UpRiverMatt

Co-founder. Looking to understand the human body, mind, and spirit and live in harmony with it.

Introduction to Drugs

Drugs, a loaded word filled with numerous bad and good connotations depending on who you are, what you've been told, and what you've experienced on them. Almost everyone tries drugs, many of us become addicted, and a few of us even use them beneficially.

1. What Are Drugs? Why Do We Do Them?

TL;DR: Drugs are a wide classification of chemicals that alter your biology for medical, recreational, or other reasons. Drugs that affect your consciousness are termed psychoactive, with the main categories being stimulants like caffeine, depressants like alcohol, antipsychotics like SSRIs, and hallucinogens like LSD.
Are tobacco and nicotine unhealthy?

4. Are Nicotine and Tobacco Unhealthy?

TL;DR: All tobacco products are highly addictive, cause cancer, and damage your entire body when smoked. Nicotine alone doesn’t cause cancer, but messes up your brain chemistry for months and is highly addictive.
The Best Nootropics and Smart Drugs

9. What Are the Best Nootropics?

TL;DR: Smart drugs work, they just won't make you a genius. Categories from safest to least safe include nutritional-based, adaptogens, stimulants, and designer drugs. Many designer drugs are not well understood yet. Nootropics may improve energy levels and mood, and/or memory and learning rate.

10. What Is the Microbiome?

TL;DR: The microbiome is a collection of single celled organisms in all areas of our body, especially the gut, and is integral to our immune and nervous system. Eat nutritious, natural food and avoid antibiotics unless absolutely necessary to keep it in good condition.

11. 5 Types of Breathwork & How to Practice Them

TL;DR: Changing your breathing pattern is a powerful, free, easy, and immediate way to drastically reduce stress and enhance focus and well being. You should almost always breathe through your nose rather than your mouth and into your belly rather than your chest.

15. Strategies for Naturally Glowing Skin

TL;DR: To improve skin health from the inside, reduce stress with meditation and good sleep habits, remove processed carbs and vegetable oils and include healthy fats and collagen, and improve circulation with exercise, hot and cold exposure, sunlight, and infrared or red light therapy.

14. Aim to Achieve, Not to Please

TL;DR: Set time aside to decide on a goal you want to achieve whether it is big or small, and apply strategies to maintain your progress rather than allowing yourself to follow others.

6. What Are Chakras and Meridians?

TL;DR: Energy appears to move through the body via channels called meridians, and centres called chakras as explained through several ancient texts. More recently, science is validating these claims.

7. Unleash Your Masculine Energy

TL;DR: Harness and contain your masculine energy by exercising, taking cold showers, or using one of several breathwork exercises. An adaption of this may work for women.

2. Sleep Stages Explained

TL;DR: You cycle through different stages of sleep: light sleep, deep sleep, and REM, with the last two being most important. Keep your room dark and between 15 - 19oC, eat during the day, and most importantly, sleep while the sun is down and be awake and active while the sun is up.

Introduction to Food

Food is one of the main pillars of the UpRiver philosophy because it is one of the most important factors in our health. The poor state of most people’s mental and physical health can very often be mainly attributed to poor food choices. As the father of nutrition once said, “Let food be thy medicine.”

1. Which Diet Is Best? Understanding the Basics of Food

TL;DR: Rather than try to follow the hype of each new diet you hear of from vegetarian, Mediterranean, paleo, keto, and even carnivore, go with common sense and evaluate diets based on 5 timeless factors: “Naturalness”, Nutrient Density, Anti-nutrients, Variety, and Real Life Application.