Eye strain:
• “Digital related eye strain.” Check out this NPR article about this problem and what we can do to combat it. Easiest to implement is the 20/20/20 rule. Also, some research suggests that black font on a white or cream computer screen is the healthiest / least-straining way to read.
• So this newsletter is using the template I send out to the medical residents. Please reply let me know if you have a strong opinion as to which format is most pleasing to the eye. Thanks Suzanne McGee for the link and info.
Looking good:
• I still refer back to this post from 2016 on how to “look” primal. Sisson breaks what we look at into short range, mid range, and long range. And most of us today focus on very close range (computers, phones, books) and close range. Reading and studying in medical school caused me to become very slightly myopic (from “normal vision” to -0.75). They did this in cats, induced near-sightedness. Look at far away objects, let your eye’s ciliary muscles relax, let your lenses flatten.
• This also links to the Own the Day practice of the wide peripheral gaze. A visual meditation where you look at a far away object, then let your gaze relax from the focal point to far left, far right, upper and lower visual fields. This is one of the best descriptions I could find.
Pain:• NY Times piece from Jan ’18 by an American who had a hysterectomy in Germany. She contrasts the expectations she had for post-operative pain relief with what her surgeon in Germany prescribed. She traces her own evolution in understanding her body and its healing.
• A strong first hand case for the truly limited argument for using opioids for all pain.
Diet for Cancer:
• Haven’t posted much on ketogenic diet and effects on tumor cells in the newsletters. A fascinating place to start is this blog post by Travis Christofferson, who wrote a book called Tripping over the Truth. The blog post is now 5 years old, basically a summary of his book.
• With that background, it is promising even if a little bit late, that Siddhartha Mukherjee, famous author and cancer researcher, is now conducting a study on diet and cancer. This brief Guardian article covers the story.
It’s a Beautiful Day:
• Mr. Rogers is still popular, with an upcoming movie and a few more books. Here is a brief but informative article summarizing Mr. Roger’s rules for talking to children, and on broadcasting to children.
• Rule #1 is always to be very clear in the meaning of what you are saying, closely followed in importance by Rule #2 to frame what you say in a positive way.
• We often do not take enough care in what we say to children. His other instruction from a prior newsletter was to not hurry. Be patient with children. Their sense of time differs from ours and it is pretty enlightening to just watch a child respond to an environment.
Quote:
Last week’s Voltaire quote had a slight typo. The correct version is
“Cherish those who seek the truth, but BEWARE of those who find it.”
I bet most of you got the point.
Here is a similar thought from Eric Hoffer in 1951:
“The genuine man of words .. values the search for truth as much as truth itself.”
