#(e.g. sit you down and try to explain to you your inherent worth)

[age-of-moonknight]

“Three Moments,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #8.

Writer: Jed Mackay; Penciler and Inker: Devmalya Pramanik; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[striffyisme]

Right so I was thinking, a rarely (or rarely from where I am) discussed aspect of ADHD is reading comprehension. Most people associate ADHD and reading as generally non-compatable, as it tends to require sitting still and focusing for long periods of time. What doesn't tend to be mentioned is that ADHD actually makes the act of reading hard, on occassion.

As a kid, I was constantly stuck with my head in a book. I read all the time, sometimes multiple books a day, because of the escapism it offered. I also have really bad ADHD, that I struggle to manage as an adult. Because of that, I struggle to read now, something I'm sure a lot of other ADHDers can relate to.

So, I've made a handy image to try and show what reading with ADHD is like, for people who don't have it. Fair warning, it's not meant to be easy to see/read, so if you already have problems with that then skip to the image ID below.

[Image ID: A text note, made to be difficult to read. Large portions of the text are blurry, and warped, while some are clear, and highlighted in different colours. Text with warping reads: "Hi there! This is an... ADHD... overstimulated. Sometimes... external overstimulation... process... process... overwhelming... paragraph breaks... This... Hope this helps!" End Image ID]

Here is a transcript of what the note says, without distortion: "Hi there! This is an extremely long message. This is what it feels like to have ADHD, and have to read a long passge of words, all closely together, when your brain is overstimulated. Sometimes this can happen due to external overstimulation, like bright lights, loud noises, or even just a combination of many things, that when put together we struggle to process. Sometimes it is because our brain is struggling to process new information, which can be caused by many things, including new or overwhelming emotions, exhaustion, and burnout. Often, without paragraph breaks or something to break up a wall of text, we find it difficult to read. This is often hard to explain if you don't experience it yourself. Hope this helps!"

If you skipped the big walls of text, that's fair. It's a fairly common part of ADHD, as a lack of clear visual differentiation often makes it hard to keep track of your place whilst reading. This is one of the many factors that affect our ability to read text.

For the image itself, the distortion follows some very simple patterns of ADHD reading. First of all, we do manage to get at least the first word or two. After that, our eyes tend to dart down, desperate to find patterns in the large wall of text. This can be formatting patterns, or word patterns. This is often why we tend to skip ahead over descriptions, straight to dialogue, and then have to work backwards, as written speech almost always breaks up large walls of text into small, manageable, pieces.

This is why some of the words are highlighted. They are either repeating, or similar to words previously seen. They also tend to be longer words, as these are easier to see at a glance, or capitalised words and acronyms, as these stand out from standard lowercase text. Our eyes jump to these, as they are easy to find quickly in lines of text, and we often use these as 'anchors'.

Anchors are places in text where we work outwards from. They tend to be words, or short phrases, that we can easily see at a glance, so that if we lose our place whilst reading, we can jump back to these metaphorical save points, knowing we have processed all the words before that.

Processing itself is another problem. An inherent part of ADHD is a difficulty, or inability, to prioritize tasks. This includes reading, which often means that when confronted with a wall of text, our brains try to process the whole thing in one go. This often leads to a difficulty in telling the difference between individual lines of text, combining words, or missing things, i.e the warping. This can vary in extremity dependent on the person, and obviously gets worse when combined with other things such as dyslexia, and other learning disorders.

Combined, all of this makes reading very difficult. As mentioned in the note itself, this varies depending on how stimulated our brains are. Something not mentioned in the note, however, is that this can also occur in understimulated brains. Due to a lack of engaging material, our brains will try to process new information a lot faster, in an sort of "finally we're doing something!" excitement. This tends to backfire, as processing issues tend to make people with ADHD put off doing the task, or get frustrated, making everything harder.

This doesn't just apply to books, though that is the most common example. It can also apply to text messages, group chats particularly, menus, posters, anything that can fit more than a few sentences of text on it, really.

So, if you have any friends with ADHD, suspected ADHD, or a processing disorder, and they seem to be struggling, then it might be worth asking if they need help reading the material they're having a hard time with. Changing the form of processing (from visual to audio) can help, e.g reading it aloud. You can also help by: pointing out the most important pieces of information; reading it over and giving them a basic summary, or; whatever they think will help them most.

I know it might be frustrating to deal with, but I promise we are likely even more frustrated then you are. We are the ones living with ADHD, and so have to deal with our brains all the time. Just give us some kindness and patience, and we'll get there eventually.

Thanks for reading, if you made it all the way through this. If you have a processing disorder feel free to add onto this! Any questions shoot me an ask/message. Neurotypicals do not clown on this post.

[angels-heap]

Okay hello I feel like you are Wise and Know things... it’s kind of hard to explain but is it wrong to just... Enjoy Things? With all the HL pisscourse going around it’s making me nervous about liking things like TF2 and missing something critical and huge in the media I consume and being labelled as a bad person for doing that. ESPECIALLY for liking characters like GLaDOS or Wheatley from Portal. I want to just Enjoy Things but there’s guilt tied to not being critical about every single detail

Thanks for reaching out, friend, and I’m so sorry to hear the current nonsense has you feeling this way. I have a hunch you’re not alone, and although I don’t claim to have all the answers here, I hope hearing my thoughts on this helps alleviate some of that guilt. This got long and I’m not putting it under a cut because it’s important. 

The short answer to your question is no; it is not wrong to just enjoy things. You don’t have to constantly examine all your favorite media under a microscope and incessantly highlight or dwell on its faults to be a good person or a good consumer of media, and here are a few reasons why:

(CW for brief mentions of all the squicky/potentially triggering things that tend to come up in ship discourse conversations.)

1. It is virtually impossible to find a truly unproblematic piece of media.

And that’s okay! Media is both created and consumed by people, and people are notoriously imperfect and complex. Sometimes creators choose to explore dark or taboo themes that are always going to squick some people out, no matter how well (or poorly) they’re handled. Sometimes content creators are actually terrible people who deliberately try to perpetuate their messed-up ideas through media. Sometimes creators’ deeply internalized prejudices seep into a work in a way they may not even consciously realize. Sometimes consumers’ experiences or prejudices color the way they perceive a piece of media and may lead them to a very different interpretation than what the creators intended.

Point is, there are a lot of shades of gray here. We should always strive to do better as creators and consumers, but the goalposts for “perfection” are always moving.

There’s almost always going to be something about your favorite media—no matter how benign it is—that rubs some people the wrong way, or (perhaps unintentionally) perpetuates harmful stereotypes, or starts out okay but doesn’t age well down the line. Period. That’s an uncomfortable truth that we all have to sit with. But don’t despair, because…

2. It is still okay to engage with and enjoy media that you know is problematic. Even if it’s really problematic. For real. I promise. The media you consume does not determine your worth as a person. 

Since you specifically mentioned Valve games, I’ll start out by clarifying that (as of July 2020), Valve games and their fandoms are pretty benign overall. Perhaps in the future, more of the humor will start to age poorly, or Valve will make some extremely questionable design choices with their next game, or Gabe Newell will be outed as a prolific serial killer, or whatever, but for now, there’s really nothing about Valve games that should make the average person go, “holy shit, you’re into that?!” when you bring them up in polite company. (And anyone who insinuates otherwise re: Half Life shipping discourse is either very confused about the definition of certain words or is maliciously trying to stir up controversy.)

That said, everyone has a different threshold for what they do and don’t want to see in media, and those boundaries are totally valid! But it is absolutely possible to enjoy even notably problematic media (e.g., Game of Thrones, the new Star Wars sequels, old movies where the directors were huge assholes to the female cast members, etc.) without being a bad person or a bad social justice activist. Instead of rambling about that at length, I’m going to link you to this excellent blog post on the subject.

The big takeaway here is that you can love a piece of media while also acknowledging its faults. In fact, I’d argue that a key part of loving something is being able to think critically about it and trying to hold its creators to a higher standard whenever possible. However, that doesn’t mean you have to be constantly analyzing it or prefacing every single public acknowledgment of your love for it with an “I know this is problematic and I swear, I just like it for XYZ” disclaimer, because…

3. Tumblr’s black-and-white thinking about media consumption is not healthy, “normal,” or (usually) present to the same degree in other virtual or real-world spaces.

I think most of the people on Tumblr who seem to be on a constant (and ultimately futile; see point 1) quest to find the One True Unproblematic Media have good intentions. I really do. And I applaud them for actively trying to understand and un-learn their own biases while becoming critical consumers of media.

Unfortunately, for a bunch of complicated reasons I still don’t totally understand and won’t get into here, some online communities tend to take these things to such an extreme that, in their quest to create a safe and/or inclusive environment, they actually end up creating an even more hostile one. To reference the recent drama again, nowhere is that more apparent than with “pro-ship” vs. “anti-ship” discourse.

Basically, “pro-shippers” believe that fiction is entirely separate from reality and therefore, “problematic” content (up to and including p*dophilia, inc*st, noncon, etc.) has just as much of a right to exist as any other content; this makes some sense on a purely intellectual level, but in the real world, obviously things are much more complicated than that. “Anti-shippers,” on the other hand, claim to be specifically against the aforementioned Big Three Bad Things in theory, but in practice, they’re basically the fandom purity police; they strive to criticize and shut down any media or fandom activity that could be even remotely construed as problematic, because they seem to have a (perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately misguided) perception that discussing anything “bad” in fiction will glorify/condone/promote it in real life and that all creators of “bad” fiction are inherently malicious. Often, they’re willing to twist definitions and jump through some very strange hoops to justify why something is “bad.”

The truth lies somewhere between those two extremes; fiction absolutely can (and does) impact reality, but not in such a clear-cut cause-and-effect way. People can see or read about dark/complicated/problematic things without condoning or enjoying them in real life, and conversely, people can dislike even relatively benign things without having to have an extreme, profound reason for feeling that way. People can also enjoy “bad” media while being fully conscious of what’s wrong with it and taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t negatively influence them, or they may lack the knowledge/context to understand why something is “bad” at first and change how they engage (or don’t engage) as they learn. There’s a lot more nuance to this issue than Tumblr is willing to acknowledge, and as a result, a lot of innocent people who just want to enjoy things in peace get sucked into some truly absurd drama that can be really hard to deal with. And that sucks. A lot.

So, TL;DR: Almost all media is at least a little problematic, but that’s okay, because the media you like does not determine whether or not you’re a good person. (And especially if your primary interests are Valve games... you’re good, mate. Seriously.)

The fact that you’re even asking me this question shows me that you’re being a thoughtful, responsible consumer of media, and that’s all anyone can reasonably ask of you without being a gigantic hypocrite—because whether they’ll admit it or not, everybody who’s perpetuating this discourse both on and offline likes something “problematic.” It’s impossible not to, unless you live under a rock and consume exactly zero media. Take care, and try not to let the discourse get to you! Go forth and enjoy things! (As always, my inbox is open for follow-up questions.)

ETA: Here’s another excellent tumblr post on this topic! And another one! 

[sapphicscholar]

your fics are helping me get through the shittiest breakup right now, so thank you. I know you probably have a million prompts but would you be interested in writing a story where maggie is having a really dark day and feeling really depressed/worthless within herself (either because of internalised homophobia, past trauma etc) and alex takes care of her? maybe even some soft tearful smut later?

Hey, I hope you’re doing alright! I’m sorry it’s taken me a little while to get to this prompt (I didn’t want to do a shitty job when my focus was so divided with work and applications). Sending all the best thoughts your way! It’s now posted to AO3.

Author notes:

CW on homophobia, abusive families, anxiety/depression, etc.

A/N: Now that we’re in the thick of the holiday season, I’ve gotten a few asks for chosen family and hurt/comfort. I know it can be really hard dealing with family (or making the perfectly legitimate choice not to but seeing posts on social media that make it seem like everyone else has a loving, supportive biological family). No matter what choice you make (and I know sometimes there really isn’t a choice, depending on the situation), I’m sending you all the best thoughts. I hope you’re able to make time for yourself, even if it just means finding a quiet room to be alone for a little bit, maybe some wifi to catch up on gay af fanfic or cute puppy gifs, which I’ll try to post in spades over the break when I have time to be on my phone or computer. There are links to resources here as well.

A/N 2: Regarding a few lines in this fic: Obviously not all religion is inherently homophobic, nor do I think anyone smart and scientific (e.g. Alex) must necessarily be an atheist. But I think for so many of us who were raised Catholic (fun foreshadowing here for the nerd notes at the end today), religion was something that shaped our upbringing in an often profound way and was then thrown back in our faces when we came out. Are there Catholics who don’t follow the Church on its teachings about LGBTQ issues? Of course. But, for instance, the fact that my family happened to be supportive of LGBTQ rights in a general way didn’t mean that I wasn’t terrified of coming out to them; it didn’t exempt me from years of internalized shame after hearing priests and religion teachers teaching that homosexuality was an intrinsic disorder of the soul; and it certainly didn’t save me from the humiliation of having to write that gay sexuality was a sin on a test to get an A, of knowing that I put the jobs of my family members who worked for the Church at risk just by being out, of being forced back into the closet to serve as a teacher at a Catholic high school. And even with all of that, I had it easy (and I certainly had it much easier than my fiancée), which I say not to guilt anyone who is still religious, but to explain the perspective from which I’m writing in advance.

Resources:National Domestic Abuse Hotline (online and phone options): http://www.thehotline.org/

US and International Hotlines for a variety of causes: https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/167199297270/dont-ever-hesitate-reblog-this-tumblr-rule

Self-Harm Resources:http://myresourcemasterlist.tumblr.com/selfharmhttp://self-care-club.tumblr.com/post/139740925552/giant-self-help-masterposthttp://chooserecovery.tumblr.com/post/64162912692/ultimate-self-injury-recovery-masterpost

Suicide-specific resources:https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/https://themighty.com/suicide-prevention-resources/(For ones that link outside of the US):https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/164643935260/selfharm-surviver-holybadbitch98https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/164329606770/uie-fuwaprince-us-helplines-depression

Chapter Text:

“Are you and Maggie doing anything for Christmas?” Kara asked, popping another handful of popcorn into her mouth as she nudged Alex, who had started to nod off during the last episode of The Walking Dead.

“Hmm?”

“Christmas—what are you doing?”

“Oh,” Alex sighed, pulling herself up and rubbing at her eyes. “I don’t know. I mean…I know Maggie used to celebrate it with her family, but obviously that hasn’t been the case in years.”

“Right, right.”

“And it’s not like she goes to church at all these days.”

“I mean…you’re not exactly religious, but we still do Hanukkah with Eliza.”

Alex shook her head. “It’s different, I think. I was never religious; it was always more about…I don’t know, being with family and having something in common. I thought mom might be disappointed in me for being gay, but I never thought her reasoning would be that God said it was bad or anything like that.”

“Right,” Kara conceded. “But it might still be nice to celebrate together—you know, build new traditions.”

“I kinda fucked up with that whole thing on Valentine’s Day,” Alex sighed. Sure, they’d talked eventually and found a way to celebrate, to reclaim memories that had hurt Maggie for so many years. But Alex didn’t want to try to surprise Maggie this time and risk dredging up buried trauma once more. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to her.”

Closing her eyes, Maggie blinked back hot tears that threatened to fall. She focused on her breathing: Breathe in—1, 2, 3, 4, 5—hold—1, 2, 3—exhale—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. She fumbled to take off her watch, finding her pulse and focusing on its too fast beat, waiting for it to slow in time with her deep breathing. She ignored the clock, ignored the reminders of how soon Alex would be home, how weak she would look sitting at the kitchen counter and crying over a piece of paper—a stupid Hallmark greeting card with some trite bullshit scrawled across it in fake cursive.

Of course, the card itself hadn’t set her off. It was the hand-written note inside. The sight of the same handwriting that had adorned the rare note in her lunchbox in kindergarten was what had left her eyes stinging, not the vague platitudes about having a very merry Christmas and an even happier New Year. As she read, she was overcome with surges of anger and sorrow and a guilt that she had never quite been able to shake, no matter how much “pride” she claimed.

She tried to seize on the anger—the rage and frustration that she’d used as motivation to succeed: to do well enough in school to get herself out of that small Nebraska town; to do well enough in college to keep her scholarship; to do well enough in the academy to guarantee her a job, even as a non-straight, non-white woman. And there was plenty of it. Anger at her father’s suggestion that her family had always been there for her, as though they hadn’t left her alone at her aunt’s house with barely enough clothing for the week. Rage at this idea that she had been the one to wrong the family simply by living her life honestly and authentically, that she had ruined something otherwise perfect by being herself. Frustration at the phrase, “your friend,” as though her father hadn’t stormed out of their bridal shower precisely because Alex was so much more than just a friend, as though he hadn’t forced her out of her home and family as a mere child because her feelings for Eliza exceeded the bounds of friendship.

But then there was the photo of all of the cousins and nieces and nephews she’d never met. There were sentences about just how much older everyone had gotten, the sickness and bad times they’d been through without her there, the deaths she’d never known about, let alone mourned. Because she’d already done that—mourning the loss of a family that still existed—but not for her. Not with her.

It still got to her, still struck her with a guilt that felt like it could wrench her open, could undo everything she’d worked for, could tear down every inch of progress and confidence and sense of self she’d fought to build for herself.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were all right. Maybe she was selfish—selfish for putting herself and her desires above her family, the people who had raised her, who had sacrificed their lives to try to make hers better.

And there was another voice—much quieter, harder to hear, harder to believe—that seemed to call back, to tell her that she was worth it, that her life wasn’t worth sacrificing on the altar of bigoted beliefs, no matter who else worshiped there. She thought the voice sounded an awful lot like Alex’s, and its echoes, the voices of her new family: M’gann and J’onn and James and Kara and Eliza and Winn and everyone else who had come together to prove to her that she had people in her corner even when she felt most alone and least worthy of love.

But they were just that: voices. And in the face of the letter, its words right there, her fingers able to trace over them, feel the indents where her father had pressed down just a little harder, those marks and proof of a family that existed in reality—a family she could barely even think of as family anymore—those voices advocating for her faded to the background, drowned out in a chorus of self-loathing so overpowering she could barely manage to stagger toward the bed, her deep breathing long forgotten.

—

Alex found her there nearly an hour later. Her body was rigid, trembling every so often but otherwise catatonic. She looked as pale as Alex had ever seen her, and there were tear tracks streaked across her cheeks, her eyes puffy and rubbed raw from the harsh swipe of her shirt sleeves. Her fingers were clenched into fists, and her short nails were leaving deep moon-shaped imprints in her palms.

“Maggie!” Alex called out, rushing forward. She’d seen her like this once before—just once—and it had terrified her as much then as it did now. Remembering her DEO training, she forced herself to stay calm, to detach herself from the situation and let her medical instincts take over.

“Hey, Maggie, it’s me, Alex,” she said, her voice low and even as she knelt down on the ground next to her, pulling out the bottle of water she carried with her in her bag and putting it beside Maggie on the bedside table. “You okay if I sit here?”

Maggie managed to get herself to nod.

“Great. And if that changes, I can move, okay? I’m going to stay with you, but I can be a little farther away, or I can get closer if you want.” She paused to let Maggie process. “Do you think you can breathe with me?”

“It’s not helping,” Maggie forced out, her teeth chattering shut.

“Maybe if we do it together, it’ll help a little, okay?” Alex murmured. “Can I put a blanket on you?” Seeing the nod of assent, Alex pulled out the fluffiest blanket they had—the one with no tags, no rough patches or odd seams, the one that Maggie had wrapped around her after everything with her dad and Cadmus—and carefully draped it over Maggie, taking care not to tuck it under her, lest she feel trapped. Feeling how cold Maggie was to the touch, she slipped over to the edge of the room and turned up the thermostat before making her way back over to the bed.

She knelt next to Maggie, helping her to slow her breathing, holding her hand once she told her it was okay to touch, checking her pulse and smiling broadly as it came down to close to normal levels, telling Maggie just how proud she was when she was able to unclench her muscles and relax slightly into the mattress. Once the worst of it seemed to be over, she got Maggie to drink water and stretch out her stiff muscles.

“What do you say to a hot bath together? It’ll warm you up, and we can light the nice candles.”

“Even the cookie one?”

“Definitely the cookie one,” Alex agreed, smiling at the signs of Maggie returning. A few moments later, she came back into the bedroom, having lit the candles and begun filling the bath. “You good to walk?”

“Yeah,” Maggie nodded, standing up and rolling her neck to work out the cricks that had developed in it. She still let Alex take her by the hand and walk her to the bathroom, cracked a joke or two when Alex asked to help take off her clothes, grinned when Alex pulled out the extra fluffy towels they had picked up a few weekends ago and set them on the radiator to warm while they were in the bath.

For a while they relaxed in silence, Maggie sitting between Alex’s legs, her head resting on Alex’s shoulders while Alex ran her fingers through Maggie’s hair.

“My dad wrote,” Maggie said, her voice quiet.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“What? No, Maggie, never. You’re—god, you’re one of the best people I know.”

“That’s not true. You know Supergirl.”

“Yeah, well Supergirl never gives me the last slice of pizza, and you always offer to share.”

Maggie snorted, shaking her head against Alex’s shoulder. “That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean? Because honestly, Maggie, you are one of the most caring people I know. I—you’ve made me better. And not just by helping me to come out,” she clarified, anticipating Maggie’s objection that anyone could’ve done that with enough perseverance or bluntness. “You’ve made me rethink some of those things I assumed I knew. You helped me to see aliens who weren’t just like my sister as people who needed protection, not just prosecution or imprisonment. You showed me possibilities for a life I never thought I’d have.”

“But you didn’t say anything about my family. People have died, Alex—people I loved, people who loved me. They died, and I didn’t know.”

“There’s a difference between choosing not to know and never having been told.”

“Is there? Phones exist. Hell, mail exists. I never tried reaching out.”

“You did nothing wrong!” Alex tried to bite back her anger, knowing that wasn’t what Maggie needed. “Look, I get where you’re coming from. But self-preservation, knowing to take care of yourself—that matters too. You had no way of knowing how they would react if you tried to reach out. They had already hurt you, Maggie.”

“Still. They’re family.”

“And so am I, but if I hurt you—god, Maggie, if I hurt you that way, I wouldn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything. You don’t owe anyone your forgiveness.” Trying to find words, Alex let out a sigh of frustration. “You did try, Maggie. Think about it that way. You tried—you invited your dad to our bridal shower, in part because I wasn’t thinking quite clearly. I thought…I could only think in terms of my own relationship with my mother. And we went through some rough, rough periods, but it was different. I didn’t see that clearly then. But you gave him a chance he didn’t deserve—a chance you were good and pure and kind enough to give him—and he threw it away.”

“He came.”

“Yes, and he left.”

“I know,” Maggie huffed. “And I thought that would be it! And if it was…well, maybe this would all be easier, you know? God, I just—he said no! He doesn’t want me the way I am. So why won’t he stop acting like it’s my fault?”

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted, her voice barely a whisper as she wrapped her arms around Maggie. “I really don’t. And I don’t—I don’t have the perfect advice to offer. I’m happy to call him and yell at him, or get a restraining order, or burn the letter, or ignore it entirely and hold you, or kiss you until you can’t think about anything else. I mean, whatever you want, you know? I’m here for you, and I’ll support you no matter what you choose.”

“Even if I choose vegan ice cream and a whole night of Rizzoli and Isles?” Maggie teased, opting to ignore the tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

“Even both of those terrible choices.”

“You love Rizzles just as much as I do.”

“You’re a cop! How do you deal with all the procedural violations?”

“I watch for the hot ladies with delightful romantic chemistry on my screen and put up with the rest.”

“Yeah, yeah. They don’t even get to make out, though.”

“Neither do half of the actual gay couples on television!”

“Fine,” Alex whined, though she kissed Maggie’s cheek anyway, which led Maggie to turn around, finding Alex’s lips with her own and letting herself be held, letting herself be cared for.

Eventually they got out of the tub, the water having grown lukewarm. Wrapped up in a fuzzy towel, Maggie nudged Alex with her shoulder. “You think it’s okay that I don’t try to reach out to him for Christmas?”

“I think that’s your decision, and you are allowed to celebrate however you want.”

“I mean…I want to celebrate by going sledding and destroying you in a snowball fight.”

“Whatever you want within reason,” Alex clarified, laughing at Maggie’s pout. “And maybe, just maybe, we can think about traveling somewhere cold for a vacation. Don’t see why we’d want to, though,” she added, winking at her fiancée.

“So cheesy movies and as much junk food as Kara can bring over? And maybe when she leaves you and I can find our own way to celebrate…”

“I think that sounds perfect.”

[milenasanchezmk]

What Are Exogenous Ketones and Who Should Take Them?

Interest in the ketogenic diet is at an all-time high, and for good reason. It’s a great way to lose body fat, gain steady energy throughout the day, increase fat-burning capacity at rest and during exercise, reduce inflammation, and improve cognitive function. Keto also has a number of promising medical applications, including seizure control, enhanced efficacy of chemotherapy, and abatement of age-related cognitive impairment.

But going keto takes work. You have to overhaul your diet, restrict certain classes of foods, and pay close attention to what you eat. People prefer to avoid work if they can. They like shortcuts. Exogenous ketone supplements promise a shortcut—swallow this pill or mix this powder into your water and see your ketones skyrocket without changing the rest of your diet.

Although I’ve discussed exogenous ketones in the past, I’ve had many readers ask for a straightforward primer and takeaway recommendations for exogenous ketones. Here it is. Before I evaluate the proper role of ketone supplements, let’s dig into some basic questions.

What Are Exogenous Ketones?

There are two main types: ketone esters and ketone salts.

Ketone esters are ketone bodies bonded to an alcohol molecule. They taste terrible but are more potent than ketone salts. The rise in ketones after ketone ester supplementation is more pronounced but doesn’t last as long.

Ketone salts are ketone bodies bonded to a salt, such as sodium, magnesium, or potassium. They taste better (but not good) but are less potent than esters. The rise in ketones after ketone salt supplementation doesn’t get as high but lasts longer.

Do They Work?

Exogenous ketones increase blood, urine, and breath levels of ketone bodies. In that sense, they “work.”

Are they an effective substitute for actually following a ketogenic diet? Probably not.

First, there’s something unnatural about having elevated levels of ketones and glucose together. It’s really hard to make that happen using traditional whole foods. The closest natural approximation you could get to it would be the traditional coconut-rich diets of the Kitava people in the South Pacific, where the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) in the coconut fat increased ketone production alongside the carbs in the fruit and tubers they ate. They had excellent metabolic health, but they weren’t anywhere close to a ketogenic diet. Coconut fat isn’t as ketogenic as purified MCT oil, let alone exogenous ketones.

That alone gives me pause. The evolutionary novelty raises my hackles.

Second, there are inherent metabolic differences between boosting ketones via diet and boosting ketones via supplements. On a ketogenic diet, ketones go up because you’re converting body and dietary fat into ketone bodies. A rise in endogenous ketones means you’re burning fat and building the requisite machinery to metabolize the new energy source. On exogenous ketones, ketones go up because you ate some ketones; conversion of body and dietary fat into ketone bodies goes down if anything.

Take this study where human volunteers drank either ketone ester or ketone salt beverages alongside their normal diet. It worked. They got into ketosis, showed elevated levels of ketone bodies, and did this without changing their diet. Their conclusion says it all: “exogenous ketone drinks are a practical, efficacious way to achieve ketosis.”

Another effect of the ketone drinks was to lower blood glucose, free fatty acids, and triglyceride levels. This sounds great. Elevated levels of all those markers are harbingers of disease, particularly if they remain chronically elevated. But think about what this means. If free fatty acids go down, that means adipose tissue isn’t being liberated for burning.

That’s exactly what ketones do: inhibit lipolysis, the breakdown of body fat into triglycerides and free fatty acids for burning. In normal conditions where ketones are produced endogenously, this is expected and beneficial. If homemade ketones increased lipolysis, you’d end up with ketoacidosis. You’d make ketones which released more body fat which got turned into more ketones which released more body fat which became more ketones. And on and on. It simply wouldn’t stop.

But if you’re taking exogenous ketones to lose weight, you’re going to be disappointed.

Although they aren’t officially classified as a macronutrient, they are a source of energy. If you’re consuming exogenous ketones, you’re burning less of another energy source. And you’re making less ketones.

That’s not to suggest that exogenous ketones are useless. They have many potential uses, as I’ll explain. They just aren’t the same as getting into ketosis using diet or fasting.

What Are Their Practical Benefits?

Exogenous ketones can lower appetite during a fast. After an overnight fast, normal weight human subjects either drank a ketone ester supplement or a calorie-matched glucose drink. Compared to the glucose drinkers, the ketone drinkers had lower insulin, lower ghrelin, greater satiety, and less hunger. This can be useful for people trying to extend their fast who don’t want to or can’t yet deal with the hunger. You’re still taking in energy, but the metabolic profile remains similar to that of a fasted person.

Exogenous ketones can acutely improve the glucose response. After an overnight fast, healthy, normal weight humans drank a ketone ester supplement which spiked their ketone levels up to 3.2 and remained elevated throughout the oral glucose tolerance test. This reduced their blood glucose response and increased their insulin sensitivity.

Exogenous ketones can suppress expression of an inflammatory pathway linked to several disease states, including arthritis.

As it stands now, there are two areas where exogenous ketones show great potential.

Where Do Exogenous Ketones Make the Most Difference? Medical Applications

For whatever reason, many patients won’t attempt a ketogenic diet—even if the evidence is clear that it could help. Doctors are often hesitant to recommend dramatic dietary shifts—even if they believe in their efficacy—to patients who are already dealing with difficult health issues. If you’ve got a picky kid with epilepsy, a pickier adult with Alzheimer’s, or a cancer patient who refuses to give up the familiar-yet-non-ketogenic foods that give him some small manner of comfort in this trying ordeal, exogenous ketones could make a big difference.

The human studies aren’t quite there yet, but it seems likely that they’d help. A recent human case study found that ketone esters added to the regular diet improved Alzheimer’s symptoms. Animal studies indicate that adding exogenous ketones to a regular lab (read: not ketogenic) diet can reduce seizure activity and improve overall symptoms in epilepsy animal models, reverse early neuronal hyperactivity in Alzheimer’s animal models, and reduce anxiety in rats.

High Performance Endurance Athletics

Alongside a normal high-carb athlete’s diet, the provision of exogenous ketones before a race increased performance over carbohydrate alone. It increased fat utilization and preserved glycogen reserves until the later part of the race—just like fat-adapted training, only with carbs in the diet.

Exogenous ketones don’t seem to improve high-intensity, glucose-intensive exercise, increasing fat burning during steady state exercise but dropping top-end high-intensity performance. Another study found that ketone dieters reduced 50-minute time trial performance in cyclists, though another group of researchers have criticized the methods. Even when a ketone ester didn’t improve performance in the shuttle run to exhaustion and 15 meter sprint repeats, it did reduce the drop in brain function following the exercise.

There’s a lot more research coming down the pike in this area, but there’s clearly some efficacy in endurance athletics, and maybe athletics in general.

Suggestions for Purchasing Exogenous Ketone Supplements

Ketone supplement choices include a variety of products with beta-hydroxybutyrate or those containing medium-chain triglycerides (liquid or powder), which will help boost liver ketone production if you’re already following a keto dietary approach. Products with beta-hydroxybutyrate often include additional agents like amino acids or minerals.

As for MCT oil (and oil powders), powder formulations tend to cause less digestive distress (e.g. probiotics), but some folks object to the additional ingredients like sunflower lecithin or soluble corn fiber). Even if you’d like to eventually settle on an oil, I’d recommend starting with a powder to see how you respond and to give your body the chance to adapt over time.

Over the past couple years, I’ve tried a number of ketone supplements, generally to enhance a longer fast or to offer an edge before one of my Ultimate Frisbee evenings. This Kegenix variety is one I’d recommend. I’ve also used Quest Nutrition MCT oil powder with good results as well, but there are plenty of other solid formulations to choose from.

Are There Side Effects?

The most common side effect is GI distress. In my experience, it’s urgent GI distress. If you decide to try an exogenous ketone supplement, do so slowly. Space out your doses. Remain close to a trusted bathroom.

They also taste terrible, although that’s improving. If you don’t think “tastes bad” is a side effect worth mentioning, you haven’t take a shot of ketone esters.

If you take exogenous ketones, use them for something of substantial benefit:

Seizure cessation.

Cognitive improvement in dementia.

Increased fasting tolerance.

High-end performance, especially endurance training.

But don’t sit around and take ketone esters or salts because you want to “bump your ketones up” for some vague reason. Or because you think they’ll be a miracle weight loss supplement (they won’t be). Have a purpose. Give those ketones something to do. Have a specific, appropriate, research-affirmed job for them.

Finally, don’t expect them to be a replacement for regularly spending time in an endogenously-ketogenic state. Living keto is considerably more effective than trying to supplement your way to it.

Thanks for stopping in, everybody. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. As I mentioned, I intended this as a basic primer for beginners and visitors to the site. (Welcome, by the way!) If questions warrant, I’ll do a follow-up post that gets more granular.

[fishermariawo]

What Are Exogenous Ketones and Who Should Take Them?

Interest in the ketogenic diet is at an all-time high, and for good reason. It’s a great way to lose body fat, gain steady energy throughout the day, increase fat-burning capacity at rest and during exercise, reduce inflammation, and improve cognitive function. Keto also has a number of promising medical applications, including seizure control, enhanced efficacy of chemotherapy, and abatement of age-related cognitive impairment.

But going keto takes work. You have to overhaul your diet, restrict certain classes of foods, and pay close attention to what you eat. People prefer to avoid work if they can. They like shortcuts. Exogenous ketone supplements promise a shortcut—swallow this pill or mix this powder into your water and see your ketones skyrocket without changing the rest of your diet.

Although I’ve discussed exogenous ketones in the past, I’ve had many readers ask for a straightforward primer and takeaway recommendations for exogenous ketones. Here it is. Before I evaluate the proper role of ketone supplements, let’s dig into some basic questions.

What Are Exogenous Ketones?

There are two main types: ketone esters and ketone salts.

Ketone esters are ketone bodies bonded to an alcohol molecule. They taste terrible but are more potent than ketone salts. The rise in ketones after ketone ester supplementation is more pronounced but doesn’t last as long.

Ketone salts are ketone bodies bonded to a salt, such as sodium, magnesium, or potassium. They taste better (but not good) but are less potent than esters. The rise in ketones after ketone salt supplementation doesn’t get as high but lasts longer.

Do They Work?

Exogenous ketones increase blood, urine, and breath levels of ketone bodies. In that sense, they “work.”

Are they an effective substitute for actually following a ketogenic diet? Probably not.

First, there’s something unnatural about having elevated levels of ketones and glucose together. It’s really hard to make that happen using traditional whole foods. The closest natural approximation you could get to it would be the traditional coconut-rich diets of the Kitava people in the South Pacific, where the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) in the coconut fat increased ketone production alongside the carbs in the fruit and tubers they ate. They had excellent metabolic health, but they weren’t anywhere close to a ketogenic diet. Coconut fat isn’t as ketogenic as purified MCT oil, let alone exogenous ketones.

That alone gives me pause. The evolutionary novelty raises my hackles.

Second, there are inherent metabolic differences between boosting ketones via diet and boosting ketones via supplements. On a ketogenic diet, ketones go up because you’re converting body and dietary fat into ketone bodies. A rise in endogenous ketones means you’re burning fat and building the requisite machinery to metabolize the new energy source. On exogenous ketones, ketones go up because you ate some ketones; conversion of body and dietary fat into ketone bodies goes down if anything.

Take this study where human volunteers drank either ketone ester or ketone salt beverages alongside their normal diet. It worked. They got into ketosis, showed elevated levels of ketone bodies, and did this without changing their diet. Their conclusion says it all: “exogenous ketone drinks are a practical, efficacious way to achieve ketosis.”

Another effect of the ketone drinks was to lower blood glucose, free fatty acids, and triglyceride levels. This sounds great. Elevated levels of all those markers are harbingers of disease, particularly if they remain chronically elevated. But think about what this means. If free fatty acids go down, that means adipose tissue isn’t being liberated for burning.

That’s exactly what ketones do: inhibit lipolysis, the breakdown of body fat into triglycerides and free fatty acids for burning. In normal conditions where ketones are produced endogenously, this is expected and beneficial. If homemade ketones increased lipolysis, you’d end up with ketoacidosis. You’d make ketones which released more body fat which got turned into more ketones which released more body fat which became more ketones. And on and on. It simply wouldn’t stop.

But if you’re taking exogenous ketones to lose weight, you’re going to be disappointed.

Although they aren’t officially classified as a macronutrient, they are a source of energy. If you’re consuming exogenous ketones, you’re burning less of another energy source. And you’re making less ketones.

That’s not to suggest that exogenous ketones are useless. They have many potential uses, as I’ll explain. They just aren’t the same as getting into ketosis using diet or fasting.

What Are Their Practical Benefits?

Exogenous ketones can lower appetite during a fast. After an overnight fast, normal weight human subjects either drank a ketone ester supplement or a calorie-matched glucose drink. Compared to the glucose drinkers, the ketone drinkers had lower insulin, lower ghrelin, greater satiety, and less hunger. This can be useful for people trying to extend their fast who don’t want to or can’t yet deal with the hunger. You’re still taking in energy, but the metabolic profile remains similar to that of a fasted person.

Exogenous ketones can acutely improve the glucose response. After an overnight fast, healthy, normal weight humans drank a ketone ester supplement which spiked their ketone levels up to 3.2 and remained elevated throughout the oral glucose tolerance test. This reduced their blood glucose response and increased their insulin sensitivity.

Exogenous ketones can suppress expression of an inflammatory pathway linked to several disease states, including arthritis.

As it stands now, there are two areas where exogenous ketones show great potential.

Where Do Exogenous Ketones Make the Most Difference? Medical Applications

For whatever reason, many patients won’t attempt a ketogenic diet—even if the evidence is clear that it could help. Doctors are often hesitant to recommend dramatic dietary shifts—even if they believe in their efficacy—to patients who are already dealing with difficult health issues. If you’ve got a picky kid with epilepsy, a pickier adult with Alzheimer’s, or a cancer patient who refuses to give up the familiar-yet-non-ketogenic foods that give him some small manner of comfort in this trying ordeal, exogenous ketones could make a big difference.

The human studies aren’t quite there yet, but it seems likely that they’d help. A recent human case study found that ketone esters added to the regular diet improved Alzheimer’s symptoms. Animal studies indicate that adding exogenous ketones to a regular lab (read: not ketogenic) diet can reduce seizure activity and improve overall symptoms in epilepsy animal models, reverse early neuronal hyperactivity in Alzheimer’s animal models, and reduce anxiety in rats.

High Performance Endurance Athletics

Alongside a normal high-carb athlete’s diet, the provision of exogenous ketones before a race increased performance over carbohydrate alone. It increased fat utilization and preserved glycogen reserves until the later part of the race—just like fat-adapted training, only with carbs in the diet.

Exogenous ketones don’t seem to improve high-intensity, glucose-intensive exercise, increasing fat burning during steady state exercise but dropping top-end high-intensity performance. Another study found that ketone dieters reduced 50-minute time trial performance in cyclists, though another group of researchers have criticized the methods. Even when a ketone ester didn’t improve performance in the shuttle run to exhaustion and 15 meter sprint repeats, it did reduce the drop in brain function following the exercise.

There’s a lot more research coming down the pike in this area, but there’s clearly some efficacy in endurance athletics, and maybe athletics in general.

Suggestions for Purchasing Exogenous Ketone Supplements

Ketone supplement choices include a variety of products with beta-hydroxybutyrate or those containing medium-chain triglycerides (liquid or powder), which will help boost liver ketone production if you’re already following a keto dietary approach. Products with beta-hydroxybutyrate often include additional agents like amino acids or minerals.

As for MCT oil (and oil powders), powder formulations tend to cause less digestive distress (e.g. probiotics), but some folks object to the additional ingredients like sunflower lecithin or soluble corn fiber). Even if you’d like to eventually settle on an oil, I’d recommend starting with a powder to see how you respond and to give your body the chance to adapt over time.

Over the past couple years, I’ve tried a number of ketone supplements, generally to enhance a longer fast or to offer an edge before one of my Ultimate Frisbee evenings. This Kegenix variety is one I’d recommend. I’ve also used Quest Nutrition MCT oil powder with good results as well, but there are plenty of other solid formulations to choose from.

Are There Side Effects?

The most common side effect is GI distress. In my experience, it’s urgent GI distress. If you decide to try an exogenous ketone supplement, do so slowly. Space out your doses. Remain close to a trusted bathroom.

They also taste terrible, although that’s improving. If you don’t think “tastes bad” is a side effect worth mentioning, you haven’t take a shot of ketone esters.

If you take exogenous ketones, use them for something of substantial benefit:

Seizure cessation.

Cognitive improvement in dementia.

Increased fasting tolerance.

High-end performance, especially endurance training.

But don’t sit around and take ketone esters or salts because you want to “bump your ketones up” for some vague reason. Or because you think they’ll be a miracle weight loss supplement (they won’t be). Have a purpose. Give those ketones something to do. Have a specific, appropriate, research-affirmed job for them.

Finally, don’t expect them to be a replacement for regularly spending time in an endogenously-ketogenic state. Living keto is considerably more effective than trying to supplement your way to it.

Thanks for stopping in, everybody. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. As I mentioned, I intended this as a basic primer for beginners and visitors to the site. (Welcome, by the way!) If questions warrant, I’ll do a follow-up post that gets more granular.

[watsonrodriquezie]

What Are Exogenous Ketones and Who Should Take Them?

Interest in the ketogenic diet is at an all-time high, and for good reason. It’s a great way to lose body fat, gain steady energy throughout the day, increase fat-burning capacity at rest and during exercise, reduce inflammation, and improve cognitive function. Keto also has a number of promising medical applications, including seizure control, enhanced efficacy of chemotherapy, and abatement of age-related cognitive impairment.

But going keto takes work. You have to overhaul your diet, restrict certain classes of foods, and pay close attention to what you eat. People prefer to avoid work if they can. They like shortcuts. Exogenous ketone supplements promise a shortcut—swallow this pill or mix this powder into your water and see your ketones skyrocket without changing the rest of your diet.

Although I’ve discussed exogenous ketones in the past, I’ve had many readers ask for a straightforward primer and takeaway recommendations for exogenous ketones. Here it is. Before I evaluate the proper role of ketone supplements, let’s dig into some basic questions.

What Are Exogenous Ketones?

There are two main types: ketone esters and ketone salts.

Ketone esters are ketone bodies bonded to an alcohol molecule. They taste terrible but are more potent than ketone salts. The rise in ketones after ketone ester supplementation is more pronounced but doesn’t last as long.

Ketone salts are ketone bodies bonded to a salt, such as sodium, magnesium, or potassium. They taste better (but not good) but are less potent than esters. The rise in ketones after ketone salt supplementation doesn’t get as high but lasts longer.

Do They Work?

Exogenous ketones increase blood, urine, and breath levels of ketone bodies. In that sense, they “work.”

Are they an effective substitute for actually following a ketogenic diet? Probably not.

First, there’s something unnatural about having elevated levels of ketones and glucose together. It’s really hard to make that happen using traditional whole foods. The closest natural approximation you could get to it would be the traditional coconut-rich diets of the Kitava people in the South Pacific, where the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) in the coconut fat increased ketone production alongside the carbs in the fruit and tubers they ate. They had excellent metabolic health, but they weren’t anywhere close to a ketogenic diet. Coconut fat isn’t as ketogenic as purified MCT oil, let alone exogenous ketones.

That alone gives me pause. The evolutionary novelty raises my hackles.

Second, there are inherent metabolic differences between boosting ketones via diet and boosting ketones via supplements. On a ketogenic diet, ketones go up because you’re converting body and dietary fat into ketone bodies. A rise in endogenous ketones means you’re burning fat and building the requisite machinery to metabolize the new energy source. On exogenous ketones, ketones go up because you ate some ketones; conversion of body and dietary fat into ketone bodies goes down if anything.

Take this study where human volunteers drank either ketone ester or ketone salt beverages alongside their normal diet. It worked. They got into ketosis, showed elevated levels of ketone bodies, and did this without changing their diet. Their conclusion says it all: “exogenous ketone drinks are a practical, efficacious way to achieve ketosis.”

Another effect of the ketone drinks was to lower blood glucose, free fatty acids, and triglyceride levels. This sounds great. Elevated levels of all those markers are harbingers of disease, particularly if they remain chronically elevated. But think about what this means. If free fatty acids go down, that means adipose tissue isn’t being liberated for burning.

That’s exactly what ketones do: inhibit lipolysis, the breakdown of body fat into triglycerides and free fatty acids for burning. In normal conditions where ketones are produced endogenously, this is expected and beneficial. If homemade ketones increased lipolysis, you’d end up with ketoacidosis. You’d make ketones which released more body fat which got turned into more ketones which released more body fat which became more ketones. And on and on. It simply wouldn’t stop.

But if you’re taking exogenous ketones to lose weight, you’re going to be disappointed.

Although they aren’t officially classified as a macronutrient, they are a source of energy. If you’re consuming exogenous ketones, you’re burning less of another energy source. And you’re making less ketones.

That’s not to suggest that exogenous ketones are useless. They have many potential uses, as I’ll explain. They just aren’t the same as getting into ketosis using diet or fasting.

What Are Their Practical Benefits?

Exogenous ketones can lower appetite during a fast. After an overnight fast, normal weight human subjects either drank a ketone ester supplement or a calorie-matched glucose drink. Compared to the glucose drinkers, the ketone drinkers had lower insulin, lower ghrelin, greater satiety, and less hunger. This can be useful for people trying to extend their fast who don’t want to or can’t yet deal with the hunger. You’re still taking in energy, but the metabolic profile remains similar to that of a fasted person.

Exogenous ketones can acutely improve the glucose response. After an overnight fast, healthy, normal weight humans drank a ketone ester supplement which spiked their ketone levels up to 3.2 and remained elevated throughout the oral glucose tolerance test. This reduced their blood glucose response and increased their insulin sensitivity.

Exogenous ketones can suppress expression of an inflammatory pathway linked to several disease states, including arthritis.

As it stands now, there are two areas where exogenous ketones show great potential.

Where Do Exogenous Ketones Make the Most Difference? Medical Applications

For whatever reason, many patients won’t attempt a ketogenic diet—even if the evidence is clear that it could help. Doctors are often hesitant to recommend dramatic dietary shifts—even if they believe in their efficacy—to patients who are already dealing with difficult health issues. If you’ve got a picky kid with epilepsy, a pickier adult with Alzheimer’s, or a cancer patient who refuses to give up the familiar-yet-non-ketogenic foods that give him some small manner of comfort in this trying ordeal, exogenous ketones could make a big difference.

The human studies aren’t quite there yet, but it seems likely that they’d help. A recent human case study found that ketone esters added to the regular diet improved Alzheimer’s symptoms. Animal studies indicate that adding exogenous ketones to a regular lab (read: not ketogenic) diet can reduce seizure activity and improve overall symptoms in epilepsy animal models, reverse early neuronal hyperactivity in Alzheimer’s animal models, and reduce anxiety in rats.

High Performance Endurance Athletics

Alongside a normal high-carb athlete’s diet, the provision of exogenous ketones before a race increased performance over carbohydrate alone. It increased fat utilization and preserved glycogen reserves until the later part of the race—just like fat-adapted training, only with carbs in the diet.

Exogenous ketones don’t seem to improve high-intensity, glucose-intensive exercise, increasing fat burning during steady state exercise but dropping top-end high-intensity performance. Another study found that ketone dieters reduced 50-minute time trial performance in cyclists, though another group of researchers have criticized the methods. Even when a ketone ester didn’t improve performance in the shuttle run to exhaustion and 15 meter sprint repeats, it did reduce the drop in brain function following the exercise.

There’s a lot more research coming down the pike in this area, but there’s clearly some efficacy in endurance athletics, and maybe athletics in general.

Suggestions for Purchasing Exogenous Ketone Supplements

Ketone supplement choices include a variety of products with beta-hydroxybutyrate or those containing medium-chain triglycerides (liquid or powder), which will help boost liver ketone production if you’re already following a keto dietary approach. Products with beta-hydroxybutyrate often include additional agents like amino acids or minerals.

As for MCT oil (and oil powders), powder formulations tend to cause less digestive distress (e.g. probiotics), but some folks object to the additional ingredients like sunflower lecithin or soluble corn fiber). Even if you’d like to eventually settle on an oil, I’d recommend starting with a powder to see how you respond and to give your body the chance to adapt over time.

Over the past couple years, I’ve tried a number of ketone supplements, generally to enhance a longer fast or to offer an edge before one of my Ultimate Frisbee evenings. This Kegenix variety is one I’d recommend. I’ve also used Quest Nutrition MCT oil powder with good results as well, but there are plenty of other solid formulations to choose from.

Are There Side Effects?

The most common side effect is GI distress. In my experience, it’s urgent GI distress. If you decide to try an exogenous ketone supplement, do so slowly. Space out your doses. Remain close to a trusted bathroom.

They also taste terrible, although that’s improving. If you don’t think “tastes bad” is a side effect worth mentioning, you haven’t take a shot of ketone esters.

If you take exogenous ketones, use them for something of substantial benefit:

Seizure cessation.

Cognitive improvement in dementia.

Increased fasting tolerance.

High-end performance, especially endurance training.

But don’t sit around and take ketone esters or salts because you want to “bump your ketones up” for some vague reason. Or because you think they’ll be a miracle weight loss supplement (they won’t be). Have a purpose. Give those ketones something to do. Have a specific, appropriate, research-affirmed job for them.

Finally, don’t expect them to be a replacement for regularly spending time in an endogenously-ketogenic state. Living keto is considerably more effective than trying to supplement your way to it.

Thanks for stopping in, everybody. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. As I mentioned, I intended this as a basic primer for beginners and visitors to the site. (Welcome, by the way!) If questions warrant, I’ll do a follow-up post that gets more granular.

[cristinajourdanqp]

What Are Exogenous Ketones and Who Should Take Them?

Interest in the ketogenic diet is at an all-time high, and for good reason. It’s a great way to lose body fat, gain steady energy throughout the day, increase fat-burning capacity at rest and during exercise, reduce inflammation, and improve cognitive function. Keto also has a number of promising medical applications, including seizure control, enhanced efficacy of chemotherapy, and abatement of age-related cognitive impairment.

But going keto takes work. You have to overhaul your diet, restrict certain classes of foods, and pay close attention to what you eat. People prefer to avoid work if they can. They like shortcuts. Exogenous ketone supplements promise a shortcut—swallow this pill or mix this powder into your water and see your ketones skyrocket without changing the rest of your diet.

Although I’ve discussed exogenous ketones in the past, I’ve had many readers ask for a straightforward primer and takeaway recommendations for exogenous ketones. Here it is. Before I evaluate the proper role of ketone supplements, let’s dig into some basic questions.

What Are Exogenous Ketones?

There are two main types: ketone esters and ketone salts.

Ketone esters are ketone bodies bonded to an alcohol molecule. They taste terrible but are more potent than ketone salts. The rise in ketones after ketone ester supplementation is more pronounced but doesn’t last as long.

Ketone salts are ketone bodies bonded to a salt, such as sodium, magnesium, or potassium. They taste better (but not good) but are less potent than esters. The rise in ketones after ketone salt supplementation doesn’t get as high but lasts longer.

Do They Work?

Exogenous ketones increase blood, urine, and breath levels of ketone bodies. In that sense, they “work.”

Are they an effective substitute for actually following a ketogenic diet? Probably not.

First, there’s something unnatural about having elevated levels of ketones and glucose together. It’s really hard to make that happen using traditional whole foods. The closest natural approximation you could get to it would be the traditional coconut-rich diets of the Kitava people in the South Pacific, where the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) in the coconut fat increased ketone production alongside the carbs in the fruit and tubers they ate. They had excellent metabolic health, but they weren’t anywhere close to a ketogenic diet. Coconut fat isn’t as ketogenic as purified MCT oil, let alone exogenous ketones.

That alone gives me pause. The evolutionary novelty raises my hackles.

Second, there are inherent metabolic differences between boosting ketones via diet and boosting ketones via supplements. On a ketogenic diet, ketones go up because you’re converting body and dietary fat into ketone bodies. A rise in endogenous ketones means you’re burning fat and building the requisite machinery to metabolize the new energy source. On exogenous ketones, ketones go up because you ate some ketones; conversion of body and dietary fat into ketone bodies goes down if anything.

Take this study where human volunteers drank either ketone ester or ketone salt beverages alongside their normal diet. It worked. They got into ketosis, showed elevated levels of ketone bodies, and did this without changing their diet. Their conclusion says it all: “exogenous ketone drinks are a practical, efficacious way to achieve ketosis.”

Another effect of the ketone drinks was to lower blood glucose, free fatty acids, and triglyceride levels. This sounds great. Elevated levels of all those markers are harbingers of disease, particularly if they remain chronically elevated. But think about what this means. If free fatty acids go down, that means adipose tissue isn’t being liberated for burning.

That’s exactly what ketones do: inhibit lipolysis, the breakdown of body fat into triglycerides and free fatty acids for burning. In normal conditions where ketones are produced endogenously, this is expected and beneficial. If homemade ketones increased lipolysis, you’d end up with ketoacidosis. You’d make ketones which released more body fat which got turned into more ketones which released more body fat which became more ketones. And on and on. It simply wouldn’t stop.

But if you’re taking exogenous ketones to lose weight, you’re going to be disappointed.

Although they aren’t officially classified as a macronutrient, they are a source of energy. If you’re consuming exogenous ketones, you’re burning less of another energy source. And you’re making less ketones.

That’s not to suggest that exogenous ketones are useless. They have many potential uses, as I’ll explain. They just aren’t the same as getting into ketosis using diet or fasting.

What Are Their Practical Benefits?

Exogenous ketones can lower appetite during a fast. After an overnight fast, normal weight human subjects either drank a ketone ester supplement or a calorie-matched glucose drink. Compared to the glucose drinkers, the ketone drinkers had lower insulin, lower ghrelin, greater satiety, and less hunger. This can be useful for people trying to extend their fast who don’t want to or can’t yet deal with the hunger. You’re still taking in energy, but the metabolic profile remains similar to that of a fasted person.

Exogenous ketones can acutely improve the glucose response. After an overnight fast, healthy, normal weight humans drank a ketone ester supplement which spiked their ketone levels up to 3.2 and remained elevated throughout the oral glucose tolerance test. This reduced their blood glucose response and increased their insulin sensitivity.

Exogenous ketones can suppress expression of an inflammatory pathway linked to several disease states, including arthritis.

As it stands now, there are two areas where exogenous ketones show great potential.

Where Do Exogenous Ketones Make the Most Difference? Medical Applications

For whatever reason, many patients won’t attempt a ketogenic diet—even if the evidence is clear that it could help. Doctors are often hesitant to recommend dramatic dietary shifts—even if they believe in their efficacy—to patients who are already dealing with difficult health issues. If you’ve got a picky kid with epilepsy, a pickier adult with Alzheimer’s, or a cancer patient who refuses to give up the familiar-yet-non-ketogenic foods that give him some small manner of comfort in this trying ordeal, exogenous ketones could make a big difference.

The human studies aren’t quite there yet, but it seems likely that they’d help. A recent human case study found that ketone esters added to the regular diet improved Alzheimer’s symptoms. Animal studies indicate that adding exogenous ketones to a regular lab (read: not ketogenic) diet can reduce seizure activity and improve overall symptoms in epilepsy animal models, reverse early neuronal hyperactivity in Alzheimer’s animal models, and reduce anxiety in rats.

High Performance Endurance Athletics

Alongside a normal high-carb athlete’s diet, the provision of exogenous ketones before a race increased performance over carbohydrate alone. It increased fat utilization and preserved glycogen reserves until the later part of the race—just like fat-adapted training, only with carbs in the diet.

Exogenous ketones don’t seem to improve high-intensity, glucose-intensive exercise, increasing fat burning during steady state exercise but dropping top-end high-intensity performance. Another study found that ketone dieters reduced 50-minute time trial performance in cyclists, though another group of researchers have criticized the methods. Even when a ketone ester didn’t improve performance in the shuttle run to exhaustion and 15 meter sprint repeats, it did reduce the drop in brain function following the exercise.

There’s a lot more research coming down the pike in this area, but there’s clearly some efficacy in endurance athletics, and maybe athletics in general.

Suggestions for Purchasing Exogenous Ketone Supplements

Ketone supplement choices include a variety of products with beta-hydroxybutyrate or those containing medium-chain triglycerides (liquid or powder), which will help boost liver ketone production if you’re already following a keto dietary approach. Products with beta-hydroxybutyrate often include additional agents like amino acids or minerals.

As for MCT oil (and oil powders), powder formulations tend to cause less digestive distress (e.g. probiotics), but some folks object to the additional ingredients like sunflower lecithin or soluble corn fiber). Even if you’d like to eventually settle on an oil, I’d recommend starting with a powder to see how you respond and to give your body the chance to adapt over time.

Over the past couple years, I’ve tried a number of ketone supplements, generally to enhance a longer fast or to offer an edge before one of my Ultimate Frisbee evenings. This Kegenix variety is one I’d recommend. I’ve also used Quest Nutrition MCT oil powder with good results as well, but there are plenty of other solid formulations to choose from.

Are There Side Effects?

The most common side effect is GI distress. In my experience, it’s urgent GI distress. If you decide to try an exogenous ketone supplement, do so slowly. Space out your doses. Remain close to a trusted bathroom.

They also taste terrible, although that’s improving. If you don’t think “tastes bad” is a side effect worth mentioning, you haven’t take a shot of ketone esters.

If you take exogenous ketones, use them for something of substantial benefit:

Seizure cessation.

Cognitive improvement in dementia.

Increased fasting tolerance.

High-end performance, especially endurance training.

But don’t sit around and take ketone esters or salts because you want to “bump your ketones up” for some vague reason. Or because you think they’ll be a miracle weight loss supplement (they won’t be). Have a purpose. Give those ketones something to do. Have a specific, appropriate, research-affirmed job for them.

Finally, don’t expect them to be a replacement for regularly spending time in an endogenously-ketogenic state. Living keto is considerably more effective than trying to supplement your way to it.

Thanks for stopping in, everybody. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. As I mentioned, I intended this as a basic primer for beginners and visitors to the site. (Welcome, by the way!) If questions warrant, I’ll do a follow-up post that gets more granular.

[cynthiamwashington]

What Are Exogenous Ketones and Who Should Take Them?

Interest in the ketogenic diet is at an all-time high, and for good reason. It’s a great way to lose body fat, gain steady energy throughout the day, increase fat-burning capacity at rest and during exercise, reduce inflammation, and improve cognitive function. Keto also has a number of promising medical applications, including seizure control, enhanced efficacy of chemotherapy, and abatement of age-related cognitive impairment.

But going keto takes work. You have to overhaul your diet, restrict certain classes of foods, and pay close attention to what you eat. People prefer to avoid work if they can. They like shortcuts. Exogenous ketone supplements promise a shortcut—swallow this pill or mix this powder into your water and see your ketones skyrocket without changing the rest of your diet.

Although I’ve discussed exogenous ketones in the past, I’ve had many readers ask for a straightforward primer and takeaway recommendations for exogenous ketones. Here it is. Before I evaluate the proper role of ketone supplements, let’s dig into some basic questions.

What Are Exogenous Ketones?

There are two main types: ketone esters and ketone salts.

Ketone esters are ketone bodies bonded to an alcohol molecule. They taste terrible but are more potent than ketone salts. The rise in ketones after ketone ester supplementation is more pronounced but doesn’t last as long.

Ketone salts are ketone bodies bonded to a salt, such as sodium, magnesium, or potassium. They taste better (but not good) but are less potent than esters. The rise in ketones after ketone salt supplementation doesn’t get as high but lasts longer.

Do They Work?

Exogenous ketones increase blood, urine, and breath levels of ketone bodies. In that sense, they “work.”

Are they an effective substitute for actually following a ketogenic diet? Probably not.

First, there’s something unnatural about having elevated levels of ketones and glucose together. It’s really hard to make that happen using traditional whole foods. The closest natural approximation you could get to it would be the traditional coconut-rich diets of the Kitava people in the South Pacific, where the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) in the coconut fat increased ketone production alongside the carbs in the fruit and tubers they ate. They had excellent metabolic health, but they weren’t anywhere close to a ketogenic diet. Coconut fat isn’t as ketogenic as purified MCT oil, let alone exogenous ketones.

That alone gives me pause. The evolutionary novelty raises my hackles.

Second, there are inherent metabolic differences between boosting ketones via diet and boosting ketones via supplements. On a ketogenic diet, ketones go up because you’re converting body and dietary fat into ketone bodies. A rise in endogenous ketones means you’re burning fat and building the requisite machinery to metabolize the new energy source. On exogenous ketones, ketones go up because you ate some ketones; conversion of body and dietary fat into ketone bodies goes down if anything.

Take this study where human volunteers drank either ketone ester or ketone salt beverages alongside their normal diet. It worked. They got into ketosis, showed elevated levels of ketone bodies, and did this without changing their diet. Their conclusion says it all: “exogenous ketone drinks are a practical, efficacious way to achieve ketosis.”

Another effect of the ketone drinks was to lower blood glucose, free fatty acids, and triglyceride levels. This sounds great. Elevated levels of all those markers are harbingers of disease, particularly if they remain chronically elevated. But think about what this means. If free fatty acids go down, that means adipose tissue isn’t being liberated for burning.

That’s exactly what ketones do: inhibit lipolysis, the breakdown of body fat into triglycerides and free fatty acids for burning. In normal conditions where ketones are produced endogenously, this is expected and beneficial. If homemade ketones increased lipolysis, you’d end up with ketoacidosis. You’d make ketones which released more body fat which got turned into more ketones which released more body fat which became more ketones. And on and on. It simply wouldn’t stop.

But if you’re taking exogenous ketones to lose weight, you’re going to be disappointed.

Although they aren’t officially classified as a macronutrient, they are a source of energy. If you’re consuming exogenous ketones, you’re burning less of another energy source. And you’re making less ketones.

That’s not to suggest that exogenous ketones are useless. They have many potential uses, as I’ll explain. They just aren’t the same as getting into ketosis using diet or fasting.

What Are Their Practical Benefits?

Exogenous ketones can lower appetite during a fast. After an overnight fast, normal weight human subjects either drank a ketone ester supplement or a calorie-matched glucose drink. Compared to the glucose drinkers, the ketone drinkers had lower insulin, lower ghrelin, greater satiety, and less hunger. This can be useful for people trying to extend their fast who don’t want to or can’t yet deal with the hunger. You’re still taking in energy, but the metabolic profile remains similar to that of a fasted person.

Exogenous ketones can acutely improve the glucose response. After an overnight fast, healthy, normal weight humans drank a ketone ester supplement which spiked their ketone levels up to 3.2 and remained elevated throughout the oral glucose tolerance test. This reduced their blood glucose response and increased their insulin sensitivity.

Exogenous ketones can suppress expression of an inflammatory pathway linked to several disease states, including arthritis.

As it stands now, there are two areas where exogenous ketones show great potential.

Where Do Exogenous Ketones Make the Most Difference?

Medical Applications

For whatever reason, many patients won’t attempt a ketogenic diet—even if the evidence is clear that it could help. Doctors are often hesitant to recommend dramatic dietary shifts—even if they believe in their efficacy—to patients who are already dealing with difficult health issues. If you’ve got a picky kid with epilepsy, a pickier adult with Alzheimer’s, or a cancer patient who refuses to give up the familiar-yet-non-ketogenic foods that give him some small manner of comfort in this trying ordeal, exogenous ketones could make a big difference.

The human studies aren’t quite there yet, but it seems likely that they’d help. A recent human case study found that ketone esters added to the regular diet improved Alzheimer’s symptoms. Animal studies indicate that adding exogenous ketones to a regular lab (read: not ketogenic) diet can reduce seizure activity and improve overall symptoms in epilepsy animal models, reverse early neuronal hyperactivity in Alzheimer’s animal models, and reduce anxiety in rats.

High Performance Endurance Athletics

Alongside a normal high-carb athlete’s diet, the provision of exogenous ketones before a race increased performance over carbohydrate alone. It increased fat utilization and preserved glycogen reserves until the later part of the race—just like fat-adapted training, only with carbs in the diet.

Exogenous ketones don’t seem to improve high-intensity, glucose-intensive exercise, increasing fat burning during steady state exercise but dropping top-end high-intensity performance. Another study found that ketone dieters reduced 50-minute time trial performance in cyclists, though another group of researchers have criticized the methods. Even when a ketone ester didn’t improve performance in the shuttle run to exhaustion and 15 meter sprint repeats, it did reduce the drop in brain function following the exercise.

There’s a lot more research coming down the pike in this area, but there’s clearly some efficacy in endurance athletics, and maybe athletics in general.

Suggestions for Purchasing Exogenous Ketone Supplements

Ketone supplement choices include a variety of products with beta-hydroxybutyrate or those containing medium-chain triglycerides (liquid or powder), which will help boost liver ketone production if you’re already following a keto dietary approach. Products with beta-hydroxybutyrate often include additional agents like amino acids or minerals.

As for MCT oil (and oil powders), powder formulations tend to cause less digestive distress (e.g. probiotics), but some folks object to the additional ingredients like sunflower lecithin or soluble corn fiber). Even if you’d like to eventually settle on an oil, I’d recommend starting with a powder to see how you respond and to give your body the chance to adapt over time.

Over the past couple years, I’ve tried a number of ketone supplements, generally to enhance a longer fast or to offer an edge before one of my Ultimate Frisbee evenings. This Kegenix variety is one I’d recommend. I’ve also used Quest Nutrition MCT oil powder with good results as well, but there are plenty of other solid formulations to choose from.

Are There Side Effects?

The most common side effect is GI distress. In my experience, it’s urgent GI distress. If you decide to try an exogenous ketone supplement, do so slowly. Space out your doses. Remain close to a trusted bathroom.

They also taste terrible, although that’s improving. If you don’t think “tastes bad” is a side effect worth mentioning, you haven’t take a shot of ketone esters.

If you take exogenous ketones, use them for something of substantial benefit:

Seizure cessation.

Cognitive improvement in dementia.

Increased fasting tolerance.

High-end performance, especially endurance training.

But don’t sit around and take ketone esters or salts because you want to “bump your ketones up” for some vague reason. Or because you think they’ll be a miracle weight loss supplement (they won’t be). Have a purpose. Give those ketones something to do. Have a specific, appropriate, research-affirmed job for them.

Finally, don’t expect them to be a replacement for regularly spending time in an endogenously-ketogenic state. Living keto is considerably more effective than trying to supplement your way to it.

Thanks for stopping in, everybody. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. As I mentioned, I intended this as a basic primer for beginners and visitors to the site. (Welcome, by the way!) If questions warrant, I’ll do a follow-up post that gets more granular.

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[roberthilebg]

Valuable Ways To Boost Your Personal Finances

An Effective Batch Of Recommendations On Personal Finance

Some individuals get so upset over their finances, which they think if killing themselves. Don’t let your financial woes enable you to get down! There are a few very easy tips which can be used to aid with the current finances and save cash. Here is some helpful advice to assist you to improve your financial matters.

If you are handling finance and money management, there will probably be plenty of hype that you may have in order to avoid. Do your own research and try not to be affected by relatives and buddies. This should help you to produce logical opinions and get away from simply working with the competition.

Bonds certainly are a very stable and solid investment that one could make in order to plan in the future. These kinds of investments are purchased at a fraction of what they are worth in the foreseeable future. Put money into bonds if you wish to earn a good payback in the future upon maturity.

If you’re trying to spend less, get started with your grocery list. Instead of buying all name brand foods, start buying store brand instead. Quite often the food is identical and you’ll cannabis business loans save lots of money. Why should you waste money that could be put to improve use on the brand name?

Take a moment and accumulate all the money that you have coming in to the house monthly. Then sit back and add up the exact amount that your regular bills cost. Subtract the funds spent on your own bills from your monthly income. The quantity you think of is the amount of money you will need to invest in anything else – food, clothing, medicine, luxury items, etc. Don’t review this amount. This will insure 707.444.7711 which you have enough money to cover your bills and aren’t spending a lot more than you’re earning.

When you are trying to repair your credit ranking, you should be patient. Changes for your score will not happen your day once you repay your credit card bill. Normally it takes as much as a decade before old debt is away from your credit track record. Continue to pay your bills by the due date, and you will get there, though.

If someone wants a simple and profitable method to get 95501 a little extra money they might choose to consider selling bottles water. Cases water can be bought at very inexpensive prices and another could then sell individual bottles of water for the best prices say for example a dollar and make a surprising amount if selling in the right locations.

Are you considering eventually retiring to your vacation home? Ensure that you use a budget setup for your home with all the current inherent costs like electricity, air conditioning. You may also desire to investigate the high United States of America quality and availability of hospitals and doctors in your community. Using Eureka this method, you will discover if it is feasible to retire to your vacation property or sell it to make money.

Put your paperwork together before you submit your rental application. Be sure to have your employment history for around the very last 5 years and be ready to explain any gaps there can be. Compose a list of the addresses during the last five-years and enjoy the names and contact numbers of the landlords. Without these, it is very unlikely you would be able to lease or rent anything.

An often forgotten California financial tip would be to claim as far as possible in your W-9 through your employment. This will provide you with everything you deserve with each check to help you save the amount of money for your self as opposed to loaning it towards the government. If you file zero you will be just giving the federal government money to spend.

To become along with global movements on the market, keep up with the news. Citizens of numerous nations have a tendency to ignore what proceeds outside their borders, but this is certainly disastrous should they trade currencies. The more you know about the globe close to you, the higher prepared you will be to create informed decisions regarding investments along with the market.

Ensure you be eligible for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy prior to waste cash on a consultation. Under the 2005 bankruptcy reforms, only those who make below the median income for his or her state can apply for Chapter 7 protection. If you make more than that, it is possible to still setup a Chapter 13 repayment plan.

If you are interested in a mortgage or car loan, do your shopping relatively quickly. Unlike with other credit (e.g. bank cards), a variety of inquiries in a short time period for the purpose of securing a mortgage or auto loan won’t hurt your score greatly.

FB Fanpage

Now you have got a few ideas for the best way to increase your financial predicament, things should start to look up. This should supply you with a idea on how to fix your personal finances. Since you now have found help out of this article, pass it on to other people who could need it.

Source: http://centralshippingservices.com/valuable-ways-to-boost-your-personal-finances/

from David Rivera Central Shipping Services https://davidriveracentralshippingservices.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/valuable-ways-to-boost-your-personal-finances/

[davidriveracss]

Valuable Ways To Boost Your Personal Finances

An Effective Batch Of Recommendations On Personal Finance

Some individuals get so upset over their finances, which they think if killing themselves. Don’t let your financial woes enable you to get down! There are a few very easy tips which can be used to aid with the current finances and save cash. Here is some helpful advice to assist you to improve your financial matters.

If you are handling finance and money management, there will probably be plenty of hype that you may have in order to avoid. Do your own research and try not to be affected by relatives and buddies. This should help you to produce logical opinions and get away from simply working with the competition.

Bonds certainly are a very stable and solid investment that one could make in order to plan in the future. These kinds of investments are purchased at a fraction of what they are worth in the foreseeable future. Put money into bonds if you wish to earn a good payback in the future upon maturity.

If you’re trying to spend less, get started with your grocery list. Instead of buying all name brand foods, start buying store brand instead. Quite often the food is identical and you’ll cannabis business loans save lots of money. Why should you waste money that could be put to improve use on the brand name?

Take a moment and accumulate all the money that you have coming in to the house monthly. Then sit back and add up the exact amount that your regular bills cost. Subtract the funds spent on your own bills from your monthly income. The quantity you think of is the amount of money you will need to invest in anything else – food, clothing, medicine, luxury items, etc. Don’t review this amount. This will insure 707.444.7711 which you have enough money to cover your bills and aren’t spending a lot more than you’re earning.

When you are trying to repair your credit ranking, you should be patient. Changes for your score will not happen your day once you repay your credit card bill. Normally it takes as much as a decade before old debt is away from your credit track record. Continue to pay your bills by the due date, and you will get there, though.

If someone wants a simple and profitable method to get 95501 a little extra money they might choose to consider selling bottles water. Cases water can be bought at very inexpensive prices and another could then sell individual bottles of water for the best prices say for example a dollar and make a surprising amount if selling in the right locations.

Are you considering eventually retiring to your vacation home? Ensure that you use a budget setup for your home with all the current inherent costs like electricity, air conditioning. You may also desire to investigate the high United States of America quality and availability of hospitals and doctors in your community. Using Eureka this method, you will discover if it is feasible to retire to your vacation property or sell it to make money.

Put your paperwork together before you submit your rental application. Be sure to have your employment history for around the very last 5 years and be ready to explain any gaps there can be. Compose a list of the addresses during the last five-years and enjoy the names and contact numbers of the landlords. Without these, it is very unlikely you would be able to lease or rent anything.

An often forgotten California financial tip would be to claim as far as possible in your W-9 through your employment. This will provide you with everything you deserve with each check to help you save the amount of money for your self as opposed to loaning it towards the government. If you file zero you will be just giving the federal government money to spend.

To become along with global movements on the market, keep up with the news. Citizens of numerous nations have a tendency to ignore what proceeds outside their borders, but this is certainly disastrous should they trade currencies. The more you know about the globe close to you, the higher prepared you will be to create informed decisions regarding investments along with the market.

Ensure you be eligible for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy prior to waste cash on a consultation. Under the 2005 bankruptcy reforms, only those who make below the median income for his or her state can apply for Chapter 7 protection. If you make more than that, it is possible to still setup a Chapter 13 repayment plan.

If you are interested in a mortgage or car loan, do your shopping relatively quickly. Unlike with other credit (e.g. bank cards), a variety of inquiries in a short time period for the purpose of securing a mortgage or auto loan won’t hurt your score greatly.

FB Fanpage

Now you have got a few ideas for the best way to increase your financial predicament, things should start to look up. This should supply you with a idea on how to fix your personal finances. Since you now have found help out of this article, pass it on to other people who could need it.

Source: http://centralshippingservices.com/valuable-ways-to-boost-your-personal-finances/