Gut feelings

The inspiration for today's post comes from a construction foreman I met last week. I was working on a construction site and during one of the morning toolbox talks (where the foreman goes through the days activities with the site crew) he ended his talk by asking everyone to pay attention to their 'gut feelings'. He was referring to gut feeling from a risk assessment perspective and he defined this feeling as the combination of our training and experience. If we "felt" that something was wrong then there was a good chance it was, and we should stop what we are doing and assess the risks. By paying attention to our gut feelings we could reduce/avoid hazardous activities. This prompted me to contemplate the concept of  gut feelings, and how we could apply this idea of learning to pay attention to how we feel about something to life in general.

Wictionary defines a gut feeling as "An instinct or intuition; an immediate or basic feeling or reaction without a logical rationale. Don't think too hard about the answers to a personality test; just go with your gut feeling". So gut feelings and intuition are essentially the same thing.

• A gut feeling is when someone can sense that there is a connection between in-obvious things, or that something in their environment is not quite right. It doesn’t involve telepathy or super-senses, it involves being open to the awareness that our bodies and minds will achieve, if we let them. 
• Intuition uses past knowledge and experiences to assess a situation, as well as a very quick assessment of the present, based on clues and details that may not be obvious to the rational mind. 

There are a number of explanations as to the root of our gut feelings such as:

1. Our intuition is associated with our immediate emotional responses to stimuli.
2. Our intuition is based on repeated experience that we access automatically. 
3. Societal conditioning creates a kind of gut reaction that operates without conscious awareness. 
4. Our brains are capable of forming very strong associations and this can lead to what might be interpreted as Gut feelings.
5. Gut feelings can be explained by our evolved instincts that are encoded in our DNA (or Mitochondria), which exist because they helped our ancestors survive in the world as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago. 

It's fair to assume that our individual gut feelings are a combination of all of the above. I would also suggest that as a species we have traditionally relied on our gut feeling/intuition in order to survive. Some decisions benefit from a slower more rational thought process but when the excrement hits the proverbial fan its your gut instincts that will save you.

We are conditioned by today's society to try and ignore our gut feelings and apply rational, logical thought processes to decision making and "Use your head not your heart". However research suggests that the conventional wisdom about decision making may be the opposite of what actually happens. It is easy problems that are better suited to the rational brain, and more complex problems best suited to the emotional brain. If we relied on reason alone we would be almost incapable of deciding anything at all. Some scientists believe that we can consciously process somewhere between five and nine pieces of information at any given time. Too much information can actually interfere with understanding. When the prefrontal cortex is overwhelmed the person can no longer make sense of the situation. Correlation is confused with causation and people make theories out of coincidences. On the other hand, the emotional brain has a longer path of evolutionary development and is especially useful at helping us make hard decisions. The emotional brain has massive computational power, it can process millions of bits of data in parallel and can analyse a huge range of relevant information when assessing alternatives.

And its likely that its not just the brain involved in our decision making processes. For decades, researchers have known of the connection between the brain and the gut. For example anxiety often causes nausea and diarrhea, and depression can change appetite. The connection may have been established, but scientists thought communication was one way, i.e.  it traveled from the brain to the gut, and not the other way around. But now a new understanding of the trillions of microbes living in our guts reveals that this communication process is more like a multi-lane superhighway than a one-way street. Gut microbes are in fact part of the unconscious system influencing behavior. and majorly impact on cognitive function and fundamental behavior patterns.This recent article also describes how Neuroscientists have found that specific types of gut flora help a host animal detect which nutrients are missing in food and then finely titrate how much of those nutrients the host really needs to eat.

So whether its by tapping into the collective intelligence of our microbiome or by unleashing the true power of our emotional brain there is benefit to be had in learning to trust our gut/intuition more and I think that this is especially applicable to our health/lifestyle choices. By arming ourselves with sufficient knowledge through research and becoming more aware of our bodies and how we feel in response to diet/exercise/lifestyle choices we can reengage with our gut feelings and allow those encoded instincts that have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to help us survive in the world.

Deep down your body already knows what it wants/needs and what it should avoid, we just need to learn to listen again.

Habits, Routines and the environment we create

The power and influence of habits and routines should not be underestimated. Understanding the influence of our habits and how to control them through routine is a powerful self-improvement strategy.

Like it or not we are all a product of what we do. Sure we inherit our genetic code from our parents, grandparents, etc which has a huge influence but within our own genetic code there is a large scope for variations through genetic expression or suppression. This process is known as epigenetics and I won’t delve into this subject in any greater detail for the purposes of this post (maybe later..), it’s just important to appreciate that who we are is influenced by what we do. The current ‘you’ is trying to adapt, using the genetic code available, as best it can to the environment you are in. And by ‘environment’ I mean all that you surround yourselves with, do and take in. I.e. your diet, activity levels, physical environment, etc.

Now if you take a minute to think about that I think you’ll agree that’s a powerful concept.

So if your environment consists of a desk, a computer screen, sugary drinks, sweets and junk food, then your body is going to adapt as best it can to suit this environment. You may not necessarily appreciate the results! Your muscular skeletal system, originally intended for upright movement will weaken and deform, your body will adapt as best it can to deal with all the excess carbohydrates being consumed, the only real method it has is storage, so store it will, and a touch of diabetes will help with this! Think of the people in Disney’s Wall-E (a very insightful movie if you haven’t seen it!).

Now this is an extreme example of a poor environment but our environment is essentially what we do most of the time. This is why when considering diet, your effective diet is what you eat most of the time. If you eat an appropriate diet 80% of the time you will see the results, the fact that you have an ice-cream/cake/bowl of pasta/etc once a week shouldn’t have a significant effect (this is the principle behind ‘cheat’ days, sins, etc that dieters will often refer too).

So applying our evolutionary lens it can be said that in order to achieve our optimum genetic expression we should match our environment to the environment we evolved in. Admittedly this is going to be almost impossible in the current world we have created for ourselves but we can and should try to align our environments to better suit our genetic expectations using evolutionary principles as a guideline. And this idea forms the basis of this blog and the whole primal/paleo/ancestral movement.

So I’ve got somewhat side-tracked as I wanted to talk about Habits and Routines but there is a point (I promise!). we are creature of habits and our habits will to an extent define our environments. Whether the habit is smoking, morning stretches, late night TV, drinking bone broth, etc all, if habitual, will have an epigenetic effect (some positive and some negative in these examples). As we have all probably experienced habits are hard to break and I would also suggest hard to make. So if we want to improve our environment we should be trying to encourage positive habits and discourage negative habits and this is where routines come in…

Whilst in life variety is generally a good thing and I would encourage variety in all things (diet, movement, etc) as I believe the reason we have been so successful as a species is our ability to thrive in an environment full of variety, routines also have their place. Daily routines will have always had a place in human societies to ensure the required activities are completed to ensure our ongoing survival. And I believe we have evolved to require/appreciate a certain amount of routine in our life. Any parent should be aware of the effect of a sensible night time routine and the positive effects it has on children, well guess what we all still have this need but it’s easy to forget in todays fast paced dynamic environment. Routines are the mechanism by which habits are formed. Its not possible to decide one day that you are going to adopt a new habit that day, habits have to be formed over time. However if you decided that you wanted to encourage a particular habit then you could decide to incorporate it into a routine, and, in the fullness of time, this routine would become habit. Equally if you have identified a negative habit with some thought and planning you could adopt a routine to, over time, break this habit. 

Examples

1. Sam struggles to get to sleep at night and ends up watching late night TV and snacking. She acknowledges that both these habits are not healthful and decides she wants to break them. By introduce a night time routine that involves turning the TV off after nine pm and getting into bed and reading a book with dimmed lighting from 10pm she finds she is able to fall asleep with greater ease and now she is not sat up watching trash TV she also has no need for the night time snacks. She soon finds herself waking in the mornings with far more energy and feels far more alive throughout the entire day than she had for a long time.
2. Jim has woken up every morning for the last 3 years with a stiff back, he knows he would benefit from improving his flexibility and doing regular mobility exercises but never seems to have the time or energy. Jim decides to do something about this and changes his morning routine, instead of spending 10 minutes catching up on social media as soon as he wakes up he now does a quick 10 minutes yoga in the morning getting changed and heading out the door It was relatively easy to slot change his routine and his yoga routine soon becomes a habit. Jim now wakes up pain free and for the first time in 10 years is able to touch his toes!

I am developing routines that I believe will promote positive habits and results and incorporating them into my life. I will detail these on the Routines page of this blog for your information. You may want to consider incorporating some of these into your life. I would encourage you to assess your current routines and habits and think about what sort of environment they are creating. Then decide what you want to try and change and redesign your routines to encourage the habits you want and eliminate the habits you don’t want. Make this assessment and re-design of routines a continuous process that is always being revisited and reviewed and you will optimise the environment around you and encourage a better ‘you’ to be expressed.

A DIY Mindset

I think I’ve always had a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) mindset, certainly as long as I can remember. As I child I found pleasure in taking things apart to understand how they worked and maintaining and repairing my toys, bikes, etc. This has continued throughout my life and has resulted in a useful set of practical skills. I also know many people who have no apparent DIY mindset, who will always call on else, and who do not seem to understand the satisfaction that can be gained by doing it yourself. I think there are more benefits to a DIY mindset than just practical skills though, as I will try to explain in my following ramblings. Furthermore I firmly believe that everyone could benefit from developing their own DIY mindset and applying it to all aspects of life.

So what is ‘DIY’ and a ‘DIY mindset’?

Simply doing it yourself! Instead of calling a plumber, decorator, mechanic, etc read a manual/get on google, grab some tools, and go fix it/mend it/make it/do it. I define a DIY mindset as a need to understand how things work and a self-belief that if someone else can do something then so can you. It’s certainly driven in part by economics as a significant amount of money can be saved by doing a job yourself rather than getting a ‘man’ in but it goes deeper than that. It’s a need to understand things, and an appreciation of the joy that comes from getting a job done. So If my car needs a new set of brake pads instead of going straight to the garage I’ll find a manual, figure out what needs doing, buy the parts and crack on. Sure the first time it took ages, I got stuck, and I had to buy some new tools. But I did it, I had the satisfaction of getting it done, I learnt a new skill, and I understood my car a bit better.

As with most things in life there is a balance to be struck, one person cannot be an expert in everything and it is still important to understand when to seek advice and assistance and indeed employ the services of a professional. All I’m suggesting here is that there is much to be gained from having the self-belief to give things a go and taking ownership and responsibility of solving a problem.

The benefits

If, when something goes wrong or needs repairing you look up the nearest professional and call them in sure your problem will be solved, but you’ll pay for it, and you’ll have missed an opportunity to test/demonstrate your own abilities and maybe learn some new skills.

If, when something goes wrong or needs repairing your initial thoughts are “how do I fix it?” you’ll do some research, you’ll understand the problem better, and you’ll probably have a crack at fixing it. You won’t always be able to and you may need to ask for advice and get assistance but I guarantee that you’ll have a better understanding of the problem and will know what and who to ask. If you can develop and apply a DIY mindset in your life this will save a lot of unnecessary expense and time in the long run and will increase your own abilities and skill-sets.

The majority of humans (there probably are exceptions but I wouldn’t recommend these people as friends) all gain some satisfaction from helping others, and the sense of worth that is gained by successfully solving a problem and receiving gratitude for it is not to be underestimated. With a DIY mindset you will be more likely to put yourself in positions to provide assistance and receive this gratitude. Even if your ability and willingness to hang a new curtain rail just serves to keep your Mother-in-Law happy, this also should not be underestimated!

This mindset can be applied to many situations in life, not just a broken washing machine! By applying your DIY mentality to your own health you can start to research and try and fix the things that aren’t working properly in your own body. All the biohackers out there are essentially applying a DIY mentality to their own body, looking for all the things that aren’t working and finding effective ‘hacks’. Now I’m certainly not suggesting practising open-heart surgery on the kitchen table but by trying to initially understand what’s going on and researching potential solutions you will at least be able to better understand what professional assiatance will be of benefit, and you will be able to make educated decisions.

The warning, just to be clear…

As I’ve mentioned earlier there will be times when you require professional assistance and you should be mindful of your capabilities. For example, you won’t be a hero if you decide to take apart your home heating system in the middle of winter and are unable to put it back together! Or if you have just been hit by a car and broken your collar bone I would recommend a trip to your nearest healthcare professional (both personal experiences by the way!).

In conclusion then

Develop your own DIY mindset. If you already have one, great, build on it and apply it to all aspects of your life, including your health and wellbeing. If you have never understood the appeal of DIY humour me, give it a go. Start small but try to tell yourself that you can fix it, find out how and give it a go. Have confidence in your abilities but do your ground work and learn to trust your instincts to decide when to give it a go, when to ask for assistance, and when to call a professional.

Information overload? Apply some filtering

Information is more accessible than it ever has been. New data, new studies, new concepts, new products appear every day often conflicting with each other. In the world of health and fitness good science and bad is cited all the time, and EVERYONE has an opinion. So how do you pick a path through it all?

Firstly, and most importantly, remember it’s your body, your life, your choice.

As with everything else in life to make a good choice you firstly need a sufficient level of knowledge and understanding to make an educated choice. Knowledge most certainly is power so go get some! Read books, blogs, papers, listen to podcasts, audio books, etc. You will find that the more you learn the more there is to learn, and once started, your journey will never end and will take many paths and changes of direction.

Now the more knowledge you gain the more conflicting concepts and ideas you will be exposed to. You will find yourself having to assess and critique to sort the wheat from the chaff and decide what is worth investing your precious time and money into. This is not always easy but it is definitely important.

I’ve put my engineering hat on and tried to systemise the methodology I use when assessing a new food, exercise, lifestyle choice, etc. To keep things simple I have used the word Thingamabob to describe any new food, exercise, lifestyle choice, etc that you are evaluating.

It’s a 5-stage process and described briefly in the following high quality flowchart. Lengthier descriptions of each follow. In reality this systemisation is an oversimplification and you’ll need to adapt it to suit a particular problem. Hopefully it is a useful framework though to encourage you to make informed decisions about what you do with and put in your body.

1. Check the Science

Check the current science/medical advice. Here you need to do your research and look for any positive or negative results. If there is convincing evidence pointing to negative effects then this Thingamabob should be carefully considered and the Thingamabob may need to be thrown in the bin. If the current science suggests there are benefits outweighing any potential negatives then go to the next stage. If the current science is inconclusive or non-existent then I would also suggest proceeding to the next stage, don’t worry there are other filters coming up to help remove the rubbish!

2. Evolutionary Lens

This is my favourite filter and I would argue the most effective, this will definitely stop any rubbish sneaking through. What I do here is look at the idea from an evolutionary perspective. Assuming that our genes have evolved based on lifestyle and dietary models that have been practised for 200,000 years and in order to be all we can be and get the most out of our genetic code we should honour this heritage, does this new idea fit this model. Have ‘we’ as a species always done this, eaten this, etc in some form, and is this Thingamabob likely to result in a positive expression of my genetic code based on the above. If the answer is no then bin it, if not, proceed.

3. Cost/Benefit balance

This will depend on personal preferences and circumstances as everyone will be in a different position, with different priorities. This is where you weigh up the potential benefits based on everything you currently know against the expected costs (could be time or money) and decide whether it’s worth the initial investment, if the answers no then out it goes, if it’s a yes then please continue.

4. Test it

If your Thingamabob has passed through all of the filters then it’s probably worth trying. With anything new I recommend you give it an initial trial and be as scientific as possible in order to help decide whether this new Thingamabob has rocked your world or not. Try to start from a baseline, decide on some metrics you can record and then give the Thingamabob a go for a period of time. The required period of time will vary and you may be able to get some guidance from your earlier background research. As a general rule of thumb 30 days is a good time period to start to see some differences form diet/lifestyle choices. So you give it a go and see what it does. If you experience any negative side effects then you may need to call it a day and send the Thingamabob to the bin and this is a result in itself. If you complete your initial test then it’s time to try and assess your results and decide whether to incorporate this Thingamabob into your life. You can revisit the cost benefit balance now that you have first hand experience and a new piece of n=1 scientific research to consider.

5. Adopt it

If the Thingamabob has passed through your filters and your initial test then it’s probably worth adopting it into your lifestyle. I say probably because everything is a choice and sometimes you may just feel that even with everything you now know and the actual benefits experienced you just can’t be bothered, and that’s ok, so long as you’ve made that conscious choice. You’ll want to decide how you are going to adopt this Thingamabob, is this going to form part of your daily routine, is it once a week/year/month Thingamabob, or just something for a rainy day. Again you can make this decision based on everything you now know, and you can change your decision whenever/wherever.

That’s it! I’ve tried to keep the described system as generic as possible so you can apply it to whatever Thingamabob you may wish to consider, but in order to demonstrate the system in action and maybe describe my ramblings a bit more specifically I’ll run through an example below, I’ll use the example of a nice cup of bone broth.

Example

So you were at your friend Dave’s house recently and he offered you a cup of his latest favourite drink, bone broth. After you’d recovered from the initial shock of being offered boiled up animal remains you politely declined and the conversation moved on. Later during a period of reflection you started to wonder whether ‘crazy’ Dave had found a magic bullet (or was in-fact crazy).

Stage 1 Check the Science – You get online and do some searching. You soon discover that bones contain an abundance of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, and amino acids such as collagen, gelatine, glycosaminoglycans, glycine, proline, glutamine. You also find research that suggests there may be benefits such as improved skin elasticity, bone and joint health, gut health and brain health. Sounds good, in fact the more you research the more you discover but you’ve got enough to satisfy your curiosity for now, what’s more you haven’t uncovered any negative effects other than the same risks associated with poorly raised meat and you’ve already cleaned up your supply.

Stage 2 – So there seems to be a bit of science suggesting potential benefits, and certainly no published negative effects to be concerned about so time to apply the evolutionary lens. Does this fit in with our traditional lifestyle/dietary model as per the last 200,000 years or so. Upon consideration it seems perfectly believable that ancient man would have wanted to extract all nutrients from the animal we know he would have been eating, and boiling the bones is a simple effective method of doing this so yeah this sounds like a fit. A bit of additional research quickly highlights the fact that it is widely accepted that bone broth has been an integral part of many if not all traditional societies and cultures so yes you’ve looked at this idea through an evolutionary lens and it holds up, on with the process..

Stage 3 – Time for a quick cost/benefit analysis. So you have an idea from stage 1 that there are a number of potential benefits and the nutrients in the broth should provide your body with some of the building blocks it requires. You price up the cost of some bones form the local butcher and the means to boil them in water for a day or two and it looks like the cost is pretty low. So low cost with benefits that appeal, sounds good so lets continue.

Stage 4 – You’ve given this some careful consideration and decided there’s no good reason not to give this a shot so it’s time to put your body on the line. You call in at your local butchers and ask for a few offcut bones, you’re in luck, he’s just butchered a cow so gives you a bag for free. Back home with your kill and you check online for a good recipe. Before you know the kitchen is filled with the smell of boiling bones (I’m not going to lie this isn’t for everyone!). Two days later your broth is ready for tasting. You pour yourself a small amount and SLURP it all down. You may at this point decide that this is the most disgusting thing you have ever tasted and there is NO WAY you will ever be letting that cross your lips again! I that’s the case then that’s your result, you’ve tried but its not something you can adopt. Lets assume for the purposes of this example that you find it surprisingly tasty and fulfilling (which I assure you that you may) so you decide to incorporate it for a month. During the next month you have a mug of boney goodness each day and make a note of how you feel before, after, any changes to your body and bodily functions you may notice during the month, etc.

Stage 5 – A month has passed and now it’s time to decide whether to incorporate bone broth permanently into your life and if so how best to do it. You reflect on your trial period, in summary you conclude that you now really like the taste of bone broth but you haven’t noticed any significant benefits or effects positive or negative.  Your research suggested though that any benefits would be long term and as such likely hard to measure directly. You weigh up everything you now know and decide that the potential long-term benefits are worth having, you have suffered no ill effects, and the costs (other than a bit of time in the kitchen) are minimal. So its decided, it’s going to be a new part of your lifestyle, furthermore as you like the taste so much it’s going to be a permanent feature in your fridge as you can imagine not having your mid-afternoon liquid bone snack!

My beginning

The beginning, the dream, and the pathway to living long and living strong......

For me this journey began in 2012. Having always been relatively fit but not particularly muscular I wanted to try and build a stronger body so got interested in weight training. I started reading all the science (bro' science!) and soon enough I was on the low-fat high protein train with protein shakes, egg white wraps and daily gym sessions. I did start to see results but the more I learnt the more I didn't understand the dietary advice....

It seemed that 'we' had a pretty good understanding on a macro level of how much protein was needed to grow muscle but in order to take on this amount of protein without eating excess fat it was necessary to eat a highly manufactured diet. How then had the human race managed to produce the warriors of the past without modern food processing technology?

This was when I came across the Paleo/Primal/Ancestral movement and I haven't looked back since. My gateway was  Mark Sissons blog and I soon purchased a copy of the Primal Blueprint (and I  still  recommend this book to everyone). To me it was the answer to my dietary confusions, the realisation that the 'healthy diet' I had been brought up on was based on, at best, flawed science and marketing forces was a revelation and the idea that eating a species appropriate diet would allow for optimum gene expression made perfect sense.

This was where my journey started and it has continued since. Its true that the more you learn, the more you realise how much you don't know ut like any journey the only way is to continue one step at a time, with the hope that in this journey each step makes the journey last a little longer!