HitPoint Health Weekly 5/28: Exercise Before Bed, Boundless Parenting, Adrenal Cortex, Cassette Beasts, and more

Good morning, happy Sunday as always, and I hope that all is good. It's great to have a 3 day weekend, it always feels like it comes at just the right time. Although if every weekend could be a 3 day weekend, it would always be the right time, I suppose. This week I didn't get the chance to do as much gaming or even music playing / learning as I had initially wanted, but that's okay, the extra day on the weekend should make up for it. I hope that you can utilize this extra time this weekend for something fun and productive as well.

Stuff I did this week:

Boundless Parenting

This book is a dense one, which is what I think I will need to be a successful parent. The idea has always stressed me out, and as someone who didn't really grow up around many kids younger than myself, the concept can seem a little alien to me sometimes. Even look alien. But this book gets into detail from many different parents on how to raise children into successful and powerful humans. And I know that if I ever decide to have kids, that I would want them to be just that. In their own power, and able to navigate the world without fear, and anxiety that seem to be very common in the world today.

I recommend this book whether you're a parent, interested in parenting, or even if you just want some lessons in how to treat other people. So really, I'd recommend it to anyone. Sometimes, parenting books have sage advice on patience, tolerance and acceptance, and this book certainly has all of these and more. So whether you're looking for advice to help you with your children, or to help you with your inner child, I think it's worth the read.  

Cassette Beasts

When playing this game, I was reminded of the first time I played Pokemon Diamond and Pearl on the DS many years ago. How it felt to navigate a world that felt so large, so many new and creative Pokemon to see, places to explore, galaxy members to defeat. And the best part (other than the awesome music) is that it's two player locally, which is great for Steam Deck! I love my Deck so much. This is a game that I am excited to continue to explore with my partner, and I'm excited to see how my beasts will evolve!

Weekly recommendations:

Adrenal Cortex

I recently started taking adrenal cortex, which is quite literally that, dessicated bovine adrenals. I get this from Thorne, which is a name in the supplement industry that I have come to trust. It is said that taking this can help with adrenal fatigue, cortisol balance, and a number of other benefits.

Of course, the research on taking this as a supplement still needs more work, but it falls in line with a sort of ancient chinese medicine, where consuming parts of a creature where you are damaged or need improvment helps that part of you. And there may be some merit to that, or maybe not. Either way there are some initial studies, and anecdotal evidence to suggest that dessicated adrenal cortex supplementation can be beneficial due to the nutrients that it provides, and the inclusion of the hormones in the bovine adrenal as well. Similar to taking something like DHEA or thyroid hormone, perhaps. So, with that in mind, be careful if you choose to supplement with this. But if you have ever been diagnosed by a hollistic health practitioner with adrenal fatigue, this could be a good choice of supplement to help with that.

Consensus AI

In the advent of all the AI tools out there, this one has become one of my favorites. I've actually paid for the early bird pricing to continue using this tool, as it won't be in beta for much longer! So try it out while it's free and see if you like it. Essentially, this website is a tool that uses AI to navigate and sort through a large pool of scientific papers, and breifly summarizes them. You can also ask it a yes or no question and it will use a formula to determine whether the answer is yes no or maybe depending on the research around the question. Sometimes, when I have a question that I am unsure about and Google or other AI don't seem to answer it the way that I like, I will look into it in further detail using Consensus. I enjoy this tool, and there will be more features coming out for it as time goes on. So keep a look out!  

HitPoint Hacks:

Exercise Before Bed

I have been doing some research on the latest findings in regards to exercise timing. With my current job, if I don't workout on my lunch break, I find that I often won't end up working out until around 7:30 or so PM. I always thought that this is a bit late for intense strength training considering my bed time is typically around 10:30 PM. This though has been in my head due to sleep researchers like Matthew Walker or even Andrew Huberman speaking to this, to avoid food and exercise for about 2-3 hours before bed.

When looking at the data, however, it seems to be okay to get this exercise in even closer to bed that I initially thought. The studies that I have seen (and I will link a few below) suggest that exercise that is relatively intense won't interfere with sleep as long as it is performed about 90 minutes before bed time. 2 hours different than what I had initially believed! This actually is consistent with how I generally felt when working out 1.5 hours before bed, generally I fell asleep just as quick if not even faster due to the exhaustion and fatigue I accumulated in the workout.

So long story short, if faced with a choice of exercising at a non-convenient time or not at all, always choose the exercise!  

Vitamin DAEK

Have you heard of fat soluable vitamins? Or the benefits of taking them together? Vitamins A, D, E and K are all fat soluable vitamins, meaning that they are all absorbed in fat. This means that taking these vitamins with either a meal high in fat, or even just a tablespoon of MCT oil (which is how I do it) or even just by themselves if they are encased in a fat gel capsule, can really help with the absorption of these vitamins! I also tend to take my other fat soluable vitamins at the same time too, generally in the morning. This includes something like COQ10 which is in an MCT capsule, and fish oil, which is omega 3 fats.

Thank you once again for coming by and reading my newsletter!

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And as always if you think of any additional segments or topics that I should cover, just let me know and I will look into it.

Thanks as always, and keep those Hitpoints up.

Matt

Sources

Vincent, G., Sargent, C., Roach, G., Miller, D., Kovac, K., Scanlan, A., Waggoner, L., & Lastella, M. (2020). Exercise before bed does not impact sleep inertia in young healthy males. Journal of Sleep Research.

Miller, D., Sargent, C., Roach, G., Scanlan, A., Vincent, G., & Lastella, M. (2019). Moderate-intensity exercise performed in the evening does not impair sleep in healthy males. European Journal of Sport Science.

Val, P., & Martinez, A. (2016). Editorial: Adrenal Cortex: From Physiology to Disease. Frontiers in Endocrinology.