January 23, 2019

Sun worship:

• Comprehensive and enlightening article from Outside Online. I love the title, Is Sunscreen the New Margarine. Hopefully the headline alone will cause some people to read and find out that margarine is a horrible poisonous atrocity.
• The article dives in to some interesting literature on skin cancer and mortality. If you develop non-melanoma skin cancer, you are actually less likely to die from cancer and many other diseases, including cardiovascular causes. Even in folks who developed melanoma, the ones who had more sun exposure were less likely to die from it. • Vitamin D is usually given credit for the effects, BUT Vitamin D pills do not seem to extend life expectancy according to recent, very well done articles in NEJM. • Australia apparently has much looser recommendations on how much sunlight is safe. • The bottom line always seems to be: avoid sunburn. To do this, it often helps to have small amounts of exposure all year, with increasing time in the sun during the spring leading up to summer, “get your base.” If you head down to Cancun for spring break when you haven’t seen the sun yet this year, you’ll get burned and increase cancer risk. Just like exercise, cold exposure, heat exposure, fasting, low doses are beneficial, high doses can be harmful. 

Power of Money:

• Post from thehappymd.com on how to spend money to make you happy. Hint, it is not a foreign car. According to (at least) 3 studies, money can buy happiness when you spend it on buying back your time.
• What do you hate doing? What takes you far longer than it would take another person. Cleaning your house, yard work, dry cleaning, dog walking? You will not regret outsourcing this stuff. 

MeRT:

• Researchers are investigating a new transcranial magnetic treatment, apparently effective for PTSD. Magnetic EEG/ECG-guided Resonant Therapy (MeRT) has shown remarkable effects so far in a randomized controlled trial in “door kicker” SEALs. 
• They believe some brains have lost the natural information-processing rhythm, its “dominant frequency” (how many times per second the brain pulses alpha waves). The front and back of the brain lose synchronization. 
• Ben Greenfield has covered various brain stimulation techniques to optimize cognitive ability. Definitely want to see more data proving safety in manipulating brain electricity, but promising results so far. 
• Thanks Dan O’Brien for the very cool article. 

Stoicism:

• Just stumbled upon a new term apparently attributed to Stoic philosophy, anacoluthia, loosely translated as mutual entailment of the virtues. Jim Loehr, a performance coach from the 90s, talked about it in a couple of his books. He says “no virtue is a virtue by itself, all virtues are entailed.” An example: “honesty without compassion becomes cruelty.” 
• “There is always an optimal value”, explained the philosopher Gregory Bateson, “beyond which anything is toxic, no matter what: oxygen, sleep, psychotherapy, philosophy”. The Stoic philosophers referred to this paradox as anacoluthia, the mutual entailment of virtues. No virtue, they argued, is a virtue by itself.”
• Some dude even started (and then kind of gave up on) a blog at anacoluthia.net. 
• The concept of anacoluthia could inspire us to be well-rounded, to strive for Aristotle’s Golden Mean. (Fun fact, according to researchers who studied Wikipedia, Aristotle is the most famous person of all time). 

Quote:

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, knowing it must work it’s hardest to outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up knowing it must run harder and faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle — one thing is for sure: When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

– Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

Martin Huecker, MD, is co-editor in chief of the free, open access Journal of Wellness. He is an Associate Professor and Research Director in the Department of Emergency Medicine (EM) at the University of Louisville. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. Dr. Huecker graduated from UofL’s EM Residency Program and (Chief Resident in 2011). He works full time seeing patients and teaching residents in the UofL Emergency Department. His diverse research interests include substance use, accidental hypothermia, and healthcare professional wellness. Dr. Huecker is also a Certified Lifestyle Medicine Physician (DipABLM). He loves books, (cold) trail runs, dogs, and coffee. His wife is an OB/GYN and they have 4 children with cool names.