How to Create Your Very Own Cookbook

Cookbook Create, a platform on which anyone can create print-on-demand cookbooks using their own recipes, has appeared in The New York Times, The Kitchn, and Edible. Anna Curran was inspired to found the company when she wanted to preserve her own family's recipes, and offer a more technology-inclusive platform as a solution to consumers. Her customers are everyone from a bodybuilder offering recipes for athetes following similar exercise and diet plans, to parents putting together family recipes for a child going to college or getting married, pages peppered with family photos. Anna says that technology allows for customization that's key in tools like Cookbook Create.

As for advice she would give to other aspiring food entrepreneurs, Anna says that entrepreneurship is a journey in which your best day and your worst day can be happening simultaneously. She recommends moving forward through uncertainties, to take other people's advice with a large grain of salt, and, most of all, to dream big. 

You can keep up with Cookbook Create on their blog or on your favorite social media platform  Facebook,  Twitter,  Pinterest,  Instagram.

Listen to the full episode with Anna in the top right hand player or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Can You Get Enough Fiber on a Low Carb Diet?

Christy writes:

“I need your expertise! I am overweight and suffer from polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). For that, I’m told to follow a low-carb diet. But I also have mildly elevated cholesterol and a familial tendency toward fatty liver disease. For that, I’m told to eat lots of fiber and whole grains, which are loaded with carbs. So what should I do?”

Maybe you’ve found yourself in a dilemma similar to Christy's, where dietary recommendations for one health concern directly conflict with dietary advice for another. For example, I remember getting an email a few years back from a woman who had both IBS and diverticulosis and was wondering about her doctor’s advice to eat a high-fiber diet. While that can certainly help with diverticulosis, it can make IBS worse!

See also: Should I Eat a High Fiber or Low Fiber Diet for Diverticulitis?

In some cases, your best bet may be to work with a nutrition professional, who can not only help you sort through and reconcile conflicting recommendations but can also help you translate them into practical solutions such as meal plans and shopping lists.

That was definitely the case for the woman with IBS and diverticulosis and it might also be a good idea for Christy. In the meantime, however, I think I can help resolve Christy’s dilemma—because the recommendations to increase fiber and decrease carbohydrates are not as contradictory as you might think.

Why Is Low Carb Better for PCOS?

Let’s start by taking a closer look at the idea that people with PCOS need a low carb diet. As I talked about in a previous episode on PCOS, people with this condition are likely to have some degree of insulin resistance, meaning that they have trouble managing their blood sugar. Going on a strict low carbohydrate diet is one way to deal with insulin resistance but it’s not the only way.

I prefer a less drastic approach, where we focus on reducing the carbs that are doing the most damage (and contributing the least nutrition) but avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

First, you’d want to eliminate sweetened beverages, fruit juice, candies, pastries, desserts and other things made with sugar and white flour. These are high glycemic carbohydrates, meaning that they are quickly digested and absorbed into the bloodstream. Eating a lot of high glycemic carbs when you have insulin resistance or blood sugar issues is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

See also: What is High Glucose?

Other, more nutritious sources of carbohydrates, such as whole fruit, dairy products, legumes, and whole grains aren’t high glycemic foods--but they’re not low glycemic either.  They can certainly be included in your diet. The trick is to consume them in moderation. So, for example, while whole grains are a better choice than refined grains, you still might limit your consumption of whole grain foods to just a couple of servings per day. 

Non-starchy vegetables are almost 100% carbohydrate—but these are very low glycemic carbs (not to mention nutritional superstars) No need to limit them.

Just to review: You’re going to largely eliminate high glycemic carbohydrates like sweetened beverages, desserts, white bread and other things made with white flour. You’re going to moderate your intake of moderate glycemic carbohydrates like whole fruit, dairy, legumes, and whole grain foods. And you’re going to load up on low glycemic carbohydrates.like non-starchy vegetables. So far, so good.

---

How to Get Enough Fiber on a Low Carb Diet

Now let’s take a look at the dietary recommendations for high cholesterol and/or fatty liver disease. Both of these conditions benefit from a diet that is higher in fiber. A good goal is 25 to 30 grams of fiber per day.

Soluble fiber, in particular, reduces the amount of fat and cholesterol that is absorbed from foods and processed by the liver. Sure enough, eating foods that are high in soluble fiber, such as oats and legumes, can help lower your LDL cholesterol levels--but this may not all be due to the fiber!

These foods also happen to contain phytosterols, which I just talked about in a recent podcast on corn oil. As you may recall, phytosterols are plant compounds that work to block absorption of cholesterol from foods by occupying the cellular parking spots where cholesterol would normally park.  This article on phytosterols includes a chart that lists the phytosterol content of many foods.

The good news is that you can get all the fiber you need without overloading on carbs. A bowl of high fiber cereal for breakfast, a cup of black bean soup for lunch, some fresh fruits and vegetables along the way, and you’re there. Although whole grain breads have more fiber than their white flour counterparts, they have a somewhat undeserved reputation for being high in fiber. Other foods, such as legumes, bran, avocados, artichokes, broccoli, and berries are even better sources of fiber (and lower in carbs).

Weight Loss Also Helps

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that all of these conditions (PCOS, fatty liver, and high cholesterol) generally improve when you lose weight.  Any diet that helps you shed excess pounds should help, even if it’s not particularly low in carbohydrates or high in fiber. As it happens however, the low-glycemic, moderate-carb diet we’ve just outlined is also great for weight loss, because low- to-moderate glycemic  foods help quell your appetite.

Have a nutrition question for the Diva? Send an email or post your question on the Nutrition Diva Facebook page. Then, be sure to subscribe to the Nutrition Diva podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, so don't miss a single episode! 

#TryPod: QDT Participates in Campaign to Share Favorite Podcasts

This March, podcasters are coming together to suggest their listeners "#trypod" or try a podcast. In this widespread campaign to reach new audiences and share great content, QDT hosts will be recommending some of their favorite podcasts and encouraging listeners to do the same by reaching out to a friend, relative, or coworker with suggestions of programs they might enjoy.

One in five Americans listens to podcasts, according to a survey conducted by Edison Research. Nonetheless, many people still don't know how or where to listen. If you're a podcast listener, why not share your favorites with a new listener, while also showing them how to listen?

All through this month, you'll hear our hosts recommending some of their favorite podcasts and encouraging you to do the same. In the meantime, here's a list of the QDT team's favorite podcasts to get you started! We encourage you to share your favorite shows with friends and family—either in person or online, by using the hashtag #trypod.

On the Media

"It's a fascinating look not at the news of the past week, but how that news was covered. It's a super-interesting way to learn more about media and media ethics, whether you trust news organizations or not."

-Bruce Lubin & Jennifer Boudinot, hosts of Who Knew?

Body Kindness & The Stoop Podcast

"The first is such a welcome antidote to all the unhealthy and unhelpful messages that we get about food and our bodies. And the Stoop is a little like The Moth but it's produced in my hometown of Baltimore so there's often a fun local twist to the stories (or the storytellers are people I know)."

-Monica Reinagel, MS, LD-N, CNS, host of Nutrition Diva

The Longform Podcast

"I've been listening to the Longform podcast since way before Serial even aired. The hosts bring on incredible nonfiction writers—from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Susan Orlean—to talk craft."

-Alyssa Martino, QDT Editor

The ONE Thing, NPR Fresh Air & Freakonomics 

-Laura Adams, host of Money Girl

The Daily, All the Books, 99% Invisible & 2 Dope Queens

-Bryn Clark (associate editor) & Kara Rota (host) of Clever Cookstr

Listen on any of the platforms below, or wherever else you find podcasts! And if you aren't a podcast listener and need help figuring out how to get set up, feel free to email us at editor@quickanddirtytips.com. We'd be happy to help.

How to Clean Your Walls and Remove Stubborn Stains

Quickest Way to Clean a Wall

Whether your walls are the victim of dirt and grim or your little Pablo Picasso has created a beautiful work of art all over your living room wall, the easiest way to get them clean again is with a baby wipe. Rub in a circular motion until the crayon is gone. (Test first on an inconspicuous area to make sure it won’t harm your paint job.)

DIY Magic Eraser

What’s the easiest way to remove crayon, pencil, ink, or even furniture scuffs from painted surfaces? Sprinkle baking soda on a damp sponge, rub clean, and rinse.

DIY Wall Cleaner

Do your painted walls need a cleaning? Try a solution made of one cup of white vinegar, a quarter cup of club soda, and one quart of warm water. Simply dip a rag or sponge into the solution and use to wipe down walls.

Get Rid of Scorch Marks

If your beautiful candle is staining your walls with black soot marks, don’t try to simply scrub them away—that will only make more of a mess. Instead, remove those unsightly spots by sponging them with rubbing alcohol. Also works for removing marker stains.

How to Get Rid of Greasy Finger Marks

A great way to clean walls covered in greasy fingerprints is with white bread. You can eliminate fingerprints, light stains, and even ball-point ink by simply rubbing a piece of white bread vigorously over the spot.

Hard-to-Remove Wall Stains

If you have an especially though stain on your wall, try this trick. Cover the area with a brown paper bag or kraft paper, then apply a warm iron. The paper will absorb the grease.

For more cleaning tips for around the house, check out our Cleaning Tips board on Pinterest. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook for our Tip of the Day!

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

6 Things You Should Know About the New Planet Discovery

Last week NASA made the historic announcement that seven Earth-sized planets  had been found around a single star. Astronomers have found Earth-sized planets before, but never so many orbiting the same star, in this case an ultracool M-dwarf known as TRAPPIST-1.

Amidst the flurry of press coverage this announcement has inspired, here are six important points summarizing both why the star TRAPPIST-1 and its seven planets are so important, as well as how this discovery raises even more questions about life on other planets.

1. Three of the planets are crammed into the star’s habitable zone.

Some stars burn brighter (and hotter) than others, and so the range in distances from a star that result in temperatures amenable to liquid water will vary from star to star. Since water is a key ingredient for life like us, this range of radii where temperatures are not too cold and not too hot but instead “just right” are sometimes called the “Goldilocks region” or the star’s habitable zone.

Of the seven Earth-sized planets found around TRAPPIST-1, three reside in the habitable zone. However, distance from its host star isn’t the only determining factor in a planet’s temperature: atmosphere also plays a big role. For example, here in our solar system, Venus, Earth, and Mars are all in our sun’s habitable zone. Unfortunately for our potential future travel plans, Venus is experiencing a runaway greenhouse effect that creates a very thick atmosphere which is very good at trapping in heat like an extremely warm blanket. On the other hand, the atmosphere on Mars is quite thin, leading to large temperature changes from day to night. Thus, give or take a little atmosphere, any one of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets could host temperatures hospitable to life, but the ones in the habitable zone have a better chance.

2. TRAPPIST-1 is not a star like our sun.

Our sun is an average G-type star, which means it emits the most light at white to yellow wavelengths and has a surface temperature of 5,000-6,000 Kelvin, which is somewhere in the middle of the range of temperatures stars are known to exhibit. TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool M-dwarf which means it is on the order of 10 times smaller than our Sun – in fact, it’s barely bigger than Jupiter – and has a surface temperature less than half that of the Sun’s.

This cooler temperature means that the habitable zone for TRAPPIST-1 is much closer to the star than is the case in our own solar system.  The three planets found in habitable zone for TRAPPIST-1 have orbital periods between 6 to 12 days, meaning that “a year” on one of these newly discovered planets spans less than what we would call 2 weeks here on Earth. In fact, the whole system is barely larger than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. Such close quarters make it even more impressive that 3 planets are found crammed into the habitable zone.

Another important distinction between stars like the Sun and stars like TRAPPIST-1, is their activity. According to Dr. Bárbara Rojas Ayala, an expert on M-dwarfs and an assistant professor in Santiago, Chile, ultracool M-dwarfs can be very active. “Their flares can be quite powerful and thus the high energy radiation they produce in the form of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation can affect the atmospheres – and thus the habitability – of their planets.”

---

3. The transit method of exoplanet discovery can only tell us so much.

The name TRAPPIST-1 comes from the name of the telescope to first identify the system last year as a potential multi-planet system, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile. Later, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope not only worked to confirm the original discovery but also found additional companions for a total of seven.

Astronomers have not observed these planets directly but instead discovered them using the transit method. As the planets pass in front of their star, they cause a slight dimming in the light astronomers observe from that star. How much the light dims and how long the light is dimmed for can tell us about the size, mass, and thus density of the planet causing the dip. However, the transit method still leaves a lot of room for interpretation, especially as far as the habitability of a planet is concerned, suggesting that these planets will be highly sought after targets for followup observations like those that will be possible with upcoming powerful telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (or JWST).

Dr. Rojas Ayala cautions that we still do not know enough about the planets to tell if they are indeed like Earth or if they could be more like Venus. "Just looking at the bulk properties of Earth and Venus, they look like twins, but obviously they have very different geological histories. These new planets will be exciting targets for JWST which can tell us what their atmospheres are like."

4. The planets might be tidally locked with TRAPPIST-1.

The close proximity of all seven planets to their star and to each other suggest that they may be tidally locked with one side of the planet always facing TRAPPIST-1 while the other always faces away. Thus, if you’re a fan of both night and day, a visit to one of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may not be for you. Those who have heard of the dark side of the Moon may recall that the Moon is also tidally locked with the Earth, even though the so-called dark side isn’t really all that dark.

5. TRAPPIST-1 is far from being a reliable back up plan.

The TRAPPIST-1 system is “only” 39 light years away which is about 10 times farther than our closest neighbor Alpha Centauri. While 39 lightyears is relatively close astronomically speaking, it is still nearly 230 trillion miles away. Interstellar travel is incredibly challenging – we have not yet sent probes beyond our own solar system and humans themselves have never been farther than the Moon.

TRAPPIST-1 is also a relatively young star at an age of ~500 million years old, compared to the Sun’s 4.5 billion years. Although such a young age doesn’t rule out the possibility of terraforming, TRAPPIST-1 may not have been in existence long enough for life as we know it to have evolved.  

It is still of the utmost importance to take care of our own planet rather than depend on mass emigration to other planets in the future.

Thus, it is still of the utmost importance to take care of our own planet rather than depend on mass emigration to other planets in the future.

6. The TRAPPIST-1 discovery has important implications for the success of future planet searches.

The first exoplanet discovery was confirmed in 1991 and now, less than 30 years later, we know of more than 3400 confirmed planets around other stars. Of course, all Pluto drama aside, we know our Sun hosts multiple planets. And now that we know that seven planets, especially seven planets either in or near their star’s habitable zone, can exist around a single star, the chances of finding a spot hospitable for life have effectively been multiplied by seven.

More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that M-dwarfs are believed to vastly outnumber stars like our sun. Thus, the more examples we can find of habitable or even potentially habitable planets around M-dwarfs, the better the odds become that habitable planets also exist in the regions of the Galaxy we have not yet explored.  

Until next time, this is Sabrina Stierwalt with Everyday Einstein’s Quick and Dirty Tips for helping you make sense of science. You can become a fan of Everyday Einstein on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, where I’m @QDTeinstein. If you have a question that you’d like to see on a future episode, send me an email at everydayeinstein@quickanddirtytips.com.

Image courtesy of nasa.gov

6 Tricks to Negotiate with More Power

1.) Know the power dynamics and realities

It’s smart to assess the realities and perceptions. The reality: since they approached her, and her business is doing just fine, she doesn’t actually need anything they have to offer. So in fact, she has something they want, and so far, they haven’t demonstrated that they have anything she wants. That means she has all the leverage, and at the moment, all the power. Now she has to act like it.

The perception: Since they’re the 800-pound Audrey II of the plant industry (they used to be the 800-pound gorilla, but a gorilla is no match for an Audrey II), and since they’re offering her a job, GOT GREEN is probably coming in thinking that they are one-up and that Bernice is chomping at the bit to be noticed by such a Magnificent Enterprise.

She needs to adjust their perception so they begin to treat her as a serious entrepreneur and CEO in her own right. She needs to convey that she’s the Audrey II that could gobble up their 800-pound gorilla.

2.) Power is signaled even with logistics

Her instinct is to call GOT GREEN and ask, “What time and where do you want me to come for the meeting?” “What’s the job you’re offering?” “Is my plant store experience enough for me to get a Vice President level job with you?” Even though she asks in a confident voice tone, she's asking as if GOT-GREEN is the final authority on everything. They come from a place of “Little, unworthy me wants something out of Grand Amazing You.” They immediately put Bernice in a one-down position by assuming that GOT GREEN has all the answers and all the benefits, and all she can do is comply with whatever they are generous enough to offer. A powerful person expect to have input, and have their issues considered, too.

3.) Convey power by controlling the process

When you’re at the negotiating table, power isn't just attitude. You also want to behave in ways that show you're at the top of your game.

While weak questions presuppose GOT GREEN has all the power, Bernice can use questions very powerfully. Questions absolutely have a place in a negotiation, and that place is finding out enough about the other side’s needs and constraints that you can craft an offer that meets their needs, and find leverage to get them to meet yours. In this case, though, all of Bernice’s questions come down to some form ofasking permission or asking for the result of their decision, which are what a one-down person does. Instead, she can decide what answers she wants and she can be the one to offer them the opportunity to provide them.

And this is the crux of how Bernice signals power. She takes control of the process. Instead of asking these questions, she can make declarative statements that give them a chance to counter-offer.

Instead of “What time and where do you want me to come for the meeting?” she can say, “Let’s meet Friday at 5 pm at Green Growing Things 1, behind the Audrey II feeding pens. If you’d prefer another time, let me know and we can schedule something.” She’s taking control of the process, while leaving them plenty of leeway to choose a new date, time, or place. Framing things this way communicates, “I’m a busy person, I’m in control of this situation, I’m going to move it along at my pace” instead of deferring to GOT GREEN to move at their pace. She doesn't necessarily expect them to move at her pace—large companies often move very slowly due to their size—but she's signaling that her needs are as important as theirs.

---

4.) Keep the process moving

When they say “Great, we’ll get back to you sometime later this week to confirm,” it sounds like good news. But only partly. Because that leaves the next actions in their hands. If they’re still thinking of this as a standard employee interview, they might jerk her around for weeks before getting back to her with anything definitive.

Her maneuver here is to keep the process moving, herself. She does this by making sure there’s always a next step on the calendar in a time frame that works for her. “That sounds great. I’ll expect to hear from you by Wednesday at 2 pm. Does that work for you?”

By using phrasing like “I’ll expect to hear from you,” she’s again making the power dynamic clear—she’s an important person who has expectations about this process. She ends with a question that gives them the freedom to propose a different time, but she’s making sure the process keeps moving and never depends on them having to remember to get back to her.

5.) Rebalance the power dynamic subtly in your favor

“What’s the job you’re offering?” becomes “We can talk about your needs and my needs and how we can work together.” Instead of framing the discussion as them offering little, defenseless her a job, she’s framed the discussion as a meeting of equals trying to meet each others’ needs. This is a much more powerful framing.

“Is my experience enough to qualify for VP?” becomes “I’m the founder and CEO of Green Growing Things and that carries with it a certain level of status, autonomy, and control. Let’s put that on the agenda for our conversation. Is there anything you’d like me to add to the agenda, from your end?”

Next time you go into a negotiation, take a moment to assess your mental state, the real power dynamics, and how you’re thinking about the power dynamics. 

6.) Make yourself the decision-maker

Bernice had the meeting yesterday, at the time she suggested. It turns out that meeting by the Audrey II feeding pens gave her a bit more psychological control than she’d anticipated. There's nothing like the crunching sounds of an Audrey II feeding to make it clear who has the power. She explained her needs, listened to GOT GREEN’s needs, and at the end, both sides decided that the most sensible way to go would be for Green Growing Things to acquire GOT GREEN.com. Details to be determined.The first framing, “is my experience enough to quality?” implies that GOT-GREEN is the judge of her. The reframe implies they’re equals, by reminding them that she’s a CEO (albeit of a small business) and that she has needs that are getting met that they’re going to have to meet in order to get her. Suddenly she’s the one judging their offer, not the other way around. Then she offers, quite reasonably, to add their items to the agenda. But notice that by doing so, now she’scontrolling the agenda and gets to be the one who is adding items that they’re requesting. There’s been a real change in who’s one-up and who’s one-down, and all it took was a couple of sentences.

Next time you go into a negotiation, take a moment to assess your mental state, the real power dynamics, and how you’re thinking about the power dynamics. Don’t ask lot of permission questions; instead, use declarative proposals of working together, that give the other side a chance to respond. Keep control of the calendar to keep the process moving, and keep your framing powerful, while giving the other side plenty of flexibility. I’m not saying you’ll take over the world this way, but if you do, send along a seven-figure bonus check for the Get-it-Done Guy. There are two Bs in Robbins.

This is Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run programs to help people have Extraordinary Lives and extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com or join my personal mailing list by texting GETITDONE to 33444. You’ll also get a free copy of my secret book chapter on how to build relationships that help you succeed.

Work Less, Do More, and Have a Great Life!

 

How to Stay Fit While Partying

In last week’s episode, you discovered how to stay fit and healthy when parenting.

But let’s face it: you may not be interested in being a parent. Perhaps you’re actually more interested in partying. Or perhaps you occasionally need a break from being a parent (or a student or a CEO or an athlete) to throw down the occasional bout of hedonism. Work hard, play hard … right?

The problem is that partying—especially when alcohol is involved—is pretty hard on the body.

For example, alcohol can have a variety of different effects on the heart, including creating abnormalities in heart rates referred to as arrhythmias. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism explains that there are two types of alcohol induced arrhythmias: atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. Atrial fibrillation occurs when the upper chambers of the heart weakly shudder but are unable to fully contract, which can cause blood to build up and clot in these upper chambers, and if these blood clots travel from the heart to the brain, a stroke can take place. If these clots travel to other organs, an embolism (a blood vessel blockage) can occur.

Meanwhile, ventricular tachycardia affects the lower chambers of your heart. The electrical impulses that keep blood pumping through the heart get altered so that they circle through the heart’s ventricles too many times, which causes the ventricles to contract excessively, the heart to beat too quickly not enough blood filling up in the heart. Because of this, the the rest of the body won’t get supplied with enough blood, cuasing dizziness, lightheadedness, unconsciousness, cardiac arrest, and sometimes sudden death.

Then there’s your immune system. If you’ve ever wondered why you seem to battle more colds or other infections after you’ve been partying a lot, it’s not necessarily because you’ve shared one too many drinks with someone who may have been sick. The National Institutes of Health has shown that alcohol suppresses all aspects of your immune system, including the ability of your white blood cells to effectively fight harmful bacteria and the production and development of your body’s other immune cells. Chronic drinkers are more likely to contract diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis, and just drinking an excessive amount on just one occasion can impair your immune system.

Drinking alcohol and excessive partying, along with lack of sleep, can negatively impact the results that you’re hoping to see from your workouts, including growth hormone and testosterone release. In addition, when you have alcohol in your body, your metabolism makes it a priority to break down alcohol instead of burning fats and carbs. Alcohol can also lead to the breakdown of amino acids for fat storage, and increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which also increases fat storage in the body. Besides breaking down the amino acids that should be used for muscle recovery and can also help with sleep, alcohol decreases muscle recovery and performance by decreasing sleep quality and how long you sleep, leading to further decreases in human growth hormone production (which is very important for building muscle) by up to 70%!

Finally, alcohol can not only interfere with multiple aspects of your brain function, including your behavior, mood, and communications pathways, but it also irritates the lining of the stomach, and this can reduce capacity to absorb nutrients and increase the frequency at which you have to urinate, resulting in dehydration and gut issues.

---

The good news is that by supporting your heart, your immune system, your gut, your brain, and your sleep, you can mitigate much of this damage! So in today’s episode, you’re going to discover some of my top quick and dirty tips for the days leading into a party or a partying weekend, the actual day and night of the partying itself, and the infamous, notoriously uncomfortable morning after. Enjoy, and remember—be responsible!

1-3 Days Going Into Or Before The Party

-Log as much extra sleep or naps as possible. Research has shown this helps to mitigate the effects of sleep loss, a concept I discussed in a recent article.

-Limit vegetable oils and omega-6 fat intake and instead emphasize monounsaturated and satured fat consumption. Multiple studies, including many I discuss in this podcast episode with Cate Shanahan, author of “Deep Nutrition,” confirm that high-omega 6, vegetable oil and polyunsaturated fat intake increases liver damage in response to ethanol in alcohol, while more stable fats like cocoa butter and coconut oil protect against this damage. If you do eat omega-6 fatty acids, make sure they’re in whole food form such as nuts, seeds, eggs, etc.

The Day Of The Party

-Don’t skip your workout. Exercise increases endogenous (your own) antioxidant production activity and can also reduce liver damage from alcohol intake.

-Eat five eggs or egg yolks, or down a serving of liver or take choline supplements. Your liver processes choline much more quickly when exposed to alcohol and metabolizing alcohol and these extra choline sources will help tremendously.

One Hour Before The Party

-Eat a teaspoon to a tablespoon of any or all of the following: extra virgin avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil, or red palm oil. The polyphenols in the olive oil and avocado oil and the vitamin E in red palm oil can help to protect against alcohol-induced oxidative stress and the monounsaturated and saturated fats in all three oils will help to protect your liver against alcohol-induced injury.

-Eat a light-to-moderate meal. Extra food in your stomach can slow the absorption of alcohol. This is important because if you expose your body to too much ethanol from alcohol too fast, the conversion of ethanol into acetaldehyde can overwhelm your own antioxidant defenses. For added electrolytes and antioxidants, I recommend you salt your food with a mineral rich sea salt and a curry-like source of spice such as cumin, turmeric, curcumin, etc.

-Supplement with n-acetyl cysteine (600 mg) and vitamin C (1 gram). The former is a precursor to glutathione, the antioxidant responsible for metabolizing alcohol and the latter helps helps n-acetyl cysteine (also known as NAC) to supply glutathione.

-Take 200-400 mg magnesium (alcohol rapidly depletes magnesium stores).

-Consider eating a few squares of high-cacao dark chocolate. As you learned earlier, some fats, including cocoa fat, protect against alcohol-induced liver injury, and the cocoa polyphenols increase your antioxidant capacity. But pay attention to the next tip too, because excess fat intake from things like cacao and coconut oil can be inflammatory unless accompanied by fiber, a topic I explore in more detail here.

-As I alluded to earlier, for extra antioxidant production be sure to eat plenty of polyphenol-rich plants and spices, including curries, turmeric or curcumin, ginger, berries, beets, arugula, dark cabbage or anything else colorful or slightly sulfurous smelling (think garlic, broccoli cauliflower, etc.). A way to do this with supplements is to take 1-2g of curcumin. For a liquid option of polyphenols, you can drink one giant cup of high-quality green tea.

-Eat collagen or drink a giant cup of bone broth. The glycine in collagen (or gelatin) reduces lipid peroxidation and antioxidant depletion in the livers of ethanol-exposed rats. In recent studies, it has been shown that the vitamin C will increase absorption.

---

During The Party:

-Drink the best alcohol you can afford or access and avoid any high fructose corn syrup, sugars, such as those notoriously found in margarita mixes and other pre-mixed cocktails and bottled beverages. Review these resources I’ve written on healthy cocktail options:

·         How To Make Healthy Cocktails: The Ultimate Guide

·         6 Crazy, Exotic Superfood Cocktails, Shakes & Mind-Bending Recipes

·         Wine Myths, Dark & Dirty Secrets of the Wine Industry, Wine Biohacks & More!

·         Dark & Dirty Secrets Of The Wine Industry, Four Ways To Make Wine Healthier, and What Kind Of Wine Fit People Should Drink

·         Why You Get A Hangover, And How To Get Rid Of A Hangover As Fast As Possible With The Best Natural Hangover Cures

As you can see, some of your top options are clear, clean vodka, organic wine, gluten-free beer, and natural fruit juices or club soda/sparkling water mixed with a high quality, low sugar alcohol such as tequila.

-Dilute your wine with sparkling mineral water. Watering down your wine can help to improve your hydration. If you’re like me, you can have your wine (as blasphemous as this may sound) over ice, with a touch of sparkling water and a squeeze of lemon and pinch of sea salt or electrolyte tablet. Bon appetit!

-Drink a glass of water (ideally mineral-rich, glass bottled water such as any of these options with a pinch of salt or one effervescent electrolyte tablet  for every drink you consume.

Before Bed:

-For alkalinity, hydration and minerals, mix one electrolyte tablet  or a pinch sea salt, juice from one lime or lemon, 1 heaping tablespoon blackstrap molasses, and 12 ounces water (again, preferably mineral or coconut). Drink 30 minutes before bed to give yourself enough time to urinate so that you don’t need to wake up in the middle of the night to pee. You can also consume another 200 mg of magnesium (such as powdered magnesium citrate) along with this water.

-Take 4 capsules activated charcoal to soak up toxins and alcohol.

-Take one packet of inhibitory neurotransmitters and sleep aids such as melatonin (I like this Sleep Remedy stuff). Alcohol can reduce melatonin secretion, which can contribute to early awakenings, and can also interfere with GABA production, one of your body’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitters.

The Morning After:

-Drink the same pre-bed drink from night before with the magnesium, molasses, etc. The molasses helps to regulate blood sugar, supplies iron and minerals, and further assists with detoxification pathways.

-Take 4 more capsules charcoal.

-Exercise or sauna. Go do anything that gets you sweating, preferably in a fasted state. My top technique is a 5 minute shower as 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot, 10 times through.

-Eat a breakfast high in choline and fats, such as eggs (with the yolk) cooked in butter with avocado and turmeric or cayenne, along with and a handful polyphenol rich blueberries.

-Finally, within this entire routine utilize light producing “biohacks” like the Human Charger, the ReTimer and other blue light producing (morning) and blue light blocking (night) strategies as much as possible. I have full details on how to do that at:

Everything You Need To Know About Sleep Cycles (And Four Ways To Hack Your Sleep Cycles)

The “Re-Timer” Effect: How To Re-Time Your Circadian Rhythms If You Wake Up Too Early Or Stay Up Too Late.

The Ultimate Guide To Using Light To Biohack Your Circadian Rhythms, Sleep Better & Beat Jet Lag Forever.

So that’s it! Remember to be responsible, and if you have more questions, comments or feedback how to stay fit when partying, then you can join the conversation at http://ift.tt/1xq4tz1. 

6 Tricks to Stop Heartburn

Stay Away from Over-the-Counter Treatments

Over-the-counter antacids such as Alka-Seltzer, Tums, Maalox, and Rolaids can offer immediate relief, but they don’t actually target the root of your heartburn problem. In fact, they can even create additional digestive issues, like constipation, diarrhea, cramps, and gas, and they may also interact with other medications you’re taking. If your heartburn flare-ups occur more than twice a week or endure for a couple weeks or more, contact your doctor for alternative treatments or try one of the remedies below.

Do an Acid Reflux Test

Acid reflux results when your body makes too much or too little HCl, the acid that breaks down food in your stomach. When you experience heartburn, do a little test by drinking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. If it alleviates the symptoms, this means your body isn’t producing enough HCl, and you’ll benefit from sipping pure apple cider vinegar mixed with water as you eat. If the test makes the symptoms worse, this means your body is producing too much HCl. Try drinking up to three teaspoons of baking soda daily, mixed with water in increments of a quarter to a half teaspoon per glass.

Change Your Eating Habits

Eating while talking, eating quickly, or drinking water while you eat are all culprits that prevent food from being broken down by the enzymes in your mouth and stomach. For better digestion and less heartburn, make mealtime a quiet time to sit down and chew your food thoroughly before swallowing.

Bitters for Heartburn

Alcohol is not particularly good for heartburn, but those bitters you bought don’t have to go to waste. Before you sit down for a meal, pour yourself a glass of water and add a few dashes of bitters (like the kind normally used for cocktails). One common botanical ingredient in Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters is gentian root, which stimulates the flow of stomach acids, bile, and saliva, getting your system ready for digestion.

Switch Your Sleeping Position

The esophagus connects to the stomach on the right side of your body. Acid reflux occurs when the food in your stomach presses against or flows into the entrance of the esophagus. To remedy this, simply sleep on your left side. Even if you’re not completely comfortable at first, the reduction in reflux symptoms will be worth it!

See also: Natural Remedies for Stomach Pain

Brew Some Fennel Tea

Fennel is an aromatic herb used in cooking that doubles as a healthy treatment for a range of digestive issues, including heartburn. Place a few teaspoons crushed fennel seeds inside a tea infuser, then add boiling water and steep for 7–10 minutes, covered. When crushed and soaked, fennel seeds release volatile oils that have been found to relieve heartburn.

For more all natural remedies from all around the internet, check out our Health and Beauty Tips board on Pinterest. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram! 

The suggestions offered here are for informational purposes only.  The author and publisher do not accept liability for damages arising from the use, attempted use, misuse, or application of any of the suggestions included on this website.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

3 Tactile Crafts Your Kids Will Love

Arts and crafts have always been a staple in our house. My 8 kids, at one time or another, have gone through many stages where creativity and all things glue and glitter took center stage over any other toys or items on their play time agenda.  In fact, three of my children who were severely speech-delayed thrived when they were able to get lost in a great hands-on project.

Preschoolers learn through their five senses. The senses of touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing are how young children explore the world around them. For toddlers and preschoolers, everything is new so experiencing new activities that are not part of their normal routines can be fascinating to them.

For most children, simply engaging in everyday play activities that allow for exploration, touch, and movement allows for healthy development of the tactile sense and as parents it is our job to help them explore their senses by providing appropriate activities for sensory play and learning.

Angie Dorrell, a NAEYC accreditation validator and former commissioner, puts this in perspective when she explains in an article titled Developing and Cultivating Skills Through Sensory Play  “Imagine trying to teach a group of four-year-olds about melting without allowing them to hold an ice cube as it melts in their hands or to watch cheese on bread in the microwave. As a grownup, imagine learning how to use a computer without actually sitting in front of a computer!” Ultimately and without a doubt, we need to experience certain properties with our own senses in order to comprehend and communicate important properties.

Mighty Mommy agrees wholeheartedly with Ms. Dorrell and has personally experienced the benefits of engaging kids in gooey, glittery activities over the years.  Here are three tried and true favorites that her children still enjoy today.

#1.  Ultimate Fluffy Slime

My 11-year old daughter has been concocting various versions of this very easy and fun to make ultimate fluffy slime for months now.  In fact, she’s gotten so good at making it that she’s sold it at local craft fairs and within our community.  There’s a wonderful DIY video on You Tube you can check out here.  Ultimate Fluffy Slime

Here are the ingredients and step by step instructions:

Ingredients:

1⁄2 cup (120 ml) school glue

1⁄2 cup (120 ml) shaving cream

Slightly more than 1 tablespoon (15 ml) cornstarch

Borax

1 cup (240 ml) hot water

Lotion

1⁄2 cup (120 ml) foaming body wash, or foaming soap (optional)

Food coloring (optional)

Instructions:

• Start off by making the borax solution. Take 1 teaspoon (4.9 ml) of borax powder and add it into 1 cup (240 ml) of hot water. Mix it until it's thoroughly dissolved and set aside for later use.
• Pour ½ cup (120 ml) of glue into a separate bowl.
• Add ½ cup (120 ml) of shaving cream into the same bowl as the glue.
• Add ½ cup (120 ml) of foaming body wash or soap (optional). Adding the foaming body wash or soap can make the slime fluffier, but it's okay to forgo this step.
• Mix until there are no lumps. The substance should have a thick and fluffy texture, similar to marshmallow cream.
• Add in slightly more than 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of cornstarch. The cornstarch helps to thicken the slime and allows it to retain its shape.
• The cornstarch isn't necessary for the recipe, but leaving it out will result in a thinner slime that won't hold its shape so much.  Mix thoroughly, but carefully. (Cornstarch is easy to spill.)
• Add lotion to your slime. To make your slime stretchier, add in two pumps of hand lotion to your slime.  It's okay to skip this step if you don't want to add it at the moment - it can always be added later.
• Add in food coloring. Too much of some kinds of food coloring can stain your hands or other surfaces, so if it's a potent one, start with just two drops. Mix it well until there are no more white streaks.
• Add 3 teaspoons of the borax mixture to your slime. Stir thoroughly, then continue adding the borax mixture 1-3 teaspoons at a time until the slime is at the consistency you’d like it to be.
• You will likely not use all of your borax mixture! It is important to not add too much of it or your slime will harden and break. The original recipe only uses 6-9 teaspoons (44 ml) of the borax solution.
• Knead the slime. Once the slime has clumped into a ball and is easy to remove from the bowl, place it on a flat surface and begin kneading it with your hands to thoroughly mix it.
• If the slime is still too sticky, add about 1 teaspoon (4.9 ml) of the borax mixture and carefully knead it in.
• Rub lotion into your slime for a stretchier slime. If your slime is fluffy, but not very stretchy, add a few pumps of lotion into your slime, rub it into the slime, and then knead it again. Repeat until your slime is as stretchy as you want it to be.
• It can take up to 16 extra pumps of lotion to reach the desired stretchiness, so don’t hesitate to be generous!

Now it's playtime.  This slime is stretchy, squishy, and fun to play with - it's great for keeping your hands busy!

---

#2:  Homemade Glowing Bouncy Ball

These rubber-like balls are so easy to make and so much fun to play with.  These are great for your younger kidss as well as tweens and teens.  To be honest, I’ve seen plenty of moms and dads have fun with these bouncy balls too.   There's a DIY video on You Tube you can check out here:  Glowing Bouncy Balls

Here are the ingredients and step by step instructions:

Ingredients:

1/2 Tsp of Borax

4 Tbsp of Corn Starch

4 Tbsp of warm water

Combine in a small bowl, mixing until all ingredients are dissolved

In a separate Bowl Combine:

1 Tbsp white glue

1 Tsp Fluorescent or Glow in the Dark Paint

Mix well until the paint is completely blended into the glue.  If you have homemade glow in the dark glue on hand you can also use that and skip the mixing.

Once the ingredients of both bowls are well mixed combine the two bowls.  Allow the ingredients to react by themselves for a minute before stirring them.  As you stir a sticky hard, slimy material will form.

Instructions:

• Take the material and continue to work it with your hands, rolling and shaping it into a ball.
• As you roll the material it will lose it's sliminess and become dry and rather hard, yet still moldable.
• Once you have formed 6 separate balls, break them apart.  You can break each ball into 6 pieces to make 6 Rainbow bounce balls.
• Take the 6 pieces and work the varying colors together.  Its fun to stretch and pull them into a rainbow before rolling them together to form the individual bouncing balls.

Notes about the bouncing ball from the website—Growing a Jeweled Rose

·         The material of the bouncing balls is very similar to slime only thicker.  The balls lose their shape if left to sit.

·         Placing your bounce ball material in the refrigerator before playing helps the balls to hold their shape longer.

·         These balls are different from store bought bouncing balls.  They do not bounce nearly as high nor do they bounce on all surfaces, but a big part of the fun is the experience of making the balls & experimenting with them.

·         When play time is over you can store your bounce ball material in a zip-lock bag in the fridge for future play. Next time you are ready to play just pull out the material and and re-form it to make bounce balls

·         The bounce ball material is also fun to play with in other ways. It is essentially a thick slime.   It can be used as a sensory material in it's own right, and glows brightly which is always a hit with kids.

·         Adults should handle the borax and/or closely supervise children.  Borax is not meant for consumption and should be kept out of the reach of small children who may be tempted to taste.  The same rule applies to the borax bounce ball material.  Please use your own judgement to determine if this activity is suitable for your child.

#3:  Homemade Floam

One of the hottest tactile crafts to hit the market over the past few years is a fun invention called Floam.  Floam is like slime with polystyrene beads in it, that kids can mold into shapes. You can sculpt with it or use it to coat other objects.  My kids have enjoyed Floam for the past few years, and I must confess, I love to dig my hands into it as well.

You can buy Floam at your local craft store, but it’s also very easy to make.  You can follow this you tube link for a guided visual recipe in addition to the directions listed here.

Floam Recipe

2 tsp of borax

1/2 cup of warm water & 1/4 cup of warm water- divided

2 oz of white school glue

1 & 1/3 cups of polystyrene beads (bean bag filler)

Optional: Food coloring or liquid watercolors if color is desired

Directions:

• In a bowl combine 2 teaspoons of borax with 1/2 cup of very warm water. 
• Mix until the borax is dissolved.
• In a separate bowl combine 1/4 cup of white school glue with 1/4 cup of water.  Add several drops of food coloring or liquid watercolors if color is desired.
• Once the ingredients of both bowls are mixed pour the glue mixture into a zip seal bag.  Add the polystyrene beads and then add the borax and water mixture and seal the bag. 
• Once sealed mix the ingredients of the bag well until the Floam is formed.
• You can use more or less of the borax and water mixture to create different Floam consistencies.  Use more for a stiffer and more mold-able Floam.  Use less to create a more slime-like Floam. 

Mixing the Floam is really fun for kids and is an activity all in itself

After lots of mixing you will have Floam!  To get vibrant coloring you will want to add a lot of food coloring.  You can also use liquid watercolors, which work really well! 

Floam can be stored in an air tight container for endless play, or kids can leave their creations out to dry and preserve their works of art.

What types of hands-on arts and crafts projects do your kids enjoy?  Share your thoughts in the comments section at http://ift.tt/1zMEe2L, post your ideas on the Mighty Mommy Facebook page. or email me at mommy@quickanddirtytips.com. Visit my family-friendly boards at http://ift.tt/1wyJKr5.

Be sure to sign up for the upcoming Mighty Mommy newsletter chock full of practical advice to make your parenting life easier and more enjoyable. 

How to Strengthen Your Nails

Give Them a DIY Hot Oil Treatment

Strengthen weak nails with warm baby oil: Pour the oil into a shallow microwave-safe bowl and nuke it until warm. When it’s cool enough to touch comfortably, soak your digits in the oil bath for a few minutes, then wipe them off with a clean towel. It will help moisturize and harden nails.

Scrap the Acetone

Do you have weak nails? Look for only non-acetone polish removers. That harsh chemical might swipe away nail polish easily, but it also sucks the natural oils from your nails and cuticles, leaving them dried out and damaged. The non-acetone removers are gentler, but they will take a little more work to dissolve your polish completely—a small trade-off for healthy, beautiful nails!

A Mayo Mani

That rich, creamy mayo in your fridge can also help nourish your nails! You can either “polish” your nails with the mayonnaise or dip your fingernails in a bowl of the stuff—after five minutes, remove and wash off.

Overnight Oil Treatment

Treat your nails and cuticles to a salon-worthy repair regimen using olive or coconut oil. Place a few tablespoons of oil in a microwave-safe bowl and heat until warm. Rub the warmed oil into your cuticles and coat the nails completely, then slip on a pair of cotton gloves. When you wake up the next morning, remove the gloves, and rinse your hands in the sink. Repeat as needed to moisturize and fortify your nails back to health.

Don’t Pick Your Polish!

Once your polish starts to chip, it can be hard not to pick at it and peel it off. However, picking at your nails also scrapes away the protective top layer of coating, which can leave your nails thinner, flimsier, and more prone to damage. To squash the urge to pick, simply remove your polish when it starts to crack and chip off.

Healthy Fats for Healthy Nails

Omega-3 fatty acids offer fantastic health benefits for the brain, heart, and immune system. But did you know they’re great for your skin and nails, too? If you aren’t eating them already, you can incorporate these fats into your diet by eating fatty fish like salmon, tuna, sardines, and anchovies, walnuts, flaxseeds and flaxseed oil, and kidney and pinto beans.

For more all natural remedies from all around the internet, check out our Health and Beauty Tips board on Pinterest. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram! 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Why Is It Important to Study Math?

Today is a very special episode of the Math Dude. To begin with, it’s episode 300. And because we humans have 10 fingers, we love to give special meaning to multiples of 10. But while that’s fun, it’s not the big news of the day or what makes this episode special to me. The big news is that this 300th episode is my last. Between my day job as a physics and astronomy professor and my day-and-night job of being “Dad” to an awesome and bustling 3-year-old, my free time for Math Dude duties has dwindled. And although I will surely miss all of you math fans, after seven years on the job, it's time to say goodbye.

But before I go, I have one more thing to say—and I think it’s the most important thing I’ve ever said on the show. It’s not something that I would (or even could) have said when I wrote the first episode seven years ago, because I wasn’t yet a father and so I wasn’t yet watching somebody discover the world for the first time. So please take a few minutes and listen, because I think this is something that everybody who has kids or might have kids or works with kids or might work with kids should know.

Here it is: Math is a playground … so play! Allow me to explain.

Math Is a Playground

A few days ago, I was at the park with my daughter watching her play. She’s at a very adventurous age and is constantly testing out every possible pathway to the top of what she has dubbed the “mermaid castle.” As she stretched her relatively tiny legs from rung-to-rung over what comparatively looked like a gaping chasm, I squiggled and squirmed as I struggled to keep myself from jumping up and lifting her over what I perceived to be a great danger. But she was careful, she didn’t fall, and she learned a bit about the world.

To be sure, playgrounds can be dangerous. So why do we let our kids play on them? Because playgrounds exercise their bodies. And not just in the sense of improving cardiovascular health or building strong bones and muscles. Those are all lovely side-effects, but what playgrounds do is provide kids with a relatively safe way to learn about using their bodies to navigate the world—how to balance, how to get from here-to-there, what to do when you get stuck. In other words, how to solve problems in the physical world.

As I was watching my daughter, I realized that math too is a playground. But it’s not a playground for our bodies, it’s a playground for our minds. In a way I’ve always known this to be true, but I’d never thought about it quite like this. And the thing is that this is pretty much the opposite of the way kids are commonly talked to and taught about math (and many of the sciences, too). All too often we’re taught that math is a tool—and only a tool—that we need to master in order to complete some boring but purportedly important task. We drill and drill our kids with arithmetic or factoring problems, but we never allow them to explore. And we never really allow them to play.

---

So Play!

But play is exactly what kids do best. It’s how they learn. And it’s what we need to allow them to do—both with their bodies on the physical playground and with their minds on the mathematical one. Many adults struggled with math as kids. Why? In many cases, it’s because their parents struggled with math. And why was that? Because their parents struggled with math. And so on. Which means it’s time to break the cycle.

Your child, or grandchild, or friend’s child, or student, or whoever it may be, does not need to struggle just because you did. Please don’t let your past struggles determine your child’s future struggles. Don’t say things like “I’m bad at math” or “I’m just not a math person” when talking to kids. When they hear such words they just hear that “math = pain,” and it gives them the easy excuse that “I too am bad at math.” But they aren’t bad at math. They’re bad at drills. And drills aren’t math. Math is the playground.

So let them play. And just like my daughter figuring out how to span that jungle gym chasm, let them work to get better at playing. Because even play requires work. Before children walk, they fall. But when our kids fall taking those initial shaky steps, we help them to their feet and we encourage them to keep trying. Eventually those steps lead them to the playground and to chasms like the one my daughter crossed a few days ago. So why is math any different? Why do we treat the mental playground differently than the physical one? I don’t honestly know, but I know that we shouldn’t. And I believe that if we change our attitude and encourage our children to play—both physically and mentally—we’ll help create the greatest generation of creative and critical thinkers the world has ever seen. Which is something we could use right about now.

That leaves us with one final but very important question: What does playing with math actually look like? What is the mathematical playground? The good news is it’s simply the world around you. Math is everywhere if you just stop and look. You can explore the patterns on sea shells. Play with tiles and shapes. Categorize objects in bizarre and creative ways. Do puzzles. Do origami. Study the patterns in music. Study the structure of trees. Paint. Knit. Create secret codes. Program computers. Be creative. And check out the many amazing resources on the web such as http://naturalmath.com and http://gdaymath.com that are there to help you, your kids, your grandkids, your students, and everybody else learn how to play with math. Because math is a playground…so go play!

Wrap Up

OK, that's all the math we have time for.

Thanks again to everybody who has tuned in over the past seven years to hear what I’ve had to say. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a ton along the way. Hopefully you’ve gotten as much out of it as I have (although I doubt that’s possible). If you want to follow along with me on my future adventures in life, you can always find me on Twitter.

For the last time, this is Jason Marshall with The Math Dude’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Make Math Easier. Thanks for reading, math fans.

Playground image from Shutterstock.

How to Deal with News Overload

I’m giving away my non-millennial age here, but remember when the internet was new and experts crowed about how much less time we’d spend searching out information and how much more time we’d spend, say, relaxing at the beach with our families? Easy access to news and information was supposed to save our time and sanity. Turns out … not so much.

Instead, the internet, a 24-hour news cycle, smartphones, and an unprecedented political climate are all conspiring to make us feel lousy. This week, regardless of your political leanings, we’ll break down four problems with today’s news and three things you can do to save your sanity.

Problem #1: Sheer volume. First, the quantity of news is utterly massive. According to Richard Saul Wurman, founder of the TED conferences and author of Information Anxiety, just one New York Times is packed with more information than the average nineteenth-century individual encountered in a lifetime.

These days, we scroll through the news before we get out of bed, absorb the world through the radio during breakfast, get pinged with updates and alerts all day long, and then tune into the late-night shows to try to muster a laugh about it all. It’s exhausting. The news is even broadcast in airplanes—we can’t escape, even at the equivalent altitude of Mt. Everest.

Finally, the news doesn’t come at us only from mainstream news organizations. These days, for better or worse, anyone can be a reporter. We get news from so many sources: niche websites, blogs, or even140 characters at a time. We’re left to filter the mass for ourselves, which again, is exhausting.

Problem #2: Divided attention. The second problem is how we consume the news. How often do you sit down to watch a news show or read the paper without simultaneously doing something else? If you’re like me, not often. Usually, we’re multitasking: scrolling through online news while getting ready for the day, checking Facebook during lunch, or watching the news shows while talking on the phone.

All this multitasking results in divided attention. And our brains are not designed to do this. Writer Linda Stone coined the term continuous partial attention to describe our constantly fractured mental state. 

By contrast, focused attention—the kind of that’s most productive—essentially entails ignoring whatever other stimuli are vying for our attention. But put us in front of a website littered with breaking news alerts and clickbait, and focused attention doesn’t stand a chance.

---

Problem #3: Anxiety. Depending on your political leanings and demographics, the news these days may be causing a trickle—or a torrent—of anxiety.

Now, news is designed to be bad. Indeed, there’s no story in saying that things are fine and all is well. But when the news leaves you feeling personally attacked or endangered, it causes anxiety, not to mention possible feelings of helplessness and hopelessnes, all of which take a toll.

Problem #4: Anger. Finally, so much of the news these days is angry. Headlines include the verbs “lash out,” “attack,” and “berate.” Veins bulge from commentators’ foreheads. Twitter feuds are daily occurrences. All this anger makes us feel upset, afraid, and intimidated, not to mention angry right back at the news.

So what to do about all this? Now, I won’t try to tell you how to deal with the content of the news, but here are three things you can do to manage the dizzying effects.

Tip #1: Check if you’re still breathing. No, really. Linda Stone of “continuous partial attention” fame has coined another phrase: email apnea, the unconscious suspension of breathing when dealing with your inbox.

This phenomenon also happens with the news. When you scroll through a news site, do you unconsciously hold your breath? Are you breathing fully and steadily, or shallowly, from your throat and chest instead of from your belly? If that’s the case, try the opposite. It’s hard—your body sees the news as a threat, it’s not going to want to relax when it’s in front of you. Which brings us to…

Tip #2: Designate “news time.” News takes up as much time as we allow it, so if we find ourselves taking the clickbait whenever we check email or the TV is always on in the background, we’re going to find ourselves sucked down a vortex hole of news. 

But you don’t have to think about news as all-or-nothing. While it may be tempting to kill your television or accidentally-on-purpose dunk your smartphone in the toilet just to get some relief, consider an alternative: “news time.” 

This means designating specific times to consume news to help regulate your intake.  To do this, designate one or two—or however many, as long as they’re contained—times a day you’ll take in the news. Perhaps over breakfast, or during your commute, or after work. Consider it your “briefing.” Think of it as doing one daily workout rather than running yourself ragged, or eating three meals a day rather than stuffing your face all day long.

If you’re tempted to look when you’re supposed to be doing something else, punt it until news time. The news will still be there, believe me.

To push this even further, make an executive decision not to use devices on certain days, or at certain times of the day. Maybe you won’t check your emails at all on Saturdays, or after 8:00 PM during the week. Maybe you’ll only watch TV three nights a week.

Whatever limits you choose, they will likely feel wrong at first. Especially if you expect to feel instant relief when you turn off your news feed, you may instead feel anxious—indeed, sometimes not knowing is worse than knowing. Be patient with this feeling. Let it pass. I promise it will dissipate, but give it time.

Tip #3: Filter ruthlessly. When the news threatens to drown you, it’s important to bail your metaphorical boat by blocking out inessential incoming information. Cancel subscriptions you don’t read or need. Use email filters to reduce unwanted junk news, and think twice before submitting your email address on a website, as it may be sold to other sites that will infiltrate your inbox with more news. And unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe.

In a future episode, we’ll tackle how to deal with the content—what to do when the news gets you down. But to wrap up today, while can’t choose the tenor or the pace of the news, we can choose how to respond. And by doing that, we can take back control.

Get more savvy by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or get the episode delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the newsletter.

2017 National Grammar Day Haiku Contest

Fire up your fingers! It's time for the National Grammar Day haiku contest. It's becoming something of an annual event—but we don't like to commit, so we aren't giving it a number.

In collaboration with the American Copy Editors Society, the contest takes place on Twitter, where you submit your haiku-like poem by tweeting it with the hashtag #GrammarDay.

The haiku must be about grammar, usage, or langauge in some way. Entries must be posted by 11:59 PM PST Thursday, March 2. Judges will deliberate on March 3, and the winners will be announced on National Grammar Day, March 4.

To get more of a sense of the contest and to find out why these are only fake haiku, please visit the page with the 2016 haiku contest winners.

 

Millis Jefferis: Expert of Destruction

The first thing people noticed about Millis Jefferis was his extraordinary physique. He looked like a gorilla, with ‘a leathery looking face, a barrel-like torso and arms that reached nearly to the floor’.

The second thing they noticed – if and when they got to speak with him – was that he had a brain like lightening. Jefferis was a maestro of applied mathematics and a genius at structural engineering. He had built the most extraordinary bridges, viaducts and roads.

But he one other talent that was known to only a handful of people. He was the country’s greatest expert in destruction. Millis Jefferis knew better than anyone else how to blow up a bridge, a viaduct or a power station. And in time of war, that made him very valuable indeed. 

Jefferis joined the top secret guerrilla unit, MIR (Military Intelligence Research) in the spring of 1939; he was to be MIR’s expert on explosives. When the office secretary, Joan Bright, was first introduced to him, she was as startled as everyone else by his strange looks and abrupt manner.

His jacket was crumpled and his trousers creased: the overall impression was of someone with a complete disdain for military etiquette. His brother-in-law thought he looked ‘more like a race-course bookie’ than a soldier.  Joan wasn’t so sure. She took one look at his ruddy cheeks and declared that ‘he could never have belonged to any other branch of the army but the Royal Engineers."

To find out what happened next, listen to the full episode of our podcast, Unknown History, in the top right hand player of this page or on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Plus, connect with Giles on Twitter and Facebook

----

This post was roughly excerpted from Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Giles Milton. You can pick up a copy today on Amazon, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, and Booksamillion. 

Double Dactyl Poetry

Next week is National Grammar Day once again! In what has become an NGD tradition, grammar lovers have been using Twitter to submit their entries in the annual National Grammar Day haiku contest. Actually, like this podcast, these haiku cover not only grammar, but also word usage, punctuation, pronunciation, and writing style. That’s OK, though; we cast a wide net here, and everything that’s both interesting and language-related is fair game. 

This year, though, I’d like to invite you to work with another short form of poetry, called the double dactyl. 

What’s a Dactyl?

To understand what a double dactyl is, you first need to know what a dactyl is. It’s not an extinct flying reptile; that’s a pterodactyl. However, if you translate the Greek roots that make up pterodactyl, you get “wing finger.” So dactyl means “finger,” but what do fingers have to do with poetry? True, you do use your fingers to write poetry, but that’s true of poetry in general. The more relevant answer is that a dactyl is a sequence of three syllables: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. For example, the word holiday is a dactyl as are genesis and poetry. Are you getting the rhythm?

And what do fingers have to do with sequences of one stressed syllable and two unstressed syllables? In metrical notation, stressed syllables are often written as a dash, and unstressed syllables as shorter, bent lines. Represented this way, apparently a dactyl reminded someone of a finger: The dash for the stressed syllable is the first, longer knuckle, and the two shorter knuckles are the bent lines for the unstressed syllables. 

What Are the Double Dactyl Poetry Rules?

The form of poem called the double dactyl has two stanzas of four lines each, in which the first three lines each are made up of just two dactyls, and the fourth line has a single dactyl followed by one more stressed syllable. For example, some acceptable fourth lines could be Hullabaloo, or Give me a break!

---

Aside from the metrical description, there are three other requirements for a double dactyl. The one that makes National Grammar Day particularly suitable for a double dactyl is that the topic of a double dactyl has to be a two-dactyl proper noun. Not just any proper noun fits this description. Some that do fit include Emily Dickinson, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ivan the Terrible. And as you may have noticed by now, so does National Grammar Day! So here it is, a double dactyl composed especially for next week’s august occasion:

Holy infinitives,

National Grammar Day!

Grammatomaniacs, 

Time to geek out!

Syntax, semantics, and

Strange ambiguities—

This is the fun stuff that

Grammar’s about.

In case you’d like to try writing your own double dactyl, whether it’s about National Grammar Day or something or someone else, I’ll explain the rest of the requirements. They can be found in the introduction to the book Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, which was edited by John Hollander and Anthony Hecht, the inventor of the double dactyl. That’s right—unlike haiku, limericks, or sonnets, the double dactyl has a known inventor. In the book, Hecht explains that he invented the form in 1951, when he was looking for a poem in which the word Schistosomiasis could take up an entire line all by itself. Schistosomiasis, by the way, is a parasitic disease spread by snails. (SHIS-to-so-MY-a-sis)

In fact, this word brings us to the second requirement for a double dactyl: At least one line must consist of a single, double-dactylic word. Furthermore, just to make things more difficult, Hecht and Hollander declared that no double-dactylic word should be used in more than one double dactyl poem. I won’t bore you with a list of all the no-longer-eligible words I found in the double dactyls in Jiggery Pokery, but I’ll put a list of them on the transcript for anyone who’s interested.  

---

As far as I know, the word grammatomaniac has not yet been used in a double dactyl. In fact, I even thought I had invented the word, on the model of grammatological and grammatophobia. Then I searched for it, and found that it was coined by H. L. Mencken in 1922, when he wrote: 

There are fanatics who love and venerate spelling as a tom cat loves and venerates catnip. There are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; specialists in an objective case that doesn’t exist in English; strange beings otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under gastro-enteritis. (H. Kl. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series, Volume 3, 1922, pp. 245-246)

To Mencken’s coinage, I would add that grammatomaniacs can also be people who are just plain interested in how languages work. In fact, in an earlier draft of the poem, I called them language enthusiasts instead of grammatomaniacs, but that’s no good. Although language enthusiasts does consist of two dactyls, it’s two words, not one. It has to be one word! The rules are very clear about this. Actually, Hecht and Hollander also specify that the double-dactylic single word should be in the second four lines, and ideally in the second-to-last line, but I just couldn’t make that work.

Here are some tips for finding or inventing your double-dactylic word: 

1. Take advantage of long suffixes. The suffixes –ability and -ological have four syllables all by themselves, so you only need two to turn them into words like irritability and dermatological. 
2. Take advantage of kind of long suffixes, The suffixes -arity, -atical, -ational, -arian, -ality, -istical, -ography, -ology, and -torial are all dactyls, so you just need to find another dactyl that can combine with them.
3. Take advantage of two-syllable suffixes. Don’t forget about suffixes such as -able or -ible, as in terrible, and -ian, as in contrarian. 
4. Remember the suffix -ly. This suffix can turn an adjective into an adverb, and sometimes it can do so without even adding a syllable. The following pairs all have the same number of syllables: unjustifiable, unjustifiably; dermatological, dermatologically.
5. Take advantage of your prefixes, especially two-syllable ones. These prefixes are often borrowed from Latin or Greek, such as hetero-, hyper-, hypo-, meta-, mono-, neo-, and poly-. The negative prefixes non- and un- are useful for putting a stressed syllable at the beginning of a word.
6. Look for Latin or Greek bound roots. What’s a bound root, you ask? Take the double-dactyl word pharmacologically. You may recognize the root pharmaco- and figure, correctly, that this word has something to do with drugs. But on its own, pharmaco- is not a word. Linguists call it a bound root. Similarly, the noun grammar can stand on its own, but the dactylic bound root grammato- has to be part of a longer word.

---

In addition to being about a person or thing with a double-dactylic name, and having at least one line that consists of a single, double-dactylic word, there’s one more requirement for a double dactyl: The first line has to be nonsense—for example, jiggery-pokery, the title of Hecht and Hollander’s book. They should have titled the book higgledy-piggledy, because that was by far the most-used piece of double-dactylic nonsense in their poems. They only used jiggery-pokery once. Occasionally they used pattycake, pattycake, and one poem in the book uses pocketa pocketa, which is an allusion to James Thurber’s short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” If you’re curious about that allusion, read the story; it’s a classic. I’ve also seen hickory dickory in double dactyls elsewhere. The name Babbitty Rabbitty in J. K. Rowling’s Tales of Beedle the Bard has the distinction of being both a suitable subject for a double dactyl and a piece of double-dactylic nonsense. I bent the rule about starting with a line of nonsense, because I didn’t like completely throwing away a line by not having it carry any meaning. Plus, I was sick of reading higgledy-piggledy. Instead, I figured an exclamation would be close enough to nonsense, and went with Holy infinitives!

So much for the anatomy of a double dactyl. Since I’ve spotlighted syntax and semantics in the fifth line of my double dactyl, this is a good time to give a quick and dirty distinction between the two. Syntax is about the structure of a string of words, and semantics is about the meaning. Sometimes, the same string of words can have different invisible structures, which correspond to different meanings. These are the “strange ambiguities” of the sixth line of my poem. A good example is the ambiguity of Make me a sandwich, the classic grammar joke that was the subject of episode 442. Do I want someone to assemble a sandwich for me or turn me into a sandwich? There are also stranger ambiguities, in which you get multiple meanings even without different structures. For example, there’s the sentence Every year, somebody’s dog gets killed by a deer, which Gretchen McCulloch wrote about in episode 422. It had eight possible meanings! And though opinions can differ, my opinion is that this is the fun stuff about grammar.

Tell us what you think grammar’s all about in your own double dactyl! Leave it in a comment on this page, or tweet a screenshot of it to us at @GrammarGirl and @LiteralMinded with the hashtag #GrammarDay.

Neal Whitman is an independent researcher and writer on language and grammar. He blogs at literalminded.wordpress.com, and tweets @LiteralMinded. 

Single-word double dactyls used in Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls. 

antediluvian
anthropomorphically
balletomania
characteristically
cosmetological
decalcomania
erotogenesis
etymologically
gubernatorial
gynecological
heliocentrically
heterosexual
historiography
hypocoristically
incomprehensible
irritability
Machiavellian
metalinguistically
mythopoetically
Neo-Dravidian
non-navigational
organizational
parachromatically
parliamentarian
parthenogenesis
philolinguistically
plenipotentiary
polysyllabically
practability
propagandistically
psycholinguistical
quasiacceptable
sesquipedalian
uncomplimentary
un-Dostoevskian
ungeriatrically
unjustifiable
unmetaphysically
unsuitability
valedictorian

Hand image courtesy of Shutterstock. Quill image courtesy of Shutterstock.

What is Crohn's Disease?

 

Do you suffer from chronic diarrhea? Diarrhea is quite a common symptom – almost all of us have experienced it at some time in our lives. However, there’s a subset of people, mostly young, who suffer from chronic diarrhea which might actually be caused by Crohn’s Disease. They may not even know it!

What is Crohn’s Disease

Crohn’s Disease is an auto-immune disorder of the gastrointestinal (GI) system -- which means that the body produces specific proteins that it erroneously regards as foreign and attacks the lining of the digestive tract. This creates little ulcerations, causing it to occasionally bleed. It can affect the GI lining from mouth to anus, commonly including both the small and large intestines. Crohn’s is often genetic and occurs in those with a family history of it.

Symptoms of Crohn’s Disease

Symptoms of Crohn’s Disease often appear in adolescence or in the 20’s – it’s often the young people that doctors think of when diagnosing Crohn’s. Because Crohn’s Disease attacks the GI tract, the symptoms are often related to the digestive system:

• Diarrhea

• Abdominal pain

• Bloody stools

• Fatty droplets in stool

• Fistulas (little “tunnels” between the colon and other organs nearby, such as the bladder)

• Anal fissures (small superficial openings on the surface of the anus)

• Recurrent oral ulcers

• Anemia (from bleeding)

• Vitamin B12 deficiency (from abnormal absorption in the gut)

The proteins that attack the GI tract can also attack other organs, and therefore can cause:

• Arthritis

• Eye redness

• Liver disease

• Skin rashes

As well as general symptoms such as:

• Fatigue

• Weight loss

• Fever

What Else Could It Be?

When first seeing patients with similar symptoms, doctors need to make sure it’s not something else that can mimic Crohn’s. Because of the overlap in symptoms, patients with Crohn’s can often be misdiagnosed with the following disorders:

• Ulcerative Colitis: Both Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis fall under the heading of “Inflammatory Bowel Disease” (IBD), in which the GI lining is inflamed However, Ulcerative Colitis occurs only in colon, and not in the small intestine as it does in Crohn’s. Bloody diarrhea is also much more common in Ulcerative Colitis, as is cancer of the colon, unfortunately.

• Lactose Intolerance: Patients with lactose intolerance often experience diarrhea after eating dairy. Make sure to listen to my previous podcast on lactose intolerance to learn more.

• Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): Those with IBS also battle chronic diarrhea, however it is often alternating with constipation. The colonoscopy in patients with IBS often comes back normal.

How to Test for Crohn’s Disease

Doctors often run a routine blood test while investigating for Crohn’s, including a test for anemia. In addition, a stool test to check for bleeding may be considered, since microscopic bleeding may occur that is not visible to the eye. 

The mainstay of the diagnosis, however, is endoscopy. An endoscopy is a procedure in which a doctor inserts a camera into the GI tract (via the mouth or the rectum) and biopsies the lining of the intestinal tract to confirm the diagnosis. A diagnosis may entail having a colonoscopy, upper endoscopy, or capsule endoscopy of the small intestines.

Treatment of Crohn’s Disease

Crohn’s Disease is often a recurrent disease, unfortunately.Only up to 20% have a remission after the very first episode. So for many people, these are flare ups that come and go throughout their lives.

Crohn’s can be treated in various ways:

• Decrease the Inflammation: Certain medications that calm down the immune system and steroids are often used to reduce the inflammation in the GI tract.

• Kill the bacteria in the gut: Antibiotics are often prescribed during flare ups to calm down the GI tract as well.

• Surgery:  As many as 80% of those with Crohn’s Disease unfortunately end up requiring surgery of the intestine at some point in their lives. This means cutting out a specific segment of the intestines, or what’s called an “bowel resection.”

• Avoid smoking: Smoking has been shown to exacerbate Crohn’s Disease.

• Avoid anti-inflammatory drugs: Medications such as ibuprofen seem to worsen symptoms since they can further irritate the lining of the GI tract.

Resources for Crohn’s Disease

http://ift.tt/1ozAYHB

http://ift.tt/oG5nC1

http://ift.tt/q4Ue7t

Don’t forget to join the House Call Doctor’s Facebook and Twitter pages, where you can read more of my health related tips!

Please note that all content here is strictly for informational purposes only. This content does not substitute any medical advice, and does not replace any medical judgment or reasoning by your own personal health provider. Please always seek a licensed physician in your area regarding all health related questions and issues.

 Stomach image courtesy of Shutterstock