Dealing with chronic pain: it’s in the way you move

August 7, 2023

Image made by Spencer using Midjourney in the style of Leonardo da Vinci

I've come to think that you can somewhat reduce your chance of chronic injury (and improve chronic pain you already have) by learning to notice and pay close attention to pain right at the moments when it crops up. By doing so, you can learn to immediately adjust how you move to take the pain into account (not avoiding the action, but changing the way you engage in the action). The goal is to make your movements as smooth and natural as possible. If avoiding the pain is causing you to make l...

Why “nature plus nurture” is sometimes the wrong way to think

April 28, 2021

People who sit here and then chat with someone might get happier…but whether they sit here in the first place probably also depends on their personality and their baseline mood. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

It's common to try to explain things as either due to nature OR nurture. Or, at best, we say: some percentage of the variation in outcome is due to genes, and some percentage is due to the environment. It's important to remember, though, that outcomes can be a complex interaction between the two. Consider this: Our genetically-influenced traits impact what environments we seek out and find ourselves in. For instance, risk-taking seems to have moderate heritability, and it in...

What Health Advice Is There a Consensus On?

January 16, 2017

What recommendations related to diet, nutrition and health seem to be universally agreed on by experts of nearly all stripes and schools of thought? Given the incredibly high levels of disagreement in these areas, and the poor quality of studies, it often seems like we know almost nothing. Below is my attempt (via a combination of brainstorming and crowdsourcing) to list what there does seem to be a high rate of consensus on. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes. Tentative L...

Changing Your Life Using Habits

August 1, 2011

One of the most effective ways to get ourselves to regularly do a behavior is to make it automatic through habit formation. Once something has become a habit we no longer have to worry about forgetting to do it, or worry about lacking sufficient motivation. We do the behavior without even trying to do it, without even thinking about it. Habits make behavior effortless. We can program ourselves with new habits by following a very simple procedure. If you want to regularly do behavior B after s...