Hey there... Christmas time! 😲
Yeah, who am I kidding. I lost track of time, again. I fell again into the whole pre-holidays madness trap, along with some personal issues, and didn't manage to set up the November Smartsiez in time. Boo for me and the promise I made myself. 😟
Since it's a special time, why not have a compressed November+December, festive edition?
Yeah, who am I kidding. I lost track of time, again. I fell again into the whole pre-holidays madness trap, along with some personal issues, and didn't manage to set up the November Smartsiez in time. Boo for me and the promise I made myself. 😟
But! These smartsiez are time friendly(-ish). Think entertaining podcasts, animated book summaries, light(er) subjects. Who knows, maybe this Christmas lunch with the fam will be the most interesting yet, with many new, interesting, topics to debate... or not? Maybe not everyone is interested in... bacteria covering all our bodies, including our insides 😁 I for one, find this whole subject fascinating. And incredibly meaningful. So please, kindly approach me with this kind of topics, anytime, and you will be my star-marked friend.
Anywho, a quick look into this edition's smartsiez:
- Microbiology. Gut biome. Oh boy oh boy. My mind = blown. Another (loud) proof that us, beings are an astonishing work of art. With pieces and connections that are still not fully understood but luckily there's smart awesome people working hard on translating it all for us 😊
- Why identifying those things which bring you joy (and flow) is so beneficial
- Who to thank for during holidays (spoiler alert: not your mom who makes you eat the entire ton of food, nor your uncle pushing you into finishing the whole bottle)
- Why getting into almond milk coffees might not be such a bad or "too hip" idea after all 🤔
- Things avocados and shootings have in common
- Why learning a new language is like an illicit love affair 😮
- A damn good banana bread recipe
- ...and some cute holiday movies to watch for that needed dose of chill and cheer 📽🍿
So Ologies, the fun podcast I spoke about in the last smartsiez, recently got mentioned on TIME on the list of best podcasts to listen to and I couldn't agree more!
This Microbiology episode blew me away with so many fun facts about the little helpful "pets" we didn't know we have 😄 I won't spoil it all away, but here's some personal highlights for me...
I learned that each human is basically a superorganism, because its body is an ecosystem. It is home to trillions of microbes (yikes!) that form communities in different places in and on your body. Together these communities make up... your microbiome. But this is nothing to freak out about, these little fellas are incredibly important to us, in ways we only now begin to understand.
Let's put it this way... what if how you think and feel isn't just controlled by the brain, but in fact, a second brain you did not even know about? For me too, this sounds like when you think that someone’s the boss, and then you find
out that, like, their assistant does all the work! 😲 This video (from AsapSCIENCE) is a cute introduction on the way our gut collaborates with our brain.
Now to some cool stuff from the podcast: remember serotonin, the happiness hormone? Guess what. 90% of it is made in the GUT. Do you see? Food WAS happiness all along! And wait, there's more. Approximately 1000 different species of bacteria were identified till now, and each of these HAVE FOOD PREFERENCE, what? So that's (also) why they recommend to have your daily 5 fruits & 5 veggies (also known as prebiotics) - to take care of all your little hungry pets. OK all fun and cute but what do these guys do for you? Well, first of all, without them you wouldn't be able to digest a lot of the things you eat during the day. They also help fight the bad guys (bad bacteria) when needed, therefore keep your immunity system in check. They keep your skin in balance, that's why taking probiotics might even help you with acne issues (more on that, below). And the most recent link is to changing moods and even more crazy, to several mental illnesses (depression, anxiety, even autism), a link that is being heavily researched atm.
This whole story made me think even more on the damage antibiotics bring in this whole inner harmony; another reason to only use them once you've exhausted every other option (if antiobiotic resistant bacteria wasn't a powerful enough argument), only for treating bacterial infections (not for common colds!) and respecting the minimum treatment time.
One last thing which I found too cute: bacteria promotes pro-social behavior. Larger groups of people increase the chances of diversifying your microbiome, thus your general well being, so sort of a I help you, you help me kinda thing. Adorable, methinks.
Phew. And I didn't even cover it all here 😅. Strongly recommend this episode, and all the other linked materials. This quiz is also a fun way to get to know your friendly inhabitants better.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the hungarian-american psychologist who recognised and named the psychological concept of flow (something I also mentioned in September's smartsiez), wrote a book about it. And here's a fun & quick review on flow, with all the interesting takeaways on how and why to achieve this wonderful state. And no, mindless scrolling on facebook or watching TV don't qualify here 😉.
This section here is what everyone in the world should be conscious about, because happiness can simply not be achieved through material things.
"A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening 'outside', just by changing the contents of his consciousness". Curious yet? 😊
I was saying earlier you should thank a special someone these holidays. Well, someone may be stretching it a bit too hard, but bear with me. We're talking about... your liver.
"Like an office manager who remembers everyone’s birthdays and duties while their own contributions are forgotten, the liver keeps the rest of the body’s functions running smoothly."
While your liver is "happy to work overtime every once in a while — regenerative properties and all that — it’s not completely immune to abuse. It also loves vegetables and coffee(...)" - wait, what? Can this be true? Yep. Coffee lovers, rejoice - your liver, he a cool guy. He loves coffee just as much as you do 😛.
Ah, fresh, plump skin. Something all children and young teenagers take for granted before adulthood and hormones mess it all up. 😜
This guy has been battling acne in its most vicious forms since forever and got to eliminate it and keep it under control by taking several measures (including probiotics, mentioned earlier, aka the good bugs 💗). In this linked article he focused on the link between acne and diet. Aww man, what a mean thing to talk about, now in full stuffing-our-faces season, you say? Well. A few days won't change anything (I keep convincing myself 😁).
So back to the topic. He wrote this super extensive, easy to follow and understand summary on how and why some things you eat may trigger the unwanted adolescence on your face all over again. Think dairy, acid foods, processed stuff. And what to better focus on, for healthier looking skin. Good guy. Super useful article. From February on 😜.
So remember all those perfect morning routines, those tips & tricks on how to become a morning person, to function on less hours and accomplish more during the day? Yeah. Forget those.
You do you. Be a fabulous, night-functioning owl if you will.
True crime series about food and shady things happening because of it? Wow, Netflix really has it all.
Is this another scaremongering documentary? No, not really. Rather than zeroing in on a specific, heartstring-pulling topic like, say, the ethics of the meat production industry, Rotten casts a wider net. Across the six episodes, it explores unusual topics to take aim at unusual targets. Corporations, regulators, retailers, distributors, restaurateurs – everyone is culpable.
That isn’t to say Rotten doesn’t have an agenda. It explicitly asks you to reconsider your food choices. But it’s provoking a more intellectual outrage. The reliance isn’t on images of cute, fluffy animals being reared and slaughtered. It’s fact-based and investigatory. And brings light on things like the avocado mafia gangs in Latin America. Those are definitely three words I never thought I'd see together in a sentence...
Is this another scaremongering documentary? No, not really. Rather than zeroing in on a specific, heartstring-pulling topic like, say, the ethics of the meat production industry, Rotten casts a wider net. Across the six episodes, it explores unusual topics to take aim at unusual targets. Corporations, regulators, retailers, distributors, restaurateurs – everyone is culpable.
That isn’t to say Rotten doesn’t have an agenda. It explicitly asks you to reconsider your food choices. But it’s provoking a more intellectual outrage. The reliance isn’t on images of cute, fluffy animals being reared and slaughtered. It’s fact-based and investigatory. And brings light on things like the avocado mafia gangs in Latin America. Those are definitely three words I never thought I'd see together in a sentence...
"Those are the languages that will consume you – all of you – as you do everything to make them yours. You dissect syntax structures. You recite conjugations. You fill notebooks with rivers of new letters. You run your pen over their curves and cusps again and again, like you would trace your fingers over a lover’s face. The words bloom on paper. The phonemes interlace into melodies. The sentences taste fragrant, even as they tumble awkwardly from your mouth like bricks built of foreign symbols. You memorise prose and lyrics and newspaper headlines, just to have them at your lips after the sun dips and when it dawns again.
Verbs after adverbs, nouns after pronouns, your relations deepen. Yet, the closer you get, the more aware you become of the mirage-like void between you. It’s vast, this void of knowledge, and you need a lifetime to traverse it. But you have no fear, since the path to your beloved gleams with curiosity and wonder that is almost urgent. What truths will you uncover amid the new letters and the new sounds? About the world? About yourself?"
I could swear this was based on a true story. Me and german, something I would never in a million years thought would happen 😄 </nerd>.
A quick, healthy banana bread recipe, perfect for lazy Christmas mornings.
Ending the list with, what else, 27 best holiday movies or series to watch these days (in case you want to watch something besides Love Actually for once). My personal season favorites are Home for Christmas and Sugar Rush, the Christmas edition. And definitely never letting go of Love Actually 💗.
New fan here. Read everything, loved everything, please write more! :)
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