This is the beginning of an experiment to organise a notebook that will make some sense of my personal journey and learnings on health.
related notebooks
posts written on this topic
my first week of wearing a continuous glucose monitor
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |how we assign value (and the complexity of nutrition)
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |my messy brain
seeing my brain in new light & trying to work with it instead of against it
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |ruminating thoughts on inequality, mental illness and what it means to be human
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |What I learned after 60 consecutive days of running
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Running as an experiment to reduce anxiety and facilitate healing
the relationship between running and the stress response
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |The connections between health, conflict avoidance and trauma
how childhood trauma can affect our physical health
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |On running, fitness and the narrative of sadness
on why do we associate "sadness" with certain feelings
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Chronic patterns
on the repetition of unhealthy patterns
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |How I finally learned to meditate
anyone can learn to meditate simply by learning how to count
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Practicing the ability to wait
being unable to wait = misery
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Quitting coffee
my process of quitting coffee and why I quit it
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Understanding mental health with systems thinking
a simple holistic perspective on the complexity and importance of mental health
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Self-quantifying to better health
with the Apple Watch
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |What I learned from cultivating self-compassion
on the relationship between self-compassion and compassion for other people
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |the now, the limbic brain, and the fear of abandonment
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Building resilience through a sustainable self
the framework that leads to a sustainable self
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Piecing myself together after burnout
The process of finding the root cause and addressing it
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |Recovering from chronic depression
and documenting what helped me
0 post(s) | 0 collection(s) | 0 responses |related collections
selected resources
Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine
completed: 11 Dec 2015Amino acids are the letters. Peptides, including polypeptides and proteins, are the words made from these letters. And they all come together to make up a language that composes and directs every cell, organ, and system in your body.
She was the scientist who discovered the opiate receptor. This book is partially a memoir and partially a breakdown on how emotions can affect our physical health. You'll have to read this with an open mind, as she goes into new-agey stuff. I discovered this book through reading "My Age of Anxiety."
view meta | in 1 collections | 43 highlights | 0 responsesSpark
completed: 12 Jun 2016They don’t know that toxic levels of stress erode the connections between the billions of nerve cells in the brain or that chronic depression shrinks certain areas of the brain. And they don’t know that, conversely, exercise unleashes a cascade of neurochemicals and growth factors that can reverse this process, physically bolstering the brain’s infrastructure. In fact, the brain responds like muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity. The neurons in the brain connect to one another through “leaves” on treelike branches, and exercise causes those branches to grow and bloom with new buds, thus enhancing brain function at a fundamental level.
I didn't consider incorporating exercise into my routine until I read this book.
view meta | in 2 collections | 20 highlights | 0 responsesselected highlights
…the value of exercise has less to do with building muscles or burning calories than it has to do with getting your heart to pump faster and more efficiently and thereby increase blood flow to nourish and cleanse your brain and all your organs.
When stress prevents the molecules of emotion from flowing freely where needed, the largely autonomic processes that are regulated by peptide flow, such as breathing, blood flow, immunity, digestion, and elimination, collapse down to a few simple feedback loops and upset the normal healing response. Meditation, by allowing long-buried thoughts and feelings to surface, is a way of getting the peptides flowing again, returning the body, and the emotions, to health.
The scientific name for the disorder speaks volumes: hypercortisolism. Its symptoms are eerily similar to those of chronic stress: weight gain around the midsection; breaking down muscle tissue to produce unnecessary glucose and then fat; insulin resistance and possibly diabetes; panic attacks, anxiety, depression, and increased risk of heart disease. One of the many correlations Starkman has shown is that the extent of hippocampal shrinkage and memory loss is directly proportional to elevations in cortisol.
Regular aerobic activity calms the body, so that it can handle more stress before the serious response involving heart rate and stress hormones kicks in. It raises the trigger point of the physical reaction. In the brain, the mild stress of exercise fortifies the infrastructure of our nerve cells by activating genes to produce certain proteins that protect the cells against damage and disease. So it also raises our neurons’ stress threshold.
“…conversely, exercise unleashes a cascade of neurochemicals and growth factors that can reverse this process, physically bolstering the brain’s infrastructure. In fact, the brain responds like muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity. The neurons in the brain connect to one another through “leaves” on treelike branches, and exercise causes those branches to grow and bloom with new buds, thus enhancing brain function at a fundamental level.”