Mindfulness Medication

  “Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing” https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2707428 “Cohort study of 122 007 consecutive patients undergoing exercise treadmill testing, cardiorespiratory fitness was inversely associated with all-cause mortality without an observed upper limit of benefit” The methods used to quantify cardiorespiratory fitness was a MET on treadmill testing  Patients would go on a treadmill slow to begin with and over time the incline and speed of the treadmill gradually increased until the patient stopped because of fatigue or inability to tolerate symptoms  The data around their max speed and incline was used to estimate MET’s which are metabolic equivalents  1 MET represents energy expenditure at rest An increase in MET represents increased energy expenditure (ex. 2 MET’s = energy expenditure twice that at rest)  Patients were then assigned...

Hey team, I recently reread some of my old posts on self and ego, and I wanted to write a follow-up to reflect my current, more evolved understanding. My knowledge and realizations have grown since I wrote those original posts last summer. My most recent book, Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, discusses at length how free will is nothing but a post-hoc (after the fact) illusion of our underlying biology doing what it would do under specific circumstances. To put it another way: our behaviors, encompassing every action we take, are merely our body's reactions (outputs) to specific stimuli (inputs). These reactions are established by innate sensitivities and further conditioned and rewired over time by everything external to us (parents, diet, lifestyle, traumas, education, etc.). This challenges the illusion of the self as a person in the driver's seat, solely in control of our actions and separate from the all-encompassing factors that sh...

 Hey team, Today, I’d like to write about wellness as a follow-up to my previous post on health and wellness. I know the term “wellness” gets thrown around all the time and has somewhat lost its value, but regardless of what we call it, engaging in practices that serve your body and mind is essential. In previous posts, I discussed how most issues, in terms of subjective dysfunction, symptoms, or diseases, result from your cells not working well. While some things may feel like dysfunction, such as being stressed or sad in response to something serious, these are healthy and normal responses that are not pathological. On the other hand, if this stress or sadness is prolonged for weeks to months and extremely severe, that is actual dysfunction.  To explain that more comprehensively, in a healthy state where all or most of one's cells are functioning perfectly, symptoms or strange lab values don’t come up. But as our cells are damaged by major stressors (both physical and psycho...

  Hey team, As you all know I am a barista at java junction on seabright in santa cruz. Last year I posted a trivia facts about the place and some of the other employees there. Today I’d like to make another list. Karen is a cancer If you enter through the doors near the bar, you can read the answer to the question of the day and always get a free cup of coffee  At least one employee's mom has fake boobs  The non dairy milk is from costco  At least 3 people are going/ have gone to europe this summer  Micheal is from the midwest and makes old man noises  Emilee is an EMT but still works a shift every now and again  Most of our baristas have been employees at other local coffeeshops before  You can bet that a chappel roan song will come on at least once during a shift  We exclusively carry non fat yogurt which is loaded with sugar  If you are nice and know how to work it, you can probably get a discount 

  Hey team, Per usual, I have been reading about health and wellness topics in addition to practicing what I preach. While I am nowhere close to the epitome of healthy, happy living, I and the people around me can see that I’m doing pretty well overall. This is in terms of the objective behaviors I engage in, from what I eat to how I spend my time, and my subjective experience of feeling, well, fantastic! More recently, it has become apparent that many people do not prioritize or even care much about their health and well-being, which are, of course, inseparable. While acknowledging that I cannot read minds and therefore cannot understand the full extent of why people are the way they are, given the distributed causality of what formed them into the person they are today, I also know rather objectively the utter importance of taking care of yourself. Yes, many of us are busy, stressed, uninformed, and often responsible for dependents, which can lead to neglecting our own health and...

  Hey team, I recently read Johnathan Haidts, “The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion” and it was incredible and absolutely changed and advanced how I see divide in modern society. I was originally attracted to the title, specifically the word “righteous” as I recently wrote about how I am often disgusted when it is amplified in someone's behavior. I now see the word “righteous” as meaning what you, or your group, believe you are rightfully owed in addition to a belief or perspective you hold as being superior to others. This has clear implications in political and religious debates because ultimately we are arguing over what we believe ourselves, or more often our collective, is owed in terms of its laws, regulations, and support. When we assert and believe that things should be a certain way with specific attributes, we are implying that our interpretation of the world is superior to that of those who disagree with us. While we often utilize rati...

Hey team, In my last post, I introduced the work of Dr. Chris Palmer, who views and treats mental illnesses as metabolic disorders, delving into the information he presents in his book “Brain Energy”. Since then, I have continued to engage in this space and recently finished reading “Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind” by Dr. Georgia Ede and “Metabolical” by Robert Lustig MD. Today, I want to break down the pathophysiology of metabolism, including the sites of damage, causes, and consequences. I hope you find this both informative and engaging. Life runs on energy, and for biological organisms like us, this energy comes from the food we eat. Sugars (carbohydrates), fats, and proteins are the macronutrients our cells use to create energy. Essentially, we derive energy from electrons that hop from one molecule to another in a series of reactions, yielding substrates like NAD, FAD, and pyruvate. Our cells break down food into smaller components, such as glucose, fatty acids, and amino aci...