Sunday 10 July 2005

Pic of the day: Why couldn't it be this kind of heart-beat instead? ^^ (Screenshot from the anime Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~.)

Sunday heart speed

I took a walk to the shop and bought groceries. I was all out of fresh food. Yesterday the heat had been too searing for me to walk an hour along a tarmac road. It wasn't too bad in the shadow, but there was no option to walk that way in shadow. Today there was, because clouds almost completely obscured the sun; only faint shadows were cast by the atomic orb in the sky, and sometimes not even that.

I drank a couple glasses of water before I went, and ate a teaspoon of honey. I hadn't eaten all that much yesterday either so I wanted to have some energy in my blood. After the half hour's walk to the shop, I bought my groceries as well as a small ice cream and a small box of chocolate milk, both of which I devoured on my way home.

Despite (or perhaps because of) this, when I was just a couple hundred meters from home, my heart rate shot up to the 140es while walking on flat terrain. (I know this because I always wear my pulse watch on these trips. Also I was feeling strange, kinda faintly dizzy.) This pulse remained even when standing perfectly still. When I sat down, it fell back to normal after-exercise levels. But when I stood up, it quickly climbed again. I repeated this for a while. After 10-15 minutes I reverted to a normal pulse, and I went home. It was uphill most of that way, and after I came home the higher pulse was again in effect for a while.

***

Something similar happened a couple weeks ago, also on a Sunday. After walking for 50 minutes, my heart rate suddenly shot up while on flat ground. That time, it remained in the 130es even when sitting down, which was a lot more creepy. It did not max out, though, as it did during the episode I called my doctor about. The other Sunday I had not eaten during the trip, so that was not the cause. Actually I'm not sure if that would be a good or a bad thing. As long as the meal is light, the body should not need to divert much resources to digestion. But it may also not be digested quickly enough to provide sugar for the body. I have tried repeatedly to learn how fast water and sugar are absorbed by the body, but nobody will tell me. I mean, is it 5 minutes of 5 hours? An experiment on rats mentioned 20 minutes to completely absorb a load of sugar, but then again rats live in a much faster lane than us. With millions of diabetics in the world, you'd think that the absorption rate of various carbs would be taught in grade school. Perhaps it is, now, but on the Net I have failed to find it.

Of course, carbs or even water may have nothing to do with this. Something has, though. It is not that a pulse of 140 or even 150 is life- threatening for a few minutes or even hours, at my age. (It will be if I reach 80.) It is more the kind of unease you feel when you've left your computer on while doing something else, and suddenly there is the loud whirring of the hard disk and blinking of various lamps. You go like "what is possessing my PC", which is creepy enough as you think of virus, back doors and trojans. But "what is possessing my body" is definitely creepier, all other things being equal. It is not so much the symptom itself as not knowing the reason.

And why on Sundays? I really doubt there is a religious message in this, as I haven't accepted Mithra as my personal savior. And it would take a lot more than this, or a sign in the sky, for me to do that.