For example: Chris Farley
By Source, Fair use, Link

Here was a man that was really funny, super successful in movies and television, a life many people would LOVE. But he died at an early 33 years old. He was seeking help with obesity and drug addiction. And it’s important to know a key reason for drug addiction: low dopamine levels. In other words, the person is seeking pleasure, any kind of happiness, because they can’t feel it.

Again, science to the rescue for understanding why… the more we eat fatty foods the less happy people become… and the more they try to eat to regain some happiness. It’s a vicious cycle. TIME magazine has an article you can read to understand the research in Nature Neuroscience journal.

What researchers found is that when rats, whose brains & body are similar to tiny humans, ate high-fat foods, their dopamine receptors stopped working. That means, dopamine wasn’t working for them, they had trouble experience pleasure. The rats began to only get pleasure from the fatty foods and nothing else. They would continue to go for the fatty foods even if doing so would cause a small shock, rather than eat their regular healthy diet high in proteins.

Why is this important to you? Because you’re not a rat! You have a higher brain, the cortex, so you can make decisions and LEARN new behaviors that improve your survival. You can use pain to work for you, instead of continuing the shocks to your brain with each bite. First, by realizing that every time you or your friend eat high-fat foods, each bite is killing your ability to feel pleasure, to enjoy life at all.  Yes, in the moment of that bite, the palate feels a little pleasure, but being able to LOOK FORWARD TO (dopamine) anything just got cut off.

It’s mostly about conditioning. After years of bites of fatty foods, high-glycemic foods, the receptors have been blocked. BUT, every time you eat a healthy food instead, you’re helping those little dopamine receptors in your brain and in your body. Yes, there are receptors throughout your body. It takes time, but so did eating those fats. Of course, one of the most powerful ways to be successful is by ASKING FOR HELP! Go to a nutritionist, ask your spouse to help you, ask your friends, get a coach, whatever it takes. You deserve to he happy and life is a team sport!

A new study, from the University of Birmingham, involved 3.5 million people, approximately 61,000 of whom developed coronary heart disease. Medical records from 1995 to 2015 were reviewed and everyone should be talking about the results:

The study found that those obese individuals who appeared healthy in fact had a 50% higher risk of coronary heart disease than people who were of normal weight. They had a 7% increased risk of cerebrovascular disease – problems affecting the blood supply to the brain – which can cause a stroke, and double the risk of heart failure.

Even though tests suggested the person was “healthy”, they were much more likely to get disease.

It’s time to stop lying to ourselves that we can be fat AND healthy. Abusing our body like a trashcan never pays off. If you wouldn’t feed it to a child you love, that you want to grow up healthy,

why would you feed it to an adult?

In 1990, Congress designated the first week in October every year as “National Mental Health Awareness Week.”

It seems each day we hear of someone that has a cold or flu, an injury, or maybe something worse, and we have so much compassion for them. As we say, “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.

But, when it comes to “mental health”, it might not be a stretch to suggest most people become afraid. Why the difference in our attitudes about body health vs. brain health? That’s the reason for this years campaign by NAMI is called #IAmStigmaFree.

If you’re like me, “health” is one of your highest values in life. I run on the beach most days then have a salad for lunch. I like to hit the gym on the weekends to build muscle. And, besides supplements to make up for our poor farming strategies today, I work to keep my mind in peace and harmony, not letting most things generate stress… a leading cause of illness.

So where does the stigma of speaking about mind health come from? Well, since we’re basically conditioned hairless monkeys, taught to follow culture… we only need look back a hundred years to see that for CENTURIES, anyone that was even sad for an extended period of time might have been attacked for being posed by a demon, or worse, a danger to everyone that should be killed. We’re not too far from a barbaric past that still may be creating a superstition that seeking assistance to ensure our mind is running at optimal performance could get us fired from a job, banished from friends, lose a marriage, or worse.

Point: Let’s wake up into the 21st Century and abandon all superstition. Your brain is an organ like any other and DESERVES to be performing at optimal health levels! 

If you knee continually hurt when you went running, wouldn’t it be great to find out why and the solution for it? It’s same thing for your mind! When the organ of our brain is not functioning optimally, life it just harder than it needs to be. Keeping our mind in optimal health doesn’t come from just come from will power.

For example, studies show that alcoholics could keep from relapsing, but supplementing with EPA oil, because it helps replenish the fatty oils of the brain that when depleted, have us be more angry and agitated. Many alcoholics us trying to use alcohol as medicine because they won’t seek any other kind of mental health help. Some times mind health shows up in a simpler way in that an entrepreneur has a slight adult ADHD and that’s the real reason why she keeps voraciously learning how to be successful but can’t seem to translate that into success. Many hugely successful entrepreneurs, like Sir Richard Branson, are are aware of their ADHD and that awareness helps them.

How can you check out your levels of mind health? Here’s a short quiz I discovered years ago when consulting for some dating coaches. We were dreaming of a day when everyone would first want to get their mind in optimal health, before dating, to have the best experience. Check out the quiz here: www.sanityscore.com

For those afraid of the word “sanity”, it doesn’t mean “not crazy”. It means “healthy condition” from the Middle French word sanité meaning “health“. The quiz is a health score for your mental health with insights into key things to look at that, if addressed, could make life happier, peaceful, and more like the success you dream about.

To your health! Mind and body health!

Alphabet, the new parent company of Google, has its corporate code of Conduct visible for the whole world to see. It’s stated plainly in the first paragraph:

“… do the right thing – follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.”

https://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html

You may recall that Google’s code still begins with:

“Don’t be evil.”

What’s your code?
Do you have one? Does your company have one?
Is it simple or a complicated list that’s hard to remember or live by?