Category / Pop Science

by Eileen 配仪

Is that really science? Andrew Huberman morning rituals for well-being and personal developement. 

Lately I have encountered youtube pushing something call non sleep deep relaxation by Andrew Huberman after playing to some sleep related content. I tried it once and felt asleep promptly so I have been using NSDR for sleeping. I soon saw multiple youtube content on his morning rituals claiming to make people better at everything.

 He speaks charismatically and communicates well with public. However, a tiny bit of me wonders if he actually picked these some of these TCM practices to talk about. There is a huge area on  TCM practices for well being and Mediacorp Ch8 often discusses these with a western medicine trained doctor on a show,

I am astonished by how much his ritual sounds like TCM advice for well being that my husband practices.  Sufficient sleep , starting out in the morning to do some relaxation, exercising, showering with cold water while not looking through the phone. (My husband gargles with salt water instead of straight up drinking it.) There are lots of others as well – why didn’t he pick these up?

  • Avoiding cold drinks and food
  • drying hair well before sleep time, eating well before sleep time.
  • going to bed at 10pm (because various organs start their repair at different times of the night)
  • keeping feet warm with socks or warm soaks
  • nourishing soups to supplement health
  • Drinking warm tea or other plain beverages

It’s not only him. There is a huge beauty guru industry  towards traditional practices for great skin. Eg, guasha, jade rollers, staying out of the sun, consuming beauty supplements, etc.

TCM methods are not intellectually protected and therefore cheap. I can see why it is easy to pick it up and run with it. To be frank, the  typical over-educated plumpy/skinny white haired ladies or balding pot bellied finger wagging men is not going to be able sell it as well as good looking, well spoken young people who look like affluent bank sales men.        

by Eileen 配仪

Reading up on games

So cute

Glynis: Perhaps it’s the psychology she’s using, not algebra. You know, rock is id, paper–ego, scissor–superego.
Grace: You people are seriously warped. It’s a game. It’s about luck.
Luke: No, grace. Games are never about luck. Everything has a strategy from government to romance, such as the time when I gave you a gift– a calculated gambit designed to throw you in a state of imbalance.
Grace: You worked me?
Luke: No, no.
Grace: You used a gambit on me?!
Luke: No, grace. I’m making an analogy.
Friedman: That was some bad math, dude

 

Friedman: Let’s go. Let’s go. You got it. You got it.
Joan: As the probability of duplicating a tie decreases with each tie thrown, human behavior becomes the deciding factor. This is the domain of the philosophers and the poets and not the mathematicians.
Friedman: That was so hot.

 

by Eileen 配仪

Make study more effective, the easy way « Mind Hacks

This means you need to think about what you are trying to remember means, both in relationship to other material you are trying to learn, and to yourself. Other research in memory has shown the importance of schema – memory patterns and structures – for recall. As teachers, we try and organise our course material for the convenience of students, to best help them understand it.
Make study more effective, the easy way « Mind Hacks.

This year I signed up for a memorising course and a mind mapping course. Both methods teach deep learning and is great for students. The memorising course starts of with a set of 10 peg items. To memorise you create memory associations between the pegs and the list. Mind mapping actually teaches the method of re-organising and reclassifying chunks of information.

by Eileen 配仪

Food Choices

I had exceeded my 3kg every 4 weeks weight gain limit. I had workman size box of Chow Fun everyday. In between meals I was snacking on muesli and milk. I couldn’t stop being hungry. Once I returned to a low carb diet, I no longer needed to snack in between meals. (Low carbing for me now means avoiding white carbs and not carb counting.) My food is boring. I am eating chicken everyday. The protein makes me full for longer periods of time. What I think worked is the lack of Food Reward than the protein.

I’m not sure if that is a good strategy. Fetal programming theory says that baby’s body will react to the signals sent by the outside environment. If I limit white carbs, will baby’s body attempt to absorb and hold on to it? In practice when the body responds enthusiastically to food rewards, it is difficult to a balanced meal.