Starving:
• I am just discovering Theodore Dalrymple. That feeling when you find a new author you love, and he or she already has like 10 books! He is a prison psychiatrist in the UK and has been called the best doctor writer since William Carlos Williams. **I think that award goes to Richard Selzer. • An essay in one of his books is called the Starving Criminal. He leads with a study of vitamin supplementation in criminals: the treatment group had one third fewer disciplinary offenses or acts of violence compared to placebo group. He backs this up with vivid anecdotes of his patients in British prisons. People would beg to NOT be granted bail so they could recover health in prison, eating more than “chips and chocolate.” A traditionalist, Dalrymple points out that most of these criminals never really shared meals with their families, instead would eat “furtively … [as a ] solitary vice.”
• Have a meal with someone today – put the phones down and share stories from the past.
Posture:
• Another posture pearl here. This video shows a scapular retraction exercise. Similar to the chin tucks, this exercise activates the lower trapezius muscle, taking tension away from the upper trapezius. The upper trapezius is (usually) the cause of your neck pain! I was instructed to perform a bit of depression with this exercise, pulling the shoulder blades downward more than backward.
• Do these and chin tucks daily.
Equanimity:
• Check out this video on Stoicism, and Massimo Pigliucci’s book. Thank you Naren Vellanki for the suggestion.
Rest:
• Check out this great post on biphasic sleep from last month on Delanceyplace.com. This is website with a free daily email with an excerpt from something interesting in history. Check out the letter to subscribers. This passage talks about the deeply biologic phenomenon of naps. All humans have a mid afternoon circadian drop in alertness. It is natural to give in to the urge and take a 20 minute nap.
Healthy Snack:
• Another new low carb dessert on the market. KNOW cookies are soft, almost muffin-like. No super sweet. Strong coconut flavor from the coconut flour. One half of a cookie is a solid snack. Drastically better than Quest cookies. Have only seen them on Amazon so far.
Quote:
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, thill they take root in our personal experience.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
