Entertaining Harissa Traybake
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No, it’s not entertaining in the sense that it will tell you jokes or perhaps dance for you, but rather: it can be easily prepared in advance, kept in the fridge for up to 3 days, and reheated when needed as part of a spread when entertaining, leaving you more time to spend with your houseguests.
Aside from its convenience, it is of course nutritious and delicious:
You will need
- 14 oz cherry tomatoes
- 2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed)
- 2 eggplants, cut into ¾” cubes
- 1 red onion, roughly chopped
- 1 bulb garlic
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp harissa paste
- 1 tbsp ras el-hanout
- 1 tsp MSG or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 400℉ / 200℃
2) Mix the onion, eggplant, and garlic (whole cloves; just peel them and put them in) with the olive oil in a mixing bowl, ensuring everything is coated evenly.
3) Add in 1 tbsp of the harissa paste, 1 tbsp of the ras-el hanout, and half of the MSG/salt, and again mix thoroughly to coat evenly.
4) Bake in the oven, in a walled tray, for about 30 minutes, giving things a stir/jiggle halfway through to ensure they cook evenly.
5) Add the cherry tomatoes to the tray, and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.
6) Mix the chickpeas with the other 1 tbsp of the harissa paste, the other 1 tbsp of the ras-el hanout, and the other half of the MSG/salt, and add to the tray, returning it to the oven for a final 10 minutes.
7) Serve hot, or set aside for later, refrigerating once cool enough to do so. When you do serve, we recommend serving with a yogurt, cucumber, and mint dip, and perhaps flatbreads (you can use our Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe):
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
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Cognitive Enhancement Without Drugs
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Cognitive Enhancement Without Drugs
This is Elizabeth Ricker. She’s a Harvard-and-MIT-trained neuroscientist and researcher, who now runs the “Citizen Science” DIY-neurohacking organization, NeuroEducate.
Sounds fun! What’s it about?
The philosophy that spurs on her research and practice can be summed up as follows:
❝I’m not going to leave my brain up to my doctor or [anyone else]… My brain is my own responsibility, and I’m going to do the best that I can to optimize it❞
Her goal is not just to optimize her own brain though; she wants to make the science accessible to everyone.
What’s this about Citizen Science?
“Citizen Science” is the idea that while there’s definitely an important role in society for career academics, science itself should be accessible to all. And, not just the conclusions, but the process too.
This can take the form of huge experiments, often facilitated these days by apps where we opt-in to allow our health metrics (for example) to be collated with many thousands of others, for science. It can also involve such things as we talked about recently, getting our own raw genetic data and “running the numbers” at home to get far more comprehensive and direct information than the genetic testing company would ever provide us.
For Ricker, her focus is on the neuroscience side of biohacking, thus, neurohacking.
I’m ready to hack my brain! Do I need a drill?
Happily not! Although… Bone drills for the skull are very convenient instruments that make it quite hard to go wrong even with minimal training. The drill bit has a little step/ledge partway down, which means you can only drill through the thickness of the skull itself, before the bone meeting the wider part of the bit stops you from accidentally drilling into the brain. Still, please don’t do this at home.
What you can do at home is a different kind of self-experimentation…
If you want to consider which things are genuinely resulting in cognitive enhancement and which things are not, you need to approach the matter like a scientist. That means going about it in an organized fashion, and recording results.
There are several ways cognitive enhancement can be measured, including:
- Learning and memory
- Executive function
- Emotional regulation
- Creative intelligence
Let’s look at each of them, and what can be done. We don’t have a lot of room here; we’re a newsletter not a book, but we’ll cover one of Ricker’s approaches for each:
Learning and memory
This one’s easy. We’re going to leverage neuroplasticity (neurons that fire together, wire together!) by simple practice, and introduce an extra element to go alongside your recall. Perhaps a scent, or a certain item of clothing. Tell yourself that clinical studies have shown that this will boost your recall. It’s true, but that’s not what’s important; what’s important is that you believe it, and bring the placebo effect to bear on your endeavors.
You can test your memory with word lists, generated randomly by AI, such as this one:
You’ll soon find your memory improving—but don’t take our word for it!
Executive function
Executive function is the aspect of your brain that tells the other parts how to work, when to work, and when to stop working. If you’ve ever spent 30 minutes thinking “I need to get up” but you were stuck in scrolling social media, that was executive dysfunction.
This can be trained using the Stroop Color and Word Test, which shows you words, specifically the names of colors, which will themselves be colored, but not necessarily in the color the word pertains to. So for example, you might be shown the word “red”, colored green. Your task is to declare either the color of the word only, ignoring the word itself, or the meaning of the word only, ignoring its appearance. It can be quite challenging, but you’ll get better quite quickly:
The Stroop Test: Online Version
Emotional Regulation
This is the ability to not blow up angrily at the person with whom you need to be diplomatic, or to refrain from laughing when you thought of something funny in a sombre situation.
It’s an important part of cognitive function, and success or failure can have quite far-reaching consequences in life. And, it can be trained too.
There’s no online widget for this one, but: when and if you’re in a position to safely* do so, think about something that normally triggers a strong unwanted emotional reaction. It doesn’t have to be something life-shattering, but just something that you feel in some way bad about. Hold this in your mind, sit with it, and practice mindfulness. The idea is to be able to hold the unpleasant idea in your mind, without becoming reactive to it, or escaping to more pleasant distractions. Build this up.
*if you perchance have PTSD, C-PTSD, or an emotional regulation disorder, you might want to talk this one through with a qualified professional first.
Creative Intelligence
Another important cognitive skill, and again, one that can be cultivated and grown.
The trick here is volume. A good, repeatable test is to think of a common object (e.g. a rock, a towel, a banana) and, within a time constraint (such as 15 minutes) list how many uses you can think of for that item.
Writer’s storytime: once upon a time, I was sorting through an inventory of medical equipment with a colleague, and suggested throwing out our old arterial clamps, as we had newer, better ones—in abundance. My colleague didn’t want to part with them, so I challenged him “Give me one use for these, something we could in some possible world use them for that the new clamps don’t do better, and we’ll keep them”. He said “Thumbscrews”, and I threw my hands up in defeat, saying “Fine!”, as he had technically fulfilled my condition.
What’s the hack to improve this one? Just more volume. Creativity, as it turns out, isn’t something we can expend—like a muscle, it grows the more we use it. And because the above test is repeatable (with different objects), you can track your progress.
And if you feel like using your grown creative muscle to write/paint/compose/etc your magnum opus, great! Or if you just want to apply it to the problem-solving of everyday life, also great!
In summary…
Our brain is a wonderful organ with many functions. Society expects us to lose these as we get older, but the simple, scientific truth is that we can not only maintain our cognitive function, but also enhance and grow it as we go.
Want to know more from today’s featured expert?
You might enjoy her book, “Smarter Tomorrow”, which we reviewed back in March
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Taurine: An Anti-Aging Powerhouse? Exploring Its Unexpected Benefits
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Dr. Mark Rosenberg explains:
Not a stimulant, but…
- Its presence in energy drinks often causes people to assume it’s a stimulant, but it’s not. In fact, it’s a GABA-agonist, thus having a calming effect.
- The real reason it’s in energy drinks is because it helps increase mitochondrial ATP production (ATP = adenosine triphosphate = how cells store energy that’s ready to use; mitochondria take glucose and make ATP)
- Taurine is also anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticancer.
- In the category of aging, human studies are slow to give results for obvious reasons, but mouse studies show that supplementing taurine in middle-aged mice increased their lifespan by 10–12%, as well as improving various physiological markers of aging.
- Taking a closer look at aging—literally; looking at cellular aging—taurine reduces cellular senescence and protects telomeres, thus decreasing DNA mutations.
For more on the science of these, plus Dr. Rosenberg’s personal experience, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Taurine’s Benefits For Heart Health And More
- Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight
- Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Take care!
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Optimism Seriously Increases Longevity!
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Always look on the bright side for life
❝I’m not a pessimist; I’m a realist!❞
~ every pessimist ever
To believe self-reports, the world is divided between optimists and realists. But how does your outlook measure up, really?
Below, we’ve included a link to a test, and like most free online tests, this is offered “as-is” with the usual caveats about not being a clinical diagnostic tool, this one actually has a fair amount of scientific weight behind it:
❝Empirical testing has indicated the validity of the Optimism Pessimism Instrument as published in the scientific journal Current Psychology: Research and Reviews.
The IDRlabs Optimism/Pessimism Test (IDR-OPT) was developed by IDRlabs. The IDR-OPT is based on the Optimism/Pessimism Instrument (OPI) developed by Dr. William Dember, Dr. Stephanie Martin, Dr. Mary Hummer, Dr. Steven Howe, and Dr. Richard Melton, at the University of Cincinnati.❞
Take This Short (1–2 mins) Test
How did you score? And what could you do to improve on that score?
We said before that we’d do a main feature on this sometime, and today’s the day! Fits with the theme of Easter too, as for those who observe, this is a time for a celebration of hope, new beginnings, and life stepping out of the shadows.
On which note, before we go any further, let’s look at a very big “why” of optimism…
There have been many studies done regards optimism and health, and they generally come to the same conclusion: optimism is simply good for the health.
Here’s an example. It’s a longitudinal study, and it followed 121,700 women (what a sample size!) for eight years. It controlled for all kinds of other lifestyle factors (especially smoking, drinking, diet, and exercise habits, as well as pre-existing medical conditions), so this wasn’t a case of “people who are healthy are more optimistic as a result. And, in the researchers’ own words…
❝We found strong and statistically significant associations of increasing levels of optimism with decreasing risks of mortality, including mortality due each major cause of death, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and infection.
Importantly, findings were maintained after close control for potential confounding factors, including sociodemographic characteristics and depression❞
Read: Optimism and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study
So that’s the why. Now for the how…
Positive thinking is not what you think it is
A lot of people think of “think positive thoughts” as a very wishy-washy platitude, but positive thinking isn’t about ignoring what’s wrong, or burying every negative emotion.
Rather, it is taking advantage of the basic CBT, DBT, and, for that matter, NLP principles:
- Our feelings are driven by our thoughts
- Our thoughts can be changed by how we frame things
This is a lot like the idea that “there’s not such thing as bad weather; only the wrong clothes”. Clearly written by someone who’s never been in a hurricane, but by and large, the principle stands true.
For example…
- Most problems can be reframed as opportunities
- Replace “I have to…” with “I get to…”
- Will the task be arduous? It’ll be all the better looking back on it.
- Did you fail abjectly? Be proud that you lived true to your values anyway.
A lot of this is about focusing on what you can control. If you live your life by your values (first figure out what they are, if you haven’t already), then that will become a reassuring thing that you can always count on, no matter what.
Practice positive self-talk (eliminate the negative)
We often learn, usually as children, to be self deprecatory so as to not appear immodest. While modesty certainly has its place, we don’t have to trash ourselves to do that!
There are various approaches to this, for example:
- Replacing a self-criticism (whether it was true or not) with a neutral or positive statement that you know is true. “I suck at xyz” is just putting yourself down, “Xyz is a challenge for me” asks the question, how will you rise to it?
- Replacing a self-criticism with irony. It doesn’t matter how dripping with sarcasm your inner voice is, the words will still be better. “Glamorous as ever!” after accidentally putting mascara in your eye. “So elegant and graceful!” after walking into furniture. And so on.
Practice radical acceptance
This evokes the “optimistic nihilism” approach to life. It’s perhaps not best in all scenarios, but if you’re consciously and rationally pretty sure something is going to be terrible (and/or know it’s completely outside of your control), acknowledging that possibility (or even, likelihood) cheerfully. Borrowing from the last tip, this can be done with as much irony as you find necessary. For example:
Facing a surgery the recovery from which you know categorically will be very painful: with a big smile “Yep, I am going to be in a lot of pain, so that’s going to be fun!” (fun fact: psychological misery will not make the physical pain any less painful, so you might as well see the funny side) ← see link for additional benefits laughter can add to health-related quality of life)
Plan for the future with love
You know the whole “planting trees in whose shade you’ll never sit”, thing, but: actually for yourself too. Plan (and act!) now, out of love and compassion for your future self.
Simple example: preparing (or semi-preparing, if appropriate) breakfast for yourself the night before, when you know in the morning you’ll be tired, hungry, and/or pressed for time. You’ll wake up, remember that you did that, and…
Tip: at moments like that, take a moment to think “Thanks, past me”. (Or call yourself by your name, whatever works for you. For example I, your writer here, might say to myself “Thanks, past Nastja!”)
This helps to build a habit of gratitude for your past self and love for your future self.
This goes for little things like the above, but it also goes for things whereby there’s much longer-term delayed gratification, such as:
- Healthy lifestyle changes (usually these see slow, cumulative progress)
- Good financial strategies (usually these see slow, cumulative progress)
- Long educational courses (usually these see slow, cumulative progress)
Basically: pay it forward to your future self, and thank yourself later!
Some quick ideas of systems and apps that go hard on the “long slow cumulative progress” approach that you can look back on with pride:
- Noom—nutritional program with a psychology-based approach to help you attain and maintain your goals, long term
- You Need A Budget—we’ve recommended it before and we’ll recommend it again. This is so good. If you click through, you can see a short explanation of what makes it so different to other budgeting apps.
- Duolingo—the famously persistence-motivational language learning app
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The End of Alzheimer’s – by Dr. Dale Bredesen
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This one didn’t use the “The New Science Of…” subtitle that many books do, and this one actually is a “new science of”!
Which is exciting, and/but comes with the caveat that the overall protocol itself is still undergoing testing, but the results so far are promising. The constituent parts of the protocol are for the most already well-established, but have not previously been put together in this way.
Dr. Bredesen argues that Alzheimer’s Disease is not one condition but three (medical consensus agrees at least that it is a collection of conditions, but different schools of thought slice them differently), and outlines 36 metabolic factors that are implicated, and the good news is, most of them are within our control.
Since there’s a lot to put together, he also offers many workarounds and “crutches”, making for very practical advice.
The style of the book is on the hard end of pop-science, that is to say while the feel and tone is very pop-sciencey, there are nevertheless a lot of words that you might know but your spellchecker probably wouldn’t. He does explain everything along the way, but this does mean that if you’re not already well-versed, you can’t just dip in to a later point without reading the earlier parts.
Bottom line: even if you only implement half the advice in this book, you’ll be doing your long-term cognitive health a huge favor.
Click here to check out The End of Alzheimer’s, and keep cognitive decline at bay!
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Anti-Cholesterol Cardamom & Pistachio Porridge
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This tasty breakfast’s beta-glucan content binds to cholesterol and carries it out of the body; there are lots of other nutritional benefits too!
You will need
- 1 cup coconut milk
- ⅓ cup oats
- 4 tbsp crushed pistachios
- 6 cardamom pods, crushed
- 1 tsp rose water or 4 drops edible rose essential oil
- Optional sweetener: drizzle of honey or maple syrup
- Optional garnishes: rose petals, chopped nuts, dried fruit
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat the coconut milk, adding the oats and crushed cardamom pods. Simmer for 5–10 minutes depending on how cooked you want the oats to be.
2) Stir in the crushed pistachio nuts, as well as the rose water.
3) Serve in a bowl, adding any optional toppings:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health? ← it’s beta-glucan, which is fund abundantly in oats
- Pistachios vs Pecans – Which is Healthier? ← have a guess
- Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← coconut can!
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Wasting Your Vitamins?
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Are you flushing away your vitamins?
Most likely…but you don’t have to.
We all know what a wasteful expense supplements can sometimes be, but you can optimise your intake to get more bang for your buck!
Top Tips for Getting Your Money’s Worth:
- Liquids are better than tablets—the body can’t absorb nutrients from tablets anywhere as easily as it can from liquids, with some saying as low as a 50% absorption rate for tablets, so if your supplement can come in drinkable form, take it that way!
- Capsules are better than tablets—capsules, depending on the kind, contain either a powder (true capsules) or a liquid (softgels). Once the capsule/softgel is broken down in the stomach, it releases its contents, which will now be absorbed as though you took it as a drink.
- Stay hydrated—on that note, your body can only make use of nutrients that it can easily transport, and if you’re dehydrated, the process is sluggish! Having a big glass of water with your supplements will go a long way to helping your body get them where they’re needed.
- Take with black pepper—studies disagree on exactly how much black pepper improves absorption of nutrients. Some say it improves it by 50%, others say as much as 7x better. The truth is probably that it varies from one nutrient to the next, but what is (almost) universally accepted is that black pepper helps you absorb many nutrients you take orally.
- Take with a meal—bonus if you seasoned it with black pepper! But also: many nutrients are best absorbed alongside food, and many are specifically fat-soluble (so you want to take a little fat around the same time for maximum absorption)
- Consider split doses—a lot of nutrients are best absorbed when spread out a bit. Why? Your body can often only absorb so much at once, and what it couldn’t absorb can, depending on the nutrient, pass right through you. So better to space out the doses—breakfast and dinner make for great times to take them.
- Consider cycling—no, not the two-wheeled kind, though feel free to do that too! What cycling means when it comes to supplements is to understand that your body can build a tolerance to some supplements, so you’ll get gradually less effect for the same dose. Combat this by scheduling a break—five days on, two days off is a common schedule—allowing your body to optimise itself in the process!
- Check Medications—and, as is always safe, make sure you check whether any medications you take can interrupt your supplement absorption!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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