Aggressor

The aggressor with regard to the Ukraine proxy war isn’t Russia, but US/NATO. Russia is just defending itself against this stealth invasion by Europe.

If anything, we owe Putin a debt of gratitude for the restraint he has shown. Otherwise, we would all be in basements waiting for the missiles to fall.

This proxy war is just more insane and counterproductive US foreign policy. After Iraq and Vietnam, I guess we should expect this — foreign policy that makes no sense and that is not in our interest.

Russia/Ukraine

Dish Detergent

Now they are pointing out that dish detergent leaves a residue of chemicals on the plates, silverware, etc. that is extremely harmful to humans and causes inflammation. So they encouraging people to wash all dishes and silverware with tap water before use to get rid of this harmful residue.

I’ve never ever used dish detergent for this very reason. It occurred to me very early on that one would be digesting some really crazy chemicals from the residue from dish detergent. I have always just washed everything with tap water, which is also not a complete solution as tap water without a filter will have chlorine that negatively impacts your microbiome.

Sometimes, there is no good solution.

Strength and Old Age

Censorship

What is shocking to me is how quickly social media organs like Facebook and Youtube and many others caved to government pressure to censor anything that was anti-Woke. The First Amendment Right to freedom of speech was of no importance to these organizations.

Cudos to Elon Musk for purchasing Twitter and restoring it to free and unhindered expression. He did this not because it was a good business decision, but solely for that admirable political goal, which clearly bucks the trend of all the other social media organs to adhere to the censorship endorsed by the illiberal Biden administration.

Nevertheless, the last 4 years shows how easily and quickly our First Amendment right can be taken away.

War

Poison?

Processed food is poison is an exaggeration, but not by much. The thought that occurs to me though is that the food industry could actually make very healthy processed foods but they don’t, and I’m not sure why because I would think there would now be a real market for healthy processed foods as more and more of the public have become conscious about what is healthy for them and what isn’t. So one would think a processed food with healthy ingredients without crazy additives would be a real seller.

Assumptions

Food Order

An interesting question is whether there is any advantage in eating the macronutrients — fat, carbs, protein — in any sequence?

There is a lot of evidence that having fat in one’s meal aids the digestion of various vitamins and minerals. Without the presence of fat, these nutrients are digested, but not as well as they would have been had there been some fat available.

Fat also has no impact at all on insulin, and if you eat a meal that includes some fat, the carbs, which will spike insulin, will spike it much less severely because of the presence of fat. You do want to lower insulin spikes as much as possible.

There is also a good deal of evidence that protein is very satiating, and also slows down digestion because the protein compounds require a lot of work by digestive enzymes to break them down, which is a good thing.

So on balance, eating fat/protein at the start of a meal would appear to be the best strategy, and nothing fills that bill better than a handful of mixed nuts — high in both fat and protein. Perhaps you should start all your major meals with a source of fat/protein like nuts to improve your digestion.

Strength and Old Age

Strength and Old Age

Aerobic exercise is not enough to maintain your strength in old age. You need to use weight training/resistance training to break down the muscle so that it can rebuild with protein. That’s the process that maintains muscle and strength, and that’s what the majority of older people don’t do, and therefore suffer from severe sarcopenia.

You see this all the time in very old people, that they don’t have the strength to do simple things — like just standing up is a real effort for them. The other day, I saw an old woman who needed help getting out of the hot tub. She didn’t have the strength to step up to the next level. Clearly, this was person who never did any of the weight training for years, so her muscles atrophied.

Don’t let that happen. Do the weight training/resistance training on a regular basis — at least 3 times a week at the gym. Just do it. Your strength depends on it.

Breathe

Importance of Sleep

How well you sleep determines how you will feel the next day. Get a solid 8 hours of deep sleep and you feel like you can take on the world. Get 6 or fewer hours and you feel like the world is going to take you on.

Basically, sleep determines the quality of your life. It is that important.

Breathe