Let there be light • Anyone else sad when the Sun starts to go down at 5pm? Check out this blog post from a guy who decided to install a fake Sun in his home office. 35,000 Lumens for about $120. He notes better productivity. Certainly some mood enhancement for folks who get the Winter Blues.• I…
Stretching • We have covered Gabe Mirkin’s newsletters on prior PWellness segments. This new one of his was tough. He rips apart the entire enterprise of stretching. • Folks who have looked into the exercise literature may know that static stretching prior to competitive sport does NOT prevent injuries and may even increase them. Before your game or…
Zero to One: • Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, wrote Zero to One in 2014 based on lectures notes from his student at Stanford. I usually stay away from business books, too many claim to have the secret to making us all millionaires. But this book dove into philosophy, macroeconomics, common sense, and futurism. • I was a…
Mix it up: • Looking for a way to entertain your kids, or keep your own activity level up? Check out this thing I wish I had invented. Dice (or die) that you roll to determine what exercise you will perform. My kids were fighting over who got to roll it next, didn’t even realize we…
• Hope everyone is coping well with July in an academic hospital. The ER has been very busy, but our residents are rising to the challenge. We have been impressed with all of the new faces of consultants in the ER. Everyone has been sticking to Mama’s Rules. Check out the article, it is from a…
Wellness Ideas: Hard work of being lazy: • Post on Book of Life on the importance, and seriousness of being lazy.“By contrast, the easy bit can be the running around, the never pausing to ask why, the repeatedly ensuring that there isn’t a moment to have doubts or feel sad or searching. Business can mask a vicious…
For those who noticed, Practice of Wellness is evolving to a less frequent (monthly) but longer newsletter for wellness practices. Hopefully you have been keeping up with your daily practice of taking care of yourself. Here are some ideas for this month. Open Access: • This article about the business of publishing comes from an emergency medicine…
Longevity: • The Longevity Code, by Kris Verburgh, MD adds to the recent literature on how we can live longer, healthier lives. Much of this book matches advice from Longo, Mattson, and Mitteldorf.• Verburgh is big on hormesis, calling it one of the 4 pillars of his approach. He hits on radiation hormesis, pointing out the long…
Catastrophizing: • Definition: “to imagine the worst possible outcome of an action or event : to think about a situation or event as being a catastrophe or having a potentially catastrophic outcome.”• Humans are very good at this. As we evolved, having the creativity and habit of imagining how events can go wrong, hugely wrong, would have saved…
Snack: • It is tough to find low carb foods that do not require refrigeration or preparation. Duke’s sausages are low carb, no sugar, jerky style snacks. They have no nitrites, so none of the issues that accompany cured meats (cancer risk, inflammation, etc). They have tons of flavors now. And they are at almost every store…
