health

Could you spend 1 day with only all fresh thoughts? No old thoughts allowed.

| johnas9000

I am sure you have heard that we have around 80,000 thoughts a day. The huge problem is that 80% of them are the same thoughts you had yesterday and most of them are negative. Do you think that might cause a problem? Do you think that could steal your happiness? If you havent heard that google it. You will find it written a thousand times a thousand different places. It is what you are doing right now. You are asking yourself, “what is he talking about?” We talk to ourselves incessantly. That is literally the foundation of everything, “self help”. Lets test my theory. Meditation; duh. The goal is to get you to quiet your mind’s incessant chatter. Affirmations; the goal is to at least say positive things. Positive thinking; the goal is to think positive things. Anthony Robbins ( biggest self help guru you know the big guy) He goes through the plethora of things you tell yourself, your beliefs etc. Heck there are even books on self talk. I should ask AI how many books are written to address self talk. In one form or another, they all address self talk. What are you doing when you set goals? You are talking to yourself.

I have a novel idea, I havent seen anywhere. What if you spent one day without repeating a single thought you have had before. Think about that. There is no reason to repeat a thought from yesterday, the day before, and so on and so on. If there are things you have to do, just do it. Just stop repetitive talking to yourself. So now you are challenging your mind to actually “Think” with a capital T. I wrote about this previously. Babbling to yourself in anyone’s world can not possibly pass for thinking. The only place babbling to yourself incessantly is common is in an insane asylum. Worse yet if you are doing it in public. Are you any different, if you are calling up your friends every day and saying how about that Donald Trump or how about that Joe Biden? Or if you are simply repeating your money or health worries from yesterday? Seriously people, get a life.

Its funny I “let go” of so much with the Sedona Method, that my mind is extremely quiet. Yes I have some serious challenges with work that has me playing different options and decisions that are not black and white today. But for the most part, I dont talk to myself, not too much, LOL. When it gets real quiet, I start to “Think”, I write. Its when I wrote most of this blog. I think of things like this idea to have a day with only “thinking,” no vomiting repetitive thoughts. God only knows what will come to mind. And I mean that literally and figuratively. Where is this writing coming from? I am just spontaneously writing, or so it seems to me. We have a lot we can think about. In fact where is our thinking coming from, is easily one of the things to think about.

Maybe all of the great ideas and inventions of the past few hundred years of civilization came in moments of stillness when certain people were able to access the part of their mind where original thinking comes from. Or maybe the stillness allows the reception of collective consciousness, or even “God” in whatever way you choose to see the intelligence outside of yourself. In fact, I cant even believe how cohesively and seamlessly I am writing this, or am I? I am really impressed with this thought. I will have to ask others how they understand what I am saying

For me, I am going to spend the rest of the day in quiet “contemplation” allowing myself to have real thinking. Its almost like a living meditation. Being so quiet that maybe magic can happen. I am standing guard at my mind not allowing any thought I have had before to enter. Just like when you are meditating and when a “thought” comes by you just let it pass without giving it any attention. If a repetitive thought presents itself I am merely letting it gently pass without paying any attention to it. And why should that only happen while you meditate? Why not stand guard all day? Am I the only one that entertains repetitive thoughts? Or am I the only one recognizing and suggesting that we live without entertaining repetitive thoughts? Like, while we meditate, but constantly, throughout the day while we are awake.

Maybe tonight I might plan tomorrow and what my next steps are with my current overwhelming issue. But for the rest of the day I am going to enjoy my meditative state of “being” Perhaps that is another way of “being” Or maybe that is, the way to “be.” Or maybe, that is the path to “being.” Or maybe we should call “living in the now,” simply a human “being,” vs a human “thinking” small t. And are you actually being, if you are thinking BS ( repetitive thoughts)? Again my proposal is to either “be” or you can “Think” ideate, create. The only thing I am suggesting with this exercise it that you merely do not allow a single repetitive thought to be entertained. I know, no mere task. It is actually monumental, if you can experience a whole day without a single one of your 80,000 repetitive thoughts, from yesterday, hijacking your brain and, by the way, your happiness. It was also noted that most of those repetitive thoughts are negative. So there should be a plethora of benefits if you can spend your days without entertaining repetitive thoughts.

I will have to search to see if I am the only one suggesting this, because there are a lot of famous people out there that I listen to. I have yet to hear anyone suggest you even try to do this. They suggest meditating and positive thinking and visualizing. No one that I have heard, in my 40 plus years, reading self help, has ever suggested to merely try to live a day without entertaining a repetitive thought. No old thoughts allowed, only new thoughts. Good luck I will have to open the comments. PS I just found some moron suggesting blank mind is a problem. Not so fast Bozo. Pretty much every single one of us suffer from entertaining the same repetitive 80,000 thoughts pretty much every day of their life. That might be a bigger problem. Maybe people like Elon Musk and Thomas Edison are not repetitive thought monkeys. I doubt they would have the time to invent anything if there mind is merely repeating the same thoughts as yesterday. Think about how insane we have all been merely repeating the same thoughts every day. I will report back. This could be monumental. I might have to create a whole course around this if I succeed, and especially if it changes my life as I imagine it would.

Maybe I should ask a few friends to take the challenge. We might have to refine it, ie you are only allowed repetitive worrying thoughts for one hour a day, preferably early evening when you are preparing for the next day. This way you can tell yourself, as I am doing today, ” I can let that thought pass because I will make plans early this evening” vs just self flagellating by repeating my very serious decision I have to make this week. I also say that because I want to return to “no thoughts” before sleep.

What about Metformin?

| johnas9000

It is time for us to think about taking Metformin for anti aging, health and disease prevention. I remember being at a health seminar in New York where all the top doctors were talking about healthy foods, and supplements, and they literally mentioned Metformin for Anti Aging more than 10 years ago.

Today type two diabetics who are taking Metformin are having better health outcomes than normal people. Think about it. Type two diabetics, who are normally getting their arms and legs chopped off and having all kinds of horrific issues with their pancreas, liver, and brain who are taking Metformin are healthier than “healthy non diabetics” That’s crazy.

It’s time to take a deep dive and look into this seriously. I have a friend who’s in his 30s who’s been taking it for a number of years. I’m looking for side effects and I am not finding any. Of course ask your doctor.

Lets start here at PubMed. The National Institute of Health where we find all the medical school research. For those of you that are lazy I am going to take a few lines out of context to make it easy for you.

..”metformin is widely used for treating people with type 2 diabetes and appears to show protection against cancer, inflammation, and age-related pathologies.” … Read it yourself. The link is above. If you read just the first paragraph it addresses the concern for lactic acidosis which is .03 per 1000 patient years. So that is virtually zero. And maybe a slight tummy ache.

Here is a 2022 study in PubMed You get to place your bets on your life and measure the risk reward ratio for you “The most involved mechanism of metformin’s action is AMPK activation. Emerging evidence has indicated that AMPK is not only a key effector of glucose and lipid metabolism, ……… improving insulin resistance; ………driving the cardiovascular protection and neuroprotection; ……… mediating anti-inflammation; ……executing anticancer; …… improving reproductive system; …… probably protecting against COVID-19. ……..inhibiting HGP and cancers, anti-obesity, improving complications of COVID-19 and Down syndrome, cardioprotection and neuroprotection.”

I took out a lot of acronyms and even things I assumed you didnt know like autophagy. Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells.

Here are 18,000 more studies you can read. There are so many studies they needed a study to summarize the studies. Here is the study to summarize the studies.

“The numerous beneficial health outcomes associated with the use of metformin to treat patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), together with data from pre-clinical studies in animals including the nematode, C. elegans, and mice have prompted investigations into whether metformin has therapeutic utility as an anti-aging drug that may also extend lifespan. Indeed, clinical trials, including the MILES (Metformin In Longevity Study) and TAME (Targeting Aging with Metformin), have been designed to assess the potential benefits of metformin as an anti-aging drug.”

They even have an acronym TAME targeted anti aging with Metormin. Starting to get the idea this might be helpful? And you might not want to wait 50 years? How about this one liner from this study? “Based on a systematic review of 53 studies, Campbell et al. concluded that independent of its therapeutic efficacy as an anti-diabetic drug, the use of metformin results in a reduction of all-cause mortality associated with diseases that accelerate aging, including cancer and cardiovascular disease (37).” Thats a small mouthful that says a lot and all you need to know.

For me its time to start. “Diabetes-associated hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, elevated oxidative stress, vascular disease, and inflammation are all linked to cognitive decline and, as reflected by a meta-analysis, it was concluded that metformin reduces cognitive decline and dementia in T2DM subjects (255).” My risk benefit ratio at my age seems like a no brainer. But you get to place your bets for your life. So far I cant find a downside. And this drug was approved as a treatment for diabetes in Europe in the 1950s and in 1995 by the FDA in the US. So I think if there were some serious or even not so serious side effects they would have shown up in the past 78 years.

Here is more from Life Extension Magazine August 2023. The title of the article “Will Metformin become the first Anti-Aging Drug?” “New studies appear almost daily revealing how metformin inhibits aging by boosting AMPK activity. Data on cancer risk reductions provide an even greater urgency for maturing individuals to reactivate their cellular AMPK.”.

..”also has been shown to protect against cancer and cardiovascular disease. It also offers neuroprotection, and promotes weight loss”

Apparently “FDA has allowed metformin to be studied in humans as the first anti-aging drug.1

Just go read the whole article. Its beyond proven in my eyes and the real proof may never come.

“The FDA has approved a study that will determine if metformin can do more than lower blood sugar—it will evaluate metformin’s ability to slow aging. This is the first ever anti-aging study approved by the FDA.”

“Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME), will evaluate 3,000 people over a course of six years. Half of the participants will receive metformin, and the other half will receive a placebo. Since aging is largely characterized by the development of disease, the success of the study will be determined by whether or not the drug delays the onset of typical age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.

This groundbreaking study has the potential to change the future of how we treat disease. Developing a single drug designed to treat multiple conditions would dramatically reduce the number of drugs a typical person would need, which would reduce overall drug side effects, eliminate contraindications, and of course, save money.

None of this is good for Big Pharma’s bottom line—which is likely why no company has agreed to fund the study. Until that happens, this important study is on hold.”

To my friend who says never trust big pharma, I agree apparently one drug that would prevent multiple diseases that is many years off patent and around 5 cents a pill is so potentially efficient no one wants to fund this study.

Anyone still reading? Here is David Sinclair’s regimen He is a professor at Harvard who has been studying anti aging for most of his career.

We can keep going into the weeds deeper and deeper. Suffice it to say that you should increase your intake of B12 and other B vitamins and maybe not take it on days that you exercise. Sinclair says you are stressing already stressed mitochondria. But seriously this is getting into the weeds now. That would be like me warning you about hyponatremia and tell you not to drink water because of possible Hyponatremia (the sodium level in the blood is below normal.can cause seizures, coma and even death. Hyponatremia is more common in older adults because they’re more likely to take medicines or have medical problems that put them at risk of the disorder.)

It really happens with people have some serious imbalances and usually in a hospital. Not to say that I didnt read one marathoner somewhere managed to drink enough water without adding any salts or sugars and managed to induce it.

If you are planning on running a marathon in 90 degree heat and you are slow and will be at it from more than 5 hours maybe a little gatorade plus water. But I was really making fun of the idea that we are “sweating the small stuff” vs taking advantage of the big stuff.

You can never say too much if you are advising people to take drugs. Here is another great article.

Here is the link followed by my excerpts. Of course if you read the actual article my excerpts are redundant.

Article is it safe to take Metformin for anti aging

65 Yrs in the marketplace, 6th most common prescribed drug. Embraced by silicon valley, anti aging doctors and celebrities. The feared side effect of lactic acidosis occurs in less than 10 cases per 100,000 patient years. Experts who are taking it;

  • David Sinclair, Ph.D. – 1000mg per day
  • Nir Barzilai, M.D. – 1500mg per day
  • Ray Kurzweil – 500-850mg per day
  • Jay Campbell – 1000-2000mg per day

For more details refer to the article. Suffice it to say to make sure you are taking your B vitamins and B12.

Tips on how to start losing weight

| johnas9000

I wrote an answer on Quora I think is worth sharing here.   The question was where to start when you want to lose weight.  1. Drink two glasses of water before every meal, this alone will make you so full you will not be able to eat much.  2. Allow your stomach to shrink.  Hunger pangs means your stomach is shrinking. Once it shrinks be aware. It will take less food to feel full. Pause before you eat that next slice of pizza. You might have eaten 3 slices previously, but if your stomach has shrunk you will be full now after two or even one. Wait 20 minutes. Your satiety signal from your brain doesnt come for at least 20 minutes after you are full.  Dont fall for high carb diets. If you dont eat any fat you will never feel full.  Actually if you really practice just these few tips you will lose weight. Emotional eating is a different problem.  Ask yourself if you are hungry. People are rarely hungry.  We eat out of habit and emotionally. Simply ask yourself if you are hungry each time before you eat, that alone will help you lose weight.   Simple is better.  You will do great if you can incorporate just those few suggestions.  If you want to go more in depth,  Weigh yourself every day. You must have a scale that measure body fat. Because if you are losing fat, ( replacing fat with muscle) because you are working out, your weight will not reflect that.  Those scales are now very inexpensive. You can buy them online or at most retail stores. When you weigh yourself its merely to stay on target a few pounds might be water weight.  Notice how much water you are drinking.  But on the other hand if you seem to have consistently gained a few pounds its time to ramp up your efforts.  Dont unconsciously gain weight.  You need daily feedback.  Weigh yourself with the same amount of clothes or none, at the same time of day with the same amount of water each day.

Visualize.  That is way more important than willpower.  Dream and visualizing how sexy you are going to look in that little black dress and feel wearing that bikini in the first time in years. If you are conversely dreaming how good that slice of pizza is going to taste you lose, not weight but your quest to lose weight.  You need to flood your conscious and subconscious with positive visualizations of how great you are going to look and feel. I would even go so far as to imagine the worst foods ( you should never eat anyway) to taste bad and have the true negative effects they actually have. Imagine.  If you are constantly thinking about how much damage the coca cola and its 10 teaspoons of sugar are doing to your body besides gaining weight.  If you have a look at the pictures of people getting amputations because of diabetes its not going to take much willpower to make a better choice.  Your choices are 100% imagination.  Even when you wife or husband asks you what you want to eat, you actually stop and imagine what you are in the mood for.  How about imagining what is going to get you to your goals of happiness and looking great and feeling great ?

Cancer Cures ? Alternative Medicine

| johnas9000

Are there alternative cures for cancer ? Natural Cures ?   Another question I answered on Quora that is worthy of repeating here. Is complementary/alternative medicine harmful?   

The uneducated practice of alternative or complementary medicine or even orthomolecular ( mega doses of vitamins) can absolutely be dangerous !!! I am the biggest health nut and pop dozens of supplements daily. But I studied first. We just watched an episode of strange deaths. Some nut job poisoned himself with vitamin A. Anyone taking supplements should know at least the fat soluble ones like A, E, K. You must have some level of understanding even to take a few vitamins. Most water soluble vitamins like vitamin C and most B vitamins will harmlessly wash out of your body every day.  Other vitamins, like vitamin A,  can literally kill you if you are stupid enough to take toxic amounts.  Herbs are also something to be extremely careful with.  Some herbs are extremely strong.  Remember ephedra ? A few people died from that. Its pretty much speed in herbal form. Most drugs were actually modeled on herbs. Where do you think the drug companies got the idea for ephedrine ? Plus you have to consider if its going to interact with any drugs or pre-exisiting conditions. Also they compete with each other, so by overdosing with one supplement you could create an imbalance or shortage of another one. I can think of countless issues where I have been helped as well as times I was surprised at a side effect. For example some make you more photo sensitive. I remember taking St John’s Wort and getting a really bad sunburn. I am olive skinned and rarely burned in my whole life. But the absolute worst thing you can do is to avoid getting proper, or conventional treatment because you are trying your alternative path first. I honestly dont know what I would do if I got cancer.  I have seen and listened to alternative cures both here and in Europe at the World Anti Aging Congress. But I also know that for certain types of cancer, if treated early there are many conventional therapies that are extremely effective and have very high cure rates if caught early. Also if you wait until it is spread throughout your body even the best conventional cures might be hopeless. If you are lucky and have a good complementary or integrative doctor that understands how to integrate alternative and conventional therapies for the best possible outcomes you would be in the best hands. But don’t do it yourself and dont take anything without telling your doctor no matter how much of a health nut you are. Certain supplements are terrific for your liver. But if you need a medication and the supplement or vitamin is clearing your liver out too quickly the medication will not be in your system long enough to be effective. So there is no blanket answer except for no, without proper education, yes with a good integrative doctor. That would be someone who is an MD and also a PHD in biochemistry and nutrition and or organic chemistry who also has clinical experience. Its a very new field of medicine and you should seek out the most experienced providers to assist you who work with conventional doctors that are open minded to complementary alternative treatments to integrate with your conventional treatment. But again I cant emphasize enough do not wait to get a conventional opinion on the speed and progression of whatever is ailing you. PS if you want a great education, the vitamin companies that sell exclusively to doctors have a tremendous amount of great research that together with guidance from a qualified practitioner can be carefully integrated into your treatment.  But dont do what my friend recently called me and did.  He got me on a three way call with his cousin and father in law who had cancer, for my opinion about a specific natural “cancer cure”  That is simply absurd.  There are dozens of different types of cancer that could be at various degrees of progression.  Unless you have a medical degree and are also a PHD in biochemistry and a ton of experience with different complementary medicines and the knowledge of how they can interact or effect a specific treatment you have no business messing with people’s lives.  That being said the time for alternative therapies is before anything bad happens.  Limit your exposure to the thousands of cancer causing chemicals.  There is nothing wrong with taking the brocolli sprouts and other wonderful natural substances that detox harmful cells before they get expressed as cancer.  There is a theory that we constantly have damaged cells.  Our body naturally eliminates them with our T cells and killer cells.  Its only when our system is overwhelmed that it becomes expressed as cancer.  Dont wait til things get that far gone. You can live very well without all of the cancer causing ingredients and chemicals. Paradoxically the wonderful natural supplements that eliminate “bad cells” or cancer cells or help your liver flush out all of the toxins will also flush out the drugs before they have a chance to help you.  This is a compelling reason to take all of those wonderful supplements now.  Because you literally cant, or will be betting your life if you wait until you have a serious disease before you pay attention to your health and embrace complementary or natural remedies.

 

Frozen or Cryotherapy my experience at Kryolife

| johnas9000

One of the newest crazes is Cryotherapy.  Ok so in a certain sense its not all that new.  I was with Dr Lisa Zdinak in Paris almost 1o years ago and learned how to do cryotherapy for the face.  The goal is to improve circulation.  So an intense amount of heat or cold is going to increase circulation. If you think about it there is an overwhelming number of technologies based on that theory.  Even Carboxytherapy, fooling the body to increase circulation,, ok next post on that.  But cryotherapy is a truly extreme example of that.  You may have heard of or even subjected yourself to a cold plunge at your local gym. Putting a sustained amount of ice on a recent injury is actually to accomplish the opposite. You’re trying to stop the body from overreacting and bringing too much imflamation to an area. But brief amounts of intense cold will actually stimulate your body into more circulation. That’s why cryotherapy has been used as a facial therapy. There’s always so much to say and so many related therapies it’s almost impossible to stay on topic.

cryo

Cryotherapy or at least the recent craze is the immersion of the whole body into -273° F gas for a period of 2 to 3 minutes. The claimed results include reducing inflammation in the body,  increasing testosterone and energy, and reducing the signs of aging to name a few. It’s actually quite intimidating. But they also make it very comfortable in that you’re standing there only a few feet away from the operator of the equipment and your friend if they come with you so that goes a long way to alleviating the fear.  I have to admit that I was quite scared because I do have an arrhythmia of the heart. So I am not sure if after completion I was experiencing an endorphin rush or as one of the other reviewers commented just happy to be alive. So once again and I will say ask your doctor first. In fact ask your doctor first before you do anything or take anything or take any advice whatsoever. In fact you’re hearing more and more stories of patients bypassing conventional treatment of easily curable diseases and experimenting with the alternative cures and then finding that they are now too far gone to be treated conventionally. Any conventional or alternative therapy has to be weighed with the gravity of even potential life or death when it comes to certain diseases. This I say as a hard-core alternative minded person who witnessed both of his parents lived to their mid 90s with hardly taking  anything.  My mom even refused to take an aspirin for most of her life. But again another story.  I give this one a thumbs up. My dear friend Oz Garcia is there every week, since I discovered it, by the way. cryo 3

Melatonin

| johnas9000

Melatonin deserves a blog unto itself.  It  is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland. It is believed to regulate other hormones and maintains the body’s sleep wake cycle or rhythm. You produces more melatonin at night, and it drops from light. Exposure to bright lights or shift work or travel can interrupt your circadium rhythm.

Some scientists believe melatonin levels may be related to aging since the these levels drop as we age. They believe that is why  older adults have sleep problems.  Melatonin also has strong antioxidant effects. Evidence suggests that it may help strengthen the immune system.

If you are considering using melatonin supplements you should talk to your doctor first. In fact you need to look no further then something as innocuous as vitamin E. Its among the list to avoid before surgery since it would slow the clotting time.

People use melatonin for jet lag and studies suggest that for short periods of time melatonin is more effective than a placebo in reducing the time it takes to fall asleep, increasing the number of sleeping hours, and boosting daytime alertness.Heart Disease

Several studies show melatonin has cardioprotective properties, including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Research also suggests that melatonin may help lower blood pressure levels and improve cholesterol profiles. More research is needed.

PS beauty sleep is a real thing. If you are not getting your sleep it will affect your appearance.  In fact another supplement based on magnolia flower is extremely popular and so helpful we call it beauty sleep.  Two of our patients told us it helped them get off Ambien ( another long story people have hurt themselves sleep walking on Ambien)

More on that and other beauty supplements here

Also in one of the most underappreciated but favorite book of mine Stopping the Clock by Klatz and Goldman it has a list of over one hundred of the top anti aging scientists in the world and what their vitamin regimens were.  I was astounded that the most common “Supplement:” was melatonin, because of their belief that of its anti aging properties.