Serotonin, Flat-Butt Syndrome, Protein & Strength, Stress & Anxiety, Orthopedic Pain, Alzheimer's, and Much, Much More

Happy Monday. Yes, it’s Monday and you’re getting a Nikkola Newsletter! “How can this be,” you might be thinking.

I’m just experimenting with the idea of sending this out a couple of times per week instead of just once. That way, I can share more news about health and fitness, while sprinkling in some of the cool and crazy stuff going on in other parts of our world.

If this brightens your Monday, I’m glad about that. Maybe you could brighten someone else’s Monday by sharing the newsletter with him or her.

📖 Deep Dive Article

Serotonin: Effects on Health and How to Raise Your Levels

As I was re-recording some audio articles the other day, I realized how often I mention serotonin. Yet, I’ve never written about it, and I can only assume that many readers don’t really know what it is.

I’ll briefly explain what it is, how it affects your health, and give you three things you can do today to naturally improve your serotonin levels.

Read (or listen to): Serotonin: Effects on Health and How to Raise Your Levels.

🏋️‍♀️ Fitness

Squats vs. hip thrusts to avoid flat-butt syndrome: Building a bigger, stronger butt isn’t just for aesthetics. It protects your back and significantly improves overall strength and performance. This has led people into doing lot of hip thrusts, but it turns out that squats work just as well for building your butt muscle, while also helping to build leg muscle at the same time. Thrust if you like it, but don’t neglect your squats.

High-protein and strength training: Forty ex-military and untrained men followed a strength training program and either ate the recommended daily intake of 0.8 grams per kilogram of protein or double that for eight weeks. Not surprisingly, the guys who ate the ridiculously low recommended intake of protein built less muscle and developed less strength than the guys who ate more protein.

🌲 Essential Oils

Stress and Anxiety: Reviewing available research studies, researchers found that in 70% of 76 studies, essential oils reduced stress and anxiety.

Orthopedic pain: A random controlled trial looked at the effect of bitter orange (Citrus aurantium) on pain after orthopedic surgery. Inhalation of the essential oil reduced mild and severe pain in the patients.

SARS-CoV-2: Researchers looked at the impact of COVID-19 on the interest in studying essential oils for their impact on combating viral infections. The authors concluded, “there is growing evidence on essential oils efficacy as anti-SARS-CoV-2 agent.”

Entourage effect: Scientists examined the influence of separate substances in Cinnamomum cassia and Eucalyptus globulus on bacteria. They also investigated the overall impact of the essential oil and discovered that it had a greater effect than the combined effect of its individual components. This highlights the importance of the "entourage effect" in essential oils, which makes them more powerful than isolated compounds.

Alzheimer's Disease: A research review analyzed the impact of essential oils on Alzheimer’s disease, showing essential oils improve cognitive function, reduce restlessness, and improve sleep quality. Exactly how they work gets pretty complicated, but if you like getting into the details, this graphic from the research paper might help.

💊 Nutritional Supplements

Fish oil protected people from COVID-19. During the “pandemic,” those taking fish oil regularly were less likely to get infected, and if they did get infected, were less likely to get severely ill.

🥩 Nutrition

A high-carb diet leads to cardiovascular disease. You know that high-carb, low-fat diet the U.S. government has promoted since 1977 to lower heart disease risk? Research shows that high-carb diets raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. Eat fewer bagels and eat more bison.

Prime energy drinks over-caffeinated? Prime energy drinks are under fire for their higher levels of caffeine. Can you consume too much caffeine? Sure. But it seems odd that politicians in Washington are up in arms about these energy drinks and stone-cold silent about human sex trafficking.

General Mills announced that it’s doubling the vitamin D in its cereals. They’re now going to include 4 mcg of vitamin D, or about 160 IU, which is a teeny-tiny amount compared to the 2000 IU most people need. No doubt, this misleading announcement will drive up sales as people think it’s a lot better for them and their kids now.

Yogurt dough, lower-carb, high-protein pizza coming to a store near you. Yough! frozen pizza, made with a Greek yogurt-based pizza crust is coming to grocery stores soon. It’ll be competing with other popular gluten-free pizza options, like Kirkland’s and Banza’s gluten-free pizzas. I’m looking forward to trying it!

🩺 Health

Kidney stones in kids? Apparently kidney stones are on the rise in kids as of late. As usual, my first thought is, “Could it be connected to the vaccine?” The current, publicly held belief is that it could be due to diets high in processed foods, antibiotic overuse, or the global warming 😆.

Did Moderna neglect to inform the public about the risk of their vaccine? It would appear so, based on 15,000 pages of documents the FDA finally made publicly available. I can’t say I’m surprised. I expressed my doubts about the the vax back in December of 2020, with this article.

🌎 Other News

Misgendering someone = crime! According to a recent poll, 44% of millennials think it should be a criminal offense to misgender someone. Take a moment to let that sink in. I’ll just refer to Genesis 1:27 (NIV), “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Even more bonkers, a biological male is suing a New York yoga studio for a whopping $5 million. What’s the issue? They didn’t allow him to use the women’s locker room. I could see the result of this lawsuit could affect fitness clubs nationwide.