Michael569

He probably gets hundreds, even thousands of email from people about business opportunities, colabs , interviews, requests for guidance, coaching, sponsorship, adds on actualized.org and then hundreds and hundreds for young men and women with mental health struggles, difficulties in life, guys unable to find women, get laid ...you name it. Don't take it personally, he probably has to filter everything pretty aggressively Having committed conversations with random individuals on the internet that are not just some half arsed blabber but actually good quality advice would take a whole team of people to take care of. Its just not doable

Probably a bit overrated and overpriced If you adjust your diet for higher antioxidant intake, you might feel better than any mediocre benefit derived from astaxanthin pill. The evidence on antioxidant supplements in general is showing fairly poor results compared to something like Mediterranean diet. Humans seem to benefit more from food-derived antioxidants rather than supplemental ones because food comes in a bundle of nutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants and all sorts of components stimulating secondary pathways in cells. So even though we don't fully understand what does what in terms of different molecules, we know that as a sum of its parts, it works better than isolating one and mega dosing it. it might even be harmful in some cases when we do that.

What do you think is the obstacle you're facing. Loss of motivation can be temporary but motivation alone isn't enough, you need to be prepared for hours of boring work that often feels demotivating. Maybe that could be what's causing this? It is important to revisit your "why" fairly often but also important that you don't stay on the macro level but regularly zoom in to the day to day micro of all the operational stuff

@kray i don't, sorry. We stopped working together last year

good luck! if nicotine gums don't work, try the patches instead. Someone I worked with last year found that approach incredibly helpful. I think he was cutting down by about 20% every other week and took him about 3 months to quit altogether with a few ups and downs. Hope it'll work out for you/ Also reading Alan Carrs's books could help Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Be a Happy Non-smoker for the Rest of Your Life: Amazon.co.uk: Carr, Allen: 9780141039404: Books

I'm asking this with genuine interest, what made you take up smoking? I assume you had to override some form of self preservation instinct since you've been a member of the forum for a while...is it because of a girl you were dating? That's how buddy of mine took it on for example.

@Something Funny you can but it would be gross. Filtering removes certain components which are bitter, indigestible and not so tasty and spares you the cholesterol increasing effect of unfiltered coffee (there is something in unfiltered coffee that does that, don't remember what that molecule is called)

Hope you're well Judy. Here if you wanna talk to someone 👋🏻

I think making difficult life choices needs to be a combination of some intuition (gut feeling) and some rational strategic considerations. Taking the example of your house: intuition tells you something doesn't feel right. Most likely what that means is one or more of your core values are being compromised because intuition always works alongside your value system (do you know what your values are?) . Maybe it is the location because if you, for example, value solitude and isolation, then living alonside a noisy neighbourhood won't be good for you. Or if ne of your core values is connection and your house is in the middle of nowhere and there are no opportunities , then that is not good for you. - you need to spend time journaling on this not thinking. Writing things down opens up deeper areas of your cerebral cortex and helps you engage more brain pathways. Thinking isn't good enough, its too superficial, too easy to distract and thinking tends to always follow the same patterns because it conserves energy. You need to go deeper. Grab a pen and paper and write Secondly the other aspect is being strategic and rational if I am unhappy what can I do about it? where would i like to live? how much can i afford to pay per month on a rent, council tax, utilities will my expenses go up if I move? will I have to commute further? could it be that I am just bored and the movement is simply a distraction? maybe final consideration is a 3rd party opinion - ask someone else who knows you well for an opinion. Sometimes other people, especially those who are good systemic thinkers can help you think differently about issues, introduce new variables or maybe answer open questions. Anyways, hope that helps. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I mean too much caffeine can get your heart racing so there is a balance that needs to be struck. If you do experience that, where caffeine gets your heart racing regardless of the dose, then maybe you are unlucky to be poor metaboliser. It often has to do with P450 1A2 mutation. In the long term, regular caffeine consumers have lower risk of heart disease, stroke, heart attacks and slower progression of atherosclerosis despite caffeine's tachycardic effect. I'm not really sure what the mechanism is. I would guess it is a combination of its antioxidant effects, fatty acid metabolism, potentially positive effect on HDL and maybe improved mean arterial flow but not sure. all good stuff provided you don't drink each cup with sugar. Green tea beats black tea and coffee beats both, although green tea seems to have superior effect on neurodegenerative disease risk reduction which is seen nicely in the long term Japanese cohort studies where people have been ritually consuming green team up to 5 times a day for generations. I don't know enough about matcha but what I researched hasn't impressed me, I mostly consider green tea superior to it although they both come from Camellia sinensis so maybe we just don't have enough data on matcha yet.

Those are two different career paths. Counsellor requires different education and different certification to health coach. Technically you can do both without certification but if you are not trained to work with clients and you still do (which a lot of people do) and something goes wrong, you will be completely unprotected from liability because no insurance will cover you without having a proper training. So it starts with a little bit of digging on your part Which way do you want to take it? - what is an interesting career path? What type of client do you want to work with? Are there any legal requirements in your country for that? Do you need a degree , certificate? What are your study options and costs? Are there remote study options abroad that would better match your expectations? Do they offer clinical training?> What will be your available scope of practice? Can you actually give advice to a client after completing it? (that usually requires clinical training which not all courses do) What are the career prospects? What can and can't you do with that license / degree? Working remotely is possible and doable. It cuts the costs on needing to lease an office and a variety of small tax expenses but may come across as disadvantage as certain type of people only prefer seeing their therapist in person.

It's not unhealthy unless you are more sensitive to caffeine 's effects. I assume you mean coffee and not caffeine pills? In moderate amounts, coffee is mostly beneficial over the long term for men and women both. Helps protect your liver, cardiovascular system, reduces risk of prostate and breast cancer. Where it gets tricky is when coffee starts becoming a disgusting 700 calories shake full of sugar, high fat dairy, caramel, chocolate chip cookies and crap like that. Standard black is totally fine or if milk, better to choose semi skimmed or plant based

@shree I recall you raised similar topic some time ago in relation to keto diet. Has it helped back then? I don't remember exactly the conversation we had but have you ever had any blood work done? Brain fog can come and go but if it is always persistent it might be tied to something else other than your diet. if it keeps coming back it might be worth speaking to a dietitian or someone with a bit more holistic thinking as there might be more to it than the few elements mentioned above. EDIT I went back into this post Persistent Fatigue - Health, Fitness, Nutrition, Supplements - Actualized.org Forum and I think back there you mentioned you were exhausted balancing a career, family , 2 kids and all of that. Has that situation improved? Do you get enough sleep these days?

If you're finding it difficult to decide, you could try introducing another variable into he equation - what is likely to be more demanded by the market? Provided that you are equally passionate about art & biology, given the advancements in AI and design, you might find that specialising in a particular area of biology might make make it easier to find a job in the future and make a major contribution. With the likelihood of another pandemic, the gradual dying of species, devastation of natural habitats and ecosystems, there will be a growing need for people who are uniquely specialised to, for example, help with reintroduction of species, study the survivability of plants and animals, help do research on genetic hybridisation of fruits, vegetables, crops etc and continue doing research in the those areas etc. We will need marine biologists, more botanists, more zoologists, more doctors. And if you can uniquely position yourself in some area to do with climate changes, you are likely to be both fulfilled and in high demand. On the far note, if you do choose to specialise in an area of biology, medicine etc, you may need to go down a university route to obtain a relevant degree but if you really enjoy the subject you'll likely enjoy your studies too and being surrounded by likeminded people will make it all more fun. Ofcourse don't take that as a limiting belief and if you feel stronger about art, continue doing that on the side but at some point one of those will probably become a source of income so think about what the world is likely to demand more of, but don't sacrifice your soul while pursuing that although sometimes, temporarily that needs to happen. Its okay not to have an immediate answer just yet, your LP will be formulating for years. If it was me, with only those choices, I'd go down the biology route. Just a personal opinion. Read all the comments then make your own choice. Listen to your heart but also think of the practical implication and usefulness to the market. All the best

This ^ Obsidian or Notion are far far superior to One Note, personally I find Notion exceptional but others prefer Obsidian, they seem similar in how they work although Obsidian has that cool mind map which Notion doesn't and more plugins. The limitation to customisation you can do in One Note compared to Obsidian/Notion is what pushed me away from MS. It just couldn't do what I needed.

The ego doesn't like to be shown its inadequacies so the ego creates a delusional fantasies about the subject of interest having nothing to do with reality because it hurts less that way. How do you know those "less intelligent" do not spend hours in self study which is why they get it and you don't. Swallow your pride and if you really care about understanding math, do more home studying. If you don't care, do bare minimum to get by, just don't point fingers and blame the system, the intelligence of others and the teachers. Take responsibility, study harder, get private tutorship if you must, ask a friend for a help in exchange for something you're good at. This is a phenomenal lesson for you and one that has proved true over and over in my life as well as I watched how all of us 90s kids progressed through life. Some who were exceptionally smart in the elementary and high school and got used to passing by didn't make it far in life. Others who were a bit slower and got poorer grades learned early on that unless they do 5 times as much they won't pass, In the end it was those who were consistent in their approach not those who got used to passing by effortlessly who got further in life because that sort of mentality then penetrates in other areas of your life - your finances, your health, your personal development, your relationship, your family. You realise that unless you work consistently on things, you don't ever get results or only unsatisfactory results. Life rarely gives you things because you are blessed with some natural intelligence, life gives you thinks because you put time, energy, willpower and soul into something and do it consistently and repeatedly for years, specially the boring mundane tasks such as taking trigonometry exercises 30 minutes a day for a whole month in order to advance your knowledge. And so once you embrace that mentality, you become unstoppable. And even tho it takes you longer than others who were maybe more intelligent to achieve results, when you do, those results last longer because you had to build up your entire character and you had to develop yourself around those problems and that cannot be taken away from you.

This. Might just be a common gingivitis or something of that sort. I'd start with checking in with your dentist and maybe booking a hygienist session. It can usually be corrected with some hygienist cleaning and then following proper dental hygiene, especially by cleaning interdental spaces (between teeth). Electric toothbrush seems to be better than manual one and a water pick is a nice addition to the interdental brushes.

@ICURBlessings thanks for taking the time to reply. I skimmed through it (I haven't watched the videos yet). I probably disagree with more than I agree with with. There is a lot in your response that warrants deeper scrutiny but it would take hours and hours to continue the conversation so I'll just politely submit my resignation at this point and leave the conversational unfinished. (aware that it was me who started it ) Thanks for the debate and your time writing all the responses!

When you say "weak teeth". Do you mean physically weak as in wobbly and moving in the root when pushed/pulled? Or are you referring to bleeding, sensitivity to touch etc. Or is it more aesthetics, e.g. plaque build-up on or in between?

@tezk hey, sorry. When I said degree, I meant certification lol, my bad. Nutritional Therapy is not an academic degree. It is a certificate received after completing the 3-year course. It includes both academic part and clinical Practice to allow the practitioner see real clients but it is not as strictly regulated as dietetics for example and NTs cannot work in hospital, diagnose nutrition related conditions etc. but I don't mind that, as long as you're careful about what you can and can't do (and say), you're fine.

It might not be as black & white. The highest natural sources of fructose are fruits yet it would probably not make sense to consider fruits unhealthy, even in high amounts. I do agree that concentrated, isolated fructose (e.g. high fructose corn syrup) isn't great and can contribute to health problems. Words like "miraculous", "reversal" "optimal for general performance" are tricky to defend. REVERSAL of diabetes (type 2) can be achieved by a sufficient amount of weight loss so that insulin sensitivity is restored (provided that pancreatic beta cells have not yet been completely destroyed) You can achieve this with any diet as long as the patient loses sufficient weight. Take away the element of weight loss, and the ketogenic diet is not superior to any other diet in that sense. At this stage, the evidence on type 2 diabetes is clear that it is an energy status disease; the body becomes too "fat for its own good" , said in a sort of silly way. Roy Taylor's research has made a great breakthrough on that front. It has nothing to do with ketosis and everything to do with reducing the size of adipose cells. Losing weight without starvation is also achievable on most diets as long as they are planned properly, that's not a secret. What is "optimal for general performance" exactly? Quackery thrives in vagueness, so let's be clear with exact terms. What is it, in human performance, that can be achieved only with ketosis that can't be achieved otherwise? Be precise if you can. If ketosis is a natural state and not the opposite, why are humans naturally pulled towards hunting, foraging, sugar rich and caloric rich foods and basically sourcing food? If not eating was so beneficial and such a pleasure, surely we would have been all more naturally inclined to want to do that more...most of us aren't. Its an interesting story for sure and I don't dispute that it happened or didn't. But lack of pain is not equal to arthritis cure. You can temporarily remove symptoms by removing the trigger for example. I also feel there is more to that story. I would be curious what else the patient was doing that the doctor did not mention because it might have contradicted his bias. Maybe they were put on physiotherapy routine. Maybe tinctures or antiinflammaries were used? Was patient put on any medication by this or other practitioner? Did they also get another therapy? It is an anecdote and those are always interesting but not enough to give us enough certainty to form public guidelines. I had a client with rheumatoid arthritis couple years ago. It was extremely difficult but we did achieve some symptom remission. I wouldn't have considered him cured, but his mobility was greatly improved on a Mediterranean diet, but we also did tons of other things, so it's hard to say. Oh and I wanted to also respond to this in particular. You used the word 'reversed'. In case of Alzhimer's, reverse would mean - regrow dead neurons and restore lost function to the cerebral cortex permanently. Basically, a phenomenon that has never been recorded in medicine. Do you have a source for this? If this is indeed the case, this would have been all over media and this person would have probably received a Nobel Price for Medicine. It might have been temporary improvement in symptoms , that does happen. For example, Alzheimer's patients given certain medication exhibit improved memory and improved spatial orientation. But those effects often wear off quickly. When you say reverse, in case of a disease so irreversible as Alzheimer's I can't help but think that it must have been either some funky article by someone who did not understand what reversal means or what you meant was "improved symptoms" which is possible but not permanent. How do you know that? Studies in ketogenic diets might have actually done just that. Otherwise, how would they know that participants are indeed in ketosis? I don't know the answer to this question, but do you really have 99% certainty that they didn't measure urinary ketones? Which is really simple and cheap thing to do. Throwing your argument back at you. If 99% of studies DO NOT achieve ketosis, how do you know it was ketosis that was responsible for the effect? What if the effect came down to Hawthorn Effect or Observation Bias? Simply being a part of a study that is designed to "help people with depression" while being surrounded by experts, might be enough for some people to already start feeling better. Again...what is the evidence? As far as I know, mental health, in general when approached through dietary protocols tends to go up and down. Confidence Intervals are too wide, there is insufficient meta regression, studies aren't sufficiently powered, this is a known issue in mental health research in general. My bad. I misread that statement Also upon rereading my earlier comment, I realised it might have come off as a bit inflammatory, some of the bits, so for that I apologise. I'll try to keep it balanced

@ICURBlessings thanks! I'll reply to both of your posts a bit later 👍🏻

I think we should be more careful with clustering an entire macro nutrient category into the same bag. What you seem to be referring are refined carbohydrates, not unrefined sources of carbohydrates. If you, at this very moment, attach a continues glucose monitor on your arm and then in the spread of 4 hours ate: 2 croissants vs a bowl of lentils, I can guarantee that your blood sugar response would be very much different. The earlier would produce a rapid spike and a subsequent fall where the later would show more moderated response. It is important to notice that neither is harmful as long as your insulin response works optimally. The later is also beneficial for your energy and your heart and your mind and reduces risk of Alzheimer's (contrary to what you mentioned above) and does not interfere with sleep quality nor mood stability. A lot of people are reading this and thinking "carbs are bad for me, I must do keto" and they may slip into poorer mental health state as a result of that. Keto if done poorly can have detrimental effect on cardiovascular system, cerebrovascular system and digestive health so also keep that in mind. There is no one size fits all. The evidence is clear that in the long term (> 24 months) , high fat is no more favourable to high carb or moderate carb. Not better for weight loss, not better for heart disease risk mitigation or diabetes or Alzheimer's risk mitigation. Keto studies have the highest dropout rates pass month 24 of all because they are unsustainable for a lot of people compared to more balanced moderate carb moderate fat approaches which consistently show the best results for chronic disease risk mitigation. I saw you are a student of Ayurveda which seems to go along macrobiotic type of diet with hints of Hindu / Chinese / Budhist traditional diets which are all rich in carbohydrates while relatively lower in fat putting emphasis on unrefined carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables and some lean protein. Isn't that contrasting the opinion you're putting out there? I appreciate you may be trying to approach this topic from a more spiritual / energetic perspective rather than perhaps, purely scientific, but you should be a bit more cautious with such umbrella statements. It is very unholistic. Not everyone can do keto. Not everyone can eliminate carbohydrates. And no, carbohydrates are not bad for you, you just need to take time to choose the healthier ones and obviously don't overconsume on anything. Not on carbs, not on protein and not on fat. Btw, comparing carbohydrates to heroin or alcohol like that....... You dismissed the poster's comment in a patronising way in a sort of "hold my beer" type of response. It is unempathetic and it is incredibly inconsiderate to even say something like that, especially from someone who seems to be attempting to take a high ground in this thread

Its a bit shady, I admit but these corporations are filthy rich and they don't really care about you as a person so use their resources, use their money, do the bare minimum work to get by and keep your boss happy. Don't do any extra because these placed don't value hard work. They value connections, shareholder value, stock prices, reputation and power. Use any spare time and spare energy to pour it into something meaningful because one day when you no longer have the energy and time, you'll hate yourself over not doing anything and that feeling will never leave you All the best!

I think I still agree to that to some extend but I no longer consider naturopathy the best way to study health from a non-medical perspective. There is too much funny business being thought there and lot of it is either outdated knowledge or just wrong. That being said, I still think naturopathy combined with a good degree of nutritional therapy as a part of some sort of integrative wellness approach is the way to go for anyone who doesn't want to go directly to medicine. You can take the best of all worlds while leaving the quacky bits on side. Mainstream medicine isn't a bogus but its lack of holism is its greatest blind spot, especially treatment of chronic disease where you can neither operate nor give quick medication to remedy. If modern medicine had an integrative approach embedded into it, it would be phenomenal. In terms of the life purpose direction, there is many ways to take it. I studied nutritional therapy at the naturopathic college so naturally portion of my education was outdated nonsense and I had to correct my knowledge over the years but overall that 3-year study was the best 3 years of my past decade and I'd do it again. Not to mention being one of 2 guys in a class of 30 beautiful and health conscious women was amazing! I'd encourage you to pursue that journey if you feel that calling and you feel like you have a right value set to want to do that. Its not easy to find clients and build a business but when it works and you see a client undergo a journey that you've helped them build, entering the process unwell and leaving it changed and in a better shape, there isn't much in terms of human experience that can beat that. Hope that helps