A small improvement…
…but still a way to go. At least my ‘body age’ is lower than my chronological age!
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Doug Belshaw
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Doug Belshaw
Results of avoiding refined sugar and alcohol for a week
Lost 2.5kg in the past week! Pretty easy too, as I drank the alcohol-free version of Brewdog Punk IPA and ate honey.
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Doug Belshaw
For one of life’s mysterious laws shows that we only notice the authentic and essential when it’s too late: youth, once it has fled, health at the moment it abandons us, freedom of the soul, that must precious essence, at the very moment when it is taken from us, or has already been taken.
Stefan Zweig
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Doug Belshaw
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Doug Belshaw
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Doug Belshaw
[R]esearchers point out that highly intelligent people have tendencies for “intellectual overexcitabilites” and a hyper-reactivity of the central nervous system. On the one hand, this gives people with high IQ heightened awareness that helps their creative and artistic work. In fact, the field of cognitive ability recognizes one aspect of highly intelligent people to be “a broader and deeper capacity to comprehend their surroundings.” This hyper-reactivity, however, can also lead to deeper depressions and poor mental health. This turns out to be particularly true for poets, novelists and people with high verbal intelligence. Their intense emotional response to the environment increases tendencies for rumination and worry, both of which predict depression and anxiety disorders.
Teodora Zareva (via Harold Jarche) -
Doug Belshaw
Hyponatremia
I’ve been reading Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of Titans: the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers. As with all of his books, I start of skeptical about its value, and then learn a lot that I can apply to my own life.
In one bit I was reading, he mentions ‘hyponatremia’ which is defined by Wikipedia in the following way:
Hyponatremia is a low sodium level in the blood. It is generally defined as a sodium concentration of less than 135 mmol/L (135 mEq/L), with severe hyponatremia being below 120 mEql/L. Symptoms can be absent, mild or severe. Mild symptoms include a decreased ability to think, headaches, nausea, and poor balance. Severe symptoms include confusion, seizures, and coma.
In other words, if you drink too much water, you dilute your salt levels.
I’m keen to avoid migraine triggers, and had assumed that one of these was dehydration. As a result, I always have a bottle of water with me, and drink constantly throughout the day. Despite this (so I thought) I’d get headaches and sometimes migraines.
In retrospect, I think that I perhaps occasionally get into a state of hyponatremia. Over the last few days, therefore, and as Ferriss recommends, I’ve been adding a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar to my water bottle during and after exercise. It doesn’t taste great, to be honest, but so far seems to be having the desired effect.
Of course, this is what ‘isotonic’ sports drinks do. Except they jack up the sugar so you can’t taste the salt.
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