AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

90 lbs in a year is nothing to be bummed about. You’re doing great Andy, I’m proud of ya!

You’re doing the marathoniest of all marathons, so hang in there. You’ve done amazingly well so far.

Not sure your angle on the early rising comment. But I’ve found that when I’m forced to get up fairly early—versus sleeping as long as I can—I have more of an edge and often am more alert.

Way to go! That’s awesome

Thanks, guys!

Wow what a big loss in weight great job seems like everything will continue to follow a positive trend for you

Great job!

90 lbs is the weight of a newborn calf and 100 lbs is a two month old horse (ketchup)

Seven days without taking the blood pressure med.

After the doc put me on the med last spring I started taking my blood pressure several times a day. I have a cuff on my desk and another by my bed; if I’m near either within 15 minutes of the top of the hour, I’ll slap the cuff on and write the numbers down. So, anywhere around five to ten times a day. Then I average the readings and put the daily average in the speadsheet.

Cutting to the chase, no real change from what it was reading after the Lisinopril refill. The seven-day average was 119 vs. 120 on the refill vs. 110 from the previous refill.

My blood pressure might vary 20 points during the day; neither my GP nor the cardiologist thought that was a problem. There are occasional spikes for no particular reason I can figure; those spikes are a bit higher on the new refill and bare-naked, up into the 135-ish range every now and then, but usually only once or twice a day, so they don’t bring the average up much.

I’m still feeling more alert and motivated after getting off the Lisinopril. I’m also sleeping better. I hadn’t really made the connection before, but after I started taking Lisinopril I would sleep a couple of hours at a time, wake up, read for a while, go back to sleep… I got plenty of sleep, but not all at once. I was also having to wake up and pee three or four times a night. Now I’m sleeping solid, other than getting up to pee once per night.

I’m going to continue the experiment for another week.

I’ve been using the heating pad when pumping for three weeks now. I’m still not doing much as far as night or morning wood, but EQ is mostly back.

I stopped L-arginine and celery seed extract yesterday since I have a TRT lab coming up next week, The two supplements have proven modestly effective for wood and EQ, so I’m expecting the improvement to flatten or drop slightly.

Coming out of the hot tube leaves my shaft rock hard at 110% if I’m using a cock ring while pumping, or stretchy and flexible if not. I’ve been either edging or jelquing to take advantage of that, as appropriate. I don’t get those responses at room temperature.

The ring is one of the wide, hard rubber ones; the narrower O-rings tend to pinch when pumping. It fits loosely when completely flaccid, snug if full, and tight when erect. Coming out of the hot tube, my shaft feels and looks pretty much like it does during a clamping session. I haven’t had any damage that I can tell, but I’ve been limiting the edging to 10 minutes, just in case. That’s on top of the 30-minute timer cycle on the electric pump, so it’s probably OK indefinitely, but I don’t have unlimited time to lay around playing with my dick.

Mem had mentioned that sunlight would help make vitamin D. Getting more sun exposure isn’t really practical, so I put that in the “interesting, but not useful” file.

I’m taking 6000 IU/day of vitamin D supplements, spread across four doses. That brought me up from “seriously deficient” to “just barely in the acceptable range.” I don’t think uptake on D supplements is all that good, and I haven’t found any papers on dose vs. improvements in D level, which makes me suspect there’s an upper limit on how much they can help.

The other day I followed up on Mem’s comment some more. I found a paper on what wavelength is most effective for vitamin D production. It’s right in the middle of the UVB range. UVA is just below visible light, used for things like drying fingernail polish and lighting velvet Elvis paintings. UVC is further up in the ultraviolet, and is used for disinfecting things. UVB is, of course, smack in the middle, but there’s not a lot of UVB lighting out there. I found some UVB LEDs of the proper wavelength, but they were $40 *each*. I found some curly-flourescent UVB light bulbs, and then odd-length straight flourescents.

Further reading showed that most of them, even if rated as “UVB”, only put out 3% to 7% UBV; the rest is UVA. However, the paper that showed D production by wavelength showed that though much less efficient, UVA still makes a bit, and the since ~95% of the lamp output is UVA, there’s plenty of it.

I didn’t get a whole lot more from the medical searches, but then I hit a bonanza on herpetology sites. The snake, lizard, turtle, and spider guys are heavy into UVB, which their pets need. It’s a larger market than medical, and some of those guys are engineer types who test things with UV meters and kill-a-watts.

I finally ordered a pair of 34” UVB lamps and some UV goggles. The D home test kits are $50 each.

“What could possibly go wrong?”

I’ll be interested in your results.

I still have one of the D test kits. The plan is to get another reading before starting the UVB light to get a new baseline, then maybe buy another test kit in three months to see if anything has changed. Once I have some numbers I’ll post them.

Mostly I’m concerned about exposure time. There are guidelines for UVA and UVB exposure in the medical literature, but they’re for “natural sunlight.” The UV lamp makers don’t like to give out actual numbers for their products, so I have no idea how much UV they’re putting out. I’m planning to start at one minute per day, increasing by one minute each day until I feel like I might be getting sunburned, then back off a bit, unless I get a better idea in the meantime.

If I had any wall surface that wasn’t covered with bookshelves, I’d buy a velvet Elvis painting to take advantage of all the wasted UVA light.

From 10/09:

12/10/2022: 7-3/4”

The shaft skin is still too tight to get a BPEL reading. I finally put the stretches on my exercise checksheet to make sure I do them. Otherwise, “just missed a day” translates into “probably last did them three weeks ago.”

A 1/4 inch increase in two months, excellent!

LOL. I’ve definitely done that type of PE once or twice.

Great gain, Andy! There’s plenty more coming!

-Stay safe