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Depression is not a small problem. But this is a dangerous disease. A person suffering from depression thinks more on a small matter. It has negative mentality. The person suffering from depression can quarrel with anyone to change his mood. It is a part of the depression that is taking a bad thing in the brain; It can not be said that only doctors can treat the depression problem. But you can treat depression yourself too.
Knowing such things, doing such things can be overcome by depression. There is no such thing as to come out of depression that can be expelled from eating. But your body needs saturated food for the brain. The best way to get rid of depression is to use fruit-fructose and drifroot for it. Choose a good food to make Mood better. Choose Omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin B-1 foods. Add low fat carbohydrates to the diet plan. Which increases the chemical serotonin in your brain. So you can think better. Increase the amount of vegetables, fruits and fibers in the simultaneous diet plan.
Do you consume more spoilage while working in the office? So beware that because of excessive frustration, there is panic and irritability. Often, it happens that ours is worse than another person's personal commodity. So always think positively to keep our mood and health healthy. Positive thinking can help you fight depression. It is said that exercising is a relax. And the brain remains calm and healthy. Exercise also has good mood. But we should do the same exercises that we can get pleasure from exercising. You can play tennis, bike, swim, walk, or swim. We look forward to more depression in the dark. Especially in winter, especially in winter. Vitamin-D is obtained from sunlight. On the other hand, depression is also free from sunrise.
There are many benefits of honey. It preserves and refreshes the body. But if it is a little too much of a loss of honey, it is harmful to health. -Madhne Tasir is hot. It should be avoided with warm food. By eating honey with tea or coffee, the body temperature increases. It is likely to panic. -Don't eat radish with honey. It produces toxic substances in the body. -Heading honey with fish and fish produces poisonous ingredients in the body. It has a bad effect on the body. Ghee and honey should not be consumed in equal proportion. It also produces poisonous substances in the body, which is harmful to your health.
About
ten years ago I took some supplements that changed my life. I was in
optimum health and peak performance during this phase; happy and
centered with an ability to handle any kind of stress that came my way
with grace and ease. My meditations were off the charts — I was able to
traverse the universe in the most elegant, exciting way possible. With
full access to all of my gifts and abilities, I was unstoppable.
In
light of the recent challenges in my life, I had to think back to when I
was doing my best and remembered this phase. I decided to do something
about it and came full circle reintroducing these missing elements for
my brain and body.
It’s such a relief to feel amazing again — these are extraordinary “cultural essences” that most people don’t have access to.
So
here’s another listicle for you. I know, you’ve read a lot of them. But
there is some new information here, in fact, some of it is so
revolutionary it will blow your mind.
Forget
about what I’ve said before regarding certain fats and foods. I was
caught up in the popular diet and now with a little more enlightened
education, I stand corrected. It takes experimentation in diet and ways
of living and after years of trying everything that doesn’t work, I came
up with this.
1.
Microbiotic Vitamins are a whole new class of vitamins. There are the
common vitamins we all know about that you can get in conventional foods
or dietary supplements at the store. And then there are these special vitamins that can only be produced within the body.
About
thirty years ago, a brilliant scientist discovered this concept of a
new type of vitamin that is made by the action of the healthy bacteria
of the microbiome within the body. (The kingdom of God is within in more
ways than one).
Without these essential vitamins, humans are prone to chronic illnesses both physical and mental.
These
microbiotic vitamins are necessary to prevent the diseases of modern
civilization, including anxiety, depression, obesity, cardiovascular
disease, and cancer, amongst others.
The
scientist noticed these “cultural essences” quickly and miraculously
reversing modern day diseases and in the process, the people taking the
supplements, were happier, had improvements in their personality and
experienced a deep spiritual connection that was not possible before. This was an unexpected bonus.
His
subjects were in glowing spiritual health, faster, better, stronger in
every facet of their lives. This supplement goes beyond health, it
enhances all aspects of human performance.
2. Diet — Research and experience has shown that the diet human genetics is best suited for is a high-quality whole-plant based diet. Fruits, vegetable, whole grains, and legumes. Non-fat fermented milk products can also be beneficial.
There’s
been a lot of discussion and hype lately about fats and their
beneficial properties and the current fad is to consume large amounts of
coconut oil and butter to attain ketosis.
Oils
are a refined food analogous to sugar. You wouldn’t want to eat only
the sugar from the fruit, you would want to eat the whole fruit. The
same thing applies to oils, eat the entire high-fat food such as the
avocado, olive, nut or coconut. This is what we mean by whole foods.
The
healthiest way to go into ketosis is to do intermittent fasting,
without the saturated fats. That’s right, just fast until dinner, or as
long as you can.
3. Exercise — The best exercise is aerobic running, cycling, swimming, ya know, the kind that makes you lose your breath.
Yoga
is a time-proven method of stretching that greatly benefits the body,
mind, and spirit. You guys are good at this part, I don’t have to say
too much. Do whatever you love to do! An hour a day is best in the
morning. Just take it from someone who sat on her ass for at least a
year that inertia will kill you.
4.
Sex — We are talking about healthy relationships here. There are three
categories as I see them, marriage, partnership or friendship. The most
important thing is that its loving. Having someone who cares about
you — who you can discuss anything with without feeling judged, is
crucial.
Someone
you can learn from and evolve with. Someone you talk to about how your
day went, your dreams and aspirations, whatever — you just want to have a
mutually supportive relationship. Nota codependent one. Codependent ones usually have a toxic, addictive quality about them.
Engage
in a relationship with someone who you truly like and who you feel safe
with. Your safe refuge in a storm. Having sex with healthy people makes
you healthier — since you are pretty much swapping juices and taking on their energy — it’s kinda a big deal. It actually affects your gut biome. Choose wisely.
5.
Spirituality — Is the reconnection to the God within, to the creative
force within, to the unlimited knowledge of the universe. It’s within
all of us. Most people don’t know how to tap into it and it can take
many years and be inefficient.
The
majority of the global population are addicted to caffeine, sugar,
alcohol and other drugs. Most people, no matter how hard they try cannot
attain a spiritual connection, due to resistance in their brain
chemistry. It’s like a barrier in the brain.
Without
this spiritual knowledge, we have no true meaning or direction or
purpose in life. We can only live a life of self-indulgence and if we
are not working for a higher purpose, it is self-purpose. If you’re not
listening to your creator, you’re simply not listening to the greater
plan or heeding your life’s evolutionary destiny.
The
light of creation within all of us determines who we are, how we do
things, and what our mission in life is and without this, we can get
lost easily.
Do
what you can to cultivate that light within for when you are in
alignment spiritually all the other things —in the realm of the physical
and mental — flow forth from there. And by this, I mean your body, your
relationships, your work, your mental well-being, everything.
When
we speak about resilience, we often think of “bouncing back.” This
implies rebounding to how things were prior to experiencing adversity.
This definition may be fine for minor challenges, but it’s unproductive
for more serious ones.
First off, it sets a pretty high expectation. If you don’t meet it, you’re likely to be disappointed. Sometimes you physically can’t
bounce back, like in the case of chronic illness or the death of a
loved one. If you lose a limb — literally or metaphorically — you won’t
ever be the same as before. Trying will only leave you down and
dejected.
It’s
highly distressing to carry with you fear, pain, and uncertainty. But
it’s even more distressing trying to repress or forget those feelings.
Second
off, bouncing back is limiting. It says that there is a “back” to which
we should bounce; some ideal, perhaps more comfortable, place. But this
fails to acknowledge the significance of the adversity itself. It’s as
if you are trying to delete it from your life. In my own experience,
this doesn’t work. Yes, it’s highly distressing to carry with you fear,
pain, and uncertainty. But it’s even more distressing trying to repress
or forget those feelings when they’ve been seared into you by situations
that are unforgettable.
Following
true adversity — I’m talking about the gut-wrenching, hole in your
heart, sleepless nights kind — there is no bouncing back. There’s only
moving forward.
And,
though it sucks at times, you’ve got no choice but to carry your
experience with you. This won’t make you an immediately happier person,
but it will make you a fuller and more compassionate one.
And yet…and yet…
Holding fear, pain, and uncertainty is hard.So it’s important to dispel yet another falsehood about resilience. Resilience is about inner strength, but it’s not
about keeping a stoic profile and going at it alone. Inner strength and
seeking support are not exclusive; if anything, they go hand-in-hand.
Following
true adversity — I’m talking about the gut-wrenching, hole in your
heart, sleepless nights kind — there is no bouncing back. There’s only
moving forward.
Being
vulnerable and reaching out for help when you need it demands
inner-strength, and inner strength grows when it’s supported by help.
“It is a myth that resilient people don’t need help,” writes Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia. “Seeking support is what resilient people do.”
In the aftermath of adversity don’t try to bounce back. Do your best to move forward. And let others help you along the way.
For 50 years, cancer was considered to be caused primarily by genetic mutations. This line of thinking got us almost exactly nowhere. As the research began to repudiate the main tenets of the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT) of Cancer,
competing hypotheses gained attention. The SMT’s main premise was that
cancer is derived from a single somatic cells that has accumulated a
bunch of genetic mutations that allow it to become immortal. The main
cancer causing genes are termed onco-genes and tumor suppressor genes.
This is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
What
does this mean? Well, imagine yourself stuck in the middle of a forest.
All you see are trees. It doesn’t seem so great. It’s just a bunch of
trees like you find in your backyard. Here’s a tree. Here’s another
tree. Here’s a third tree. What’s the big deal? But, if you could see
the Amazon rainforest from a helicopter, you could then appreciate the
beauty of the entire forest.
The
same problem happens if you read too close. Imagine that you are
reading this blog post but have mistakenly zoomed in by 700%. You can’t
see more than a few letters. Can’t see much. Gibberish. By looking too
closely, you have missed the entire point of the passage. You need to
‘zoom out’. Imagine there are 3 blind men examining an elephant. The
first, examining the trunk, says the elephant is long and limber. The
second, examining the tail, says it is small and swishes around. The
third, examining the body says it’s huge and flat. All three are
simultaneously correct and incorrect, because they have ‘zoomed in’ too
closely.
The
same problem exists in the SMT. We’ve zoomed into cancer too
closely — right down to the genetic makeup of the cancer and it is
gibberish. We can make no head or tail of cancer’s origin and therefore
make no progress towards treatment. Over 100 oncogenes and over 15 tumor
suppressor genes have been identified, but we don’t know what it all
means as a whole. Instead of three blind men and an elephant, we have
thousands of blind researchers and cancer. Each sees a tiny, tiny piece
of the puzzle and can’t see the whole. The rate of mutation necessary to
develop a cancer is far, far more than the known rate of mutation in
human cells (Loeb et al 2001).
Normal cells just don’t mutate anywhere close to what is needed to
produce cancer. Further, while every cancer has mutations, it was not
known what the ‘denominator’ was. That is, how many cells had mutations
but no cancer. This turned out to be pretty high. You could alter 4% of
the genome and still have a cell that looked and acted completely
normally. This is a remarkable high degree of tolerance (Humpherys 2002)
We
need to zoom out and look at cancer from a different perspective. The
SMT looked at cancer at a microscopic genetic level. The Tissue
Organization Field Theory (TOFT) begins to correct the problem by
looking at the tissues surrounding the cancer. In multicellular
organisms, single cells do not have an existence outside of the whole
organism. The liver, for example, could not exist outside of the body.
We don’t walk down the street and say hi to the next door neighbor’s
liver out walking the dog. You don’t see your spouse’s lung jumping out
of the body at night to rummage around the refrigerator. You don’t yell
at your spouse’s kidney to put the toilet seat down.
All
cells originate from a single fertilized egg, so all cells in the body,
including all the different organs share the same genes and DNA. The
original undifferentiated stem cells have the ability to become any part
of the body — lung, liver, heart etc. It is therefore, not the genes
that determine if a cell becomes a liver or a lung, it is the signals
received from the surrounding tissues that tell an undifferentiated cell
to become a liver cell. There is detailed hormonal signalling involved
in this process.
For
every problem, including cancer problems may develop in one of two
places. There may be a problem with the cell itself — it mutated and
became a cancer. Or, it may the environment it grows in that may be
telling that cell to become cancerous. Is it the seed or is it the soil
or both? If you drop a grass seed in the desert — it does not grow. But
drop that same grass seed into your lawn — it may grow extremely well.
But it is the exact same seed with exactly the same genes. Focusing
exclusively on the seeds means we missed the forest for the trees.
Myopically researching the genetic difference of seeds to see why one
grows and the other does not is futile.
By
the same token, a cancer cell may grow very well in the normal
environment of growth pathways. But that same cancer cell may not grow
at all in the ‘desert’ where growth pathways have been entirely shut
off. The key is to shut off these pathways. How to do that (previously discussed here)?
Well growth pathways are closely linked to the body’s nutrient sensors.
If the body sees that there are no nutrients, then it will shut down
all cells to go into a quiescent state, just as baker’s yeast will
become dormant without water. The reason is self preservation. In this
dormant state, it can live essentially forever.
This
understanding of the importance of the ‘seed and the soil’ concept
helps to answer one of cancer’s most interesting questions. Why can
virtually every cell in the body become cancerous? Think about
this — there is cancers of the lung, breast, stomach, colon, testicles,
uterus, cervix, blood cells, heart, liver, even fetuses. The ability to become cancerous is an INNATE ability of every cell of the body, almost without exception.
Sure some cells become cancer more frequently than others. The
oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes discovered so laboriously over the
last quarter century are mutations of NORMAL
genes. The seed of cancer lies in every single one of our cells. So we
must pay more attention to the ‘soil’ because that is what likely makes
the difference between having cancer and being healthy.
The question is why? Why should any cell turn into cancer? Why shouldn’t all
cells turn into cancer? The origins of cancer lie in our own cells. The
capacity to turn into cancer lies in the normal pathways of growth that
become somehow perverted — by the environment it lives — the ‘soil’. If
you bathe lung cells in cigarette smoke, it will more likely turn into
cancer. If you infect cervical cells with Human Papilloma Virus, it will
more likely turn into cancer. If you give asbestos to the lung lining
(pleura), it will more likely turn into cancer. If you are obese, breast
cells will more likely turn into cancer. The question of what is the
common linkage of all these stimuli?
The
SMT assumes that the default state of cell proliferation in humans is
quiescence. The liver cell, for example, won’t grow unless it receives
growth signals to tell it to grow. Therefore the assumed problem in
liver cancer is that the ‘seed’ is bad. But it could just as easily be
the ‘soil’ or the environment surrounding the liver that the will tell
it to grow or not.
On
the other hand, single celled organisms are assumed to have a default
state of growth. That is, cells grow all the time unless they are
constrained by not having enough nutrients. Put a bacteria in a Petri
dish and it will keep growing until it runs out of food. From an
evolutionary perspective, since we evolved from single celled organism,
it would only make sense that all our cells retain this INNATE ability
to grow. For example, the replication machinery of yeast and human cells
is almost completely homologous. So, if you simply find the right
‘soil’ any cell may return to its original state of growth. Unregulated,
this is almost the very definition of cancer.
The
same issue exists for motility. Liver cells, for example, don’t move
around our body at will. But for unicellular organisms, this is the
natural state of things. Yeast will move around constantly. Bacteria are
constantly moving. This has enormous implications for why cancers
spread (metastasize), which is 90% of the reason people die of cancer.
Metstasis, or movement of cells, is an INNATE feature of life on earth.
Cancer
exists at many levels. If we dig too deeply into the genetic level, we
miss entirely that the way that cells are organized plays a huge role in
cancer’s development. If we look too closely at the trees, we miss the
forest. If we look too closely at the genetic level, we miss the tissue
organization level problems — the growth signals, the nutrient sensors,
the hormonal signalling. Cancer cells do not grow faster than normal
cells. It’s just that normal cells don’t normally grow. Also the growth
of cancers are not autonomous. Breast cancer cells, for example will
still respond to hormone changes like estrogen.
Gleevec,
the very poster child of recent cancer breakthroughs illustrates that
we have been digging too deeply. Recall that Gleevec, imatinib, is a
drug that blocks tyrosine kinase, a growth signal for cells. It can cure
many patients from chronic myelogenous leukemia, a disease that is
caused by a genetic distortion, the Philadelphia chromosome. But here’s
the crucial part. Gleevec does not affect the genetics of the cells. It
affects the growth signalling pathways — the SOIL, not the SEED. In
doing so, it sometimes so completely cures the cancer that the genetic
aberrations disappear.
Gleevec,
the most successful cancer treatment of the last 50 years, is proof
that we had been diving too deeply into the minutiae of the genetic
problems and failed to consider the cancer’s hormonal environment. This
is an example of so called ‘preposterous reductionism’ (Dennett, Darwin’s dangerous idea).
“If you want to know why traffic jams tend to happen at a certain hour
every day, you will still be baffled after you have painstakenly
reconstructed the steering, braking and accelerating processes of the
thousands of drivers whose various trajectories have summed to create
those traffic jams.”
If
you want to know why cancer happens, you will still be baffled after
you have painstakenly reconstructed the oncogenes and tumor suppressor
genes and other processes of the thousands of cells whose various
trajectories have summed to create cancer. This is exactly the track we
have taken with almost all of modern cancer research, and we wonder why
we’ve made no progress. After billions of research dollars and decades
of time, The Cancer Genome Atlas is the cancer equivalent of
reconstruction steering patterns of thousands of cars to see figure out
rush hour traffic.
Zoom
out. Look at the proper level (tissue level, not genetic level).
Consider cancer’s soil, not only its seed. This does not invalidate any
of the advances of genetics. The changes merely occur at different
levels. The SMT looks at cancer at a cell based level, and tissue
organization theory looks at the ‘society of cells’ level. But
understand that one does not preclude the other.
Over the past few years, there has been an ever-increasing obsession with biohacking and life extension: FDA-approved studies to see if metformin, a drug historically used to treat Type 2 diabetes, can slow aging. A supplement called Basis, which purports to extend life
and is backed by multiple Nobel Prize–winning scientists. Transfusing
the blood of younger individuals into older ones. Plus a whole manner of
other hacks, such as dumping loads of butter into your coffee and wearing headbands that allegedly improve brain function.
Although
these approaches are intriguing and arguably worth studying further (at
least some of them), too many people seem to have forgotten that there
already exists a scientifically proven method — one supported by decades
of peer-reviewed research — to extend both the quantity and quality of
your life: adopting a few healthy, quotidian habits.
“We’ve known since the mid-1960s that lifestyle behaviors have an outsize influence on health and longevity,” says Michael Joyner,
a researcher and expert on health and human performance at the Mayo
Clinic. Since then, evidence to support the positive impact of healthy
living has mounted, he says, even as more people try to find the elixir
of youth. Consider research published in 2011 in the American Journal of Public Health
demonstrating that adopting healthy lifestyle behaviors — regular
exercise, a wholesome diet, no smoking — can increase lifespan by 11
years. Or a 2016 study published in the British Medical Journalthat found a healthy lifestyle reduces one’s chance of all-cause mortality by a whopping 61 percent.
The
great irony is that “the idea behind a lot of these moon-shot fountain
of youth drugs, supplements, and gadgets is to replicate the already
proven biological and physiological effects of a few key behaviors,”
says Joyner.
Aubrey
de Grey, a pioneer in the anti-aging movement and chief science officer
at the SENS Research Foundation, a Silicon Valley–based longevity
institute, recently told the New Yorker
that by doing things like optimizing his mitochondrial mutation, “I can
drink as much as I like, and it has no effect. I don’t even need to
exercise, I’m so well optimized.” Perhaps. But in the meantime, there’s
an easier, proven method to life extension.
#1. Move
If
exercise could be bottled up and sold as a drug, it would be a
billion-dollar business. Decades of studies show that just 30 minutes of
moderate to intense daily physical activity lowers your risk for
physiological diseases (like heart disease and cancer), as well as psychological ones (like anxiety and Alzheimer’s).
According to Joyner, many of the newfangled longevity elixirs aim to
prevent mitochondrial dysfunction, or the breakdown of a cell’s ability
to properly use energy, which is a normal part of aging. “But
people who exercise can double the number of mitochondria in their
skeletal muscle and improve its function throughout the body,” he says.
“This is why exercise has such a potent anti-aging effect.”
#2. Eat Real Foods
Avoid
stuff that comes wrapped in plastic. “Foods that undergo
ultra-processing tend to see much of their nutritional bounty stripped
from them,” says Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa-based obesity doctor and
author of The Diet Fix.
Another reason to avoid processed foods is related to energy density,
or calories per gram of food. “Generally speaking, ultra-processed foods
are much higher in energy density than foods made from fresh, whole
ingredients,” says Freedhoff, “which isn’t great for maintaining a
healthy weight.”
Freedhoff’s
ideal diet for health and longevity? “One that is rich in whole foods
that in turn are especially filling. You can keep calories at bay while
maximizing nutrition,” he says. “This means a diet rich in vegetables,
whole grains, fish, and leaner meats with regular but not excessive
consumption of fruits, nuts, and healthy oils.”
In a 2010 study published in PLOS Medicine,
researchers from Brigham Young University followed more than 300,000
people for an average of 7.5 years. They found that the mortality risks
associated with loneliness exceeded those associated with obesity and
physical inactivity and were similar to those associated with smoking.
#4. Avoid (Nearly) All Supplements
Americans spend more than $30 billion every year on dietary supplements, yet the vast majority don’t work and may even cause harm. A 2016 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
cited more than 20 years of research and concluded that “studies
evaluating dietary supplements have yielded predominantly disappointing
results about the potential health benefits, whereas evidence of harm
has continued to accumulate.”
Though
supplements are often pristinely packaged in alluring promises,
Freedhoff says that “it’s smart to have a policy of ‘just say no.’ There
simply aren’t any supplements with sufficient evidence behind them to
support their use in a person who doesn’t have a particular proven
deficiency or need.”
#5. Sleep 8 Hours (at Night)
Regardless
of what the biohackers may tell you, you simply cannot nap or
intermittently sleep your way to optimal health and functioning. It’s
only after you’ve been sleeping for at least an hour that anabolic
hormones like testosterone and human growth hormone — both of which are
critical to health and physical function — are released. What’s more, a 2007 study published in the journal Sleep
showed that with each additional 90-minute cycle of deep sleep, you
receive even more of these hormones. In other words, there are
increasing marginal benefits to sleep, and hours seven through
nine — the hours most people don’t get — are actually the most powerful.
Deep sleep is also beneficial to mental health. Researchers from Harvard found
that it’s only during deep sleep when your brain combs through,
consolidates, and stores all the information you came across during the
day. “There’s a reason all the bodybuilders and super-intellectual
people I know are obsessed with sleep,” says Joyner. “Sleep works
wonders.”
#6. Enjoy Nature
In Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir, Wild,
her mom tells her that the cure for much of what ails her is to “put
[herself] in the way of beauty.” Turns out she was right, at least
according to the latest science. Time in nature is an antidote to the ill effects of stress, prevents and in some cases even helps cure anxiety and depression, and enhances creativity.
Though the exact causal mechanisms are not yet known, researchers
speculate there is something unique about nature — perhaps related to
the fact that we evolved to be in it — that puts both our bodies and
minds at ease, promoting physical and psychological restoration and
subsequent functioning.
#7. Don’t Smoke
Smoking is associated with dozens of types of cancer, as well as heart disease, dementia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. According to the American Cancer Association, smoking causes one out of every five deaths
in the United States, killing more people than alcohol, car accidents,
HIV, guns, and illegal drugs combined. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, your body literally starts repairing the
damage caused by smoking within days of stopping.
#8. Don’t Drink Too Much
Like smoking, excessive alcohol use is associated with a number of chronic diseases,
such as liver cirrhosis, throat cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Drinking too much also impairs sleep and daily function. The good news
is that if you enjoy alcohol, drinking reasonably — one drink per day for women and up to two for men — carries minimal risk. “Moderation is key,” says Joyner.
The most important principles to grow your body and mind
“Principles
are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that
gets you what you want out of life,” writes investor Ray Dalio in his
bestselling book, Principles. Dalio
focuses on skills like decision-making, investing, and managing
organizations. While reading through it, I became inspired to put
togethermy own list of
principles that I’ve devised after more than five years of interviewing
and coaching elite performers in sports, business, and beyond. Like
Dalio’s, these principles are a foundation for a better you.
1. Stress + Rest = Growth
Whether
you want to grow your body or mind or get better at a specific skill,
you need to push to the outer limits of your current ability, and then
follow that hard work with appropriate recovery and reflection. Decades
of research in exercise science show that this is how you get stronger and faster, and the latest cognitive science shows that this is also how you get smarter and more creative.
2. Focus on the Process, Not Results
The
best athletes and entrepreneurs aren’t focused on being the best;
they’re focused on constant self-improvement. When you stop stressing
about external outcomes — like whether you win or lose, attain a certain
promotion, or achieve some other form of validation — a huge burden is
lifted off your shoulders and you can focus your energy on the things
you can control. As a result, you almost always end up performing
better. Research shows that concentrating on the process is best for both performance and mental health.
3. Stay Humble
Humility
is the key to growth. If you don’t maintain an open mind, you’ll
severely limit your opportunities to learn and make progress. The best
athletes trust their training programs but are also constantly looking
for new ways to improve. Same goes for the best thinkers and creatives;
they tend to be confident but not arrogant,
and they check their egos at the door. Knowledge is always evolving and
advancing — if you want to evolve and advance with it, you need to keep
an open mind.
4. Build Your Tribe
There’s
an old saying that you’re the average of the five people you spend the
most time with. Turns out that’s true. A large and growing body of
behavioral science research shows that motivation (or lack thereof) is
contagious. One study, “Is Poor Fitness Contagious?Evidence
from Randomly Assigned Friends,” found that up to 70 percent of your
fitness level may be explained by the people you train with. Other research
shows that if you work on mental tasks with people who are internally
driven and love what they do, you’re more likely to end up the same way.
If, on the other hand, you surround yourself with people who have a
negative attitude and are focused solely on winning the rat race, you
set yourself up for a less fulfilling experience.
5. Take Small, Consistent Steps to Achieve Big Gains
Habits
build upon themselves. If you want to make any kind of significant
change, you’d be wise to do so gradually and over time. In Stanford
researcher BJ Fogg’s behavior model,
whether someone takes action depends on both their motivation and their
ability to complete a given task. If you regularly overshoot on the
ability side of the equation, you’re liable to become discouraged and
quickly flame out. But if you incrementally increase the challenge, what
was hard last week will seem easier today. Put differently: Small and consistent victories compound over time, leading to massive gains.
6. Be a Minimalist to Be a Maximalist
You can’t be great at everything. Regularly reflect on what matters most to you and focus your efforts there. In the words
of Mayo Clinic researcher and human performance expert Michael Joyner:
“You’ve got to be a minimalist to be a maximalist; if you want to be
really good at, master, and thoroughly enjoy one thing, you’ve got to
say no to many others.”
7. Make the Hard Thing Easier
Willpower
is overrated. Rather than relying completely on self-control,
intentionally design your environment to make the hard thing easier. For
example, if you (like everyone) are constantly distracted by your
smartphone, don’t just turn it off — remove it altogether
from where you’re trying to concentrate. If your challenge is eating
healthy, instead of relying on your willpower at 9 p.m. after a glass of
wine, simply keep the brownies out of the house. This applies to
everything. Don’t just think about how you’re going to accomplish your
goals; think about how you’re going to designfor them.
8. Remember to Experience Joy
At first, this may sound crazy. Who doesn’t want
to experience joy? But many Type A people are so driven to keep growing
and progressing that sometimes they forget to be fully present for
special moments or neglect to pause and celebrate their milestones.
Don’t fall for this trap — it’s an especially dangerous one. “Moments of
joy don’t just give us happiness — they also give us strength,” says Adam Grant, author of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. When things aren’t going well, we can fall back on happy memories to give us the resilience to move forward.
There
is nothing fancy about any of these principles, though they do work
best when all are applied together. Build them into your life and they
will help you do it — whatever that is — better.
If you enjoyed reading and want to keep the conversation going, follow me on Twitter @Bstulberg where I share all my work and love to discuss big and meaningful ideas.
Aging has always been considered an inevitable process. But the discovery that the aging process itself could be ‘hacked’
has led to the concept of ‘health span’ as opposed to merely
‘lifespan’. A long life is not necessarily marred by disability and
death and specific dietary interventions in particular may promote
healthy long life.
However,
much of this data results from animal data as it is difficult to
experiment on live humans. The table below illustrates the results from
dietary, exercise, genetic and drug interventions and their main
mechanism of action. Pay particular attention to the column ‘Main
Mechanism of Action’. This is the best guess as to how all these
different interventions may increase lifespan.
Did you notice something rather striking? Almost all of the interventions work through the same pathway — decreased nutrient sensing — which also includes decreased growth factor signalling and increased autophagy. As you may recall from our previous post on mTOR, the main 3 nutrient sensors of the human body, which is similar to most animals are
mTOR
AMPK
Insulin
Most of these interventions affect one or more of these pathways. With TOR, less is more.
Blocking mTOR improves protein handling, increases autophagy and
enhances stem cell function. That is, from all the animal research,
increased health span depends not on having more nutrients, it is having less. Increased longevity depends on decreasing
the nutrient sensors (lower mTOR and insulin, higher AMPK) at least
periodically. This is fascinating, because the most ancient dietary
intervention is fasting — a clear form of decreasing nutrient sensing
pathways. Humans have used fasting (or cleansing, detoxification,
purification or whatever you call it) as a method of increasing wellness
since antiquity. Benjamin Franklin, kind of a smart guy, said “The best
of all medicines is resting and fasting”
In
addition, there is a clear correlation between better mitochondrion
functioning and decreased nutrient sensors. Mitochondrion are the
powerplants of the cells, and it is obvious that cells need to have
power to work properly. Activation of SIRT1 and AMPK activates PGC-1a, a
key regulator of mitochondrial function, antioxidant defenses, and
fatty acid oxidation.
AMPK
is a highly conserved regulator of energy homeostasis and links
energetics to aging. AMPK is a sort of reverse fuel gauge of the cell.
ATP is the molecule that carries energy in a cell. When this level gets
low, AMPK goes up. AMPK induces mitochondrial biogenesis (creation of
new mitochondrion) as well as regulates mitochondrial metabolism and
dynamics. In the 2017 study, Weir et al show that AMPK can maintain
youthful mitochondrial network morphology even with aging. When they
exposed animals to Intermittent Fasting, there was a striking change in
mitochondrial networks. Both fission and fusion are required to maintain
health and lifespan.
Recent (2017 Weir et al)
work highlights the key role that dietary restriction may increase
lifespan by affecting mitochondrial networks. Mitochondrion are part of
networks that can fuse together (fusion) or break apart (fission) in
constant remodeling. A dysregulation of these mitochondrial dynamics and
abnormal morphology (shape) of these mitochondrion are hallmarks of
aging and thought to contribute to many degenerative diseases such as
Alzheimers and Parkinsons. With age, many studies report increased
swollem fragmented mitochondria. Mitophagy, a process of degrading
damaged mitochondrion and recycling, plays an important role in keeping
the dynamics normal.
If this holds true for humans, then dietary interventions are the key to longevity.
This has refocused attention to meal frequency, timing and intermittent
fasting. During our evolutionary history, most large animals and humans
ate only intermittently. Long periods of starvation were normal,
whether due to seasonal changes or due to episodic weather events. Many
animals developed forms of quiescence in response to the onset of food
shortages. If food was not available, then most of the cells in our body
stop growing. Importantly, the same genes that control quiescence also
control lifespan. In rodents, fasting for 24 hours every other day or
twice weekly extends lifespan up to 30%. Chronic caloric restriction may
also have similar benefits. Fasting may promote mitochondrial function,
trigger autophagy and DNA repair pathways.
But
what is more controversial is whether the benefits relate to caloric
restriction in general, or whether it relates to specific nutrients. Original studies from 1985
suggested that it was calories, rather than protein. However, a point
overlooked originally was that these animals were not food restricted.
Subsequent studies, (eg. Grandison et al, 2009,)Solon-Biet 2014, Nakagawa 2012
and others pointed specifically to protein restriction as the key to
longevity in these animal studies. Most believe this is due to dietary
protein’s key regulatory effect on mTOR and IGF1. In humans, unlike
rodents, severe calorie restriction does not reduce serum iGF-1
concentration unless protein intake is also reduced.
Is
it all protein or certain amino acids? The answer is not known. In
animal studies the specific amino acid that is critical differs between
species. In humans, branched chain amino acids seem to be a particularly
strong activatory of mTOR.
Decreased Nutrients Sensors
Compared
to other dietary interventions, intermittent fasting appears to be far
more powerful because alone has the ability to affect all 3 nutrient sensors simultaneously,
as well as stimulate autophagy and mitophagy. mTOR is sensitive to
dietary protein. Insulin is sensitive to proteins and carbohydrates. So
eating a pure fat diet (not realistic) may lower mTOR and insulin, but
will not be able to raise AMPK, since that senses the energy status of
the cells. If you are eat a very high fat diet (ketogenic) your body
will still be able to metabolize this to energy — generating ATP and
lowering AMPK. Only 2 of the 3 nutrient sensing pathways have been
alerted. Only complete restriction of nutrients will have this effect
(ie. fasting).
Theoretically,
eating less frequently may significantly improve health. Most
omnivorous mammals eat only intermittently, since we tend not to live on
a Petri dish where nutrients are constantly available. Carnivores like
lions and tigers often eat once a week or less. Ancestral humans tend to
eat intermittently depending on food availability. Being able to
function at a high level, both physically and intellectually, for
extended fasting periods was fundamentally important to survival. This
explains our well developed systems for food storage (glycogen in the
liver, and body fat), and also our highly conserved nutrient sensors to
slow cellular growth during a period of low nutrient availability.
Things
changed somewhat with the agricultural revolution approximately 10,000
years ago. From a hunter-gatherer society, agriculture allowed
populations of humans to stay in one area and resulted in more stable
food availability. However, there would still be seasonal variation and
possibly long weeks or months where food is less available. There would
also be shorter periods of time, days — weeks, where food was
restricted.
Most
humans ate between 2–3 times per day. Without light, it would be
difficult to eat a ‘midnight’ snack in the pitch blackness. So early
humans still followed a tradition of a long overnight fasting
period — hence the term ‘break-fast’.
Different
nutrient sensors are sensitive to different time durations. That is, it
would be useful for our body to know whether nutrients were restricted
in the short term (overnight) in the medium durations (days) or long
durations (weeks — months, seasons). You can see that our human body has
evolved exactly those same capabilities in our nutrient sensors.
Insulin (short term)
mTOR (days)
AMPK (weeks)
Insulin
spikes quickly after a meal, but falls just as quickly during an
overnight fast. It responds primarily to carbohydrates and proteins.
While protein does not raise blood glucose, it raises insulin quite a
bit. It also raises glucagon, so that blood glucose stays stable. mTOR
is mostly sensitive to protein and particularly branched chain amino
acids. It does not fall as quickly and takes somewhere from 18–30 hours
to activate. AMPK is the reverse fuel gauge of the cell (AMPK goes up as
cellular energy stores of ATP deplete) and only increases with
prolonged energy deprivation. All macronutrients can contribute to ATP
production, so AMPK is sensitive to all macronutrients.
These
nutrient sensors overlap somewhat in their sensitivities and functions
but each is also unique. In this manner, our cells are able to gain
exquisite information about the particular macronutrient availability of
the outside world. Crafted by millions of years of evolution, the
biochemical wizardry of our nutrient sensors makes a mockery of our
comparatively dull brain that can only say ‘Look like food to Grok. Grok
eat.’ But we don’t need to understand all the complicated biology to
gain the benefits. We can begin to regain some of our lost ancient
wisdom by following the ancient food tradition of taking a break from
eating once in a while. Give yourself a chance to digest the food you’ve
eaten. Intermittent fasting. Boom.
