
Fast Diet, Fast Exercise, Fast Improvements
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Diet & Exercise, Optimized

This is Dr. Michael Mosley. He originally trained in medicine with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist, but he grew disillusioned with psychiatry as it was practised, and ended up pivoting completely into being a health educator, in which field he won the British Medical Association’s Medical Journalist of the Year Award.
He also died under tragic circumstances very recently (he and his wife were vacationing in Greece, he went missing while out for a short walk on the 5th of June, appears to have got lost, and his body was found 100 yards from a restaurant on the 9th). All strength and comfort to his family; we offer our small tribute here today in his honor.
The “weekend warrior” of fasting
Dr. Mosley was an enjoyer (and proponent) of intermittent fasting, which we’ve written about before:
Fasting Without Crashing? We Sort The Science From The Hype
However, while most attention is generally given to the 16:8 method of intermittent fasting (fast for 16 hours, eat during an 8 hour window, repeat), Dr. Mosley preferred the 5:2 method (which generally means: eat at will for 5 days, then eat a reduced calorie diet for the other 2 days).
Specifically, he advocated putting that cap at 800 kcal for each of the weekend days (doesn’t have to be specifically the weekend).
He also tweaked the “eat at will for 5 days” part, to “eat as much as you like of a low-carb Mediterranean diet for 5 days”:
❝The “New 5:2” approach involves restricting calories to 800 on fasting days, then eating a healthy lower carb, Mediterranean-style diet for the rest of the week.
The beauty of intermittent fasting means that as your insulin sensitivity returns, you will feel fuller for longer on smaller portions. This is why, on non-fasting days, you do not have to count calories, just eat sensible portions. By maintaining a Mediterranean-style diet, you will consume all of the healthy fats, protein, fibre and fresh plant-based food that your body needs.❞
Read more: The Fast 800 | The New 5:2
And about that tweaked Mediterranean Diet? You might also want to check out:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
Knowledge is power
Dr. Mosley encouraged the use of genotyping tests for personal health, not just to know about risk factors, but also to know about things such as, for example, whether you have the gene that makes you unable to gain significant improvements in aerobic fitness by following endurance training programs:
The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
On which note, he himself was not a fan of exercise, but recognised its importance, and instead sought to minimize the amount of exercise he needed to do, by practising High Intensity Interval Training. We reviewed a book of his (teamed up with a sports scientist) not long back; here it is:
Fast Exercise: The Simple Secret of High Intensity Training – by Dr. Michael Mosley & Peta Bee
You can also read our own article on the topic, here:
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Just One Thing…
As well as his many educational TV shows, Dr. Mosley was also known for his radio show, “Just One Thing”, and a little while ago we reviewed his book, effectively a compilation of these:
Just One Thing: How Simple Changes Can Transform Your Life – by Dr. Michael Mosley
Enjoy!
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Reinventing Your Life – by Dr. Jeffrey Young & Dr. Janet Klosko
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This book is quite unlike any other broadly-CBT-focused books we’ve reviewed before. How so, you may wonder?
Rather than focusing on automatic negative thoughts and cognitive distortions with a small-lens focus on an immediate problem, this one zooms out rather and tackles the cause rather than the symptom.
The authors outline eleven “lifetraps” that we can get stuck in:
- Abandonment
- Mistrust & abuse
- Vulnerability
- Dependence
- Emptional deprivation
- Social exclusion
- Defectiveness
- Failure
- Subjugation
- Unrelenting standards
- Entitlement
They then borrow from other areas of psychology, to examine where these things came from, and how they can be addressed, such that we can escape from them.
The style of the book is very reader-friendly pop-psychology, with illustrative (and perhaps apocryphal, but no less useful for it if so) case studies.
The authors then go on to give step-by-step instructions for dealing with each of the 11 lifetraps, per 6 unmet needs we probably had that got us into them, and per 3 likely ways we tried to cope with this using maladaptive coping mechanisms that got us into the lifetrap(s) we ended up in.
Bottom line: if you feel there’s something in your life that’s difficult to escape from (we cannot outrun ourselves, after all, and bring our problems with us), this book could well contain the key that you need to get out of that cycle.
Click here to check out “Reinventing Your Life” and break free from any lifetrap(s) of your own!
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Exercises for Sciatica Pain Relief
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Jessica Valant is a physiotherapist and Pilates teacher, and today she’s going to demonstrate some exercise that relieve (and also correct the cause of) sciatica pain.
Back to good health
You will need a large strap for one of these exercises; a Pilates strap is great, but you can also use a towel. The exercises are:
Pelvic Rocking Exercise:
- Lie on your back, feet flat, knees bent.
- Gently rock your pelvis forwards and backwards (50% effort, no glute squeezing).
Leg Stretch with Strap:
- Straighten your left leg and loop the strap around the ball of your right foot.
- Gently straighten and bend your right leg while holding the strap.
- Perform a “nerve glide” by flexing and pointing your foot (not a stretch, just gentle movement).
- Repeat on the left leg.
Piriformis Stretch:
- Bend your right knee and place your left ankle over it (figure-four position).
- For a deeper stretch, hold your right thigh and pull your legs inwards.
Lower Back Release:
- Let your legs fall gently to one side after stretching each leg, opening the lower back.
Back Extension:
- Lie on your belly, placing your elbows down, palms flat.
- Optional: push up slightly into a back bend if it feels comfortable.
Seated Stretching:
- Finish by sitting cross-legged or on a chair.
- Inhale while raising your arms up, exhale while lowering them down, then reach sideways with your arms to stretch.
- Perform gentle neck stretches by tilting your ear to your shoulder on each side.
She recommends doing these exercises daily for at least a few weeks, though you should start to see improvement in your symptoms immediately. Nothing here should cause a problem or make things worse, but if it does, stop immediately and consult a local physiotherapist for more personalized advice.
For more on all of this, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
6 Ways To Look After Your Back
Take care!
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The Rise Of The Machines
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In this week’s health science news, several pieces of technology caught our eye. Let’s hope these things roll out widely!
When it comes to UTIs, antimicrobial resistance is taking the p—
This has implications far beyond UTIs—though UTIs can be a bit of a “canary in the coal mine” for antimicrobial resistance. The more people are using antibiotics (intentionally, or because they are in the food chain), the more killer bugs are proliferating instead of dying when we give them something to kill them. And yes: they do proliferate sometimes when given antibiotics, not because the antibiotics did anything directly good for them, but because they killed their (often friendly bacteria) competition. Thus making for a double-whammy of woe.
This development tackles that, by using AI modelling to crunch the numbers of a real-time data-driven personalized approach to give much more accurate treatment options, in a way that a human couldn’t (or at least, couldn’t at anything like the same speed, and most family physicians don’t have a mathematician locked in the back room to spend the night working on a patient’s data).
Read in full: AI can help tackle urinary tract infections and antimicrobial resistance
Related: AI: The Doctor That Never Tires?
When it comes to CPR and women, people are feint of heart
When CPR is needed, time is very much of the essence. And yet, bystanders are much less likely to give CPR to a woman than to a man. Not only that, but CPR-training is part of what leads to this reluctance when it comes to women: the mannequins used are very homogenous, being male (94%) and lean (99%). They’re also usually white (88%) even in countries where the populations are not, but that is less critical. After all, a racist person is less likely to give CPR to a person of color regardless of what color the training mannequin was.
However, the mannequins being male and lean is an issue, because it means people suddenly lack confidence when faced with breasts and/or abundant body fat. Both can prompt the bystander to wonder if some different technique is needed (it isn’t), and breasts can also prompt the bystander to fear doing something potentially “improper” (the proper course of action is: save a person’s life; do not get distracted by breasts).
Read in full: Women are less likely to receive CPR than men. Training on manikins with breasts could help ← there are also CPR instructions (and a video demonstration) there, for anyone who wants a refresher, if perhaps your last first-aid course was a while ago!
Related: Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)
When technology is a breath of fresh air
A woman with COPD and COVID has had her very damaged lungs replaced using a da Vinci X robot to perform a minimally-invasive surgery (which is quite a statement, when it comes to replacing someone’s lungs).
Not without human oversight though—surgeon Dr. Stephanie Chang was directing the transplant. Surgery is rarely fun for the person being operated on, but advances like this make things go a lot more smoothly, so this kind of progress is good to see.
Read in full: Woman receives world’s first robotic double-lung transplant
Related: Why Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Is More Likely Than You Think
Take care!
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Avoiding Anemia (More Than Just “Get More Iron”)
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The Iron Dilemma: Factors To Consider
Anemia affects around 10% of American seniors, and that number jumps to 34–39% if there’s a comorbidity such as diabetes, hypertension, or hypercholesterolemia, which in turn climbs with increasing age or with other chronic conditions:
So, what can we do about it?
Get iron yes, but how?
We’d be remiss not to say: yes, do of course make sure you get plenty of iron.
Most people know that red meats, which are terrible for the heart and for cancer risk, are good sources of iron.
Well, good insofar as they provide plenty of it! They’re bad for other reasons.
❝Studies consistently show that consumption of red meat has been contributory to a multitude of chronic conditions such as diabetes, CVD, and malignancies.
There are various emerging reasons that strengthen this link-from the basic constituents of red meat like the heme iron component, the metabolic reactions that take place after consumption, and finally to the methods used to cook it.
The causative links show that even occasional use raises the risk of T2DM.❞
Source: Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities?
To heme or not to heme
Did you catch that in the middle there, about the heme iron component?
Dietary iron is broadly divided into two kinds: heme, and non-heme.
- Heme iron comes from animals
- Non-heme iron comes from plants
Bad news for vegans: non-heme iron is not so easily absorbed as heme iron.
This means that if you’re just eating plants, the RDA may be significantly lowballing the amount actually required. As a rule, about 1.8x more iron may be needed for vegans, to compensate for it being less easily absorbed.
Why this happens: it’s because of the phytic acid / phytate in the plants that contain the iron, blocking its absorption.
Good news for vegans: however, taking iron with vitamin C increases its absorption rate by about 5x better absorption, and several other side-along nutrients do similarly, including allium (from garlic), carotenoids (from many colorful plants), and fermented foods.
Why this happens: it’s because they bind with similar sites as phytic acid, without causing the same effect. To make a metaphor: these foods steal phytic acid’s parking space, so phytic acid can’t do its iron-blocking thing.
By happy coincidence, today’s featured recipe has all of these things in, by the way (vitamin C, allium, carotenoids, and fermented foods), and the star ingredient (fava beans) is a rich source of iron.
What are good sources of iron, then?
In the category of plants:
- Beans (pick your favorites / eat a variety)
- Lentils (pick your favorites / eat a variety)
- Greens (especially dark leafy greens)
- Apricots (you can get these dried, for convenience!)
- Dark chocolate (5mg per 1oz square!)*
*Ok, technically dark chocolate is not a plant; cacao is a plant; dark chocolate is usually plant-based, though, as there is no reason to add milk.
In the category of dairy products:
That’s not a publication error; dairy products are just not great for iron. Cheeses are more nutrient-dense than milk, and have less than 0.5mg per oz, in other words, the top dairy product has around 10x less iron than dark chocolate, which came in 5th place and let’s face it, we were doing broad categories there. If we listed all the beans, lentils, greens, etc it’d be a much longer list.
Eggs, which are sometimes considered under the category of dairy by virtue of not being an animal (yet!) but an animal product, have around 1mg per egg, by the way, so considering eggs are nearer 2oz, that’s not much better than the cheese.
“But what about if…”
The above is good science and general good advice for most people. That said, some people may have conditions that preclude the foods we recommended, or have other considerations, and so things may be different. Anemia can sometimes be caused by things that can’t be fixed by diet (beyond the scope of today’s article; another time, perhaps), but for example, if you have leukemia then definitely discuss things with your doctors first. Other illnesses, and some medications, can also have troublesome effects that can contribute to anemia. Again, we can offer very good general information here, but we don’t know your medical history, and our standard legal/medical disclaimer applies as always.
See also: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
Take care!
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Women want to see the same health provider during pregnancy, birth and beyond
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Hazel Keedle, Western Sydney University and Hannah Dahlen, Western Sydney University
In theory, pregnant women in Australia can choose the type of health provider they see during pregnancy, labour and after they give birth. But this is often dependent on where you live and how much you can afford in out-of-pocket costs.
While standard public hospital care is the most common in Australia, accounting for 40.9% of births, the other main options are:
- GP shared care, where the woman sees her GP for some appointments (15% of births)
- midwifery continuity of care in the public system, often called midwifery group practice or caseload care, where the woman sees the same midwife of team of midwives (14%)
- private obstetrician care (10.6%)
- private midwifery care (1.9%).
Given the choice, which model would women prefer?
Our new research, published BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, found women favoured seeing the same health provider throughout pregnancy, in labour and after they have their baby – whether that’s via midwifery group practice, a private midwife or a private obstetrician.
Assessing strengths and limitations
We surveyed 8,804 Australian women for the Birth Experience Study (BESt) and 2,909 provided additional comments about their model of maternity care. The respondents were representative of state and territory population breakdowns, however fewer respondents were First Nations or from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds.
We analysed these comments in six categories – standard maternity care, high-risk maternity care, GP shared care, midwifery group practice, private obstetric care and private midwifery care – based on the perceived strengths and limitations for each model of care.
Overall, we found models of care that were fragmented and didn’t provide continuity through the pregnancy, birth and postnatal period (standard care, high risk care and GP shared care) were more likely to be described negatively, with more comments about limitations than strengths.
What women thought of standard maternity care in hospitals
Women who experienced standard maternity care, where they saw many different health care providers, were disappointed about having to retell their story at every appointment and said they would have preferred continuity of midwifery care.
Positive comments about this model of care were often about a midwife or doctor who went above and beyond and gave extra care within the constraints of a fragmented system.
The model of care with the highest number of comments about limitations was high-risk maternity care. For women with pregnancy complications who have their baby in the public system, this means seeing different doctors on different days.
Some respondents received conflicting advice from different doctors, and said the focus was on their complications instead of their pregnancy journey. One woman in high-risk care noted:
The experience was very impersonal, their focus was my cervix, not preparing me for birth.
Why women favoured continuity of care
Overall, there were more positive comments about models of care that provided continuity of care: private midwifery care, private obstetric care and midwifery group practice in public hospitals.
Women recognised the benefits of continuity and how this included informed decision-making and supported their choices.
The model of care with the highest number of positive comments was care from a privately practising midwife. Women felt they received the “gold standard of maternity care” when they had this model. One woman described her care as:
Extremely personable! Home visits were like having tea with a friend but very professional. Her knowledge and empathy made me feel safe and protected. She respected all of my decisions. She reminded me often that I didn’t need her help when it came to birthing my child, but she was there if I wanted it (or did need it).
However, this is a private model of care and women need to pay for it. So there are barriers in accessing this model of care due to the cost and the small numbers working in Australia, particularly in regional, rural and remote areas, among other barriers.
Women who had private obstetricians were also positive about their care, especially among women with medical or pregnancy complications – this type of care had the second-highest number of positive comments.
This was followed by women who had continuity of care from midwives in the public system, which was described as respectful and supportive.
However, one of the limitations about continuity models of care is when the woman doesn’t feel connected to her midwife or doctor. Some women who experienced this wished they had the opportunity to choose a different midwife or doctor.
What about shared care with a GP?
While shared care between the GP and hospital model of care is widely promoted in the public maternity care system as providing continuity, it had a similar number of negative comments to those who had fragmented standard hospital care.
Considering there is strong evidence about the benefits of midwifery continuity of care, and this model of care appears to be most acceptable to women, it’s time to expand access so all Australian women can access continuity of care, regardless of their location or ability to pay.
Hazel Keedle, Senior Lecturer of Midwifery, Western Sydney University and Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Two-Second Advantage – by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney
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The titular “two-second advantage” can in some cases be literal (imagine you got a two-second head-start in a boxing match!), in other cases can refer to being just a little ahead of things in a way that can confer a great advantage, often cumulatively—as anyone who’s played Monopoly can certainly attest.
Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney give us lots of examples from business, sports, politics, economics, and more, in a way that seeks to cultivate a habit of asking the right questions in order to anticipate the future and not just be ahead of the competition—some areas of life don’t have competition for most people, like health, for example—but to generally have things “in hand”.
When it comes to personal finances, health, personal projects, and the like, those tiny initial advantages that lead to incremental further improvements, can be the difference between continually (and frantically) playing catch-up, or making the jump past breaking even to going from strength to strength.
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