How to Make Disease Disappear

🔗Connect

🔼Topic:: health (MOC) 🔼Topic:: Wellbeing (MOC)

✒️ Note-Making

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Health is mostly environment - it is what we do, rather than our genes that dictate our health. By maintaining healthy habits at four main pillars we can keep most of the chronical diseases at bay while improving our health, our wellbeing and our happiness
2. Modern medicine focus too much on symptoms - Instead of addressing the main cause of a disease, we try to solve each problem individually, or even just reduce it's symptoms. Focusing on symptoms is a lost, expensive pursuit that hurts our quality of life. However, the human body is an holistic system, which is a disadvantage when we look narrowly at one problem, but an advantage when we try to heal it holistically. For example, good sleep can reduce many health problems.
3. Relax - Stress is okay at small short quantities, but nowadays we experience it non-stop, and it is damaging our health. We should focus on reducing chronic stress, with:
   1. dedicated "me time" - at least 15 minutes a day for something you enjoy
   2. gratitude - write down something good that happened to you, and something good you've done to someone else
   3. reduce screen time - digital minimalism, where the best case is to have a tech-free day
   4. practice mindfulness - whether it is yoga, meditation or tai-chi, find you way to calm down
4. Eat - Our bodies are still the same as hunter gathers, although we are surrounded by modern temptations that work against us. We need to reclaim our diet to make sure we give the body what it needs and nothing more, with:
   1. De normalize sugar - try to avoid any added sugar
   2. 5 vegetables a day of different colors
   3. 12 hour fasting - try to fast for 12 hours between end of dinner to start of breakfast
   4. drink more water - at least 1.2 liters a day
   5. unprocessed your diet - don't eat anything that has more than 5 ingredients
5. Move - We were designed to move, to activate our body. Not only that it improves our diet, but also aging and overall health. We shouldn't treat moving as something we need a gym for, we can combine most activities into our daily lives.
   1. Walk more - at least 10k steps a day
   2. become stronger - two sessions of 15 minutes a week
   3. begin HIIT - two sessions of 15 minutes a week. The important thing is that it's hard, not long.
   4. play - goof around with kids or find a sport to play with friends
   5. wake up your glutes - do simple standing exercises to counteract our prolonged sitting
6. Sleep - Sleep is the maintenance routine of our brain and body, without it everything else collapses. Since the industrial revolution we have become light polluted, hurting our rhythm which hurts both our quality and quantity of our sleep. To counteract this, we can:
   1. Create total darkness in our bedroom - The main contributor is screens of any type
   2. Embrace morning light - try to soak 20 minutes outside every morning
   3. Have a bedtime routine - try to fall asleep and wake up at the same time
   4. No stress before bed - avoid any emotionally stressful content - work, tasks, social media before going to sleep
   5. No caffeine after lunch

🗒️Relate

⛓ Life lessons, action items

🔍Critique

✅ by following this method, what will happen?

1. Better health - By focusing on prevention and healthy lifestyles, you can improve your health dramatically and keep many diseases at bay without the need for medications or external interventions, while being more aligned with how your body operates.

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

1. Unsourced - Lack of linking to scientific research, even when he claims that "research has found"... Also at the beginning of the book he stated a "practical view" that he focuses on "what works" which doesn't always match what science has discovered, which is a sign of caution.

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... I do like this book very much, although it is thin in theory but rich in substance. What I don't like is his egoistical statements at the beginning and ending of the book, like "I just cured type 2 diabetes", or "I can get rid of all chronical diseases". Have some humility and remember that it's us who cure us by being healthy.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Introduction

The problem with modern medicine is that they focus too much on the symptoms and not on the root cause. Since the human body is an "holistic" system, we can have many potential chronic conditions stemming from the same problem, so instead of trying to fix each one individually, we can recognize four main pillars that when cared for, they will keep us healthy and prevent Prevention many potential diseases, while fighting the symptoms is not only a lost cause, it's also much more damaging to our health, our wellbeing, and our life.

Those pillars are:

1. Diet
2. Sleep
3. Relaxation (avoidance of stress)
4. Workout

Relax

Stress is perhaps one of the most harmful aspects of modern life, leading to many complications.

Stress is useful in the short term, but having constant feelings of stress is harmful to you. The body is overwhelmed with cortisol that puts you in a "fight or flight" response, and diverts all resources to handle the "threat". That means less resources to thinking, to digesting, only to automated reactions. It causes heightened responses of the immune system, often causing inflammation throughout the body.

Stress can be caused by anything, from actual physical stress, to emotional. From short deadlines at work, from balancing work-life, tight schedules, and even imbalanced diet can push us towards stress eating.

Me time Every Day

*Every day for at least 15 minutes, be selfish and enjoy some time for you

Do something relaxing, without shame or judgment, and preferably without technology.

Examples:

1. Have a bath
2. Take a walk
3. Sit in the park
4. Read a book
5. Art - sing, play, dance, paint
6. Yoga (or similar)

Me-Time Every Day

• Stop treating “relaxation” as something that you do—or, more likely, don’t do—when everything else has been dealt with. Choose to relax. (Location 249)
• Firstly, it must be something unashamedly for you and you alone. Secondly, it must not be an activity that involves your smartphone, tablet or computer. Thirdly, you’re not allowed to feel guilty about it. (Location 253)
• The Screen-Free Sabbath (Location 434)

Screen Free Sabbath

One day a week, turn off your screens and live offline

We have become addicted to our smartphones, when social media is usually to blame Attention Economy. Our social urge to compare ourselves to others is intensified when everyone displays a false image of their lives Image vs core, along with being extremely hostile with the protection of anonymity.

To reduce this stress, we need to stick with digital Minimalism. To have at least an hour before going to sleep and after waking up without screens. To try interact as little as possible with your phone, perhaps shutting down notification, and try having one day a week without screens.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

Write 3 things you are grateful for daily

Expressing Gratitude hones our mind towards Optimism and greatly improves our quality of life. Have a gratitude journal where you write good things that happened to you or good things you have done to others

Practice Stillness

Find at least 5 minutes for stillness a day

Practicing mindfulness is a good way to reduce stress and achieve flow. Mindfulness can be anything from meditation, to tai-chi, to listen to music. The most important is to be immersed in the experience.

You can try the 3-4-5 breathing exercise. Breath in for three, hold for four, and release for five.

Practice Stillness Daily

• mindfulness is being attentive and present to what you’re doing in the moment. Really, it’s about stillness.” (Location 609)

Reclaim Your Dining Table

Have one meal a day, preferably with company, around a table and without screens

Loneliness can eat you away every day, and to combat that, we need more shared time together. Instead of eating in front of the TV, we can eat together and talk in the meantime.

Eat

Diet is highly personal matter, there's no one true diet, and we even see that across the "blue zones" (places where people live up to 100+) don't have a consistent diet.

Although we do see some very basic common traits such as:

1. local, fresh, unprocessed produce
2. meals are eaten together
3. eating seasonally
4. snacking is rare

Eat

• None has a processed-food culture. By and large, they eat fresh, unprocessed, local produce. They all sit down and eat meals together. They eat what’s in season. They have treats, but only at very special festival times (Location 812)

De-normalize Sugar

Remove all sugar from your house

Sugar is everywhere (thanks capitalism) and can cause diabetes, and make us fatter. The food industry has hijacks our taste buds, we get more and more used to sugar so we need larger doses to satisfy ourselves.

Over consumption of sugar can lead to:

1. Cravings, especially for snacks between meals
2. low concentration
3. afternoon slump and fatigue between meals
4. Reliance on caffeince

Tasting "sweet" is a matter of perspection. The more we de-tox suger, the sweeter normal things will be (like fruits), so that's a win-win.

Reducing suger means to watch for any kind of suger, both added and "natural" like honey or maple, and any types of artificial sweetners. To make the transition easier:

1. Don't add suger to tea or coffee
2. Beware of social settings (we usually go "all out" on snacking)
3. replace sugary snacks with healthy ones, such as carrots, hummus, fruit or nut butter
4. eat more protien (makes us feel fuller)

If you can't quit sugar entirely, stick to no more than 9 teaspoons (36 grams or 150 calories) of added sugar per day for men, or 6 for women.

A New Definition of "five a day"

eat vegetables of 5 different colors a day

Our health is highly affected by the health of our microbiome, same as many things, we need it diversified and fully staffed in order to work properly. Without it, we may experience allergies, weakening of the immune system, and lack of vitamins. Unfortunately, the popularity of antibiotics and processed foods has reduced the diversity of our microbiome by 33-50%.

To make it healthier, we need a diverse diet of vegetables, such as:

1. Misc - bananas, black olives, berries
2. Reds - tomatoes, red peppers, beets, red lettuce. radish
3. yellow - corn, yellow peppers, lemons, summer squash
4. purple - olives, purple carrots, purple sweet potatoes, blueberries, eggplant, black rice, red cabbage
5. whites - chickpeas, cauliflower, mushrooms, shallots, onions, garlic, lentils
6. orange - carrots, orange peppers, pumpkin, butternut squash, sweet potato
7. Green - brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, asparagus, lettuce. avocado, green peppers, celery, cucumber, peas, okra, artichokes, leeks, agave

Vegetables also contain helpful components named phytonutrients. Overall eating more vegetables can lead to slower aging, lower blood pressure, better immune system, general health, and resistance to desieases.

Introduce Daily Micro-fasts

Eat within a 12 hour window

Eating non-stop is like pilling up dishes in a cloged sink. Fasting for 12 hours could be beneficial by:

1. When not busy with "digesting", the body can direct resources to reparing cells and the immune system.
2. When fasting, the body starts to consume it's fat and colesterol tissues instead.
3. The body follow's a circadian rhythm, meaning that some bodily functions don't work at certain hours of the day, making eating a uselss or even harmful action.

It's best to fast for at least 12 hours to start seeing the benefits of fasting. Try to find the time that works best for you, but also know that in general it's better to have early dinner or even skipping dinner rather than delaying or skipping breakfast.

Drink More Water

Try to drink at least 1.2 liters a day

Our body is made of water, and the most important functions of it require water. When we are dehydrated, we are more likely to experience headaches, low energy, and dry skin. Drinking more water not only prevents those cases, but also likely to improve our digestive system and even reduce our feelings of hunger.

Unprocess Your Diet

Try to avoid food products that contain more than 5 ingredients

Don't focus on carbs or fats. It's not that carbs or fats are always bad, there is a good kind and a bad kind. Usually what differentiates between the two is the source. There the more helpful approach is to have "unprocessed diet", staying clear from things that have more than 5 ingredients, like cereal, baked goods, ready meals.

Processed foods are high in energy but low in nutrients. It causes inflammation and gut problems. On the other hand, eating "real food", something as close as possible to it's "natural look" is preferred. While junk food is not recommend, eating vegetables with it is a good way to reduce some of the risks.

Unprocess Your Diet

• the major problem is not that we’re simply eating too much food; it’s actually that we’re eating the wrong type of food. (Location 1352)

Move

Weight loss is not just about the inputs, we have to be mindfull of the outputs, aka our movement. Our problem with exercises can be:

1. We treat it as a seaparate thing, one that requires dedicated locations (gyms) and special cloths, instead of incorporating it into our daily lives
2. we can do too much - if we exercise too much when we are out of energy or time to rest, we can hurt our bodies
3. we can do too little - most of us just sit the entire day on a chair, not moving it all, which doesn't always compensated by going to the gym

Move

• it’s much better for us to see our whole lives as a potential workout. We need to stop thinking about getting our exercise chore done and start thinking about making it a part of our daily lives. (Location 1624)

Walk More

Aim for at least 10k steps a day

Walking is a good gateway activity for overall health. 10k steps is about 60-90 minutes of walking, which is possible if we incorporate it into our daily lives. For example:

1. Get up every 60 minutes to walk a little bit
2. get off 2/3 stops early on your bus to walk the rest of the way
3. do a morning walk

Become Stronger

Do strength training twice a week

Maintaining our muscle strength is essential for prevention of aging and increase our energy levels. If we don't habitually workout, we start to lose our muscle density from the age of 30 onwards, and the body starts to age.

Here are some examples of a "5 minute workout" you can do whenever, everywhere:

1. 5-10 squats
2. 5-10 calf raises
3. 5-10 push ups
4. 5-10 tricep dips
5. 5-10 lunges

Begin Regular High-intesity Interval Training

Find a form of HIIT that works for you, do two 10-15 minute sessions each week

We don't need much time to workout, doing a more intense workout for a shorter period could be worthwhile, even just a 20 minute could be beneficial. The key is that it has to be hard, as the name suggests, HIIT requires intensity, so as long as it is difficult for you, i.e you go all out and finish without a breath, that's good enough.

Movement Snacking

do 3-4 mini movement 5 days a week

Play around, move a little just for fun. Do some push up on your desk, do squats while your food is in the microwave, whatever works for you.

Wake up Your Sleepy Glutes

Do one glute movement every day

The glutes are the extenders of our bodies, which are essential in our sitting, hunching world. Without it we will experience back pains and difficulties standing straight.

Key exercises for activating our glutes:

1. Flex on a step
2. Hip adduction
3. Foot clocks
4. 3d hip extension

Sleep

We are all Sleep deprived, and this is one of the most harmful things we can do to our bodies, even more harmful than being drunk. The problem gets worse when we see that we can't "pay back" our sleep in our days off, sleeping extra on the weekend is not enough to compensate for the lack of sleep during the week.

To understand whether you sleep well is less about the length as it is about the quality, to see if you sleep well, ask yourself:

1. do you feel refreshed when waking up?
2. do you wake up roughly at the same time without an alarm?
3. are you able to fall asleep with 30 minutes?

Create an Environment of Absolute Darkness

Try to keep the bedroom completely dark and free of screens

Our body adjust it's rhythm based on the amount of light we are experiencing. Having too much light in our bedroom or before we go to sleep, especially with smartphones and tablets would hurt our ability to go to sleep. By having a no-light policy, preventing screens and reducing blue-light with apps, settings or special amber glasses 2 hours before going to sleep could reduce the damage to your rhythm.

Embrace Morning light

spend at least 20 mins outside every morning

Same as darkness is important at night, light is important in the day. Even seeing the light from a window is not the same level of exposure as being outside. Try to spend at least 20 minutes outside, it can easily be combined with other activities such as physical activity, or "me time" to check off several pillars at once.

Create a Bedtime Routine

have a "no tech 90" before going to sleep

If we go to sleep late, we should still try to wake up at the same time, and make up for it with naps. The goal is to have a stable as possible routine of when you go to sleep and wake up.

Manage Your Commotion

Minimize activity that will trigger you emotionally before bed

Emotionally stressful situations can prevent us from falling asleep well. So try to reduce watching the news, scary movies, working, or thinking about tasks in the 2 hours before going to sleep.

Enjoy Your Caffeine before Noon

If you choose to take caffeine, do it by lunchtime

Not only that we can have too much coffee to the level of addiction, but also that it can cause us having trouble falling asleep or affect the quality of our sleep. Since coffee tends to be in your system for around 6 hours, stopping at midday is a good recommendation