014 - Terramation, Farmacies, and Edible Cities - HealthHippieMD Week In Review

Are You Still the Same You?

I enjoyed the essay in The New Yorker, Are You the Same Person You Used to Be? about how our personalities and our views of ourselves often change over a lifetime. _"We change, and change our view of that change, for as long as we live."

A New Role for the Cerebellum

In medical school, we were taught the cerebellum was primarily involved in the coordination of body movement. As with the majority of the brain, reality is much more complicated: A New Function of the Cerebellum

Food as Medicine - Welcome to the Farmacy

The concept of food as medicine is gaining acceptance. How to Prescribe Food as Medicine is a quick overview on the topic. I especially appreciated the links to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine white papers .

Human Composting / Terramation

There is now an alternative to cremation or burial after death; Terramation or "natural organic reduction," turns your body into soil. In fact, human composting is now legal in five states.

Electrical Memory Prosthesis

Here is an interesting article about a DARPA-funded initiative, centered at Wake Forest and University of Southern California, to help with memory formation. Brain-zapping tech improves memory by more than 50%

The Rise of Edible Cities

Edible cities are growing in the U.S. and Europe I love the idea of an "edible city," a place where space is rehabilitated with fruit and vegetable plants with food free for the taking. Check out the Edible Cities Network to see if there is an edible city near you.

How to Strengthen your Bond with your Canine Companion

Researchers are studying the human-canine bond in part to build better robotic dogs. The article, Want a better relationship with your dog? These 7 factors are key, describes ways to bond with your biological canine companion today.

Recognizing Smell from Molecular Structure

Here is an interesting article about attempts to use machine learning to determine how a substance smells solely from its molecular structure: AI Model Links Smell Molecules With Metabolic Processes

Gaslighting in Scientific American

Scientific American is one of my favorite magazines. I was surprised to see an article on gaslighting, but How Gaslighting Manipulates Reality taught me a thing or two.

Chasing Success and Happiness

Many people chase achievement because they believe it will lead to happiness/well-being. Arthur Brooks writes most people have the equation backwards.....Why Happiness Is the Key to Success

+Arthur Brooks was also featured on The Peter Attia Drive Podcast talking about the science of happiness talking about his book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

The Real Paleo Diet

Although today's Paleo Diet is all the rage, it is historically innacurate. If you're interested in what our ancestors truly ate, the article, The “paleo” diet bears little resemblance to the real thing, offers insight from a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health.

Changing Baseball through Diet

Baseball's athletes are far behind many other professional sports when it comes to the use of nutrition to enhance performance. The NY Times article, How Team Dietitians Are Changing How Baseball Players Eat, explains.

How to Tell Good Research from Bad

The article, Psychedelic drugs: how to tell good research from bad, offers great advice on how to spot good and bad research, and not just the psychedelic kind.

Inventing Food

Meet the Man Who Invented Cool Whip, Tang and Pop Rocks talks about a General Mills chemist who invented some of the iconic (unhealthy) foods of my youth.

Left-Handedness

I hadn't really thought much about handedness. About 10% of the population is left handed. I knew that lefties are considered more creative and are statistically more likely to be president of the U.S. I did not know lefties are more likely to be elite athletes or to suffer from mental illness: Why left-handed people are likelier to be mentally ill.

The Microbiome and Brain Macrophages

In newsletter 003 - Mad Honey, Frisson, and Psychedelic Capitalism, I mentioned one of the foundational papers in Alzheimers research had been called into question. One of the alternative explanations for the cause of Alzheimers is dysregulation of the immune system of the brain. Here is a synopsis of a pre-clinical study that supports the alternative conclusion: Age-related changes in microbiome composition affects brain macrophages. And here is a link to the paper: Age-dependent effects of gut microbiota metabolites on brain resident macrophages

Lateral Thinking

I'm fascinated by metacognition, so the article, The most undervalued problem-solving tool? Lateral thinking, was catnip for me. The article starts with a puzzle that caught my attention and went on to describe the phenomenon of lateral thinking-a process highly correlated with creativity.

Quote

“Our bodies are our gardens – our wills are our gardeners.”
– William Shakespeare