A Life of Purpose

[Michael569]

@fridjonk true 

[GeorgeLawson]

On 11/5/2020 at 4:16 AM, Michael569 said:

My partner and I have started discussing the possibility of moving closer to the coast, possibly Wales or Kent if we remain in England. Probably around March time next year if the current situation prevails there are no benefits of living in London anymore, I'd much rather be locked out by the side of the sea. It has always been a small dream of mine to spend a chapter of my life living by the sea or an ocean. Provided that I can slowly start moving away from my wage slave job and if the online clinic things pick up a bit, that would be the most wonderful experience and freedom unlike any I've ever experienced. Don't want to jinx it but would be awesome if we can make it happen. 

There is something out there in nature, especially when I am near a sea. I can't put my finger on what it is. it is not just the fresh air or the negative ions. There is some higher power, some deeper mysterious cleansing energy. I feel the same way when I swim in the sea. Not only do I sleep amazingly afterwards but feel rejuvenated as if everything that troubles me drops. 

Should this become reality, I will make it part of my purpose to bring this experience to light, if I can and observe what & how it happens. 

 

I feel the same with the sea air, too. It always has a healing, rejuvenating effect on my health and wellbeing. Thanks for sharing your dreams for the future. 

[Michael569]

Today I am grateful for my girlfriend pulling me out to go for an awesome bike ride when all I wanted to do was to be nerdy and hunch in front of my 2-volume naturopathic bible the whole day. Must have been one of the last beautiful days of the autumn.

Sometimes actually having life makes for a nice change. As members of English Heritage, we went to see a charming Tudor palace from the 16th century with beautiful gardens and experienced one of those magnificent sunsets from Greenwich Park. 

 

[flume]

22 hours ago, Michael569 said:

when all I wanted to do was to be nerdy and hunch in front of my 2-volume naturopathic bible the whole day.

Literally laughed out loud reading this Such a nerd! 

Great pictures

[Michael569]

20 hours ago, flume said:

Literally laughed out loud reading this Such a nerd! 

said the Party Girl 

[Michael569]

I've always been that sort of person who never looks back (at what I've already achieved) but always looking forward. What else is there? Who is the competition? How much more till the target has been achieved? I've been stuck in this trap throughout most of my life which has made retrospection difficult.

But now after practising gratitude for 3 weeks I feel a slight shift happening. It is humbling & grounding to look at what has been good, what worked, what I've managed to achieve so far rather than being always out there. Not for the sake of comparison with others but for the sake of slowing down, stopping & retrospecting. It is those small things that I always took for granted that I have now begun to pick up and ponder. Warm water, a job in covid times and stable income, healthy family, a partner, great health, living in a peaceful and relatively wealthy country....being able to build up my dream life brick by brick. 

I have a long way to go to TRULY appreciate this spiritually (not just intellectually) but I am grateful that I've had a chance and support to be making this shift 

[Michael569]

A bit out of focus this week, my meditations haven't been as good as they usually are, lots of distractions & few nights of worse sleep. I think it comes along with having launched my online clinic just recently and still figuring out a lot of things. I need to stop comparing myself with all the people in my industry 

My wage slave job has been increasing in demand with all these stupid & ridiculous projects. This makes me even more impatient to get the hell out of that place but I know I won't be ready anytime soon. I must not let my impatience and negative emotions about that place to do an irrational decision and cut off my only source of income. The hole in the wall is not yet ready for Andy to climb out of Shawshank....it will be. But not yet!!

Will also be heading into an experimental detox protocol for 8 weeks starting from Monday. Have already seen some decent results with few people I applied it and want to experience on my own skin what it feels like to know what people are up against. It may collide with the Christmas time a bit but it is possible I'll be staying in UK this Christmas anyways due to covid so it won't be that big of a deal. 

[Michael569]

Been researching into fibre & gut microbiome this weekend but want to take a deeper dive into the connection to mood disorders especially anxieties & depression with the gut health. I'd like to understand how manipulating and altering gut microbiome can help people alter their mood. I've seen it happen twice so far so curious how exactly the works and what the connections are. It is a fascinating area of research because till now the focus is always on brain neurotransmitters & brain chemistry but it seems like it is the gut where the "magic" needs to happen. 

Also, excited about entering into the 8-week detox program with @flume tomorrow for the next 8-weeks. Will be good to return back into my vegan times although eggs are still on the menu gluten, dairy, meat, farmed fish and anything processed will go. Curious about some of the herbs that are part of it, never tried many of them but heard positive things from people who did. My fridge is filled with vegetables to burst. Well stocked with lentils, beans, chickpeas, spices & plant milks. I'd like to aim for 100g of fibre per day...beware the bathroom 

 

[Michael569]

I spend so much time decoding & trying to understand a variety of biochemical pathways in the body. For some reason, I find all of this absolutely fascinating. Today I spend 3 hours decoding and mapping out the cellular Insulin-GLUT4 pathway, the insulin signalling pathway that opens the cell for glucose. Basically a bunch of molecules passing on phosphorus to each other until the gates are opened and glucose floods in. Really fascinating stuff although I'm still not clear on what happens during Insulin Resistance intracellularly, that shit is seriously complex. 

The interesting bit is to translate this to human language. I always get so fascinating and feel like this is something I'd like to make a post of on social media but then I reground myself knowing that nobody cares and it is me, my nerd and I that get off on this hunched over studies & books..like Gollum polishing the ONE RING inside his cave in misty mountains " my precious" 

The funny thing is that I have no idea to what degree any of this is  true or whether it is just some mental masturbation. I like to believe it is all part of 10,000-hour rule but maybe I am just blindly following a meatgrinder science....maybe.... but it seems more meaningful to me than participating in other forms of meat-grinding such as watching the news or idly socialising over overpriced British beers.

 

[Loving Radiance]

1 minute ago, Michael569 said:

I spend so much time decoding & trying to understand a variety of biochemical pathways in the body. For some reason, I find all of this absolutely fascinating. Today I spend 3 hours decoding and mapping out the cellular Insulin-GLUT4 pathway, the insulin signalling pathway that opens the cell for glucose. Basically a bunch of molecules passing on phosphorus to each other until the gates are opened and glucose floods in. Really fascinating stuff although I'm still not clear on what happens during Insulin Resistance intracellularly, that shit is seriously complex.

What tool do you use for connecting the pathways? Do you use pathway databases for researching this or exclusively papers?

Quote

The funny thing is that I have no idea to what degree any of this is  true or whether it is just some mental masturbation. I like to believe it is all part of 10,000-hour rule but maybe I am just blindly following a meatgrinder science....maybe.... but it seems more meaningful to me than participating in other forms of meat-grinding such as watching the news or idly socialising over overpriced British beers.

Who knows, maybe you recognize a connection which was unseen before.

[Michael569]

12 minutes ago, Loving Radiance said:

What tool do you use for connecting the pathways? Do you use pathway databases for researching this or exclusively papers?

Mostly research papers but also books. I'm subscribed to a bunch of online magazines (Frontiers, ScienceDirect, Nutrients..) which publish a lot of interesting stuff every month and then it just comes down to finding other papers on what interests you and creating these connections. I draw a lot of it in notebooks or on Canva adding more to them as I go on 

17 minutes ago, Loving Radiance said:

Who knows, maybe you recognize a connection which was unseen before.

I'm trying to entertain multiple perspectives without owning any but it can be difficult not to slip into dogma and blindly follow what you read 

[Loving Radiance]

31 minutes ago, Michael569 said:

I'm trying to entertain multiple perspectives without owning any but it can be difficult not to slip into dogma and blindly follow what you read 

Don't call me out like that

31 minutes ago, Michael569 said:

I draw a lot of it in notebooks or on Canva adding more to them as I go on 

All analog or do you use digital tools?

Edited November 17, 2020 by Loving Radiance
link suggestion

[Michael569]

2 minutes ago, Loving Radiance said:

Don't call me out like that

I mean that on myself (you = me ) 

2 minutes ago, Loving Radiance said:

All analog or do you use digital tools?

Canva is digital, I use it for lots of stuff, super handy and it is mostly free. But I got paper notebooks full of arrows, connections, & weird words as well. 

[Michael569]

Detox Week 1 nearly done, so far so good. Eliminating dairy is super easy and surprisingly gluten is not that hard either although I did have few bits of gluten-free bread as comfort food. Lots of lentil stews, soups & tofu. I've decided to cut the program by 1 week in order to make most of it before Christmas as Slovakian Christmas is not detox compliant. I'm starting gut cleanse for the next 2 weeks, really curious about this, heard it can be really rough but that should be fairly individual. Been increasing my fibre a lot, 94g yesterday and 88 the day before, should bump it up to 100 over the next 2 weeks to maximise the benefits. My pressure cooker has been an absolutely irreplaceable tool in this. 

I've decided I want to try my first lifestreaming. Either Instagram or in my FB group. Just to see how it feels, obviously, it should be a pretty great strategy to increase reach on social media. Want to do it within the next 2 weeks. Everything in my introvert brains is yelling NO which is why it should be an interesting experience a maybe pushing the comfort boundaries a bit further. 

 

 

[Michael569]

Attended an interesting seminar today, reputable US psychiatrist talking about major depressive disorder & suicidal tendencies. 
It is not common to hear MDs talk about how fucked up the the mainstream treatment of mental health disorders is but this guy was really ravaging. Study after study showing how antidepressants & antipsychotics increase risk of suicide over the long term, mess up the gut microbiome which completely destroys neurotransmitter pathways,  these drugs deplete nutrients and eventually make everything 1000 times worse. Yet 25% of Americans on antidepressants are on them for more than 10 years...scary. Psychiatry doctors can lose license for even mentioning nutrition in their clinic, even here in UK. He talked a lot about diet, nutrition, how certain minerals & vitamins once depleted predispose individuals to severe depressive disorders. Showed a bunch of studies that showed even that having cholesterol too little increases the suicidal risk...I never knew about this, need to look into it more. It is a nice paradigm break to my old vegan bias that all cholesterol is evil. 

Productive day today. Workload really lows so allowed me several hours for a good amount of studies. Been reading on chronic kidney disease for few hours & organic acid testing, the latter will require a lot of time till I am comfortable interpreting a result for somebody. Super complex but fascinating how much they can assess these days...

 

 

[Loving Radiance]

16 minutes ago, Michael569 said:

Psychiatry doctors can lose license for even mentioning nutrition in their clinic, even here in UK.

Why is it looked down upon when one speaks of diet in that department? Is it like speaking of metaphysics in science?

It could also be a dogma that just pills are applicable for deviant mental tendencies when in fact the evidence shows no clear long-term progress if it is true what they presented in the seminar.

[Michael569]

14 hours ago, Loving Radiance said:

Why is it looked down upon when one speaks of diet in that department? Is it like speaking of metaphysics in science?

It could also be a dogma that just pills are applicable for deviant mental tendencies when in fact the evidence shows no clear long-term progress if it is true what they presented in the seminar.

I think it is an element that is hard to control. With drugs, the guidelines are clear, you work as a computer algorithm. Say blood pressure. As long as blood pressure goes above certain number usually 130/80, you prescribe the first type of blood pressure drug. The client comes back 3 months later, it is not working, their blood pressure went to 150, different type of drug (all based on guideline), they come back again, more aggressive drug for BP management (according to guidelines). When they come back again you measure their cholesterol and blood sugar and find out they are diabetic and now they are on BP drug a statin and metformin (or some other blood glucose moderation drug). And you continue doing this until your patient has a heart attack (as we know these drugs ultimately don't prevent that scenario) and if they survive they may get a bypass and are put on more drugs. All in the name of science and guidelines. 

Now with diet, they have no regulation. They have no training. One doctor may tell a patient with high BP to avoid eggs. Another will tell them to only eat them sometimes. Another doctor ( a better informed one) will tell them to stop eating animal products...but what if this patient develops anaemia because they don't know how to do this -> the doctor loses license for practicing unsafe medicine. You would say dietitian will know but do they? Most of them are trained with the silly pyramid guidelines that tells patients to eat white breads, white pastas, meat, lard, dairy and some fruits & vegetables...again not good enough. It is incredibly complex so what they do is restrict it and only enforce using drugs because there is a good evidence for efficacy and the safety (short term) is usually guaranteed. 

 

[Michael569]

I've been reading Graham Alcott's Productivity Ninja for some time now and I love the techniques & teachings he is making. The entire book has become my new productivity bible, sticky notes, scratches, my own texts with red pen, feels like Snape's Half-Blood Prince elixir book. I spend so much time of my day doing counterproductive tasks or often getting sidetracked with something that ends up being a dead end so having something so practical yet so simple really helps. One of the greatest lessons has become understanding when I am in Proactive, Active or Inactive focus and then channelling that towards the work that has to be done or towards strategising & planning. I've allowed myself to come to the forum only during periods if Inactive attention otherwise I end up procrastinating here for hours. 

Back to study mines--> 

 

 

[Michael569]

Today I realised that I have entered into some sort of maintenance mode. 

For the past months, I have been putting a lot of effort into finishing the school and building foundations of my practice, marketing, finances, legal stuff and all of that while catering for 12 clients. Now having all of it in place more or less and only leading a few people on their health journey I feel rather than advancing I am taking a step back. My online practice is still a baby in a diaper so it does not keep me as busy as I expected...which is probably a good thing as it allows me to spend more time retrospecting. 

I've been putting more time into journalling, uncovering some of my own demons and battling with those. I'm also trying to break down and recreate some of the productivity habits that I need to unlearn as they are not serving me well. Distraction with social media is still a real and vicious thing but I think I have found the right tool and the Productivity Ninja keep being my invaluable assistant in this. It completely turns around everything I thought I knew about to-do lists, projects, planning, task lists, maintenance etc. 

Let's set the rhythm of the evening

[Michael569]

During my studies, I used to absolutely hate digestive health. I found it boring, complicated and disorganized. I never wanted to work with digestive problems. All of this changed when I started to get the first couple of clients and I realised that gut is in the absolute centre of everything. 90% of all conditions regardless of symptoms start and end in the gut and the more people I see the more convinced I am that without becoming a gut health expert I won't be able to help anyone. I've now spent probably 200 hours researching on all aspects of gut health all the way from dental health to haemorrhoids. It is such a fascinating area of study that I never had any appreciation of and from what I can see many people in health don't either...even the more experienced ones. I became convinced of this when I saw how much gut work can alter a person's mood even depression. The more I read about this the more I believe that all the allergies, asthma, sensitivities, autoimmunities, thyroid and intolerances are just dysfunctional digestion. Sometimes not but mostly right so. 

I've bought an incredible book from a leading gut health expert in my country and am now digging deeper than ever. There is so much gold & diamonds buried deep in the US Institute of Medicine. Research papers that have never seen the daylight carrying hope & cure for a lot of people. One could spend lifetime reading those and it would not be a wasted life.