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| Zara |
There’s a tide shift happening—and it’s exciting and inspiring to be a part of it.
Within my health coaching practice, I’m finding the entire vernacular changing. When I ask my prospective clients what their Main Health Goals are, I’m not hearing things like “I want to look good in my swimsuit on my beach vacation.” Or, “I want to rock a body-conscious outfit at my high school reunion.” Or even “I want to lose X number of pounds by X day of the year.”
Check out these quotes from some of my client Intake Forms over the last six months:
“I have an unhealthy relationship with food; I have a sugar addiction and constant food obsession. I need to get rid of all of this.”
“I’m looking for the lifestyle change, and to gain a better understanding of how food works in relationship to my body.”
“I’m uncertain of the foods I should be eating and the workouts I am doing. I need help reorganizing my eating, drinking, sleeping and workout habits.”
“My body feels out of sorts. I want to increase my energy and my overall sense of wellbeing.”
“I have been obsessed about food for my entire life. I just want to understand it all, once and for all.”
When people are put on the spot—and about to make a financial investment in improving their health—they spend some time really thinking about how to specifically articulate their health goals.
They put a lot more time into it than most of us put into our New Year’s Resolutions, which often end up looking a lot like the same hastily-scribbled list from last year.
And that’s a big reason why New Year’s Resolutions don’t work.
A benign list, with no emotion behind it—no strategy, no incentive, no WHY—will almost always fall short in the motivation category. There’s no skin in the game. I’m not talking about a financial investment. I’m talking about an emotional one. A spiritual one.
The Why-by-Five exercise is a tool that I use with my health coaching clients to help them uncover their true motivating factors for change. Those same old resolutions make it onto the list each year for a reason, and I think we can agree it would be nice to move the needle on a few of them—once and for all. This exercise helps us get to the root. All you have to do is ask yourself WHY, five times.
Allow me to share an example:
My Main Health Goal for 2018 is, as always, improved mobility. Except, that’s too vague. And the way I know it’s too vague is because I literally make this New Year’s Resolution every year and have never once stuck to it.
Let’s go deeper:
I want to practice my barefoot Grok Squat daily, keeping my feet in a relatively neutral position and my chest lifted. I’d like to work up to holding this for ten straight minutes.
Better! Now we work that specific, measurable, realistic goal through the WHYx5 exercise:
The lack of mobility through my hips and lumbar spine has prevented me from progressing in both my strength and conditioning program, and my yoga practice.
Why does that matter?
Because I want a really capable body that can do all kinds of badass things, including lifting and bending.
Why is that important?
Because I feel like I’m just going through the motions with my fitness right now, and I want to really optimize the function of my body as I move into middle age.
Why would that be great to achieve?
Because I’ve watched so many people descend into old age and infirmity, and I believe there is a better fate for us—for me! I don’t believe we are destined to be confined to walkers and wheelchairs, and much of this is in my control.
Why?
Because I want to know that well into middle age and beyond I’ll be able to trust my body to shoulder the burden of performing badass human tasks like lifting heavy in the gym, training and exercising my horses, playing sports, and just being able to be out DOING awesome things.
From there, simply splice all of those well-thought out intentions together, to achieve an articulate goal worth reaching for.
Here is inspiration I can stick on the front of the fridge:
My 2018 goal is to practice my barefoot Grok Squat daily so that I can keep my feet in a relatively neutral position and my chest lifted, and I’d like to work up to being able to hold this for ten minutes. This will lessen the physical restrictions through my hips and lumbar spine, and enable me to trust my body to shoulder the burden of performing badass human tasks well into middle-age and beyond.
Okay now you go.
Download the WHYx5 exercise here (PDF printable), fill it out yourself, and share your 2018 goal(s) on the comment board. What are you reaching for, and what’s your why behind that desire?
Thanks for reading, everyone, and Happy New Year!
— Erin Power, CHNC, PHC
The post A Practical Tool For Your 2018 Goal Setting appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.
For today’s Dear Mark, I’m answering just one question. It concerns an article I posted in yesterday’s Weekend Link Love about the radiation exposure flight crews experience. They receive more radiation than people who work next to nuclear reactors, which sounds really dangerous. Won’t all that radiation result in higher cancer rates?
Let’s take a look:
Hi Mark,
Regarding the article about flight crews being exposed to more radiation than any other profession, does this translate into higher cancer rates?
The atmosphere is teeming with cosmic rays from outer space. Few reach us here on the Earth’s surface, but up in the air it’s a different story. Your average member of an air crew will receive about three times as much radiation each year as your average landlubber does.
Here’s the article.
So they’re getting considerably more radiation than everyone else. Are flight crew members even at a higher risk for cancer? Maybe, depending on the sex, the study, and the cancer. In one study of female flight attendants, breast cancer and melanoma were the biggest risks. In another, male crew members had slightly increased risks for melanoma and all-cause mortality while female members had slightly increased risks for breast cancer and reduced all-cause mortality and mortality from all cancers. Another study found that female flight attendants reported 34% more reproductive cancers than the general population.
Okay, there are some increase and some decreases. But let’s focus on the increases. Is the radiation the cause?
They do get more radiation than anyone else, and high dose radiation can and does cause cancer.
But that’s not all they get. They also subject their bodies to consistently inconsistent circadian inputs. They whizz all over the world, crossing time zones. They’re often active at night, if their bodies can even identify “night.”
The two cancers that keep popping up—breast and melanoma—have established relationships to circadian arrhythmia. The ability of our skin to resist the damaging effects of UV rays is severely degraded when sleep or circadian rhythms are disturbed. And there are dozens of studies linking breast cancer to shift work, sleep disturbances, nighttime light exposure, and other things that either cause or reflect circadian misalignment.
My guess is that the circadian arrhythmia of plane work is more of a primary cause.
There’s also the lack of sun exposure.
As I’ve shown in a previous post, too little sunlight may be as bad for melanoma risk as too much sunlight. Sun gives us vitamin D, which has the ability to turn pre-cancerous skin cells into benign skin cells, repair UV damage, and prevent the formation of skin cancer. If you’re sitting inside an airport or an airplane for most of your work day, you aren’t producing any vitamin D from sun exposure.
But I don’t think the radiation is having much of an effect. In one study that found an increased risk of skin cancer in pilots, they were unable to link the increased risk to increased exposure to cosmic radiation. Although the authors maintain the “influence of cosmic radiation on skin cancer cannot be entirely excluded,” I find it far more likely that circadian misalignment and perhaps sun deficiency are the culprits.
What’s really ironic is that the low level doses of radiation flight crews receive may be protective. This is the hormesis hypothesis, which posits that low doses of otherwise harmful stimuli provoke an adaptive response that results in net benefits to health. Most people can think of hormetic stressors like polyphenols (antioxidants are actually pro-oxidants that compel our endogenous antioxidant systems to work better), fasting (going without food trains us to burn body fat), exercise (damages your muscles, which come back stronger than before), but radiation is another one.
That’s probably surprising to you. Radiation is supposed to be dangerous at any dose, just less dangerous at lower doses. Turns out that the old paradigms of radiation toxicity are probably wrong as an absolute anyway.
Linear paradigm: The toxicity of radiation proceeds linearly in a dose-response fashion.
Threshold paradigm: There’s a certain amount of radiation that we can safely tolerate, after which the toxicity increases linearly.
Hormesis paradigm: Some radiation is healthier than none. Too much is really bad.
Imagine if the hormesis hypothesis is true. That would mean it’s conceivable that protecting the flight crews from radiation exposure would increase their risk of cancer. I’m not saying it’s true. We need more data. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.
All this is a roundabout way of saying not to worry about flying. And if you are a flight attendant or pilot, perhaps you should worry, just not for the reasons you were thinking.
Oh, and get your sleep, sun, and daytime natural light. Wear blue blocking shades after dark and cut down on the electronics usage.
Take care. Have a great year. I can’t wait to tackle it with you all.
The post Dear Mark: Happy New Year, and Flight Crews, Radiation, and Cancer appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.
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| John Boyega |
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| John Boyega |
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| Lupita Nyong'o |
Research of the WeekIncreasing cholesterol synthesis gene expression restores the walking ability of mice with multiple sclerosis. Too bad they’ll all keel over from heart attacks, no doubt.
In terms of cancer risk, nicotine inhalers are way safer than e-cigarettes, e-cigarettes are way safer than tobacco vaporizers, and tobacco vaporizers are way safer than cigarettes.
Episode 205: Jason Leapai and Jason Sakorsi: Host Elle Russ hangs out with Jason and Jason, hosts of The Savage Podcast. The Jasons are big nature-lovers, true outdoorsmen, lifelong martial artists, and committed Primal eaters.
Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.
What could have been an interesting discussion—should you cook with olive oil or coconut oil?—ends up a one-sided screed against saturated fat.
For the second straight year, U.S. life expectancy has dropped.
I admire Rahul Verma’s efforts to fight the Westernization of the Indian diet, but he should really read Dr. Ron Sinha’s South Asian Health Solution.
A 63-year-old British man found himself enmeshed in a months-long battle with uncontrollable prostate orgasms after buying a special butt plug to nurse his infected prostate back to health and taking Cialis to heal a UTI. I’m sure those were the reasons.
An artificial pancreas that metes out insulin as-needed, even during HIIT.
Knowing back pain’s mostly in the head is often the only way chronic back pain sufferers can improve.
When to start collecting social security benefits.
Pretty incredible study result: In treatment-resistant depression, psilocybin increases the amygdala response to emotional faces, the opposite of what SSRIs do. SSRIs blunt negative emotions; psilocybin (with psychological support) help patients face and work through them.
Blog post that got me thinking: Excessive heavy lifting is unnatural!
Concept I’m pondering: Do schizophrenics have a better grasp on objective reality?
Podcast I enjoyed: Nina Teicholz on Joe Rogan.
Miscellaneous news I found interesting: Flight crews are exposed to more radiation than anyone else.
One year ago (Dec 31– Jan 6)
“Sounds like you have some skin in the game.”
– Nicely done, Nocona.
The post Weekend Link Love — Edition 484 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.
