8 K’an 2 Sak’

Another day, another brush with death. The latest SVT event occurred on Saturday at the gym. Five minutes into the cardio workout, atrial fibrillation commenced. The duration was four hours, long after the quick return to the “old folks home” in Waikiki. The laundry chores had to performed under the duress of constant heart palpitations. The peak heart rate was 143bpm, and the duration was four hours. A new twist came in form of a brief moment when the heart rate fell to 43bpm.

Oddly, the Watch Series 9 recorded sleep the night before at over seven hours, the first ever in a long time. If that is the case, then sleep deprivation is not the cause. Could the workouts at the gym be just too much for the 70-year-old codger?

There are very few age peers who workout at the gym, whereas most of the other “garden variety” senior citizens are really not doing much of anything. The personal workout has essentially been the same since the minor downgrade about 15 years ago or so. Thus, the weight workouts have multiple sets and high maximum weights. The cardio workout was downgraded to only 30 minutes, but still strenuous. The other age peers are doing much lighter maximum weights, and cardio is restricted to walking on the treadmill or using the recumbent bicycles. The old codger is the only one who is doing workouts that even many younger gym members cannot (or will not) perform. That’s the reason why the old codger doesn’t look like his age peers.

Searching the Net for information about workouts for senior citizens 70 years of age and up reveals that the age peers are following the correct workout protocol. Thus, the time has come to begin tapering (i.e., “throw in the towel”) the current workouts. Quite disappointing, actually. The initial plan was to maintain the regimen for at least another four years. The body obviously has other plans.

On a side notes, a bottle of generic melatonin tablets was reluctantly procured at Target®. The trial run has not yet been scheduled. There are some reported side effects like bizarre dreams resulting from melatonin. Bizarre dreams are already occurring. Will they become even more bizarre?

The “night shift” function on the iPhone 16 Pro has been re-enabled to shift the display toward the red spectrum after 9pm. The “warmer” display setting supposedly reduces blue light exposure and improve sleep quality. The feature was previously disabled because studies indicated that sleep quality didn’t improve much when enabled. Well, at this point in time, every little bit helps.