- Green Pill by Alex Shinkarovsky
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- Green Pill 007: Story of psychotic patient finding past family | Epigenetic Myths | Moved to NJ!
Green Pill 007: Story of psychotic patient finding past family | Epigenetic Myths | Moved to NJ!
"If You’re Not Taking Care Of Your Sleep, Exercise And Nutrition, You’re Not Giving Yourself A Fighting Chance Against Depression And Anxiety."
Alex Shinkarovsky
March 04, 2023
Happy Friday, fitfam,
This week's resources to improve your life, and get you where you want to be.
Green Pill Stories: Psychotic patient thought to be making up a past life, actually had one - this therapist found it out.
Weekly Quick Recs: (Meme, Back to New Jersey, Genetics, Quote)
Deep Dive:
Green Pill Stories - Robert Engle LMHC, M.A
So, I have featured 25 different psychotherapists on my blog for the past few months.
The main idea is to give them a platform to share their story, and, ultimately, to create a relationship, so that they consider my coaching for their clients who need lifestyle adjustment (sleep, food, fitness, habits).
One of the main questions I ask is:
3. Tell us the story of a patient who you are most proud of helping.
There is someone whom had severe psychiatric issues and was actually institutionalized for decades of their life due to this illness. He often discussed things from his past a wife, children, driving a bus for local school. Many took these as another hallucination. After helping him organize his story we searched and found his family. They were real, alive, and he was able to get on contact with them. Belief in his story lead us to place of healing and restoring a loss he had for over 30 years.
Wow.
Highlights of the Week
Meme of the Week:
Health Hacks I’m Testing: Back to HIIT
For March, I am going to do 10 minutes of high-intensity cardio daily (zone 4 or 5, 80-95% of HR max) . Ideally, between or right before 🖥️ work. I’ll track with a wearable device. Keep you posted!
What I’m Listening To: 🧬 Dr. Oded Rechavi: Genes & Inheritance 🧬
I learned the difference between two theories of the inheritance of traits between generations. My understanding is laid out below.
Darwinian theory suggests organisms have heritable traits they are born with, which help or hurt them in survival and reproduction.
Lamarckian inheritance, popular until the late 19th century (and later), suggests that an individual’s actions DURING life influence the traits of his/her offspring.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection requires that an organism’s life experience does not matter, only their (later discovered) existing genes.
This touches on the now-popular concept of epigenetic changes to an individual’s genome.
The fascinating thing is that C. elegans worm, when injected with double-stranded RNA, will shut off the genes that match in sequence to the RNA as well as passing on such gene silencing pattern to the next generation [Dr. Oded Rechavi] (meaning they epigenetically modify those parts of the genome to not be expressed) [Elena Buglo, PhD interpretation].
MEANING: the worm’s life experience does influence its offspring.
If this was all a bit deep for you, don’t worry, it is and was for me, too. My gf, Elena, is a PhD geneticist. The podcast breaks it down in layman’s terms.
What I’m Reading: Not much, honestly. Lots of road signs…
Just moved back to New Jersey, living Lake Life for a couple months. My work is fully remote and I am blessed to be able to move around as needed. Will def be back to Miami! Follow along on IG @alexlovescardio.
Quote(s) I’m Loving:
Children come to understand that they exist, that they are discrete entities from the world around them, largely by coming to understand that ‘they’ are the thing which just caused something to happen—the proof of which is the fact that they can make it happen again. Crucially, too, this realization is, from the very beginning, marked with a species of delight that remains the fundamental background of all subsequent human experience.
Sponsored by...me!
It all started when I asked a new personal training client whether she wanted to me to "run her life". 3 months later, we trained 3x a week, but she also texted me daily, we went to Whole Foods together, I tracked all her sleep, made her "eat this/not that" take out menus, and she lost 35 lbs, went to therapy and started feeling confident.
Deep Dive - Travel & Eating
Having just driven from Miami to New Jersey, we stopped in 5 hotels.
Sample breakfast menu:
Oranges, bananas
Scrambled eggs (good so far…)
Cooked oatmeal
Muffins*
Sausages*
Croissant with egg and meat*
English muffin with egg and meat*
Juices (orange, cranberry, apple)*
Cereal*
*Processed food or premade using preservatives (not fresh)
Most guests (cities like Raleigh, Durham, Savannah, D.C.) were >50 and quite overweight.
We always orient to personal responsibility: stop eating so much! Workout!
But even the oatmeal, supposedly heart healthy, is said to cause blood sugar spikes.
If not USDA Organic, it also has glyphosate (main ingredient in Monsanto Roundup), an herbicide used to kill weeds. The WHO, in 2015, said glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic” to humans.
But the European Food Safety Administration is still authorizing it, and publishing new conclusions in July 2023.
Individual responsibility vs. society-wide poor availability of quality food & water is a big question in public health, at least for me.
P.S. Just referring you to these resources - no commission or anything like that.
Thanks for reading. Your feedback really helps! This takes me an hour to put together.
You may find out more about my lifestyle adjustment & coaching services at my site, or read a Case Study here.