Dr. Rich Callahan's (USC) awesome presentation at GPA Week 6

Game Plan Academy (GPA): Week 6

Four Quadrants for Health

Nassim Taleb maps out randomness/uncertainty into Four Quadrants.

I suggest these Four Quadrants for Health:

1) Ancestral Environment paired with Ancestral Fitness

2) Ancestral Environment paired with Modern Lifestyle

3) Modern Environment paired with Ancestral Fitness

4) Modern Environment paired with Modern Lifestyle

Ancestral Environment = Domains in modern-day space and time that resemble the dynamics that our evolutionary ancestors faced (protected beaches, river parkways, mountain trails, etc.).

Modern Environment = Domains, largely the result of human construction, that dominate our modern-day space and time textures (office buildings, computer consoles, cars, etc.).

Ancestral (evolutionary) Fitness (power-law, non-linear lifestyle) = No bad carbs + Intermittent Fasting + High-Intensity, Low-Duration Exercise (plus good sleep and eating plenty of fermented foods/good bacteria).

Modern Environment = Sedentary. Linear. Constant/chronic stressors. Information/entropy rich (the current status quo: Facebook, iPhones, 9:00-5:00 jobs, etc.).

In our current Information Age, it appears that human bodies are at a crossroad: our physiologies thrive in Quadrant I, but achieving optimal health requires carving out or finding spaces within the textures of our world that resemble our Ancestral Environments and allow us to practice Ancestral Fitness in concert. For instance, I try to obtain Quadrant 1 when I work out: I fast, sleep, work out intensely in the morning, fast, and then eat an ancestral, paleo-style meal sometime later on in the day. Whether I like it or not, I find myself in Quadrant 2 from time-to-time, for example, when I turn to my iPhone while enjoying a nice, relaxing round of golf (golf course = Ancestral Environment, iPhone = Modern Lifestyle). Overall, I spend most of my time in Quadrant 3, working to integrate Ancestral Fitness into my Modern Environment endeavors (blogging while fasted or researching articles online while enjoying almonds and Kombucha, to name a few). However, I work diligently to avoid Quadrant 4 (and limit exposure to Quadrant 2 as well). Quadrant 4 is why our US healthcare system has ballooned into one of the largest economies in the world: our plastic physiologies have adapted to our Modern Environments by employing Modern Lifestyle components: high-sugar diets, high caffeine intake, nicotine/drug/food/____  addictions, obesity, and many others. As a result, our bodies have suffered immensely, and we spend trillions of dollars on pills, procedures, surgeries, and other modern-day-scientific-looking 'treatments' and interventions that largely could be abated if people practiced proper, ancestral nutrition patterns, living in Quadrants 1 & 3, while limiting exposure to Quadrants 2 & 4, as much as possible. Or, minimally, we need to be aware of which maps and 'tricks-of-the-trade' to use in each Quadrant, so, at least, psychologically, we perceive our world more effectively.

Of course, many of our Modern Lifestyle adaptations, despite their downfalls like diabetes and obesity, help us perform more effectively in our Modern Environments: consider that an accountant seated at a desk all day crunching numbers could improve his performance by drinking coffee habitually and by eating high-carbohydrate snacks to cope with the constant/chronic stressors that his job presents. Scientifically, Neuropeptide Y appears to be linked with abdominal fat deposition and with creating a 'metronomic heart' that makes people more resilient to chronic stress (read here, thanks to Navanit). If Modern Lifestyle activities cause abdominal fat and sinusoidal, simplistic heart rhythms (two risk factors for sudden cardiac death), but confer benefits in terms of performance in Modern Environments, then humans are simply optimizing their feedback loops in their current worlds, despite the fact that these endeavors result in poor health and chronic health problems (if you are an attorney, Modern Lifestyle choices may increase your income, but they most likely will also decrease your life expectancy, as one iteration). Perhaps Ancestral Fitness, with its ability to enhance multifractal complexity in heart rhythms (protects against sudden cardiac death), helps people achieve tremendous health states but puts them at a competitive disadvantage in their Modern Environments.

The cost-benefit tradeoff analyses that arise from considering these Four Quadrants for Health help frame the decision-making challenges we all face as we attempt to Live as Local Animals in the Information Age.

Game Plan Academy (GPA): People Helping People

Latest piece in Sacramento Press (click here).

Game Plan Academy (GPA) video: "The Little Things"

As my good friend, Alex Van Dyke (former NFL player and All-American at University of Nevada at Reno), says: "It's the little things that matter."

"Keep in mind: ... it's the little things that are going to make us better."

Alex is an awesome mentor at GPA.

Team GPA is fabulous.

Game plan (academy) for life: Joe Thomas of the Positive Coaching Alliance speaks to students at GPA

Negative Advice: Ten Commandments for Health

Don't versus do (*See entry 113).

Uncertainty and randomness muddy the waters for positive advice ("Workout on a regular basis," for instance) much more than they do for negative advice ("Never go a week without working out once," for example). In this light, negative advice proves more effective than does positive advice (at least it appears to). In nutrition, the advice to "Never eat bad-carbs" (breads, starches, pastas, corn syrup products, etc.) is much more powerful than is the recommendation to "Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables per day" because one (negative advice) sets a clear, concrete baseline or boundary and leaves bottom-up choice to individuals, while the other sets a top-down prescription that limits the degrees of freedom for individual, personalized decision making. 

Negative: Don't smoke.

Positive: Keep your lungs healthy.

Negative: Never drink and drive.

Positive: Drive carefully and responsibly.

Negative: Don't eat bad carbs.

Positive: Eat healthy foods.

Negative: Never go a week without exercise.

Positive: Exercise regularly.

(*See more examples of negative advice here in Nassim Taleb's "Ten principles for a black-swan proof world"--warm thanks to Dave Lull.)

Psychologically, negative advice, I suspect, works because it provides people living in a highly complex, recursive, and uncertain world that they do not understand with concrete, tangible boundaries for decision making (of the 'bounded rationality' variety) -- practical heuristics, in essence. We know with much more certainty what is bad for us (negative) than what is good for us (positive). Consequently, in health domains, the advice to "Take care of yourself" or to "Lead a healthy lifestyle" ('positives') may prove less influential in shaping people's behaviors than a set of key negative boundaries/limits would. 

Perhaps, we need a 'Ten Commandments for Healthy Living in the Information Age', or something similar. Most of the Ten Commandments are 'negatives'. Religion is full of 'negatives'. Here is one possible list, just to set the exercise in motion (I encourage others to develop their own; the tinkering process may be more useful than the actual list itself):

1. Never eat bad carbs.

2. Don't smoke.

3. Never start a car without wearing a seatbelt.

4. Don't workout regularly; never jog.

5. Never go ten days without intense exercise.

6. Don't eat a low-fat diet.

7. Never go a day without eating a fermented food (good bacteria)

8. Don't follow the 'Food Pyramid'

9. Never go a week without fasting once.

10. Don't drink more than one serving of alcohol per day.

Of course, there are many good 'positives' that we can use in our daily lives ("Say thank you" or "Remember those who have helped you," to name a few); it just appears that 'negatives' cut deeper and last longer than positives do. Out of curiosity, for a research investigation, I would like to know if more people get 'negative' tattoos than they do 'positive' ones: "Never give up" or "Never forget" tattoos versus ones with with 'positive' phrases like "Dream big" or "Just win". Tattoos serve as external signaling devices that shape people's behaviors; maybe 'negative' tattoos are more popular for this reason.

Of note, five of my ten 'negatives' refer to nutrition because I suspect that improper nutrition (not exercise, not health insurance, etc.) is the core problem that plagues our healthcare system: we are what we eat, and we are a nation of unhealthy eaters; hence, we are unhealthy.

However, Kaiser Permanente's Farmers' Market program is refreshing to see; hopefully other big players in the health industry will follow Kaiser's creative lead with other low-cost, outside-the-box ideas. Time and time again, nutrition seems to drop off the map in mainstream health policy and politics discussions. Yet, nutrition, like music, is a cheap health option when engaged properly. We need more cheap health options; Carlos Rizo is doing something to achieve that end at his latest, awesome venture, MyHealthInnovation. Check it out (or don't not check it out, continuing this post's theme of 'negatives').

To good health (or not experiencing bad health).

GPA huddle

Half-time at Game Plan Academy (GPA).

Video and photos from Week 4 at Game Plan Academy (GPA)

We are now half-way through Game Plan Academy (GPA); here are some photos from Week 4 this past Sunday: Video and photos (click here)

Four more fractal Sundays to go ...

Game Plan Academy (GPA): Photos from Camp

(Photo credit to Anthony Bento)

Game Plan Academy (GPA): It's awesome.

Read more about GPA's awesomeness here on Sacramento Press.