Note from Jenné: This post about why you should eat fat was written by my good friend and vegan sister Isabelle Steichen of The Plantiful. She was so kind to share her wisdom with us today, and she’s got a lot of it. Isabelle is a recent graduate of Cornell’s Plant-Based Nutrition Course, and currently enrolled in the Holistic MBA Health Coach program. Make sure you check out her blog, and follow her on Instagram @theplantiful.
One of the biggest concerns when it comes to veganism, seems to be the worry that vegans (and vegetarians for that matter) don’t get enough protein which could lead to health issues and just overall weakness.
I think a reason for this misconception comes from our overall lack of knowledge when it comes to nutrients and their function. So what is protein? Protein is a macronutrient made up of amino acids, necessary for us to survive. Now we distinguish between animal and plant protein. For a long time, and it’s still the case today, it was assumed that animal protein is of ‘higher quality’ than plant protein. This comes from the fact that the amino acid chain contained in animal protein is closer to the human one than the one contained in plants, due to the fact that genetically we are closer to animals than plants. Now the only thing that proves this, is that the protein synthesis will be faster when it comes to animal protein. Tests done on mice in the early 1900s proved that these mice grew faster with animal protein than with plant protein.
All of these findings are not enough to make up your mind about protein. Indeed scientists have found out that plant foods contain all of the essential amino acids. The don’t come in perfect chains but they can be put together by the human body if one just eats a balanced plant based diet. This means that plant based protein can fulfill our dietary needs without any problem. When somebody asks me, where do you get your protein from, I say: Lentils, chia and hemp seeds, chickpeas, beans, seeds and nuts as well as organic tofu and tempeh. These are only the protein richest foods and it’s super easy to integrate them into your diet by adding them to salads, dips, smoothies etc.
In addition, it generally gets overlooked that animal protein have in multiple studies proved to generate unhealthy growth and lead to diseases. Prof. Collin Campbell for example studied this issue in depth. When he tried to solve the malnutrition issue in the Philippines, he realized that a lot of kids suffered from liver cancer in that region. Now these kids where not the malnourished kids but actually the kids that were eating the most animal protein rich diets. From that, Campbell did a number of studies on rats where he found out that if rats consumer over 10% of animal protein a day, they are more likely to die of cancer. This was not the case at all for rats fed with plant based protein.
If anything, I believe that the fitness boom as well as a number of misconceptions when it comes to protein, have reinforced the general trend of us eating enormous amounts of protein, that rather than being beneficial, lead to health complications and premature death.
Bottom line: unless the only thing you eat is processed junk food, there is no danger for you to suffer from protein deficiency if you are vegan. If anything, plant based protein is better for us and will keep us healthy in the long run.
I want to share the two strategies that I think have made the biggest impact for me. Number one is having a foundation and a framework into which you can plug your own knowledge and curiosity and grow a completely unique practice that fits you. And number two is a system to plug your expertise into to reach new patients and readers and grow beyond your practice. What you can do right now, essentially, to build a better and more rewarding future.
In this episode, we cover:
4:54 Keith's healthcare background 9:15 How Chris found success 21:00 Why the ADAPT framework will work for you 32:53 What is the Evergreen course? 45:28 How to sign up for the ADAPT Framework Level One Course
[powerpress]Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. Most of the time, this podcast, as you know, is aimed at the general public and particularly toward people that are interested in improving their health, but today I want to talk to the healthcare practitioners out there, those of you that are working on the frontlines to help patients and clients to achieve that goal. Specifically, I want to talk about a central challenge that I know many of us as practitioners face, which is that you want to make an impact on a big scale but maybe you’re not sure how or you’re struggling to carve out a career for yourself in a world of healthcare that’s rapidly changing or you’re looking for ways to build and grow your practice more effectively and more quickly. Here’s why I want to do this today: I know that many of you who listen to this show are currently healthcare practitioners or aspiring healthcare practitioners, and as I’ve done this work for the past several years, what’s become really clear to me is that the world needs you and your voice matters. You want to have a meaningful career, you want to make a difference, you want to help people, and we absolutely need you on board more than ever before, but the truth is it can be hard to build a practice, it can be hard to stand out, it can be hard to learn the best functional medicine principles in a way that’s practical and useful, so I wanted to have a discussion about that today. In particular, I wanted to share the two strategies that I think have made the biggest impact for me in overcoming this challenge. Number one is having a foundation and a framework into which you can plug your own knowledge and curiosity and grow a completely unique practice that fits you, and number two is a system to plug your expertise into to reach new patients and readers and grow beyond your practice, what you can do right now, essentially, to build a better and more rewarding future. To help me out with this, I’ve asked my own strategic advisor, Keith Rhys, to join me today. Now, Keith has been with me from the very beginning. If I recall, I hired him a month or two after I graduated from school. Keith is really unique in that he’s worked with natural and integrative doctors for 35 years, helping them to become thought leaders, to be seen, to create digital programs and other products that generate passive income. I feel tremendously blessed to have encountered Keith because when I started looking for someone that could help me face these challenges and overcome them, I had a particular person in mind but I didn’t know that that person existed. Of all places, I met Keith on a forum and immediately knew that he was the right fit, and we’ve been working together ever since. So, Keith, welcome to the show, and can you tell us a little bit more about what it is that you do for healthcare practitioners?
Keith's healthcare background
Keith Rhys: Sure. Thanks, Chris. Well, I started 35 years ago at a school as a marketing VP for supplement companies, and so I started selling supplements, but what I found was it was more rewarding working with the doctors who created the supplements because they usually had a vision and ideas that were a lot bigger than the cheesy supplements they were trying to sell. Right? Chris Kresser: Mm-hmm. Keith Rhys: And so I started working with doctors with big ideas, and I never looked back because my passion is helping people like you, Chris, who have a vision and want to move the needle forward when it comes to healthcare. I talk to doctors all the time, I talk to practitioners all the time, and their questions when we first start chatting are always the same: How do I stand out from the crowd? — especially now that we have the internet — How do I go from that stripmall clinic I have to having an authoritative, go-to expert with my ideas? How do I grow beyond my practice and only making money from seeing patients, and money limited by my time? And so that’s what I have been working with for the past 30 years or so with practitioners, helping them fill their practice and get the book deals and create the supplements, create the digital products, and that’s how we met. Chris Kresser: Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting to have you on the show because you’ve really been such an instrumental part of my practice and the growth of my website and everything associated with that. You’ve been kind of behind the scenes. I feel like you’re stepping out in front of the curtain a little bit and it’s great! When I graduated from school, I had already started my blog, and the blog was growing and I was starting to get more attention from the blog, but when I first reached out to you, I think my income was still tied to the hours that I was spending with my patients. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s obviously a limit to the number of hours that can be spent with patients, and I’m sure most practitioners out there who are listening to this would agree that it can be really taxing energetically and tiring to have a full-time, 40-hour-week patient care practice, so I was interested in figuring out how I could expand beyond my private practice and one-on-time with patients both to have a bigger impact and affect more people and also to generate some income that wasn’t directly tied to time. I thought the blog might have something to do with that, but I wasn’t really sure how at that point when we first started working together, Keith, and I think the biggest thing for me, too, was that I wanted to figure out a way to do it with integrity and not using any of the sleazy techniques that I had often seen internet marketers using. We’ve all seen the sales pages that are 52 miles long with blinking yellow highlighters and big red arrows pointing everywhere. In fact, the forum that Keith and I met on was a forum that was kind of exclusively dedicated to people like me and like Keith who want to barf when they see that kind of marketing, basically! Keith Rhys: Right. Chris Kresser: So we met on this forum, and the fact that Keith was there I already knew that he was different than a lot of other marketing folks, and when I first spoke with him, he was one of the few people I had spoken with that really got the importance of integrity and anything that I did being really consistent with who I am as a person. One of the first things Keith helped me do was to create the very first digital program that I ever created, The Healthy Baby Code, which kind of evolved out of a local workshop that I taught and is still to this day one of the most successful programs I’ve ever created and one of my bestselling programs.
How Chris found success
I want to come back to all of that, but we promised at the beginning of this that we’d talk about the two elements that I think had the biggest impact on my success and that I think you can start doing right now to start claiming your spot in this industry and filling your practice and building a future with more income freedom. One of these things was kind of a happy accident, really, if you think about it. The other one, though, took a lot of years of trial and error and blood, sweat, and tears and a lot of money and a lot of time, but the good news for you is that it doesn’t have to be that hard, and I want to maybe start there and jump into why that is. Keith Rhys: Let’s start with that because here’s what’s interesting to me: I’ve watched your evolution as a practitioner and now as a teacher, and so let’s get to the good part. Let’s get to the blood, sweat, and tears. When I first met you, you were just really getting started, and I think, like a lot of the clinicians or practitioners listening right now, they might be getting started as well. Maybe they just graduated school. What was that like for you? Let’s rewind the tape a bit. Chris Kresser: It was a little intimidating and scary! I studied acupuncture and Chinese medicine formally in school, as a lot of people know, and like most other people who go to school for that, when I started I figured I’d end up practicing acupuncture and Chinese medicine — a natural assumption, right? Keith Rhys: Right. Chris Kresser: But as I went through school, I began to realize that I wasn’t as passionate about it as I thought I was, and then I went to a few seminars on functional medicine, and it was like the lights were turned on. I immediately knew that that was what I wanted to do, but I didn’t fully admit it to myself yet because I didn’t know what that looked like. It was very clear to me what the model was for practicing acupuncture and Chinese medicine. I mean, that’s what I was studying in school. That’s what my teachers and mentors there were doing. I knew what it looked like to have a clinic, an acupuncture clinic. I knew what the different possibilities were. There was more traditional practice, and then community acupuncture was coming onto the scene, so I kind of knew what all the frameworks and models were for that, but for functional medicine I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t have any model to follow. They certainly weren’t teaching it in school. I didn’t have any teachers that had a functional medicine practice or any advisors or local role models that I could just look to and kind of emulate, so it was kind of a mixed experience. I was super passionate and excited about functional medicine, and I knew it was the path forward for me, but I didn’t have any model at all. Keith Rhys: So you basically had to build your own model, your own framework. Chris Kresser: Yeah, exactly, and that’s a little bit scary. At least it was for me at that time. I mean, it was exciting as well, but I knew the conventional model for medicine was broken, which is why I chose to study acupuncture and Chinese medicine in the first place, but I also came to believe that traditional medicine, as effective and amazing as it can be, wasn’t enough on its own either. And I had had enough exposure to functional medicine to know that it was the future of medicine, but there were not many formal training programs at that time. IFM was definitely there, but I didn’t know much about it, and it didn’t seem to me to be very systematic. There were a lot of individual courses you could take, and over a longer period of time, you could become certified, but there wasn’t anything that really taught you how to have a functional medicine practice. So I just kind of sat with that for a while, that dynamic tension. I had a huge desire to make an impact. I really wanted to help people to heal and transform just as I had done myself, and at one point I just realized I had to take a leap of faith and put a framework together myself, and what that forced me to do was to be extremely investigative in my approach, to take nothing for granted, to assume nothing, to really explore everything in as much depth as I could, and this is when I became a really voracious researcher and started to study a lot on an ongoing basis because it was clear to me that nobody was coming to save me, really! Keith Rhys: Right. Chris Kresser: And if I wanted to create this practice and this vision, this way that I imagined my life could be as a clinician, I had to just go for it and do it, so that’s what I did. Keith Rhys: I remember — it’s been a couple of years now, I think — I came down to Berkeley, and you showed me on a whiteboard for the first time your functional and evolutionary model for patient care, and that’s when it really started evolving. And you started talking about how you wanted to share this with other clinicians, right? Chris Kresser: Yeah, that was really kind of a breakthrough moment for me. It felt like the culmination of all of my work up until that moment. I’ve mentioned this before, and I know you know this, Keith, but at that time and still today I get literally five to ten emails a week asking for referrals. If you check out the comments on any blog post I write, you’ll see numerous people asking for referrals to functional medicine practitioners in their area that also have an ancestral or evolutionary perspective, but one of the most difficult parts of my job is I’m often unable to make referrals. I would love to be able to do that. My practice has often been closed to new patients for the better part of the last several years. There’s nothing I would like more than to be able to refer someone to a clinician that could really help, but there just aren’t enough practitioners out there that have a functional medicine background and an ancestral perspective. So over the last couple of years, as I thought about my own future and what direction I wanted to go in, I wrote a book, as many of you know, and of course, there was thinking about writing a second book, my publisher had asked me to do that, and there was kind of this crossroads that I reached that I know you remember, Keith, and for me, my question when I reached that crossroads was, how can I make the biggest contribution? Why am I here? What can I do that will have the biggest impact? Is it to write another book or is it to meet this obvious need for more practitioners by training people to combine functional medicine and ancestral or evolutionary health and to do so in a way that creates a streamlined, efficient, lean practice model that can offer a really high level of patient care, but also a really engaging and fun platform for a practitioner, where they’re going to love and enjoy their work for their whole life without burning out, which is such a common thing in our profession? That’s how the Kresser Institute and eventually after literally two years of thinking about this stuff and having meetings with you and other people on my team and whiteboards and all of that, the ADAPT Framework Level One Course, which is the first offering from the Kresser Institute, were born. Keith Rhys: So if I’m a practitioner listening right now, I’m thinking, “OK, I would like a framework. I’d like a practice foundation because I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.” Chris Kresser: Yeah. Keith Rhys: “But I also want to carve out my own place in the world. I have my own ideas.” So how is this framework able to give people both — enough structure, but also encourage them to develop their own voice, their own approach? Chris Kresser: Well, that’s a great question, and of course, as someone that didn’t follow an established path and went off on my own, I can completely relate to that. I guess the best way to answer that would be to use a couple of analogies. When you study martial arts, you typically start by learning a form, a set of predefined movements. and learning the form is the best way to acquire the underlying skills and knowledge that enables you to eventually move beyond the form and use those skills in a more fluid situation that demands improvisation and creativity, like a sparring match or a fight, for example. Music is another good example. You typically begin by learning scales, but then those scales become the basis for improvisation and personal expression once you’ve mastered the scales. If you try to go straight for the improvisation and personal expression, it usually doesn’t sound that good. I mean, that’s what my daughter Sylvie does! She’s 4 years old, and it sounds pretty good to me as a parent, but I’m not sure that people would pay to listen to her that aren’t related! In the same way, I feel like this ADAPT training is teaching a form or a number of different scales because that’s the fastest way to learn functional medicine and become a competent practitioner. But just as I’ve done myself, I fully expect — and want — clinicians that I train to move beyond this form and create their own model that fits with their own personality, interests, patient population, etc., and there will be numerous factors that actually determine that. And really, as long as you’re listening and paying attention, you won’t be able to stop that from happening. That’s the natural evolution and outcome of a functional medicine practice where you’re following this path. Keith Rhys: Right. OK, so it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach then? Chris Kresser: No. Of course, a lot of people have heard me say this when it comes to diet, but I do believe the same is true when you’re talking about a functional medicine practice. My practice is going to look very different than someone’s practice in rural Pennsylvania, for example. The needs that they’re serving there are going to be different, and that’s going to determine a whole number of factors in terms of what kind of testing they do or how much testing they do or what treatments are available. There are just so many considerations, and there’s so much room for customization and personalization, depending on all of those factors.
Why the ADAPT framework will work for you
Keith Rhys: Beautiful, and I love those analogies, but give me specifics. I want to know how the ADAPT Framework accomplishes these objectives and provides this foundation. Chris Kresser: One of the reasons it took me two years to put this together is I spent a long time actually learning about learning and thinking about learning. Being the kind of geek that I am, I read probably seven or eight different books on modern learning theory. I read a lot of the scientific literature on learning theory. It’s that old saying: Don’t give a man a fish; teach a man to fish. I wanted to figure out how I could do that in this training program, like how could I impart the knowledge that’s required and the basics that are required to quickly reach competence but also give people the kind of meta-skills that they need to take that basic competence and expand on it and transition to mastery. The first thing is that I teach processes, not protocols. There are some trainings out there that teach — I’m not sure of a better way to say it — somewhat cookie-cutter protocols where you prescribe a certain protocol with certain test results, and the protocol is always matched to the test results, and it’s kind of a paint-by-numbers type of approach. I’m definitely going to provide guidelines and basic protocols because, again, those are kind of like the scales or the forms and they’re necessary often when you’re just getting started, but I’m much more focused on teaching clinicians how to evaluate each patient individually and then create customized protocols based on that evaluation as well as their own preferences and circumstances and scope of practice. That’s number one. Number two is that the ADAPT training emphasizes case-based learning. One of the benefits of case-based learning is that it encourages independent thinking and investigation. When you learn information through case studies and practice, you can apply that information in a wide variety of contexts, but when you just learn textbook style, which is how most of us were taught, that knowledge is often difficult to apply outside of the context that we learned it in. This is why so many leading medical schools, like Harvard, have already transitioned to a case-based learning format, and this is what we’re going to use in the ADAPT training as well. The third factor is that ADAPT empowers clinicians to develop their own authority. As I said before, I don’t assume or even want students to follow my approach in every way. My aim is to provide clinicians with the resources and the skills that they need to develop their own approach, which is what I did. I do this by teaching how to research, providing tips on where to find the right information when you need it, how to think critically about that information, and how to apply that kind of critical thinking approach to any clinical problem or challenge that you’re going to face when you see patients. Keith Rhys: And it just so happens, Chris, that that approach that you take is also what’s helped you write a blog like you have regularly, weekly, for four years, and it’s going to be an invaluable skill to learn. Chris Kresser: Absolutely. Yeah, to be able to critically evaluate the research that we see and to be able to make sense of it and then translate that into practical application in the clinic, that’s what separates an average clinician from one that really will be in high demand and achieves a high level of mastery. Keith Rhys: Beautiful. I agree. You weren’t handed this on a silver platter, clearly. I mean, you had to create this out of necessity, and this foundation, this framework, this ADAPT training is one of the two things that’s most important to a clinician’s success, really to any practitioner’s success. Chris Kresser: Yeah, I absolutely believe that. Trust me: If a course like this had existed when I was just starting out, I would have been all over it. I would have sold my car or done anything I had to do to get into it. I don’t regret the time and the energy and the money I spent figuring all this stuff out because it was a good learning process, but I can definitely tell you that if there had been a shortcut that would have saved those resources, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Keith Rhys: Yeah. And by the way, Chris, I saw your car when I was in Berkeley. It is time to sell that car. I’m just saying. Chris Kresser: All right, so the blood, sweat, and the tears. That was what that was. And the people who are going to join us in the ADAPT training this year are going to be able to avoid that. That’s one of the main purposes of this training, but as we talked about, there was also a little bit of a happy accident. Keith Rhys: Definitely. Chris Kresser: When I was in school, as many of you know, I started a blog called The Healthy Skeptic. That was the name. The current website, of course, is ChrisKresser.com. It used to be The Healthy Skeptic. I know some listeners and readers out there have been around since The Healthy Skeptic days. I started this while I was a student in school, and the reason I say it was a happy accident is because I didn’t have any intention when I started the blog that it would become the foundation of my future success or anything like that. I just started it to keep track of my own research. I was doing a semester project on the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease — or the lack of relationship, in many cases — and I just needed a place to kind of track all my thoughts and research and write. I’m kind of a kinesthetic learner, so it helps me to write while I’m learning. I was aware of this new format of blogging, and so I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll start a blog,” but just because it seemed like the easiest way to keep everything in one place in a kind of narrative format. The funny thing is, of course, now that I know a lot more about this world and the online space, I bet that if you knew me then, Keith, that’s exactly what you would have told me to do. Keith Rhys: That’s right. Yeah, because really it’s an underlying principle that’s worked for doctors for decades before there was the internet. Here’s the bottomline: People always approach me at conferences where I’m speaking or doing one of my workshops, and they’ll pull me aside and they’ll say, “OK, what’s the secret? How do I really make an impact? How do I get my voice out there? What’s the secret?” And I’ll tell them, the ones that are making the biggest impact are the ones that are serving their patients every day with a relentless, ongoing curiosity and an ever-expanding toolbox of treatment options. And then because of that work, that practice work, they’re actually creating value for people as a result of this curiosity. You can’t help yourself! It can be a blog, it can be an email to your list, it can be a book, and it’s what we used to do pre-internet. Old-fashioned mail newsletters — remember those? Chris Kresser: Barely! Keith Rhys: But it’s the same tried-and-true philosophy. You produce content that has real value, you put it in front of an audience that is looking for that value, and then you keep testing and refining your message. Wouldn’t you say that’s kind of what you’ve been doing for the last five years? You’re putting it out there and seeing what the feedback is from your readers. Chris Kresser: Yeah, absolutely. I’d say the other part of that, which you’ve always encouraged me to do as well, is just stay true to my own curiosity and passion because if you start just writing for other people only, in my experience, there’s not much energy behind that. I’ve found that just writing what I’m curious about and passionate about has been often a really good guide because I’m not unique in my interests and my passion. I know there are many others out there who share the same ones. Keith Rhys: Right. Absolutely. That’s clear. Chris Kresser: The little funny story I have about this and that Elanne never lets me forget — Elanne is my wife, by the way — I tried to quit my blog several times early on because it was a ton of work and I was busy building a practice. We had just had a baby, Sylvie. I was taking care of my body through exercise and doing everything else I needed to do, and the added time and energy that I was putting into my blog sometimes just felt like a little bit too much, and I initially didn’t really know if I would get anything back in return for doing that other than the joy of helping people, which is, of course, really valuable. But each time where I would start to waffle like that and think out loud about giving it up, Elanne would always just kind of metaphorically slap me upside the head and say, “No. You keep going. You keep doing this. This is the most important thing that you’re doing.” And I’m glad that she did because the blog has really been the centerpiece of all of the success that I’ve achieved — the digital programs that have just helped a number of women get pregnant and have helped people get clarity on their cholesterol and transition successfully to a paleo type of diet, and provided me with some additional income that’s not directly tied to one-on-one patient work; the web-based platform that enabled me to get a great book deal with a Big Six New York publisher and write a New York Times bestseller; the force behind a full practice just a few months after graduating from school and one that continues to be full without ever having spent even a dollar on advertising; and then most recently as a platform for launching the Kresser Institute and the ADAPT Framework training program. None of that would have been possible without the blog, and it’s so clear now, looking back in retrospect, so I’m glad I listened to my wife before you came along, Keith, and then, of course, once you came along, I had two people telling me to keep going!
What is the Evergreen course?
That’s why I’ve asked Keith to include his course, which is called Evergreen Audience, as part of the pre-course for my training program. Some of you might not be familiar with all this lingo, but as part of the full ADAPT Framework Level One Course, which lasts a year, we created a pre-course that lasts about eight weeks, which has a bunch of content that’s basically designed to help students succeed and get even more out of the full course. One of the elements of that pre-course is called Evergreen Audience. This is something that Keith has put together, and it’s the second most important thing, I think, that a practitioner can be doing right now to start doing intentionally what I did by happy accident. So, Keith, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about how your course helps folks to do this. Keith Rhys: All right, the way I look at it is your ADAPT training provides a practice foundation and the framework for the practitioner while my pre-course, Evergreen Audience, offers them a way to build their online platform and create that content that’s going to move their practice either online or help them move a bit beyond their practice. It’s really interesting that a lot of practitioners approach me and they’ll say, “You know, I can wait to write that blog,” or “I can wait to write content on my website,” and what I really need to remind them is that content marketing is happening on their behalf every day because they have patients who are viewing them on Yelp and they have patients talking about them on Facebook. That’s content marketing. Chris Kresser: Yeah. Keith Rhys: So all I’m encouraging practitioners to do is develop the simplest, cleanest, most natural platform for them, that they get their own voice out there, their own content, their own ideas. That’s where we start because I maintain that today all practitioners are online practitioners. We don’t call it “blogging” anymore. Today the big word, the buzz word is “content marketing.” The first thing we do in Module One of this pre-course is help each practitioner choose an angle or a niche up front that’s going to help them reach their tribe, the people they connect with, the people that resonate with their message, what they have to offer, and figure out what it is that’s uniquely their voice, what they uniquely offer. Then there are three more modules that take you from that point forward. It’s actually a complete system. It’s a blueprint, if you will, and it’s just designed for health practitioners. Chris Kresser: Yeah, it’s an amazing course, and again, I sure wish it would have been available when I was just starting out! It wasn’t, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Keith one-on-one, so of course, I’ve gotten all of the lessons straight from the man himself, but this is something that I can’t encourage enough for people who are just getting started. As I said just before this, virtually everything good that’s happened to me in terms of my career has come out of my blog and my website and the content marketing that I’ve done. Call it whatever you want, but what it really comes down to is just helping people, delivering really valuable information and content to people, and in doing that, you develop a relationship. It’s a meaningful relationship, and it’s one that’s really deeply satisfying. I mean, I get letters. There’s a picture on my desk right now. I got a letter from a woman whose 2-1/2-year-old son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and she did a whole bunch of research and read my book and my blog and listened to a lot of podcasts and started implementing some of the recommendations and addressing his gut health, and now he’s not on the spectrum anymore. Getting a letter like that, it totally makes my day, my week, my month, and it makes all the hard work and everything that I do worthwhile, and that just came from having the blog. This isn’t someone who saw me in my practice. I didn’t treat this little boy. I’ve never spoken to this person in my life, but to get a letter like that just overwhelms me with joy, and it all started from just writing a few blog articles, so it’s difficult to underestimate the impact that this can have. Keith Rhys: Right. When I met you, what percentage of your practice, would you say, was virtual with Skype? Chris Kresser: Here’s what I would say: I would say 90% of my patients, or 95%, came from the blog. Keith Rhys: Wow. Chris Kresser: Basically what happened is when I graduated from school and once I got my license and got all set up, I sent an email saying, “OK, my practice is open,” and then within three months it was full. Like I said, I’ve never spent one dollar for advertising. I didn’t do any local advertising. I didn’t even send an email to my friends or family, saying that my practice was open. All I did was send an email to my email list, people that were reading my blog. Yes, at that time, I was doing virtual initial appointments. Now I require patients to come see me in person for the first visit, but at that time, I wasn’t, and of course, that was helpful because I had the blog and I was drawing people from all over the world, actually. I had patients in Australia, the UK, Eastern Europe, China — all over the world — South America, Central America. And even today, now that I do require people to come see me in person for the first visit, I would say probably 75% or 80% come through my blog or my podcast and another 20% or 25% come from word of mouth from people that have already been my patients. That’s just an estimate. I’ve never really figured it out, but it’s a strong, strong influence from my blog and podcast. Keith Rhys: And do you find that that’s helped you, for lack of a better word, pick and choose, so you can pick the patients you can most help? Chris Kresser: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You talked about how step one of your program is creating a niche, choosing an angle, and I think that’s really important. It’s hard to be everything to everyone, and there are certain things that as a clinician you’re going to be more interested in treating than others, and that was the same for me. I wanted to work with patients who are really active and engaged in their own healing process, who were really pretty well educated already about what they were doing, which was kind of a natural outcome of people coming to me through my blog. In most cases, the patients that come to see me have been reading my blog or listening to my podcast, they’ve read my book, they already have a pretty high level of basic knowledge, and I really find satisfaction in the challenge of working with these patients because they tend to be people who’ve been to several different doctors without success. They have a kind of chronic, complex illness, just like I had, and of course, since that was my own experience, that’s the way that I really get the greatest reward and satisfaction from helping others, so that’s definitely how my practice has evolved. Keith Rhys: I think for a lot of the people listening, that’s exactly the direction they’d like to head as well, and the challenge is that there are so many people out there making this so complicated. Chris Kresser: Right! Keith Rhys: Really! I designed this course specifically for natural docs, knowing, one, they have a practice — Chris Kresser: Yeah. Keith Rhys: Two, they don’t want to become a full-time internet marketer — Chris Kresser: Please, no. Keith Rhys: Right! They didn’t get into practice to become a full-time marketer. Chris Kresser: No. Keith Rhys: So I put together specific strategies to accomplish creating the content, building the practice, building beyond that if that’s your goal, without becoming a smarmy salesperson, which is the first thing a practitioner will tell me when they get on the phone: “I don’t want to be smarmy. I don’t want to be hypey.” And you don’t have to be. Chris Kresser: Yeah. Keith Rhys: And in the end, it also helps you become a better practitioner, so that’s the goal. Chris Kresser: Yeah. It’s funny, because if you read all these articles on SEO and you try to keep up with all the online marketing trends and what Google just did with their latest algorithm, you’ll make yourself crazy, you know? Keith Rhys: Yep. Chris Kresser: The good news is — maybe I shouldn’t say this — I never paid any attention to any of that! I just wrote. I tried to just create the best possible content that I could, and I was kind of blissfully ignorant of all of this other stuff until fairly recently, and even now, we don’t pay a lot of attention to that kind of thing. We just really focus on helping people and creating the best possible content we can, and everything else takes care of itself when you do that. Keith Rhys: That’s right. Chris Kresser: The people who need to think a lot about all those other things are people who are creating not very great content, and so then they have to do everything they possibly can to get eyeballs on it because nobody really wants to read it otherwise or consume it! Keith Rhys: Exactly. Chris Kresser: All right, so we’ve gone a little longer than I have typically lately, but I think this was a really important topic, and I know from surveys we’ve done in the past that about 25% of listeners and readers of the blog are healthcare practitioners, so I wanted to do this because we’ve never really addressed you in any blog post or podcast at all yet. Just to recap, the two strategies I think have made the biggest impact for me in creating the practice and the work that I wanted were having a foundation and a framework that you can plug your knowledge and curiosity into — and in order to grow that, you need practice — and number two, a system to plug your expertise into that allows you to reach new patients and readers and grow beyond just the one-on-one work that you do with patients. So if you’re thinking about becoming a practitioner, if you’re a student, if you’re already a practitioner but maybe you’re a doctor and you’re practicing within an HMO model or you’re practicing conventional medicine and you’ve been thinking about breaking out and starting your own functional medicine practice, if you’re an acupuncturist or a chiropractor doing traditional acupuncture or traditional chiropractic and you’re thinking about moving into functional medicine, I really want to encourage you to do it. We need you. There’s such a high demand for functional medicine practitioners right now. All you have to do is look at my email inbox to see that! And in particular, there’s a high demand for functional medicine practitioners who embrace and incorporate an ancestral or evolutionary perspective on diet and nutrition. Those are very few and far between, and it’s exactly what this huge audience of people is looking for.
How to sign up for the ADAPT Framework Level One Course
The good news is that you can do this. If you take that leap of faith, there are a lot more resources available now than there were when I did it. There’s help for you. Whether it’s this ADAPT Framework training that includes the Evergreen Audience course and the benefits of Keith’s 35 years of experience working with holistic docs, I’m just on a mission to get as many of you listening to this to take that first step and do it. So to learn more about the ADAPT Framework Level One Course, which we’ve been talking about throughout the show, you can head over to KresserInstitute.com. I want to thank you, Keith, for joining us. It was a pleasure to have you step out from behind the curtain and introduce you to all my folks because you’ve been such a great source of support as an advisor and coach and as a friend for all of these years. I couldn’t have done it without you, so it’s great to have you on the show. Keith Rhys: Thanks. Chris Kresser: All right, everybody, that’s the end of another episode of Revolution Health Radio, and I look forward to talking to you again in a couple of weeks. Thanks again, Keith.
from Chris Kresser http://chriskresser.com/transform-your-practice-change-the-world/
via Holistic Clients
Pregnancy is such an exciting time! From finding out that you are pregnant, through the various stages of pregnancy (some not so fun), to the birth of your child, there is so much to learn and experience.
Some couples wait until the second trimester to announce a pregnancy, while others can’t wait to share the news right away. If you are pregnant (congratulations!) and looking for a fun way to tell family and friends, here are a few suggestions:
5 Creative Pregnancy Announcements
1. Say it With Video
I always wanted to announce my pregnancies with a funny music video, but I forget the small detail that I tend to get Chandler Bing face on camera and I don’t have a great singing voice (and by not great, I mean terrible).
If you happen to have a great singing voice and the ability to smile naturally on camera, a pregnancy announcement video can be a fun way to tell the world. This is my personal favorite pregnancy announcement video:
You can even find some funny ways to announce in a photo, like Dad passed out after seeing the positive pregnancy test, or Dad holding two bags of ice and mom pointing to her tummy for an “Ice, Ice Baby” parody.
This is one way we have announced before and it was a really sweet way to tell family. We let our older children announce that we were expecting again. There are a lot of options for an older-sibling announcement too:
Give the current youngest child a “big brother” or “big sister” shirt to wear to a gathering or in a picture
Post an “eviction notice” on the crib of the youngest child and take a picture to send to family and friends
4. Have a Pet Announce
This is especially cute for a first child if you already have pets. I’ve seen cute announcements with pictures of a pet with a sign that says something like:
If you have a blog, this can be another great place to creatively announce a pregnancy….
Speaking of which, this would be a good time to let you know…
I’m Pregnant!
If you’re counting, that is #6. We are due in February and we couldn’t be more excited. (If you want to catch up on my previous pregnancy and birth stories, I’ve compiled them here)
And not that any of you would ever ask, but I figured I’d proactively include these answers in case the random people I meet in the grocery store happen to read my blog:
Yes, we do know what causes that (and yes, we rather enjoy it!)
Yes, we do have a TV
No, we are not crazy (ok, maybe a little)
Yes, my hands are wonderfully full
Yes, actually, we are Catholic
Yes, I’ve heard of birth control, I’m not a fan of artificial hormones, actually
Yes, they are all mine
Yes, they have the same father
No, it really isn’t your business if we are stopping or not (specifically addressed to random checkout clerk at the store who has asked the same question 5 times, including asking if I’m going to have any more while I’m visibly pregnant)
No, we are not getting “fixed” as clearly nothing is broken
Yes, we do get time to ourselves sometimes (obviously)
I promise WellnessMama.com won’t turn into a pregnancy blog, though I do plan to take the opportunity to write a few new posts on pregnancy/birth/fertility related topics that I’ve gotten a lot of questions about recently.
I’ve also compiled an ebook of all of my top pregnancy and birth resources, including the supplements I take while pregnant, the diet I follow, my routine and resources that helped me have natural births (and a vbac). It also includes a list of supplies I packed for hospital births and how I prepared for my home births, as well as some tips for getting baby in a good position for birth.
Even though this will be my 6th pregnancy, I’m doing something different that I haven’t done since my first:
Here’s why. As a first time mom I took All. Of. The. Birth. Classes.
Lamaze, Bradley, even Hypno-babies.
After my first birth I realized an important fact: labor pain can not be accurately described in smiley or sad faces, and my biggest struggle is relaxing and staying joyful during labor (which is what helps me the most when I’m able to do it).
I’ve successfully birthed 5 children and have “doula-d” for dozens of births, but I still get nervous about labor.
This time, my friend Genevieve, aka Mama Natural has a birth course that she filmed with a doula and midwife-in-training. It includes input from pregnant couples, experts, and a ton of medical research.
Even though I’ve done this whole birth gig more than Genevieve has, she achieved something I have not- a joyful and mostly painless birth. Her birth video from her last birth (which you can watch in the course) shows her happy in labor and declaring “that was awesome” as soon as she delivers her baby.
I also love the community aspect of her pregnancy course. With past pregnancies, I joined Facebook groups or online pregnancy forums and found ways to network with other pregnant women, but always became frustrated because most of the expectant mothers were not on the same page in regards to birth plans, pregnancy, labor, and birthing preferences.
The Mama Natural Birth Course has a wonderful group of moms striving for a joyful natural birth and a ton of great info about pregnancy and birth (including a bonus workout video that I’m loving right now).
If not, I hope you’ll follow along with my pregnancy through my blog (and possibly my labor too if my husband is successful in getting me to Periscope parts of it!).
Do you have any specific pregnancy or birth related questions you’d like me to write about in the coming months? Let me know in the comments below!
If you have kids, how did you tell family/friends that you were expecting? Share below!
from Wellness Mama » Blog http://wellnessmama.com/6040/creative-pregnancy-announcements/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=creative-pregnancy-announcements
via SEO Derby
Building muscle doesn’t just “happen.” You must force growth by using this proven technique that will add size to any stalled workout program.
Beginnings suck.
Sure they are exciting — in theory — but learning a new skill or practicing a new habit can be incredibly frustrating. With time, practice, and lots of effort, you see rapid improvements and rewards for your relentlessness.
When it comes to building muscle, oftentimes the opposite is true. When first start training you seem to gain size like you were born to be a bodybuilder, or you drop fat as if those 4-week magazine promises are actually a reality.
Then a funny thing happens: you become better at lifting and yet most of the time the progress slows down. Sometimes almost completely.
Sure, you add some weight to your lifts or learn some new exercises, but you end up feeling like your body is muscle-resistant.
What gives?
In the most basic sense, you’re completely normal. Plateau is a natural part of body transformation.
At a higher level, you’re digging your own grave by ignoring a few simple rules. You see, you need to add in specialization that targets your weak points and gives them no choice but to change into what you desire.
To bust past your plateau and start gaining muscle fast, you usually have to stop following the same traditional methods and become more innovative with your workouts.
Remember, muscle growth is primarily the result of three factors: muscle tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage. That means just adding weight is not enough. You need to challenge your muscles in ways that force them to grow.
Having a hard time gaining muscle or jumpstarting a lack of progress? Good, you’re not alone. But with a specialized approach, as pointed out below by muscle-building specialist Bryan Krahn, you can jumpstart almost any stagnant plan.
Adding Muscle: The New Rules of Specialization for Size
In the simplest sense, you want gains. New muscle. More size. Something you can look at in the mirror and think, “Awesome, my body changed.”
To make that happen, select a body part and then make it a focus for at least 4 to 6 weeks. Follow the rules below, and you will see the type of changes you want, but be forewarned: it will require quite a bit of extra effort.
Design: Yes, there is a time and place for body part trainng. One body part or muscle group (chest, back, legs, arms, etc) at a time.
Sets: 40-50 sets per week
Frequency: 2-4 sessions per week. Spreading the weekly volume over more training days typically works better.
Rep range: All of them! 4-6, 8-15, 12-25. Even sets of 50. The only range to avoid would be sets of 3 or less, especially if frequency is on the high end. Save that for a dedicated functional hypertrophy phase.
Exercises: All of them. Compound lifts are great but isolation work earns its stripes during a specialization phase. Also include both unilateral and bilateral movements.
The Muscle-Building Difference
Variety is a strong hypertrophy driver, so during specialization phases I like to program exercises that I haven’t used consistently in two years at least.
This doesn’t mean making up silly exercises – just switching from wide-grip barbell curls to medium grip. Buy Bill Pearl’s book The Keys to the Inner Universe. You’ll find plenty of options
Intensity Techniques
If your workout just consists of the, “same old, same old” you probably won’t notice much difference, although the added frequency will probably cause a spark. This is about creativity that makes your muscles feel alive.
Add in techniques like mid-rep pauses, peak contractions, accentuated stretches, drop sets, super sets, and compound sets. Just not all in the same workout. More is more…up to a certain point. So take a technique or two, and then add it to your workout.
Oh yeah, and one of thing: Avoid techniques like forced reps or negative reps.
But What About The Other Body Parts?
Think maintenance. Use full body workouts with basic, compound exercises performed with perfect technique while leaving a few “reps in the hole.” This will provide a solid training effect and make you feel like you’re actually doing something worthwhile. Which you are — reinforcing great technique.
Duration
Use this approach for 4-6 weeks max. You need to reduce volume to allow supercompensation to occur. It’s also wise to return to more “normal” training before embarking on another specialization phase.
For example:
4-6 week Arm Specialization
1-2 week Unloading (volume reduction)
4-8 week “Normal” Program
4-6 week Leg Specialization
Note: Never do back-to-back specialization phases for the same muscle group. It doesn’t work.
What sparked your interest in health and wellness? After being diagnosed with intolerances to foods such as wheat, dairy and preservatives I had to entirely change the way I ate. In order to become excited about this diet and lifestyle change, I had to find a way of making it interesting and maintainable. I started to read blogs for recipe inspirations, and after keeping to a clean diet for only a few weeks, I felt so much better in myself. The biggest difference I found was in my energy levels. I was able to fit MORE activities and work into my days, and this encouraged me to keep up this lifestyle.
How did you build your passion for healthy living into a business? It was after seeing how much better I felt in myself from eating well, and how easy it was to keep up that I became passionate about spreading the word. Not only did I want to send an important message, but I also wanted to create a tangible product that people could buy in order to make healthy living a little easier. My passion for healthy living was only very new when I decided to start a company based on it. Something I had loved for much longer than healthy living was desserts. The challenge was how to combine the two since they seem slightly contradictory to each other. I saw this challenge as a hugely exciting and enticing one, and knew that it could be achieved. I have worked for about 18 hours a day, every day over the last year to build this business. I would say that it is equally as important to love what you do as it is to be prepared to work hard. Working this hard, and having to make sacrifices on other parts of my life has never been difficult because healthy living truly is one of my main passions. I feel better than I have ever done before without ever having to diet or restrict myself. I strive to be part of the movement that pushes people away from skinny to strong. I aim to show people that the sweeter things in life can be enjoyed in a healthier way.
Where did the crumble obsession come from? Crumble is one of those desserts which I have always associated with cosyness and family. It is such a traditional, British dessert and something I would have always chosen from a menu at a restaurant. The idea to put a nutritional twist on the traditional crumble was not a planned one. I simply was experimenting with a whole host of desserts and for a big family dinner, I prepared a crumble which was inspired by one of Ella’s recipes from her blog. It went down a treat at that dinner, which gave me the idea of doing something with it. I then spent days in the kitchen trying out different flavour combinations, and that is really where my love affair with crumbles began. Everything I tried, I loved, and I was just certain that these were a product that everyone would love too. What I really love about my range of crumbles is that they are very different from the traditional ones. Instead of being made with ingredients such as flour, butter and sugar, I use ingredients such as oats, nuts , coconut oil and maple syrup. These crumbles are delicious cold as well as hot, so do not necessarily need to be heated before eating. What I am especially obsessed with about these crumbles is that they make amazing breakfast options as well as desserts. I LOVE the crumbles for breakfast with some coconut yoghurt and some berries. They are perfectly filling and provide amazing nutritional value for the rest of the day.
What has been the hardest part of starting a new business? Eek! That is a hard question, because in all honesty there have been a lot of hurdles to overcome, and some quite difficult times in my journey so far. However, I think that it would be unrealistic to think that you could start a business without stumbling over such hurdles, and it is how they are overcome which is important. For me, what I have found most difficult in starting a business is the inability to ever really be able to switch off. I became so immersed into the world of Livia’s Kitchen and was working for so many hours a day on it that a few months ago I started to feel quite overwhelmed and exhausted. I realised at that stage how important it is when starting a business to learn the skill of delegation and to start depending and relying on others more. It was at that point when I took on two full time employees and it has been a total game changer. I have two of the most reliable and committed girls working for me now, and after training them well, they have been able to take a lot of the workload off from me. This has enabled me to have a little more time for socialising and relaxing, which is so important. I have just taken a 10 day holiday where I truly switched off and re-charged and that is all because I had been able to pass responsibility onto my employees. So… I would say to anyone with a new business that although delegation and letting others do tasks for you is one of the hardest parts of starting a business, there will inevitably come a time where it is essential and the better you are at it, the more likely you are to succeed. Not one person can do everything, and this is where I went wrong. It is so crucial to always make time for yourself and the important people in your life, and I am so happy to be able to do this a little more now since I have mastered the act of delegation.
What has been the most fun part of starting a new business? Again, this is such a hard question since the fun never really ends when you embark on an adventure like this. I would probably say that one of the most fun parts for me has been the friendships that have evolved from it. All my crumble elves (the girls who have helped me with baking) have become great friends and we have had some of the most fun times together in the kitchen. I also love being able to interact with my fans and customers through social media and events. There is nothing more worthwhile than hearing that you are making a positive difference to people.
What is your biggest achievement so far? There is nothing quite like the feeling of transforming ideas and dreams into reality. The sense of achievement I felt when Selfridges expressed interest in being the first stockist of my crumbles back in October 2014 was enormous. Then actually seeing the crumbles in the Selfridges Food Hall, and on the shelves of some of my other shops such as Daylesford and Planet Organic filled me with so much happiness. I love that I have been able to create something for others to enjoy.
What advice would you give to someone looking to start a business? As I said above, I think it is so important to love what you do. When it is your own business, it truly becomes your baby. You have to nurture it in every way and dedicate so much time to it and so it would be such a shame to not love it. Learning how to delegate and make time for yourself is also so important. The main piece of advice I would give to someone who is looking to start a business is that you have to be brave, you have to take risks, and you have to be able to take criticism and pick yourself up quickly if you fall. Obstacles prop up every day, and it is how you overcome the hurdles and the difficulties that will determine if you succeed. When it is your own company, it is so hard to not get down when things go wrong, but it is so important to always focus on the solution of those problems and on the positives. Staying optimistic is key, and recognising that making mistakes is okay is also important.
Who inspires you? My Dad has been a huge inspiration to me and he is one of the reasons why I chose to go into business. He is the founder of a company, and has the most amazing business mind. He is able to tackle problems with the most logical and clear mind, and he has guided me on how to always remain calm and strategic. His determination to succeed inspires me to do the same.
Favourite quote? “Better an oops than a what if”
What’s your typical…
Breakfast: Porridge
Lunch: A salad packed full of veg and mostly always with protein such as chicken, tuna or quinoa
Snack: One of my sweet bites or a piece of fruit.
Dinner: Brown rice risotto, quinoa stir fry.
What’s your favourite dessert? That is simply too hard for me to answer having the sweet tooth that I have.
What’s the best recipe you’ve ever made? Ohhhhh, I have made so many delicious sweet recipes recently that it is too hard to choose. I share these recipes with everyone on my blog so you can keep up to date with my recipes there! If I HAD to say I would probably say the raw frosted chocolate brownies. I love their deep chocolate flavour and gooeyness!
Where do you get the inspiration from to create so many awesome recipes? Other people’s blogs and recipes initially gave me so many ideas of how to bake in a healthier way. The fun that I have experimenting in the kitchen and the creations that come from it inspire me to carry on. A lot of the time it is trial and error, but that is what makes it even better when I get a recipe right!
What are the ingredients you can’t live without? Oats and dates
Where are your favourite places to eat? I love Nama and Ethos.
What do you do to stay active? I spin at Psycle 3 times a week and also try to do a few body combat classes each week too.
What is your beauty routine? I have to say that I don’t really have one! When I am at home or in the kitchen I would very rarely wear make up.
Do you have any favourite natural skin care products or awesome beauty recipes? I am just totally obsessed with coconut oil. I use it as a moisturiser and also an overnight conditioner for my hair.
Where’s your favourite place in the world? New York. I love the buzz.
What makes you happy? Family, friends and food. Oh…. And sun!
Describe your perfect day. I love summer, and would adore to live by the sea. My perfect day would be a typical summer holiday day which would usually consist of a morning work out, and then a long stretched out day with delicious meals and quality time with the people I am with. These days, a perfect day would also involve doing something work related as I love to stay on top of things and always want to feel that I have achieved something for work each day.
Do you have any favourite tips and tricks to stay healthy and happy everyday? I just think it is so important to listen to your body and do what makes you feel your best. What may be right for one person, may not be right for another and so it is in dangerous to compare yourself to others. I also think that everything has to be done in moderation. Often when people try to be healthy, they start quite restricted regimes and diets, and I think that they are often so hard to maintain. If you allow yourself to have some flexibility in what you eat and make what makes you feel good exciting then it is so much easier to keep up.
Journalist Anders Fjellberg told the heartbreaking story of how he identified two Syrian men who had attempted to swim the English Channel. Their bodies washed ashore, wrapped in cheap wetsuits, on beaches in Norway and the Netherlands. This take on the refugee crisis moved the audience at TEDGlobal>London. Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED
In 1831, Michael Faraday stood in a lecture hall and demoed an idea that changed everything: electromagnetic induction. This work paved the way for widespread use of electricity.
On September 29, 2015, in the same lecture hall, attendees gathered for TEDGlobal>London to hear more ideas with the potential to shift reality. Sixteen TED speakers shared insights on the issues that matter most in the world right now: the refugee crisis, poverty and ethical science. Oh and, of course, spam email.
Read recaps of the talks given in Session 1…
Embrace the mess.Keith Jarrett’sKöln Concertis the best-selling piano album of all time. But the day of the concert in 1975, it careened toward disaster. The opera house delivered the wrong piano — the black notes stuck, the white notes were out of tune and it wasn’t big enough to drive the sound needed. Jarrett wanted to cancel. But he didn’t. Instead he played, working with the piano’s constraints. The performance was a revelation.Tim Harford, the “Undercover Economist,” sees a lesson in this. “We need to gain a bit more appreciation for the unexpected advantages of having to cope with a little mess,” he says. Disorder and disruption can propel good creative work, and Harford shares several psych experiments that point to this conclusion. “Disruptions help us become more creative, but we don’t feel like they’re helping us — we feel like they’re getting in the way,” he says. He gives one final musical example — producer Brian Eno and his deck of Oblique Strategies, which include tactics like having musicians switch instruments. “Sometimes all of us need to sit down and try to play an unplayable piano,” he says.
Architecture as an organism.Ole Scheerendoesn’t just design and construct buildings — he tells stories, creating scripts and narratives for the people inside. As he shows five structures he helped design, Scheeren illustrates how architecture can exceed the physical domain of the built environment and focus instead on how people engage with reality. Eschewing traditional architectural conventions, Scheeren asks if buildings — specifically skyscrapers — can be about collaboration instead of isolation and hierarchy. Take theCCTV Headquarters in Beijing, an office building designed in the form of a loop which provides a workspace for the 10,000 employees. OrThe Interlace, a residential space in Singapore patterned as a hexagonal grid with huge outdoor spaces. Scheeren’s projects are a hybrid of the technical and the social, and he is constantly thinking about the characters inhabiting his buildings — where they would meet, what they would experience. “We no longer live in a world that is clearly delineated,” says Scheeren. “We live in a world in which boundaries have started to blur.”
What’s missing from the welfare system?In 1942, The Beveridge Report became a bestseller. No, it wasn’t about coffee or tea. This pamphlet written by Sir William Beveridge outlined the architecture of the first welfare state. Its concepts rippled out into the world, says social entrepreneurHilary Cottam, and it made impersonal bureaucracy the standard for care of the needy. This system works — to a point. But it favors forms and assessments over real conversations and connections. When many care workers visit someone in need, they spend most of their time managing the system rather than really working with the people. “The system is like a costly gyroscope that just spins around families, keeping them stuck exactly where they are,” says Cottam. So, what’s the alternative? Cottam wants us to move toward “relational welfare” — the creation of social meshes that are based on human connection. These systems can be far more effective, and much cheaper, when it comes to big issues like unemployment, cyclical violence and the loneliness experienced by the elderly. “It’s all about relationships,” she says. “Relationships are the critical resource we have.”
Pulling back the curtain on sovereign debt.Haircut, reprofiling, restructuring, refinancing, rollover. These are the terms that make people’s eyes glaze over when trying to understand sovereign debt — the much talked-about but seldom understood public finance phenomenon by which countries finance themselves.Jill Dauchyadvises governments on debt and, in a Q&A with TEDGlobal curator Bruno Giussani, she reveals the patterns of governments that run into debt trouble and the perception that debt negotiations are a murky business. “What’s changing today is the nature of the governments getting intro trouble,” Dauchy says. “It used to be a problem in emerging markets. But today, from the European perspective, it’s getting closer to home.”
Two migrants’ lethal gamble for a better life. Norwegian journalistAnders Fjellbergwas determined to solve the mystery of two dead bodies, clothed in cheap wetsuits, that had washed ashore, one in Norway and one in the Netherlands. Through persistent investigating, he evetually identified them as two Syrian men who’d tried to swim the English Channel in a desperate bid to gain asylum in the United Kingdom. Fjellberg retraced their journey from a ravaged district of Damascus to an overcrowded refugee camp in Calais, dubbed “the worst refugee camp in Europe.” It was here that Fjellberg discovered “the reality of living as a refugee in Europe in 2015,” he says: thousands of migrants contending with hunger, scabies and an interminable wait for passage to the UK. “Go to Calais and talk to the refugees,” he says, “and you will meet lawyers, farmers, engineers — the full spectrum,” he says. Gradually, Fjellberg says, the motivation of these two Syrian men came into focus. While some have said this is a story about death, “I don’t agree,” Fjellberg says. Instead, it throws into relief two life-affirming questions: “What is a better life? And what am I willing to do to achieve it?”
Girl with guitar.Emily Barkerhas recorded lush, studio versions of her songs. But for her new album The Toerag Sessions, she went analog, recording on 2-track tape — peeling it back to just her, her guitar and, sometimes, a harmonica. She treats us to a performance of “Nostalgia,” with the kind of intimate, heartfelt delivery usually found around a campfire.
The importance of the pre-mortems. Many of us have done post-mortems at work. But what about a “pre-mortem?” NeuroscientistDaniel J. Levitinsees pre-mortems as an essential tool because, when we’re in the moment, experiencing stress, our thinking gets cloudy (and we don’t know it because, um, our thinking is cloudy). Instead, plan ahead for stress: “Look ahead and try to figure out all the things that could go wrong and what you can do to prevent all those things,” he says. The idea is to systemize potential pitfalls. One simple example: At home, designate one set place for the things you always lose. “The hippocampus … is an exquisitely evolved mechanism for finding things,” he says. “But not so much for things that move around.” Or, for instance, before going to the doctor’s to get test results, make a list of the questions you need to ask in order to make calm, rational decisions. (If prescribed a drug, for instance, he suggests asking for a piece of data doctors don’t like to talk about, the “number needed to treat.”) “All of us are flawed, all of us will fail,” he says. “The idea is to think ahead of what those failures might be and put systems in place that will help minimize the damage.”
A report card for the world. TheUN’s 17 Global Goals, unveiled this month, are not just an exercise in wishful thinking, saysMichael Green. Think the world can’t end poverty by 2030? Just consider the ambitious goals the UN set in 2001, and know that the world leapt ahead of many of the benchmarks set. “The pessimists and doomsayers who think the world can’t get better are simply wrong,” Green says. But, to reach this next set of global goals, world leaders need to broaden their focus beyond GDP. Three years ago, Green and his team unveiled the Social Progress Index, a set of indicators that measures the world’s progress in civil rights, education and environmental protection, among other issues that slip under the GDP’s radar. This year, Green will roll up the measures into the “People’s Report Card,” to show the world and individual countries how they’re doing. In 2015, the world gets a C-. But world leaders have committed to working toward an A. The intention is to hold leaders accountable on these vital, neglected measures. “Even a flood tide of economic growth is not going to get us there if it lifts the mega-yachts of the super wealthy and leaves the rest behind,” says Green. “Getting to the Global Goals will only happen if we do things differently.”
Hilary Cottam wants to see the welfare state redesigned to take into account human connection. Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED
And now, the talks in session 2:
A massive extension of the Internet. More than 4 billion people worldwide don’t have access to the Internet, and with little energy infrastructure in developing countries to support traditional broadband and wifi, it will be a challenge to get it soon. This phenomenon, known as the digital divide, stands between people and information.Harald Haasuses off-the-shelf LED lights and solar cells to transmit data — a breakthrough that may help close the digital divide without a massive spike in energy consumption. For the first time in public, Haas demoed his technology, showing how light emitted by an LED could make a video play on a computer connected to a solar panel. The video data is encoded in fast, subtle fluctuations in the brightness emitted by the LED. The solar panel detects those changes as it harvests the light, the computer decodes those changes, and the video plays. Using this technology, any existing solar panel — on objects, houses and more — can be adapted to receive broadband signals.
The invisible power of radio waves. “You’re bathing in a sea of electromagnetic waves,” says engineer and scientistDanielle George, who taps the invisible energy of radio waves to send huge volumes of information through the air. These wireless transmissions promise to unleash a tsunami of data from unlikely places. Sensors beneath the soil of a farm can transmit vital information about moisture and nutrients. Sensors in a jet engine could transmit a live feed of information to maintenance crews. And it only gets bigger from there. George introduces us to theSquare Kilometre Array, which is 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. “We’ve broadcast radio signals into deep space for century and it’s allowed us to realize how much of the universe is beyond what we think we know,” says George. “It will expand our knowledge of the overall universe.”
Why CRISPR demands caution.Jennifer Doudnaand her colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier invented CRISPR-Cas9, a technology that lets scientists delete or insert specific bits of DNA in cells. It allows the human genome to be “edited.” Easily. “Genome engineering has been in development since the 1970s, but the techniques were either inefficient or difficult enough to use that most scientists have not adopted them,” says Doudna. “This is a technology that’s analogous to the way we use a word processing program to fix a typo in a document.” CRISPR-Cas9 finds sequence matches and functions like a pair of scissors to make cuts. It has incredible potential to help scientists cure diseases. “But we have to consider that CRISPR could be used for enhancement — we could make a person with stronger bones or less susceptibility to cardiovascular disease,” says Doudna. And with this comes the potential for “designer humans.” Doudna and Charpentier want to slow down. They’ve called for a global pause in research until the social and ethical implications can be thought through. “This is no longer science fiction … This needs careful consideration and discussion,” says Doudna. “It may not be possible to come up with a consensus view, but we need to understand all the potential issues.”
Intrigued by spam.James Veitchresponds to the spam emails you most likely delete. A few years ago, he responded to an email from a man named Solomon Odonkuh, who’d offered to cut him in on a deal involving a large quantity of gold. Email by email, Veitch narrated his months-long exchange with Solomon, which included discussions of what they would do with their newfound wealth, a dubious set of code words and, of course, a request for Veitch to send him some money.
How to be a global reader. WriterAnn Morgan considered herself well read — until she realized the “massive cultural blindspot” in her bookshelf. Amid legions of English and American authors, there were very few (translated) works from authors beyond the English-speaking world. To see what she was missing, Morgan committed to finding and reading one book from each of the world’s 196 countries. From an orgy in a tree in Angola to the confessions of Kuwait’s Bridget Jones, her literary odyssey offered glimpses of worlds almost entirely unknown to English speakers. But the most amazing part was how people around the world jumped to help her find books — they even offered to translate untranslated works into English. “Little by little, that long list of countries that I’d started the year with morphed from a rather dry, academic register of place names into living, breathing entities,” says Morgan. She urges other Anglophones to read translated works for themselves, so that publishers might take notice and bring the world’s literary gems back to their shores.
Turning mass surveillance into art.The revelation that the NSA and GCHQ had mounted antennas to the roofs of the American and British embassies to spy on the German governmental district in Berlin — including German Chancellor Angela Merkel — enraged the international community. In the outrage, artists Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud saw opportunity. “If people are spying on us,” Jud says, “it stands to reason that they have to listen to what we are saying.” Wachter and Jud started the “Canyou hear me?” project, mounting antennas on the roofs of the Swiss Embassy and the Academy of the Arts in Berlin that established an open network that allowed people to send anonymous text messages, emails and voice chats to those listening on the intercepted frequencies. More than 15,000 messages showed the growing discontent with surveillance, and looked forward to a future in which citizens will not be constantly monitored by their governments. “We should start making our own connections, fighting for the idea of an equal and globally connected world,” Jud urges. “This is essential to overcome our speechlessness and the separation provoked by rival political forces.”
In a cave, clues to the world’s evolution.Francesco Sauroexplores “alien worlds” on Earth — he studies life in yet-undiscovered caves. Caves tend to form in areas where water dissolves soluble rock. But that’s not the case in thetepuis— the tall, flat mountains that lord over the Brazilian and Venezuelan rainforest. The tepuis are made of quartz, one of the hardest rocks — and yet, cave formations snake through its mountains. Sauro takes us inside one of them, called Imawarì Yeuta, or “House of the Gods” in the indigenous language. Imawarì Yeuta is “a labyrinth of passages” that offers “snapshots of the past.” Its mineral formations are almost unimaginably strange — stalagmites of opal, “mushrooms” of silica, “monster eggs” of an unidentified substance. Life inside these caves has been isolated from the rest of the world for, probably, eons. “Everything you can find there, even a cricket, has evolved in the dark in isolation,” he says. Some could provide clues to the origins of life.
How two kids made big change.Plastic bags are essentially indestructible, but they’re used and thrown away with reckless abandon. Even in the small island nation of Bali, whose population is just north of 4 million, 680 cubic meters of plastic garbage are produced each day. Most end up in the ocean, where they pollute the water and harm marine life, or burned in garbage piles, where they release harmful dioxins into the atmosphere. Two sisters — Melati and Isabel Wijsen, 14 and 12 years old respectively — are on a mission to stop plastic bags from suffocating their beautiful island home. The young activists startedBye Bye Plastic Bags. Their efforts — a petition, beach cleanups, even a hunger strike — paid off when they landed a meeting with Bali governorI Made Mangku Pastika. He recently committed to a plastic-bag-free Bali by 2018. The sisters provide an inspiring example. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re too young or you won’t understand,” Isabel says, “We’re not telling you it’s going to be easy, we’re telling you it’s going to be worth it.”
from TED Blog http://blog.ted.com/16-speakers-share-ideas-at-tedgloballondon/
via Sol Danmeri
There are so many ways to announce with photos. From the classic ultrasound photo (though some people 
