Food for Thought: Nutrition

For me, nutrition is an interesting strand of the Global Be Well Day programme. It is an area that we all think we know something about, have a perspective on, but in reality, do we know what is right for each of our students? How do we let our own biases affect the way we perceive nutrition or a good or bad diet? 

Hence I thought the best place to start this Food for Thought from is information relating to the question: What is the best diet for humans? The talk below by Eran Segal gives us insight into how what we eat impacts us. Its key finding is that the results show that it isn't just about the food it is about the person eating it. Some of the data that Eran's team discovered goes against what is traditional nutritional advice. We have talked a great deal about the threat of AI and algorithms but in this talk, you will hear about the power of them to help us as individuals shape our diet so it is right for us. This talk links with personalized learning, because as in education Eran's research shows that there is no perfect diet to suit everyone, our response to the food we eat depends on who we are and our microbiomes. 

If we take the information in the talk by Eran Segal it immediately undoes much of the nutritional information that determines how we feed ourselves, our family and students in the school cafeteria. Hence, as personalizing nutrition isn't that easy I just wanted to share some generalized and traditional information that you might find useful when dealing with this topic. The first piece of information comes from the, The Dietary Guidelines that are published every 5 years by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. It is designed for professionals to help all individuals ages 2 years and older consume a healthy diet that meets nutrient needs. The focus of the Dietary Guidelines is on disease prevention and health promotion. Although the Dietary Guidelines are not intended to treat disease, it can be adapted by nutrition and health professionals to describe healthy eating to patients and clients.

Finally, I looked at this site, Health Engine, that provided good nutritional information for school students in Australia. The post that I read ended by saying: 

"Habits developed in the formative years of life have a lasting effect on health. As a result parents need to set positive food culture through meal planning, keeping a variety of foods in supply, and setting a good example. The key points to remember as a parent/caretaker include the following:

• Adequate nutrition will help your child develop maximal intelligence (IQ) and well being.

• The child should be guided to make independent food choices and eat a variety of foods.

• Malnutrition and its consequences will be prevented by eating the right kinds and amounts of foods.

• Encourage your child to practice proper hygiene at all times."

Food For Thought: Sleep

The second strand from Global Be Well day that I'd like to support your thinking about is sleep. I think that we are far more aware of the importance of sleep and its impact on learning and health than we were ten years ago. Understanding about sleep, its impact on health and wellbeing, doesn't only apply to students, we as adults also need to ensure that we are getting enough sleep so that we are energized and healthy for our lives. So how much sleep do we need?

Below are the recommended sleep times for different age groups as reported in the Independent newspaper article:

Newborns (0 - 3 months): 14-17 hours per day

Infants (4 - 11 months): 12-15 hours per day

Toddlers (1 - 2 years): 11-14 hours per day

Pre-school children (3 - 5 years) 10-13 hours per day

School age children (6 -13 years) 9-11 hours per day

Teenagers (14 - 17 years) 8-10 hours per day

Younger adults (18 - 25 years) 7-9 hours per day

Adults (26 - 64): 7 - 9 hours per day

Older adults (65 years+) 7-8 hours per day



Childmind.org has run a series of article about the importance of sleep and sleep patterns for adolescents. I have picked out two articles that I think are worth you taking a look at. The first is about why teenagers are sleep deprived. Here is the worrying conclusion to this article

"With more than half of American teenagers living with chronic sleep deprivation, parents and teachers tend to overlook the profound effects it has on kids’ physical, mental and behavioral health. The sleep deficit is not in fact, a normal part of being a teenager. It’s part of an invisible epidemic that we need to start addressing."

The second article is about the consequences of not getting enough sleep. The article raises the question that perhaps the teenage angst, stress depression, and anxiety that we are seeing today is not normal and is partially the result of sleep deprivation.

"It’s a radical thought, but what if the behavior we casually dismiss as “teenage angst” — the moodiness, the constant battles, the sleeping all day, the reckless, impulsive and careless behavior — is not in fact a normal part of being a teen? Or at least, not to the degree we assume it is. What if instead we are doing our teenagers a disservice by writing off as “normal” what are in reality the symptoms of chronic and severe sleep deprivation?
We know that the radical changes that occur in adolescence, including tremendous hormonal shifts and significant brain development, affect teenage behavior. But the physical, mental and behavioral consequences of chronic sleep deprivation are profound, too. With studies showing that 60 to 70% of American teens live with a borderline to severe sleep debt, we need to know how going without their recommended (optimal) nine hours a night affects them."

This article, Synchronizing education to adolescent biology: ‘let teens sleep, start school later’ is an academic paper on sleep and its importance and the link between our biorhythms and our ability to focus and concentrate. Below is the abstract to the article that starts with a good 4-minute Vimeo outlining the research findings. 

"Arne Duncan, US Secretary of State for Education, tweeted in 2013: ‘let teens sleep, start school later’. This paper examines early starts and their negative consequences in the light of key research in the last 30 years in sleep medicine and circadian neuroscience. An overview of the circadian timing system in adolescence leading to changes in sleep patterns is given and underpins the conclusion that altering education times can both improve learning and reduce health risks. Further research is considered from education, sleep medicine and neuroscience studies illustrating these improvements. The implementation of later starts is briefly considered in light of other education interventions to improve learning. Finally, the impact of introducing research-based later starts synchronized to adolescent biology is considered in practical and policy terms."

Here at ISHCMC over the past five years, we have done several things to address the importance of student sleep, most importantly moving the school day fro a 7:25 start to an 8:50 start in secondary. But we must not be complacent as there are still questions we have to ask ourselves about the pressures that students feel to work late on homework as they move up through the school, student time management skills and the use of technology and screen time late at night.

Food For Thought: Understanding being well.

I know that you have all been working hard on Global Be Well Day (GBWD) last week and that we are very close to having our programme for the day, and surrounding days sorted. Over the next few weeks, I am going to dedicate Food for Thought to ensuring that you feel comfortable in your knowledge and understanding regarding each strand so that you can discuss both with students and parents. This week I am sharing information about the brain and its link to mindfulness.

During the summer I obtained a copy of Altered Traits; Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body. It is certainly a good book for those who want to discover more about the science behind mindfulness and meditation as this review from PenguinRandom House explains:

"In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.Two New York Times–bestselling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain.

In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.
           
Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice.
           
Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice."

In this 25 minute talk (not TED) Daniel Goleman talks about his background in studying meditation, levels of study, how we all benefit regardless of our different levels of mindfulness experience, data on student benefits and how it can impact our desire to take action to help others. He summarizes the key content of the 6,000 peer-reviewed research papers that show the changes that mindfulness practice can bring to us.

This article from Tricycle links with the above works and reinforces how consistent practice, as we have been told many times, is needed to develop altered traits. The article identifies traits that may also occur beyond those associated with a well being focussed approach to meditative practice.

The sense of a life mission centered on practice numbers among those elements so often left behind in Asia, but that may matter greatly. Among others that might, in fact, be crucial for cultivating altered traits:

• An ethical stance, a set of moral guidelines that facilitate the inner changes on the path. Many traditions urge such an inner compass, lest any abilities developed be used for personal gain.
• Altruistic intention, where the practitioner invokes the strong motivation to practice for the benefit all others, not just oneself.
• Grounded faith, the mindset that a particular path has value and will lead you to the transformation you seek. Some texts warn against blind faith and urge students to do what we call today “due diligence” in finding a teacher.
• Personalized guidance, a knowledgeable teacher who coaches you on the path, giving you the advice you need to go the next step.
• Devotion, a deep appreciation for all the people, principles, and such that make practice possible. Devotion can also be to the qualities of a divine figure, a teacher, or the teacher’s altered traits or quality of mind.
• Community, a supportive circle of friends on the path who are themselves dedicated to practice.
• A supportive culture, traditional Asian cultures have long recognized the value of people who devote their life to transforming themselves to embody virtues of attention, patience, compassion, and so on. Those who work and have families willingly support those who dedicate themselves to deep practice by giving the money, feeding them, and otherwise making life easier. This is often not the case in modern societies.
• Potential for altered traits, the very idea that these practices can lead to a liberation from our ordinary mind states—not self-improvement—has always framed these practices, fostering respect or reverence for the path and those on it."

Food For Thought: Is hope enough to cure the world's problems?

This week's Food for Thought may be seen as a bit provocative because brings together a book and an article that I have read recently that are linked to the concept of hope and how having hope will not solve the issues that are plaguing the world today. Both raise questions about how we approach encouraging our students to take action. In a simplified format at present we point out all that's gone wrong in the world and then tell our students there is hope, you can fix it by taking action. But what if hope is defined as, " a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless." If this definition is true then I believe it raises questions about the 'why' we use to encourage students to take action. 

Below is an animated summary of the thinking behind Mark Manson's book, Everything is f***ed, A book about hope. In it, he suggests the opposite to happiness is hopelessness and that it is hopelessness that is contributing to the increase in depression and anxiety in our world at the time when all the metrics point out that it has never been a better time to be alive. We have to ask, do the things that we talk about with our students in any way develop a sense of hopelessness in their thinking?  Mark Manson may not be an academic, but his pulling together of a vast amount of psychological research made his book a very interesting read and makes one think about who we are as humans. This 9-minute video summarizes the book but I would recommend it as a good read for educators searching for a better understanding of society today.

Moving beyond Mark Manson's ideas of hope I was interested to read this article in Orion Magazine, Beyond Hope by Derrick Jensen. Derrick Jensen is the author of Thought to Exist in the Wild, Songs of the Dead, Endgame, Dreams, and other books. In 2008, he was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He is an environmental activist and his article again emphasizes the issues we are facing regarding our earth and the futility of relying upon hope as a solution.

Photograph by Stephen Wilkes



"THE MOST COMMON WORDS I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have — or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective — to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals. Sometimes they’re reduced to trying to protect just one tree.

Here’s how John Osborn, an extraordinary activist and friend, sums up his reasons for doing the work: “As things become increasingly chaotic, I want to make sure some doors remain open. If grizzly bears are still alive in twenty, thirty, and forty years, they may still be alive in fifty. If they’re gone in twenty, they’ll be gone forever.”

But no matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We’re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don’t care.

Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth."

The concluding sentence to this passionate article again provides a pointer as to how we should be approaching student action, 

" And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a very good thing."

Finally, I'd like to return to Mark Manson and his thinking. Although not touched upon in the summary, the book ends with a chapter that focuses on our future relationship with AI. This chapter yet again raises questions that Elon Musk, Yuval Harari and multiple other philosophers and futurists are predicting as the outcome of the impending power of AI. 

" The AI, realizing that the productive energies of humanity emerge only through conflict, will generate endless series of artificial crises in a safe virtual reality, where that productivity and ingenuity can be cultivated and used for some greater purpose like a resource, a never-ending reservoir of creative energy........................

And then, maybe one day, we will become integrated with the machines themselves. our individual consciousness will be subsumed. our independence will vanish. we will meet and merge in the cloud, and our digitalized souls will swirl and eddy in the storms of data, a splay of bits and function harmoniously brought into some grand, unseen alignment.

We will have evolved into a great unknown entity we will transcend the limitations of our own value-laden minds. We will live beyond means and ends, for we will always be both, one and the same. we will have crossed the evolutionary bridge into "something greater" and ceased to be human anymore. 

Perhaps then, we will not only realize but finally embrace the Uncomfortable Truth: that we imagined our own importance, we invented our purpose and we were, and still are nothing.............

And maybe then, and only then, will the eternal cycle of hope and destruction come to an end."

Food For Thought: Thinking to Start the Year

Welcome back to Food for Thought for 2019-20. Thought that I would start the year with a post that focuses on who we are as people and how our culture and background plays an important part in who we are and how we are seen by others.

We have started the year with some excellent sessions of mindfulness from Susie and Katie that have returned us to our practices and provided deeper insight into the reason why these simple routines can be so powerful. This short article from Open Link, How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers and Writers Have Always Known, shows how walking can stimulate creative thought.

"A certain Zen proverb goes something like this: "A five-year-old can understand it, but an 80-year-old cannot do it." The subject of this riddle-like saying has been described as "mindfulness"---or being absorbed at the moment, free from routine mental habits. In many Eastern meditative traditions, one can achieve such a state by walking just as well as by sitting still—and many a poet and teacher has preferred the ambulatory method.

This is equally so in the West, where we have an entire school of ancient philosophy—the "peripatetic"—that derives from Aristotle and his contemporaries' penchant for doing their best work while in leisurely motion. Friedrich Nietzsche, an almost fanatical walker, once wrote, "all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." Nietzsche's mountain walks were athletic, but walking---Frédéric Gros maintains in his A Philosophy of Walking---is not a sport; it is "the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found."Gros discusses the centrality of walking in the lives of Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, and Thoreau. Likewise, Rebecca Solnit has profiled the essential walks of literary figures such as William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Gary Snyder in her book Wanderlust, which argues for the necessity of walking in our own age, when doing so is almost entirely unnecessary most of the time. As great walkers of the past and present have made abundantly clear—anecdotally at least—we observe a significant link between walking and creative thinking.More generally, writes Ferris Jabr in The New Yorker, "the way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa." Applying modern research methods to ancient wisdom has allowed psychologists to quantify the ways in which this happens, and to begin to explain the reasons why. Jabr summarizes the experiments of two Stanford walking researchers, Marily Oppezzo and her mentor Daniel Schwartz, who found that almost two hundred students tested showed markedly heightened creative abilities while walking. Walking, Jabr writes in poetic terms, works by "setting the mind adrift on a frothing sea of thought." (Hear Dr. Oppezzo discuss her study in a Minnesota public radio interview above.)Oppezzo and Schwartz speculate that "future studies would likely determine a complex pathway that extends from the physical act of walking to physiological changes to the cognitive control of imagination." They recognize that this discovery must also account for such variables as when one walks, and—as so many notable walkers have stressed—where. Researchers at the University of Michigan have approached the where question in a paper titled "The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature" that documents a study in which, writes Jabr, "students who ambled through an arboretum improved their performance on a memory test more than students who walked along city streets."One wonders what James Joyce—whose Ulysses is built almost entirely on a scaffolding of walks around Dublin—would make of this. Or Walter Benjamin, whose concept of the flâneur, an archetypal urban wanderer, derives directly from the insights of that most imaginative decadent poet, Charles Baudelaire. Classical walkers, Romantic walkers, Modernist walkers—all recognized the creative importance of this simple movement in time and space, one we work so hard to master in our first years, and sometimes lose in later life if we acquire it. Going for a walk, contemporary research confirms---a mundane activity far too easily taken for granted---may be one of the most salutary means of achieving states of enlightenment, literary, philosophical, or otherwise, whether we roam through ancient forests, over the Alps, or to the corner store."


Recently the Dalai Lama has been the center of controversy following a couple of things that he said about woman and immigration. Having read several of the Dalai Lama's books and been enchanted by his vision and way of thinking I found it quite strange that so many people were being so judgemental about what had been said and took so little time to place it in any sort of context. It makes me smile to think that the Dalai Lama's words could be so focused upon when he has expressed so many beautiful and wise words that can help guide us through our lives and define his deeper thoughts. 

“…a truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend or an enemy, as long as that person wishes for peace and happiness and wishes to overcome suffering, then on that basis we develop genuine concern for their problem. This is genuine compassion…the goal is to develop this genuine compassion, this genuine wish for the well-being of another, in fact for every living being throughout the universe.”

I no longer tweet because something I tweeted was taken out of context, caused others to suffer on my behalf and for others to express anger and unhappiness at my words. The world can do without my tweets but I do hope that the Dalai Lama does not stop sharing his great wisdom especially on happiness and living a good life. The reason I am sharing this is that as we start the new school we do need to remember that many of our students and families are not native English speakers and come from different cultural backgrounds. At times we may be surprised or shocked by conversations or communications, but unlike journalism, it is our responsibility to dig deep and find true meaning. This Ph.D. student, Tenzin, decided to do just that in her article and I think there is much we can learn from her writing.

The final part of this post is a talk by David Brooks that asks us to dig deep into who we are and links closely to what we aspire to as a school. Last year I watched his talk on cv against eulogy, this encouraged me to read his book, The Road to Character which I found very enlightening. This TED talk asks very big questions about society and the need for change. In a year when one of our focuses for professional development relates to service-learning, an obvious question arising from this talk is: Can we create weavers out of our students?

"Our society is in the midst of a social crisis, says op-ed columnist and author David Brooks: we're trapped in a valley of isolation and fragmentation. How do we find our way out? Based on his travels across the United States -- and his meetings with a range of exceptional people known as "weavers" -- Brooks lays out his vision for a cultural revolution that empowers us all to lead lives of greater meaning, purpose and joy."