Health

Limiting sleep to just 4-5 hours for one single night will drop levels of critical anti-cancer fighting cells, called natural killer cells, by 70%. That's a rather alarming state of immune deficiency, and it happens after just one night of short sleep.

Sleep scientist and author of "Why We Sleep

Every single process in the body, and every operation of the brain, is powerfully enhanced when we get sleep, and demonstrably impaired when we don't get enough sleep.

Sleep scientist and author of "Why We Sleep

It's a very precarious situation we're in right now; and the biproduct of our current policies is that a tidal wave of radioactive social problems is coming. I worry that we'll just repeat the mistakes of the past where drug addictions, drug related deaths, alcoholism and suicide spike out of control.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

What really characterises the experience of poverty is emotional stress. Stress is a natural human response to emotional strain, and whilst it can be useful in short doses as a catalyst, a motivator, a wake-up call, in the long term it can impact development, damage relationships and lead to self-defeating compulsive, addictive behaviours.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

Distraction is one of those epidemics that we didn't realise existed until quite recently. At a societal level, it's inevitable that our distraction will be impacting our ability to communicate with each other, and will lead to a lowering of focus and attention across our whole population.

It's disappointing to see the amount of people who choose to profit from the pain and self-consciousness of teenage girls without even thinking about it. If you are motivated to constantly talk about your image, your weight and to guide people through ridiculously unhealthy juice fasts- then you are already poison; you've drunk the kool-aid.

Actress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place

Tapping into these forgotten parts of the brain can be transformational for bipolar, for anxiety, fear, depression, PTSD and trauma. This is the part of the brain that is normally stimulated by opioids and cannabinoids; but imagine being able to consciously activate this part of your brain- to create euphoria whenever you need.

Extreme athlete known for ice exposure & breathing technique methods

By consciously and regularly going into the cold- I've learned how to tap into this primordial part of the brain; an area we've lost access to because of our destimulative behaviour. We need to get out into the cold, into the heat, and allow our brain to reconnect to these lost areas.

Extreme athlete known for ice exposure & breathing technique methods

Within each of us is a deep, complex network of capillaries, veins and arteries which extend a distance equivalent to more than 3 times the circumference of the Earth, and because our body has lost its conditioning to nature, our hearts have to pump 20-30 times a minute more than if we regularly exposed our body to cold water.

Extreme athlete known for ice exposure & breathing technique methods

We come from mammals, we are mammals… we're just mammals that wear clothes. We're destimulated – we don't feel the cold, the heat, everything in our environment – even though our physiology is built for it. We've allowed them to lose this fitness, to lose their conditioning – and so our hearts compensate.

Extreme athlete known for ice exposure & breathing technique methods

We're extraordinarily vulnerable to the functions of our heart, no other organ can cause sudden death.

Cardiologist and author of "Intern" and "Heart: A History

The heart is a fascinating machine. It beats 3 billion times in a typical human lifetime, consumes so much energy, and does so much work that if you attached a heart to a typical swimming pool – the heart would empty the pool in about a week.

Cardiologist and author of "Intern" and "Heart: A History

I grew up with a fear of the heart as an executioner of men in the prime of their lives.

Cardiologist and author of "Intern" and "Heart: A History

Growing up in Pakistan, I saw so many people with heart disease and having heart attacks – it felt almost biblical – it was catastrophic. Unlike a lot of diseases, there wasn't much a cultural footprint for heart disease – it's not something you hear about on news or TV shows.

Cardiologist and author specializing in heart disease and public health

I do not talk about life and death – I talk about birth and death, they are opposites, and life is simply a continuum of both, and you cannot have one without the other.

Wellness Entrepreneur & Author Promoting Mind-Body Medicine and Spirituality

For thousands of years, the religions, movements and philosophers of the various iterations of 'us' have espoused mindfulness as being an essential life-skill, bringing us from wherever we may be to the here and now- where we are at our most alive.

Founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program