Steve Piccolo's Blog

I haven’t posted much on this blog lately, but I wanted to tell you my latest news. For the past four years I have been paid to attend school full time while working on my PhD. I’m still working on my PhD (hopefully I’ll finish in the next 2-3 months), but my scholarship/fellowship has ended, so I had to find a way to pay the bills Yesterday I started a job that I’ll be doing for the next few years or so. It’s unique, I must say. I’ll be half employed as a researcher in the University of Utah’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. And I’ll be half employed as a researcher in BYU’s Department of Statistics. So I guess I’m in the PAC-12, and I’m independent! (That’s a football joke.)

For my job, I’ll be working on some cutting edge research related to analyzing people’s DNA and RNA (basically speaking) and coming up with better ways to determine the best treatments for cancer patients. I feel very privileged to be doing this kind of work and to be working with great people.

September 2nd, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Just wanted to share a quick link to something I thought you might be interested in. Awhile ago, I came across an article about the USA soccer team’s starting goalie, Tim Howard. He has a disease called Tourette’s Syndrome. This is a neuropsychiatric disorder that causes involutary tics, or repetitious physical movements. For example, he often coughs, clears his throat, or jerks his head. You’d think that could be a problem for a soccer goalie, who requires a lot of concentration. What I found interesting is that Howard has fully accepted that this disorder is part of who he is and wouldn’t change it about himself (or take medication for it). In fact, he has reached the highest levels of success in soccer with the condition.

Sometimes we look at ourselves and perceive certain qualities that we have as being abnormal or limiting. Especially when those qualities are beyond our control. While I believe it is possible to overcome many of our weaknesses, especially with God’s help, I also think it can be empowering to acknowledge our limitations and make the most of life despite them. And who knows, maybe what we perceive as a limitation can actually become a strength in ways we don’t now understand.

Your thoughts?

(Here’s the article about Tim Howard.)

July 12th, 2010 | Category: goals, self help | Comments (2)

It’s Kate’s b-day soon, and we were having a party, so Laurel decided to bake a cake for her. She went online and found some clip art of Baby Bop. For those of you who are unversed in children’s TV shows, I’ll tell you that Baby Bop is a friend of Barney the Dinosaur. Kate loves watching Barney and especially Baby Bop (unlike me). Anyway, Laurel found some clip art of Baby Bop, printed it out, and baked an amazing cake based on it. See the picture below.

She told me she wasn’t sure how it would turn out because she’s not good at this kind of thing. Boy, I’d really like to see what she could do if she only had some talent. Nice work, Laurel!

June 10th, 2010 | Category: baby | Comments (1)

Laurel, my wife, sings with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. On Easter they sang at the church’s General Conference, and her beautiful face was shown in a close-up at the end of a song. See for yourself. (Thanks to my bro for pointing it out.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Mp9qmjfQQ&feature=related

April 20th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Sorry to brag, but I just wanted to let you all know that I survived the race and wrote about the experience here: http://run.hammerpig.com/survived-buffalo-run-50-miler.html. Knowing that I had told you all that I was going to run it, gave me strength to push through the difficult parts.

March 27th, 2010 | Category: exercise | Comments (3)

I just put up a new post on my running blog about a race I’m running tomorrow. You can read about it here.

March 26th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

About 18 months ago, I read something about Body Mass Index (BMI) levels in the U.S. BMI is a measure (though an imperfect one) of people’s health status based on the ratio between their height and weight. According to the chart I saw, I would have been classified as borderline overweight. That really surprised me! Yes, it is an imperfect measure partly because it doesn’t take body fat into account. But I didn’t see myself as carrying around many extra pounds, though my pants had been getting tighter. I thought the problem was the dryer had been shrinking my clothes, but now I realize it was also me getting a little bigger. Looking back, I see that I ate a little too much at meals and wasn’t exercising.

At the beginning of the 2009, I decided to commit to a New Year’s Resolution to run 5 times per week, no matter what. I’m happy to say I kept that goal. Some days I ran only 1 mile, other days I ran many more and even ran a marathon in October. But another neat thing was that I dropped 25 pounds in weight over the year. I didn’t do anything extreme. I just exercised consistently and tried to eat until I was satisfied but not stuffed. Now I’m not super skinny but pretty lean and have been getting faster (but not super speedy) at running. What was interesting is that I thought my previous weight was my “normal” weight. But now I realize I was carrying around some extra weight and had a lower energy level than I do now.

So anyway, I just wanted to share this with all of you. Millions and millions of $$ are made each year on books, videos, and programs trying to help people lose weight. I know that some people deal with challenges that make weight loss very difficult, but for me the ideal recipe has been consistent exercise and eating in moderate amounts.

February 18th, 2010 | Category: exercise | Comments (2)

Last year I went to a conference in St. Louis and presented some research I had worked on with some colleagues in the Genetic Epidemiology group at the University of Utah. It’s not tied directly to my dissertation work, but it was a good opportunity to collaborate with some great people and learn some new things. As a result, we also got the paper published in a journal called BMC Proceedings. This journal is not published in paper format (I don’t think). It just serves as a way for conferences to publish results.

Anyway, the idea behind the paper is to explore how well you can predict whether someone will have cholesterol problems based on their genetic profile. We expanded on some work that others have done by adding weights to the genetic markers. Here’s a link to the paper if anyone is interested. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2795945/?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_DiscoveryDbLinks&ordinalpos=1&tool=pubmed

December 28th, 2009 | Category: Research | Comments (3)

Lots of people say they don’t want to run because running is bad for your knees. I recently came across an article in Time magazine that summarizes some recent research suggesting that runners have the same prevalence of osteoarthritis in their knees as non-runners. Or in other words, genetic factors likely influence arthritis in your knees more than anything, but running might even be able to help counteract that.

And people who run regularly have a much better chance of being healthy overall.

This isn’t to say that running is the only type of exercise worth doing. But it does say that this is no longer a valid reason to not run (for most people). Surely running can cause injuries, typically affecting some people more than others, but so can sitting on the couch too much of our lives (and probably much more serious injuries at that).

I recently read a book about the science of running called Lore of Running, which says (in basic terms) that if you have knee problems when you run, it usually can be fixed with something simple like a new pair of running shoes or a pair of custom orthotics, rather than surgery or other drastic measures. The book has lots more detail. But I just wonder how many times people give up on running because they think it’s bad for their knees when something simple could have made it better.

December 27th, 2009 | Category: exercise | Comments (4)