Author Archives: Edward Brownlee

Autophagy

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Autophagy is your body’s rejuvenation process that can be turned on by fasting.

Autophagy is our body’s natural recycling process, a system our bodies have used for centuries to survive. It is our body’s way of renewing itself. It involves the breakdown of old, damaged cells and renews them into healthier versions of themselves.

Over time, our cells grow old and become more susceptible to damage, which leads to oxidative stress in the body. This occurs when the body is exposed to harmful substances in the environment called free radicals, which can increase the risk of disease and accelerate aging.

Autophagy’s sole purpose in life is to reverse this negative process as much as possible. It is your friend, and is a protective mechanism to preserve the health of your cells and your entire body.

During autophagy, cells identified as being damaged are broken down, destroyed, and parts of them are reused to generate healthy, more high-functioning cells.

This process needs to occur frequently and long enough to achieve its intended benefits. Fortunately, there are ways to induce autophagy more regularly to support healthy aging and longevity.[1] One of the best ways is through fasting.

Autophagy Fasting Benefits

There are multiple autophagy benefits to health, and fasting is one way to help you achieve these benefits more often.[2] This is the case with both intermittent fasting and prolonged fasting methods.

Denying your cells of nutrients when fasting gives your body (and liver) a break from digestion and allows it to focus on cell renewal.

It then begins to locate the damaged cells that need to go, recreating them to become stronger.

Here are a few possible autophagy benefits associated with fasting:[4]

  • Decreases oxidative stress that leads to early aging.
  • Destroys damaged cells that can cause disease.
  • Bolsters the removal of toxins from the body.
  • Improves hormonal balance.
  • Decreases inflammation.
  • Boosts skin health by increasing collagen production.
  • Supports proper nerve communication and function, helping your body work more efficiently.
  • Promotes the conversion of your food and nutrients into needed energy.

When it comes to your own autophagy fasting timeline and method, it’s important to know yourself and weigh out the pros and cons of starting an autophagy diet plan like fasting.

How to Induce Autophagy By Fasting

Here are a few tips and best practices if you want to start fasting to stimulate autophagy.

Fast for at least 24 hours – While the exact fasting schedule to stimulate autophagy is not yet set in stone, your body needs some time to prepare for autophagy. While some experts say it’s possible to induce autophagy after fasting for 14–18 hours, most research points to at least 24 hours to begin to see a notifiable autophagy effect. For this reason, at least a 24-hour fast with is generally recommended to stimulate autophagy.[5]

Consider extended fasting – It’s possible that more extended fasts of at least 24–48 hours may lead to even bigger autophagic activity. However, this is not easy or necessarily safe for many people to follow.[6] Extended fasting can be especially dangerous for those who take insulin or other medications to manage blood sugar, as this can result in hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).

Add certain foods to speed up the process – There are a few foods you can try to help support the autophagy process during your eating windows. This includes coffee, green tea, turmeric, and polyphenols called ellagitannins and ellagic acid that promote health.[7] These polyphenols break down into Urolithin A

There are other effective (and safe!) ways to induce autophagy that don’t involve drastically changing your diet or eating schedule.

Calorie Restriction

A continuous calorie restriction can provide the same autophagy fasting benefits by “starving” your cells of calories on a more regular basis. You don’t need to go super low on calories to achieve autophagy – just reducing by 10-40% of your maintenance calorie needs can be effective.[8]

To achieve this safely and effectively through this method, it’s best to work with a registered dietitian for guidance.

Exercise

If you need a little extra push to exercise more, let the healthy-aging benefits of autophagy get you going on those unmotivated days. Physical activity has been shown to induce autophagy in muscles, especially after higher intensity exercise like interval training or running.[9]

However, even more prolonged, moderate-intensity exercise like walking produces these same autophagy benefits – you may just have to do it for longer.

Autophagy is your body’s way of self-preserving to delay the aging process, optimize health, and protect you from disease. You hold the tools to induce it more often through your daily habits like fasting, calorie restriction, and exercise.

References:

  1. Nakamura S, Yoshimori T. Autophagy and Longevity. Mol Cells. 2018 Jan 31;41(1):65-72. doi: 10.14348/molcells.2018.2333. Epub 2018 Jan 23. PMID: 29370695; PMCID: PMC5792715.
  2. https://www.timelinenutrition.com/blog/autophagy-and-fasting-unleash-the-power-for-optimal-health

Tax Everyone But Me – The Rich

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Congress! Congress! “Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me. Tax the guy behind the tree.” ~ U.S. Senator Russell B. Long

Regarding taxing the other guy, “Most people have the same philosophy about taxes,” says U.S. Senator Russell B. Long, (D-LA), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which handles tax legislation.

“All taxes discourage something. Why not discourage bad things like pollution rather than good things like working or investment?” – Lawrence Summers

Making federal tax policy is hard work because virtually any path chosen by Congress will have different impacts on sectors, regions, and tax payers no matter how hard one tries to make it as even-handed as possible.

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates.” – John F. Kennedy

In recent years, governments seem to have even stopped trying for tax policy neutrality and instead have embarked on tax policy competitiveness—using it as a bribe to entice companies to locate in their territory and as a weapon to punish companies that are either out of favor or attractive targets for easy money, writes William Reinsch, the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” – Winston Churchill

Recently, the European Union has begun to weaponize its tax policy as a search for easy money from foreign (almost entirely American)—marks and a way to disadvantage foreign companies in areas where the Europeans are having a hard time competing. The best current example of this is EU efforts, as well as those of individual member states, to impose a digital services tax (DST), according to Reinsch.

References:

  1. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/04/tax-tree/
  2. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dont-tax-me-dont-tax-thee-tax-fellow-behind-tree

 

Investing Advice

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Investor Stan Druckenmiller says one of his mentors taught him two crucial things:

• Never invest in the present; look 18 months out.
• The central bank moves the market, not earnings.

“If you invest in the present, you’re going to get run over!”

Compound interest – By saving $10, you are really saving $100 or $1,000 [because of the future compound growth of the $10], and this compounding growth requires a little wait and patience.

https://twitter.com/joincommonstock/status/1661902483147612160?s=61&t=8ACS6bcx2PFMgdLuBnL1JQ

Viktor Frankl and the Search for Meaning in Life

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“Striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.”  ~ Viktor Frankl

As Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.”  He developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning “reason” or “principle”).

While observing the brutality and degradation within the Nazi concentration camps during WWII, he theorized that those Jewish concentration camp prisoners who tended to survive the experience, were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of control over their environment, and had some meaning and purpose in their lives.

These prisoners with meaning and who retained a ’sense of control’ were more likely to survive the dehumanizing experience; he himself tried to recreate the manuscript of a book he had been writing before his capture.

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except for one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” ~ Viktor Frankl

According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:

  • “Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others,
  • Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and
  • Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.”

He observed:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.”

For Frankl, joy was an important byproduct of finding meaning in life. He points to studies where there is marked difference in life spans between “trained, tasked animals,” i.e., animals with a purpose, than “taskless, jobless animals.”

In his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. He concludes that “without meaning, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions.”

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” ~ Viktor Frankl

In “Man’s Search For Meaning”, he says for a person to be happy they need 3 things:

1. Someone to love (relationship).
2. Something to do (meaning and purpose).
3. Something to look forward to (vision and hope).

References:

  1. https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/viktor-frankl/
  2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/mans-search-meaning

Always Believe in Yourself

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“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”. ― Norman Vincent Peale.

When you believe in yourself, it can help you achieve your goals, manifest your dreams, and increase your well-being.

At the core of Dr. Peale’s message was a call to take charge of your life.

  • “Believe that problems do have answers. Believe that they can be overcome. Believe that they can be handled. And finally, believe that you can solve them.”
  • “Change your thoughts and you can change the world.”
  • “When obstacles or difficulties arise, the positive thinker takes them as creative opportunities. He welcomes the challenge of a tough problem and looks for ways to turn it to advantage.”
  • “Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.”

Source: https://fee.org/articles/norman-vincent-peale-s-timeless-advice-take-charge-of-your-own-life-first/

ChatGPT to Explain AI

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Recently, I asked ChatGPT to explain artificial intelligence and ChatGPT to a novice. Below is the response:

”AI stands for artificial intelligence which is the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and learn like humans¹.

ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI¹ which uses natural language processing capabilities to interact with humans³. It was built on a family of large language models (LLMs) collectively known as GPT-3⁴.

ChatGPT can be used for a variety of tasks such as answering questions, generating text, and even writing code⁵.”

Image

References:

(1) Demystifying ChatGPT for Government Leaders | LMI. https://www.lmi.org/blog/demystifying-chatgpt-government-leaders.
(2) ChatGPT: 30 incredible ways to use the AI-powered chatbot. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/chatgpt-30-incredible-ways-to-use.
(3) ChatGPT explained: everything you need to know about the AI chatbot. https://www.techradar.com/news/chatgpt-explained.
(4) ChatGPT explained: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot …. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/chatgpt.
(5) AI And You: How ChatGPT Can Take Your Career To The Next Level – Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/03/15/ai-and-you-how-chatgpt-can-take-your-career-to-the-next-level/.
(6) ChatGPT for dummies. I asked chatgpt to explain me chatgpt… | by …. https://medium.com/geekculture/chatgpt-for-dummies-6dd542c60cf9.

Quotes

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“Quality of life is having the freedom to make choices that are not fear based. Whether it’s the ability to choose the kinds of projects I want to take on and can learn from, or the ability to take a month off to travel. Freedom to choose is the ultimate luxury.”

~ Interior designer Danielle Colding on the ultimate luxury

Source: In the Company of Women​

Magnesium

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Magnesium helps your body function properly, especially as it pertains to your muscular system, bones, and nervous system.

Magnesium matters.

  • 7 out of 10 Americans are below the Dietary Reference Intake for Magnesium, according to a USDA Agricultural Research Report
  • Sufficient magnesium intake is important in helping to maintain the function of the heart, muscles, and nervous system, support learning and memory performance in aging adults,  absorb and utilize potassium and calcium properly
  • Magnesium is also critical for athletes’ endurance in order to help maintain electrolyte and energy levels.
  • Adults with certain health concerns or who are taking medication may need magnesium supplementation. Magnesium can be found in foods such as green and leafy vegetables, halibut, nuts, such as almonds, and sunflower seeds.

Magnesium is a mineral that’s essential for making proteins and promotes normal nerve cell communication, muscle contraction, and a normal heart rhythm.

It’s estimated that up to 70 percent to 90 percent of the population are magnesium deficient, according to some findings.

This means that the majority of people living in industrialized nations, even many who think they eat a mostly “balanced diet,” are missing out on the many benefits of magnesium. These include its ability to help manage pain, decrease digestive issues and support quality sleep.

Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the body and assists with more than 300 bodily reactions that occur constantly. About 50% of magnesium is found in bones, and the other half is divided among cells that make up your tissues and organs.*

A mere 1% of the magnesium in your body circulates in the bloodstream, but that small fraction doesn’t accurately convey magnesium’s importance there, as the body makes maintaining blood magnesium levels a high priority.*

Magnesium is important because it assists in the movement of calcium and potassium across cell membranes, magnesium plays a mighty role in promoting normal nerve cell communication, muscle contraction, and a normal heart rhythm. Magnesium also helps to maintain the strength of cell membranes and bones. Diets that provide recommended levels of magnesium are considered beneficial for bone health.*

Magnesium is an essential mineral that’s very important for many aspects of health, since it’s involved in hundreds of bodily functions, including:

  • Blood pressure regulation
  • Protein synthesis
  • Energy production
  • Blood sugar control
  • Digestive processes like moving stools through the intestine
  • Regulation of heartbeat rhythms
  • Neurotransmitter functions, including those involved in sleep and mood stabilization
  • Balance of nitric oxide in the body
  • Growth and development in babies and children
  • Functions of nerves, muscles and tissue
  • Production of stomach acid

Source: https://www.centrum.com/learn/vitamins-minerals/magnesium/