I haven’t eaten a Pop Tart since high school, and that does not make me a better human than anyone else.

“I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.”

Natalie Goldberg

This is a free market. Ask for CVs. Ask for resumes. Ask for testimonials. Ask what professionals have done lately to be a leader in their field. Be a smart consumer. It is a powerful job because you decide who stays and who goes.

As you exercise and contract your muscles you fire up mitochondria and even healthy mitochondria run hot, leaking out reactive oxygen species (ROS). Think of these like sparks from the fire that if not quenched could put a hole in your brand new t-shirt or lulu pants. When you exercise you are revving up the fire. More sparks and the potential for more holes in your nickers. Intense exercise also upregulates nitric oxide production by 600% which can further produce reactive nitrogen species. The pump is real. These free radicals (such as: superoxide, hydroxyl radical, and peroxynitrite) are controlled by antioxidant systems and when these systems can’t cope with the amount of free radicals produced these free radicals scavenge for electrons from proteins, cell membranes, and DNA. Bad. Many diseases and aging are related to unchecked ROS production.

Religions across history have been attaching their followers to the ideology of dietary purity. In ancient times, this was likely for their safety. Yet, now it seems that diets have become religions themselves. The Paleo community is getting less and less stringent with their definition of what exactly is Paleo. The dogmatic among this community likely hate this evolution, but the indisputable fact is that we do not live in the Paleolithic era, and no matter how hard we try (which would be counter productive), we can not recreate that world, nor would we want to. Our goal is to objectively learn from our ancestors, just as it is to objectively learn about ourselves and what foods nourish us and what foods don’t.

If a duck gets in an altercation with another duck, it goes down, and then the ducks flap their wings for 20 seconds. Done. Game over back to doing normal duck stuff.

Magnesium is one of those miracle supplements if you are deficient. It is estimated that over three quarters of Americans don’t even meet the RDA for Magnesium (400mg for men and 320 mg for women) and for most Magnesium tends to help tremendously with bowel movements, energy, and sleep. Also, if you are a heavy exerciser or under high stress say goodbye to the RDA and please start supplementing or downing smoothies with Swiss Chard and Mackerel. This is because you need magnesium to run the enzymes that make energy and also clear adrenaline.

That mouth full of a title is out of the hope that Physical Therapists will read this article and plug into something they may not know they do not know.

I also picked it because what any true health care provider (body worker, acupuncturist, psychiatrist, functional medicine doc, naturopath, shaman, etc) is trying to do is shift autonomics in a society that constantly drives us sympathetic.

Here are my three big take homes from a weekend of baby research….

“Medieval anatomists called women’s external genitals the “pudendum,” a word derived from the Latin pudere, meaning “to make ashamed.”

-Emily Nagoski