Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ has had a huge impact in my personal and professional life.
Especially, when I change my fast, automatic, and emotional thinking to slow, deliberate, and logical thinking, I not only improve my decision making process but also my understanding of human habits, patterns, and conflicts.
I’ve tried to apply the essence of this book not only in my professional life but also in my personal life, particularly in my current lifestyle.
I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people who are positively influenced by Kahneman’s seminal work.
If you want to improve your life by improving your decision making process on various aspects of life, especially long lasting strategic life movements like health, longevity, fulfillment, professional skills; please read it and apply it in your life.
In my experience, most of the time, we make mistakes by quick emotional decision making processes, and Kahneman teaches you the ways to improve on it.
“We, humans, are actually nothing but the collection of our own thoughts which shape us to move forward or backward because they dictate our actions and behaviors.”
The other book that has had a huge impact in my lifestyle is Daniel Goleman’s ‘Emotional Intelligence’.
In nutshell, after reading this book, I learned and strengthened my emotions to motivate myself and in developing relationships around me.
I mean the quality relationships, the win-win relationships, the relationships that might go ten, twenty or thirty years from now in both ways.
Our relationship with our family and quality friends; our relationship with our foods and daily habits all will change gradually if we seriously follow what Goleman says in ‘Emotional Intelligence’.
Of course, we can be emotional because we are human but at the same time, we also can make better and sustained personal and professional progress.
There is another related concept of neuro linguistic programming, NLP, developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder which teaches us to understand the relationship between language, behaviour, and our own thoughts.
We, humans, are actually nothing but the collection of our own thoughts.
Everyday, our own thoughts shape us to move forward or backward because these thoughts dictate our actions and behaviours.
“A lot of things that are glamorized by society aren’t actually worth listening they are just preinstalled human mentalities.”
Once in the past I’d thought, I’m not this kind of personality or that kind of personality.
I’d think I’m introvert but still I was asking questions to my advisor and line manager all the time.
I was compelled to present in front of people, almost always.
My colleagues who’d say they were extroverts but still hesitating to present in front of teams or colleagues.
I learned that saying is one thing but doing is completely different.
Our mindset gradually changes by doing not just by saying.
After reading the book ‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck, PhD, I gradually learned how our mind works and how it changes over time.
Carol Dweck’s ‘Mindset’ is a generational book to read, and especially, for those who think they are having one kind of personality or another kind of personality or if you think that you are born with a particular set of genes in your body.
The fascinating thing about ‘Mindset’ is whatever others might think about our life and behaviours, our mindset is our own.
Only we can feel it, recognize it, taste it, and improve it, no question about it.
The best lesson of ‘Mindset’ is we can actively choose to take steps to develop and deploy a growth mindset over a fixed mindset all the time at all ages.
Tony Robbins, one of my inspirational figures and author of ‘Life Force’ often shares his own life experiences to indicate the power of mindset, how shifting his own perspective from a fixed to a growth mindset helped him overcome many obstacles and achieve his numerous goals.
In the past, I never completely understood the connection power between opportunity, skills, and people around me.
Everytime, I was blaming more on my capacity and incapable mind, I was fixated with my mindset.
No doubt, I’m still failing all the time but at the same time also developing my growth mindset internally.
In my view, a lot of things that are glamorized by society aren’t actually worth listening to at all. Society says you can do this but you can’t do that, you should be doing this when you grow up but not doing that because you are not capable of it.
Carol Dweck in ‘Mindset‘ teaches us that all of these preinstalled mentalities are BS.
“A black swan is an unpredictable event or circumstance that is beyond our prediction like having a cancer but that could be obvious in hindsight.”
An amazing and key thing about our mindset is our mind is always a work in progress.
Our mind is run by neuroplasticity, it’s flexible, mobile, and always on the move.
Neuroplasticity means our brain reorganizes itself by forming new neural connections throughout our life based on what we think and do everyday.
I strongly recommend watching ‘Developing a growth mindset with Carol Dweck’ on YouTube.
Here is one example of how I used Daniel Kahneman’s slow and deliberate thinking mode in my life.
I used to eat a lot of roasted and salted nuts as a snack but I didn’t realize how the excess salt and preservatives were affecting my life.
I thought nuts are pretty good for our health without really understanding what I was eating.
The first time when I was reading Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ , I still remember, it was 5 am Friday morning.
I was a little bit sick with a specific kind of disease, related to blood clot and intestinal microbiome, so basically I was taking Friday off from work.
By the way, I’m an early riser.
I naturally wake up early in the morning, typically before most other family members so that I can enjoy quiet time, focussed concentration, and a positive mindset.
Robin Sharma, the author of ‘The 5AM Club’ has popularized the ‘5 AM Rule’ that involves waking up at 5 AM to dedicate the early morning hours to personal health, growth, and productivity.
In the middle of the reading ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, I said to myself, I’m not living just for today or tomorrow, I’m married, I’ve very young kids, and they need me.
I have to live a long healthy life, then what I have to do now.
I have to change myself, I have to be proactive about what I put in my mouth, and what I do throughout my day.
These all were the results of what I was reading about the effects of slow and rational thinking in Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’.
I don’t want to make my life a black swan or a gray rhino.
Michele Wucker, the author of ‘The Gray Rhino’ said, “A black swan event is completely unexpected but a gray rhino event is a more visible threat that is often ignored.”
My health problem at the time was a gray rhino event in my life.
I realized if I ignore or dismiss what my body is whispering to me, it would be too late to act.
I must be humble in my understanding of my body and physiology.
Remember, black swans and grey rhinos are our remainders of human understanding of our complex body as well as the complex world, whatever the situation may be.
We must be open, curious and humble in understanding of our complex body and many alarming diseases like neurodegenerative diseases and cancers.
We have seen and experienced the news that somebody is diagnosed with a cancer like pancreatic cancer and the person is gone in three months since we knew the person had cancer.
Is cancer for the person a black swan or gray rhino?
By the way, if you are not familiar with what black swan is, please read ‘The Black Swan’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
A black swan is an unpredictable event or circumstance that is beyond what we generally predict which has potentially severe consequences in our lives.
These events are characterized by extreme rarity and severe impact, but they were obvious in hindsight.
“Without a change in our food habits, there would be no change in our gut ecosystem, an increase in dietary fiber intake is a sure path towards healthy life and longevity.”
After reading these many books, I changed myself, and I’m still trying to shape these habits.
I’m changing my mind and mindset everyday.
Even though it was a little expensive to buy raw and premium quality nuts, I started eating them regularly instead of salted roasted nuts with preservatives.
My health issue was improving gradually with my food habit which was related to blood clotting and intestinal microbiome.
In the rest of the content, I’m going to share the advantages of key foods associated with microbiomes.
Research says that the king of nuts probably is walnuts.
Walnuts have the highest antioxidants and omega-3 levels.
They are the only nuts known to significantly improve artery function in our body.
They beat out other nuts in suppressing cancer growth in vitro.
Harvard Nurses’ Health study reports that among many nuts only walnuts are significantly associated with healthy aging.
Walnuts are extremely good ingredients for our microbiome in the gut.
Could you imagine how big our intestines are?
The total folds of our intestinal lining means its total surface area is about half the size of a badminton court.
Interepithelial lymphocytes are a special type of white blood cells, part of our immune system.
These cells perform two main functions; they serve as our gut’s first line of defense against pathogens and repair thin intestinal lining.
The Ah receptors cover these lymphocyte cells and activate the cells.
The amazing thing is that these receptors are upregulated in centenarians, who live one hundred and more years, and obviously their loss leads to premature aging.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, science communicator and author of ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’
said, “More bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of our lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived.”
Remember, prebiotics are things which we feed these good bacteria.
Probiotics are good bacteria themselves.
Postbiotics are things these bacteria make.
Our transition from adulthood into old age is accompanied by huge changes to the microbiome present in our body.
The 2005 Nobel prize in medicine was awarded to Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren for their discovery of Helicobacter pylori.
This discovery fundamentally changed our understanding of the stomach and the power of the microbiome to colonize and impact health in the gastrointestinal tract.
This clearly indicates the broader need to pave the way for deeper understanding of the gut microbiome and how they affect our health and longevity.
Dr. Erika Ebbel Angle, PhD, discusses why the gut microbiome is the most important organ you’ve probably never heard of.
The gut is the second brain, and gut health affects your overall health.
Dr. Angle’s TedTalk ‘Your Gut Microbiome’ is worth watching.
There is always a shift in microbiome as we become older.
For example, a shift from the fermentation of fiber to the putrefaction of protein leads to gut leakiness.
It is the spillage of bacterial toxins into our bloodstream if we are not aware how to grow the good bugs in our gut.
Putrefaction becomes common when the gut has a low availability of fermentable carbohydrates like fiber or resistant starch.
What these good bacteria love is fiber in our daily food.
Without a change in our food habits, there would be no change in our gut ecosystem, the probiotics that we take don’t make any root in our gut permanently.
An increase in dietary fiber intake is a sure path towards healthy life and longevity.
“One toxic postbiotic produced by bad bugs is TMAO, TriMethylAmine Oxide, grown by eating wrong foods, is linked to a high risk of heart attack and stroke.”
Fiber rich foods have two major advantages.
Firstly, they produce short chain fatty acids, SCFA, which enter in our bloodstream and work for the whole body.
Secondly, they selectively cultivate the good bugs in our gut to make these short chain fatty acids available all the time.
FDA recommends at least 25g fiber a day for women and 38g a day for men, but only three percent Americans actually meet the minimum requirements.
What is interesting is that researchers found tons of short chain fatty acids like butyrate or acetate from fiber fermentation from centenarian’s poop in their study.
This clearly indicates the fiber’s importance for longevity.
Bifidobacteria, Akkermansia, Lactobacillus are good health boosting bacteria, all accelerate our lifespans.
Michael Greger, MD, the author of ‘How Not to Age’ says “To stop leaky gut caused by bad bugs’ growth, we have to stop drinking alcohol and avoid NSAIDs like aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen.
These NSAIDs cause gastrointestinal lining damage in less than five minutes.
Eating cooked lentils everyday helps to stop leaky gut because of the zinc present in it.”
The bottom line is prebiotics like fiber and resistant starch feed our probiotics like Lactobacillus, Bifidobacteria, and Akkermansia to make beneficial postbiotics like butyrate and acetate.
Foods like legumes have resistant starch which cannot be digested by our small intestine and end up in the colon.
Good bugs like Ruminococcus like it and fosters the good bug ecosystem.
Author of ‘The Good Gut’ Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, said, “Humans are really composite organisms with microbial and human parts. But now, because of changes in diets, antibiotic over use, and over sterilization, our gut microbiota is facing a mass extinction which may explain the increase in some of our most troubling things, from food allergies to autism, cancer to depression.”
As a result of the extinction of good bugs, one toxic postbiotic by bad bugs is TMAO, TriMethylAmine Oxide.
It is produced by bad bugs grown by eating wrong foods.
Research shows that having a high level of TMAO is linked to a high risk of having a heart attack and stroke.
TMAO accelerates atherosclerosis by speeding the accumulation of cholesterol and inflammatory cells within artery walls.
TMAO makes our blood clotting platelets thicker and stickier resulting in high risk of blood clotting.
TMAO also creates oxidative stress so antioxidants like vitamin C and other polyphenols are very helpful to curb it.
TMAO is produced by bad bugs in our gut when we eat high choline foods like eggs and high carnitine foods like meat and energy drinks.
The best option to remove TMAO in the first place is, don’t grow bad bugs by feeding wrong foods.
One endocrinology journal article says TMAO is not ‘TriMethylAmine Oxide’ but ‘Time to Minimize intake of Animal prOducts’.
“If we avoid processed meat like ham, bacon, salami, hot dogs, and sausages, our body does not make carcinogenic nitrosamines and nitrosamides because these animal products convert nitrates and nitrites into cancer causing nitrosamines and nitrosamides.”
Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables boost our immunity against many pathogens, pollutants especially dioxins.
Cruciferous compounds block these harmful things.
Broccoli not only reduces inflammation level in our body but also helps to clear carcinogenic pollutants like benzene from our body.
Similarly, the power of nitrate containing food sources can not be ignored.
Nitrates improve the efficiency of our mitochondria, the power house of cells.
Research reports that a single shot of beet juice enables swimmers and free divers to hold their breath for 30 seconds longer than usual.
This is the power of nitrate vegetables.
According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, if we avoid processed meat especially ham, bacon, salami, hot dogs, and sausages, our body does not make nitrosamines and nitrosamides, they both are carcinogenic.
These animal products convert nitrates and nitrites which are very good to combat artery aging and muscle aging into cancer causing carcinogens.
Conclusion
Remember, what tackles carcinogens is antioxidants because antioxidants prevent free radical damage.
Which food has the highest amount of antioxidants?
The levels of antioxidants are different in different foods.
For example, one apple has 60 units of antioxidants.
One banana has 40 units of antioxidants.
Look at the berries per cup, they are so rich in antioxidants.
Strawberries have 310 units of antioxidants.
Likewise, blueberries have 380 units.
Raspberries have 430 units, cranberries have 490 units, and blackberries have 680 units antioxidants.
Berries are best to tackle oxidative stress in the body and fight for carcinogens.
In my research I also found that there are some amazing all rounder fruits for our body for healthy living.
For example, amla is so powerful that it reduces triglycerides, improves blood fluidity, reduces oxidative DNA damage, and systemic inflammation.
It also improves blood sugar control in diabetes, and may decrease the effects of heart stress.
Check Amla Benefits in NutritionFacts.org.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”
