It’s not easy to put yourself into someone else’s shoes (hopefully they’re the same size!). All kidding aside, this website does a good job of simulating what it’s like to read with dyslexia. The letters continuously move around, making reading difficult and time consuming. Although it’s not exactly what someone with dyslexia experiences, the website can help people better understand the challenges that nearly 40 million American adults face.
I Want to Check It Out!
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tinybuddha/~3/lo-ZscnG4PI/
“To have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile.” ~Unknown
Studies show that perhaps the most important component of psychological well-being is not family, material possessions, or career successes, but rather our friendships.
For someone like me, that is terrifying news.
I have few friends. There are several reasons for that: I’ve moved often throughout my life, I’m an introvert, I was always deeply afraid of rejection. But the root cause was that I never learned how to be a friend.
Books and movies became my source of information about friendship and as a result I had wildly unrealistic expectations. People constantly disappointed me; I was hurt by and fought with every significant friend in my life.
My inability to create and maintain authentic relationships brought me great pain. I wrote myself off as a loser, inherently flawed, and doomed to be friendless. Luckily, I realized I could teach myself to be a better friend and build meaningful connections.
Now, I actively seek out new friendships, evaluate my current ones, and fully invest in continuing those that have all the elements of an amazing friendship. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
It is never too late to learn to be an amazing friend.
Here’s how:
1. Mak…
Source: http://www.sonima.com/meditation/mindful-living/sleep-and-aging/
We know that getting a good night’s rest helps us feel better in the morning, but what may be even more important is how consistent sleep habits might predict future health. From smoother, glowing skin to a sharper mind and a healthier heart, mounting research shows that quality rest can help us all age a little more gracefully. Here’s how.
Regular Sleep Reduces Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease
Those planning on powering through early adulthood and middle age with little sleep and resting in old age might want to take particular notice. One recent review from Baylor University examining decades of data, suggests that getting good sleep in middle age and young adulthood protects against age-related cognitive decline during senior years.
Deep sleep plays an important role in memory, and research shows that missing out on rest can contribute to a build up of beta-amyloid protein in the brain, associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In middle to older age, continuing to practice good habits is further associated with healthy brain function and reducing risk of dementia.
Deep Sleep Protects Skin Against Damage and Aging
During sleep, our bodies repair and renew at a cellular level. For example, growth hormone peaks during deep sleep, which plays an important role in aging and metabolism. Even a single night of sleep deprivation can affect how attractive and healthy we appear to other people.
A study conducted by Est…
For the Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week nutrition science is corrupted, a huge mistake in habit hacking, and lack of sleep makes you eat like a stoner.
Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app I just discovered to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!
Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.
Links of the week
Food companies distort nutrition science. Here’s how to stop them. <<Nutrition science can be confusing and contradictory, and it isn’t entirely accidental. There’s a systemic problem that needs to be addressed. (Vox)
Do You Make This Huge Mistake, When Trying to Help Someone (or Yourself) to Change a Habit? <<I love this. There’s a huge value in realizing that your own personality type can be (and likely is) different from other people. Keep this in mind in both giving and receiving advice, and more important, when engaging in self-talk a…
Source: http://romanfitnesssystems.com/articles/spend-more-time/
![trustdontdsuc]](http://i2.wp.com/romanfitnesssystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/trustdontdsuc.jpg?resize=300%2C300)
In the worlds of fitness, self-improvement, and entrepreneurialism, one seemingly universal notion is this: “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
While there’s certainly, at least, a hint of insipid ideological phraseology inherent in any universalism, this one in particular has merit.
You are–without question–a product of your environment, and the people with whom you choose to surround yourself will, as a matter of course, have a tremendous influence on everything from your ambition and the energy you’re willing to expend to achieve it, to the way you speak and present yourself.
Ironically, while people accept this as truth, many seem to miss the inescapable yet seldom voiced counter-notion:
If you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.
Therefore, while it’s certainly true you should prune your social and business circles from time to time, and seek ways to spend time with people who make you better, you also have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better and to always be getting better.
Put somewhat less prolixly: don&#…
Source: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2016/03/three-books-about-eating-3-a-short-history/
This is the third book about eating I’ve been posting about. The first two were here and here.
Graham Dukes & Elisabet Helsing. A Short History of Eating. The London Press, 2016.
Dukes and Helsing, married couple, English and Norwegian respectively, and friends of long standing, have produced a light-hearted, entertainingly illustrated romp through the history of the human diet, from breast milk (on which Helsing is expert) to bubble gum, based on their research into a wide range of sources, literary as well as anthropological. The authors quote poems in appropriate places:
When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman’s food,
It ennobled our brains and enriched our blood.
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good
Oh! the Roast Beef of old England.
The illustrations display cartoons, ads, portraits, and botanicals.
Here is an excerpt to give you the flavor…
Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the Revolution, is often cited—almost certainly wrongly—as having suggested that since during a famine the starving population lacked bread they should eat cake instead…But if Marie Antoinette truly did propose that the populace eat cake, what sort of cake, familiar in her royal circle, might that have been? Mod…
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tinybuddha/~3/-8mmPa3AmMM/
“Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” ~Muhammad Ali
Doesn’t it hurt?
You develop a friendship with someone who appeared to be decent but turned out to be a huge problem in your life.
I’m not talking about those occasional slip-ups like keeping you waiting at the coffee shop until 4:10 when the rendezvous was scheduled for 4:00.
I mean those things that completely slash the fabric of your friendship—stuff that truly hurts, like harsh words that prey on your weaknesses and sensitivities, or complete betrayal of your trust and abuse of your goodwill.
We’re all vulnerable to being hurt by those closest to us, and I’m no exception.
Over the years, I’ve made friends with several people who turned out to be destructive to my well-being.
Some had spoken words to me that cut like blades. Others had coldly accused me of things I wouldn’t even dream of doing, just to save their own hide.
But despite the pain and anguish those experiences put me through, they were telling moments in my life because they forced me to rethink my understanding of the true meaning of friendship.
We often befriend someo…
One glance at photographer Brittany Wright’s Instagram account will fill you with wonder. Her account captures the colorful beauty of good-for-you food. (Also burgers and ice cream.)
From chard to chilis, Wright organizes food in rainbow gradients and patterns that are nothing short of mesmerizing. You might forget that her artwork is edible—it is that beautiful. It’s easy to understand how the Seattle photographer has become such an Instagram success (to the tune of 145,000 followers).
Below are a few of our favorite shots. Follow her account and the hashtag #foodgradients for more incredible images.
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Source: http://www.fannetasticfood.com/2016/03/04/friday-fun/
Happy Friday, my friends! I hope your week is ending on a high note. Here’s one of my high notes from this week:
My friends Heather, Sokphal, and I met up for a morning run date yesterday and of course had to stop to snag a sunrise shot! It was cold but refreshing out – and we practically had the Lincoln Memorial to ourselves. Sorry for the face shadow, Heather. 
We had a great time running and chatting – the miles flew by and ended up being quite speedy, too!
<img title="running dc" style="border-top: 0px;border-right: 0px;border-bottom: 0px;float: none;padding-top: 0px;padding-left: 0px;border-left: 0px;margin: 0px auto;padding-rig…
Source: http://www.bornfitness.com/sickness-prevention/
“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”
While that advice might seem insane (or hilarious if you’ve watched the movie Dodgeball), it was that mentality that allowed me to figure out how to stay healthy, fine-tune the art of sickness prevention, and have a simple daily routine that can provide your body with the type of insurance you want.
Let’s get this myth out of the way fast: Vitamin C does not “cure” colds.
In my case, the “wrench” was the discovery of an autoimmune disorder. For years (nearly 20 if you can believe that), I suffered from chronic fevers that would repeatedly knock me out of commission, sometimes as long as 6 to 8 weeks, with my temperature as high as 104 degrees. It took chunks out of my teenage years, a terrible sophomore year of college, a battle during grad school, and I even chronicled “the plague” during a business trip to London.
The short-end: the smallest breakdowns could cause me to become incredibly sick. I had to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Most people wait until they get sick and then try to put together recovery plans. The problem? At that point, you’ve already lost the war and are trying to win mini-battles against miserable symptoms.
The right strategy—or the only strategy, if you like feeling good—is taking preventative measures. The problem is that the wealth of health information either makes it:
Too confusing to know what will actually …