5 Tips for Improving Digestion

These tips were written to be applicable to everyone regardless of what they eat, however I hope everyone considers eating more or all plants and less or no animals.

1.) Don’t overeat and realize that if you have a significant amount of excess body fat you are overeating. Perhaps not today or even recently but definitely over the long run because no animal can produce body fat without an excess of energy. Therefore eat as your body requires and try to stay as close to hungry as comfortably possible provided that allows you to maintain your ideal body composition. If it doesn’t you’ll have to slightly increase or reduce your energy intake.

2.) Keep hydrated because digestion is one of the first bodily functions to be negatively affected by dehydration as your body struggles to hang on to all the water in your stools which will slow them down and make their eventual expulsion much more difficult. Therefore drink enough water and eat enough water rich foods to ensure that your urine is clear or almost clear because the darker your urine is the clearer sign it is that you’re dehydrated.

3.) Stay active because physical activity helps keep our bodies in good working order especially our digestion. All types of physical activity are good for digestion especially walking and knee raises. The amount of physical activity we require for optimal health is far too much to allocate to an exercise session so it must be incorporated into our day and become habitual, e.g., walking or biking instead of driving and taking the stairs instead of elevators and escalators.

4.) Some foods and food combinations digest poorly for some people and the best way to figure out which foods and food combinations to avoid is by living a healthy lifestyle, simplifying meals, and spacing them out so you can accurately observe their effects because even if you ate only one type of a food at a meal if you ate another meal an hour or two after the last one it may be difficult to determine whether it was the first meal that caused you an issue, the second, or the combination of the two.

5.) When going to the bathroom rather than sitting consider squatting. Sitting is an unnatural position to be in when having or trying to have a bowel movement so consider squatting or at least raising your knees with a small stool. However regardless of whether you’re sitting or squatting never try to force a bowel movement and instead when you are constipated consider alternating walking with squatting while continually swallowing small amounts of water until you’ve had enough or are ready to go to the bathroom.

Feeding the World vs Feeding the Worlds Livestock

Current food production is sufficient to feed the over 7 billion of us here now and it will even be sufficient to feed the over 9 billion who will be here in the near future… provided the arable land we use and the food we grow is used to feed people rather than livestock and provided we stop wasting so much of the food that is produced. The reason why so many people on this planet are without access to adequate food isn’t because there isn’t enough to go around it’s because they don’t have the money to buy it. Therefore in addition to making better use of the food that’s already being grown and the land that has already been cleared to grow it eliminating extreme poverty should be the primary goal of anyone serious about feeding the world. Not cutting down more forests and using more toxic chemicals to produce more food that the people who need it most can’t afford to buy all while continuing to waste so much of it by feeding it to livestock and placing much of the food that is produced into plastic bags and sending it off to landfills.

Straws

I stopped using straws years ago and this is one of the reasons why. Do you still use straws? Maybe you should stop using them too or start using your own reusable one.

strawsI don’t know how long we’ll live but I do know the straws we’ve used thus far in our lives will be around long after we’ve died and decomposed. To me at least it’s disturbing to know that the environmentally harmful waste I’ve unnecessarily created as a result of my own ignorance will outlast me. I don’t know where all our old straws will eventually end up however I imagine some will end up in leaky landfills, others buried in the soil future generations will use to grow their food, and some of them in the bellies of birds, fish, and other poor creatures.

bird plastic (photo by unknown)

Let this post and these images be a reminder to bring your own reusable food boxes, water bottles, and shopping bags and to say NO to unnecessary and environmentally harmful disposable items because in today’s overpopulated and over-consuming world it’s critical that we all work to reduce the negative social and environmental impacts of our consumption.

Dog Loving Animal Abusers

Dog loving animal abusers are people who treat dogs like humans while at the same time support the treating of pigs, cows, and other livestock like inanimate objects via their consumption of factory farmed milk, eggs, and, flesh. If you have a dog please make sure it’s spaded or neutered and always on a leash in public. If you want a dog please don’t support dog breeders and pet shops and instead adopt one from your local animal shelter. Also please clean up after your dog each time it makes a mess in public and as you do ask yourself if you really need another dog after the current one dies especially if you live in a densely populated area.

Thank you,
One of many people who is sick of being chased by dogs, dodging their excrement, hearing them bark, and feels that humanities resources would be much better spent on people rather than on pets.

Bargain Bananas

Whenever I have the chance I try to teach people how to eat fruit… when it’s ripe, however I must say I do benefit from the fruit ignorance of the average person because it often gets me awesome discounts on premium ripe fruit. Today’s discounted fruit was Namwa bananas, probably my favorite type of banana. Saying these things put Cavendish bananas to shame is an understatement. Today I got a 66% discount and last week on some that were slightly riper than these I got a 100% discount however I still gave a tip to show my appreciation.

In today’s case these bananas weren’t even on display, they were behind the sellers table in a crate as the seller had already decided to compost them because she said no one would buy bananas like these and felt it wasn’t even worth displaying them next to the 70 and 80% ripe ones. I said get them bananas on this table and give’em a chance! Who knows maybe another oddball like me who eats ripe bananas will be happy to buy some at a 66% discount. She did put them on the table but I doubt she sold any because the average person would rather eat yellow/green bananas than yellow/brown or yellow/black ones.

Anyway I just wanted to remind you to keep your eyes open for discarded fruit and encourage you, when practical, to feed yourself with cheap, healthy, and delicious things that would have otherwise gone to the trash can or compost pile.

Namwa Bananas

Hearing Loss

While swimming at the beach I saw a deaf couple wading through the water nearby. The man was happy to have reached a school of fish which he could see swimming around him in the clear waist-deep water and wanted to tell his companion however she had turned her head before he could do so and despite them being only about 10 meters apart he had no chance of contacting her. A few minutes later she was standing near some limestone formations and I think she wanted him to take a picture or at least have a look however once again although he was only 10 meters or so away he had turned around and was heading back to the shore so she had no chance of contacting him.

Not that I didn’t already appreciate my ability to hear but this made me do so even more. I hope it will also remind you of just how precious your hearing along with the rest of your senses and bodily functions are and encourages you to better appreciate and take care of them. Hopefully in the near future waterproof smart watches will make the lives of deaf people much more convenient via haptic “Hey look over here!” alerts, and in the not too distant future hearing loss will be curable. After I got home I looked for a good hearing charity on Charity Navigator and found Health Hearing Foundation and made a small donation. They have a nice 6 minute video about how hearing works on their website.

Knees, Shoes, and Going Barefoot

While there aren’t any health consequences with wearing a shirt past its prime there are health consequences to not repairing or replacing your footwear in a timely manner. So in your quest to continually reduce the burden you place on the biosphere by striving to reduce, reuse, repair, reuse, and recycle don’t wear the same shoes for too long without repairing or before replacing them and if you really want to extend the life of your footwear and thus reduce your ecological footprint, literally and metaphorically, consider going barefoot when practically possible.

When wearing footwear I recommend walking/running as if you were doing so barefoot, i.e, landing towards your toes with a larger surface of your foot rather than smashing down on the outside of your heel with every overextended stride. Shoes or no shoes be careful while walking/running on slanted roads as this could cause you to develop a poor gait and put extra stress on your knees. When you do walk/run on sloped roads try to balance it out. For instance, when safe, walk/run with the traffic there and walk/run against the traffic back.

Fossil fuels aren’t cheap and neither is the electricity generated by burning them so why not get a nice umbrella, which is extremely useful in rain or shine, and walk more. This is not only better for personal health but also for public and planetary health. When you do need to cover slightly longer distances consider a bike or a perhaps a skateboard.

Black Tooth Little Fatty

As I was kicking along on my bamboo longboard I was passed by a motorcycle ridden by a mom with her little fat black tooth kid who looked around 5 years old but probably had the blood profile of an unhealthy 50 year old. He gave me a hello and I gave him a hello back but unfortunately was unable to give his mom my usual stop feeding your kid junk, encourage them to move, and in this case clean their teeth parenting lecture. The well-being of all children is our business and no child should have to suffer as a result of their parents health ignorance and/or health apathy so don’t be afraid to speak up and tell a person there’s obviously a problem with the way they’re raising their kid and kindly provide them with some useful and friendly advice.

Bring Your Own

For the love of all that is good on planet earth could everybody please stop using plastic shopping bags and do their best to bring their own water bottles, food containers, and dining utensils. Please consider sending an email like the one below to your local retailers and encourage them to do what they should already be doing… charging for plastic shopping bags.

Dear Company X,

As a longtime and frequent customer I strongly suggest you start charging for plastic shopping bags and:

1.) Place signs regarding your effort to reduce plastic shopping bags at each register which encourage customers to support your stores noble efforts to reduce its overall environmental footprint.

2.) Sell reusable shopping bags at each register, you can prominently display them next to those nice signs. Provide customers with an option: pay for every single plastic shopping bag you take for the rest of your life or buy one that can be used many times.

3.) Make sure the single use shopping bags you do sell are non-toxic and biodegradable. You can also use your clout as a retailer to pressure your suppliers to send you things packed in non-toxic and biodegradable packaging. Better alternatives to plastic bags and plastic food trays do exist so please start using them.

As for the few ignorant and/or selfish people who will complain about you charging them for plastic shopping bags, if you talk with your competitors about how you can work together to reduce your environmental footprints starting with working to eliminate the use of plastic shopping bags these ignorant and/or selfish people will have no where else to go so don’t cave under the pressure of a few bad apples because we the vast and rapidly growing majority have your back.

Thank you for doing what’s right regarding this and with other social and environmental issues,
Your Name

Did I…

Use more energy efficient forms of transportation?
Strive to eat a locally and organically grown plant based diet?
Waste anything such as a bottle or a bag when I could’ve brought my own?
Forget to turn anything off or unplug things that use power even when they’re off?
Spend my 1000 minutes today as well as I could have?

Marriage and Children

Perpetuating such emphasis on getting married and having a baby as if it’s the apex of becoming an adult is extremely backwards. Anyone with the notion of it being selfish not to have children should ask themselves in which day and age their personal reality is constructed upon and whether if in the current day and age having kids brings our species back from the brink of extinction or moves us closer towards it.

Instead of young adults constantly being asked if they’re married or have children I think we’d be moving in the right direction as a species if we started asking adults of all ages things like: “What are you doing or not doing to make the world a better place?”. Instead of seeking to bind someone to a contract or leave behind genes no better than the ones already in circulation, especially when there are already so many orphaned and abused children in the world in desperate need of homes and funding, I seek to leave behind knowledge and a world in better shape than it was yesterday and I hope you do too.

Turning Back the Doomsday Clock Starts With You.

What has to be said and who has to say it to get people not just to say they care when they’re around others but act like they care even when they aren’t? As individuals we need to do what we can NOW rather than waiting for our “leaders” to do something later because waiting for top down change to be initiated from those with the most vested interests and those funded by those with the most vested interests is a formula for failure.

Doing what you can to avoid fossil fuel powered trips along with reducing the damaged caused by unavoidable fossil fuel powered trips by taking public transportation or finding people to carpool with might not seem like much. Avoiding meat at your next meal in favor of a few of the healthy, humane, eco-friendly, and delicious plant based alternatives might not seem like much either, but it is, all of it, every individual action means a lot.

However we also need to realize that simply living responsibly isn’t enough because the challenges we face are far too pressing and there are currently far too few people living like they care about this planet to reach a positive tipping point anytime soon. Therefore as the true leaders of this global society we the people also need to focus on those in business and government looking for our financial and political support by regularly contacting them in order to tell them things like:

I like many of your other constituents strongly oppose government subsidies for fossil fuels and the raising of livestock which artificially lowers market prices and encourages unsustainable consumption. Instead I strongly support taxes on fossil fuels and the production of unhealthy, inhumane, and environmentally destructive food which encourages people to consider healthier alternatives. The revenue raised could be used to support such alternatives or it could be given back on a per capita basis allowing those who consume the least of these and other health undermining things to financially benefit while allowing everyone to benefit in terms of a cleaner environment, a more stable climate, and peace of mind in that we are doing our best to ensure that we leave to future generations a planet as beautiful and as hospitable as the one we inherited from previous generations. Sincerely…

White House     U.S. Senate     U.S. House of Representatives     U.S. Governors

If you’re interested in learning more about the doomsday clock: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Probiotics and Prebiotics

A healthy gut microbiome is essential for good digestion and good health in general however this doesn’t mean we should be taking supplements of beneficial bacteria or eating yoghurt. For most people the problem isn’t that they’re missing a species of beneficial bacteria but that they don’t have optimal amounts of it. So instead of going out of ones way to consume such bacteria only to have them die off as soon as they reach the unhealthy gut home that awaits them it’s best to first create an environment conducive to the survival of these bacteria which will allow them to reach and maintain optimal numbers on their own. The way to do this is to live a healthy lifestyle with adequate sleep, sunlight, and physical activity; and to eat a plant based diet abundant in healthy prebiotics, e.g., fresh fruits and vegetables, which provide the raw materials needed for your beneficial bacteria to thrive.

Just How Different Are We?

monkey monkeys

Genetically speaking we aren’t very different from them, and if you question this I recommend taking a closer look at those photos, but it’s that little bit that makes a lot of difference. I can’t speak for all monkeys or the other great apes because we humans haven’t yet been able to devise a way to communicate with them as they communicate amongst themselves let alone read their thoughts, so what follows is just my anthropocentric presumption.

It seems we humans unlike other apes, monkeys, and animals in general have the ability to take not just one or two but a few steps back in order to get a bigger picture of the reality beyond our individual existence along with the ability to see not just far enough into the future to know when a tree will be fruiting and when we should return to it, but far enough to imagine what life might be like hundreds or even thousands of years into the future.

It’s these unique abilities which allow us to understand the long-term consequences of our actions and overcome instinct to adjust our patterns of consumption and the rates at which we reproduce accordingly. Whereas other animals without these unique abilities would probably just go on consuming and reproducing until nature finally by way of famine, disease, or resource scarcity induced conflict painfully brought their levels of consumption and population down to that which the biosphere could support.

On second thought… now that I look around and see the tribal mindsets, over-consumption, and overpopulation that threatens to end our evolutionary journey I begin to think… maybe we aren’t that different. On the bright side we are moving in the right direction, the only problem is will we move fast enough in order to meet new challenges and prevent future catastrophes, or will we continue as usual making it increasingly likely that future generations will be born into a noose of our tying?

Conservation and Innovation

Humanities number one problem is a rapidly deteriorating biosphere and this needs to be adequately addressed from both sides of the solution: conservation and innovation. There are many people working on the innovation side of things which is understandable because the cutting edge of science and technology is an exciting place to be and great monetary rewards await those who can best innovate.

However while there are people working to promote conservation there aren’t enough. Perhaps because it isn’t very fun or exciting to teach people common sense, e.g., not to waste things, nor are there any great monetary rewards for doing so. In fact you’re more likely to get a dirty look or be told to mind your own business but don’t let that deter you from speaking up in the name of our planet and future generations when needed.

We must not bet the biospheres future on technological advancements which may never come and as advances in science and technology do come we must remember that neither can save us from ignorance and apathy as billions go about their daily bad habits thinking that some authority will intervene before things get really bad. Things are already really bad however they can be made much better if we all do our part.

Minute by Year

Minute by year another birthday draws near while it still seems like the last one was just here. The older we get the faster time moves take a look back and this is easy to prove. Once a year seemed like a lifetime and now it seems more like a half-time. Life’s short live with this in mind and seek to make the most with your remaining time. Regardless of whether you’re in your hundreds, teens, or somewhere in between don’t settle for second best or give up on your dreams.

Self-mastery

Self-mastery is about being the person we want to be. Even if this seems impossible we should continue doing what we can while we can like a tree growing towards the sun knowing that it will die long before it ever reaches it but until then it just keeps on reaching. The path to self-mastery is an endless road of self reflection and walking alone with something to record new realizations with is a good way to remember new ones or review and further ingrain existing ones. Here are a few that have made their way into my notes.

Life’s too short for a bad day and things could always be worse.

Entertain or educate, induce laughter or learning, there’s rarely any other reason to speak.

The only reason to point out or repeat anything negative is if it can lead to something positive.

Work hard and see where it gets you rather than thinking about working hard and thinking about where it might get you.

Lower the bar and then raise it incrementally instead of raising it to the point you balk every time you go to clear it because what matters isn’t where you start but where you end up.

Don’t wait for opportunities create them and don’t search for paradise build it.

On the road to increasing self-mastery there will inevitably be some obstacles so rather than seeing stumbles as complete failures we must see them as important parts of the self-improvement process. Some people may progress two or three steps at a time while others may fall back a step or two for every two or three they take. Regardless those who stick with it will inevitably end up in a place much higher than they were when they started.

Better World

Let’s step back and take a look at where we’re at beyond nations, politics, and all of that. We’ll see a world overpopulated and heavily polluted, infatuated with consumption and morally diluted with many if not most lacking concern or a desire to learn as oceans rise and rainforests burn.

A population immersed in marketing designed to exploit instincts and capitalize on greed, many now consume what advertisers tell them to rather than what they need. Too many people look to the TV to construct their reality where mindless programming only serves to make them hollow, turning off their minds and setting them up for the ads that follow. Sports stars and celebrities who sell out at the drop of a dime, advertising junk food and soft drinks to children in their spare time. Anything for a dollar, anything for a plug, just tell them what to holler and where to place their mug.

It doesn’t take an anesthesiologist to numb’em up and dumb’em down like this because processed food and television does the trick, it’s got many going through life deaf, dumb, blind and sick. It’s how we’ve ended up with a population too sick to think and too tired to blink, just barely getting by on prescription drugs and caffeine filled energy drinks. Addicted to salt and hooked on sweets, congested on dairy and constipated on meat. Junk food marketing preys on the weak and prime time television’s got them glued to their seats.

Where processed food and prescription drug ads play in succession only adding to their anxiety and deepening their depression. People start thinking they’re suffering from the disease they just saw advertised on TV when what they’re really suffering from is an inability to see that the reason they’re ill is a direct consequence of the way they live. So before they go looking for a partial fix with inevitable side effects to mix they ought to take a pause and get to the root cause by looking at their diet, lifestyle, and personality flaws.

A better world starts with me and you and that’s the reason why I live the way I do. From rise to rest I do my best to let a positive example shine through. It’s sad to see what our world is when one knows what it could be as between ideal and reality lies a sea of discrepancy however complaining won’t do much and complacence won’t do a thing so lets get informed get involved and see what each of us can bring.

Handshakes: Unsanitary and Unnecessary

Under some circumstances I think a handshake is justified and serves a purpose. For example if representatives from two tribes came together to sign an agreement a handshake between them could serve as a symbol of cooperation and unity. Under circumstances like these I have no problem with the handshake, however where I do have a problem is when people, particularly people you don’t even know, feel the need to reach out their sweaty palm for a sturdy embrace of hands. What’s up with that?

What purpose does it serve to shake somebodies hand? Do people think that if they shake somebodies hand that that person becomes less likely to lie to or harm them? Do they think if they shake the hand of a rich or famous person that some of that persons traits will literally rub off on them and that they’ll increase their own chances of becoming rich or famous? Has the average person even stopped and thought “Why do we shake hands, what are the benefits and what are the detriments?” ?

Handshakes under normal circumstances are not only unnecessary they are also unsanitary. Just think about all the door handles and other things that person may have come into contact with just before shaking your hand. Perhaps they just finished blowing a runny nose or perhaps they’re just returning from the bathroom. Did they properly wash their hands? Did they even bother to wash their hands at all? Will you remember to wash yours before you touch your face or put food into your mouth?

Fortunately there are a number of far superior alternatives to the handshake for example people could simply make eye contact and nod, they could bow with their hands down as they do in Japan, or “wai” by placing their palms together, raising them up, and slightly bowing as they do in Thailand. If physical contact was needed a more sanitary fist bump could be used in lieu of a handshake. In conclusion, I’m not trying to abolish the handshake entirely however I don’t think it should be overused like it is.