Five wellness things I liked lately - July
Here are 5 health & wellness things I’ve loved lately.
How to Do Great Work by Paul Graham. This is easily the best thing I read in 2023. And yes, it falls under the “health & wellness” recommendation umbrella because reading Paul’s essay will do more for your brain than all the EPA & DHA, ice baths and Huberman dopamine protocols combined. Here’s just one of the tens of paragraphs I highlighted and am now looking at every morning before I sit at my desk:
We live in a time when too many people (especially young ones) view stress and anxiety as something that needs to be eliminated. But stress is not just intrinsic to life, I believe it can be harnessed for positive results when you look at it as a driving force rather than a hindrance. It’s difficult to experience purpose, passion or love without also feeling stressed and anxious about the things/ people you care about. However, building stress resilience and emotional robustness is essential for improving every aspect of health and longevity because poor emotional health does lead to accelerated aging. I am currently going through one of the hardest, most stressful periods of my life (building a startup, fundraising etc.) and even though I do not have much control external stress factors, I do have the power to work on modulating my response. To that end, I’ve implemented a simple and short stress-relief routine that I bookend every day with: immediately upon waking (before I look at my phone) I do 5-10 minutes of breathwork - mostly physiological sigh to really drive my parasympathetic response up, and at the end of the day, before bed, I foam roll for 5-10 minutes to help my body release tension which in turn will calm my nervous system. I think 10-20 minutes per day of catering to your mental state is enough in order to help you build resilience. Spending hours on self-care can ultimately have the opposite effect where you become more and more ensnared in a solipsistic spiral of anxiety.
This viral TikTok/ IG shaved iced strawberry recipe that makes for an amazing blood-sugar friendly dessert. I experimented with swapping peanut butter for black sesame tahini (less inflammatory for those sensitive to peanuts) and I think I like it even more.
I’ve struggled with debilitating PMS my whole life (at least 40% of women experience it to a degree that affects their daily functioning and quality of life), and I’ve often felt frustrated that all my health habits (eating nutritious, whole foods, moving my body everyday, meditating etc) have not been enough to help me manage my symptoms. Sometimes, we do need exogenous compounds to help our bodies build more resilience to hormonal fluctuations. I started taking the Women’s Phase I supplement by Vitanica (2 capsules twice/ day starting around day 14 of my cycle all the way through the start of my next period) and I do notice less severe PMS.
Listening to 40Hz binaural beats for 30 minutes at a time while doing bouts of focused work. I like the Brainwaves app, but you can also find free audio sessions of YouTube. I find this helps especially when I need to constantly switch from doing tons of time sensitive emails to more demanding product work.
Please let me know what kind of recommendations you’d like to receive in this newsletter. Which one of the above was your favorite? You can reach me on Instagram, Twitter or at sabina@kahla.com
Have a great weekend
Sabina
I love number 2. People only look at stress and anxiety's bad side without acknowledging its good side. What people should do instead of focusing on the bad side is teach others to balance it.
Loved this essay, Sabina! 💗