Blood cholesterol is clearly an important indicator of disease risk and worth monitoring. It’s frequently suggested that exercise may help lower and control our overall cholesterol levels and it’s frequently suggested that minimizing our overall consumption of saturated fat and food containing cholesterol may help lower and control our overall cholestrol levels as well. But the real smoking gun here… is our overall protein intake from animal based products (i.e. meat, dairy, eggs, poultry and fish). As our consumption of animal protein goes up, so too does our cholesterol levels.
The solution? Eat more plant-based foods and consume no more than 5% of your diet from animal based foods.
The Warrior Ethos goes well beyound soldiers and battlefields… in other words, we all fight our own personal battles, frequently far away from open and armed conflict. We work to define why we exist and what matters to us. We struggle for our position in society and for what we believe in. We fight for our families, our friends and even against the aging process. I believe in this kind of fight and what it can make of us…
Can we live robustly until our last breath? Do we have to suffer from debilitating conditions and sickness? Is it possible to add more vibrant years to our lives? In The End of Illness, David B. Agus, MD, one of the world’s leading cancer doctors, researchers, and technology innovators, tackles these fundamental questions, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misperceptions about what “health” means. With a blend of storytelling, landmark research, and provocative ideas on health, Dr. Agus presents an eye-opening picture of the human body and all of the ways it works—and fails—showing us how a new perspective on our individual health will allow each of us to achieve that often elusive but now reachable goal of a long, vigorous life.
When Dr. Agus decided to pursue a career in oncology, many of his mentors questioned his choice. Why, they asked, would a promising young doctor want to enter a field known for its inescapably grim outcomes? But it was precisely the lack of progress that inspired Dr. Agus to join the war on cancer. He moved away from the modern methods of the medical establishment, which aim to reduce our afflictions to a single point. Instead, as he does in this book, Dr. Agus argues for the adoption of a systemic view—a way of honoring our bodies as complex, whole systems. This outlook informs how we can avoid all illnesses—not just cancer. Dr. Agus empowers us to take charge of our individual health in personal, customized ways we could not have imagined before.
This indispensable book is not only a manifesto—a call for revising the way we think about health—it’s also filled with practical but impossible-to-ignore suggestions, including:
• How taking multivitamins and supplements could significantly increase our risk for cancer over time.
• Why sitting down most of the day, despite a strenuous morning workout, can be as bad as or worse than smoking.
• How sneaky sources of daily inflammation—from high heels to the common cold—can lead to a fatal heart attack, and even rob us of our sanity.
• How three inexpensive medications—aspirin, statins, and an annual flu vaccine—can substantially change the course of our health for the better.
• How taking shortcuts to health via blending fruits and vegetables, and sometimes even by purchasing what we think is “fresh,” could be shortchanging our health.
• The single most important thing we can do today to preserve our health and happiness that costs absolutely nothing.
Dr. Agus also offers insights and access to breathtaking and powerful new technologies that promise to transform medicine in our generation. In the course of offering recommendations, he emphasizes his belief that there is no “right” answer, no master guide that is “one size fits all.” Each one of us must get to know our bodies in uniquely personal ways, and he shows us exactly how to do that so that we can individually create a plan for wellness.
The End of Illness is a bold call for all of us to become our own personal health advocates, and a dramatic departure from orthodox thinking. This is a seminal work that promises to revolutionize how we live.
Success is most frequently synonyms with money, but without close interpersonal relationships, good health and a properly functioning body, as well as the ability to enjoy what we already have… we’re certainly not successful. Remember, rock stars commit suicide and millionares take prozac… it’s the little things, that we already have, that matter the most.
Being busy has become a sign of success, even a status symbol in our society… ever been asked if you’re “staying busy”?
In fact, being busy from a distance looks dam impressive and even makes us appear important to others, but its frequenlty fluff with no real substance. The look of success, without feeling successful.
Being busy makes us feel important and valuable… but are we really doing something important and valuable?
Are we spending too much time being busy… and not enough time with our families and friends?
Are we taking care of our bodies and developing our minds… or spending too much time being busy?
Are we taking the time to appreciate what we’ve already earned… or simply staying busy?
It’s most likely that we lose – more than we gain – when we are permanently busy.
Without daily thought and careful reflection in our day-to-day actions, we frequently find ourselves saying, buying, doing or accepting things that are unwelcome in our lives. Perhaps, we should slow down and consider what is most important to us and then have the strength-of-mind to actually follow through with it.
We make decisions together here based on your personal history, present physical and mental state, level of motivation, available spare time and future goals. Two minds fully engaged on the same subject, one from an objective point of view and the other from the subjective point of view, makes for shared decision making.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.
There are a multiplicity of studies (large and small) being performed by individuals to large institutions at any given time… but NOT all studies are created equal.
Studies performed by whom? Did they have an agenda or a preference to the outcome? Were they deeply experienced in the scientific method? Did they intentionally find the results they were looking for?
How large or long was the study? How many subjects were directly involved? How long were the subjects followed or observed?
How well was the experiment constructed? Did the people administering the experiment control for all the possible variables that could influence their experiment and the results? Was the design of the study even capable of finding an accurate answer to the question being asked?
Was it a “double blind” study, where those performing the study, as well those involved directly within the study, kept unaware of the critical aspects of the experiment?
Well done studies are expensive, time consuming and laborious, but most studies are done cheaply, too briefly and with poor design! Furthermore, biased studies are worthless studies and they’re all too common in this capitalistic society.
Well done studies are very important to the lives we lead and they influence every aspect of it as well. From the construction of the car you drive, to the medical procedures you had performed last year, to the products you consume off the shelf… but consider the source of the study before you blindly accept its dogma or cynically reject its findings.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Book Description:
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled “quiet,” it is to introverts that we owe many of the great contributions to society–from van Gogh’s sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer.
Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie’s birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical megachurch, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects. She talks to Asian-American students who feel alienated from the brash, backslapping atmosphere of American schools. She questions the dominant values of American business culture, where forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and where the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. And she draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience to reveal the surprising differences between extroverts and introverts.
Perhaps most inspiring, she introduces us to successful introverts–from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Finally, she offers invaluable advice on everything from how to better negotiate differences in introvert-extrovert relationships to how to empower an introverted child to when it makes sense to be a “pretend extrovert.”
This extraordinary book has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how introverts see themselves.
It requires above average mental effort to exercise consistent will-power, self-control and good judgement… exhaust yourself mentally (and/or physically) and you will find yourself making poor decisions.
Have ANY 2 of the following 4 risk factors in your mid 40’s and you increase your risk of heart disease by 42% (the story from NBC Nightly News is linked below).
Personal trainers, among many other professionals, frequently believe they need to command the floor with fast talking and artificial charisma. I think it’s best to remember that we have two ears and one mouth and just like everyone else we should use them proportionately.
