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[UpRiverGreg]

Hey Matt, Great question (and great forum revamp too! 😉 )

Upon brief thought, the advice I would give to a young, 15yo me would be to decide what you want to do, rather than just doing what you think others want you to do.

I spent most of my high school and university days following along the path that others prescribed to me, more or less. By the time I came to understand that it should be me, and me alone, directing my life, I was basically finished University, which left a lot of closed doors behind me. I don’t regret going into engineering, as many of the skills I picked up from it I consider invaluable today, and I did meet a lot of good friends and special people along the way. However, the decision to go into it could be likened to putting all the various careers and occupations that teachers, parents and guidance counselors suggested may be compatible with my skills and personality on a dartboard, and then choosing whichever one the dart landed on.

I realize this is a rather generic answer so I will try to give it a bit more thought and see if I can come up with something better.

I’m curious to know what your advice would be to a 15yo baby Matthew would be? (Other than choosing to be my roommate earlier =p )

[UpRiverGreg]

Good little bit of info there, Matt. Thanks for that!

So it seems like, according to that rule, we’ll need to pump those numbers up 70 more before we hook a live one.

Then again, UpRiver has never been about following the rules 😏 😜

[UpRiverGreg]

Of course, my entire argument relies on the assumption that the current ban on steroids is actually keeping these athletes from using them, which I admit is likely not the case.

Many are likely already being coerced into not only using steroids, but using them in secret, deceitfully

[UpRiverGreg]

Also reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUCSt5tj9H0

Long story short, dude was a champion gymnast, trained from birth, won many medals on the world stage, then got injured and got completely abandoned by his country, now is essentially homeless and working as a street performer as he has no other skills

I could imagine many athletes being put in some sort of similar experience: either inject this harmful substance or be completely abandoned

[UpRiverGreg]

Great question Spencer, and one I’m torn on.

On the one hand, my views definetly trend more towards the libertarian side of things. As long as something doesn’t harm anyone else, nor cause excessive drain on our socialized healthcare system, I believe that people should be able to do as they please.

On the other hand, testosterone raises some concerns for me when it comes to competitive sport. You’ve established in your article that those who take T dominate those who don’t in sport. You’ve also established that taking exogenous T can be quite harmful to ones health. It seems like a shame to me that the criteria for competing in the upper echelons of sport would basically require you to inject a harmful substance into your body.

This is not to say that some well thought out rules and regulations could be used to circumnavigate these issues, just that it is a complicated issue that would need to be well addressed. I have particular concerns for athletes hailing from countries where their governments rule over them with a bit more of an authoritarian hand, such as China. I can envision circumstances where young, promising athletes may not want to take T, but are coerced into doing so.

My brain draws parallels between this and the NFL concussion debacle from a few years back. Many players were pushed to continue playing in situations that were well known to be unsafe, and as a result suffered serious head trauma, often leading to lasting mental health problems. Sadly, this drove many to commit suicide later in life, after the NFL left them high and dry at the end of their careers. I can imagine similar circumstances with athletes struggling with the heart, liver and reproductive damage that came as a result of the steroids they were strongly encouraged to inject into their bodies during their younger years.

[UpRiverGreg]

Thats an interesting point Spencer. I hadn’t really thought of it before but it is rather tiresome how so many communities seem to try much harder to disprove their “opponents” points, rather than prove their own.

It seems focusing on the truth is whats best, and would be whats part of my ideal health site.

[UpRiverGreg]

“no matter what I’ll be okay” is the most useful to me, as for some reason when things get stressful my mind can tend to drastically exagerate the consequences of things. When things go slightly wrong and I’m feeling overwhelmed my mind can try to convince me that its the end of the world. A thought process somewhere along the lines of “I messed up on this one little thing so now my entire business is going to go under and I’ll be homeless in a week and surely dead in a month”

My mantra helps ground me and instantly snap me out of that unproductive mindset. It reminds me that this little issue I’m facing is just that, a little issue. One that I will overcome in the same way that I have overcome all of the thousand little, and big, issues before in the past and still be perfectly fine on the other side of it.

If you experience a similar sort of anxiety Id recommend giving the “no matter what Ill be okay” mantra a try. If it works for you, great. Otherwise play around with it and personalize it until you find one that works for you

[UpRiverGreg]

Hey Gus,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the forum!

Three simple things that I can say actually had a noticeable effect on my mindset are as follows:

1) Taking some time daily to reflect and do nothing
Usually I try to slip away for about 20 minutes to do literally nothing. I try to do this as near the middle of the day as possible, which is around 2pm for me. I don’t look at my phone or read or do anything during this time. I just sit on my bed or chair and relax for a bit while I process the first half of my day. While this doesn’t sound like much (it is nothing, afterall) its probably the most powerful thing I do to keep me feeling positive and motivated. Its huge for dealing with anything that might be stressing me that day, and without fail I feel much more motivated and energetic after doing it.

2) Deep breaths
It’s amazing how much slowing your breath can slow everything else down. Sometimes when things are really busy or hectic at work, my mind starts to feel like its spiralling out of control. Not only does this make me feel shitty, it also makes me super unproductive and unfocused. It sounds childish almost, but giving yourself a moment to take 10 deep and slow breaths, and I mean DEEP and SLOW, is like hitting the reset button on my brain. I instantly feel way more relaxed, clearheaded and ready to focus on what needs to be done. As an added bonus I find this also helps a lot for falling asleep on those nights where you have too much on your mind keeping you up.

3) Repeating a Mantra to yourself
When things get tough and my mindset starts slipping I like to remind myself that “No matter what I will be okay”. I make a point to actually “say” those words to myself in my head a few times. When I’m alone Ill even say them to myself out loud. This simple act of reminding myself of that little fact never fails to improve my mindset, even if just a little bit. The best part about it? It’s completely true! I will be okay. Im 25 years into this life, and while its had its ups and downs, I am still okay. I have no reason to believe that that will ever change, regardless of what life throws at me. I will make it through and I will be okay. Of course your mantra doesnt specifically have to be “No matter what I will be okay” but you get the idea

Looking forward to hearing what the rest of you guys have to say

[UpRiverGreg]

I mainly just updated things to display better on mobile. A lot of pages had too much padding that made things look really squished.

Areas specifically targeted were the image on the about us page. The select a stream tiles on the articles main page, the width of the forums on the forum pages and the size of data entry section on the contact us page

[UpRiverGreg]

When I wake up in the middle of the night I find it’s usually due to temperature. I naturally run pretty hot so if I accidentally load up too much on the blankets I’m pretty prone to waking up a couple hours later, overheated.

Often, I feel nice and cozy under the blankets when I’m going to sleep, but after my body has had a couple hours to pump some more heat into them it can get to be too much.

I’m sure theres a myriad of reasons for waking up in the middle of the night so this is likely not the issue you’re experiencing, but it could be worth a shot to downgrade on the blankets and see what happens

[UpRiverGreg]

In my experience once I start exceeding a week it can begin to become more of a distraction than a benefit. I’ve found reducing frequency, rather than full on abstenince to be a much more practical method

[UpRiverGreg]

Very cool research on this topic, Matt.

I’m left wondering if there is still something missing from the equation in regards to replicating sunlight. Even if you got the wavelengths and element temperatures just right, would it truly have the same effect as the sun?

Without derailing the conversation too much could it be that there is some sort of spiritual connection that we humans innately have to that big flaming orb in the sky, that just can’t be artificially replicated, no matter what we do?

I’d love to have the oppurtunity to give that LED sun that you linked a try and see how it feels.

[UpRiverGreg]

Cool thread idea, Matt!

To contribute, I’ll excerpt a little bit from my article on how to be more manly: (https://projectupriver.com/how-to-be-more-manly/)

“a 2012 study [4] performed on lab rats actually showed a significant T increase when a red light laser was shone on their testes for 5 days. That’s right, scientists actually blasted some rats balls with red light for 30 minutes a day for 5 days straight and found a significant increase in their manliness, ie test levels, after doing so. How significant, you’re probably wondering? On the fourth day, the rats who were treated with 670nm light had T levels roughly 6.7 times higher than the test case of rats who were not treated with light. Even better, upon investigation from the scientists, there was no damage found to the rats’ testes when treated with the 670nm frequency of light. This led them to conclude that red light therapy could potentially be used as an alternative method to treating men suffering from low T levels.”

Of course this needs to taken with grain of salt, as the experiments were only performed on rats, but it does provide a pretty interesting connection between red light and testosterone.

As for why red light seems to differ from actual sunlight, I dont know, but I have noticed a similar experience myself. Something about using red light just feels synthetic to me. It feels like there is something missing from it, almost as if its incomplete.

[UpRiverGreg]

Thanks for the answers boys! I agree Matt, it is pretty sad that there aren’t more healthy fast food places availible. The only one that I even know of that markets themselves as being healthy food is Freshi, but thats more rabbit food than anything.

Seems like theres a pretty huge gap in the market, especially with people seemingly starting to care more and more with what they put in their bodies. One has to wonder what health conscious people who constantly have to travel for work are doing to get by.

[UpRiverGreg]

Definetely been feeling the affects pretty strongly, now that we are over half a year into this craziness! The lack of socialization I’ve been able to do during this time has been starting to take its toll on me. I can feel an absense of an important part of life.

As for what I’ve been doing to overcome this challenge, I’ve been trying to put the extra effort in to go socialize from time to time. For the first few months socializing was extra challenging so I more or less just neglected it. Now, I’m trying to get out and see people as much as I can, despite the new challenges that Covid presents.

I’ve also been trying my best to unplug myself from the news in regular intervals. It feels like things are almost moving at the speed of light these day with groundbreaking news story after ground breaking news story continously being released. I find that trying to stay on top of it is draining, stressful and depressing! Theres definetly a balancing act that comes with ita. On one hand you want to stay informed, but on the other you dont want to drive yourself crazy delving deeper and deeper into things.

What’s going on politcally right now is very surreal I’d say. Everything is so extemely polarized. Theres so much tension and division right now I dont really see a way that things can just diffuse peacefully. It looks like we are in for a rollercoaster over the next few months. Additionally, it is extremely challenging to know what is true and what is false in todays world, which is extremely frustrating and ineffecient. It doesn’t really seem like a single point these days isn’t contested. No matter what “x” is, you can basically gurantee if someone says “x is true” you’ll get a whole bunch of others saying “No, x is actually false.” Almost feels like we’re living in a Post-Truth world, where political identity matters a whole lot more than the truth or finding the best solutions.

Economically, things are downright terrifying. It’ll be interesting to see how the government plans to pay off this excessive amount of debt they have amassed during this pandemic, but it doesnt really seem like theres a good option at this point, with how far things have gone.

Socially, I think everything is pretty sick right now. People social distancing for this long does not seem healthy whatsover. Everyone seems exhausted and on edge. I look forward to the day when we can put this covid craziness behind us, and hopefully all just take a breath and relax. When that time will come? Who knows!

[UpRiverGreg]

Hahaha, oh boy! You’re definetly making me wish I made an annoynomous section with these sort of questions, Spencer!

I too have heard the whispering of the legends, but its not something I’ve personally managed to experience myself. Im one of those “believe it when I see it” type of people so I’ve always kinda chocked it up in the urban legend/myth category in my head.

With that said, I’m definetly open to being proved wrong about this! Looking forward to hearing what others have to say.

[UpRiverGreg]

Thanks dude! Do you use any help apps yourself? I’d be interested to know what you look for in your ideal health app!

[UpRiverGreg]

Great answer, thanks Spencer! The idea of cycling it sounds like a great compromise!

[UpRiverGreg]

I’ve mainly used MyFitnessPal. It’s pretty great when it comes to tracking calories and nutrients as it has and extensive database of pretty much all foods that you would be able to find in a grocery store. Simply type in what you at for your meal and boom, the calories are added to your daily calorie count. It’s a godsend during those time where I want to shed a couple extra pounds.

As for what the app is missing it’s hard for me to really give a fair answer, as I’ve never managed to justify purchasing the premium version of the app, which by the looks of it has a whole whack of extra features that the free version that I do doesn’t.

It’s a little bit of a far fetched idea with the current state of things, but my dream fitness app would be one that uses some sort of iterative process to help you create the perfectly tailored diet for yourself. How I envision it working is something along the lines of this:

1) Throughout the week you eat your food as you regularly would, and log everything you eat into the app
2) At the end of every week the app surveys you based on multiple metric e.g. energy levels, sleep quality, emotional state, bowel movements, blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, etc. Much of this data could potentially be collected automatically by integrating with various wearable technologies
3) The app would then use an algorithm to evaluate the food you ate against your bodily measurements and come up with suggestions of foods to add, remove or change in your diet.
4) You would repeat this process week to week, making little minor tweaks to your diet and having the app analyze the results until you would eventually converge on the “perfect” diet just for you

I know, I know, this would be extremely difficult to pull off with any respectable level of efficacy as there are just seemingly infinite variables that you would have to account for, but hey, a guy can dream, can’t he!

I think something like this would really hit our tenets of Impact and Efficiency really hard, as it would allow users to rise about the noise and confusion of the nutritional world and easily make a diet that works really well for them specifically.

[UpRiverGreg]

Hello U.S.EH. Thank you for your forum contribution and welcome to UpRiver!

Incorporating more of the female perspective is definitely pretty common among some of the initial feedback, and I agree it would be a great way to widen our potential audience! As it stands right now, UpRiver is completely run by three guys with a shared passion for health and wellness, solely within our own free time. We didn’t feel like we would really be capable of writing quality articles on more female-specific health topics, due to us obviously not having any first-hand experience with them. It is our aim/dream to grow UpRiver to the point where we can expand our team and potentially bring on some female talent so we can expand more into the female health world.

Great suggestion about nasal breathing! It definetley much lesser known of an issue and one that could fit very well hear. I remember doing some research on the topic a year or two ago and some of the results were pretty astounding! It seems that mouth breathing and improper tongue position can have an absolutely massive affect on the development of your facial structure, especially during early childhood. Kids who are mouthbreathers often end up with a more sunken jaw/face. I’ve heard that some people manage to correct this latter in life via a practice called “mewing” where they gently apply pressure to the roof throughout the day with their tongue. Some people swear that doing this for a couple years, even in adulthood, can drastically improve your facial structure.

On a somewhat related note, drawing parallels to nutrition, I also read a study which compared the affects of early childhood diet on facial and teeth development. The most interesting part to me was when they studied a set of twins from what I believe was a native Australian tribe. One of the twins was fed the natural native Australian diet, whereas the other was fed a standard western diet. By the time they hit puberty, the twin who was fed the traditional diet had nearly perfectly straight teeth whereas the twin who was fed the western diet had very messed up teeth, in need of extensive dental work.

The theory for why this happened is that the native diet involved more difficult to eat foods, so the child developed a proper chewing technique, which applies force to the teeth, jaw and mouth, whereas the western diet involved very easy to eat foods (think mushy baby food) so the child never really learned how to chew properly and instead would do more a swallowing action

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