Dr. Andrew Belaveshkin

The compensation effect or “morally tired — immorally rest.” (The paradox of moral self-regulation). A frequent problem of a healthy lifestyle is the unconscious “compensation” of one’s “right” actions with “wrong” ones. By doing something right, it’s as if we get permission to do something wrong. By becoming “good” in one area of life, we can get a “license to do bad things” in another. After all, we want to see ourselves as good, but we don’t want to put in much effort. Therefore, our brain is constantly bargaining, balancing good and bad things. And when we are “good enough, “ we can stop worrying about the consequences of subsequent actions. Let’s look at examples of how this rule works. 1. Selection of healthy products and good deeds. If you ate a healthier lunch than usual, you tend to cheat more often. In the studies, different groups of subjects were offered to buy conventional and organic products. Those who bought “organic” showed a statistically higher probabi...

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and movement. Throw off the shackles and run or move to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Traumatic memories are packaged differently in our brains than ordinary memory. A variety of techniques is used to restore access to and weaken them. Movement plays a very important role here: our memory of events is connected with our muscle memory. Pay attention to these 4 techniques: 1. Desensitization and Processing by Eye Movement (EMDR) When we think, our eyeballs move synchronously with our thoughts. Try to fix the eyeballs at one point — and you will notice that the train of thought has slowed down. The method developed by Shapiro specifically for treating post-traumatic stress disorders helps restore access to traumatic memories and weaken them. Walking in the park, Frances noticed that the beginning of her anxious thoughts coincided with a specific motor pattern of the eyes. And that changing this pattern also leads to a change in fe...

We worry about the quality of the air outside, but we forget that we spend 90% of our time indoors and often worsen the air quality ourselves. Scientists develop a concept of exposome — a combination of various factors affecting us. What we exhale, spray, and burn inside the room can bizarrely interact, forming a sea of toxins. Once our ancestors were sick and died prematurely because they drowned in black and swallowed soot. Now we have an opportunity to breathe high-quality air. Here are 10 ways we harm ourselves. Incense sticks. Incense sticks, when burning, form multiple incomplete combustion products that increase the risk of lung damage (COPD, lung cancer, respiratory tract cancers). Their regular use is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and cognitive impairment. 2. Gas stoves. Like any open flame in a closed room, they are harmful (an increase in levels of nitrogen oxide, PM2.5 benzene particles, etc.). Thus, 12.7% of cases of childho...

Ice baths have become popular and are considered very effective. Many believe they help to recover, lose weight, strengthen physical and mental health, and improve blood flow and libido. The beginning of this fashion was laid by athletes such as runner Paula Radcliffe, and swimmer Michael Phelps, later celebrities and entrepreneurs intercepted the fashion, for example, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. Tempering popularizers such as Hof, who set a Guinness World Record for swimming under ice, maintain interest, saying that a “cold shower a day keeps the doctor away” is the best medicine. Is it so? Science has refuted all these misconceptions and has not confirmed the expected effects of ice bathing. Moreover, it turned out that ice baths do not speed up recovery. Instead, they noticeably worsen muscle growth after training, reducing the rate of muscle growth by 25%! No positive effect of baths on anxiety reduction was found. And ice baths help only mice to lose weight, not ...

  When I talk about the benefits of hunger, many people get scared. But they shouldn’t because healthy hunger is not our enemy but our ally. A healthy physiological appetite is more than just a wish to eat. It is a sign of health and the zest for life. A slight hunger is normal and a person’s natural state. For healthy metabolic function, well-being, and healthy eating behavior, it is important to follow a simple rule — eat when you are hungry and eat to satiety. Despite the apparent simplicity, this rule has many nuances. A slight hunger is a natural state of a healthy active person. For healthy metabolic function, well-being, and healthy eating behavior, it is important to follow a simple rule — eat when you are hungry and eat to satiety. A normal appetite and eating full meals ensure the excellent work of the hunger-satiety system, which is based on the balance of two hormones, ghrelin, and leptin. Please understand that the word hunger is often misunderstood. It ...

  Something about “sweet aspirin.” In Montezuma’s treasure trove, 25,000 hundredweights of cocoa were collected as taxes, and now there are more than three thousand publications and three hundred clinical studies on cocoa. I am on a caffeine detox and added cocoa as a traditional morning drink. The active ingredient in cocoa, theobromine, is a much weaker antagonist to adenosine than caffeine, has a weak effect on the brain, and carries no risk of addiction. Theobromine relaxes smooth muscles (expands bronchi, lowers the vascular tone, increases blood flow in the heart’s arteries, etc.). The critical components of cocoa are various polyphenols, of which there are many in cocoa, up to 50 mg per gram! The more polyphenols, the more bitterness. Plants accumulate them for protection against parasites, and we use them for our health. Cocoa polyphenols are antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds: procyanidin, epicatechin, catechin, epigallocatechin, quercetin, anthocy...

Use it or lose it. Much talk about what will happen to our cognitive functions when we delegate them to various technologies. Let’s look at this on a concrete, already well–studied example — GPS navigation and its biological analog — spatial orientation. Knowing where you are in space and building its mental models is one of the most important brain functions for survival. In 2014, scientists received the Nobel Prize for the description of certain types of neurons in the hippocampus, “place” and “grid” neurons (“grid cells” in the entorhinal cortex (next to the hippocampus). Our brain builds mental maps and calculates our routes. The rear part of the right hippocampus tracks changes in the number of available path options, the front pars records changes related to distance calculation. However, we stopped using this skill with the advent of GPS navigation. Brain scans have shown that when we plan a route in imagination, our hippocampus is active, and when using a phone, ...

The pause before eating is between the moment you sit at the table and the moment you start eating. Such a pause is very important for getting ready to eat, reducing stress, increasing appetite, stimulating the brain phase of insulin secretion, improving taste and satiation, and stimulating the secretion of digestive enzymes. All these factors have a very positive effect on our eating behavior and digestion. I can often see how people scoff at themselves the moment they sit at the table. I used to be such a person. But this is not healthy eating behavior. If we want the complex processes to work correctly and if we want to gain from them, we have to get ready. In fact, the secret of good sex is foreplay. The same with food. If you devour food the moment you sit by the table you miss out on a lot. Make food like foreplay and you will get more pleasure and satisfaction! How did the problem arise? The problem of devouring a meal the moment it appears happens after you have ...

  Slow eating means having a meal lasting at least twenty minutes. This time allows your hunger-satiety system to switch on completely. It also allows you to relax and gets the glands of your gastrointestinal tract working. The time you take to eat a meal directly impacts your health. All things being equal, a higher eating speed is associated with poorer health. According to some researchers, eating over 100 grams of food per minute is fast eating; and less than 60 grams per minute is slow eating. To find the optimal eating time, we can consider twenty minutes as the shortest time for a meal. You can make it longer, and in good company, you mustmake it longer! From my experience with my clients with no self-enforcement, just with a longer meal, they noticeably decrease the number of calories consumed. We think fast food is what we buy in fast-food chains. Alas! Any food eaten quickly becomes fast food! Imagine for example how a crowd of people pass through narrow d...