"Urban Jungle" playground reduces accidents at elementary school

An "Urban Jungle" natural play area trialled at a Glasgow school has seen a reduction in accidents, it has been claimed.

Trees, hills, boulders and tunnels were installed in the playground of Merrylee Primary in 2009.
The £65,000 scheme was funded by Glasgow City Council and Forestry Commission Scotland.
A report suggested a marked decrease in pupil segregation and an increase in physical activity.

Over a two week period in 2009 there were 76 accidents, one incident of bullying and 53 other incidents, which include pushing, hitting and slipping.

A follow-up study in 2011 recorded six accidents and two cases of bullying. Both cases of bullying occurred when the natural play space was closed.

Simon Sinek: how leaders inspire

 Watch this TED talk every few months and ask yourself how you can use it to be a better leader.

expertise vs. accountability Part II

A slightly more succinct way of saying I meant to say in my earlier post:

When your engine is on fire, and you're out of gas, and your windshield is broken, you need to:

• put the fire out
• fill up the gas tank
• replace the windshield

in that order.

You don't need to know why method ABC of replacing the windshield is superior to method XYZ at that moment.

Adherence trumps programming most of the time. Poor people typically make less-than-optimal financial decisions, say, on payday when they spend it on beer (rather than saving up so that food doesn't run out at the end of the month). You can TELL people how to manage their money better, but if you can't get them to actually do it, you're useless to them.

Adherence trumps programming. It doesn't matter whether I tell my client to do conventional deadlifts or sumo deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts. It matters more that my client freaking show up twice a week, every week, for the next 12 weeks.

It doesn't matter (as much) if my client optimizes her vitamin K2 intake or her serum vitamin D levels. It matters whether she avoids processed junk, 90% of the time, for the rest of her life.

expertise vs. accountability

I've been at my internship at IFAST for just over six weeks. The amount that I've learned is a bit overwhelming, and I think it's a great stepping stone on the path to becoming a world-class coach.

As I pause to reflect on my time here, though, I can't help but think that expertise is not the most important thing. The guys at the gym are among the most knowledgeable in the field, but that hasn't made them millionaires in the industry. Why not? Part of the problem is that they know TOO much. When you need to get an oil change, you don't need to hire a Ferrari engineer at $500/hr. All you need is some guy who can do the oil change for $24.95.

The truth is that I know more than I will ever need to know -- to help most people change their lives for the better. Do I know enough to train Olympic-level athletes? No, and I probably never will. Do I know enough to treat acute dysfunctions and orthopedic issues? No -- I'd need to invest about 3-5 years in PT school for that.

But I do know enough to help people lose fat, gain muscle, get some relief from chronic pain, feel better about themselves, and live better lives. It's not that hard. All you have to do is eat real food, avoid processed crap, do some mobility work, do a little lifting, do a little conditioning, find/build a great community. The hard part is not so much figuring out what people need to do, but rather, getting people to make behavioral changes that stick.

I think the real future for me lies in efficient and intelligent lifestyle coaching. Step-by-step, or even better, day-by-day procedure manuals for people to follow.

For example: 

Day 1. Throw out all the vegetable oils in your pantry and go buy some butter and coconut oil.
Day 2. Walk around the block. Twice, if you can.

What vegetarians and vegans have going for them

From Jonah Lehrer:

Basically, viral videos tap into emotions, not facts.

It’s one of the most popular online videos ever produced, having been viewed 355 million times on YouTube. At first glance, it’s hard to understand why the clip is so famous, since nothing much happens. Two little boys, Charlie and Harry, are sitting in a chair when Charlie, the younger brother, mischievously bites Harry’s finger. There’s a shriek and then a laugh. The clip is called “Charlie Bit My Finger—Again!”

Why has this footage gone viral? The answer, according to a new study by Jonah Berger, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has to do with the visceral emotions it arouses in viewers.
Here’s the thing about Harry and Charlie—they are incredibly expressive kids. In the span of 56 seconds, we see their faces go from anticipation to agony to laughter. Just when we’re worried that Harry might actually be hurt, he breaks out in a wide smile. The relief is palpable, the delight infectious. (Harry’s adorable British accent doesn’t hurt, either.)

Mr. Berger argues that the popularity of such videos is rooted in the way they excite the body, inducing a spectrum of physiological changes. When we watch Harry and Charlie, we briefly enter into a state of “high arousal,” as the autonomic nervous system mirrors the flurry of feelings on-screen. Our heart rate increases and sweat glands open; the body prepares for action. These are the same physical changes that occur when we encounter any strongly emotional content, from a scary movie to a sappy love poem.

In his study, Mr. Berger demonstrates that such states of arousal make people far more likely to share information. For instance, when he had subjects jog in place for 60 seconds—Mr. Berger wanted to trigger the symptoms of arousal directly—the number of people who emailed a news article to their friends more than doubled. He also boosted levels of “social transmission” by showing his subjects frightening and funny videos first. “Levels of arousal spill over,” Mr. Berger says. “When people are aroused, they are much more likely to pass on information.”

This builds on previous work by Mr. Berger in which he analyzed 7,500 articles that appeared on the most-emailed list of the New York Times between August 2008 and February 2009. While Mr. Berger initially assumed that people would share articles with practical implications—he imagined lots of pieces on diets and gadgets—he discovered instead that the most popular stories were those that triggered the most arousing emotions, such as awe and anger. We don’t want to share facts—we want to share feelings.

This is what vegetarians and vegans have going for them. Emotions are very handy when you want to convert people to the cause.

The Paleo people think they have the facts on their side. But the most effective Paleo marketers tend to play on people's emotions, not on facts and information. Sometimes this comes at the expense of accuracy ("humans haven't evolved much in 10,000 years, and that's why the Paleo diet is best") or rigorous thinking.

I'd love to have both: facts and emotions. But it's important to know when to use one and then the other.

What I despise about the vegetarians and vegans is that they have the emotions down pat ("I don't feel good about killing an animal just so I can enjoy bacon") but they don't have the info ("Red meat causes cancer and it's so much more efficient to feed grains to animals than it is to humans").

How your gut bacteria keep you healthy (or sick)

This is entirely fascinating, from the always excellent Emily Deans. 

Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species are known to produce GABA.  Escherichia, Bacillus, and Saccharomyces produce norepinephrine.  Candida, Streptococcus, Escherichia, and Enterococcus produce  serotonin.  Bacillus and Serratia produce dopamine, and Lactobacillus species produce acetylcholine.  That's pretty much the entire hit parade of major neurotransmitters (there's histamine and glutamate and a few others - and histamine is known to be produced by some bacteria that infect shellfish, for example, causing food poisoning).   

What's clear is that gut bacteria affect our brain and vice versa. It's also clear that there are millions of other species of bacteria whose functions are entirely unknown to us. That's a scary thought.

Whenever someone talked about depression or other mental health issues as the result of "chemical imbalances" it used to make me cringe, since that sounds so appealingly pseudoscientific. But it's actually true.

Depression is largely unheard of in "primitive" cultures, and diet (as it affects gut bacteria) is one major pathway by which depression is modulated. Of course, having a great community, lots of sunshine exposure, etc. etc. etc. all helps, too.

One minute to a better you!!1!!111

From another column by the Heath brothers:

In One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Dr. Robert Maurer of UCLA's School of Medicine writes about his patient Julie, a divorced mother of two, who was 30 pounds overweight, depressed, and fatigued. He knew that the solution to her problems was exercise. He also knew that talking about thrice-weekly aerobics was likely to get him slapped. So he gave her a challenge: "How about if you just march in place in front of the television, each day, for one minute?"

That was the kick start she needed. One minute of low-intensity exercise did nothing to improve her health but everything to improve her attitude. When she came back for her next visit, she asked, "What else can I do with a minute a day?" Within a few months, as Dr. Maurer slowly stepped up Julie's challenges, her resistance to a serious exercise program disappeared.

The value of small, definable, too-easily-reached (?) goals.

Of course, I find it objectionable to say that the solution to her problems was exercise, much less aerobics classes... but let that go.