• Jeff Buckley released one album (Grace, 1994) before his accidental death by drowning at age 30. Listening to his music now sounds totally different than it did back in college. He had such a unique voice and instrument arrangement, but some of his songs still capture the 90s grunge vibe. If you listen to nothing else, check out the cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Calcium from food or pills?
• In a recent newsletter, Dr. Gabe Mirkin cites studies that seem to prove we should get out calcium from foods. Our bone density goes down as we age, so many doctors recommend calcium pills. In a study of 2700 people over 10 years, those that took calcium pills had a 22% increased risk of arteriosclerotic plaques forming in the arteries leading to their hearts, compared to those who did not (J American Heart Association, October 11, 2016). But, those who got significant calcium from food (>1400 milligrams per day) were 27 percent less likely to have plaques. Calcium pills also correlated with increased risk for kidney stones in susceptible people (Am J Clin Nutr, July 2011;94(1):270-277).
• As with most nutrients, calcium in pills works differently in the body than calcium in foods.
Low Carb or Low Fat
• Interesting preprint (unpublished article) that describes how carb diets do different things to the brain compared to low fat diets. A low carb diet might be easier to adhere to because of reduced craving and the drug-like effects of food.
• This makes sense to people who get on the ‘carb rollercoaster’ of blood sugar rise and fall. When subjects in this study stopped their experimental diets, those who had been on the low fat diet had more craving for high carb + high fat foods (which are the most fattening foods).
Lean Mass Hyperresponder
• This is an interesting article by David Feldman, an engineer who has become famous in the lipid / cholesterol world. They wrote a paper about 548 adults who voluntarily eat a low carbohydrate diet, most of whom experienced beneficial body composition results.
• The authors describe a certain “phenotype,” a physical type of person, who has distinct cholesterol / lipid laboratory changes while on a low carb diet. This lab phenotype is summarized as low triglycerides (good), high HDL (generally good), but high LDL cholesterol (usually considered bad).
• The author team has a hypothesis, backed by other studies, that people who have high LDL but low triglycerides and high HDL, may have no increased risk of cardiac events, especially if they are otherwise metabolically healthy (usually meaning physically fit and insulin sensitive). Interestingly, when subjects reintroduced some carbohydrates, they saw LDL decrease.
• This is a topic of debate in the nutrition world, so be careful and consult with your doctor.
Seaweed
• Biological Activities of Rhamnan Sulfate Extract from the Green Algae Monostroma nitidum (Hitoegusa). This extract from green algae has properties that could protect us from viral infection and improve blood vessel health in people with metabolic disorders, likely due to antithrombotic (blood thinning) effects.
• RS strongly inhibits collagen, thrombin, and ristocetin/VWF-induced platelet aggregation – again, thinning the blood. The compound might be anti-inflammatory in endothelial cells that line our blood vessels. It might also decrease LDL levels and reduce glucose spikes. RS is found in many plants, one of which is spirulina.
• One of the more reputable appearing products with RS is Arterosil, could have great potential for prevention of cardiovascular disease.
Inventing Drugs
• A guy named Felix Hoffman synthesized / invented Aspirin and Heroin 11 days apart!
Ruck Meetings
• Michael Easter, who wrote Comfort Crisis, just wrote a brief post on GoRuck.com about Ruck meetings. I have told many patients about this. If you don’t have to be at your computer on that next Zoom meeting or conference call, throw on a backpack and walk around the neighborhood.
• Some tips from Easter: Scout the route (to ensure a reliable cell signal), lighten the load (you don’t want to be panting when it is your turn to talk), walk in green spaces, and avoid noisy environments.
4000 Weeks
• The premise of this very popular book by Oliver Burkeman is that humans have an average about 4000 weeks on Earth, based on 80 year life expectancy (Jeff Buckley had about 1500 weeks, 600 weeks in adulthood). We need to make them count. Here are a few notes from the book. Plus see the amazing quote at the end.
“The spirit of the times is one of joyless urgency, preparing ourselves and our children to be means to inscrutable ends that are utterly not our own.” – Marilynne Robinson
Limited time and stress over this as the “human disease.” Unbearable only if you think there is a cure, which there isn’t.
Paradox of limitation, more you try to fit everything in, achieve total control, the more stressful empty and frustrating life gets.
C Northcote Parkinson: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Getting through email generates more email – Efficiency trap.
The more you think it is possible to find time for everything, the less valuable time becomes. Immortal people wouldn’t need to prioritize time, value goes away. Rather than clear the decks, think about what deserves time the most. Everything is borrowed time. Learn about the “Joy of Missing Out.”
Seductive lure of convenience. Delegating tasks just frees up time for more tasks. Unsmoothed textures of life might be the most valuable parts, providing meaning.
Bad events shock us into valuing time more. Can we learn this lesson without the loss / grief?
Be a better procrastinator, put off the right things. At any moment we are procrastinating on almost everything.
Your top priority / creative project: spend some time on it every day. Do not wait until all of the other tasks are completed, there won’t be any time left over.
1. Spend first hour of each day on most important thing.
2. Schedule ‘meetings with yourself’
3. Limit work in progress, only have 1, 2 or at most 3 things you are working on actively. Resist allure of middling priorities. Make a top 25 list, focus on top 5, ignore the bottom 20 (Buffet story).
Zen Buddhist lesson that entirety of suffering is an effort to resist paying attention to present moment, “This shouldn’t be happening!”
Robert Grunion: patience as tangible, almost edible, “chewiness.” Three principles of patience: 1. develop a taste for having problems (life is a series of problems). 2. Embrace radical incrementalism (stop when time is up, leave something for tomorrow, strengthens the patience muscle). 3. Originality lies on the far side of unoriginality.
Digital nomad, not an ideal. Need to sync your own own time with other people’s. Social regulation of time, rhythms of community. This means surrendering some of your individual time sovereignty. Individualistic freedom desynchronizes you from others.
Burkeman tells us to ask 5 questions, and then gives 10 tools we can use:
Questions:
1. Where in life are you pursuing comfort when you need a little discomfort. Ask “Does this choice diminish me or enlarge me?”
2. Are you holding yourself to a standard of productivity or performance that is impossible to meet?
3. How can you accept that you are who you are, not the person you ought to be?
4. Where in life are you holding back until you feel like you know what you are doing?
5. How would you spend days if you didn’t care about seeing actions reach fruition?
Tools:
1. Fixed volume approach to productivity. Have 2 to-do lists, one open and one closed. Predetermined time boundaries for work.
2. Serialize. One big project at a time. Postpone everything else.
3. Decide in advance what to fail at. “Strategic underachievement. Fail on a cyclical basis.”
4. Focus on what you have completed, not what’s left. Small wins.
5. Consolidate caring.
6. Embrace boring and single-purpose technologic devices.
7. Seek out novelty in the mundane.
8. Practice a deliberate attitude of curiosity, especially when unpleasant things happening.
9. Act on generous impulses right away.
10. Practice doing nothing. “Nothing is harder to do that nothing.”
Quote
In his play The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard puts an intensified version of this sentiment into the mouth of the nineteenth-century Russian philosopher Alexander Herzen, as he struggles to come to terms with the death of his son, who has drowned in a shipwreck–and whose life, Herzen insists, was no less valuable for never coming to fruition in adult accomplishments.
“Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up,” Herzen says. “But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment … Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late.”
