The Root Node

The healthy man wants a thousand things, the sick man wants but one - Seneca

Diagnosing the common causes of sickness is one thing. Learning to live more healthy is another.

Tags

1. Advantages and Disadvantages of Drills
2. Alcohol and Smoking
3. Books
   1. Book - The Primal Blueprint
4. Brain fog
5. Coordination drills
6. Coughing
   1. Child’s Cough: Is No Medicine the Best Medicine?
7. Diet
   1. What Apple Cider Vinegar Can and Can’t Do for You
   2. Diet - Saturated fat
   3. Diet - Sugar
   4. Diet - A Simple Bad-Fat Budget
   5. Diet improvements
   6. How to Decode Food Labels
   7. Tips on Eating Less Fat at Home
   8. How to Eat Less Fat When You’re Eating Out
   9. Drink more water
   10. Foods that may help in offsetting the negative impacts of a sedentary lifestyle
8. Exercise
   1. South Asians have a unique problem in fitness
   2. Rewire Your Nervous System with Movement, Not Mindset
9. Fitness trackers
10. Good posture
11. Heart health
    1. Cholesterol and Triglycerides Levels
    2. Diet - Saturated fat
    3. Diet - A Simple Bad-Fat Budget
    4. How to raise hdl good cholesterol
    5. Should I Be Taking Aspirin, Antioxidants or Folic Acid?
    6. Other Problems with Controlling Cholesterol
12. Insulin, Sugar, Glucose and Diabetes
    1. Diet - Sugar
    2. Doctor explains why 18% of young adults in India already have diabetes
13. Joint pains
14. Liver
15. Negative ions
16. Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
17. Sedantary lifestyle
    1. Sitting all day at a desk can be deadly. Use short walks to offset harms.
    2. Harvard Researcher: ‘Sitting Is the New Smoking’ Is a Harmful Myth
    3. Sitting too much drags down your mental health. Here’s how to get moving https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/16/1034201715/home-workout-exercise-tips
    4. How your Daily Step Count and Parkinson’s Disease are related
18. Sleep
19. Smoking
20. Sore throat
21. Steam Room
22. Stretches
23. Supplements
24. Swimming
25. Tennis
26. Triglycerides
27. Take care of your body
    1. Take care of your feet
    2. Toothpaste
28. Visceral Fat
29. Water intake

TODO

1. ‘Japanese Walking’ Is a Fitness Trend Worth Trying https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/well/move/japanese-walking-fitness-trend.html
2. How Your Diet Influences Your Colorectal Cancer Risk https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/well/how-your-diet-influences-your-colorectal-cancer-risk.html
3. 12 Ways to Improve Your Circulation for Healthy Blood Flow, According to Doctors: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/12-ways-to-improve-your-circulation-for-healthy-blood-flow-according-to-doctors?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
4. Got neck and back pain? Break up your work day with these 5 exercises for relief https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/05/1146374970/got-neck-and-back-pain-break-up-your-work-day-with-these-5-exercises-for-relief
5. This simple snacking habit could improve your cholesterol levels: new study: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/this-simple-snacking-habit-could-improve-your-cholesterol
6. Just Move: Scientist Author Debunks Myths About Exercise And Sleep https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/21/959140732/just-move-scientist-author-debunks-myths-about-exercise-and-sleep
7. South Asian Strong
   1. South Asian Skinny Fat Body Part 3: Fat Loss Nutrition (Phase 1) https://southasianstrong.com/nutrition/south-asian-nutrition-plan/
   2. South Asian Skinny Fat Body – Part 2: Transformation Plan https://southasianstrong.com/transformation/south-asian-transformation-plan/
   3. South Asian Skinny Fat Body – Part 5: Stress Belly https://southasianstrong.com/lifestyle/south-asians-indians-lifestyle-stress-belly/

Meditation and mindfulness

Is there evidence that meditation and being mindful helps the brain?

Yes. It does. There are beautiful studies showing brain plasticity in the areas that are important for focus and attention. The practice of meditation is basically a practice of enriching the function of your prefontal cortex. So you can focus on that object - either the breath or love and kindness is a form of meditation. There are studies to show that brain changes occur in long-term meditators that are absolutely benificial.

What if I am on social media all the time?

And that is keeping you from interacting with real people. There is enormous amounts of evidence showing that the increase in use of social media, especially in young kids, correlate with huge increases in depression and anxiety levels - particularly in young girls. When kids started to get into smart phones, and started to spend more than 7 hours a day on social media, that is when the anxiety and depression went up.

Social media is not the same as face-to-face social interactions with people.

What does social media do to our brains - at a chemical level? What are the physiological consequences or physiological harm to the brain from social media?

The psychological harm (from comparison with other people) causes stress. Stress releases stress harmones that goes into the brain - that, at too high and too constant of a level can start to first damage connections, and then kill cells. So, the psycological harm and the physiological harm are intertwined. You can’t pull one away from the other.

The images, messages, notifications, etc. on social media are mini dopamine hits. What is the harm in that? It is similar to pulling a slot machine, gambling. We do not want to be addicted to gambling. They are addictive, it is hard to get away. They effect all the things that are good for us - sleep, social connections, exercise, making movement. What social media is doing to us and our young kids is exactly the same. It is not good. They are not joining teams outside to be social and interactive. These are not old-fashined things. They are a very powerful way for development and brain health. The main problem is what we sacrifice from our addictions to the devices. There is no substitute for human connections. Addiction to phones and devices limit our potential to brain growth, brain plasticity. It is going to limit your possibility for joy in your life. There are different kinds of joy in real, person-to-person interactions that social media cannot replace. The likes and comments and other things on social media are not the same.

Not wanting to be alone with our thoughts and focus on something organic (like the breath) is one of the central problems and meditation is a good cure for that. People have difficulty to be alone with their thoughts. In a study, people chose to get an electric shock rather than sitting alone with their thoughts. (Link this to the node: sit with a difficult problem in mindset notes).

Achieving this will help us be more creative and more imaginative when we practice meditation, being alone with our thoughts. We will get to know what comes to our minds, how our own imagination works - which is very much dependent on the hippo campus, putting together all these things in our memory, finding new and interesting ways that are unique for you.