Your Brain is Poison

Push pull rinse repeat. Sick. Tired. Cannot sleep. You know you want out. From the squiggly jello labyrinth upstairs. The pesky little overlord of your life. The damn brain.

But how? If you're looking for an easy exit - you won't find one up there. After all, as the Buddhist proverb reminds us, "the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

Ok the verbiage is dated. Tone-deaf. Taboo. But the fact remains: harnessing the wilderness within requires practice, patience, and resolve. A willingness to slow down the highway of life, to relax the incessantly problem-solving left brain - an increasingly complicated ask in a world of clicks and goldfish attention spans.

"Our bodies know that they belong," writes the late John O'Donohue, an Irish poet, philosopher and apostate. "It is our minds that make our lives so homeless."

So what's the T? A simple Rx:

Meditate. Hydrate. Exercise. Sleep.

Rest. Self-care. Down time. Repeat.

Boring? Maybe. Necessary? Yes. Especially as we get older. I mean, when all else fails, you could have a drink. But she won't like it down there. You know, the tenant in the basement. The one who cashes all your oral checks and fudge Rapunzels them back to the bank when you flush.

The gut.

New science stipulates that 70 percent of our brain state stems from our gut. Serotonin levels. Mood. It all hinges on a balanced gut biome and its signals to the skull via the gut-brain axis.

In the Netflix documentary "Hack your Health: The Secrets of your Gut," medical doctors advise us to follow the ABCs. That is, always be counting - the number of fruits and veggies we eat each week. Add 'em up and they should total 20-30. That's different types, not servings. This science suggests that diversity (as opposed to caloric intake or portions) is what makes us thrive.

So what's a microbiome?

It's kinda like the brain with neurons, but instead - the GI with microbes. In lieu of synapses, an array of microscopic species rule the roost. And they've been there since you were born.

It's a bug eat bug world, baby. So eat the right ones. Lest you be eaten by the likes of some in "Scavengers Reign" on Netflix - a scary unsettling anime where literally everything is out to eat you.

Slow down for a second. What do your senses say?

Check out  "Scavengers Reign" - an imaginative epic on a fantastic planet, and "Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut," both on Netflix.