The Internet—the Worst Doctor in the World

Nate A___, a perpetually ruddy-faced guy with a "rat tail" and a propensity for amazing hole shots (rubber-burning peel-outs with his truck, performed primarily in the high school parking lot), once remarked that your dear author was "smart, but he don't have no common sense. I bet he don't even know how to change a carburetor."  Nate A___ was pretty astute, in his way.

I'm smart. I think most people I know think I'm really smart. A few people think I'm "too smart for my own good," and most certainly think I'm a smart aleck. The people going the right way down the one way streets I've gone down the wrong way probably don't have a very multidimensional view of my intelligence. I'm not in a position to comment on any of this, but I'd like to offer an object lesson on how whatever agreed-upon intelligence I may have recently failed me. The failure is part of a cautionary tale.

I'd like to talk about WebMD and other "search-by-symptom" websites, and I'd like to begin by deploying a timeline.

1996: What we know as "WebMD" deploys as Healthscape. 
1997-Present:  People the world over, on the order of 86.4 million visitors per quarter, search the website for their symptoms, make slapdash diagnoses, become convinced they have terrible terminal illnesses, and freak out. 

The above dynamic has passed from "emerging" to "standard practice." The News warns you against this paranoia. My doctor friends tell me it's beyond common--we live in a world where every generation is Internet-savvy now, and the default move in any situation, from installing a garbage disposal to diagnosing that pain in your abdomen, is to consult the WWW.

But, see, I already know this. I should have been immune. Instead, I played directly into the hands of fear and quick-draw diagnosis, because the vortex of WebMD paranoia is so great that it can pull in even one of my titanic intelligence.

Long and harrowing saga short, I thought I had a life-ruining, ultra-debilitating condition. I can bail out Past Me a bit and say that 100% of the symptoms matched, that the people on the forums (oh, the forums) corroborated my diagnosis. But ultimately, I was wrong. The wrongness in this case was important, because the thing I thought I had (that I didn't have) was indeed so terrible that it made me anxious beyond description, and my life became a waking nightmare. When it comes to health and well-being, avoiding "waking nightmares" is a priority.

The problem with WebMD (and other sites like it) is twofold, as I see it:

First, the symptoms you're looking up are often false positives for other, worse maladies. Without a (brief, expensive, impersonal) visit to a doctor, you can't be sure that the tingling means anything at all. At the same time, relying on websites for diagnosis means you could be missing serious conditions which are asymptomatic.

Second, WebMD mainly subsists on advertising dollars, like most of the Internet. Who primarily advertises on WebMD? Pharmaceutical companies, of course. So there are ads on all sides, trawling for someone with "shortness of breath," "unexplained fatigue," and "frequent heartburn." Since the people visiting these sites are already looking for something to explain and/or fix their symptoms, these ads can be especially inviting. Not only that, but the ads often contain such ambiguous and common symptoms that most people could make a case for having them.

I already knew all this, but I was sucked into the vortex anyway. I found people describing symptoms similar to mine, and the fear took over. As soon as I talked to a real health professional, they made a different diagnosis, and my anxiety creeped back into the orange zone, where it usually resides.

This isn't very novel advice, but it's sound: if you have a physical problem, consult a doctor. The more Internet-literate you are, the worse the chance you'll descend through a portal of misinformation.

You don't have to take it from me.  Here's an article on "cyberchondria" published on...WebMD. 

Or, if you're avoiding that website altogether, here's a New York Times article on the phenomenon, instead. 

Kentucky Hype Stout?

I'm drinking a Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout. Boom! That means I'm winning at life. I think. It means, at least, that "I know a guy." Or that I don't work during the day, in the traditional sense. For those of you seeking context:

Remember when you almost ran over that family of four to score Meijer's last Beanie Baby? Or that fateful Christmas Eve when you and three friends piled your money together for a Teddy Ruxpin? Or that time that I waited outside, all night, in the rain, to get opening night tickets for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? It's easy to laugh, but I bet you voted for someone who turned out to be a lemon, so take it easy.

If you've never boarded the hype train, Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS) is a hard thing to understand. KBS is a beer, manufactured by Michigan darling Founders Brewery. It's a chocolatey stout, "cave-aged in oak bourbon barrels for over an entire year." It weights in at a deceptive 11.2% ABV. That said, it's a just a beer, in the same way that The Beatles were just a band for those screaming black and white girls in the front row. 

As a retailer, I have had grown men--big men--stare at me with barely suppressed homicidal intent because I didn't have their KBS. At Foods For Living, people still tell the story of how sweet Susie once tried a coveted bottle of the stuff and promptly said "Ick," before pouring it down the drain. What's notable is not that she did that--it's that people still tell the story, years later.

www.beeradvocate.com, one of the world's leading beer-ratings websites, gives KBS a 100%. (100% is the highest rating possible outside the realm of corporate goal-setting and high school sports, where giving 110% is not uncommon.) This rating is democratic: the 100% is a result of 9,395 separate votes, as of presstime. It's hard to think of anything more universally supported by such a volatile demographic. This puts KBS in a very elite category, in which the late Saddam Hussein may be the only other contender.

"KBS finds a way."

It's difficult to overstate KBS hype. Anywhere craft beer is sold, you're likely to see a handwritten list of thirty or so names dangling from some beleaguered manager's desk. One, or two, or perhaps three of these names will be savoring a KBS come launch week. How much KBS is allotted to a certain retail outlet is the result of a complex equation involving Michigan's three-tier distribution system, vendor-retailer relationships, and probably something involving chaos theory.

The KBS allotment for a particular store (or bar) is a function of how much business that store (or bar) does with the distributor in question generally, or of how much the distributor's rep plays golf with that store's beer buyer, or both. Foods For Living, and other such outlets, would simply skirt this bizarre byzantine system by going directly to the brewery, if that hadn't been declared explicitly illegal after Prohibition. If all this is making your head spin, you're not alone, although--to be honest--I assumed it was just the KBS, in my case.

People I know have followed the relevant delivery truck from store to store, hoping to capitalize on the few designated "first-come, first-served" KBS bottles available. This sort of behavior all but guarantees that those only casually interested in trying KBS will simply not be able to do so. This is a reasonable barrier for entry for the Shaolin temple, or the navy SEALS, but for a beer?

Maybe you'd rather just go straight to the source, skipping the labyrinth of middlemen. Downtown Grand Rapids is a place of wonder, so why not stop by Founders and grab a pint right out of the barrel?

Well, you might want to book a reservation, or get a ticket. See, Founders tries to offer a little hometown wink wink nudge nudge to the locals, culminating in KBS Week (Match 9-14). The beer doesn't officially release to the public until Match 30th. Unless you live in Michigan! Oh my gosh, KBS is available right now, throughout Michigan! (I just flipped my coffee table over. Not really).

Now, I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to gastronomical hype. When a restaurant has a two month reservation wait, I usually end up opting for the local Thai option instead. But KBS exists in a sort of gray area between true Epicureanism and...Armchair Epicureanism. Beer consumption shares this sort of opportunity with poker, PC gaming, and air hockey. If you're a tennis fan, there's zero chance you'll be able to book a match against Vanessa Williams. But if you're an air hockey enthusiast (like me), playing in the US Open is a very real option, to which I can attest. A best-of-the-best wine is out of the average Jane's price range, if you can even find it. But a best-of-the-best beer is being aged in bourbon barrels in some secret catacombs beneath Grand Rapids, and it's only $9.00 for a snifter. As long as you know a guy. So perhaps KBS is a way for Joe Six-pack to indulge in beverage elitism, without trips to Napa Valley. (As long as Joe Six-pack doesn't expect a literal six-pack of KBS, which is not a thing.)

Hype or not, KBS is delicious, and it's something to do in March in Michigan besides be cold and not care about basketball at all (if you're me). But beware, Epicurean adventurers: when your entire to-do list for the day is a craft beer, an emptiness of spirit may accompany an emptiness of glass. I'm uniquely qualified to say so, having reached the bottom of my KBS and the bottom of these reflections in perfect synchronicity. 

6 Things You Should Know About Essential Oils

WILX—you know, the breaking news and weather authority—did a two-part report on essential oils last week, titled Essential Oils: Hype or Help? I can compress Part One into a brief summary for you: essential oils are very popular right now, and many people will testify to their efficacy. Part Two features some lightly cautionary missives about liver damage from some doctors, and a couple more testimonials. In the meantime, I thought I'd take a break from my crusade to master the mind to splash about in some plant extracts. I thought the best approach would be presenting bite-sized chunks of related information, because readers and writers are finally in agreement that transitional sentences and linked paragraphs are a waste of time. So...(trumpets)

Things to Know About Essential Oils

There isn't much research on the efficacy of essential oils.

I don't mean to imply anything about their efficacy. Many people clearly love essential oils, and what is worthwhile, my friend, if not love? And they smell good. Whole businesses have been founded on the premise of good smells. There's simply not much clinical evidence about essential oils and their effects. What data does exist is largely subjective, or reliant on patient/user reporting. Patient reporting might be as good an indicator as any when it comes to mood enhancement, but less so when it comes to, say, combating ear infection. In other words, learning about essential oils (EO) is not like learning about aspirin. Everything is frustratingly vague. That said...

The premise for aromatherapy isn't as silly as (some people think) it sounds.

You have a brain. You have a nose, and some olfactory receptors connected to it. If you were to catch a whiff of the shoe-spray-and stale-cigarette-smoke melange from the bowling alley in which you spent your salad days, you may (briefly) experience a feeling of youthful exuberance. The brain's limbic system processes both memory and emotion, meaning that smells can create big feels. This doesn't seem entirely reliant on connotation and nostalgia, either. Some smells excite this physiological pathway almost universally. (As a rule, people like flowers and food, and tend to avoid raw sewage.) Is it possible that lavender, aside from smelling "nice," possesses a unique combination of terpenes, esters, oxides, phenols, alcohols, ketones, and aldehydes that has a calming effect on the mind? That seems entirely possible, but more research has to be done. What is firmly established, however, is that the placebo effect is powerful enough to conquer anxiety on its own. Moreover, the memory of feeling calm can itself generate more of the same. As far as aromatherapy is concerned, the risks are almost nonexistent. At worst, you're purchasing a nice scent, at best, soothing your core being.

No such thing as "certification" exists in the world of essential oil manufacture. Terms like "therapeutic grade" are arbitrary.

No regulatory body issues any sort of approval or rating regarding "purity" for an essential oil manufacturer. Many brands claim to be certified or therapeutic grade, but these distinctions are entirely at the discretion of the brand's marketing team. Like supplements, essential oils do not require any sort of FDA or other oversight. As a result, manufacturers' claims lay in the gray area of implying benefits without explicitly promising them. This is common to the entire supplement world, and shouldn't be considered an indictment of any sort. A bottle of calcium cannot promise to prevent osteopenia, either. 

Essential Oils and multilevel marketing are sometimes big buddies. 

Sometimes. Part of the reason for the recent visibility of EO is the tireless marketing efforts of multilevel marketing companies like doTERRA and Young Living. ("Multilevel marketing," or MLM, is the euphemistic term for those things that are not pyramid schemes, legally speaking, but seem exactly like pyramid schemes when your friends you haven't seen since high school call you up for "coffee" so they can try and sell you premium cutlery, or essential oils.) 

In order for MLM to work, the MLM company must convey the central idea that their product is the absolute cream of the crop. MLM requires an incredible amount of overhead to pay the pyramid network of people involved and market the product, so the price of said product is usually far greater than a store-bought counterpart. That's not to say these products are not top notch. Only that these companies must convince their customers—who are also vendors—that they are top notch. This creates a sense of fierce, unnuanced loyalty around said essential oils. It's why you often can't even suggest that any other brand might be comparable to a devotee of the MLM EO brands. 

There is a hot debate about whether to ingest essential oils, especially in the EO community.

It shouldn't be that confusing—do you drink 'em, or not? 

In an amazingly in-depth series of articles on EO, Tauna Meyer asks Paul Dean—owner of Native American Nutritionals—this very thing.  His answer: you can ingest them if you want, but there's no need, because smelling them is more potent. 

I'll be frank—I find this answer lacking. 

His main point, later in the interview, is that ingestion safety is largely a matter of adulteration. How common is "adulteration?" He says somewhere about around 95% of EO are adulterated. Did he discern this in his lab, or with a scrying glass? It turns out that... you can just tell, after accumulating enough experience. Hmmm. 

There is no straight answer about the ingestion issue. But most doctors and aromatherapists agree: just don't ingest them unless you know what you're doing. This implies that it is possible to know what you're doing in regard to EO. Is it?

You can become an "expert" without expertise, and develop expertise without becoming an "expert."

You can become a "certified" aromatherapist with many different organizations, including some that sell EO. This is much like how you could become an ordained minister online within the hour. Again, that's not to say that some of these sources aren't experts, but it's hard to separate the helpful from the...hype-full. 

The most common aromatherapy certification is issued by the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy. This organization is large and generally respected, but it's important to understand just how little applied science is involved in the process of certification. 

The Bottom Line

• Aromatherapy is great, but it's more art than science at this point. 
• Becoming serious about aromatherapy means wading through a lot of conjecture.
• You should buy all your essential oils at Foods For Living. FFL offers many brands, expert staff, and food-grade oils from Lansing's own LorAnn Oils, if you're into ingestion. 

 

Who is Thinking Your Thoughts?

This is the second entry in an admittedly idiosyncratic miniseries about the intersection of health, anxiety, and the mind. Here's the first.

To paraphrase one of my favorite neuroscientists, our thoughts chase us out of bed. They are our constant companions through the day. It can feel like our thoughts are bludgeoning us to sleep. When you stop and think about it, which you are cognitively obligated to do as you read this sentence, you probably feel more like an audience than an actor inside your own mind, more or less forced to watch helplessly as your mind's eye throws an array of images on the inside of your skull. When you consider the thoughts you have in a typical five minutes, an overwhelming percentage are probably not things you feel like you're actively "thinking," so much as commercials for various plans and anxieties. (Here's an article from PsychCentral about this.)

It's somehow trite and profound to stop and realize that you are the only one inside your head, and the seemingly random broadcast of mental events you experience in a day is, well, you, and not the equivalent of pharmaceutical commercials you sit through until the real program returns.

Is this important? If you care about your health and well-being, it is important. That's because, much like ads on TV, your mental adverts have an agenda. They are trying to hook you with a clever tactic—usually some form of fear—and make you do their bidding. The intentions of your thoughts can be pure—anxiety about an unlocked door, for instance, can come from a natural impulse to protect your family and possessions. But there is a threshold where this sort of anxiety ceases to be productive, and indeed can begin to subtly warp your relationship with consciousness in an unhealthy way. This can have a direct impact on your health. 

Learned helplessness a psychological phenomenon that goes a little something like this:

In Scenario Number 1, I give you electric shocks until you pull a lever in your immediate vicinity. When you pull the lever, I stop. You walk away from this experience less-than-happy with me. Next time we play "this game," you pull the lever immediately, and I stop immediately, and all is well. (Sort of.) Your feathers are ruffled, but you're prepared for the next time we play, because you've figured out the system.

In Scenario Number 2, I shock you, and you pull the lever, and I keep shocking you. You are unhappy, and hate me, but that's beside the point. The next time we play the game, I've arranged for the lever to end the shocking, but you assume that the lever will perform identically to your previous experience —that it won't do anything. So you don't pull it, even though it would stop the shocking.

Sorry I had to walk you through that. I thought it would less disturbing than explaining the original 1960s experiment, which involved shocking a lot of dogs.

Consider this study, published in 2012 in Chest Journal, the official publication of the American College of Chest Physicians. (Don't act like you don't read every issue.) The study found that the friends and family of people admitted to intensive care units demonstrated significant learned helplessness, and this consequently affected their decision-making ability in regard to their loved ones' health. An overwhelming feeling of futility often breeds decisions that will birth more futility. This is common in the face of severe medical trauma. It's also common outside the medical sphere, as anyone who has hibernated in front of Netflix for 3 days with a cache of dark chocolate can tell you.

Conclusion: if you falsely determine that something is true about your health or well-being, your brain's predilection for pattern recognition will likely carry it too far. This is one way the brain magnifies feelings of doubt and failure until they metastasize into Depression and Anxiety and Frustration. (Luckily, the opposite is also probably true.)

To combat making unhealthy choices, in any context, it's important to realize something that sounds dimwitted at first blush:

YOU ARE THE ONE THINKING YOUR THOUGHTS.

This is a crucial realization if you are to become the master of your mental environment, and your health, and your well-being. This, though, is only one half of the equation, and the other half sounds almost like a contradiction, but it isn't:

Figure 4: a human brain (male).

IT IS NOT THE DEFAULT SETTING FOR HUMAN BEINGS TO HAVE MUCH CONTROL OVER THEIR THOUGHTS.

(I'm sorry. If you're an avid reader, you'll know I do not rely on capital letters for extra gusto. This questionable choice bespeaks my conviction in these ideas.) If you're interested in an extensive and fascinating object lesson on the distance between who we are and what we think, I highly recommend this episode of the NPR program Invisibilia, entitled The Secret History of Thoughts. 

The word "thoughts" implies a lot of personal agency, but I think thoughts are better conceptualized as "mental events." When you realize that you are thinking your thoughts, but they're not, by default, going to generally be thoughts that are in the interest of your self-esteem/health/well-being, you have the blueprint for a new personal directive: take control of your thoughts, before they take control of you.

Like hula hooping, it seems easy, and it's not. But simply being aware of your mental passenger status is the first step to becoming the pilot.

Researching this sort of thing will send you directly into the arms of sages of very disparate quality, obviously. But if you can stomach the cheesiness inherent in fostering a positive mindset, there are some great specific suggestions tucked into these articles:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-master-your-mind-part-one-whos-running-your-thoughts.html

http://mountainmovingmindset.com/blog/?p=1173

Is Venting Good For You?

How bad was the traffic, Gilbert?

Let me vent for a second. By "a second," I mean as long as I like. But then, you knew that, because I'm Venting. If you've been Vented at, you know that time is not a prime consideration of the Venter.

The title, "Is Venting Good For You?" promises another piece of pop quasi-science. Since frustration (and the need to communicate it) is universal, the title attempts to wrangle the human condition for its own ends. The title is also posed as a question, which implies that 1) the author has not reached a conclusion, or 2) the author has reached a conclusion and is holding out on you in an attempt at suspense, and/or 3) the author hopes to convey his even-handed approach to a legitimate investigation.

In my view, this sort of title is ubiquitous because, 4) it has proven to generate traffic, despite the fact that it is artless, and deftly avoids doing what titles have done historically: indicate the thesis or thrust of the article, because the author is compiling a sloppy hodgepodge of extant information on a well-worn topic and dressing it up as an earnest inquiry.

Phew. Do I feel better? Not really. I have vented, and the conventional wisdom says I should be relaxing about now. But upon rereading what I've just typed, my rhetoric inspires in me the same feelings of discontent that prompted the words in the first place. My cortisol levels remain dangerous, I can tell. Where there should be dopamine, there is only a dusty twister. 

This interaction is missing something crucial: you, or someone like you. (Obviously, you're irreplaceable. I'd rather have you, but I'd make do with anyone.) A good venting session is incomplete without some sort of validation. This seems to spread a finite amount of angst across a psychic space twice the size; any engineer will explain that the pressure on the venter will accordingly decrease. (Meanwhile, it increases on the ventee, as any ventee will tell you.) If you were listening, and said something like, "Yeah, I hate vacuous click-bait articles with silly titles too," then I might feel better. Right? I'd feel less alone, because what felt like an irritation borne of the friction between me and the world would become something shared, and the resulting solidarity would diminish said friction to an acceptable level.

But what if venting was not a release at all, but rather a reinforcement of our own rage? What if the seemingly-healthy act of simply complaining about other drivers and our boyfriends and Congress and people who smoke too close to the building is fortifying a rampart of gloom deep inside us somewhere? I have tried certain gripes on for size, found I liked the fit, and purchased them. They become mine, and eventually graduate to the status of Pet Peeve, even though I avoid the phrase "pet peeve" because it's gleefully precious and self-indulgent. In fact, I'm forcing myself to use it, because the phrase itself is a Pet Peeve of mine, and Pet Peeves themselves are exercises in self-indulgence.

Sometimes a simple scalp massage will do the trick.

What's wrong with self-indulgence, ergo, what is wrong with venting? It's not my job to tell you that, or even arguably to be talking about this at all. But after years of selling extracts and tonics to calm people down, help them sleep, manage stress, and all the rest, I thought it would be novel to try examining the roots rather than pruning the branches.

So, like I was saying, what's wrong with self-indulgence? Well, if you're going to indulge, it should be fun, at least. Venting is less like candy, and more like anesthetic. When the numbness disappears, the pain will still be there.

So please, do try kava kava. Do enjoy the benefits of Omega 3s, and restful sleep, and the proper quotient of Vitamin B12. But consider, for instance, what this article from Psychology Today tells us: venting feels good while it's happening, but has very little lasting benefit, and generally negative psychological consequences. If you like, here's another interesting article with a similar take. I'm feeling generous, so here's another, from livescience.com. Perhaps you'd like to peruse this lifehacker.com article, which espouses the same idea. 

This temple is like, way too loud, and I'm going to snap.

Obviously, not all venting is the same. Stoicism has its place, but people need to share their feelings.* But there's a Pettiness Threshold™ that an event should cross before we decide to begin chattering to ourselves and our fellow humans about it. Not because venting is "wrong," but because we'll actually feel better in the long run by showing some restraint and pursuing reflection, and feeling better is what this blog is all about.

Frustration and anxiety are natural symptoms of living, but they can have a big impact on both health and well-being. I'll be examining the issue of frustration and its effect on health further in the coming entries. If you like what you read, tell a friend. If you don't, keep it to yourself—for the sake of your health.

Before we see each other again, I challenge you to listen to this the next time you find yourself in a tizzy. I promise I'll do the same.



*I guess. 

Red Pill or Blueberry Pill? (Memories!)

Where are my keys!?

Researcher Elizabeth Loftus plays you a video of a car accident. Afterward, she asks you how fast the cars were going when they "smashed" into each other. Her research suggests you're more suggestible than you might like: you'll probably give a higher speed estimate when the question contains high-impact language like "smashed." You may go so far as to start spicing up the scene: throwing in some nice extras, like broken glass, or if you're Michael Bay, an explosion. This study confirms what those looking through their house for glasses already on their face already know: your memory bank isn't exactly Fort Knox. Your memory bank is more like one of those small-town banks out west with a single teller and no security that seems designed to be one stop on a cinematic desert crime spree.

He's content to admit the role of imagination.

Memory is prominent in the collective conscious this year, after some possible breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research has provided a new spark of hope for many. But the memory loss inflicted by a disease like Alzheimer's is very different from the simple, garden-variety unreliability of a healthy person's memory. Most people can do things to improve memory on a basic level, such as learning to remember the names of people you meet at a party (instead of avoiding referring to or interacting with them after you promptly forget their names). This doesn't address the problem of suggestibility and revisionism evidenced in the aforementioned study. There may be no cure for human nature. But what can we do to stop losing our car keys? Are there any healthy choices to improve memory? In other words: Is there anything you should be buying at Foods For Living for that pi-memorizing contest you eye up and never enter every year? (By the way, you may want to scope the competition first...)

Gingko biloba (銀杏)

The Gingko tree is a living fossil. It hasn't changed much since prehistory. Some extant specimens are estimated to be 2,500 years old. It's nearly poetic that this ancient witness to earth's story may be one of our best allies in the struggle for better memory. Gingko biloba is used in Europe for combating a type of dementia that involves reduced blood flow, since gingko seems to improve blood flow in small vessels. It may (or may not, more research is required—you'll see that this is a continuing theme) help slow and stabilize some forms of dementia. But it may not (or may) be beneficial for healthy brains. There are also some possible side effects, so (as always) consult your doctor before taking gingko.

Omega-3 fatty acids

People have been drinking fish oil (cod liver being the classic) for hundreds (if not more) years. Sea creature oil use for medicinal purposes goes back to Hippocrates, at least. (He preferred dolphin oil. This was before Greenpeace.) However, the benefits of fish oil (much like another, more serpentine oil), have fallen victim to gross hyperbole over the years. That said, many medical professionals acknowledge that the Omega-3s found in fish oil (and nuts and flax) may help the brain:

http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20140122/fish-oil-might-guard-against-loss-of-brain-cells

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/facts/benefits-of-omega-33.htm

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/expert-answers/fish-oil-supplements/faq-20058143

http://www.mensfitness.com/life/new-study-can-fish-oil-pills-really-improve-your-memory

Acetyl l-carnitine

Again, the goal of taking this amino acid in the realm of memory has more to do with combating dementia than improving the average person's memory. Lots of outlets make bold claims about ALC—I suggest reading about it for yourself before diving in.

 Ginseng

High-powered stimulant and favorite of the Wu-Tang Clan, ginseng may also improve your brain generally, if not memory specifically. There is at least some clinical evidence of this. I'll quote the link here:

"...in a 2-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 112 healthy, middle-aged adults given either ginseng or placebo, results showed that ginseng improved abstract thinking ability. However, there was no significant change in reaction time, memory, concentration, or overall subjective experience between the two groups. Another double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 50 men found that 8-week treatment with a ginseng extract improved ability to complete a detail-oriented editing task. A double-blind trial of 16 healthy males found favorable changes in ability to perform mental arithmetic in those given ginseng for 12 weeks."

Like most of the above, ginseng is available in pill form and herbal tinctures. As I said, ginseng is a stimulant. It's best treated like a polar bear: with due respect for its awesome might, and avoided when intoxicated.

Vitamin E

Feeling like something a little more classic? How about something with "vitamin" right in the name? Vitamin E, the fat-soluble tocopherol group... may be helpful for Alzheimer's. Maybe. But experts generally agree that Vitamin E isn't going to be your memory tonic, either.

Blueberries

I'd be blue too—no one else even cares.

Blueberries, that stepchild of the berry consumption world, have at least found a home in the brain-boosting community. (Look, I know you like blueberries. There are lots of likable stepchildren, too. Some of my best friends are stepchildren. But you rarely crave blueberries. There are fewer blueberry festivals, pies, etc., than those for its ruddier siblings, is all I'm saying.) There are lots of supplements, containing blueberries, with the goal of sharpening cognition and memory. Alas, the more you read, the more the focus seems to be on preventing mental decline with the onset of age. Obviously, that's great. But what about those of us who are still marginally young, and simply want to avoid acting like that guy from Memento?

The most effective choices are probably not something you can put in a pill: sleep, water, blah blah blah. But! If you want to sleep better, have I got some supplements for you! I'll make you a deal on this here Melatonin right now!

The bottom line: memory is like belly fat: no one's entirely happy with theirs, you can make a dent with supplements, and real advances are only possible with proper diet and exercise. Memory exercises, you say? Oh, yes.

THE DIET OF ICONIC FIGURES OF PEACE

When people talk about great historical figures, they tend to focus on accomplishments, philosophies, and fascinating biographical details. That's understandable, but it's problematic for me.

When it comes to great people and great art, almost every angle has been thoroughly investigated. At this point, there's probably an accompanying info-graphic for anything you'd like to know. That said, I'm still humbly mining obscure data, looking for connections where none likely exist.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You probably know a lot about his life and times if you grew up in the United States. But do you know what he ate? That's what I thought. It's time to examine...

THE DIET OF ICONIC FIGURES OF PEACE

Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can take the Civil Rights leader out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the Civil Rights leader. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. As a Georgian, King loved many traditional Southern foods. His favorite delicacy was allegedly pecan pie. I've got to think the oleic acid and natural fiber in pecans kept King healthy and energized during his many endeavors. The rest of the pecan pie was less wholesome, but you can get the least-processed, healthiest version of the necessary components—brown sugar, butter, crust of choice, sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, etc.—at your local Foods For Living.

King was said to have loved fried chicken. If you're not interested in traditional fried chicken, and you're skipping the above pie, you can still do a culinary King tribute with this pecan-encrusted chicken.

King also loved his collard greens. Why collard (and mustard and turnip and kale) greens never became a staple of Northern U.S. cuisine is a mystery to me. They are adored everywhere from Croatia to Brazil to the Kashmir region of India. Eating collards is essentially a rite of passage if you're south of the Mason-Dixon. As an excellent source of Vitamin C, soluble fiber, and a modulator of the innate immune response system, collard greens should be a staple everywhere. Adding pork shoulder and fat back is optional.

Gandhi

According to the Gandhi Foundation website, Mahatma Gandhi's diet was a product of his strong beliefs about the nature of life and morality. If you handed Gandhi a fun food survey, and he stopped leading a monumental campaign of nonviolent resistance for a second to fill it out, it might look like this:

Name: Gandhi

Favorite Coffee Blend: I do not consume coffee. Unnaturally stimulating the reflexes and mind is a poor substitute for true spiritual growth.

Favorite Deli: New Delhi. If you are referring to storefronts where flesh food is freely dealt and consumed, I do not have a favorite—they are all abhorrent to me.

Favorite Milk: That which comes from an animal is likely to be diseased. I reluctantly drink goat's milk under compulsion from my doctor.

Favorite Omelet: I prefer food that does not necessitate a massacre of the unborn. Even sterilized eggs are the result of an aberration in nature, and only possible through the unwise meddling of humankind.

Favorite Craft Brew: I do not appreciate this line of questioning. I will take this space to express my humble belief that attaining purity through diet alone is impossible. A clean diet is one step on the path to spiritual purity, but taken alone, is useless.

Barack Obama

Our President, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 (to much controversy), has a hard job: being married to a figurehead for public health and diet reform. So what does someone under nonstop scrutiny eat to stay healthy, alert, and photogenic? Some of Obama's favorites, the ingredients for which are all available at FFL, include:

• Salmon rice bowl with a ginger lime sauce
• Arugula salad with mushrooms and goat cheese
• thin crust pizzas with vegetable toppings
• chicken and spinach salad with toasted sesame dressing
• spinach simmered in yogurt, obviously inspired by aloo saag

I'm impressed with the Commander-in-Chief's selections—he doesn't skimp on flavor, while remaining committed to a balanced diet. Too bad he can't do the same with the budget, am I right? (Was I really supposed to abstain from making a single political pun in the entire entry?)

Malala Yousafzai

As the most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala is one of the most inspiring and universally adored figures to emerge in recent years. She's had a lot on her plate lately. But a lot of what, exactly? It's hard to say, but as a Pakistani, she had a wide variety of delicious food to choose from. (Malala no longer lives in Pakistan, but rather in Birmingham, England—a city less renowned for its culinary traditions than for its industrial music scene and rampant poverty.)

 Malala is from the Swat district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Pakistan is a place of regional diversity, and cuisine can vary greatly from place to place. The cuisine of Malala's native province is known as Pashtun cuisine. 

Pashtun cuisine favors lots of rice dishes, with liberal kebabs and spiced meats thrown in for good measure. Regional highlights include:

• "Ghatay Rujay, literally 'big rice,' a rice dish, resembling risotto, prepared only in Charsadda where the small grain rice needed to make it is grown."
• "Kichrei, sticky medium-grain rice cooked with mung beans and onions, topped with melted qurot sauce. This is mostly eaten during winter."
• "Londei, (spiced lamb jerky cooked with rice)"

The next time you put a fork in your hand, ask yourself: is this something one of the Iconic Figures of Peace would eat? Of course not. No one would eat a fork. But regardless of what you're eating, remember, perhaps, that the very reason you have the freedom to eat it where you do may or may not have something to do with some of their accomplishments, which they wouldn't have accomplished without eating. I'm just saying, be grateful and eat more greens. Organic greens. From Foods For Living.