“We tend to under-estimate the extent to which some kind of disadvantage or setback can, paradoxically, catapult people into higher achievement. Some people can turn the hurt and anger generated by a setback into a fierce will to succeed. By struggling against whatever forces they find pushing them down, they develop anti-gravity powers which lift them higher later on.” READ THE ENTIRE STORY AT THE BBC
Month: July 2019
Longevity Hack: Trim the Fat
Diet and exercise habits help people maintain a healthy body weight, which the Circulation study defined as a body mass index between 18.5 and 24.9. Obesity is associated with chronic conditions including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, all of which can shorten your life. A 2018 study found that widespread obesity shaved a year off the U.S. life expectancy and is responsible for up to 186,000 deaths per year.
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Health Hack: How Much Should You Exercise?
Exercising regularly, every day if possible, is the single most important thing you can do for your health. In the short term, exercise helps to control appetite, boost mood, and improve sleep. In the long term, it reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression, and many cancers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the following:
- At least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise like brisk walking or 75 minutes of rigorous exercise like running (or an equivalent mix of both) every week. It’s fine to break up exercise into smaller sessions as long as each one lasts at least 10 minutes.
- Strength-training that works all major muscle groups—legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms—at least two days a week. Strength training may involve lifting weights, using resistance bands, or exercises like push-ups and sit-ups, in which your body weight furnishes the resistance.
Writers’ Wisdom: Imaginative Truth
Contrary to all those times you’ve heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth. Don’t confine truth to fact. Imaginative truth is as powerful and often enough more so than fact. ~ Paul Harding
Outwitted ~ Edwin Markham
Outwitted
Edwin Markham
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Today’s Reflection: On Love
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. ~ Thomas Merton
Sleep Hack: Read This & Take a Power Nap
Whether you’re heading to class or just trying to learn a new skill, making sure you’re well-rested beforehand can make a big difference, research from Berkeley suggests. A study done at the school found that sleeping for an hour dramatically boosts and restores brain power, in turn making it easier to learn and retain new information. Sleep clears out our short-term memory, making room for new information and priming us to be better, more efficient learners.
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Stress Hack: Stressed About an Upcoming Event? Read On
Get Your Sweat On
Sure, a solid cardio set can leave you looking just a little bit more toned, but the mood-boosting endorphins you’ll reap are an even better reason to work it out before a big event . . . In addition to triggering a happy-go-lucky feeling, endorphins released during exercise can help minimize anxiety, according to the Mayo Clinic. So if your big event has got your nerves on edge, use your workout to help get you back to a positive mental state.
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Longevity & Higher Protein Consumption
Building on their previous studies on the role of protein in preserving health and function, epidemiologists Adela Hruby and Paul F. Jacques, researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts, found that adults around sixty years old, whose diets on average included adequate protein—and in particular protein from plants—showed fewer signs of “inflammaging.” Inflammaging is a low-grade, age-related chronic inflammation associated with frailty and illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
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Health Hack: Are Eggs A Healthy Choice?
Okay, so what if we do the experiment and assign people randomly to eat eggs or not to eat eggs? This type of a study (randomized controlled trial or RCT) will allow us to determine causation. Many studies have been completed, and a complete review is beyond the scope of this article; here are the results of a representative study.6 Participants ate 3 eggs a day for four weeks and had their cholesterol assessed. The results showed an improvement in HDL (the “good” cholesterol) function and an improvement in LDL size. As a bonus, plasma antioxidant content was also increased, because the egg contains several nutrients that are amazingly good for the body and brain. As further evidence, another group completed a meta-analysis of the egg research up to that point (2013) and concluded that eggs are not related to an increased risk in cardio-vascular disease, unless the consumer is diabetic.7 Thus, the egg is a great addition to a diet for healthy individuals.
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