April 10, 2019

Wellness:

• This week is the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Wellness Week. They have a nice email series, and do a solid job of encouraging us to prioritize wellness. In the EM office this week we have good coffee, free massages, and a handful of other perks for the residents. 
• No matter what you do for a living, spend some time this week, or at least today, thinking about your own health and wellness. 

Carbs:

• Carbs are ok as long as you earn them. And even then, watch out for the refined ones. This article, Sugar Rush or Sugar Crash? A Meta-Analysis of Carbohydrate Effects on Mood, covers 31 studies and comes to some dismal conclusions for Carbs. Their highlights:
1. Carbohydrates do not have a beneficial effect on any aspect of mood.
2. Carbohydrate consumption lowers alertness within 60 minutes after consumption.
3. Carbohydrates increase fatigue within 30 minutes post-consumption.
• Jump off the carb rollercoaster.

HIIT:

• Want to starve cancer cells, try high intensity interval training. This was a human study involving intense exercise, then they drew blood and tried to grow cancer cells in vitro. The inflammatory cytokines seemed to inhibit cancer cell growth.   Here is the actual article. Thanks Brian Ferguson for links. Get out there and do a minute of HIIT. 

Simplicity: 

• Post from Book of Life on simplicity. Fits nicely with the idea of oscillation. In the U.S. life is too linear, we never cycle down; its 80mph all the time. This post recommends ways to slow yourself down, let your body recover from the action:
1. Fewer people; fewer committments
2. More Sleep
3. Less Media
4. More thinking (sifting through the content our active minds)
5. Less nutrition, give your metabolic system a rest
6. Tone down expectations
7. Witness more beauty
• Below is a cool excerpt on how we devour media. Put your phone down, close the browser windows or Instagram. 

Quote: 

Every minute of every day presents us with untold options for filling our minds with the mania, exploits, disasters, furies, reversals, ambitions, triumphs, insanity and cataclysms of strangers around our benighted planet. Always, news organisations speak of our need to know – and to need to know right now. But what they have left out is our equally great, and often even greater need not to know: because we cannot change anything, because the stories are too violent, dispiriting and sad, because our minds are fragile, because we have responsibilities closer to home, because we need to lead our own lives rather than be torn apart by stories of the lives of others who are ultimately as remote from and irrelevant to us as the inhabitants of the Egyptian court of King Sneferu in late 2,613 BC.

– Alain de Botton

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.