Health Advices and Longevity

There's a current UK news story about a gynecologist who pulled the head off a baby as she was trying to deliver it. All of the news stories make it clear that it was a result of some pretty horrendous decision making, but only a very small fraction of the stories mention that the doctor was just completing a 24 hour work shift.

Not linking any articles because it's a bit disturbing, easily found on Google for the morbid.

 

When I started as a budding physician I used to start work on a Monday 8am and finish on the following Tuesday at 5pm with 3 or if lucky 4 hours of sleep within those 33 hours. Go home and sleep. Wake up on Wednesday for another 8 hour shift. Start again on a Thursday at 8am and finish on Friday at 5pm. Rinse repeat, including all the weekend and festive days, for another 2 years. Team work helped a lot, as supporting each other when someone cannot take it any more is essential.

I have mostly worked shift work in emergency departments rather than non-stop duties since then. It still is very tiring on body and mind as every single minute is intense especially when at the eleventh hour of a night shift a really sick case comes in. A good life work balance helps a lot but the body clock doesn't really recover. The older one gets the worse it is as the recovery phase is much longer and never resolves unless vacation leave is taken.

Is there an alternative? In the short term not really, as expertise is gained with years of sweat. On a longer term, training of younger doctors to reach a suitable number of 'experts' in the area can help relieve the burden. This is a double edged sword though. As the more doctors (or practitioners) there are, the less individual exposure there is to critical sick cases and the less experience gained. Training including simulation training bridges the gap but the reality is a different beast altogether.

 

Mhm, I agree with the fact that the older we get, the more difficult it is to recover. Ten years ago 4 hours a day sleep was enough, now after two or three days of routine like this I'm a shadow of myself at home and far less productive at work. At times it's hilarious even how much time simple tasks take me when I'm in such a state. Wrok/life balance is essential now, yup.

 

I don't think they were ever very keen on taking 8-stone* wimps! And probably less so, plumped out a bit with age, but no added muscle.

My strange body clock worked quite well with sailing. The 2am watch is legendary for its unpopularity among amateurs and professionals. I used to volunteer for it. What's more, I was fine to finish the night if others had got seasick or fever.

I hate getting up to see the dawn, but I don't mind staying up for it




*112 pounds, 50 kilos

 

FWIW, I'm a firefighter...Lieutenant actually. I'm with you on the sunrise...a beautiful thing to behold...just don't ask me to wake up.
(for the record my body-fat is still decent...a work in progress to be sure, but I try...I swear!)

 

Food allergies and sensitivities are becoming an epidemic. It is now estimated that 1 in 5 Americans now have some sort of food allergy! A recent study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that ER visits at Children’s Hospital Boston for allergic reactions more than doubled from 2001 to 2006! What could be causing all these reactions?

Well, there are many theories, from the infiltration of genetically modified foods to our obsession with anti-bacterial everything in an effort to sterilize our environment. But everybody is in agreement on one thing: Up until about 50 years ago allergies were rare, and now they are rampant genetic modify food, can reduce the number of healthy gut baccteria. It’s probably safe to say that living in the time period we’re living in means our digestive system are a bit out of whack.


THE WIDE VARIETY OF SYMPTOMS ASSOCIATED WITH FOOD ALLERGIES OR FOOD SENSITIVITIES:


STOMACH ISSUES:

• Gluten Intolerance
• IBS or Crohn’s Disease
• Gas or bloating
• Cramps
• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Indigestion
• Heartburn

NEUROLOGICAL ISSUES:

• Headaches
• Joint pain and stiffness
• Fibromyalgia
• Autism (Click here to read some fascinating research on the gut-Autism connection)
• Asperger’s Syndrome
• ADD or ADHD
• Delayed speech or development

IMMUNOLOGICAL ISSUES:

• Frequent colds and flus
• Sinus and ear congestion
• Seasonal allergies
• Auto-immune disorders
• Acne
• Eczema
• Psoriasis

As crazy as it may seem that food allergies are causing all of this, we must first understand how the body reacts when a food is interpreted as a foreign harmful substance.

WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHY DOES MY STOMACH HATE ME?
Have you ever wondered how your body became allergic or sensitive to a food in the first place? To understand how this happened, you must first understand dysbiosis. You might know it by its other name, “leaky gut syndrome.”

To put it simply, having this syndrome means that at some time your body’s intestinal flora and wall became compromised. Stress, illness, an overly sterile environment, prescription medication, antibiotics, and genetically modified foods all reduce the good bacteria and break down the wall in our intestinal tract. Essentially, you’ve developed a “leaky gut.”

A leaky gut is no bueno. Why? Because our food was not meant to be absorbed into our bloodstream until it has been broken down into the correct nutrients. If a food particle (like from that sandwich you ate) gets absorbed into your bloodstream at the wrong time, all hell breaks loose. Your body cannot recognize that food particle. It’s viewed like a foreign substance and your immune system tags it as BAD. Next time you eat that food, your body raises up the red flag and attacks.

Did you know that Nexium and Prevacid, medications prescribed for stomach problems, are the 2nd and 3rd most medications prescribed in 2012? Yikes. Lots o’ people are getting their stomachs in knots. It’s time to get off the drugs and heal that gut!

AVOIDING THE CULPRIT IS NOT THE CURE.
There is a mistaken belief in modern medicine that if a person is allergic or sensitive to a food, then that person must avoid that food until they are no longer allergic. Or, you know, forever. The theory is based on the process of elimination. The sad thing is, simply avoiding that food will not magically make the body heal. It may relieve your symptoms, but the restriction will be awfully hard to live with.
But no worries. Today I’m going to give you 3 surprising ways to heal that gut of yours and get rid of those food allergies/sensitivities.


#1 EAT HOMEMADE FERMENTED FOODS/BEVERAGES
“In the normal scheme of things, we’d never have to think twice about replenishing the bacteria that allow us to digest food. But since we’re living with antibiotic drugs and chlorinated water and antibacterial soap and all these factors in our contemporary lives that I’d group together as a ‘war on bacteria,’ if we fail to replenish [good bacteria], we won’t effectively get nutrients out of the food we’re eating.”

Our ancestors were smarty pants. They knew fermented foods were the key to a healthy gut, and therefore a healthy body.

Fermenting beverages and fermented foods have been dated as far back as 4,000 BC. The fermentation process kept food for longer times, allowing cultures to sustain themselves through the winter. Bread, cheese, pickles, yogurt – these were all fermented properly long before the industrialization of food. When we stopped canning in the home and purchasing canned goods from the store, we lost the art of lacto-fermentation. Our ancestors had jars of sauerkraut and lacto-fermented cucumber pickles stored in the cellar. Today the store-bought versions do not carry beneficial bacteria to the same extent that they used to. Today, (especially in America due to lack of culture-specific foods) we’re just not getting enough beneficial bacteria from these foods.

You’ve probably heard of probiotics before, and have chuckled at the Jamie Lee Curtis commercials promoting Activia yogurt. Well, Miss Jaime Lee Curtis is both right and wrong. While yogurt with probiotics helps to improve your digestion, store bought versions are not optimal. Your body needs two things: PREBIOTICS and PROBIOTICS. Without these foods, your body cannot perform efficient digestion.

Probiotics help colonize your gut with essential bacteria. Prebiotics help feed that good bacterium. Together they help you have a superhero system.

GOOD SOURCES OF PROBIOTICS (Choose 2 or 3 to incorporate into your diet):
Fermented milk
Kefir
Fermented and cultured vegetables
Fermented condiment
Probiotic supplements (Several at Amazon ), in addition to a homemade probiotic

GOOD SOURCES OF PREBIOTICS (Choose 2 or 3 to incorporate into your diet):

Jicama
Chicory
Endive and dandelion greens
Artichoke
Onions
Asparagus
Garlic


#2 EAT GELATINOUS FOODS
Gelatin heals and seals the mucosal lining of the intestinal tract, and aids in the assimilation of nutrients. It’s also an easily digestible protein that works as an anti-inflammatory as well.

There are a few ways you can incorporate gelatin into your diet, like these:

• You can obtain gelatin from Homemade bone broth , eating whole fat meats, and using the drippings to make gravy.
• Grass-fed gelatin powder can be perfect for adding to other foods. The best powdered brands are made from grass-fed animals. I use the beef unflavored gelatin for use in puddings and other dessert It gels up nicely, just like regular Jell-O.
• Grass-fed gelatin powder also comes in a formula.This formula doesn’t congeal in liquid, so it’s an easy way to take gelatin as a daily supplement.

#3 SLEEP!

Did you know that our bodies can withstand years of poor nutrition, but if we go more than 11 days without sleep we DIE? It’s true. People who have tried to set a world record longer than 11 days have actually died! Sleep deprivation is so damaging to the body that it is used as a form of torture! Isn’t it amazing how we spend so much time analyzing our diets, yet we forget about the quality and quantity of our sleep? You can’t torture your body during the night, but expect it to perform miracles during the day.

 

Excellent stuff! Just an observation but it seems the rise in allergies seems to coincide with the sugar epidemic?

 

Well I'll chip in. I'm an eye doctor so ask me if you need any eyes-related advice.

edit: I might also know other stuff too.

 

It's probably just a coincidence, but two things that share a common cause, that being the change of lifestyle. I guess, we do eat more sugar, so our metabolism suffers, immune system is at least a bit unbalanced by that, though, gut flora changes might have something to do with that too. I'd say it's likely that allergies mostly come because of the fact that people are not yet fully adapted to the sterility of life nowadays (developed world). No more parasites, super clean baby spaces, no more dirt, etc. Too much sterility is harmful too, to such a point that feces transplants can help with inflammatory bowel diseases which have roots in bad immune system responses. I'm not even kidding. I'm sure David is more suited to answer this though. Another example is the prostate hyperplasia. It probably has a lot to do with sitting and tight underpants causing a rise in testicular venous pressure going retro up to the prostate and/or raising testosterone levels there (at least that's what we were told in colledge years ago, if my memory didn't fail me). Not kidding either. Wear roomy pants.

edit: grammar

 

I am no nurse, medic, doctor or any kind of health specialist and/or professional.

All I know is that even on days when my dust allergies surface, a good bike ride actually helps out a bit. Staying in your bubble is not good for you. Sure there will be some slime and snot in my case (even with medicine) but nothing a few tissues cannot solve.

Yesterday I had to bring many deliveries in town (Amsterdam) on the company moped. The air inside the company building was worse than the air outside. Your nose does not lie to you. Stale and dirty air is terrible, especially during Summer heat.

 

Hey David! What can you tell me about burnout syndrome? I know that primary markers are high cortisol which wreaks havoc on most of the major systems and certain vitamin deficiencies.

Asking because I recently left a startup where for 3.5 years I did 10 - 13h days and for some time even experimented with armodafinil to keep my productivity up. Now I'm looking for a good way to get my shit sustainable. Currently a good sleep regimen and a less stressful work environment is a good start.

P.S. The best thing I tried for keeping the stress at bay were shrooms. By all means, it's not for everyone, but the next day I felt like after a vacation. I suppose that's how computers feel after a clean OS install.

 

People tend to doubt this, but if you are lucky and have compatible brain chemistry they can be legitimately therapeutic. Or used for personal improvement (I know, sounds corny). I am pretty sure some re-networked neural priming occurs. Getting defragged is a great way to think about it.

 

People who take dmt once (simmilar to lsd) have permanent increase in openness and creativity scores, and indeed, mechanism behind it is somewhat like you said. Unfortunatelly though, lack of sleep, abuse of drugs, too much stress, etc. will, if your genetic allows it (and vast majority of people are in this category), lead to dementia sooner than normal. No known remedy. Also, you ALWAYS risk a permanent psychosis with some drugs, like weed. If your genetic is normal, the risk is very, very small, but there. And always there. It's a roulette every single time. Risk is very small though. But if you have a positive family history for psychic problems, it's probably still low, but relevant. I'm not sure about shrooms.
Hallucinogens usually don't cause you to become a junkie, but can be dangerous, nontheless, obviously.

 

We do study this in the university. And certainly your impressions are real

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/pdf/S2211-1247(18)30755-1.pdf

 

@Hrodulf Speaking as a non-medical professional but from personal experience (and some latest/greatest research articles), getting your heartrate really going 4-5 times a week for at minimum 30 minutes should help. Additionally, practicing mindfulness has shown to decrease stress and improve cognitive function during stressed starts.

All lot of hippy dippy shit I thought was garbage is actually showing up in research as helpful.

Wake up at the same time every single day if you can, regardless of when you went to bed. Hopefully you'll be able to find a rhythm. You may also want to go see a sleep specialist who can monitor you while sleeping.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone, sleep has been my number one priority to sort out and I’ve been fairly succesful with it. Even my autoimmune ecsema has finally started to heal.

And before anyone decides to pop shrooms, you really need to prepare for that stuff. It’s not a party drug or an easy ride, for me it was 8 hours of hard work thinking away from bad channels and in the end putting myself back together not unlike Dr. Manhattan. I did technically od, because I took double dose as my gf was reluctant to do hers. At full blow, if you’re not in control or try to struggle, you can brake something.

P.S. I took a plastic bottle of water to have a drink and suddenly forgot how to swallow mid gulp. That was closest I got to panicking, as air was running out and my brain was sorting out an IKEA manual on how to orally intake liquids. All because I got overwhlemed by the taste of water and evening sun shining through the bottle.

 

I've had very vivid and weird hallucinations from sleeping pills. I also have that rare hereditary family type sleep paralysis.

Right, before I forget, we've recently had an outbreak of measles in Dubrovnik (place where game of thrones and last f'ing jedi were filmed).

Do vaccinate your kids. Don't be idiots.

 

My brother-in-law is not a medical professional, but has worked most of his life in biotech companies. He's in complete agreement that your gut flora is very important and can be knocked out of whack, but he says that a number of studies have shown that the only way to introduce new bacteria is from, uhh, the other end. New bacteria contained in eaten foods do not survive the stomach acid.

What's your take?

 

Some do. They are called probiotics. Don't confuse them with "probiotic supplement" stuff that's like, food/vitamins/minerals for that bacteria types or something. Labels like to confuse around with that. You want probiotic bacteria.

 

"The other way" I have to assume you mean fecal transplants. From what someone working research in GI has mentioned, probiotics aren't helping as much as advertised because a lot can't survive getting to your GI tract. That said, the docs at the same clinic are still prescribing stuff like Align because some are getting there and helping some folks.

What needs to become a standard of care is restoring your gut flora after a bat with antibiotics, which just destroys your GI.