Lessons from our kids: parasympathetic nervous system

Disclaimer: These are some of the forms that I have found that are good to do that do not require money for services (ie. acupuncture or other therapies)

My 5 year old son was always blowing into my wife’s belly, making silly farting noises and giggling. My wife finally got embarrassed and asked me if that’s normal behavior. She said that he found comfort in it and tended to do it when he felt annoyed or bothered. What he was doing was activating his parasympathetic nervous system to relax. The vibrational force on his vagus nerve from the blowing raspberries and giggling triggered his brain to switch into the relaxation mode.

The modern world’s lifestyle, along with chronic illness, is roughly termed as “metabolic syndrome.” Ultimately this occurs by constant triggers in our brain that tell the brain to activate the sympathetic nervous system. A thought that lingers about an angry email or the troubles in a 3rd world country will stimulate our fight or flight whether we know it or not. The brain sure doesn’t know what is a current threat versus a perceived threat. It’s cool, but the problem is that once the brain is in sympathetic nervous system mode, it cannot be in parasympathetic nervous system mode at the same time. The parasympathetic is the body buildup and fixing phase. Without that, it’s just constant breakdown. 

Here are a few points that I have gathered that will force the body into the parasympathetic nervous system. The best solution is to eliminate stress, but that’s pretty difficult since there are so many sources that we just don’t think about. Consider the underlying stress of making enough money for rent. Every second we think of that, our body activates the sympathetic nervous system. The more we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the more resilient we become to the underlying stress that may or may not be able to control.

1. Attune with nature. Forest, leaves, bugs, birds. Pretty much anything that works without a human brain (or artificial human brain like devices). Please note, it won’t work if you are afraid of something in nature like bugs. 
2. Breathwork – the ratio of air in/ air out determines which nervous system you are in. Deep breaths in, but longer exhales → parasympathetic. The opposite is the other one. I won’t name it so as not to confuse. This is why breathing in a paper bag works, as it unconsciously makes the person breathe in rapidly and exhale slightly slower. Breathing in through the nose is best.
3. Massage – pretty much make it like the body is not being attacked. Touch will make the brain focus on it. Go too far and the body could go into fight or flight mode.
4. Hot bath – bonus points for Epsom salt
5. Music – Anything that elicits a happy and/or promotes singing or humming along, or good memories.
6. Oxytocin – hugging, cuddling, pets (double bonus as they are naturally attuned to nature)
7. Unplug – or….do nothing. Do thought experiments, observe the threads in the curtains, look out the window. Bonus for going outside.
8. Aromatherapy – lavender and bergamot are good scents with some anecdotal overall usage. The important thing is to connect to your memories or nostalgia, meaning everyone has a different smell they find comfort in.
9. Gardening – or in other words, anything that is rote and repetitive and easy. This allows the body to go autopilot and allows the mind to process the day. This is synonymous to journaling, threadwork, simple exercises, playing music instruments.
10. Sunshine – it’s all about melatonin, which is a pretty important chemical in the parasympathetic nervous system.
11. Meditation – this is simply a term that includes a lot of the other activities, but in a focused activity. It can be done sitting, standing, walking, laying down. The best type of meditation is not even conscious at all.
12. Yawns – pretty much gets the body to re-regulate breathing
13. Drawing/ doodling – this is similar to gardening, but more for the creative side.
14. Reading – this can be counter-intuitive if reading about crises or murders. Mysteries are another story though.
15. Mantra – words that empower yourself. The best ones that I like are: “I am safe.” “I am fantastic at ___”
16. Stretching – besides the obvious, smiling is also a stretch that is very good for parasympathetic nervous system activation.Yoga poses are also excellent.
17. Sufficient sleep – obvious.
18. Vibrational forces on the throat – blowing raspberry, long breaths out with the “v” consonant, gargling, humming. 
19. Laughing
20. Eat fermented foods – this gives building blocks to the gut bacteria. If the gut bacteria are working, that means you are in a parasympathetic nervous system.
21. Observing fractals – seeing pictures with patterns. The mind will mentally trace and wonder on its own.
22. Daydreaming
23. Proper nutrition – the usual healthy, nothing really specific besides fermented foods
24. Gratitude – dopamine

The Power of Compromise

In a world of comparison, filled to the brim with experts in the field at the touch of a finger, we are subconsciously forced to be better, faster, stronger than we could catch up. Hidden amongst the seemingly trivial minute-long videos of people online, we are misled to think that we are supposed to be like that as well. What we don’t see are the numerous re-recordings, edits, and extensive research in the background. We don’t see the massive teams working together, or the prep work that goes behind the scenes. The bright side is that we can get there, just not at the moment. Instant gratification, which is fueled by the rampant success of highlights videos or pictures, tricks our brain to think we need to be that way now. The brain is smart and will try and take shortcuts, thinking it’s the most effective way.

Enter stage right, is the word Compromise. This is the golden serum to fix the current world problems of instant gratification. As human beings, we have the power to do anything that our mind believes. The only thing it forgets sometimes is it requires effort and time.

I’ll provide an example. Doing 100 pushups a day will lead to better physique. This is most definitely true, but 100 is a lot. What can you do? Find times to do it everyday, like brushing the teeth. Do as many as you can before bed, and then do as many as you can after waking up. Do that consistently and add up the total and be surprised. Mathematically, if doing 1 pushup takes 1 second, that’s 100 seconds of pushing the ground. Do you have time for that if you just want to get to bed? Split it up and the brain might think of it like a daily activity of less than a minute.

Another example. Bake the perfect brownies with this recipe. Ovens are all different. Heck, even altitudes change baking times. Consider also the base ingredients. Don’t save the recipe for the big party without trying it out and expecting failure.

So many more examples.

Cheers,

The Tasty Orange

A Pivot in Energy

Perhaps this type of growth was anticipated, but I have been experiencing what many might categorize as the beginnings of a spiritual awakening. It’s an odd realization with this background of pharmacy, but it makes perfect sense as I never had a good impression on the physical medicine, at the very least the modern medicine. I’ve always wanted to heal people as I was growing up, so that’s how I got into pharmacy. I then took a minor in herbalism and mixed the two during my daily practice.

After my weight loss journey, it not only cleaned my body it also cleaned the filters in my mind. I was able to realize that I was only helping the world minimally by applying an external bandage. The real cause was not addressed correctly and that was simply the slice of business. It was a never-ending rabbit hole that led to questioning everything that potentially made money. I can’t go back after knowing so much.

Relatively recently, there has been a rise in the term of holistic healthcare. This means taking care of the chief complaint by tackling the source. This is in the same field as my previous weight loss experience. It doesn’t go into the true source of the problems, and that typically involves psychology. Even so, a change at that level might be too sudden for people that are still living life according to the rules. It’s a great gradual stepping stone that I took.

Field work effects on Coffee, the big picture.

Let’s talk about coffee as a drug. The short answer is the same for everything in this world – the dose is the poison. We will discuss creamers, sweeteners, timing, volume and caffeine content. Let’s get right to it.

Creamers/ Sweeteners

I have bunched these two because the concern is the same. One needs to be wary of the insulin response that comes along with these products. Generally a cup of coffee is the first thing in the morning that a person has in the morning. Some even skip breakfast and go only for coffee. As long as you understand that this breaks the body’s fasting mode, that’s fine. A typical sleep ranges, but let’s assume it’s 8 hours of sleep. That means 8 hours of no eating. Good job! If you don’t eat for 4 hours before bed, or don’t eat for 4 hours after waking, that gets you to 12 hours of no sleep which is an excellent daily balance to allow the digestive system to rest. Increase that to 17 hours and you are golden, pretty much immune to sickness if you are healthy. Once sugar from the creamer or sweetener enters the body, insulin will kick in and wake up the digestion system. In other words, the body is no longer fasting.

Now, there are some creamers that have minimal to no sugar that people add in for the extra fat. This is popular for ketogenic folks, as it may provide satiety as well as caffeination. Some add alternative sweeteners that may not spike the insulin response. My blunt response? All of this stuff is kind of annoying to think about and simply get in the way of the flavor of the coffee. Arguably there are some coffees that cannot be taken without any add-ins. When that happens, remember your power as a consumer!

Timing

Besides the fasting and non-fasting concerns, the caffeine inside of the coffee deserves some consideration. The duration of caffeine is actually quite long, even if you don’t feel it’s effects. It can last up to or more than 10 hours, but there is no way you feel it that long right? It’s the way it works in the body. It binds to a receptor (for adenosine) in the brain and blocks any natural adenosine from attaching to this receptor. What adenosine does is message the cell to relax. Relaxed cells cause – you guessed it -relaxation and drowsiness. Since the ability to relax is being blocked, the brain may think something is terribly wrong and launch an adrenaline response. Being in this response for too long requires a lot of resources, it would be darn crazy to have this last 10 hours. Adding more caffeine can block more receptors, until eventually everything gets saturated. I now just drink one cup of coffee when I wake up.

Volume

Honestly, drinking a lot of coffee in one sitting may be healthier than you think. Coffee surprisingly has a fair amount of fiber. As the effects of the receptor blockage lasts on average 10 hours, saturating all the receptors is no problem if you don’t add more coffee later. You can technically drink a pot of coffee in the morning and then none later. Who does that though? Chlorogenic acid is a component in good coffee that actually lowers insulin levels and therefore improves insulin sensitivity. Other sources of chlorogenic acid are green leafy vegetables. My choice? At this point, I have improved my overall energy level that I could have cut out the coffee entirely. However, I like the flavor and can use the free boost of fiber and chlorogenic acid. That’s one less serving of green leafy vegetables I need to be creative with.

Caffeine Content

Decaf or regular? Please be aware that decaf still have caffeine and that smaller amount will still last about 10 hours. It’s great for people that react too strongly to the regular. Although it may be harder to find better sources at a good price. Other than that, nothing wrong with it!

That’s all. As always, I’m open to any questions or private messages.

Cheers and happy coffee drinking,

Know your personality type, a shortcut to your strengths and weaknesses.

Stress is one of the most important parts of good health. There are two types of stress, but mainly in today’s world only one is prevalent. That would be mental stress. Worried about being late for work, how others are driving, the news, when a favorite character dies off in a series? These are better considered mental stresses because they differ from person to person as opposed to, say, running from a bear. Eating processed foods is kind of gray area because people can have a developed or underdeveloped bodily environment to handle it.

So that’s the key concept. Mental stress contributes affliction differently based on the person. There are a documented four different cognitive functions, that are split and combined to make currently 16 different personality types. Essentially this means that everyone shares the same functions, but they are ranked in preferred usage. Knowing your personality type will help guide you to see (if you are honest with your questionnaire) how you gather information and create a response to it. After knowing this, you may notice that a lot of medical information or even health advice is based on a few generalizations that might explain a few personality types. You can find your type on this great site here.

I guess as a disclaimer my explanation will be terrible compared to someone that has actually studied psychology.

Let’s use me for example. I’m the blessed/eternally cursed INFJ. Maybe one day I’ll post a “day in the life” post about it. Once you know your type, you can look up your primary, secondary, tertiary, and inferior functions with this site. I’m part of the 1-2% of the world, and naturally a lot of the information that’s out there about stress management doesn’t immediately apply to me. I have always had to read at least a dozen variations of the same article to piece together enough information to think it was possible. I absorb feelings around me from other people, social media, books, etc. like a sponge without even realizing it. Without a strong stress outlet, it can accumulate pretty quickly. I look too far into the future of progress and see how much work it needs, and tend to shy away. I can foresee how much work I will need and pretty much calculate how much effort is needed to achieve the goal. Without a strong goal, my mind will tell me to chill out because it doesn’t want to go through the remainder of the way.

Let’s find out why with the unique combination of cognitive functions that I have. I actually like the Psychology Junkie’s terminology so I’ll use it for mine, and a quick point using the least words:

1. Dominant – Introverted intuition (looks for hidden meaning, patterns, foresight, strategy, symbolism)
2. Auxiliary – Extraverted Feeling (decisions swayed by others’ reactions, multiple opinions, absorbs outside emotion, everyone around you must be happy)
3. Tertiary – Introverted Thinking (mental map of how things work, perfectionism)
4. Inferior – Extraverted Sensation (nervous habits, slow response to the unexpected, selective memory)
5. Opposing – Extraverted Intuition (endless “what-if” scenarios, second voice of doubt constantly)
6. Critical Parent – Introverted Feeling (self-punishment, hindered by past mistakes, hates contradiction)
7. Trickster – Extraverted Thinking (against bossy types, wishful thinking, deceptive conflict evasion)
8. Demon – Introverted Sensation (replay negative memories, low self-wellbeing, anti-routine, trust issue)

That took a while to write, much faster to read. So those are the 8 cognitive functions, and it is blaringly obvious that from 4 (inferior) downward the weaknesses start to manifest. These lower items might not even been known to you until you know about it. You may think that some of them are just part of who you are. Essentially, that’s what it is. But, these weaknesses can be improved to balance your overall function. You also may see that there are some thing that you can relate to, even if you personality type is different. We all share the same functions, after all. It’s just the combination of priority that the brain uses to make us different. This is just a sum of the default tendency of this personality type. All of these functions have both positive and negative traits. Doing a personality test will show you only the positive and negatives in your default form. YouTube is probably the fastest shortcut to tackle your weaknesses. Either videos or websites will lead you on actions recommended to tackle each cognitive function to balance it to something you want. Some of the best videos will tell you that you need to focus on function #2 so that function #3 won’t take over.

So let’s finish up with my example of how to improve on my weaknesses. My past mistakes were haunting me, even all the way to when I was born. Let’s just say I wanted to prove my presence on this earth. That led to a never-ending need for outside validation. I’ve learned to live life in the present. This means be happy for simple things like your kid laughing at a joke or an extra french fry on the on the bottom of the takeout bag. That also meant taking things for how they were and accepting the emotion as is. For example, it’s okay to be angry, sad, or jealous as long as you understood why. All of this combined took care of my perfectionism, wishful thinking, anti-routine, self-punishment, and wishful thinking. This helped even in the work environment.

Another dimension is cutting out toxic exposure. For me, it was outside world events, people’s feelings and life problems. I had to cut out social media. I stopped playing video games, except ones to help unlock items for my son’s games. I was always attuned to people’s insecurities and needs that it overshadowed my own. I stopped playing all games, but the most important thing to give up are games WITH NO ENDINGS. Just doing that gave me much more energy to move on to physical needs of well-being. Not working to balance the cognitive functions is an easy ticket to feel trapped in life.

Let’s go on to using the strengths. I have foresight, so I was able to see exactly how much energy I needed to obtain my goal. Paired with a strong motivation, like fitting into a costume, this was an extremely good incentive. If i calculated the weeks until costume day, I would know how many pounds I would need to lose per week. If that didn’t happen, I would go back to the books and figure out what went wrong and try a different approach. With past dieting fiascos, I knew something was not right so I went to the less-researched fields from YouTube motivational speakers, life coaches, vloggers. You know, the people that were not teaching at pharmacy school. I didn’t care if it wasn’t mainstream knowledge because if it worked on that many people it should work on me. I also needed to know how things worked versus just listening to them, so I watched video after video from different people, reading comment after comment to find patterns and connect them all together.

I still have nervous habits though. My poor finger nails. I’m only 35 so I’m not even close to done balancing my very unbalanced cognitive functions. You know what they say, INFJ’s tend to age backwards to an extent.

Hope this inspires you to get your personality test and learn something about your inner demons. Understanding your weaknesses will help you understand your coping mechanisms, childhood traumas from default behaviors, and actions to take to move forward if you want it. Super important to good health. Improperly managed stress will destroy your body.

As always, open to questions.

Cheers,

Not so fast! The realistic approach to fasting.

Fasting was the first part of my journey because the science intrigued me. The biology of it was so obvious that I was almost upset that all of my education and social situations always seemed to stigmatize it. I sometimes experiment by telling someone that I didn’t eat for a few days. The most frequent responses I would get are “that sounds unhealthy” and “I would be so hungry I could never do that.”

Well, I’m here to say that both are completely correct responses. Fasting for an extended period of time without preparation is literally punishment. Nowadays, fasts extending three days is generally considered for spiritual reasons.

In medicine, the “dose is the poison.” Moderation is the key to all things in life. Yes, even money. Fasting is the activation of the body’s natural medicine, and that too can be the poison if not dosed correctly. So without further ado, let’s go over this table of moderation and I will explain more later for those interested. These columns are sorted by speed of health improvement (weight loss), coupled with difficulty at the beginning.

Slower but easier

1. Time-restricted eating (ie. intermittent fasting)
2. Not changing foods
3. No added workout
4. Sugary coffee and tea
5. Unchanged food takeout tendency
6. Sleep still unaccounted
7. Nice, warm showers
8. Unchanged usage of distractions from stress

Compromise

1. “Monk” style fasting
2. Reducing carbs
3. Light weight training few times a week
4. Black coffee and tea
5. More home-cooked meals
6. Some nights reaching 7-8 hours of sleep
7. Cold-finished showers
8. Reducing stress levels

Faster but painful

1. Rolling extended fasts
2. Ketogenic diet +probiotics
3. Weight training until failure before eating
4. Just water
5. Home-cooked meals only without vegetable oils (olive is a fruit)
6. Consistent sleep
7. Cold showers followed by pushups
8. Facing your inner child

Okay, what a list right? Definitely not all-inclusive and even more definitely not required to do it all. It’s more of a pick-and-choose health plan and choices can be changed on the turn of a dime. Please keep in mind that these are the difficulties at the beginning of the journey, so the “faster” options will get easier over time. Except the cold showers. There are just some things that require more discipline than I can allot for.

Also keep in mind that I did most of the things in the left category for a while, tried some in the right category and ended mostly in the middle category and still lost my 40 pounds in 3 ish months. I also had a Taco Tuesday takeout day and still followed it for a majority of the time. Getting better health is not just about fasting, so you will see plenty of topics revolving other aspects of life such as sleep and eating. There is one of most underrated aspects on the bottom of the list – stress and how we truly cope. I can literally write a book on all of these topics, but lets go through them as best we can.

But first, we need to address the science of why fasting works. No eating, no insulin. Insulin is the storage hormone and tells the body to grab as much glucose from the food to store away for the sake of human survival. It doesn’t care that you have loads of fat cells with stored energy. Burning glucose is way easier for the body but it has a limited storage capacity. Once that starts to run out, it would rather make us find more glucose than to burn fat. Because it’s more efficient? No, it’s because we trained our bodies to be this lazy through abundance of food.

Why do we get hungry? Insulin is released when high carbs is detected, and generally a “hunger hormone” is also released by the body to make us want to eat and store more energy. This hunger hormone follows our social patterns on eating. If we are used to eating at specific times for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the body will rev those hormones automatically. I know I said it’s because our bodies are trained this way, but most of the time it’s not our fault. We had no idea because schooling and food companies stress the importance of eating, and eating frequently to not be hungry. Hmm, let’s just think about that. Food companies produce food in order to make money, promote customers to buy food, to purchase food to eat more frequently, health problems arise from eating too much, drugs purchased to assist in health problems, health problems explained in schools, diet medications being sold. It’s a bad sentence, but always remember to acknowledge what is a business and what is a goodwill.

FYI, a strict ketogenic diet also results in no insulin. Hence you may have heard the “fast-mimicking” diet in which is pretty much strict ketogenic diet in a time-restricted eating window. It’s a fantastic compromise as long as it’s not just strictly keto during the “eating window.”

So with all the ugly out of the way, let’s go with the beautiful stuff. Any length of fasting beyond 12 hours will result in initial weight loss, regardless of ANY other things being done. Isn’t that really cool? There are some prerequisites like insulin sensitivity, but generally results will be seen by simply not eating for a period of the day. That being said, a person can experience gradual healthy results by simply having their body not ingest food for a period of the day while still living a “left category” lifestyle. In my opinion, it is a fantastic entryway to improved health through “fasting” and will combat a lot of the insulin resistance problems that result in hangry-ness and overall unpleasantness. When the body is used to not having glucose readily available as energy, it will be forced to start using our stored fat as ketones.

The way to increase the speed of this improvement is to mix and match from the middle and right categories and/or increase the time of not eating per day. Also please if you are a menstruating woman, please please watching this wonderful Dr. Mindy Pelz. She is the author of Fast Like a Girl and there are indeed special considerations and timings needed during fasting. Here is her YouTube page.

The more implementations you make, the faster the progress. I would like to say the implementations might come naturally, but everyone is absolutely different. One could increase the fasting time per day and implement the other two categories later. Another could do both at the same time or try everything. This is where discipline comes in and “threshold to pain.”

Let’s explain the middle and right categories with as few words as possible. More posts later for fuller detail.

Monk-fasting and rolling fasts

Monk-fasting is considered fasting for 36 hours and then eating. Mindy Pelz does a fantastic job at explaining timing benefits of different fasting lengths in her book as well as her videos. 36 hours is the plateau buster of weight loss. If you are just impatient like I was, you can repeat this fast over and over. Repeating it back to back is called a rolling fast. Anything beyond 24 hours of fasting is considered an extended fast. I think some of the more extreme rolling fasts I’ve seen online are rolling 3-day fasts.

Reducing carbs and the ketogenic diet

The body reacts to carbs by releasing insulin. The less we have, the less insulin we have to work through. Ketogenic has super low carbs that can almost negate the insulin response and keep us using the ketones. A relaxed or compromised ketogenic diet is much more fun for me. For example, there is leftover rice that the kids didn’t finish. I’ll eat it.

Weight training a few times a week or more

Muscle uses energy whenever we use it. The more we have, the more energy we need. The more energy we need, the more fat can be burned to maintain that energy. Working until failure (literally cannot repeat a full exercise movement) will stimulate the body to plan for more resources to grow that muscle to being able to accomplish that task on a later occasion. Make sure to increase natural protein (powders why?) after those hard workouts.

Black coffee and tea, or simply water

I have never removed coffee and tea from my diet, but I have drastically reduced it. I used to drink 3-4 cups of coffee a day, but now it is just one black coffee. Coffee and tea has a ton of health benefits, but more in the future. For coffee and tea enjoyers, having just water might be true “water torture.”

More home-cooked meals avoiding specific oils

Vegetable oil, sesame, corn, palm, canola, sunflower, soy, peanut oil.. these are all pretty much expired oils we put into our bodies sadly. It is a hot issue that will probably garner disagreement, but you can’t beat environmental science. Extracting oils from things that don’t naturally contain a lot of oil and then exposing them to air is not good food preservation. Expired oil pretty much become inflammatory markers for our body. Fast-food chains fell victim to politics and were forced to use these oils in their restaurants and they still do. This is an entire book’s worth of information to also go over.

Better sleep

Who doesn’t want this? The more sleep we get, the more our body can repair ourselves. If we have an empty stomach when sleeping, we don’t have to give resources to digestion. If we are in a fasted state burning fat, the ketones will more efficiently power the brain while we sleep and we may even remember more pleasant dreams. I know I do. Please note that consistent sleep is more important than striving to get a set amount of hours. Being able to sleep and wakeup without support (alarm clock) is ideal but difficult.

Cold exposure

We cannot talk about this without mentioning The Ice Man Wim Hof. Besides being a super cool human, his guided breathing technique, his practices of hermetic stress have changed my life. These types of stresses are the “fire drills” that our bodies need to keep us in shape. We live in a comfortable life that are absent of these types of stresses. Those that are chronically stressed are laughing right now, but these two stresses are not the same. One is mental, and one is physiological. The physiological, hermetic stress like his breathing technique or experiencing the cold in a shower will stimulate the blood flow and the mental “wtf” responses. I’ve tried the full cold showers and it’s not pleasant. Turning and shampooing etc is not fun. There is a much easier compromise I coin “cold-finished” (you know, like grass-finished beef) showers. The experience is more like the monk meditating under a rushing waterfall. Way easier and still as effective at getting the circulatory system going. I also use that energy to do pushups.

Stress and the inner child

Mental stress, on the other hand, tires out the adrenal gland because it lingers on our mind. Our brain will continuously send signals to try to make us feel better. This can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms that break down our body overtime. Everyone has an inner child, and that inner child generally dictates how we perceive the rest of our life. Until we face it, we have no idea what is controlling us. Once we know, we can talk to it and work together. Most often the inner child can be traced down to our unhealthy coping mechanisms and triggers.

So that’s the list and brief explanations. Another important rule is to not stick to a single fast forever. The body is smart and will adapt. Luckily, even small adjustments are enough to trip the brain. As always, feel free to comment, private message, or use social media for any questions.

Cheers,

Ghosted, but now back. 8 years later and 40 pounds lighter.

It’s been a while, and it’s definitely been a journey. We can call this my 4th mid-life crisis at an old age of 35. If you understand all the new-age terms in the title, congratulations and know that it is not just mere click-bait. I really have lost 40 pounds with my newly supplemented knowledge of eight years in this miraculous light-speed information age.

Admittedly, I have lost those entire 40 pounds in the past three months so I’ve been coasting with “normal” life with two kiddos for the previous almost eight years. You know normal life, the stress-filled, comparative lifestyle that makes us gain so much weight. Yup that one.

I felt the need to document this little journey of mine in the small chance that it can help someone. It’s a culmination of 100’s of hours of YouTube videos, 1000’s of hours of reading articles and books, and 10000’s of hours of pharmacy practice. Sprinkle in my most recent spiritual realization of this universe, quantum physics, and deeper analysis of religious texts, and wow I have a lot to write about. If anything, condensing all that time into a 10-minute read sounds like an excellent personal journal entry. In order to accommodate a maybe 10-minute read, let’s start with the beginning of my journey.

It all started….

with….

Ozempic.

Actually, it started with Mounjaro which is literally the same drug. Pardon the dismissal of big pharma politics. Ozempic was the first I saw in this almost explosive trend in weight-loss injectable medications and didn’t think much of it. Then I saw an almost larger explosion with Mounjaro and even sillier sounding ones following thereafter. It was at that point that I was questioning if we were advertently creating a zombie infestation when a majority of America would be religiously injecting themselves with strange, sometimes compounded, substances. Luckily I remember mostly just dreams now, but you can imagine what my nightmares would consist of.

The bright side? I kept saying to myself: at least I don’t have to use those things to stay healthy. Now the nightmare. My lovely wife mentioned that it was a veeeeery long time since I got a PCP and got labs done. I had a literal feeling in my stomach (fat) that my labs would warrant a prescription or three. I decided to exercise more and eat less. I was an avid snacker because I always needed some “stimulation of the brain” to work, so the first target was to change into healthier snacks. I don’t even want to finish this paragraph because it is almost common knowledge nowadays that this approach won’t work. I ended up gaining a little bit more weight and also a lot more stress just beating myself up.

Why was I stressed? I was 1 BMI point away from being eligible for drugs like Ozempic.

What is a pharmacist to do? Well, if you can’t beat em, join em? Nah, I looked up the mechanism of action of drugs like Ozempic. They are GLP-1 agonist. Don’t mind the pun, but here’s the skinny. Pretty much they take over your body’s gate of insulin whenever you eat. The basic relationship of food and macros is if you eat, mainly the carbs will stimulate the hormone insulin. Insulin will tell the body to take all the nutrients, hoard them as they are the hormone of storage, and place them into the liver. Once the liver is full, it will spill over into the infinite storage of fat cells. If there is no insulin, then there is no storage. The drug will control the amount of insulin release and eventually remove hunger. It’s a drug that is non-specific so will most likely remove muscle mass and other important things, too but hey it reduces weight. Definitely not going to go that route.

I sometimes whisper or even shout at my phone if there is something I want and then go on YouTube to let the algorithm show me a video. Sometimes you just have to work with the technology that you got, you know? Then I went to YouTube because it was pretty much starvation that the drug was describing. If you don’t feel hungry, you won’t eat. If you don’t eat, you lose weight. Simple. Luckily I found a really cool doctor named Sten Ekberg who differentiated starvation with fasting. I’ll link it here in this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9deRK3E7iPs&ab_channel=Dr.StenEkberg

Fasting just isn’t one of those things we learned in school, so this excited my dangerous side of scholarly learning.

Thus started my journey of self-enrichment or a personal “glow-up” if you will. All of these new-age terms that I’m using is yet another foreshadow of my journey. I hope you like cliff-hanger endings since it’s not just fasting that made me lose the weight that quickly. It is a combination of biology, discipline, exercise, eating, and spiritualism that did the trick. And no, no drugs.

As always, comment below to chat, or connect on the social media connected.

Cheers,

A Pharmer’s Recommendation: Migraines

You can call them “Maigraines” or whatever you want, you just want them to go away. Working at the pharmacy many people come in with migraine questions. I feel extremely bad when people fork over tons of money for triptan prescriptions, but at least (for the most part) they take it away for the time being. A particular instance yesterday inspired me to share this information.

A patient came in yesterday with a trial prescription of a triptan that was very expensive. Doing everything I could to see if I could justify this patient paying that much for a few tablets, I asked her a few questions. Turns out that the frequency of migraines was on average once a month. I have experienced personally and seen other migraine sufferers the power of non-triptan medical care. This involves sipping very slowly some normal coca-cola (brand name only) while it is cold. It’s an old wives’ cure and also products like Cola syrup are sold in some places, so it has some merit to it. Through my experiences, it seems like regular coke only works (not diet), and it has to be cold. Seems like the bottle one is also more effective.

Needless to say, the patient stared at me with the “are you crazy?” kind of look when I explained. This happens a lot at my work, by the way. The best part was that my cooworker chimed in and stated that it does work because she had tried it herself! I was so amazed that I wanted to share this little story and hopefully someone will benefit. Migraines are evil. And if migraines are evil, there has to be a root of evil. I’ll go do some research.

 

Cheers,

thetastyorange aka the Modern Apothecary

p.s. To make myself seem more believable I’ve been referring myself at work as the Modern Apothecary instead of thetastyorange. It has a nice ring to it and more people are willing to listen rather than consider it as a fun little blog.

Field work on the Effects of Cayenne Pepper: Part 2

Ah, the Master Cleanse. I have always known that cayenne pepper was the main ingredient, but does that make it safe? It sounds scary to drink pepper, but let me share what I have figured out with personal exposure these past two weeks.

First off, let’s list the physical changes I have experienced. My heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) both had a small spike after ingestion of the tea (more like hot water plus cayenne pepper powder). Immediately after drinking it, I took my pulse and noticed it went up by 5-10 ticks. So, my pulse is normally 76 or in the 70’s range, but after drinking it was in the 80’s range. Could be risky for those with pre-existing heart conditions. My blood pressure is normally in the 120/86 range. Minutes after ingesting, my blood pressure (thanks to my wife for measuring it) was indeed higher, in the 130/90 range. Again, caution in those with pre-existing high blood pressure condition. But of course, those numbers went back down after an hour. Let me just add that I am a 27-year old male not currently on meds and relatively healthy.

Temperature-wise, I felt myself a little hotter than usual, but this was only AFTER my HR and BP went back to basal rate. So…while my vitals spiked, how did I feel? I felt not hungry, ready to run, and eyes open. After looking at the numbers, seems pretty obvious because of the heart working harder.

If you google “cayenne pepper” and “heart attack” you will most likely come up with a hit about cayenne pepper stopping a heart attack under circumstances where other means are not accessible. I have not had the opportunity to test this (and hopefully never will), but scientifically I can see it working. Although it spikes the vitals initially, it will return to base rate. You see, it’s a temporary burst of energy to the heart, and that’s exactly what a heart needs during a heart attack. A heart attack is a temporary “panic attack” that the heart has because it’s vessels are blocked.

My other question is… is cayenne pepper part of the “proprietary blend” of pre-workout supplements? It gives the heart that boost that’s needed to go into beast mode and allows to push the limit. Maybe this is a breakthrough discovery. Anyway take this how you will, it sure helps me work out more effectively, and I can buy a lifetime supply of cayenne pepper for the price of a year supply of pre-game supps anyway. Other people say vitamins are what give the energy as well. Seems like another research topic in the future.

I’m currently drinking cayenne tea feel the urge to jog, so I”ll cut this short. Let’s bring it back to the Master Cleanse. I will say I do NOT agree with it because of starvation factor. You are simply boosting the heart rate, adding some vitamin C to prevent scurvy, and maple sugar to provide just enough glucose to have a facade of living without solid food. This cayenne tea I drink makes me feel not hungry for an hour or so, but appetite surely comes back. That’s why Master Cleanse recommends sitting with the bottle of solution and continuously drink. All in all, it gets the job done but in a scary manner. Machiavellian.

Oh one more thing: the first taste of cayenne pepper in hot water was almost intolerable. As I tried and retried, it became a lot easier and I could even have it more concentrated. Just slowly add more pepper or add less water.

I’m off, see you next week! I will post more long-term effects as I tally up my numbers.

Cheers,

thetastyorange

 

 

Field research on the effects of cayenne pepper: part 1

Three words: wish me luck