The Game of Life

“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve”

Sometimes life feels like a constant hustle – certainly various stages of my career have felt that way.

Getting through exams in school…

making sure I get the best grades to get into all the medical schools I applied to…

making sure I get the best ranking at medical school so I get my first choice rotation as a doctor…

getting into my top choice of surgery training programme…

getting X number of followers on social media.

It’s endless and exhausting.

But if you treat life like a game where you have to keep levelling up like a character in a computer game…

you can never beat it as you continue to chase bigger peaks until you risk burning out.

Instead maybe there’s a better way.

Create to serve others. To educate. To entertain. To encourage. To lift somebody from a dark place. To help someone not to give up.

These things seem far more satisfying than numbers and metrics and there isn’t a discrete value placed on these.

Bacteria Have Memories!

 Bacteria may not have any of the fancy neurons, synapses or brain cells that humans do but are still capable of forming some basic “memories” according to new research.

Not just this but it turns out they can pass on this “memory” for 4 generations!

When I say memory, I don’t mean a gentle trip down memory lane thinking about the last human they wreaked havoc on..

but a memory based on the levels of iron inside their cellular structure.

Researchers used the bacteria E.Coli to model their hypothesis and discovered that these bacteria utilised iron levels to “remember” specific behaviour which were then re-activated when the same stimuli was encountered again.

For example, bacteria with lower levels of iron (which is key for their metabolism) resulted in them displaying swarming behaviour (coming together and moving as a single mass) and when they had more iron, they remain in one place forming biofilms.

Those bacteria which were exposed to one swarming event and then had low levels of cellular iron were triggered to swarm even more efficiently than before – as if they had prior memory.

What’s more is that artificially manipulating the iron levels allowed the “memory” to persist even longer.

These iron-based memories may have developed to allow bacteria to search for iron to assist with their metabolism, just like humans look for food when hungry.

What’s the value of this to us?

Unknown but it could be a target for therapeutics and dealing with antibiotic resistance!

What You Should Watch

“Invincible” – Amazon Prime.

I’m a superhero geek. Marvel, DC…yeah all that stuff.

But I also like it when the script is flipped.

Movies like “Brightburn”  where the protagonist is actually the antagonist – the villain (think evil Superman).

Or “The Boys” where the so-called superheroes that are looked up to are actually assholes.

“Invincible” follows a similar recipe – although I must warn you, it is animated but no less adult.

Life Updates

1. Seems like I’ve got a regular gig every Friday on ITV (for those not UK based, it’s channel 3 on UK TV stations!) on their morning breakfast show “This Morning”. I’ll be honest, TV is fun but I definitely enjoy making videos online way more! So if you are UK based, keep an eye out Friday mornings around 11am to see my mug on TV (for the right reasons!)

2. You’ll be sick of me talking about this so apologies in advance but my book “This Book May Save Your Life” is almost here! I visited the printing factory in Suffolk, UK last week and it was the most surreal experience. To see thousands and thousands of copies of my book being printed before my very eyes. Wow. A real pinch me moment. If you’ve enjoyed any of my videos or posts – you’ll love my book. You can pre-order here:

3. Another week rolls by and we’re almost in December. I’ve been keeping up with my 30-30-30 (30g fibre, 30 min of exercise, 30 mins of mentally switching off per day) – have you been sticking to this?!

What You Should Read

So when I was in Mumbai I went on a bit of a book-buying spree! Who doesn’t love buying books!

Anyway I promised a review of some of them when I finished them so here’s the first one:

“Elephants on acid” Alex Boese

I love weird science and medical history – this ticks both boxes.

If you wanted the answers to bizarre questions like “ how long does a severed head retain consciousness?” or “what would happen if you were to give an elephant the largest ever single dose of LSD?” and more weirdness.. well this book is for you.

Now it’s not a literary marvel nor something you’d probably read in one go but it’s a great coffee table book to pick up and dive in at random points!

Better Blood Sugar Control

Particularly relevant if you have high blood glucose, insulin sensitivity, any sort of metabolic syndrome or any type of diabetes – you will benefit from this.

By building any degree of muscle.

You see, to simplify it – your muscle behaves like a sponge.

The more muscle you have, the more it can “mop up” excess glucose after eating a high carb or high sugar meal.

Your muscles can soak up the sugar.

This is why as we age it’s key to prevent the rapid loss of muscle and improve metabolic markers.

Building muscle doesn’t mean doing super heavy weights in the gym – even preventing the LOSS of muscle is key. Any form of resistance can aid with this.