Health and Wellness

Here is a brief list of methods that may be helpful for avoiding the icy hand of death and getting the most from life. Links to references, which may be the most valuable information here, are not comprehensive sources for this material.

Sleep

• Lack of sleep can lead to many problems including stress, poor performance, accidents, and injury.
• Fatigue accumulates as a kind of debt.
• The amount of sleep different people need varies.
• Sleeping pills are dangerous and cause increased mortality with even light use.
• Both alcohol and naps can disturb the rhythm of sleep.
• Time used for sleep can be split or interruped for toilet breaks.
• Improve the sleep hygene of rest areas by eliminating distractions.
• Reference: Sleep Foundation
• Reference: Dark Side of Sleeping Pills by Dr. Daniel Kripke
• Reference: A Plan to Get More Sleep by Dr. Daniel Kripke
• Reference: The Sleep Well by Dr. William Dement
• Reference: Sleep Quest comprehensive sleep information and services

Eat

• Discussion of diet can be awkward, but is a necessary conversation.
• Chronic inflammation is a key contributor to diseases of the industrial world. What we eat, how much, and how often all influence inflammation.
• Modern foods such as sweeteners, grains, legumes, and milk can be very bad for some and may cause complications in others.
• Occasional small quantities of meat can be a low risk way of getting some nutrients.
• Vitamins are important, especially Vitamin D which is critical and commonly deficient.
• Fats and oils need to be in balance which may mean eating fish oil.
• Reference: Michael Pollan writing and rules "Eat food, not too much, mostly leaves"
• Reference: Paleolithic Diet Page
• Reference: The Jungle Diet by Daphne Miller
• Reference: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II
• Reference: Critical review The China Study: Fact or Fallacy from Raw Food SOS
• Reference: More critical review The China Study versus The China Study
• Reference: List of critical reviews China Study Smackdown Round Up
• Reference: Critical review of a critical review of The China Study The China Study: Polish a Turd and Find a Diamond
• Reference: Inflammation Nation by Floyd H. Chilton
• Reference: Heart Scan Blog by Dr. William Davis, Cardiologist
• Reference: Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UC Television on YouTube)
• Reference: Nutrition in a Bottle: Vitamins Minerals and Supplements (UC Television on YouTube)

Work

• Find a way to serve others positively. Making a difference to others is what matters.
• You must love the product.
• Do business with honor, and be prepared to dismiss customers, vendors, and employers.
• Be true to yourself and honest with others.
• Understand criteria for success and the implications of failure.
• Extra work does not always create extra value. Overwork may block real value creation. Long work hours can be a politically correct way to fail.
• Working creatively beats working hard, especially over the long term.
• For best results consciousness and balance are what is needed.
• Work for decisions, not time. Make decisions, not stuff.
• Occupy yourself with the task at hand, not the stories told about it.
• The zone is a state of continuous flow. You can't just get into the zone when you want to, but by being fully in the present the zone can happen.
• Don't take your list of things to do with you everywhere you go.
• Keep a life list of pursuits to mix together or return to later.
• Reference: The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton
• Reference: Living in More Than One World by Bruce Rosenstein and Frances Hesselbein
• Reference: Soren Gordhamer, meditations on modern work

Exercise

• Routines must fit the person and the life or they will fail.
• Movement and flexibility should be integrated with daily activities.
• Attention should accompany motion for safety and best results.

Relations

• Loved ones should come first.
• Belong in a community.
• Find a tribe that you fit and join.
• Avoid the trappings of social status.
• Competition begets strife, cooperation begets collaboration.
• Acceptance, respect, humility, and nonpossessiveness may be necessary for empathy which is itself necessary for truly nonviolent interaction.
• Reference: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD
• Reference: Alain de Botton, philosopher

Sex

• Practice safe sex every time.
• Do not be a slave to desires or traditions.
• Understand that desires are malleable.

Mind

• Be mindful in the present, to the extent possible. You are what you attend.
• Attention skills and mindfulness can be developed with exercises like meditation.
• This moment is not going to get any better.
• Know your purpose in life, your reason for getting up in the morning.
• Passive experiences like watching television programming or casually following web links tends to lead to wandering, drift, and discontent.
• Life presents challenges to which we respond with creativity or stress.
• In more detail, adaptations to life circumstances are best kept toward the more considered end of a spectrum which includes psychotic (paranoia, hallucination, megalomania), immature (acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, fantasy), neurotic (intellectualization, dissociation, repression), and mature (altruism, humor, anticipation, supression, sublimation).
• Move with awareness and feeling, be always ready to learn, take in details when observing or acting, slow down to get everything in, increase intensity to feel more alive, be flexible so as to bend without breaking.
• Exercise mental capacities by engaging them: dream, sing, dance, play, laugh.
• Downshift for health and clarity. Pursue wisdom, not cleverness. Velocity inverts power of learning.
• Guide the path of your mental flow.
• Generate positive emotions by noticing and making use of positive events, being mindful and grateful, reappraising yourself positively, noting personal strengths, having obtainable goals, and performing acts of kindness.
• Reference: The Anat Baniel Method
• Reference: Move Into Life by Anat Baniel
• Reference: On The Brain: Brain Plasticity Research by Dr. Michael Merzenich
• Reference: The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Reference: Rapt by Winifred Gallagher
• Reference: No Time To Think (Google Tech Talks on YouTube)

Healing

• Use doctors and the health system only as necessary because risks and ambiguity are as common as healing and all come with an often high price.
• Do your own research to understand your health issues.
• Have basic tests performed to understand your body chemistry.
• Heart scans (not angiograms) give a good estimate of total arterial plaque.
• Reference: Brighten Your Life by Dr. Daniel Kripke