Skip to main content

Posts that Could Change Your Life

What if one or two little tweaks could transform your life? Instead of spending years in therapy, hours a week on the treadmill, gagging down whole grains every day, or tearing your hair out over a positive test for an illness, it's possible that making a few little changes could change everything.

I've added a list of posts that could do this for a lot of people (see the list below my profile). Don't worry, there's nothing to buy. You might need to check out a library book and do some N=1 experiments on yourself. Overall, these should save you time and decrease your aggravation.

Cardio: A Waste of Valuable Dance Time. Actually, there's a school of thought that cardio is a waste of any kind of time (unless you enjoy it). Sure, you burn calories, but you move less later and get hungrier. Studies have shown that it's not effective for losing weight. I don't do cardio (I lift weights instead) and don't need to lose weight. That wasn't the case when I was on a higher-carb diet: I was working out hard six times a week (three cardio sessions and three weight lifting sessions) and I was gaining weight! (See photos here.) Just think about all the time you could be napping, reading or playing video games--I mean, helping science instead of pounding the treadmill. If you want to sweat, take a dance class at a night club. If you need some flow in your life (flow being "the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity, according to Wikipedia), this is one way to get it. It's even more fun than it looks.

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food. It's counterintuitive, but your mind is really your brain, which is part of your body. Without the proper nutrients, it doesn't work properly. It might make you dumber; it definitely affects your mood. Ever notice how your coworkers are lethargic around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon? It's likely falling blood sugar from a high-carb lunch a few hours earlier. Ever feel depressed on a low-fat diet? It's not just you--even comedian Tom Naughton said it happened to him. It happens to me on anything but a high-fat, low carb diet.

Positive Test? Avoid a Nightmare by Using Math. Here's one that even regular readers might not know about. Suppose you're asymptomatic but have a positive test for an illness. What are the odds you actually have the illness? It actually depends on some statistics and a little arithmetic (don't worry, it's not as hard as it sounds). Check out Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. If you've had a positive test, you may have reason for cautious optimism.

Why You Can't Cure a Sugar Habit with Starch. Here, chemistry meets common sense. Those lovely complex carbohydrates are made of sugar molecules, which is what your digestive system breaks them into. Health-conscious people want to avoid sugar. Yet so many of them eat complex carbohydrates. If you're spinning your wheels substituting starch for sugar, it isn't your fault.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

YouTube invites creators back; says Biden pushed censorship on COVID and politics

Google, which owns YouTube, is inviting back creators it kicked off the platform for content about politics, elections, and COVID. Google says the Biden administration pressured them to censor this content, and now Europe is trying to force them to censor lawful content. Jim Jordan, Representative from Ohio, explains on X. Thread here .  Created with AI on ImageFX.  YouTube creators banned or suspended for COVID content (source: Grok). Click to enlarge. Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan 2h • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X 🚨BREAKING: Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. Thread: YouTube also: -Admits the Biden Admin censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong” -Confirms that the Biden Admin wanted Americans censored for speech that did not violate YouTube’s policies -Details when YouTube began rolling back its censorship policies on p...

Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it.  I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,  My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...