I just finished listening to the book The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life by Rodney Dietert, PhD, on Audible. It was fantastic. It is one of the few books I have ever pre-ordered and it was worth every second of the wait.

The Human Superorganism goes into the real science that is emerging about a hot topic that many of us are interested in but largely uneducated about, the microbiome. It turns out that the microbiome encompasses much more than just the GI tract.

A fascinating discussion that underlies the entire book is the rise of what Dietert refers to as “an epidemic of noncommunicable diseases.” He is referring to the proliferation of things like asthma, autism, Alzheimers, allergies, cancer, heart disease and obesity. He even talks about how depression could be tied into the microbiome.

I encourage you to read or listen to the book, both for yourself and the people you care about. It may change the way you approach some basic things.
 
To whet your appetite, here are a few of take aways from the book:
 
Cravings
Do you ever wonder why you have such strong cravings for certain foods? For me, potato chips are irresistible. Dieters asserts that, “when your microbiome is balanced, it will, not only accept, but crave good healthy food.” Food cravings change (for better and for worse) as you gut microbiome changes. What do your cravings say about your microbiome?
 
It’s Never to0 Early
 “Do not delay seeding a baby’s microbiome.” Parent’s, please educate yourselves because it is easier to correct a damaged microbiome and to maintain a good microbiome at a young age. Still, changes are possible at any age. As in so many things, change becomes more difficult, but not impossible, to make over time.
 
Antibiotics
If you need antibiotics, talk to your health provider about complementary probiotic therapy. Antibiotics work wonders but they can go after the microbes we want to keep as well as the ones we hope to eradicate. Supporting the bacteria that makes life better will pay huge dividends.
 
What You Put In and On
Most of our medications, cosmetics, personal care products, etc. are not tested for microbiome safety. Pay attention to how they make you feel, and act accordingly.
 
It Might Not Be What You Think
Anxiety, depression and brain fog have often been attributed to hormone imbalances. It turns out, according to Dietert, that the microbiome is the “master controller” of neurobehavioral changes. Working on your microbiome can make a difference in how we feel and show up in the world in ways we probably hadn’t expected.
 
Exercise
“Voluntary” and “Forced” exercise appear to have opposite effects on the microbiome and inflammation. In mice, voluntary exercise was  associated with less inflammation and forced exercise was associated with increased inflammation.

Personally, I have a lot of questions about this finding. At the same time, I also find it tantalizingly thought provoking. This information raised some questions for me, among them: Does it give me permission to slack off when I don’t want to head out the door for some exercise? Or, does the fact that, ultimately, I make the choice to head out the door cause the exercise to become voluntary? Are there benefits that I can gain from forced exercise that could be more healthful than the increase in inflammation?
 
Last Word
This book will not give you a cut and paste recipe for how to take care of your microbiome but it will help you ask more educated questions and make more informed choices. You will see the world around you in a different light. For some of us, it is not a convenient light to see.
If you are looking to improve your microbiome or just wondering what the fuss is about, this a the book. As a final treat, Dietert does provide a list of 10 choices we can make for “becoming a healthier super organism.” 

It Happens

At one time or another, we all find ourselves tired, run-down and just feeling lousy. We start to wonder if the problem is “serious” and requires a trip to the doctor. We wonder if age is catching up with us or if we just need to take better care of ourselves.

For acute problems we get ourselves to the doctor ASAP. 

But, sometimes what to do isn’t so obvious. For the things that come on slowly or are annoying instead of debilitating, most of us wait too long before taking action. I like to experiment while I procrastinate.


Take the First Step Yourself

When you wake up to find that you have made the slow slide to feeling crappy, tired or just not yourself, try some of the things listed below for a week or two. 

Taking action, even if the action isn’t a trip to the doctor’s office, sooner rather than later, is the best policy. Taking action with a plan will make the effort more beneficial in the long run.

Document what you do and any changes in how you feel.

Sometimes, just doing these things will take care of the problem.

If the problem(s) don’t resolve, you can head to the doctor armed with some information. 


Some Things to Try

-Drink enough water
-Get your sleep situation figured out
-Make one healthy change to your diet
-Find a few minutes to disconnect in the am and pm. 
-Hang out with friends in an alcohol and shit food free environment. 
-Listen to some music that makes you happy or relaxed
-Get some sun and fresh air
-Take a walk
-Spend a little less time connected to your phone, tv, ps4 or whatever is a big time-suck for you.

If after two weeks you don’t see clear, concrete improvement, get to a doctor, get a check up or whatever seems like a prudent next step for you. Whatever you do, you will have some concrete information to pass on to a health care provider. That alone, might cut down on follow up visits and misdiagnosis.

If you find that your problems disappear or lessen, you may be on the road to recovery. Stay the course and reevaluate your situation often. Seek help if it becomes needed.

For over two years I have kick started my morning by skipping the elevator ride down from my apartment. Depending on the day, I walk, slog, bound and, recently, hobble down the 37 flights of stairs that separate my apartment from street level. It seemed like the healthy thing to do.
Last week that stopped. Over the past few months my achilles tendons have become more and more painful. It’s gotten the point where I am afraid to even make a quick dash across the road. Two bulges in the tendon tug and pull and it is to the point that I have visions of a tendon rupture whenever I make an explosive start.
Now, I take the elevator.


Health and Wellness is a Process


Health and wellness is a process. At it’s best, it is a process of finding out what doesn’t work and replacing it with something that works better. One little change may not alter things too much but days, weeks, months and a lifetime of stacking good habits and good attitudes will make us invincible, or so goes the logic.


Choices and Synergy


I believe in small steps. A way to awesomeness is stacking good habits together. But, sometimes there is more to it. A good habit plus a good habit doesn’t always equal a step forward. 
Hopefully, we figure out quickly when things aren’t working to our advantage. For me, green tea is good and bananas are good. Green tea and bananas together, however, make me feel sick and nauseous. It didn’t take long to figure that one out.
Some things are trickier though, my achilles being an excellent example. The problem arose out of an attempt to rectify another issue. I have been on a quest to help my achy, stiff feet with their twisted toes become happy, supple and healthy. Years of running in too small shoes have taken their toll. My efforts have worked to a great degree. Thanks to yoga, toe spacers, wide toe boxes, exercises and as much barefoot time as I can muster, there have been incredible improvements and I have been walking and running without pain for a few years.
That’s why the achilles pain was such a shocker. The achilles is basically a part of the foot, right. It attaches right at the heel. If my feet feel good, my achilles tendons should be happy campers too.


The problem


I had a hunch that there was a simple reason but I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
After a few months of wondering, “is this what getting older is like,” I had an epiphany. The first part of the eipiphany was, “no this is not what getting older is like.” The second part was that I had stacked one too many “good” things together and two of them were in a negative synergy.
In my quest for better feet, I had injured myself by doing too much “good”. I have been transitioning to more and more natural shoes. “Natural” meaning, among other things, zero heel lift in the shoe. It’s been a slow process. Years in fact. Only in the last six months have I been almost completely heel lift free. 
It turned out that my newest shoes had about 1/8” less heel lift than the previous ones. That 1/8” of stretch over and over as I walked down the stairs added up to cause a real injury. 
Now, I’m riding the elevator and wearing shoes that are a bit more conventional as I recover. And, once I’m able, I restart my pursuit of that extra 1/8th inch of achilles flexibility.


The Point


The point is this. It is possible that our best intentions, the things that are beneficial in isolation, can combine to cause problems. Even when we are “taking care” of ourselves, we should be in constant evaluation mode and always on the lookout for unintended consequences and unwelcome synergies.


What are your unwelcome synergies?

It’s a new blog project and journey I intend to follow wherever it leads me for the next three years. Why three years? The first part of the answer is simple. I, like many of you, work and play (this is play for me) better with a deadline. The second part is, blogs could go the way of the dinosaurs. The world is changing fast and so is the way we communicate and share information. By acknowledging that up front, I hope stay clear of unnecessary anxiety if whim, passion or good sense take this project in a different direction. 
Tuned Up Life is my attempt to share my excitement for health and living an awesome life. At the same, I am hoping to restart conversations with the people I have lost touch with and start new conversations with the amazing people I have yet to meet.
Please join the conversations. There are already several blog posts waiting for your wise input. If you prefer, email me directly from the contact page. Just click on the little envelop symbol under my name.
And, please join the email list. I don’t know exactly how I will use it yet, but I promise that I if I email you it will be for something worthwhile. I will use my email powers only for good. Under no circumstances, will I give out your email address.
There is also a Tuned Up Life page on Facebook for those of you who like to keep in touch that way. 
Thank you for checking out TunedUpLife.com and being part of the conversation and good times.


Kurt
​

​Starting in college and for the next twenty years, I had a dry, mildly annoying morning cough. For the longest time, I thought it was caused by the change from being in warm moist air to drier air. My logic being that the cough always happened when I got out of the shower. It wasn’t a huge deal. Sure, it was uncomfortable but after 10 seconds of coughing it went away until the next shower.

In retrospect, I find it bizarre that I never thought more deeply about it. As far as I can remember, it never happened when I returned to my parents’ house to visit. A closer inspection, might have led me to question whether or not the cause was something in the water.

It wasn’t until I was married that I stumbled upon the probable cause, chlorine in the water. I found this out, as often happens often, not by taking care of myself but by trying to help out someone else. In this case, it was my wife.

After moving from Japan to LA, she was having terrible skin dryness. She was miserable. Actually, I had been suffering from dry skin for years too, but I had never done much more than buy some lotion. My wife’s unhappiness made me search out a solution. I settled on reducing chlorine in our shower water as a starting point. We bought a carbon shower filter. It helped. It wasn’t perfect. Her problems didn’t go away completely but they did lessen in severity.

To my surprise, my cough went away. One day I had it and the next day I didn’t. The only thing that changed was the shower filter.

We suspect that the filter gets rid of some of the chlorine and that it is quite possible that my cough and my wife’s dry skin problems are exacerbated by the chlorine and chloramines (another disinfectant commonly used in municipal water supplies) municipal tap water.

Upon realizing that something added to tap water was likely the culprit, it made complete sense that I didn’t have a problem until I went away to college and that I didn’t have a cough when I went back home to visit my parents. The well on our property that supplied water to the house was free of chlorine and chloramine.
 
The skin and chlorine.
 
I have written about the water we drink- First World Country, Third World Water, Improve your relationship with water, 3 Questions with Travis Macy- but, it turns out that our skin is an even more inviting route for icky stuff to enter the body.

-Click below to read more-

Travis Macy is an ultra endurance athlete and author of The Ultra Mindset: An Endurance Champion’s 8 Core Principles for Success in Business, Sports and Life. He has finished over 120 ultra endurance events in 17 countries. Despite his many success in the endurance and ultra endurance realms, he notes “Proud and happy father and husband,” at the top of his career highlights.
 
Competing in and training for races that last for up to 8 days has taught Travis a few things about the importance of water. He has been kind enough to share a few bits of his water wisdom with the Tuned Up Life community.
 
Q and A
 
Do you spend as much time thinking about the quality and quantity of water that you drink?
 
Great question.  I live at altitude and exercise a lot, so I am constantly thinking about access to drinking water.  I'm also lucky to live in a small town that produces pretty good tap water.  That said, I could probably be more active in considering water quality when I am out and about.
 
What’s your best water habit (if you have one)?
 
In daily life, my best habit is carrying a water bottle everywhere I go.  I don't track fill ups per day, but I constantly fill it and really enjoy the way drinking water makes me feel.  In races, I drink to thirst.  The latest science by experts like Dr. Tim Noakes suggests that the best system for determining how much we should drink is the answer to a simple question: Am I thirsty?
 
Based on your experience as an ultra-endurance athlete, is there one thing that you would recommend to people in the Tuned Up Life community to instantly up the quality of their relationship with water?
 
If you're drinking a lot of sugary liquids, cut those.  Drink water instead; I'm confident you'll be happy with how you feel.
 
How do you compare?
 
If you aren’t doing the three things Travis mentions, I challenge you to try them out for a few days.
 
            1. Carry a water bottle everywhere you go
            2. Drink when you are thirsty
            3. Cut out the sugary drinks and drink pure water
 
Leave a comment about how it goes. Also, I’m collecting a list of the best water habits of everyone I come across. Please, add your sage wisdom about water in the comment section so that everybody can follow your lead.
 
To find out more about Travis Macy and what he does, go to TravisMacy.com. You can find an awe inspiring list of his endurance accomplishments as well as information about his coaching and speaking offerings. Don’t miss the section about his book The Ultra Mindset: An Endurance Champion’s 8 Core Principles for Success in Business, Sports and Life.

You can download a free preview of the book on the site

For most of us in first world countries, water is an under contemplated topic. Outside of choosing which brand of bottled water we want to buy at the store or choosing between flat, sparkling or tap at a fancy restaurant, we just accept what we are given.

It’s one of the benefits of living in the first world. We can blissfully go about life with rarely contemplating things that for 99.9% of human history were life or death matters.
​
Still, the first-world doesn’t equal the perfect world. In truth, when it comes to water, the United States has stealthily permitted the spread of the same problems that plague third world countries.

(click below to read more)

Fifth grade was the year that I really gave much thought to the water I drink. I can thank the Cub Scouts for that. Up to that point, water came in only two mutually exclusive categories. There was the stuff I would drink and the stuff I would not drink. The distinction was simple, clear water was drinkable and dirty, smelly water wasn’t. Turns out there is often more to it than that.
 
Thanks to Cub Scouts, I learned that there are things that can be done to make icky water less icky and potentially drinkable.  This all came out in the context of camping.  Apparently, bears are like boys and they pee when they go swimming and a person can end up with a gut full of nasty bugs if they drink the bear pee water.  At least that’s what we were told.
 
Our house in Evergreen, Colorado had a deep well and we never worried about bear pee or other lurking dangers.
 
I remember when I was in college in Boulder, Colorado noticing that the quality of the city tap water wasn’t consistent. It looked a bit brown and tasted worse than usual early every spring, probably due all of the dissolved and undissolved solids in the runoff. Maybe, there were some extra chemicals that were needed to kill off the unwanted critters too. Still, I didn’t worry too much. In my mind, if it came out of the tap it meant that someone who knew something had given it the stamp of approval and deemed it safe.
 
For a long time I took good safe water to be a given but as time passes it is becoming less of a given, even in a modern country like the U.S. The reports of plastics beads in the ocean, BPA in our water bottles, prescription drugs in municipal water supplies, entire lakes ruined by runoff from farms, toxic algae blooms in all water sources from fertilizer runoff are all a super bummer and super scary. Even the fluoride that everybody thought was a good thing turned out to be horrible for us. Lead, seemingly a problem of the past, is turning up more and more in the water we drink.
 
These things bring me back to what I learned in Cub Scouts. There are things that we can do to improved the quality of our water. The quest for drinkable water is an everyday event, not just something to do when we are roughing it in nature.
 
About five years ago I really started thinking about how to have cleaner water at home. At that point Satomi and I had been using a Britta filter for years. The improved taste of the water gave us a the feeling that we were taking prudent steps to be safe and healthy.
 
At the time we were living in Japan, surrounded by agriculture and aquaculture.  Both of them were pouring insane amounts of pesticide and herbicide into the environment. It’s bad to douse a field with chemicals. It turns out that the consequences continue far away from the growing areas because the chemicals don’t stay where they were put. They drift in the wind, run off with the water and get tracked in to the home on clothes and shoes. Some of it was bound to end up in our water.
 
We dabbled with getting spring water from a mountain a few town over but that was short lived. It was hassle to drive to the spring, fill the bottles and drive home. And, while it tasted great from the source, after a few days in the containers we used it tasted like plastic. On top of that, drinking spring water is a thing of the past for most people. We were often told that the water probably had bacteria in it. Here a cautionary tale one time too many and it sticks. Doubt, coupled with hassle, combined to send us back to the tap and a simple Britta filter. The anxiety about clean water stayed.
 
When we moved to Manhattan, I finally felt compelled to up my water filtration game. I bought a Berkey filter. It’s big, unweildy, slightly annoying to clean and also one of my most treasured possessions.  It has two carbon filters and two additional filters for chlorine and heavy metals. It won’t get everything but it gives me peace of mind and the water tastes much better. Rice even cooks up fluffier and tastes a little better with that filtered water.
 
There is an entire other rabbit holes to venture into regarding the water in which we shower and bathe, the water we swim in and the water that falls on us from the sky.  Is water from a moving source better than a still source? Is from underground better than from the surface? Is mountain better than dessert? Is different water better for different people?  They are interesting but none of those is the way to start.
 
In truth, I’m not a water fanatic but I know this about water: Whatever our relationship to it is, we can improve it and reap the benefits of that improved relationship. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just doing a little better tomorrow than we are doing today leads to big improvements over time.
 
To get you started, here are a few simple ways to improve your relationship with water. Start where you are in life and don’t try to do too much.
 
If you feel like you don’t drink enough, drink more.
If you drink enough, improve the quality.
If you don’t filter already, get a filter. It doesn’t need to be the fanciest.
If you buy bottled water, buy your own bottle and refill it.
If you have an old plastic water bottle, get a new one that is less likely to add icky chemicals to your water. I like stainless steel but I plan to upgrade to glass at some point.
If your water is overly filtered it may lack minerals. Sprinkle a little sea salt in it.
 
Start the journey today and take your time. It will be worth the effort.

​It’s odd that my most condescending tendency was inspired by a Jack Canfield book, the creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul .
 
In his book (I don’t remember which one) is a reference to a man who uses the phrase “rise above it” to keep calm and carry on when life gets frustrating. When he feels himself being pulled off course by people, or situations, or whatever, he urges himself to “rise above it” and those few words allow him to do so.
 
The method resonated with me so I tried it. Over and over again I tried it. For me, it works and I love it.
 
Bank account is at $58…rise above it.
Architect is on vacation for a week and need his input…rise above it.
Got glutened by the dish that is supposed to be gluten free…rise above it.
Screaming kid with screaming parent on the airplane…rise above it.
Mindlessly ate a bag of cookies…rise above it
Dude has 8 items the express lane…rise above.
5:30am is too early to work out…rise above it.
Hot water heater is broken until noon…rise above it.
 
It’s amazing. Giving myself the prompt to “rise above it” empowers me to just get on with life without wasting energy on things that I don’t need to change.
 
I like how it is easy to add whatever emotion suits the situation. It could be determination, kindness, or no emotion at all. I haven’t fully graduated to those levels yet. My default is an attitude that I would normally despise. At first, I thought it was a cool, laid back nonchalant attitude. Over time I’ve realized that’s not quite right.
 
My attitude is more sinister. Still, the world is likely a better place despite that fact.
 
 It feels so good. Some annoying, frustrating, oh no not again, stupid thing threatens to pull me away from my “A” game and I imagine flipping my hair back with a casual snap of the neck and as I do, giving an almost amused glance that says, “your not worth my energy”, and I say, “rise above it” as if I already have.  It’s so easy!
 
Nonchalance? Definitely not. Outwardly expressed, might the attitude get me punched the face in a bar? Likely.  Yes, my inner voice is condescending. But it works and it keeps me from spewing venomous energy into the world.
 
The attitude makes me feel superior to the problem (not the person and that is the key). With that attitude, I breeze right by annoyances. Would I benefit by being a little less smug as I “rise above it”? Most likely. I’ll keep working on it but I’m not there yet.
 
The ability to move on with life despite what once might have caused me to wallow in misplaced emotion or have a minor meltdown seems like a win compared to frustration, anger and anxiety.
 
Condescension today, bemusement tomorrow, and simple acknowledgement in the future. One baby step at a time and I’ll be there.

Here is a question for you: What makes you a hero? Don’t be modest. You are, most definitely, a hero. If you don’t believe it, read on.
 
 One of the many amazing things in the world is that we get to be the authors of our own stories. The starting point for having a good personal story is acknowledging that you are the hero of your life. Once you do that, life becomes about living your heroic legacy.
 
Being a hero is important. It makes both our world and the world at large awesome. When we see ourselves as the hero of our life story we interact with the world in a way that allows us to live boldly, to overcome challenges and to keep going, even when things seem grim.
 
Being a hero is not as difficult as people make it out to be. Everybody has what it takes.
 
Perfection isn’t a requirement. Heroes are not perfect. A hero has his or her own challenges, weakness, and flaws. Heroes succeed despite these things. Let’s look at what allows a hero to rise to the occasion time and time again when others fail. What are the traits of a hero?
 
Here is a list (thank you internet and the people who provide awesome info!).
 
I expect you will find your hero self in the list.
 
#1 According to psychology.about.com
 
•          People who become heroes tend to be concerned with the well-being of  others.
•          Heroes are good at seeing things from the perspective of others.
•          Heroes are competent and confident.
•          Having the right skills and training can make a difference.
•          Heroes have a strong moral compass.
•          Heroes persist, even in the face of fear.
•          Heroes keep working on their goals, even after multiple setbacks.
 
#2 On the Storyline blog we can find: 6 surprising commonalities of movie-screen heroes:
 
•          They are flawed
•          They are filled with doubt
•          They seek a guide
•          Heroes are lazy but get forced into action
•          Heroes change
•          Heroes experience pain
 
#3 Personalitytutor.com lists, “characteristics or qualities a hero invariably possesses.”
 
•          Courage
•          Virtuosity
•          Sacrifice
•          Determination
•          Focus
•          Compassion
•          Perseverance
•          Dedication
•          Honesty
•          Loyalty
•          Intrepidity
•          Conviction
•          Fortitude
•          Responsibility
•          Wisdom
 
Did you find yourself? Undoubtedly, you did. Even if you only find one thing heroic about yourself, that is enough. That one thing is the stepping stone to the next and the next and the next.
 
And what if you didn’t find yourself in this list?
 
If that’s the case, I would say that you are playing the part of a villain in your own life. The villain is a topic to explore in more depth at a different time. But, know this. At your core, you are not a villain. The villain is only a costume we wear that obscures the awesomeness of the hero we were born to be. The villain isn’t the true us. It is a role that we fall mindlessly into and it is a role that we can free ourselves from.
 
Don’t try to be a super hero. Superheroes have hard lives.
 
Just as the villain wears a costume to hide the true self, so does the superhero. The costume of a super hero covers up the regular person’s flaws and allows unbelievable feats or strength and power. The costume makes for good drama, but again it hides the true self and danger is always just around the corner. There is no need to be a super hero. A world full of regular heroes will be just fine.
 
Be a hero.
 
Start, right now, by acknowledging the heroic traits you display in daily life. Celebrate them. If you think that you went through the day without being heroic, think again. Look back to list #2. Did you show a flaw, have doubt or experience pain but continue on? Congratulations! You have the stuff of heroes.
 
Here are some other things that you can put into practice.
 
This is a short list that I wish I had come up with. It can help you cultivate what Zeno Franco and Philip Zembardo (who launched the Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1960s) call heroic imagination. Franco and Zambardo have set out to explore what  moves people from “cowardly inaction to heroic action.”
 
•          Maintain constant vigilance for situations that require heroic action.
•          Learn not to fear conflict because you took a stand.
•          Imagine alternative future scenarios beyond the present moment.
•          Resist the urge to rationalize and justify inaction.
•          Trust that people will appreciate heroic (and frequently unpopular) actions.
 
(From Art of Manliness post  Developing the Heroic Imagination: The five Traits of Heroes, Check it out here)
 
That’s all there is to it. Live long and be heroic!