RTD: Ready to Die?

Good morning 🦁 This is Andrew's Apples, the 2-min health email that is never mushy but occasionally bruised. Let's go.

• 🤗 The rub-and-hug. Hugs stimulate your brain to release dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins [D.O.S.E.] - these all feel really good (energizing, bonding or relaxing). A 10-second hug can also reduce fatigue, social anxiety, and depression.

  • 🍎 Andrew's Take. Hug your mom, your uber driver through that plastic divider thing, and even your local sidewalk pimp down the block. That dude never got one from his mama.

• 😴 Sleeping like shite. We spend a third of our lives asleep and yet we still do not know the exact biological reasons for it. Sleep, like the brain and quantum physics, remains a mystery. One thing that is no mystery is that Americans are getting terrible sleep. How bad? 1/3 of American adults are getting less than 7 hours of sleep each night and 50-70 million Americans have chronic sleep-related disorders.

  • 🍎 Andrew's Take. Dude, just go to sleep. Keep the phone out of sight and ideally use one of those alarm cuckoo clocks with the bird that pops out of the house. Head-down at the same time every night and head-up at the same time every morning. If you end up getting six or fewer hours, find a 20-30 min nap somewhere in your day (or do a headstand for 1-2 min to restore blood flow, it's like a shot of espresso). Melatonin once or twice a month is ok if you've had a long string of rough sleep, but it literally changes your hormones (which we by and large do not like here).

• 🥤 RTD: Ready to Die? Ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages at the grocery store are known for their convenience. Grab it, slug it, toss it. But we have to remember that every RTD product is a processed food and processing means the likelihood of contamination will always be - without fail - higher than it is for pure water. Anything that has, say, more than 5 ingredients gets tricky. This week, Oatly, Stumptown, Intelligentsia and many more RTD brands were recalled for contamination (official FDA product list here) of a germ that can cause deadly bloodstream infections and meningitis. Overwhelmingly, the recalled products contain either oat milk or low-quality dairy proteins.

  • 🍎 Andrew's Take. You should treat whole unprocessed foods like Hunter Biden treats crack cocaine: use them 96% of the time. The remaining 4% can be spent wildin' on aforementioned RTDs and processed junk (or, in Hunter's case, a sober state).

• 🕊️ Tweet of the Day. *angry atheists have left the chat.*

How about them Apples? Hit me with any comments or questions.

Your friend,

Andrew🍎

Share the link below 🍎 with other real characters: