Tip #63: Quantify yourself (a little, at least)

The beach where I take many of my daily walks

About a month ago, I bought myself a Jawbone UP, which is an activity tracker that you wear on your wrist. I decided to get it because Gym-Pact, the iPhone app which motivates you to work out and which I have been using since January 2012, started accepting 10,000 steps as a daily workout, tracked by the Jawbone UP. From my readings about bone building exercises, I knew that you need to move more than just 30 minutes a day if you want to make a difference in your density, so I felt I had to move a bit more.

Today, I'm happy to report that I love my Jawbone UP. It not only tracks your steps, but you can also configure it to do different things, like let you know that you have been sitting down for a certain amount of time (I have set it up for 30 minutes), wake you up within a time window when it feels like your sleep is not too deep, track your sleep, etc.

And I also want to share a very short talk (under 6:00 minutes) about the new phenomenon known as the "quantified self," which fits well with my Jawbone UP and Gym Pact obsessions. If you haven't heard about this, it is the idea that we can now measure and track many aspects of our lives (food we eat, time we sleep or exercise, etc.) thanks to smartphones and smart devices and apps. We can then use all the data we collect about ourselves to improve, in theory, our life.

Of course, this can be taken overboard, like this woman who wears 21 fitness trackers, but I think that judiciously used, these trackers can definitely help us improve any aspect of our lives. Here's the talk:

For more information, here are some more links:

• A comprehensive article from the New York Times, The Data Driven Life, written by the same journalist who gives the TED talk.
• An NPR segment, Self-tracking Apps to Help you Quantify Yourself, which mentions many interesting apps.
• A very intriguing website called Personal Experiments, in which you can sign up, devise your own experiment (say, take a specific supplement) and track your health with and without it, as well as share the results with other people who may be doing something similar.

I have to say that I've discovered that 10,000 steps is a long time walking! Many days I (accompanied often by my husband, sometimes the kids and friends too) go to Seaside Park, a beach near our house - in the picture - to complete the required steps. But, although it is time away from my busy day, I am finding some added benefits: the peace and serenity of the ocean fill my heart, I breath calmness, feel close to nature and, on top of all that, I'm sleeping much better. 

Do you use any of these apps or trackers? Let me know!

Tip #62: Learn (or relearn) another language

Well, it took me some time, considering my job is precisely teaching a foreign language, but here it is. I'm going to tell you how new advances in neuroscience are showing that the brains of bilingual individuals are "nimbler, quicker, better able to deal with ambiguities, resolve conflicts and even resist Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia longer" (From TIME, How the Brain Benefits from Being Bilingual). And, according to this other article,  The Bilingual Brain, it seems that the effects on the brain of knowing another language help children be able to focus more and concentrate longer during school tasks, but the benefits are also extended to adults, not only because of the already mentioned delay in dementia and Alzheimer's but also because bilingual adults seem to have a more dense gray matter, which helps them process language and communication better. One possible explanation, according to the same article,  is that bilinguals may get more oxygen and blood to the brain and keep nerve connections healthy, which, in my view, could possibly benefit the whole person.

And today I'm going to share with you a TED talk, which is not really about all this, but it is still fascinating. It describes a start up called Duolingo, which you may have heard about. As a professor of Spanish I prefer to think that to learn a language it is still better to take a class, or better yet, take a class in the country where the language is spoken, but I definitely see a lot of pedagogical value in Duolingo. And I do like that it is free. At the moment, you can learn Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, English and German, but they plan on adding more languages. What I like is that it is very simple, and it is also fun (as they have taken cues from gamification), and you can create a team with friends so you can motivate each other.

But besides checking out Duolingo, I would like you to see the talk because, to me, it is very inspiring. The speaker is a wiz kid from Guatemala who is one of the computer scientists who invented the "Captcha" system. He explains that part in detail, so I will not say more here. But I am extremely excited to see how he (and his team at Carnegie Mellon) have taken the idea of all (millions) of us doing just a little (typing a few words, spending 10 seconds on it) and using that labor to actually digitize old texts. And with Duolingo, his goal is to have everyone translating the web. I'm not sure that Duolingo can do that, but I have a feeling that he knows what he's talking about.

Although I also see the potential for this kind of enterprises to obliterate many jobs in the future, maybe even mine, I still see this type of projects as the beginning of something remarkable which will be helpful for all humanity. For example, in medicine, when we can use the data from every single patient who has something like cancer, we can probably start seeing more clearly patterns which will help us find a solution to it. I already touched a bit upon this when I talked about abundance, and this talk reinforces that idea.

Here's the talk, with the subtitles in Spanish, so we all start practicing:

And do not get discouraged if you feel like you are too old to learn a new language. I think that that's one of the beauties of Duolingo, that they make it simple for everyone, and, if nothing else, treat it as a game, which is also very good for you, as we will see in an upcoming tip.

Let me know if you have tried it already. And, as always, thanks for being there, on the other side of the screen, for me.

Tip #61: Be open to new teachers

Last May, I saw a documentary named Living on One Dollar. It looked like something that could be useful for my classes, as it was about four young Americans traveling to Guatemala, and experiencing the life of the poor in that country. Well, I really enjoyed it, did show it to some of my students, who also really liked it, and then got to work trying to find the funding to bring the two young creators (two of the students in the film) to our campus so our students could have a chance to meet them and be inspired. I'm glad to say that they will be in Sacred Heart University this Wednesday (Sept. 18th, 2013) at 7:00 pm, just in case any of you also want to see them. But, fret not if you can't, as they also happen to have a TED Talk that they gave in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last year, before the launching of their documentary and the campaign which has followed, Livingonone.org.

There are many inspiring messages for young people from their adventure, like follow your dreams, don't just think about things but do something about them, friends together can do incredible things, and so on. But in this tip, I just wanted to point out something that Zach Ingrasci mentions in the TED Talk. Both he and Chris Temple were Business students and their motivation for going to Guatemala was to try to find a solution to poverty by first understanding how the poor really live. So, they knew the theory, they wanted to live the practice. But, among many other surprises, they found that the poor themselves became actually their best teachers. They showed them what needs to be done in order to survive and how they used ingenuity, wisdom, and tools like cooperation to achieve it. I hope you have a chance to watch their talk (aptly subtitled "The Financial Secrets of the Poor.") explaining it much better then me.

I don't think we need to travel anywhere to find teachers and lessons to be learned around us. But we do need to have our hearts open to them. We often dismiss the known or obvious or, sometimes, do not consider that others can show us anything new, but we need to listen with love, wonder and patience until the lessons are revealed.

 

In the same manner, I do believe that we all are teachers and we have to remember that our message or our actions will touch people in ways that are not known to us. We just need to keep saying it.

Tip #60: Change your lens

This is one of my favorite talks. I have already talked about it before in Tip #19: Nourish your friendships and Tip# 52: Start with happiness. I always enjoy watching it because Shawn Achor is not only interesting but also very funny.

He specializes in positive psychology, which has as its aim to improve everyday life by trying to understand all the fulfilling aspects of human behavior instead of focusing on mental illness.


I hope you watch it, as it is quite entertaining, but if you don't, here are some of my favorites quotes from it.

It's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world

75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise.

Dopamine, which floods into your system when you're positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way. 

Recently, the New York Times had an article about a new book called Up, from a professor of medicine, Dr. Hilary Tindle. She connects a positive outlook with better health outcomes. So, it is not only that a positive frame of mind helps us to be more successful and happier, but also to be healthier.

And, if you need further reading, Lissa Ranking (Mind over Medicine) tells us about 10 fun ways to reduce cortisol levels, which can be making it harder for us to be more positive in our daily lives.

Let me know what you think. And if it you are a pessimist, I definitely want to know your thoughts!

Tip #59: Forgive

Beautiful present

In honor of Mother's Day, I decided to look for a TED talk suited for that theme. I just went to TED.com, wrote the word "mother" in the search box, and voilá, here we go, I found the absolute perfect one, not so much because it is about mothers, but because I found a topic, forgiveness,  which I have been meaning to write about anyway. I'm still surprised I had not talked about it before, so I'm really glad this is giving me the chance to include it here.

I know from experience that forgiveness is hard, but if we just look at its health benefits, it can help us lower blood pressure and cholesterol, make us sleep better, and strenthen our inmmune system.

But, of course, it is also much more. According to my beloved psychologist Rick Hanson this is what it can do for your spirit: 

      Fundamentally, forgiveness frees you from the tangles of anger and retribution, and from preoccupations with the past or with the running case in your mind about the person you're mad at. It shifts your sense of self from a passive one in which bad things happen to you, to one in which you are active in changing your own attitudes: You're a hammer now, no longer a nail. It widens your view to see the truth of the many, many things that make people act as they do, placing whatever happened in context, in a larger whole.

And Michael McCullough, author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, explains in this interview for the radio show On Being that we are actually wired for forgiveness, but also for revenge, and that they both served an evolutionary purpose, but in the end, forgiveness is the more important, as it enables humans to build peaceful communities. But his research suggests that we do need to work hard at it, and that the more we forgive, the easier it gets and the better we will feel.

I think we all know this already. But it is great to see that the science of well being and evolution agree that this is something worth our while.

I'm going to leave you with some more stories to read of amazing acts of forgiveness, including today's TED talk. Read them when you cannot forgive the stupid guy that was so annoying today at work, so you can realize that, yes, that stupid guy is also a human being like you and maybe he was just having a hard day today as well. These stories describe incredible acts of courage. I hope they inspire you as well.

• Can Forgiveness play a role in Criminal Justice? A rather long, but very compelling, New York Times article about the concept of "Restorative Justice," illustrated with the story of the murder of a young woman by her boyfriend, and the actions that her parents took to actually help him. 
• No more Taking Sides, Another episode from the radio show On Being that describes the unlikely friendship between an Israeli woman who lost her son to a Palestinian sniper and a Palestinian man who lost his brother to an Israeli soldier. As the description of the program says, "they don't want to be right; they want to be honest."
• Finally, here's today's TED talk about two mothers who found forgiveness and friendship after 9/11.

Although Mother's Day is an artificial holiday, I still enjoy the idea that we take the time to celebrate mothers (or nurturers, sometimes you do not need to actually have your own kid to be an incredible mother to those around you). Mothers do tend to be quite good at forgiving. Let us all learn from them.

Tip #58: Make sure you know what you are eating

Not just apples

Today's TED Talk is the story of an ordinary mother whose child suffered an allergic reaction while having an ordinary breakfast. This mother, Robin O'Brien, is now being called the Erin Brokovitch of food, as she is on a mission to educate and empower consumers in the US about what corporations are doing to the food we are putting in our plates and into our bodies. Before being a full time mother, she used to actually work as a food industry analyst, but she has turned all that knowledge and energy into researching the impact of food in our health, particularly new ingredients, such as engineered milk proteins or modified corn or soybean seeds. She also has written a book about her experience, The Unhealthy Truth, and has created The Allergy Kids Foundation, whose mission is "to restore the health of our children and the integrity of our food supply."

I know that most of you already know about Genetically Modified Foods, and other artificial ingredients in most products sold in our supermarkets, but I still hope that you watch her talk, as it is powerful, full of interesting (and terrifying, I must add) information and quite inspiring.

(Here's the transcription of the talk into Spanish) 

Here are some of my takeaways from the talk:

• Any product from the supermarket which comes in a box probably contains allergens.
• In the US, if it hasn't been proven dangerous, then it is fine to eat. Thus, many countries around the world do not allow ingredients that are considered perfectly fine here. 
• Our tax dollars are actually contributing to the protection of corporations that use genetically modified seeds which are patented.
• Organic foods are much more expensive than regular food in part because there is additional regulations that organic farmers need to comply with. 
• Companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola and Walmart use different recipes in different countries, always leaving the worst ingredients for the US, as the regulation is so lax here.
• Our health care system is also impacted by these GMOs. Our bodies are not used to these synthetic new products and our health care system cannot take care of all the new numbers of ill people because of it.
• We all have the power to change the world, even if it starts just by changing what we serve at our table.

And as she said on Twitter today:

The most toxic ingredient in our food supply is greed.
— Robyn O'Brien (@unhealthytruth) April 28, 2013

All this reminds me of the newest book by Michael Pollan, Cooked, in which he tells us that in order to be healthier and probably happier we just need to go back to simply cooking what we eat. He mentions that corporations use the cheapest, lowest quality products they can find, and then add lots of unwanted ingredients that make us like their stuff by masking it. It's not so much a matter of eating one group of foods or another, but making sure we buy real ingredients, preferably organic if we are talking about produce, not from GMO crops, cooked at home from scratch, and try to enjoy that meal with those you love, in a slow way. I try to apply his rules about processed foods when I go shopping: don't buy anything with more than five ingredients, ingredients that you cannot pronounce or that your grandmother would not recognize.

Do you read the labels of the food you eat? Are you concerned about GMOs? Tell me what you think and, as always, thanks so much for reading.

Tip #57: Context is everything

Everything I have learned in my journey to health and happiness so far points into one direction: cells, alone, don't determine what will happen to us. Isolated events are not what can heal us, but connectedness is always necessary. This TED talk explores this notion as well. Mina Bissell is a Distinguished Scientist in the Life Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.The talk is actually very entertaining to watch, even if you are not that interested in cancer research, because it is one more example of how we do need to look at things from different points of view and her journey through that idea as a scientist is quite inspiring.

 

Most scientist, even still now, believe that a single cancer cell is sufficient to cause cancer. And maybe this is true. But I learned from Servan Schreiber that autopsies of people who die in accidents or other causes show that most of them had cancer cells in them, but those never became full blown disease.

 

In this talk talk, Dr. Bissell gives us several examples of how the context and architecture surrounding the cells will determine what happens to them, not the cell alone. For example, mammary gland cells of pregnant mice will get ready to produce milk, but if you transfer them to a Petri dish, this stops happening immediately. In the talk, she gives us some examples of cancer cells which also will behave differently according to the environment where they are placed, and if they are injected into an embryo, they do not grow, but stay suspended there, peacefully. 

I remember when I first I learned about Kris Carr, after my rather gloomy diagnosis, I thought "Wait, this lady has changed her life around 100%, has changed what she eats, what she does, what she thinks, even puts coffee in weird places in her body and she is not cured???" And she still not. It's been 10 years since her diagnosis and she is thriving but her metastases are still there, not moving, not growing, not gone, but still a part of her. I had to learn that it is not the cell itself, it is not cured / uncured. It is more like, "change your life ~ find what works for you ~ change the context" What happens next is a mystery, but it can be a beautiful one.

In this talk, Dr. Bissell at the end mentions these lines from the poem "Among the School Children" by Yates:

O body swayed to music,O brightening glance

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

I hope you enjoy this talk and remember that it does apply to everything in life, don't you think?

As always, thanks so much for reading.