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Finding Harmony: Exploring the Relationship Between Taoism and the State of Flow

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Taoism is a philosophical and spiritual tradition that originated in ancient China. It emphasizes living in harmony with nature and finding the path of least resistance. Similarly, the concept of flow, first introduced by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is a state of consciousness in which individuals are fully immersed and completely absorbed in an activity, to the point where they lose track of time and their surroundings.

Creatine and Muscle Growth

Creatine is a compound that is naturally produced in the body and stored in the muscles. It is also found in small amounts in certain foods, such as red meat and fish. Creatine is a popular supplement among athletes and bodybuilders, as it has been shown to improve performance during high-intensity exercise and promote muscle growth. One of the ways that creatine may promote muscle growth is by increasing the production of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in the muscles. ATP is the primary source of energy for muscle contractions, and increasing the availability of ATP can help the muscles perform better during exercise. This can lead to increased muscle mass and strength over time. Another way that creatine may promote muscle growth is by increasing water retention in the muscles. When you take a creatine supplement, it can cause the muscles to retain more water, which can make them appear larger and more "pumped." While this effect is not necessarily the same as true muscle gro

Sodium and Muscle Growth

Sodium is an essential mineral that plays a number of important roles in the body, including regulating fluid balance, blood pressure, and nerve function. While sodium itself does not directly contribute to muscle growth, it can indirectly impact muscle growth by affecting factors such as hydration and nutrient uptake. One of the main ways that sodium can impact muscle growth is through its effect on hydration. When you exercise, your body loses water through sweating, and if you don't replenish this water, it can lead to dehydration. Dehydration can have a negative impact on muscle growth, as it can impair protein synthesis and reduce the amount of glycogen stored in the muscles. Sodium helps to regulate fluid balance in the body, and consuming sodium-rich foods or electrolyte supplements can help to maintain proper hydration levels and support muscle growth.

Unpacking the Shadow: Overcoming Fear and Embracing Our True Selves

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Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who was known for his contributions to the field of psychology, particularly in the area of analytical psychology. One of his most influential concepts was the idea of the shadow, which refers to the unconscious part of our psyche that contains all the negative traits and impulses we try to repress or deny. In Jungian theory, the shadow is not necessarily evil or bad, but rather represents aspects of ourselves that we have rejected or disowned. These could be traits such as anger, envy, greed, or lust, which we deem unacceptable or unbecoming. The shadow can also contain repressed memories or traumatic experiences that we have buried deep within our psyche.

The Connection Between Metabolic Health and Depression

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that there is a strong association between poor metabolic health and depression. Metabolic health refers to the state of an individual's metabolism, which includes factors such as blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and body weight. Research has shown that individuals who have poor metabolic health are more likely to experience symptoms of depression than those who have good metabolic health. For example, a 2015 study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research found that people with metabolic syndrome (a cluster of metabolic abnormalities that includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and abdominal obesity) were more likely to have depression than those without metabolic syndrome.

We Are Either Growing or We Are Dying

As humans, we are the most unpredictable creatures on the planet. We have such varying mental and emotional capacities, that as individuals, our actions are almost impossible to predict. But physically, we are much easier to figure out. We are conceived, we grow, we stop growing, and we eventually die. The framework of this process is completely beyond our control, but we do have quite a bit to say about the inputs and the outputs of each of these stages. Our actions play a part in how healthy we are during each phase and how long each phase may last (especially the period between early adulthood and middle age). Further, the quality of the later stage (old age) depends highly on the quality of our most critical, middle age stage. If we can stay healthy and maintain a level of strength and fitness that resembles our earlier adult years, we can extend this stage and the transition into old age well beyond what most people believe is possible. But if we fail to maintain this level of hea

Running The Longevity Gauntlet

Us humans are running the longevity gauntlet, we always have been, and we always will be. The gauntlet that we are running today looks different from the one we were running a hundred years ago, and much more different than the one of a thousand or a hundred thousand years back. And the gauntlet will look much different in the next couple decades as well. The gauntlet is always changing due to breakthroughs in medical science as well as personal lifestyle choices. Each of us is running the same gauntlet, but because of personal choices each of us makes in the way we live our lives, this gauntlet looks a lot different for each of us. For some the gauntlet feels like an endless set of obstacles, while for others it seems almost non-existent. Most people living in the Western world address the gauntlet via medical treatments, prescription drugs, or questionable supplements, each of which is designed specifically to help us clear the current hurdle we face in the gauntlet. If we are lucky,

Micro-Adventure Primer

"Adventure is a state of mind, a spirit of trying something new and leaving your comfort zone. It's about enthusiasm, ambition, open-mindedness, and curiosity." - Alastair Humphreys A Quick Escape From The 9-5 Micro-adventures are close to home, easy to plan, and maximize the core ideas of what an adventure is all about. We don't need to travel far and away to experience an adventure. There are so many opportunities for adventure within an hour drive from home. Living the adventure life is as much about quantity as it is about quality. Find the right balance and we are on our way. Don't get so caught up in the planning stage (i.e. getting permits and campsites and all the logistics), gear acquisition, and all the other stuff, that it becomes so overwhelming that we end up pushing back the date so often that we eventually cancel the adventure. Or if we do go through with it, we are more than happy to postpone the next adventure for a date further down the road to a

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Add Years to Your Life

There are quite a few things we can do to add quality years to our lives, unfortunately there is a lot of clutter that we have to wade through to find out just what we need to do to live longer. Some are extreme, some are completely mundane, and some involve plain luck (like the guy who lives to 105 while smoking and drinking daily). It’s not enough to just follow someone else's lead. We need to take the best science we can find and figure out how to apply it best to our lives. And then we need a little luck. “And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.” Cut The Sugar Not only is obesity a major culprit in many of the diseases Americans are suffering from today, but it also accelerates the aging process itself, even more than smoking, according to the largest ever study of the telomeres (our “chromosomal timeclock”) in human cells. When lifestyle factors were taken into account, however, dramatic differences emerged. The differen

80 Percent of All Deaths Are Lifestyle Related

This is the statistic that gets me up and going in the morning. Simply stated, we have a say in determining whether or not we are going to get one of the aforementioned diseases. All we have to do is live a healthier lifestyle than we have been living. And even a little bit helps. Just adding a regular walk to your daily routine will add several years (healthier years) to your life. Cut a little sugar, do a few push ups, it all adds up. These are the major lifestyle factors that take healthy years off our lives: Smoking Obesity and Sedentarism Drinking Heavily Chronic Stress The key is to make as many small changes as we can to get the greatest effect. Swapping marathons for couch time would be a definite improvement, but if we are still doing the other bad things, we really won’t get the results we are hoping for. In fact, being a chain-smoking ultra-marathoner might actually take years off our lives.