Good morning!

Here's your Saturday 7 roundup!

☺️ How to relax:

Try humming for a few minutes.

It'll stimulate your vagus nerve, shifting you from a sympathetic "flight or fight" stressed state to a parasympathetic "rest and digest" state.

It will also release nitric oxide which will dilate your blood vessels and feed your tissues.

Other "tricks" to improve nitric oxide and blood flow:

• Ditch your mouthwash
• Only breathe through your nose
• Mouth tape at night
• Beef + 2 grams of citrulline

🦃 What to be aware of:

At this time last year, I was almost 30 pounds heavier than I am now (I gained the weight on purpose).

However, good purposeful weight gain isn't the same as accidental bad weight gain...

For example, people tend to gain about 1lb during the holiday season. (r)

While that seems harmless enough, it doesn't tell the whole story.

The weight gained isn't lost with the New Year's Resolutions.

"The good news is that most people are not gaining five or six pounds during the holidays, but the bad news is that weight gained over the winter holidays isn't lost during the rest of the year." 
 
– Jack Yanovsky, MD, head of Growth and Obesity at the National Institute of Health and author of the study.

The problem is the metabolism doesn't reestablish its homeostatic baseline.

For example, after forcing myself to gain 35lbs over 18 months, I started losing fat without any effort. 

Likewise, after restricting food for a few months and dropping to 7% body fat, I gained weight when going back to eating ad lib.
 
This is how the metabolism is supposed to work. 

Your metabolism is designed to keep your body fat in a healthy range. It's not supposed to allow your body to continue to pile on fat year-after-year leading to obesity, diabetes, and the sequalae of disease that results from metabolic dysfunction.

So why don't the pounds just fall off after the over-eating holiday season?

The kind of food that is over-consumed determines how well the metabolism works. 

Junk food, full of vegetable oils (high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats), impairs proper metabolic functioning. 

This is why, if I were forced to choose, I'd choose sugar over seed oils. Though most junk food combines the two.

🥛 How about a dairy update:

A few weeks ago, I mentioned I cut out dairy after 2+ years of drinking raw milk.

I wanted to see if it would help with the tinea versicolor.

Well, it hasn't. 

If anything, the tinea has continued to worsen. This is strange because I'm getting less sun/heat/humidity which are the top risk factors that help Malassezia thrive, as evidenced by a prevalence of up to 50% of people having tinea versicolor in tropical countries. (r) 

I'm going to give the dairy-free approach some more time though.

💡How to walk the line:

Science needs a balance of dogmatism and skepticism.

You need to establish a general prevailing consensus. 

You need to be able to question that consensus.

You need to be able to ask: "is climate change real" or "do vaccines cause autism?" 

However, "science" has deemed many such questions off limits.

The science pendulum has swung far towards dogmatism.

My hope around RFK and MAHA is about not about swinging the pendulum fully to the other side of the spectrum, but to restore the lost balance and lost voices that prevent science from progressing.

🧠 What quote I've been thinking about:

"If you’re confused about life, you’re not alone. There are almost eight billion of us. This isn’t a problem, of course, once you realize that life is neither a problem to be solved nor a game to be won. 

If you are too intent on making the pieces of a nonexistent puzzle fit, you miss out on all the real fun. 

The heaviness of success-chasing can be replaced with a serendipitous lightness when you recognize that the only rules and limits are those we set for ourselves. 

So be bold and don’t worry about what people think.
They don’t do it that often anyway."

– Tim Ferriss

💸 What's my bitcoin strategy:

The best strategy is to have an overly-bullish bitcoin target.

It keeps you stacking and prevents selling. 

☹️ Why didn't they smile:

Why people in old photographs didn't smile.  

(...and why some people still don't show their teeth when smiling)

As always, it's an absolute pleasure and honor getting to spend some time with you, hope you have a great weekend!

Kevin

P.S.

Dr. Kevin Stock
Meat Health, LLC

NED LLC (The Snore Solution)
 

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