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Great health isn’t just about food or supplements, though everybody does tend to focus on those things. Great health is also about fitness, enjoyment of life, emotional satisfaction, and mental strength, too. Welcome to the Monday Moment: just a little gem from Mark that we’re passing on to you – because feeling good is healthy!
Monday Moment: One of Mark’s essential rules for life is forgiveness. Learn to forgive people – and not for them, either. It’s for you! That’s why forgiveness is so great: it frees up head space so you can feel good about yourself and your life. We don’t forgive others when they goof or hurt us so that they can go on living happily ever after – forgiveness is so you can live happily ever after. Don’t invest in thinking about how your boss, your neighbor or a pal has hurt you. It does take energy to learn a new habit (like letting go) but try it a few times and it will become old hat. It’s easier to feel good than it is to feel bad, so as the old Asian proverb goes, if you’re holding a hot coal, drop it!
Posted By: Worker Bee
My Inaugural Sherlock Award goes to Health Day News, as posted by the Poughkeepsie Journal. The Sherlock Award is given to the latest MOTO – Master of the Obvious. It’s for “breaking” health and fitness news that isn’t breaking anything except my patience. To be clear, the Sherlock Award isn’t about making fun of that news – the news is accurate. Rather, it’s about my puzzlement over reporting on things I thought were already part of the general knowledge bowl we call “Common Sense.”
This article reports that exercise can help treat depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other mood imbalances, mental disorders and health problems.
It’s human nature to compare life now to life “in the good old days.” And in the good old days, it seems nobody had a shrink or took Prozac. This doesn’t mean people weren’t depressed or stressed out “back then”; nevertheless, if you believe the statistics (always a dicey proposition), a significant number of Americans have something really unpleasant going on upstairs, whether it’s trouble sleeping, dealing with stress, or feeling good about life.
Isn’t it obvious? Most of us sit in front of a computer all day. We go home and sit in front a television. It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that moving around might be something humans were meant to do. In fact, scientists know that exercise – even mild movement like walking or doing chores – releases dopamine, serotonin and all kinds of other wonderful enzymes, compounds and hormones into our bodies. Our brains are natural little medicine factories; many of the drugs created to treat issues like stress and depression or insomnia and anxiety mimic the very compounds our bodies are capable of making – when we move.
Read the article, savor their glorious triumph, and treat your body right today.
Technorati Tags: dopamine, serotonin, depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, natural cures, health benefits of exercise, MOTO, Sherlock Award, brain, hormones
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Pfizer announced yesterday that they were abandoning their newest “miracle drug”, torcetrapib. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Torcetrapib.
Turns out that in a recent large-scale controlled study, “rolls-off-the-tongue” killed more people than even the previous miracle drug, Lipitor. Pfizer had invested over $800 million in their most recent attempt to stem the rise of heart attacks and stroke by lowering cholesterol.
The main focus of torcetrapib was to raise HDL (the “good” cholesterol that has been shown to reduce fatty plaque formation on arterial linings). Since Lipitor is coming off patent soon, Pfizer needs a new blockbuster to fill the income pipeline – now at $51 billion a year. Meanwhile, news wire services are suggesting that this is a huge setback for millions with heart disease who have been awaiting another magic pill to reverse the damage brought on by poor lifestyle choices.
Here’s the deal: as long as the medical community continues to approach heart disease by promoting cholesterol reducing drugs, they will fail.
Cholesterol is not necessarily the bad guy here. It is the inflammatory processes of C-reactive protein and homocysteine, occurring within the arterial walls, that begin the process of coronary artery disease. These inflammatory processes are the real culprits. Cholesterol production is merely the response mechanism! Attempting to avert heart problems by reducing cholesterol is literally akin to removing scabs from wounds as they try to heal. (If that analogy turns your stomach, you’ll have an inkling as to how sickened I am by Big Pharma.)
The root cause of inflammation is a combination of poor diet, sloth and stress. The good news is that most cardiovascular disease is completely preventable and largely curable without side effects.
Cholesterol is the unfortunate scapegoat in all this. It’s a shame, because this endlessly-eviscerated lipid is one of the body’s most useful and dynamic substances. Among other duties, it’s a necessary component of every cell membrane and it’s involved in hormone production. The body makes about 1400 mg a day just to keep reserves up. Unfortunately, when you have a stressful lifestyle, toss in a bad diet and lack of exercise and you can get an inflammatory process within the arteries that causes lesions on arterial walls. The inflammation problem is completely unrelated to amounts or types of cholesterol.
Nevertheless, the ever-inventive human body adapts to this inflammation sequence by using cholesterol as a band-aid to cover up the lesions until healing can take place – which, of course, almost never happens since most of us keep living the inflammatory lifestyle with little regard for how destructive it is. We’re inflammation rock stars.
Eventually, the cholesterol band-aids harden (sclerosis), narrow the arteries and sometimes break off, causing a heart attack or stroke. Of course, we blame the cholesterol for all this and embark on a national campaign to rid the body of this important substance by dousing everyone with drugs, instead of focusing on the foods (and other stresses) that promote inflammation in the first place. And these drugs have some pretty nasty side effects. And yet, we continue to worship at the idol’s altar.
Bottom line: In my opinion, diet, exercise, stress reduction and prudent supplementation should be the primary focus of any primary care physician.
Technorati Tags: drug patent, Pfizer, tocetrapib, Lipitor, pharmaceutical, pharmacology, inflammation, cholesterol, HDL
UPDATE 12/11/06: Another interesting analysis.
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Every Monday, I’ll be giving all of you a little health challenge. Sometimes the challenge will be fitness-related, sometimes it will be a diet challenge, and sometimes it will be a challenge to your current way of doing things. It’s something we can all do together. Great health starts with individual steps of accomplishment, so I really encourage you to get into the habit of taking the challenge each week. They will accumulate, and you’ll get results.
Now, for your challenge:
This week, we’re putting all attitudes in check (including ours). Make a concerted effort to think positive all week long. When a negative thought crosses your mind – whether it’s sabotaging your own hopes or finding fault with others – make a conscious point of letting it go, every time. Negative thinking isn’t healthy and it isn’t productive. Most of the time, it’s not even necessary. This week, don’t hold yourself, or others, back. Invest yourself in being positive. Be bold!
Technorati Tags: health challenge, habits, positive thinking, attitude, negativity
Posted By: Mark Sisson
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