How To Reverse Insulin Resistance Through Diet, Exercise & Sleep - Found My Fitness with Dr Ben Bikman

Insulin Resistance: A Common Root Cause of Chronic Disease

Dr. Ben Bikman, a professor of cell biology, advocates the view that insulin resistance is a common root cause for most chronic diseases. It is implicated in type 2 diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, fatty liver disease, infertility, and even breast and prostate cancers. Insulin is a powerful hormone that affects virtually every cell in the body. Rather than treating individual diseases as separate issues, Dr. Bikman suggests addressing insulin resistance as a "common soil hypothesis" to simplify the clinical approach. This perspective highlights that insulin resistance is not the sole contributor to these conditions but is an undeniable factor.

Limitations of the Glucose-Centric Medical Paradigm

Modern clinical care often operates under a "glucose-centric paradigm," focusing primarily on blood glucose levels to monitor metabolic health. However, this approach can miss the early stages of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is characterised by elevated insulin levels, where the body works harder to keep glucose in check, often maintaining normal glucose levels initially. Because glucose remains normal, this early phase of insulin resistance often "flies under the clinical radar". Dr. Bikman argues that if insulin levels were routinely measured, the earliest signs of metabolic problems could be detected sooner, allowing for earlier intervention. Ignoring high insulin levels can also lead to treatments, such as giving insulin therapy to type 2 diabetics, which may control glucose but can paradoxically "kill them faster" due to hyperinsulinemia and worsening insulin resistance.

Detecting Insulin Resistance

Navigating bone health: early life influences & strategies for improvement & injury prevention - Peter Attia

Peter delves into the topic of bone health, explaining why it is an important issue for everyone, from children to the elderly. He begins with an overview of bone mineral density, how it’s measured, how it changes throughout life, and the variability between sexes, largely due to changes in estrogen levels. From there, he provides insights into ways to improve bone health, including exercise, nutrition supplements, and medications.

Mortality Risk and the Importance of Bone Health

• Falling, especially leading to a hip fracture, poses an enormous risk of death, particularly for older individuals. The risk of death from a fall by age 75 is substantial.
• For people aged 65 or older who fracture their hip in a fall, 25% will be dead in six months.
• A hip fracture is a devastating outcome that should be avoided at any age, but especially after the seventh decade and beyond.
• A hip fracture carries a greater mortality than smoking. The hazard ratio for all-cause mortality following a hip fracture is 2.78 (a 178% increase in risk of mortality) within one year for participants aged 60 or older, which is higher than the hazard ratio for smoking (which is probably just below 2).
• In one study, men aged 90 or above who suffered a hip fracture had a mortality rate of more than 40% within a year. For people over the age of 80, the mortality risk within a year after a hip fracture is about 33%.
• Among accidental deaths, for people younger than 60, overdoses are the predominant cause, but for people over 65, falling is the predominant cause.
• The most common fractures in people over 65 are in the proximal femur (hip fractures) and the pelvis.

Bone Biology and Definitions

How To Live Freely In A Goal-Obsessed World - Chris Williamson with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Anne‑Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, founder, and author. We live by unconscious mental scripts. Most of the time, we don’t even realize it, until we wake up and see the life we’re living isn’t what we truly want. So how do we unlearn what no longer serves us and rewire our mind to align with who we really are? Expect to learn what the problem is when people obsess over finding their purpose, how to know if you’re following your own dreams or someone else’s, the tactics you can learn to begin unlearning cultural scripts, how to get more comfortable with uncertainty, how to deal with the shame of letting go of busyness and driving toward your purpose, why posture is so overlooked in mental health, how to improve a destructive mindset, and much more…

Challenging the Obsession with Purpose and Passion

• Obsessing over finding one's purpose often leads to misery because it makes people feel that something is wrong with their life if they haven't found it yet.
• This obsession leads to constantly comparing one's life to others' lives (e.g., wondering why others seem excited about what they are doing while they themselves lack purpose or passion).
• A better approach than seeking a predetermined purpose is to experiment and explore, thinking like a scientist who starts with a hypothesis or research question (e.g., "What might happen if I tried this?") rather than a specific outcome in mind.
• Humans are generally terrible at predicting what they will like in the future, as personal preferences change significantly over time based on experiences, failures, growth, and the people one associates with. It is difficult to predict what you will enjoy, as things you hate today because they are hard might be enjoyed in the future once you have mastered them.

The Trap of Cognitive Scripts and External Validation

Feminism Debate - The Diary of a CEO with Deborah France-White, Louise Perry, and Erica Komisa

Has modern feminism betrayed the very women it promised to empower? Deborah France-White (Guilty Feminist), Louise Perry, and Erica Komisar go head-to-head on sexual freedom. Deborah Frances-White is a bestselling author and host of The Guilty Feminist podcast, Louise Perry is a journalist and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and Erica Komisar is a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, and author of books such as, ‘Chicken Little the Sky Isn't Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety’.

The Sexual Revolution and Shifting Social Structures

• The Sexual Revolution comprised both an ideological event (questioning traditional, often Christian, ideas about sexual relationships) and profound material changes, including the introduction of the Pill, safe abortion, the decriminalization of abortion, and domestic technologies like the washing machine.
• The Pill gave the illusion that sex was consequence-free, although physical consequences (STDs, contraception failure) still exist, and emotional consequences remain, particularly for women who tend to bond more quickly.
• The primary positive outcome of the revolution was granting women agency (choice moment to moment), autonomy (deciding the shape of one's life), and emotional freedom.
• Feminism did not unite women but split them, with the second wave specifically telling women that they "should" want free sex and to go out to work and leave their children in daycare.
• Excessive freedom without structure is detrimental, causing individuals to feel untethered, unbound, and insecure, despite freedom generally being a virtue.
• The historical shift from women being community caretakers (checking on the poor and elderly) has been described as pulling a "keystone species" out of the environment, causing the community ecosystem to degrade.

Critique of Hookup Culture and Dating Dynamics