Playbook: Health & Wellness

This playbook was made by Kevin Liu, TKS Alumni.

Table of Contents

I've been observing anecdotally an increased prevalence of health challenges, mental health struggles, chronic issues, anything with reference to health.

While I love that we're talking about it more and I'm highly supportive of sharing <3, it's not obvious to me whether the heightened prevalence/occurrence of health issues is because we're more open or because it's actually increased overtime or some mixture of both.

Seeing this, I thought it'd be a perfect time to share a personal playbook and operating manual that I use to maximize my quality of life and more specifically health. I built this for myself after experiencing months long of chronic pain and going back to these fundamentals played a key part in my recovery. My days are built around these instructions to a T and life is just so much better.

Do the basic shit (even if it's hard).

I don't mean to be prescriptive but I'm mean to be prescriptive. The body and mountain of medical scientific and anecdotal evidence behind this is clear.

Sleeping, eating, exercising, managing stress and building a life without need for escape is so crucial. Doing these fundamental things drastically improved my personal condition. I predict it will for you too.

💡
Disclaimer: This is not a substitute for "professional medical advice." While as a collective we might share commonalities, every single person's situation is different and deserves the personalized care and attention that a medical team can provide. If you are experiencing an urgent crisis, physical or mental health, please visit your nearest emergency room and get the help you need.

1️⃣ Sleep.

Only 1 in several thousand (or at best 1 in ~200) people have this rare genetic defect that allows them to sleep under ~6hr/week.

For naturally short sleepers: there’s a specific rare mutation in the DEC2 gene and/or (a single letter) in the ABRB1 gene… that lets people literally feel naturally rested on short ~4-6 hours sleep. Anything more, and they feel tired.

Fu and her colleagues at UCSF estimates that less than 3% population have this gene (healthy sleeping less).

Everyone else who is sleeping < 8 hours and saying “oh i’m fineeee” is complete cappin + racking dangerous sleep debt. They can basically guarantee bad health outcomes. Don't be that.

Implication: Most people NEED good sleep (7-8hr/night) at least. Multiple studies validate this. The mountain of evidence is extremely clear.

Being awake for 17 hours is almost equivalent ot a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05% (drunk driving threshold in many countries). Being awake for 24 hours is equivalent to 0.10%, which **above the U.S. drunk driving level.

Sleep deficiency is linked to many chronic health problems: heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, obesity, headaches, migraines and depression. It's also linked to higher chance of injury across all ages.

Even if you don't care about your wellness (others that love you do), skipping sleep as disastorous effects on your concentration, memory, reaction times.

If you are pulling all-nighters... STOP. You are literally hurting yourself. You deserve better. You've got so much potential and your body deserves to be treated like a temple. It's not worth it.

ACTIONS: ✅ Get up at the same time. This helps your body know what to expect. Ground your circadian rhythm. ✅ Optimize for 7-8 hours. -> (How? If you've "got too much shit to do," eliminate what doesn't matter. Prioritize. You can be busy and get nothing done.) ✅ No screens at least 30 minutes before bed. ✅ Shower. It does wonders for you. If you aren't big on meditation, and don't do a lot of breathing, at the very least shower. When's the last time you've had a bad shower? ✅ Your bed is ONLY for sleeping. No screens. No laptops. Your brain needs to make the connection & association with this piece of equipment being used purely for rejuvenation and rest. ✅ If you're having some insomnia, figure out why. Here are some possibilities and things you can do.

  • Scenario #0: Medical conditions or medications are making it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep.
    • Talk to your doctor. Or do some personal research (and take your findings with a grain of salt).
  • Scenario #1: You're in "overthinking, regret, beat yourself up mode." #unoptimal
    • "What if I said this stupid thing to this person? Oh I'm so sucky because I did all of these things wrong."
    • FYI: Based on my observations (reflections on self and 20+ others I've talked to anecdotally), this negative form of self criticism is quite damaging and doesn't actually fix your problem. It makes everything about "me bad, cry boo hoo, I hate self blah blah" instead of "ok, {kev} you did this thing. maybe unoptimal. here's what you can do different, and here's how to improve for next time and an exact opportunity at a specific time in the future/scenario where you can implement to grow." That's much more productive, generous and respectful to yourself and your soul v. "me am shit." How you treat yourself and talk to yourself is so important.
  • Scenario #2: You've got something you didn't finish. You're now stressed about shit that over a long enough time horizon doesn't necessarily matter, but it's bugging you because you'll have some immediate consequence. #unoptimal
    • If it's a 30 minute activity, go do the thing. If it's longer and it's due in the near future, either you were a poor time allocator, have too much shit going on v. # of hours you have, or had something unpredictable that threw you off. Go build a plan to give yourself an extension, communicate with the person you made a commitment to, etc etc. Figure out what you need to do.
  • Scenario #3: Too much screen time before bed. #unoptimal
    • Don't do the same thing tomorrow.
  • Scenario #4: Noise, too hot / cold, uncomfortable.
    • Optimize your environment and/or your response. If you can't do the former, at least do the latter.
    • Get ear plugs from your nearest drug store. Research the best kind. I don't necessarily recommend earbuds or headphones since they might create a greater disposition to bruxism. #unoptimal
  • Scenario #5: Caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, external lifestyle disruptions to sleep schedules knocking your normal rhythms off balance.
    • No caffeine ~8-10 hours before bedtime. Unless you're magically immune, this can disrupt your sleep cycles.
    • "people may find alcohol helps them get to sleep initially, but this is outweighed by the negative effect on sleep quality through the night." -> I wouldn't know but that's what the experts say!
    • ["Primarily symptoms of insomnia, such as increased sleep latency, sleep fragmentation and decreased slow wave sleep with reduced sleep efficiency and increased daytime sleepiness, were observed during nicotine consumption. Furthermore, most studies indicated a nicotine induced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep suppression."](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19345124/#:~:text=Primarily symptoms of insomnia%2C such,movement (REM) sleep suppression.)
    • Travelling / jet lag, shift work or bad sleep schedules can go against your nature sleep-wake cycles, creating insomnia. #unoptimal

Personal reflection from Kev: Someone recently asked me if I have regrets, and while I have few, one of my biggest ones is not sleeping as much as I should've. I personally believe with some amount of certainty that it caused a good amount of my chronic pain symptoms and lead to a bunch of negative downsides.

It's been a long time since I've slept less than 8 hours and my life has been exponentially better as a result.

2️⃣ Eat well.

ACTIONS: ✅ For eating well / diet: Go look at the existing Diet and Health playbook. Not going to duplicate what aren't make sense. It's excellent.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Trashy food = inflammation guaranteed. Inflammation is known to cause nasty implications if not managed adequately:

Eat your 3 meals a day. Load up on the right micro & macros.

Exception: If you are intentionally intermittent fasting (don't use it as an excuse), run an experiment and track in precise detail on how you feel on this new practice v. normal eating cycles.

  • In my personal experience: my hypothesis -> intermittent fasting increased the probability that I'd get migraines and not function well, even if I gained that marginal amount of productivity from an unfed state. For others, it works great. Your millage might vary. Try it for yourself for a bit and stop if it's not good for you.

Track your micro and macro nutrient content. If that's too much effort right now compared to your health state, just do a rough estimation. Eat more nutritious food and supplement your gaps. 92% of the world has some form of a micronutrient deficiency which can lead to unoptimal outcomes: increased fatigue, increased risk of infections, weakened immune system, joint and muscle pain, muscle weakness + cramps, nausea & vomiting, osteoporosis and any number of adverse effects. Bad.

Of course, for some of the deficiencies you need to be below a certain threshold for you to be experiencing these effects in a visible or significant fashion, but getting a blood test would be quite optimal to figure out where you're at.

Supplementing vitamin D, magnesium, omega 3 is quite optimal. (Go do a blood test to see if you need this first and evaluate your deficiency levels.)

3️⃣ Exercise.

Spend at least ~30mins a day on movement.

Exercise has been shown to decrease inflammation, reduce chronic pain, improve your brain health, help manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, strengthen bones and muscles, and improve your ability to do everyday activities." Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits.

It's also really fricking good for your mind. Not only is it good for your mood, helps you sleep better, reduces your stress, improves cognitive function & memory, it also has a serious effect on depression and ADHD.

Best part? It's f r e e.

ACTIONS: ✅ Start with a walk. Graduate to other forms of exercise that you enjoy. Do what makes sense. ✅ Do this with a bud and work out with others. Some of y'all might enjoy this, some of you might not. Do what feels right for you.

4️⃣ Be mindful of stress, control your environment (and/or) improve the lens you use to see the world.

Stress is usually an indicator and signal that you perceive a threat or demand or some internal/external (negative) consequence, which manifests itself into "fight or flight." It generally means you're worried about something.

Minute amounts of stress for short periods of time can be optimal for you when managed, for example improving cognitive function (strengthening the connections between neurons in your brain, memory & attention span = productivity UC Berkeley), stimulates the production of a chemical called interleukins which quickly boosts the immune system, while gives you evidence that you can do difficult things when they land your desk.

On the other hand, too much of anything is never the answer. That's when it turns sour. Chronic stress, over a long enough time-horizon has serious health effects (physical and mental):

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Digestive problems
  • Headaches
  • Muscle tension and pain
  • Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke
  • Sleep problems
  • Weight gain
  • Memory and concentration impairment

Typically this tends to be when you (haven't) done something therefore it's going to create some adverse negative consequence.

When you've got stress, from a long term perspective, either you can pull the lever of:

  1. Control your environment.
    1. Pick where you spend your time. If some place is not right for you, find a better bubble that aligns more closely with what you're optimizing to do.
  2. Control your (re)actions and be more proactive moving forward.
    1. This is the one that I tend to like for me, since I can directly control 100% of what I do.
    2. Controversial take: Over a long enough time horizon, what you're stressing about today likely won't matter on your death bed. Memento mori helps contextualize and put things into perspective. Choosing to not get stressed to the same event will allow you to walk through life with so much more levity, enjoyment and grace. When you're 85 years old, you won't give a shit about that bad grade or how someone else is gossiping behind your back or how you didn't get this thing that you really wanted. You'll be grateful to be able to breathe, walk, live, and wish you could jump back into your 18-45 year old body that can pretty much do anything the mind wants. Today you is making future you sad if you're chosing to be incredibly upset over things that don't matter. The average person lives better than the kings and queens of yesteryear.
    3. Take action. That's the best thing you can do. If you want to improve your situation, this is the most optimal.

Dr. John Sarno also has anecdotally seen time and time again how the mind is inextricably linked to the body and unconscious supressed psychological feelings (i.e. stress, anger etc.) can manifest itself into physical conditions. Being highly conscious and mindful of your psychological state is so important.

ACTIONS: ✅ Sleep, eat, exercise and you'll tolerate stress much better. ✅ Stress less. Extend the time horizon that you think with. "Will 85 year old me care (if they are still alive) about what I'm stressin' about?" ✅ Do what's physically possible within your control and influence to improve your outcomes.

5️⃣ Build + create a life that you're not running away from. Activate self-agency and self-awareness.

Unintentionally living a life where you drink, do drugs, party, game, watch TV and indulge in hedonistic pleasures to escape your regular reality tends to be a great signal that something's unoptimal. It's slightly better if your life is fantastically great and you're making a 100% active conscious decision to do the things you're doing... but even then there are likely other options that you can spend your time on to get better results and activate your potential based on what you're optimizing for.

Escapism indicates that you currently have either a prolonged default stage of unoptimal-ness (long-term habits) AND/OR you're avoiding specific normalities (procrastination).

If life sucks right now because for example... you've got:

  • "friends" who pull you down...
  • "work" that doesn't feel like play...
  • "grades" that are pushing you to the brink of
  • "situationships" that are draining your energy...
  • "ex" that broke up with you because they have this incorrect belief that you're "lame" and that you'll "never get better" or just bad judgement call...
  • someone's trying to hunt you down and kill you...
  • tons of self-guilt and shame that's brewing inside you...
  • been exiled from all of the social circles and you've lost...
  • or any number of specific situations... ... be aware and activate more self agency. Take matters into your own hands and start doing things to change the outcomes.
  1. 🧠 Identify what's going on in your world that's unoptimal. Reflect on what bothers you. Discern which elements you can do something about, and which ones you can't. What is currently in your span of control and/or influence and how can you expand that circle so you can increase the percentage of your life that's optimal? Create a list of the actions that make sense to take. Schedule and sequence them. You don't NEED to do all of them at once. Pick what makes sense for you, based on urgency and importance. Which is causing the most problems?
    1. Options and examples of what you can do:
      1. If you can't change your situation or have chosen not to change it b/c you did the mental math and thought the benefits outweigh the costs of retaining the status quo (your math might be wrong by the way), then figure out how to enjoy it more. Accept that this is your reality, but maximize the fun you can extract. Gamify the process.
        1. If it's school or work: do it with other people who are equivalent or superior who you believe you'll have better results in less time or have more enjoyment with.
  2. 🐺 Make changes. Evaluate results. Document learnings. Iterate for next time.
    1. The faster your iteration cycles, the faster your feedback loops and the faster you'll see results.

6️⃣ Do what excites. Do what makes sense for you. Make your own decisions. If you haven't figured out what that looks like for you + move towards that direction.

If you don't know where you're going, any path will take you there.

If you don't have any idea what you'd like to do, decide whether or not you want to expend effort into figuring this out.

  • Then gain more datapoints, context, perspective and information to make a better decision.
  • Formulate a hypothesis based on your current set of information. Then go on a fact finding mission. Analyze the best of the best. See what they do. Build up how they spend their time. List these potential options of how you'd like to spend your life, observe what are the typical options, what's good about them, what's bad about them. Compare to what your criteria is and your personal definition of what "success" and "you made it in life" looks like.
  • Narrow down whichever option would align based on the fundamental paradigms of human existence.

Passion is not found on the sidewalk where you pick it up like a penny. You gotta try shit, in rapid succession, see what aligns and makes sense.

7️⃣ Build stronger connections with friends and homies.

Strong relationships and good connections are one of the biggest predictors of happiness. Once again, tons of anecdotal and scientific evidence of why this is true. It also makes sense, imagine cavepeople days and you were alone. You'd get eaten by predators, do something accidentally stupid and then die. From a survival perspective, it makes sense why we're wired + our systems are set up to reward us with the dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin transmitters when we connect with others, which undeniably feels good, produces happiness and generates well-being.

RE: Kev's controversial takes on romantic relationships #opinion

I view them as highly unoptimal distractions unless you've determined exactly what you want, how they'll fit in your life and you're really intentional about why you're looking to build them. Not to mention the time investment it requires, the emotional maturity & stability, and how healthy you need to individually be before you can build a genuine meaningful and productively explosive partnership. I respect you all the same if you chose to engage in relationships and I'll root for them to work for you. I'm just saying I haven't seen evidence showing that I can't get the same fundamental value from a platonic friendship built on a set of shared values, missions and grounded purpose. Maybe sometime in the future, I'll bite my proverbial tongue at how stupid baby Kev was, but I currently don't see any other evidence supporting the contrary view.

👩‍⚕️ If you've got a health problem (particularly if it's chronic), find your root cause.

Score yourself on a 1-10 scale on how well you're doing basic shit.

My hypothesis is that a majority of your health problems & symptoms might have some relationship to these 5 basics.

If you're doing all of these things extremely well and you're ranking yourself on a 10 scale (and others would vouch for you), go see a doctor. Get them to run tests.

These fundamentals are so important and it's close to my heart since I have direct context on how much life can suck if you don't take care of yourself and do these fundamental 5 basics well. I personally build every single day around these fundamental principles. Life is so much better.

🤙 My health story: Why I wish I followed this playbook before.

Between February 2022 - September 2022, I had a debilitating chronic pain and health condition that destroyed my life, shattered my reality and made me utterly useless... all while creating room for deep and dark depression, uncertainty and fear on the future. On a pain scale of how bad it was, I'd rank this beyond 10, worse than the pain I felt waking up from both surgeries I had as a child. Before this, I almost never took any medications (even after surgery) and if I did, pain or Kevin getting sick needed to be really bad, otherwise I'd refuse. I had too much "pride" and didn't want to depend on pills lol, I still do. With this condition, Advil & Tylenol Extra Strength (together) did absolutely NOTHING.

The what: During these ~8 months, I had severe migraines, jaw pain, stabbing ear pain, eye pain, sensitivities to light and sound (occasionally smell), clicking and popping around the jaw & ears, sinus issues and extreme fatigue. At the time I didn't really know exactly what was causing it... to be completely honest with you. It sucked. Doctors didn't know what was going on either.

After 10+ specialist consults, 3 MRI's, many ultrasounds and x-rays, tons of blood work and a shit ton (100s of hrs) of personal research... here's the probable diagnoses and causes...

  • Bruxism during sleep & teeth grinding. Unconscious. (hypothesis by family doc)
    • Mild osteoarthritis, anteriorly displace disc in the right temporomandibular joint. (confirmed by doctors + MRI)
  • Potential long COVID effects and inflammation. (no way to confirm, but hypothesis by family doc)

Hypothesized causes: 30% by docs, 70% by me.

  • "Up to 75% of TMJ/TMD syndrome patients have a psychosomatic component: life stresses, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, anger, obsessive personality, and pessimism may predispose these patients to grind their teeth... Bruxism is... most likely a response to (something else)." (Dreiman, 2011)
    • Periods of intense stress and significant life factors simultaneously. (Some in my control, in form of action or perception. Some factors out of my control.)
    • Psychosomatic response: Kevin was such a bully to himself in the past. He was so unkind and judged himself so harshly and with such cruelty. Kev also used to let himself get stepped on and taken advantage of. Kev treated his body unfavourably. Potentially at some point, by unconscious/subconscious just decided to create expressions of suppressed emotions that manifested itself into painful physical symptoms out of nowhere.
  • Not sleeping well. Not eating well. Not exercising as much as would be optimal. Stressing about things that don’t matter.
    • At some points leading up to this painful condition, I was heavily practicing intermittent fasting and while I felt myself more productive, I feel it increased my symptoms. For some intermittent fasting works great, it didn't work for me.
  • Post COVID inflammation.
  • Activity related: years of violin playing with occasionally bad posture might have intensified jaw issue. getting whacked on the journey to a taekwondo black belt might be a cause.

A good amount of this list was built off my own research, self reflection and internal sensing. To this day, I still have lingering and residual side effects that I am managing with preventative care. But I am orders of magnitude better, roughly 95% better. 5% just remains and decreases every day.

‼️ Pro-tips: What to do if you've got a chronic condition and it feels like nobody knows what's going on / cares.

Canadian "free" healthcare is wonderful for urgent "you have a heart attack, you got cancer, you're getting surgery for an urgent condition, the answer is super clear." For other "non-urgent" more "chronic conditions," it's much more difficult to get the care you need. Wait times can be astronomical. The doctors might not know what's going on.

Particularly if you have a chronic condition that isn't exactly visible on an imaging test like a cancerous tumour, regardless where you live in the world (but particularly in Canada), you need to take extreme ownership over your own healthcare and advocate for yourself.

  • If you need to call your family doctor's receptionist 15 times to get an appointment, do it. My family physician cares a bunch, he's just overworked to the bone, sometimes calling me at 11p at night. -> this would be a great problem to solve by the way.
  • If you need to go to the ER 5 times, do it. If you have high conviction that you need an imaging test, you're in a shit ton of pain... but doctors aren't listening / wait times are astronomical b/c "there's more urgent cases", pester them (nicely + with respect) as many times as necessary & bring the evidence of why this is important.
  • If you need to call 50 physiotherapy clinics to get yourself in, do that.
  • If you need to follow up with your referrals to other specialists b/c things are moving so slowly when you are in pain, do it.

I know this from first hand experience. It took me ~5 months just to get some proper progress on pain reduction & help.

If you're in pain now, it can take so much effort that you might not be able to muster, but you have to do it. If it’s not you advocating for your care, loop your parents or family members into the mix. Keep your friends, family, teachers, coaches and TKS fam in the loop so that they can support you during a period of immense difficulty.

If you'd like to chat about health, book a call and let's talk. If you are here @ TKS, you've already past the "filter," you have the potential to accomplish extraordinary things.

Don't let bad health be the obstacle to your success.