okay!

you currently feel like a trapped animal ready to chew your own hand off at the wrist to get free.

but that's not real. it's just a feeling.

(Big Anger and the prospect of estrangement under the cut, metions of rape and suicidality).

on Monday, HR is going to fix your paycheck. if they refuse to make it retroactive, you can loop in L, M, and N and see who they can escalate to. they owe you (redacted) dollars and they will pay you (redacted) dollars or you will quit your job.

if you have to shelve querying for a little while so you can look for a better job, you will not die it will hurt, but it will not kill you.

tomorrow, text Z and get some time on her calendar for Budgeting Round One.

your brain is generating worst-case scenarios and then looping on them for hours at a time. please try to stop doing that.

you will make a budget.if you have to, you will get a new job. this is BIG SCARY but less big scary than just Doing This Forever.

and then you will invite your parents to go to family therapy. if that doesn't work, you will write them a letter. you will say the stuff you need to say so it does not rot inside of your body and make you so sick you die. they will react how they do. maybe you will need to stop talking to them for a week or two. maybe you will have to stop talking to them forever.

your brain is creating an itemized list of scary escalations they could do if you tried to set a boundary with them (driving to your apartment, forcing you to go back to PA with them, etc.) your brain is spending a lot of itself on making disaster plans for emergencies that are, at worst, a year out and, at best, never going to happen.

your brain is scripting what you will tell your brother, your pastor, your aunts and cousins. you do not need to know those things yet.

please get your brain to stop looping and go to sleep.

you are doing this because you are scared. I think you are a little bit scared that the next time your dad snaps at you on the phone, instead of bursting into tears and folding yourself up like an origami swan, you will instead go YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE ME FEEL UNLOVEABLE ANYMORE FUCK YOU FOREVER NEVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN and you know you can't do that until you can pay your own rent.

I think for part of your brain it would be a relief if they did something totally out of pocket, something you could say to people and they would go 'oh, that's why you don't talk to them anymore, that tracks"

maybe take a break from trying to be grateful it's not worse, grateful that you get to do this on your own timeline, grateful that you can't imagine them doing anything dangerous (apart from the dangerous things they have already done, but those things were neglect-dangerous not abuse-dangerous)

you know, even typing this, that the best-case scenario is to get to a place where you have a sustainable relationship with them. you only want to nuke them from orbit because you feel so trapped and scared.

but maybe just take a little hiatus from gratitude that they didn't/aren't hurting you worse. stop imagining your calmest and most reasonable communication of boundaries in the face of the scariest thing you can imagine them doing. they probably will not do that thing and also there is no legal mandate that you have to be as calm and rational as possible in your maladaptive emergency planning/daydreams.

imagine how it would feel to go "no, fuck you, the ketamine is keeping me from literally dying, I will not stop taking it because I do not wish to literally die. you have done zero things ever to help me in pursuit of not becoming a suicide statistic, even when i was a child and you had an obligation."

imagine how it would feel to go "no, fuck you, I am as loveable as any person who can use a knife properly and I always have been. fuck you for spoon-feeding that garbage to me when I was too young to know better."

"fuck you for preferring shaved leegs with self-harm bandages on them to unshaven legs. your priorities are broken."

"fuck you for every single thing you have ever said about my body and the way I feed it."

"fuck you for every nasty, belittling little remark I am supposed to swallow"

"fuck you for telling me it wasn't rape! you are not the arbiter of that! fuck you for telling me "don't call it that" like my language was the priority when I came to you in pain. your priorities are broken"

"fuck you for brushing me off the first time I tried to tell you I had anxiety. fuck you for convincing me I was lying about having migraines."

"you guys are mean and your priorities are wrong and you did not try very hard to keep me from dying between the ages of 12-18 and you did not have my back when a boy gave me PTSD. you praised that boy for taking such good care of me and you told me "oh, you'll get over it," when I told you he had raped and terrorized me. and you fed me poison that made me grateful for him for a long time before I left."

you might love me, but you sure do treat me like I am hard to love. you do not respect me even a little bit. you are not reliably kind. you do not see me. you refuse to engage with the lived realities of my life. you do not love me in a way that feels like love, now that I have been loved by people who do not prefer a version of me that doesn't exist.

come correct or spend the rest of your life telling people that your daughter was a crazy person who cut you off for no reason. I'm prepared to spend the holidays alone, are you?

you will be able to tell them a version of this in three to eighteen months, depending on how the budgeting and a possible subsequent job hunt go. it will be scary but you will no longer feel like chewing off your own hand every night.

“Is this real?”

The connections to our past can be tenuous, where we lose grasp of even simple memories or they can tether us to them in a way that those foundational moments keep us from achieving any level of personal growth. How often do we get to revisit or relitigate our past and if given the chance, would we?

In Andrew Haigh’s electrifying new film, All of Us Strangers, we’re introduced to Adam (Andrew Scott), a late 40’s film and television writer living alone in a seemingly deserted high-rise on the outskirts of London. He’s working on a script about his working class parents set in the 1980s but can’t seem to get past INT. SUBURBAN HOME. He obsessively watches Top of the Pops, listens to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and attempts to conjure up inspiration by looking at old family photographs of him and parents, who both died in a car accident when Adam was 12. Loosely adapted from Taichi Yamada’s Japan-set 1987 novel, Haigh switches up gender, location and sexualities for his most ambitious film to date – a love story, a ghost story and a story of letting go.

During a fire alarm in his apartment complex, Adam spots a figure multiple floors up who has yet to come down and join the meager amount of people who populate the massive building. Soon enough the mysterious stranger appears at his door in the form of Harry (Paul Mescal), bottle of Japanese whisky in hand, making a very forward pass at Adam, who politely rebuffs the advances of the younger, attractive but slightly creepy stranger. Imagine saying no to Mescal? Couldn’t be me, but I digress.

The casting of Mescal, who is absolutely incredible here, is quite perfect and almost eerie. There is a sense, if you’re an adventurous viewer, that All of Us Strangers could be a bit of a spiritual sequel to last year’s Aftersun, featuring Mescal’s Oscar-nominated turn. There isn’t a literal connection between the films other than Mescal but it’s enough to imagine a cinematic universe where they are, especially for a metaphysical and metaphorical story like this.

And it is the metaphysical and metaphorical returning to his childhood home that gives Adam’s story its weight. His nostalgic thoughts of his dead parents begin to consume him and something shifts when he takes the train back to his hometown. Between the subtle cues of Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s reflective score and the hazy allure of cinematographer Jamie Ramsay’s 35mm lens, we’re ever so subtly taken back 30 years, where Adam’s parents (sublimely played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) haven’t aged since their death, with Adam now older than both of them. Their reunion is almost sheepishly cute at first. “Is that him?, Mum asks. “That’s him,” confirms Dad. But it’s also a reunion painted with challenges as Adam still needs to come out to both of his parents (in separate visits). First is Mum, who is as curious as she is disappointed. “It’s a sad life, isn’t it?” she laments and there will probably be several people who will hear those words and they will sting as hard now as they did before, a common refrain from parents at that time (my husband’s mother said this to him verbatim). Foy is exquisite here though, her teased perm and emerald green tracksuit speaking in a contemporary language for the time as much as her words do. When Adam asks his mother “Is this real?” she responds with “I don’t know. Does it feel real?” It does, it is, as Haigh doesn’t present anything in these interludes as supernatural or what we’ve come to expect from a ‘ghost story.’ It’s as real as anything and it both scares and pushes their honesty to unguarded places.

But it’s Adam’s conversation with his Dad that will open the water works (at least they did for me), as Adam details hiding in his room after being bullied at school all day. Dad never asked why and Adam never told why and for the same reason; “I probably would have been one of the ones who bullied you,” Dad says, confirming Adam’s feelings. But Dad, at least this version of him, is far more open and accepting, bringing Adam to tears and most definitely this viewer. As I watched this through saturated eyes, I wondered what I would say to my father, who died when I was 21. We had a very severed relationship and I never officially came out to him in any way (my mother would tell me much later that when I was 3-years old my father said to her “he walks like a faggot”) and if I could find some type of closure to an open wound that’s been there for as long as Adam’s. Do I even need it? I think one of the great powers of storytelling can be two-fold; it can certainly inspire you to do or say something in your real life but simply seeing it onscreen, feeling heard and understood, a vicarious experience can be a shockingly healing salve. My apologies to anyone who sat near me at the Herzog as I was inconsolable in my own moment of self-reflection and memory. It can’t be overstated that Bell and Scott are transcendent in this moment; we’ve associated Scott with his “hot priest” character from Fleabag and as Moriarty in the Benedict Cumberbatch-led Sherlock series, but his vulnerability in this scene is shattering. For Bell, we’ve literally watched him grow up on film, from Billy Elliot to now, playing a father doing his best to find connection with his son. It’s a quiet performance, not simply of restraint but one that allows Scott’s Adam to breathe.

Back in London, Harry returns and this time Adam is more malleable and invites him in. The two engage not in simple small talk but in the rooted fear of intimacy and love that was the 1980s, the era of AIDS and wondering if your next hook up or your next (or first, in some cases) would be your last. It’s one of Haigh’s keen powers, understanding the intricacies of interpersonal relationships whether it’s the rawness of HBO’s Looking, the guarded secrets in 45 Years or Strangers’ closest relative, Weekend. The two discuss using ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ to identify themselves and how the generations word use differs, with Adam definitely in the ‘gay’ camp and Harry remarking “queer is like all the dick-sucking is taken out.” The ice is broken at this point (thanks in part to The Housemartins’ “Build,”) melted, and their bodies do too. They quickly fall into a comfort of domesticity, the kind Adam never thought he’d have (“I’ve never been in love,” he admits at one point). A club scene later in the film, where Harry and Adam do ketamine, begins to break the fabric of what’s real and what isn’t as Blur’s “Death of the Party” rages on.

I called the film a ghost story earlier but I don’t want to give the wrong impression of what that means. It’s not a haunting, Adam’s parents aren’t locked between two worlds. It’s actually Adam that is; carrying the pain and trauma from childhood to adulthood and longing for a way to connect in the middle, to keep seeing his parents and also move forward. But “that’s not how this works,” says mum, and we know the final moments between them are near. And indeed, when the time does come and Dad and Mum offer Adam the affirmations that any child would want, but didn’t know they needed until much later, it’s a devastating master class of writing and performance from Scott, Bell and Foy. For many people who grow up gay, the lack of parental support can feel finite, the same as a physical death, an irrevocable separation. What Haigh has created is a portal of sorts, to reclaim our history, if not exactly rewrite it.

Earlier this year, Celine Song’s Past Lives introduced many of us to the Korean concept of ‘in-yun,’ that the people in our past, even if they’ve touched us briefly, have a permanent effect on our lives, on our connectivity. For Adam, his in-yun exists with the brief time he had with his parents, with his flourishing relationship with Harry and what his relationship to himself will be. Despite all of this emotion, as draining as it is cathartic, the film’s breathtaking finale is not something I’ll likely ever forget. Like 45 Years, Haigh knows how to close a film and the final shot of All of Us Strangers will be a part of me forever. Haigh has created a timeless masterpiece and the best film of the year.

Grade: A'

YES! We love seeing this kind of tension, this way of offloading Shin’s own mistakes onto Bon, relitigating their entire childhood together and noting where he felt that he wasn’t as special as Bon, that no matter how talented he was, he wasn’t the special boy. Man, I live for this stuff, these conflicts of where outside perception ruins the moment between us. What is it that makes some people like one person better than another? 

I mean, I am not removing Shin’s responsibility for his own stupidity here. His being expelled is 100% his own damn fault and I don’t feel particularly inclined to feel all that bad for him given everything. BUT ALSO, it can be true that he always felt Bon was the special one, and maybe in a way because the master didn’t expect things of him, he came to never expect them of himself.

New here? Forgetful? Please read my spoiler policy before commenting!

"I just... I don't get it. Is it a wig?"

"You've touched my hair, babe. Does it feel like a wig?"

"I don't know what wigs feel like! Maybe they feel just like real hair!"

"It's not a wig."

"It doesn't make sense though! We've been living together for months and I've never, literally never, seen you do anything about your hair. You don't go to hair dressers, we use the same shampoo, unless you're hiding a secret shower somewhere..."

"I'm not. I don't like putting that much effort into my hair, it just looks like this."

"It's blue."

"Yup."

"Nobody has naturally blue hair."

"Can you prove that?"

"Yes! Also, I've seen your childhood pictures and your hair was brown!"

"...fine. I was expecting it to come up eventually, just, it's kind of awkward to bring up..."

"OK but just tell me already!"

"You know I've talked about all those uncomfortable conversations I had with my parents, about how they love me anyway even though I can't continue the family business, and that you don't need superpowers to be special, and they apologised for unfairly burdening me with those expectations and... you know, that whole thing. And then, after we went through all that and they saved me from a hostage situation that somehow resulted from that argument and the tearful reconciliation, I then figured out I kind of... did have powers? after all?"

"You... have hair powers?"

"Not quite? I'm, like, the world's slowest shapeshifter. I can change anything about my appearance, within the usual constraints for that and so on, but it takes me weeks for even minor stuff. Not exactly a combat power."

"I mean, you could-"

"Yes, yes, I could do all sorts of things with it, but I don't want to! I like my job, I don't wanna relitigate the whole effing legacy argument after we settled it to everyone's satisfaction already. I'm not gonna use my powers for that."

"So you use them to make your hair blue."

"I like blue! And hair dye maintenance is a hassle."

"Are you gonna tell them or just... wait for them to figure it out somehow?"

"I mean, sure, at some point. Probably. I think. ...they're not gonna figure it out on their own."

"...no, probably not. Who has?"

"I told my brother. And Kayla figured it out."

"Same way I did?"

"...she, uh, didn't get to the point of questioning the hair, but within a few days, she realised I never took off my 'contacts'"

"...oh. Right. Those are also..."

"Yup."

"I thought you were maybe albino."

"You said you'd seen my childhood pictures. Also, I'm pretty sure that even if I was, that shade of red isn't possible."

"It was an awkward question to ask!"

[original post]

I've been trying to drag myself through listening to Atlas Shrugged as an audiobook after failing to read it as a physical book, and managed to get through The Fountainhead as an audiobook and didn't hate the whole thing. (I read Anthem ages ago, found it "fanficy" in a not entirely good way.)

Last time I tried to read it, I got as far as Reardon's shitty family and his wife who doesn't appreciate his token of his special interest. Now I'm into the retrospective of Dagney and Francisco's childhood and youthful afair and the whole thing 1. Reminds me of The Room in that the author clearly has no understanding of the motivations of the villains and has a deep interest in relitigating their personal relationships in fiction and 2. Would be much better as full hog science fiction, because if you aren't going to understand anything about the technology you are writing about, it would be better to have it actually be made-up so it's easier to suspend disbelief, especially since things like laws, governments, and the seasons in South America are changed anyways.

Dagney's experience of gender and all the good guys' quasi autism are enjoyable for me as story elements, and Rand has an amazing ear for bad passive aggressive family dynamics, so there's that on the plus side, in addition to whatever enjoyment I can derive from the sex scenes.

I gotta say, I got distracted hard by Francisco's alma mater being Patrick Henry (and apparently several other characters as well).

For those of you who weren't homeschooled and raised far right, the real life Patrick Henry college was founded in 1998, essentially by the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, as a conservative Christian Republican feeder institution with goals of rivaling the Ivys. I took a distance class as a high school student, so I suppose technically on some level I can claim to be a student therof, although they rejected my application to study on campus, presumably because I was honest about my doubts with the Christian faith in my admissions essay, which iirc was basically begging them to help me with my doubts.

Aaanyways, I was fly on the walling the entire creation of Patrick Henry College from as close a perspective as anyone who wasn't actually involved had, and nobody ever mentioned that the name was inspired by an Ayn Rand novel, even though it's blindingly obvious that it was. Which is suspicious as fuck in it's own way.

post going around fb: “what would your occupation be if you had followed your childhood dreams?” answer: screenwriter for star trek spinoff series of my own design that opens with the premise of a diplomatic mission gone awry, the ship wrecked & crew stranded on a planet in crisis--on the brink of civil war--over the highly contested question federation membership, which a small gov’t contingent had controversially approved on a technicality that permitted them to overrule the popular majority “for the greater good.” the crew is forced to interrogate what the federation really stands for, also relitigate the federation-maquis conflict as they’re drawn deeper into sokoran affairs, and the sokoran ambassador has a lesbian romantic sideplot with the ship’s science officer, because i literally wrote this when i was 11 years old; writer of expanded universe star trek novels (see above); dead but in a way that both made me look cool & didn’t hurt; “scientist in genetics” (i went to YMCA lab camp & watched a lot of star trek) 

You ever sneak into your childhood home, microwave an old cup of coffee, and go, Fuck it, lets relitigate every major choice I've made in my life?

Facing up

In January I broke up with the guy I was seeing, because it was going to take a ton of energy to bring him up to speed on my emotional history, and it was energy I needed for dealing with that history.

It was a seven month wait to see a psychologist who had the skillset I needed. I knew I was in trouble by June last year.  A couple of things stand out: there’s an aboutness to my experience of depression; I can trace it back to a trigger event, and there’s often a specific theme to my ruminations. Secondly, it doesn’t respond to medication. My mood, confidence, day-to-day experience of life is improved on medication, but I’m still stuck, avoiding a major decision and not getting any writing done.

I’ve seen a psychiatrist who said I’m not bipolar.

Finally, about four weeks ago, I had my first appointment with the psychologist. It went well, but we barely scratched the surface. He said, straight up, that he thinks there’s complex trauma playing out.

I knew that already. I have always avoided writing that I have primary trauma. I’ve talked about intergenerational trauma, paying deference to my primary parent’s experience of domestic violence in her childhood.

But now it’s time to face up to the primary trauma: a two year period, from year eleven at high school to first year at uni.

My brother left home after about three months of screaming.

My mum visited the daughter she gave up for adoption, about three years after they’d had a reunion, and the daughter had more or less blanked her. Mum came home and spent about a week catatonic with grief, and required a massive amount of emotional support after she finally started talking again.

I came out and that didn’t go well.

Growing up I was lucky to have a dad who paid child support, but every few years the agreement would be reviewed, and mum would come home from court spitting venomous rage about how he’d screwed her in court. When I turned 18, the agreement was up for renewal (it’s payable until 21), but I was now legally an adult and the case was brought in my name. Dad had offered to reach an informal agreement but Mum called me a fool for considering it and made me sue him. So in the middle of year twelve I was suing my father for child support. On our day in court, it turned out to be a negotiation process, not a contested hearing and not an opportunity for a court to hear and adjudicate all mum’s grievances. So she unloaded those on the Legal Aid lawyer, and when I asked her to stop that, she turned her rage on me. To this day, I still break into a cold sweat in small rooms with meeting tables.

After that, it was weeks and weeks of cold, silent, grit-toothed rage. In the end I decided to move out and started looking for places, and -that- got through to mum; she said to wait until I’d finished year twelve, and the cold thawed a little.

I did something stupid, deleting a file I’d created to layout a newsletter for Women and the Australian Church. Not sure how many kids in year 11-12 were laying out 4-5 editions per year of a 12-16 page newsletter for their mum’s church group. More of the cold silent treatment lasting for weeks.

I was also debating for my school and the state team, moot courting, public speaking, and editing the school newspaper. I honestly don’t know how I got through that year. I remember my teachers being pretty concerned for me, but I absolutely couldn’t talk to them about it; at the tiniest gesture of sympathy, I felt like I would start crying and never stop — just not done in an all-boys’ school. At the end of the year I had one conversation with the guidance counsellor, who faked a bunch of absence notes in my diary, because I’d missed too many days to graduate, otherwise. Then I graduated as Dux of the School, won a Premier’s Prize for English, school prizes for Literature and Debating, and an Australian Psychological Society Prize. Straight As and perfect marks in three subjects.

And I’ve written before about how it all fell apart in undergrad at Unimelb. More than any other university, Unimelb frames pastoral care for students as a service. Even if you’re failing all your subjects, nobody there will ever e-mail to ask ‘are you alright?’ You are required to model good help-seeking behaviour, framing yourself as a responsible service user, before you’ll get help. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong; I knew I was very, very unhappy, but I understood it as moral failure and laziness, and I really resented needing to identify as sick to get help. And still do. And if you have social anxiety, and you’re paralysed, well, good luck managing to ask for help. I enrolled there in 2000 and it was not until 2008 that I was dating someone and he said, you’re acting weird, what the fuck is going on? And he pushed and pushed until finally I said, ‘mum won’t stop calling me.’

My uncle Peter had died. I’d asked her to leave me out of the inevitable court battle over his estate. But one day I visited her and she was incredibly distressed over her other brother taking money out of the estate that should have been equally divided. So I wrote a letter laying out the legal duties of executors and threatening action for her to send in her name. But she forwarded it to him saying ‘this is what I would send you if I was really nasty.’ And it turned out that he was reimbursing the money he’d paid upfront to the lawyers, having mortgaged his house, to defend the estate against my uncle’s ex-partner. ‘What difference does that make?’ said mum. I was so angry with myself for letting myself get suckered into that game: mum presenting herself as the victim to get someone else to step in as rescuer. And seeing myself the way mum saw me — like the pitbull you let off the leash to intimidate someone — I felt stupid, and used, and ashamed. I didn’t talk to mum for a year, but she kept calling my phone, and until my partner picked up on it, I had no idea how much that ‘jack-hammering’ was winding me up.

All through my teenage years and once I’d moved out of home, it was normal to go to bed and have a flashback. I have an incredibly detailed memory and the flashbacks were vivid; they would leave me frozen and sweaty and exhausted. One every night before sleep, sometimes more. I would have them as well in lecture theatres, when something in the lecture cued the memory of a family experience.

Back to the present moment: late last year, I got that e-mail from my mum, ‘correspondence must cease’. But coming up to my birthday on Monday, I knew that she would get in contact. It’s just the most characteristic thing for her to feel like she’s got the upper hand so everything in the relationship is fine. There are people she has grievously wronged and she is still surprised and hurt when they don’t accept her overtures of ‘forgiveness’. Sure enough, 10AM, there’s the e-mail, happy birthday, thinking of you, love mum. And I smacked it back over the net so hard. I reiterated the line I’ve been saying, over and over: I am not trying to relitigate the past, but I am going to tell the story of it, and you need to acknowledge that your experience does not determine the truth and validity of my story and my relationships.

The hardest thing post-trauma is to tell a coherent story of self-survival, and anyone who deliberately tries to disrupt that process is morally akin to the Catholic lawyers demanding time and date specificity of people abused as children.

I knew when I wrote that post in August 2015 to expect a call; I stopped in at a supermarket to pick up a bag of glucose in preparation. Sure enough, it came, and it was the usual arctic blast of self-righteousness and the purpose of the call was fact-checking. ‘That’s not how I experienced that.’ No shit; you have every self-serving reason to remember it differently, because you were not the one getting hurt by it.

It was my birthday on Monday. I hid the date on FB and only my step-mother remembered it. I hid the date because I knew this e-mail was coming and I knew it would dig up a ton of baggage that I would have to deal with, and I knew that I was going to really struggle to field and enjoy and respond to birthday greetings. So I had a day of self-care instead, after replying to the e-mail. And when I went to bed that night, I woke up around 3AM straight into an intrusive episode, a flashback to that tiny room in the Mag Ct, reliving it for about 45 minutes until I was finally able to get up, stagger down the hall to the kitchen and get some water.

I haven’t done that for years. I had forgotten how exhausting it is; afterwards, even though I eventually got back to sleep, I woke up feeling like I’d run a marathon overnight. And that nauseous feeling in my gut, the interferon-y feeling in my muscles, the lactic acid build-up in my diaphragm. The tightness of breath all day until my boss suggested we go walk up a mountain and that unlocked me. Today, the day after — it feels like weeks later — I’m still tired. The next appointment is on Tuesday, so that will be a chance to debrief, but it’ll no doubt dig up new stuff to process. I need to make a decision really soon about whether to continue with my PhD or put it on hold while I deal with this stuff.

Ideas On Aspects For Stevia Sweetened Iso Xp

Realistic Solutions Of Grass Fed Organic Whey Canada

My personal favorites are “clean” meats and dairy products — those that don’t contain any antibiotics or hormones, are sourced from wild, pastured or grass-fed animals, and which are preferably organic. Things like grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken,  wild-caught cold water fish (e.g., salmon, sardines, mackerel, etc.), and whey protein from  grass-fed cows. These proteins provide a much broader spectrum of nutrients, allowing our digestive system to more efficiently process the protein compounds and send them where they’re needed most. One study showed that omega-3s increased hair diameter and density. If, as part of your quest to ingest more protein, you’ve been knocking back a fair amount of wild-caught salmon, you’re ticking yet another pro-hair box: omega-3s! Salmon, along with other cold water fish, flaxseeds and walnuts all contain high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids. These compounds are highly anti-inflammatory and known to nourish hair follicles and stimulate new growth. A  2015 study measured the effect of omega-3 and omega-6 supplementation on the hair of 120 healthy females over the course of 6 months. After six months of supplementation, close to 90 percent of the women reported an overall reduction in hair loss, with similarly positive results for hair diameter and hair density. While the study only considered the effect of omega-3 supplementation in women, omega-3 is not gender-specific, so it’s safe to assume that these results very much apply to balding men as well. If you really want to step up your omega-3 consumption, consider getting your hands on a high-quality supplement like fermented cod liver oil or wild-caught fish oil. Time and again, research seems to find that low serum zinc levels are associated with hair loss in both men and women. And because much of the Western world is deficient in zinc, those high hair-loss statistics make a lot of sense.

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Get Your Beach Body By Following This Guide.

Fitness does not have to be something that inspires fear. Perhaps it conjures up bad memories of a chubby childhood or long afternoons on a treadmill. It is essential to let these feelings go, and enjoy your health. You will find the tips you need in the article below to achieve exactly that. Are you short on time for exercising? Do two shorter workouts instead of one long one. Try cutting your total work out time into half or thirds. Rather than getting an hour's worth of running in at once, try half before work and half later in the day. If going to the gym is part of your routine, do this once during the day and then use another exercise for the second part of your day. Push ups are an excellent way to bulk up triceps. Instead of doing normal push-ups, turn your hands at a 45 degree angle. Doing this targeted exercise can tone and strengthen those difficult to reach triceps like few other exercises can. Need to get more from your workout time? Stretching is great for your body and can improve your strength by 20% or more. You should take some time inbetween sets to stretch. Just the right stretch will guard against muscle strain and make your workout more effective. Make sure that any shoes you plan on working out in are a good fit. The best time of day to purchase shoes is late afternoon, when your feet are most swollen. Your shoes should have a 1/2 inch in the toe. You need to be able to move your toes. Keep up your workout routine on the weekends. A lot of people relax during the weekends and do not exercise at all during these days. A fitness routine should always be something you are thinking about at almost all times. If you take the weekend off from weight loss and enjoy rich meals and big desserts with no exercise, you may just be back where you started come Monday morning. There are more benefits to fitness than physical strength. One added advantage to a fitness routine is the improvement of your emotional health. The endorphins released during a workout help you to feel good naturally. Working out also helps your self-image as well as your confidence level. Therefore, a couple of workouts can make you happy. Practice your contact techniques for volleyball. It might sound crazy, but foosball makes a great training exercise for these skills. Hand-eye coordination used to beat an opponent is the basis of foosball. The same skill-set that is cultivated with Foosball practice is vital for volleyball players who want better contact skills. Some mistakenly believe they can work their abs every day. Actually, this isn't an ideal practice for this particular muscle group. Like other muscles, abs require periodic rest and recovery. About 2 or 3 days is sufficient waiting time between ab workouts. It is possible to exercise without missing your favorite television shows. Exercise during commercial breaks or invest in an exercise ball to workout while watching television. Yoga can be done while watching television when you have a routine down. So can simple stretches. In fact, you can set up any exercise equipment in front of the television if you have the room to do so. Box squats make your quadriceps gain bulk. Box squats can improve your regular squats. Setting a box of the appropriate height behind you is the only preparation you need. Perform regular squats, but when your posterior touches the chair, hold your position for a moment. Now after reading the above information, you should have a general understanding of what it takes to become physically fit and maintain your fitness goals. By accomplishing this, you will increase your lifespan and enjoy a fuller, enriched life.

Finding Help On Smart Solutions Of Canada

“We can’t relitigate projects every time a new government comes into place,” McKenna said, referring specifically to the change in government in British Columbia that resulted in the province shifting positions on the Kinder Morgan pipeline. “It does not create investor certainty, nor does it really help protect our environment.” McKenna is facing pushback from the provinces on multiple fronts right now. In addition to B.C.’s staunch opposition to Trans Mountain, Saskatchewan is also heading to court to try to avoid having to impose a price on carbon pollution. WATCH: Saskatchewan files constitutional reference case over carbon tax The province is asking the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal to rule on the constitutionality of the federal government’s carbon tax legislation. Ottawa has maintained it can force the provinces to come up with a plan to impose some kind of levy by the end of the year. McKenna noted that 80 per cent of Canadians already live in a province with a carbon tax. READ MORE:  Albertans are least likely in Canada to believe in climate change Asked if the systems of government in Canada are somehow broken, the minister denied that’s the case. “I think Canada’s working fine. The federal government is going to look after the national interest,” she said. “In the same week, we have Saskatchewan saying we don’t have jurisdiction to put on a price on pollution, which we do. We have the province of B.C. saying we don’t have jurisdiction to approve major projects like pipelines, which we do.” McKenna said her focus will remain on speaking directly to all Canadians, trying to convince them that the Liberals are able to balance the environment and economic considerations.

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Confused About Vitamins And Minerals In General? Read This Article!

No matter what your age is, anyone can benefit from healthy advice. It doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl. All people must have vitamins and minerals in their diet to survive. Keep reading to learn about these essential nutrients, along with top tips that you must know about them. Do your best to eat a diet that is both healthy and balanced. Try to get 5-7 servings of fruits and veggies every day, as well as some protein. If this is hard to do, consider adding a supplement. Any supplement that has fat needs to be taken when you eat, so plan to take it around the time you eat. For example, vitamins E, A and K all apply. Absorption is more effective if the food has a certain amount of fat. Milk and sunlight are among the most effective sources of vitamin D. If you aren't a fan of drinking milk and don't get a great deal of sun, you might want to add a vitamin D supplement. This will stop your bones from becoming brittle. If you want to build up your red blood cells, you need iron. These are the cells which get oxygen from place to place. Since women require more iron than men, vitamin supplements formulated especially for women have higher levels of iron. Iron can help with a loss of breath. Taking minerals and vitamins is an affordable way to make your life healthier. Vitamins will improve your mood and keep your body stable and healthy. Vitamin A is important as an antioxidant for your immune system, reducing heart disease risk, slowing skin aging and improving your vision. However, it can be poisonous if you take too much, so stick to about 2300 IU. You Whey Protein can also eat carrots or squash to up your intake. Fruits and vegetables are great for the body; however, fresh produce is much better than canned. In addition to eating a healthy diet, but you will also find it necessary to supplement your diet with a high quality, non-chemical vitamin and mineral supplement. In today's fast paced world, many people rely on fast food restaurants. This results in vitamin deficiencies. Grab a few bottles of primary vitamins to ensure that you are getting what you need to fight off colds and allow the body to convert fat to energy. Question everything you hear about supplements. Many advertisements don't care about your health, only about getting you to buy their product. Question everything when it comes to the information you receive. Discuss your concerns with your doctor. Use caution when you take supplements. Even though vitamins and minerals can be healthy for your body, it can be bad if you take too much. This usually happens when you take too many supplements and is very dangerous. Symptoms of an overdose vary, depending on which vitamin you have taken. However, the consequence is not a good one and can even kill you. People of all ages and lifestyles need minerals and vitamins. Many people don't eat the right food to cover all the needs, so supplements then become an essential daily need. Now you know how to prevent problems associated with vitamin and mineral deficiencies, so put them to use.

I don't think it's useful or practical to relitigate our childhoods, but sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if my incredible capacity to vividly daydream had been treated as a boon of deep creativity instead of annoying by the school system.