I started a database 💽 of everything I do 👽 (Part 1)

This is one of those things that you end up regretting. I don't recommend it but it was fun.

It all began with a doctor's appointment and an early stage hypertension diagnosis.

Probably, all those ibuprofen I took over the years, or simply genetics, some sort of mild covid aftermath (though I never tested positive). Who knows. Anyhow, doctor said: exercise, and do not eat salt. Cool, I can do that: started swimming. Then, I just needed to avoid salt (and get a blood pressure monitor). Actually, I need to avoid any food with sodium in it. The problem is that they (ie, food corps) add sodium to pretty much anything: bottled water has sodium, store bought bread has sodium, etc.

There's a whole alter universe of reduced sodium out there.

But, living in Argentina did not make cutting down sodium easy. That is, it is already very hard to be a vegetarian in this so notorious a country for its meat intake and machismo, let alone expect any easy-to-read tag that says: yo, you can it this, there's no sodium in it, all is good 👍🏼 . Reducing sodium proved herein to be a harder task. That aside, food does taste a lot better here than in the US, IMHO.

Hypertension is not only triggered by salt intake. Multiple factors weigh in on the overall tension curve, which is always oscillating. Stress 😓 is one of those factors: having better resources to handling stress definitely helps with high blood pressure. Exercise 🏊‍♂️ weighs in as a tension regulator, somehow, that is why it is recommended to do so. Anyway, with sodium, we have now three parameters to monitor 🎚 the context of our blood pressure habits. There are endless parameters, however, endless variables on this infinite database contingency that we call life. And I'm only talking about my own life, that is, everything I do in a day.

Do I keep track of how many breaths I take? Sting, I don't! 🐒 Do I know how many milliliters of water I have drank? I might be able to approach that number 🤔 How many popcorns you ate during the film? Well…🍿 Or, how much you sweat? Got me 🤷🏽‍♂️. In other words, the organicity of our body is uncountable, it is malleable, and it is embedded within an inseparable contextual nature that extends universally from the quantum realm to the nearest black hole, and most likely, beyond. 🪐

I began databasing myself

My life depends on the 🌞 and the 🌙, there is just no way around that. But, I still have hypertension, and I still want to find out the extent to which the things I do and the things I digest have an effect on my blood pressure or not. Hence, I decided to put all of those elements into a database, that is, I began databasing myself.

The project started as a simple logging Google Form, that changed into a more elaborate one. It's kinda cool because the first weeks have some data structure that changes into a different one, all in the same Google Sheet. A nightmare to parse, but it is historically relevant.

Anyway, the database grew at a pace of 15-30 entries a day, and it just kept piling up as you might expect. Some routine like days were simpler; others were trickier. But, I managed to log pretty much anything. It became an obsession. And I like obsessions. To the point that I thought to myself: there might be other obsessive people like me who would find an all encompassing logger app helpful, sure. That's an idea. But, I liked it to myself. It was just a Google Form and Sheet, felt simple enough.

…and then, I stopped

Three months later, I had a huge pile of data. I have not parsed it yet; haven't drawn any conclusions. I just did that 🙉🐭 database, and then, in the beginning of the year 2022, I stopped updating it. It's been over a month since my last update. I miss it. There was something raw in doing such an extreme and detailed thought work on bodily stuff. I want to parse those numbers and draw conclusions but I need to wait. For some reason, I needed to stop and think. But, I do miss punching in those numbers.

I wrote this post, perhaps to think better, but I did not get to any conclusion as of now and I doubt I will. I guess an apology is in order, towards you, reader. I embarked us on my journey to databasing, only to take us to where you already knew you were. My blood pressure is still high. I still exercise. I eat less salt 🧂🚫. One thing I can say, though, is that food tastes better after going salt-free for more than two months: the tongue feels different because the taste buds go that extra mile to extract flavor out from food to my brain.

To be continued…