Focus@Will – Neuroscience & Music
I thought I’ve blogged about this before, but I can’t find any record of it on my website. Anyway, Focus at Will has a large music library designed to help you focus when you need to, for example while working or studying. Their music has no lyrics and is designed so that it’s not distracting and there are various types of music depending on what you like. You can see the examples in the screenshot above. My coworker purchased a yearly subscription for $35 and he plays it on his speakers, so luckily I get to benefit too. I really like it.
Get More From Your Sprint Workouts
A lot of instructional sprinting articles skip the discussion about warming up, but as we get older, that’s an extremely important part of the whole exercise. This article goes over the warmup in detail, complete with video examples of all of the warmup exercises you should be doing. I really want to go to the high school track to give this all a go.
Ben Greenfield Recommends – Everything I Have Ever Recommended For Performance, Fat Loss, Recovery, Digestion, Brain, Sleep & Hormones
Last week Ben Greenfield did a free class on CreativeLive. It was awesome. My wife sat next to me while I watched it and she kept saying how he packed so much useful information into every single thing he said. He really is a super-smart guy. Anyway, during the course he mentioned this page which has pretty much everything Ben recommends for whatever you’re trying to do. This is a great resource.
This story is about something called ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, which for those who it works for, creates a very relaxing and mellow feeling, and for some it may even help with anxiety. To feel the effects of ASMR, you might need to watch “whisper videos,” listen to tapping or scratching sounds, white noise, or maybe even Bob Ross – it’s different for everyone. I watched and listened to the video on the page while I worked and didn’t feel a “braingasm” but I suppose I can understand how something like this can be relaxing for some people. I’m very interested in learning more about this, especially since occasionally I get some pretty bad high-anxiety.
Scary Non-Organic Ingredients That Are Allowed in “USDA Certified Organic” Foods
I had no idea that so many low-quality ingredients were allowed in foods labeled as organic. And with companies like Kraft, Dean Foods and General Mills working to dilute the standards of the organic label, who knows how bad organic labeled foods might be in time. The best thing we can do is to eat whole foods from local farms, avoid processed foods as much as possible, and fight against big businesses like Kraft who care more about money than they do our health.
More evidence that routine multivitamin use should be avoided
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how multivitamins are a huge waste of money. It’s mostly true. The points made in this article are good, but they don’t address the issues. Mira & Jayson Calton wrote a great article about this in issue A02 of BeMore! Magazine (page 7, “A Hard Pill To Swallow”). Some of the problems with multivitamins are that we don’t know the sources of each ingredient, some vitamins and minerals could be in amounts that are either too high or too low to be beneficial, and some vitamins might have poor absorption in the body. I don’t believe all multivitamins are bad, but you need to make sure that you are taking multivitamins that meet the requirements above. Even better, buy liquid or powdered individual vitamins that meet your requirements so that you know exactly how each one is made and working in your body.
Are you a gun nut who loves flowers? If so, you’ll probably love these shotgun shells filled with flower seeds. The company who makes these fill the shells with only enough gun powder to shoot the seeds into the ground. Fun idea, but you probably won’t be able to use them if you live in the middle of suburbia.
The leg blaster is designed by three-time My. Olympia Frank Zane and consists of a harness that sits on top of your shoulders which holds weight plates in addition to a platform that you stand on and hang on to, while you squat down to proper squat depth. It looks like a great idea for someone who can’t typically do normal barbell squats. A bit expensive at $650 + $145 shipping, but probably worth it for anyone who needs it.
Interactive: Snake Oil Supplements? The scientific evidence for health supplements
A great interactive infographic listing popular health supplements and placed on a scale based on how much evidence there is supporting the benefits of each supplement. Make sure to hover over each supplement you’re interested in to see why the supplement ranks the way it does. For example, you might notice Garlic is listed both at the very top of the chart and again at the very bottom. That’s because there’s strong evidence for garlic reducing blood pressure in people with hypertension, but almost no evidence of it helping treat people with advanced cancer. Click the bubble to be taken to the study.