Talk about rabbit holes!

Obesity seems to be a strong protective factor although in terms of overall mortality it is a poor choice. Osteoporosis is rarely fatal by itself but it does impact quality-of-life.

Some research suggests that the bones of men decrease in mineral content at the same rate as women's but our bones are much more massive to start with.

101 L-3 (third Lumbar) vertebrate removed from cadavers. Open circles are women. Solid circles are men. Age along the bottom. Force to crush the vertebrate along the vertical axis.   Source

Looking at actual force required to crush a vertebrate one sees an amazing range. Looking at the data at 40, the peak man's L-3 sustained 13kN (2900 pounds-force) and the lowest man's L-3 sustained 5kN. The range for women was not quite as striking. The peak woman's L-3 was 10kN while the lowest was half-that at 5kN.

In the cohort between 60-and-100, there are multiple data-points in the range of 2kN or 20% of the average at age 20 although there is still a factor-of-two difference between the highest and lowest.

Genetics? Nutrition? Weight-bearing exercise? Were they physically larger? What are the differences that led to the differences between the red-circled data-points and the yellow-highlighted ones?

Unfortunately, the anecdotal data regarding levels of physical activity are close to worthless. Just look at how I "lost" six days in my dead-lift program because I was not looking at my calendar. People have very little awareness of how much work they do or do-not-do. It would be interesting to see how urban mail-carriers score for bone-density vs the general population, especially the ones over 50. I cannot think of any other large groups of people who are very active physically (and carrying weight) and it is documented rather than anecdotal.