The Third Metric: The Two Steps To Solving Our Real Energy Crisis
- Our SAD diet (the Standard American Diet – industrial, hyper-processed, hyper palatable, salt-, sugar-, and fat-laden food-like substances)
- Chronic stress both psychological (our thoughts and ways of relating to our experience) and physical (any type of trauma)
- Allergies (including food sensitivities, which is why I often recommend a two-week trial of eliminating common triggers, such as gluten and dairy)
- Microbes (including imbalances in the 100 trillion bugs in our gut. Eating fiber-rich foods, avoiding antibiotics and taking probiotics can help, but sometimes the help of a trained functional medicine physician is necessary)
- Toxins (the ubiquitous chemical and metals found in our food, water, air, household cleaners, and even makeup and skin care products).
- Real whole fresh simple food that has the shortest distance from field to fork, that is cooked from real ingredients by you, or by a human near you. It’s stuff your great-grandmother would recognize as food. Everything she ate was organic, local, seasonal, heirloom, and grass fed! Vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, whole grains, eggs, olive oil, non-factory farmed animal products and sustainably raised or harvested seafood. Forget obsessing about Paleo, vegan, low fat, high fat, low carb, high carb. Just be a “foodist” or a “qualitarian."
- Nutrients, the vitamins and minerals that run all the biochemistry and regulate one third of our gene function. Low levels are very common. A recent study found that patients with early memory loss who did NOT take vitamin B12, folate and B6 had nearly ten times the amount of brain atrophy over two years compared to the group that took the vitamins. Optimizing omega 3 fats and vitamins D, C, and E can also prevent your brain from shrinking. Keeping your brain healthy is a key part of any measure of the Third Metric.
- Movement. Our bodies were designed to move and when they don’t, they atrophy and break down. Small changes lead to big rewards. It's the obvious things. Walking where you can. Playing outside more. Scheduling active fun. Or if you are time-strapped or traveling, try the scientific 7-minute workout. It’s my new favorite quick fix. If you don’t have seven minutes a day to move your body, then you have bigger issues to face about the priorities in your life.
- Sleep. This life-sustaining tool is underrated and under-utilized. When we short change ourselves on sleep, our lives are poorer for it. Our bodies cannot repair and heal; they store more fat, our brains age faster and suffer cognitive impairment equivalent to being drunk. Many of our damaged relationships, damaged organs, and half-lived lives are the result of our hyper-caffeinated, sleep-deprived strategies to achieve more. Yet, when we skimp on sleep, we wind up with less in every way. Less energy, less happiness, less health. Try these 19 strategies for better sleep.
- Air, water, light. The biological effects of clean air, deep breathing, adequate hydration, and natural light are profoundly health promoting. We all hold our breaths from chronic stress, often don’t drink enough water (our body weight in ounces every day) and many of us go for months never venturing further than required to go from our home to car to work and back, missing out on the power of the sun to balance our natural biological rhythms.
- Relaxation. I’m not talking about the sitting-on-the-couch-with-a-beer-or-glass-of-wine relaxation, but the profound, deep and rare relaxation that occurs in meditation, through deep breathing or yoga, making love, being in the rapture of dance or music or prayer. This type of relaxation takes a lot of intention and a surprising amount of work. Just try shutting down your mind or doing nothing for five minutes. Not as easy as it seems, but it is central to our bodies' healing system. Stress will find you, but deep blissful relaxation is something you have to go looking for.
- Love and connection. The need for human connection, touch, and love is one of our most profound needs. Deprive animals of maternal affection and they become sick and their neural networks don’t develop normally. In little children, we call it “failure to thrive,” and it often results from the simple loss of human connection (otherwise known as neglect). The highest expression of who we are is love, and yet we spend little time cultivating our capacity and skill at loving well, at being present and attentive to those we love. Our biology responds immediately to love – our heart and brain rhythms immediately reset with love. And the good news is that it works even if you are the only one giving the love. It turns out that our social connections and our social networks are more powerful than genes in determining our health outcomes. Most of our ills are social diseases and require a social cure.
- Meaning and purpose. While I was in Haiti after the earthquake, I visited Paul Farmer’s clinic in the mountains. Engraved in stone at the entrance to the hospital was a simple phrase, “The happiest man is one who makes others happy.” Making a difference, connecting to a larger purpose, living your life on purpose is a powerful driver of happiness and well-being. The absence of meaning and purpose is one of the scourges of our modern age. Cultivating acts of service, acts of contribution, of making the world a better place is profoundly healing for the giver and receiver. Try making everyone you meet today smile, feel loved and attended to as if they were the most important person in the world. See how much better you feel.
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