Why hello. I'm Graham. I was born in Brantford, Ontario, and growing up I also lived (in order) in Montreal, Quebec; Burlington, Ontario; and Calgary, Alberta. I then attended the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia where I majored in physics. I then moved to Ottawa, Ontario, where I earned a Master's degree in mechanical engineering. After grad school, I relocated to where I am now: Vancouver, British Columbia.
I'm truly passionate about learning and sharing knowledge on how to optimize the human experience in our modern world. From our physical bodies, to our powerful minds, to our environmental impact, to our spiritual manifestation, human beings are the dominant expression of life on this planet Earth. It is my intention with Sustainable Balance to explore and optimize the human form and our impact on the universe on all levels, and share this with others.
An effective human lifestyle must embrace our physical manifestation while also pursuing spiritual ideals: A Sustainable Balance of all that makes us what we are.
Explore with me!
Time for another installment in the Sleep Series! We already learned about high-quality sleep and why days are supposed to be bright, while nights should be dark. The last post introduced the stress hormone cortisol, and its effect on sleep. In an ideal situation, cortisol is naturally high in the morning and tapers off throughout the day to low levels in the evening resulting in high-quality sleep.
In modernity, stressors don’t stop just because it’s night time (though I suppose we don’t worry about nocturnal predators anymore). Evening cortisol levels can be elevated for a number of reasons. I don’t want anyone stressing about stress, so let’s have a good look at some sources of stress to become aware of some common causes of elevated evening cortisol levels.
The last post in this series was quite a hit! In that post, the focus was how to use your diet to increase your resistance to sunburn so that all the benefits of sunlight could be obtained, while minimizing any negative effects. With the right diet, even the palest gingers among us can improve their resistance, and gradually build up a tan and abandon the use of sunscreen, or really cut back on its usage (and I’d stick to physical sunscreens over chemical).
That’s all well and good (great even!), but even the best diet won’t make some of us sunburn immune. I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where the sun barely shines for five months of the year (we have rainy winters here). Continue reading →
The last post in this series discussed how light influences your circadian rhythm, and the health effects of blue-light exposure during the day and its negative effects at night (which was discussed in Sleep Series Part 2). This post will look at the effect of the hormone cortisol and how it gives us energy and focus through the day, and then drops off and allows us to relax and sleep properly at night. Let’s take a look at cortisol! Continue reading →
In a previous post, I presented strategies for sourcing produce in the modern food arena. This post was originally intended to demonstrate the best ways to ethically source the animals in your diet (and that will still come), but during the writing of that post, I kept thinking about and researching reasons why consuming animals properly and ethically is something positive. I consider myself very health-conscious and generally pro-environment, so often when I meet like-minded folks, they are surprised that I consume animals with such enthusiasm. Continue reading →
Previously in this series, the benefits of sunlight in the form of vitamin D production were discussed along with the ramifications of vitamin D deficiency.
Along with vitamin D deficiency, another crucial benefit of sunlight (control of circadian rhythms) has been introduced. To top it all off, here’s another: sunlight on human skin increases nitric oxide in the bloodstream, which is important in regulating blood pressure and reducing risk of heart attack and stroke. Sunlight is essential to health.
