The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Most-efficient Exercise for Strength, Longevity, Blood-Pressure, and Balance

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Mount Shasta, November 1, 2025. When it comes to living long, it comes down to eating actual food (usually single ingredients), avoiding poison (unclean air and water and household “cleaners,” additives, fast carbs), and staying “active.” But not all “activities” are equal. For example:

  • Muscle strength seems to be the best predictor for long life
  • The body-systems needing maintenance are strength, balance, blood-pressure, and heart health

So I fired up the Perplexity AI research tool, and with some questions, learned a lot, real quick, about which *TYPES* of exercise provide this benefit or that benefit. Now as you might expect, there’s certainly some overlap, but here’s a simplified summary of what I learned:

  1. The research shows Resistance Bands most efficient to build strength *and* avoid injuries
  2. The research shows whole-body isometric (holding still) exercises help blood-pressure the most
  3. The research shows aerobic (walk, run, bike) is next best for blood-pressure
  4. The research shows balance best aided by specific balance exercises (i.e., practicing balance)

I’ve been using heavy-duty resistance bands–brand name is “X3 Bands”–for several years, and walking up the hill behind my house. Recently I’ve added some “taichi” exercises to improve my balance, and now I’m going to add just a couple of these isometrics. That should have pretty much the whole thing covered.

And if your work is largely sedentary like mine is, these are *excellent* things to do, to take a break by standing up and moving around. None require going to the gym; all are very quick. (They work as well done quickly as do some things that take a long time, and there’s no time-burden of going to a gym, where the machines there would provide LESS benefit than whole-body exercises at home.)

Please note that NONE of these are bogus tiny-weights, “chair” workouts, calisthenics, mickey-mouse gym-style bicycles or treadmills, or the make-believe exercises promoted in popular magazines. These are the real thing. You *will* start off kind of easy, but they’ll actually take you to becoming strong. The real thing.

You can download a copy of the research studies and the conclusions, with all details and references, using the button further down. Hope you find this useful!

Your Time-Efficient Routine

Done in and around the home, increases strength, longevity, blood-pressure, cardiovascular health, and balance. Takes little time. Only 9 simple exercises. 🙂

Strength Training (Whole Body) …
  • Resistance Band Squats – Lower-body strength, improves mobility and metabolic health.
  • Resistance Band Chest Press – Chest and arm strength, increases longevity.
  • Resistance Band Rows – Upper back strength, improves posture.
  • Resistance Band Overhead Press – Shoulder and upper body strength, enhance functional movement.
Isometric (Core and BP) …
  • Plank Hold – Core strengthening, spinal stability, reduces resting blood pressure.
  • Wall Sit – Lower body endurance exercise, reduces blood pressure.
Aerobic (Longevity & Cardiovascular Health) …
  • Brisk Walking or Light Jogging – supports heart health, metabolic function, and longevity.
    .. OR ..
  • Cycling (Outdoors) – Low-impact, promotes balance, endurance, and health.
Balance (Fall Prevention and Stability) …
  • Single-Leg Stand – Improves balance, proprioception, and leg strength.
  • Heel-to-Toe Walk – Improves balance and coordination, fall-risk reduction.

Want to live longer? Want to be able to get around better? Have more strength? Sleep better? Feel better? Get the full details below, and give it a shot. It’s not difficult. The only key is being regular about it. I’ve done the research to uncover the scientific facts about what works best, and how to implement quick and easy. I’m happy to share. Click to download. You’re welcome! 🙂

CLICK to download the Caffeine- Nicotine, and Creatine ReportCLICK BUTTON to download a concise research pdf
detailing how to get the best BANG for the BUCK,
the MOST RESULTS for LEAST TIME & MONEY:
“Quick Exercise for Strength, Longevity,
Blood-Pressure, & Balance”

Creatine – for Fixin’ Up Your Brain!

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October 29, 2025, Mount Shasta, CA. When your brain runs low on energy, how can you charge it up again?

Well, turns out there is something you can do. Well-tested, non-toxic, inexpensive, and easy. This was explained by nutrition researchers presenting at the 2025 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo. They say there’s one nutrient many of us could use: creatine.

[… this is an extract from MSN news article, 10/28/2025:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/what-happens-to-your-brain-when-you-take-creatine/ar-AA1PnGXS …]

Quick Summary

  • Creatine fuels your brain, helping it recover from stress and stay sharp under pressure.
  • It may boost mood, memory and focus, especially when you’re tired or sleep deprived.
  • Experts suggest 10 to 20 grams daily for brain energy—check with a provider before starting.
Creatine isn’t a steroid or drug, and it won’t make you gain weight, says Diana Nguyen M.S., RDN, LDN, CSSD, CSCS. It’s a nutrient and energy source that is naturally produced in our bodies, found in certain foods and available as a supplement. While it gained notoriety for helping athletes build muscle and strength, emerging research shows creatine may also help the brain. “It helps provide the brain the fuel that it needs to work in its most functional way,” says Nguyen.

Co-presenter Eric S. Rawson, Ph.D., FACSM, CSCS, adds, “We now have evidence that you can ingest creatine and increase the amount of creatine in your brain—just like you can with muscles—and it can provide more energy to your brain, especially during times when you need more energy.”

For decades now, we’ve mostly heard about creatine from muscle-building magazines, because bodybuilders take it to help build bigger muscles. But turns out, the way it works is super-effective for powering up your brain.

“Creatine helps to support the brain when the brain is under stress,” says Nguyen. “It helps to maintain that brain energy supply when the demand is elevated.”

For example, when a person experiences a traumatic brain injury, physicians have long known that brain-creatine levels often decrease, and that means that replacing it through food and supplementation becomes important. And research shows supplementing with creatine can support recovery after injury, and it may even have protective effects if taken before an injury occurs. In studies of people with such injuries, creatine supplementation reduced hospital duration, improved overall recovery, and reduced symptoms like headaches, dizziness and fatigue.

You Don’t Need a Head Trauma to Benefit

  • By providing better energy, it appears to help with depression
  • Helps your brain to function, even when tired or sleep-deprived
  • Appears to help memory and recall for older folks

What Dosage is Recommended?

There’s no official guideline, but we know that a somewhat higher dosage is required to cross the blood-brain barrier so as to get in there and get to work. As little as 10mg a day *may* help, but more likely the best results will come from 20-30mg each day. I take this each day, split into two doses. It’s about 1.5 to 2 level teaspoons if you bought creatine monohydrate. (I get this on Amazon, from the Now supplement line. It’s tasteless, and I add my first dose to the morning coffee, and the second to a hot herbal/green-tea/cacao drink in the afternoon.)

SUMMARY: Creatine is a nutrient that offers more than just building muscle—it can provide significant benefits for the brain. Creatine may help the brain recover from traumatic brain injury, reduce risk of depression, support brain function even when sleep deprived and may improve memory. There’s no official dosage for brain benefits, experts and studies indicate something between 10 to 30 grams per day often works.

PS: And be sure to check out my triple-threat article, a surprising, longevity boost from three ingredients (caffeine, nicotine, & carnitine). Note that this article includes a link so you can download my research document showing what I uncovered about studies of these three.)

 

How to Research to Replace Anti-Depressants (and more!)

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Antidepressants often have “side-effects.” (This is BigPharma-talk for “poisoning.)

But the side-effect/poisoning/bullcrap varies hugely with the different pills. Details …

https://theconversation.com/antidepressants-physical-side-effects-vary-depending-on-the-drug-type-new-research-268010

How to FREE YOURSELF from BigPharma Poisoning

Realize that there are several things that often work as well, or better, than BigPharma pills. These include:

  • simple, daily doses of exercise; and
  • fresh, single-ingredient, non-poisoned foods; and
  • a number of inexpensive supplements

Of course, you gotta *learn* about these. Don’t just read adverts, because those are not to be trusted and will send you all over the place.

How to CREATE your Personal, Accurate RESEARCH to Find What’s True …

Here’s a simple way to find out, from actual studies, what’s true: Get a copy of Perplexity, an AI-research panel, and it comes with Comet, a clean and fast browser that’s very smart about finding things, because it uses Perplexity.

You can get it here: https://www.perplexity.ai/

Then ask it questions like, for example: What are the health benefits of exercise. (Get a list, then look at the list for the benefits most of interest to you.) Then ask “What kinds of exercise most provide [plug in benefits here]? Then, keep asking more-detailed questions from its answers until you now know exactly what kind of exercise, how long, how often, and what it will get you. This works amazingly well, you stop being a farm-animal belonging to BigPharma, and you can fix your problem, inexpensively. Try it and you’ll like it. 🙂

Then, do the same thing to find out what’s true about single-ingredient, non-poisoned foods for your body. Then do the same thing to find out what’s true about herbs and supplements. You can ask questions about what’s best for a male/female of your age and your weight. You can find out optimum dosages. You can find out which supplements on Amazon give the best result for the least money. You begin to be the boss of you. Finally. 🙂

Lastly, you can create a folder on your desktop. It might have sub-folders for exercise, food, and supplements.) And the Perplexity research tool will allow you to save each “thread” as a pdf, so you begin to have your very own, personalized, research on hand. Neatoid, Lloyd! 🙂

Can You Have a Completely Original Thought?

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August 11, 2024, Facebook profile of Richard Stillwagon …

Here is a challenging question:
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Can you have a completely original thought or idea?

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Or does your upbringing, culture, education, and world experience shape those thoughts and ideas?
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I have been watching and interacting with conversations about education, politics, religion, indoctrination in general, science, and philosophy.
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All of these conversations are skewed by the bias of each person’s education and life experience. This would seem obvious. But, it is tragically not apparent to those speaking! They believe their opinions to be universal truths. They don’t see that the opinions they have come from the collective consciousness of the environment they keep themselves in, and rarely move from that stance when presented new information.
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It takes an intelligent and critical thinking mind to be self-aware of it’s own biases. To understand that you favor one side or another of a topic and be capable of evaluating that bias and adjusting it based on new information is an incredibly rare ability.
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Humans are creatures of habit.

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That is a cliche because it is true. We resist change even though we know and experience the fact that it is constantly happening.
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Why then do we resist the possibility that new information could alter the conditions of a controversial subject? The answers are: fear, pride, prejudice and ego. We fear change. We take pride in what we think we know. We are prejudiced toward what we prefer and against that which we don’t understand or find distasteful. Finally our ego is so fragile, that we can’t stand to be seen as fallible. I experience these things myself, but I try to be aware of them and try to adjust when when compelling information is presented.
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To know that everything we currently believe has been part of an incomplete education since birth can be a freeing understanding. Knowing that everything we have learned could be outdated,incorrect, incomplete, only a portion of the whole, the beginning of a greater understanding, and a continual education should allow you to open your mind to new information. It should protect your ego and allow for adjustments in opinions on subjects.
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If you can explain why you feel strongly about a subject, then, when presented new information that alters that view, you should be able to explain the change in your opinion without fear or embarrassment. I respect that much more than someone that cannot, or worse, will not learn from new evidence that gives a new and additional insight into an issue. It isn’t waffling on your stance. It is the wisdom to adjust an opinion afforded by the opportunity of seeing a more complete and sometimes very complex picture.and adjusting your position based on that new evidence.
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Original thoughts if not impossible, must be exceedingly rare. But I think evolving thoughts and ideas that improve and become more complete are of tremendous value and should be encouraged

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How to Write a Book — Quick and Easy.

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June 7, 2023, Mount Shasta, CA: Here’s how to write a book. Done this way, it’s rather easy. And surprisingly quick.

This method took me 40 years to figure out, and it works. My proof is that I’ve published 9 books, written over 500 microstories, 50-60 short stories, 3 novels, and hundreds of thousands of pages of operating manuals, business plans, how-to articles, advertising copy and lots, lots more.

This method makes writing a book fairly effortless. (Each of my nine published books was actually created in only about a week, but these [Read more…]

How to Destroy Writer’s Block

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June 7, 2023, Mount Shasta, CA: If you experience writer’s block, it’s very easy to change that so that you no longer experience writer’s block. Here’s how …

Get up in the morning, go pee if you have to, then sit down and start typing. Don’t do *anything else* before you start typing.

Type anything. Garbage, memories, nonsense. Snippets of your dreams. Any thoughts. Don’t try to channel it in any particular direction.

Within 3 weeks or maybe even less, you will no longer experience writer’s block.

That’s really all there is to it.

Creating Your Reality

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Today I was online reading something, and I was *so* tempted to respond in argument with something that someone said.

Even knowing better, I find it hard to stop myself, all too often.

And my particular reason for desiring to restrain myself is this —

A) We greatly create our own experience of life (our reality) by the thoughts we harbor in our heads. Some say these thoughts actually create reality, but for certain they create our experience of life.

B) If you create ill-will thoughts, no matter where you intend to aim them, you are creating ill-will thoughts. And it’s in YOUR head.

C) You suffer as a result of the painful thoughts in your head, and it paints your picture of your universe, and you create your painful experience of life.

D) The more you focus thought on negative stuff (problems and pain), the more you overlook (or miss) many of your opportunities, and you miss out on enjoying the bliss you could be enjoying from your life.

E) So it boils down to — It’s your gun. It’s your foot. Do What Thou Wilt.

Want to live in a world of devils? Or a world of bliss? Although it may seem strange the first time you hear this, with a bit of practice, it is actually possible to control your own mind, and your thoughts WILL create your happiness (or suffering) in this life.

(A word to the wise is sufficient. Let he that hath ears hear!)

🙂

How to Speak to Strangers

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Mount Shasta, California, December 28, 2019 — When I was a child and a teenager, I was very insecure. And needing reassurance all the time, in the tough-guy culture of Northern Texas, I became a loud show-off smart-alec, even though I was actually an introvert.

As a result, even when I gained confidence over the years, I had to *learn* how to talk to strangers, and how to approach women. I did learn. However I wish I’d seen this article, which is both simple and [Read more…]

 
 

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