Life By Design Podcast

April 2019
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Mon, 22 April 2019

#320 Where Do Success & Happiness Come From?

"Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy" are words famously (it might be notoriously now depending on who you're asking) spoken by comedian Louis C.K in a late night talk interview with Conan O'Brien.

The context was how incredible it is to be able to fly in an airplane and how even 60 years ago if you wanted to travel across the country, it could take days or weeks, not a few hours.

C.K also alluded to the fact that you could get the internet now on an airplane (the interview is 2 years old when the internet was novel on flights) which prompted the man next to him to get upset because it wasn't as fast as he would have liked instead of being grateful and happy that this 'awesome' technology was possible.

Having the pleasure of being alive in 2019 is fantastic. The opportunities presented to us are outstanding and abundant. So, then, why aren't we happy? Why is mental illness still a thing? Why are young people full of nothing but potential taking their lives? Why is there more addiction?

The purpose of this podcast is to comment on what we believe to be a central idea to creating and achieving happiness. Yes, it's a complex topic, and we don't have to cover everything, but we share what we believe, and have experienced, to be one important idea.

What we covered:

The definition of happiness and success and why definitions and knowing your terms is essential to success. If you don't have a clear idea of what you want to achieve you'll never get.
What, in our personal experience, has to lead to our personal feelings of unhappiness, depression, and anxiety.
How we've achieved happiness and success in our lives.

Direct download: 320.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EDT

Mon, 15 April 2019

#319 Are Supplements Effective?

An interesting study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine looking at supplementation levels vs. nutrient levels and all-cause mortality. This means they were searching to see if people who took supplements (in general) lived longer.

The Cohort study was conducted on 30 899 adults in the US above the age of 20 years old. The participants were required to answer questions and complete a survey.

The findings were as such:

Adequate intake of vitamin K and magnesium resulted in decreased mortality - this was limited to obtaining these nutrients from food, not supplements.

Adequate intake of vitamin A, K and zinc resulted in decreased mortality from cardiovascular disease - this was limited to obtaining these nutrients from food, not supplements.

Excess intake of calcium was associated with an increased risk of death from cancer - this was related to consumption of 1000 mg/day of supplement intake and not with calcium found in food.

What I covered:

A discussion of the results and what I found interesting.
We just covered this a couple of weeks ago, but there are numerous limitations with this kind of study which I discuss including the concept of causation vs. correlation.
What could be causing these results - I share my thoughts.
The importance of real food good first.
The importance of testing, retesting and optimization vs. just taking a supplement (or anything for that matter) Carte Blanche.

Direct download: 319_Supplements.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:07pm EDT

Thu, 11 April 2019

#318 Success: Result or Habit?

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

-Aristotle

If you've ever read a self-help book or spent any time scrolling through your phone, it's very likely that you've seen this quote by the philosopher Aristotle on the power of your habits.

However, as easy as it is to understand that your habits are important and that your beliefs, actions, and luck have gotten you the results you currently have, it doesn't tell you which habits you should adopt and how to implement those habits into your life.

Often times principles and ideas are easily understood, but deciphering which habits to adopt and how to adopt them is much more confusing. Just like it's easy to read a book and the mechanics of a push-up, it's much harder to learn and train to do 100 push-ups with impeccable technique.

The purpose of this podcast is for us to discuss our favorite habits that we believe have been responsible for our happiness, joy, and success.

These might not be the right habits for you, but they mean the world to us. More importantly, it is how we installed these habits into our life. Just like you, we weren't born a certain way, and change can be hard sometimes.

What we covered:

What is a habit, why is it important, and why have them at all?
Cue, Routine, Reward the three components of a habit according to Charles Duhigg and his book "The Power of Habit".
Which of our routines we think are the most powerful.

Direct download: 318_Success_Habits.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:42am EDT

Mon, 1 April 2019

#317 Eggs Increase Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease?

A large recently published study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that adults who consumed higher amounts of cholesterol had an increased chance of dying from cardiovascular disease.

Cholesterol is thought to raise LDL (often referred to as 'bad' cholesterol) and is considered a risk for heart attack and stroke.

These results came at an interesting time since the U.S Government recently removed it's recommended restriction (300 mg/day) on cholesterol stating that 'cholesterol is no longer a food of concern for over-consumption.'

The general consensus among scientists was that cholesterol from food had little to do with what showed up in the bloodstream.

The purpose of this podcast is to take a look at and discuss the study.

What we covered:

How the study was conducted. The research... 29, 615 ethnically diverse people were questioned about what they ate and then were followed up with over 31 years, the median was 17.5 years.
The conclusion of the study - all things being equal, total serum cholesterol increases your chance of having cardiovascular disease.
The flaws of the study - as you can imagine there are many things that could have been done better and more accurately in a study like this, so we take the time and discuss some of the liberties taken by researchers. The questionnaire was only completed once asking participants to recall what they ate over the last year, serum cholesterol levels were not actually measured, changes in diet were not accounted for, etc.
We can't make recommendations on specific food choices but we will discuss whether or not this information is changing our eating styles.

Direct download: 317_Eggs__Cholesterol.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EDT