True Life

You can now find the True Life podcast content, happening on the Self-Help(ful) podcast where Kevin Miller and Dr Randy James bring you their "Functional Friday" episodes and more!

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#102: Recovering from injury is a popular topic, whether it’s a broken bone, a soft tissue sprain, pull, or tear, or a severe illness or disease. Yet as you’ll hear in this episode, we hit on the reality that living itself is injury. Every morning you wake up, hopefully having gotten quality sleep that was healing. Let’s say you start at 100%, which is impossible, but whatever level you start out, from that point on you are depleting yourself, physically and mentally. You spend the day wearing down your resources, which is why by nighttime, we are tired. It’s our body saying, “Hey, I’ve used up enough resources I need rest and recovery to recharge!” If you have a specific, acute injury, like my recent broken rib, or if you are down with COVID, your body needs even more recovery. Thus the things we think to do to recover from a big injury, don’t differ from things we want to address every day for our recovery. It’s a valuable paradigm shift to realize the reality of our existence as it pertains to our overall capacity and ability.

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#101: The topic today is the value of play. Now as soon as I say that, some of you will be turned off, as I used to be. I get it. For the aspiring and success oriented individual the topic of play and fun can sound like a frivolity or luxury and lacks the valor of just pushing toward the big goal. And yet, this is how sleep used to be viewed as well. The hero doesn’t sleep! Getting more than 4-5 hours is wasteful to the truly committed! Now we know better. If you want to perform at the top level, you need great sleep. Quantity and quality. Among the truly successful I see a priority given to play. Budgeting time for non-productive work that gives our emotions a break and our inspiration a boost. In this episode we dig into the concept. Join us.

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#98: We continue our walk through a fairly comprehensive list of menu items on treatments for depression. Apathy, or even just feeling blue and unmotivated and fatigued. In the previous episode, 97, we discussed solitude, outside time, exercise, positive input, having purpose and surrounding yourself with inspiration. Here we continue on with about nine other menu items you can pick and choose from to raise your spirits and increase your hope. We really worked to be compassionate and gracious as we discuss this very serious issue, and not showcase any one thing as the holy grail, and recognize you could engage in so many of these and still have a clinical problem. But none of these efforts will hurt, and they will most assuredly help give you the best chance to combat what is holding you down.

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#97: Depression, apathy, and just feeling blue and numb, are very real issues affecting all of us. We are all on the spectrum, we’re all coping to a level, and even when we are greatly inspired in one area of our life we can be dealing with aspects of depression in others. The culture looks at two possible treatments; counseling and medication. Both are of course, worthwhile. Yet they are merely two options out of about 15 we are going to discuss. None are guarantees, but all are highly relevant in combatting these issues. We get through six of them in this episode and continue on in the next episode to cover the rest. A quick note of relevance I feel we should have started off with, is...motive. Until we have a clear motive to pull out of depression, few of any treatments will matter. And motive is the root of my other podcast, What Drives You. I encourage you to find it and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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#96: We see sugar as a gift and honor it like we honor wine. And like wine, it’s probably not best to have it in excess. For the greater span of time, humans went most of their lives with little to no sugar outside of the occasional fruit when it was in season. In America it wasn’t until around 1619 when sugarcane came on the scene. Today sugar is added to everything. The American Heart Association recommends up to 25 grams, or 6 teaspoons per day. Though the average American consumes 88 grams, about 22 teaspoons a day. What’s best for our physical health? Zero. Today, 1 in every 3 Americans has diabetes or prediabetes. Another way to look at it, around 122 million Americans have a sugar related disorder, while only 14 million have an alcohol disorder. We are sicker and fatter than ever and sugar is the primary culprit. In this episode we talk about how to best view and manage sugar. Something again, we love too!

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#95: Fat is good. Say it again, fat is good. Empty carbs, bad. If you lived through the 80s as I did, they vilified fat and we pounded ourselves full of low and no fat carbs. The result this? I’ll read it to you as quoted by the NCBI: The prevalence of obesity changed relatively little during the 1960s and 1970s, but it increased sharply over the ensuing decades—from 13.4% in 1980 to 34.3% in 2008 among adults and from 5% to 17% among children during the same period. Then...the national adult obesity rate has increased by 26 percent since 2008 and today the U.S. adult obesity rate stands at 42.4 percent, the first time the national rate has passed the 40 percent mark. No fat has made us fat. Now let me clarify; a pint of Ben & Jerry’s is 16 oz, and if I have it, I eat it all. The whole pint. A pint of Chubby Hubby has 1,320 calories and 80g of fat. A 16 oz slab of salmon has 944 calories and 59g of fat. However that Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby also packs in 140g of sugar and the salmon has zero. The fat you want is from fish, meat, olives, avocado, seeds and nuts, and some dairy...but not the Ben & Jerry’s kind. Stay tuned and we’ll help you decipher what you want.

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Where should fruit factor into your diet? At all? A little? A lot? And then, if any fruits, which are the most beneficial to your wellness? It seems so basic, but these types of questions on food categories and value of different varieties are stumbling blocks in our decisions on diet, and fruitions of health. Yes. Pun intended. In this episode Dr James and I talk through whether we are generally best to eat fruit or not, and if so, which ones and how much.

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#93: Continuing on with our series on the most nutrient dense, life-giving foods, we now hit on grains. In the health and wellness world these have gotten much rap as the enemy. Carbs! I won’t hold you in suspense. Do we advise never eating grains? No. Are some types better than others? Yes. Are we best to minimize them in our diet. Yes. The greatest struggle with grains is simply the cultural norms and social friction we must deal with in a time when grains, and generally the least healthy, are still the primary food consumed in America. And being so countercultural is a bigger effort than merely managing our taste buds.

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#92: Eating meat or not is one issue, but if you choose to, are they all equal? Absolutely not. Again, we’re talking about food, the item we ingest every day that is intended to build, repair, heal, and help us flourish. So if the next meal has meat, does it contain the natural ingredients it was intended to? Ingredients that give us life? Or is it made up of synthetic hormones, antibiotics, waste products, and an overall soup of refuse and pharmaceuticals? It matters, hugely. The type of meat to a degree, but moreso, the life of the animal it came from. Dr James and I walk through meat to help you understand what will best support your...true life.

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