HighLevelWardrobe

Here to show you how to have fun combining style pieces. I also post stuff I like plus other random stuff. Trying to transition into a I.T career

[Tanner Guzy @tannerguzy]

All the brand recommendations and insider knowledge does you no good if you don’t know how to cultivate your own style.

It’s like carrying around a dictionary but not knowing how to write.

[Cooking with Chris @coookwithchris]

DIGESTION:

How it works & the 10 best things you can do to optimize it

Proper digestion is vital for nutrient absorption, energy production, waste release and much more

The problem is, due to lifestyle, modern environment and lack of knowledge, poor digestion is very common

In this thread I’ll take a look at how it works and how you can improve it

Digestion is the process both mechanically and chemically breaking down food so it can be absorbed in the bloodstream.

It begins when the food enters your mouth and you begin to chew.

Your teeth start to grind down food into smaller parts and your saliva begins to digest starches & bind chewed food into a slippery bolus that easily slides through your esophagus.

No digestion actually occurs in the esophagus, but it will then enter the stomach for more mechanical and chemical breakdown.

Glands in the stomach lining make stomach acid and enzymes, and the muscles of your stomach mix the food with these digestive juices.

Your small intestine makes digestive juice and mixes with juices produced in the liver and pancreas to complete the breakdown of carbs, proteins and fat.

Bacteria in your large intestine then break down the remaining nutrients, synthesize vitamin K, and turn any waste products into stool.

As you can see, there is a lot that goes into digesting your food and turning it into nutrients that can be absorbed. If one part of the process is off, you will not be getting the most out of your food.

Your digestive system also plays a vital role in protecting your body from harmful substances.

“Leaky gut” is becoming extremely common, which is when small gaps in the intestinal walls allow harmful bacteria and toxins to be released into the blood stream. This can cause chronic inflammation.

The good news is there are many things that can be done to improve your digestion, and thus improve your nutrient absorption and overall health.

Here they are:

Eat real food

It sounds obvious, but the more processed foods and additives you consume, the harder it will be for your body to digest them. Many of these foods will cause gut inflammation and increase chance of leaky gut.

Manage stress

When you are stressed, your body doesn’t think you have time to rest or digest. Blood and energy are diverted away from your stomach during times of stress, negatively impacting your digestion.

Things like meditation & breath work, exercise, magnesium and theanine can all help during times of stress.

Probiotics

These beneficial bacteria help by breaking down indigestible fibers than can irritate the gut. Kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha, and kimchi are all great sources. Fermented foods also contain enzymes that help you break down food.

Bone broth & glutamine

The collagen and gelatin in bone broth as well glutamine supplementation can help repair the intestinal wall and therefore reducing risk of leaky gut.

Chew your food WELL and eat mindfully

I put these 2 together because they usually go hand in hand. In today’s modern environment, most people are scarfing down food quickly while scrolling through their phones or doing work on the computer.

The more you chew your food, the less work your stomach has to do and the easier it will be to break down the food.

Eating mindfully means taking your time, turning off the screens, and actually consciously eating, which is rare these days.

Stay hydrated but avoid drinking tons of water with food

Being hydrated with proper water & mineral intake is vital to make sure everything is flowing smoothly. Dehydration is a huge factor of constipation.

However, if you are chugging water with a meal, this can dilute stomach acid and digestive enzymes, making it harder to digest your food.

Fix your posture!

Poor posture can compress your organs, including the GI tract, resulting in poor digestion. Slouching can actually push stomach acid in the wrong direction, causing acid reflux.

Supplementing with digestive enzymes

If you are struggling with digestion, supplementing with digestive enzymes can help break down the carbs, proteins and fats. Papaya enzymes are a good, natural source.

Go for a quick walk after a meal

Not only will this help with digestion, it also prevents you from having a big glucose spike!

Ginger

Gingerol, a natural component of ginger root, benefits gastrointestinal motility. This is the rate at which food exits the stomach and continues along the digestive process. Eating ginger encourages efficient digestion.

There are many other things that contribute to good digestion including fiber intake, sunlight, exercise, apple cider vinegar, limiting alcohol and drug intake, eating healthy fats, and more!

Even if you are eating nutritious foods, you won’t be getting the most out them if you’re digestion is impaired. Make sure to focus on optimizing your digestion!

[HighLevelWardrobe @HiLevelWardrobe]

@WellBuiltStyle Goddamn that jacket is cleannn

[Pat Stedman | Dating & Relationship Coach for Men @Pat_Stedman]

There is an embarrassing obliviousness that older married generations, including many millennials, have of the current dating market that makes their opinions on "appropriate" male-female relationships hard to take seriously

Dating today bears no resemblance to dating pre-apps, and even little resemblance to dating pre-COVID. Norms are broken beyond comprehension. There are no standards or expectations. It's a transactional meat-market where every other person has painful insecurities & intimacy issues that causes them to shut down authentic human interaction the moment they feel any discomfort (aka actual feelings). Behavior that a decade ago would have been considered a red flag is now ubiquitous.

Many people talk about the problems of meeting the opposite sex today, and these are salient, but I honestly think the biggest issue is how broken and jaded people are by the culture. There is a spiritual sickness that has infected people. The reasons people end budding relationships today are far more petty and superficial than they ever were before - many of them don't even make sense, because they're rationalizations of their own anxieties. People don't trust each other, and perhaps even worse, they don't trust the future. Most don't even really believe deep down they will find love, because they don't feel they deserve it, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To give a sense of scale, although the tech of 2015 was far closer to the tech of today, dating then was far more similar in essence to dating in 2005 or 1995 (maybe even earlier) than it's been to dating now. I have witnessed this shift both personally and professionally and it is frankly terrifying

Moralizing about "what's appropriate" or "what you shouldn't do" doesn't do any good when everything is broken. It's like telling people to not to jaywalk when the city's under aerial bombardment. I don't know what kind of society can maintain any credibility when a solid quarter of its women are dating guy after guy without commitment for years on end. This is not a year or two of experimentation or figuring stuff out, it's mindless casual sex and short term situationships for easily a decade or more with all the resulting broken pair bonding. You cannot just tell men to settle down exclusively when this is what they are dealing with. The incentives simply aren't apparent; especially because these men are broken too - either by the curse of too many options, or too few

I am saying this mostly to warn the already hitched crowd: while I'm a big fan of marriage and monogamy and its merits, because of all the above it is losing it's cultural dominance. That doesn't mean that the institution is inherently flawed, or that it "doesn't work" (which is cope that single and bitter people say). But it DOES mean that it is unlikely to be considered as the only viable option soon, especially to the under 30 crowd who have seen what it's like when there are no guardrails around sexuality. Many have grown up with horrors normalized - they've seen too much, and you can't just put the genie back in the bottle

So be prepared. We are now 3 generations in from the pill and no-fault divorce, and the downstream civilizational effects have finally metastasized. Norms that were considered self-evident for decades if not centuries are going to retested from first principles. Do not blame the cohort coming up for being creative in their attempts to solve the problems your generations created

Their lived experience is different than yours, and accordingly so will be their reaction.

[NEXTA @nexta_tv]

A man traveled to Rabbit Island in Japan, and as soon as he stepped onto the ground, a crowd of animals appeared.

The local rabbits immediately came over to sniff him.

[WellBuiltStyle @WellBuiltStyle]

This is what having aesthetic range looks like.

You should be both men.

[HighLevelWardrobe @HiLevelWardrobe]

@WellBuiltStyle Gorgeous!

[X @XaviercMiller]

The Indian families I know who own gas stations pool money together with 6-12 adults in the family, they work 12-16 hour days & reinvest most of the profits to acquire businesses.

And the “why not stay in India?” point ignores that America offers things that people value more than lower cost of living. Things like scale, infrastructure, financing, legal protections, consumer spending power and long-term opportunity for their children.

[George Ferman @Helios_Movement]

Here's how to finally hack your ADHD (without doing meth).

Thread 🧵

[Andra @BioavailableNd]

Low stomach acid should be the priority when you have a low thyroid function. Low stomach acid can worsen thyroid because:
- poorer mineral absorption
- less protein breakdown
- poorer T3 conversion

[Autism Squared @Autism_Squared]

https://t.co/HMbDUPavyq

[Pay Roll Manager Here @UsingLyft]

He’s typing in a search bar, quick show him the search option he’s looking for.

Perfect. He typed the next letter that is also the next letter in the option we just showed him so take that option away and show him an option that doesn’t match at all

[HighLevelWardrobe @HiLevelWardrobe]

@CoachFHM I assumed one had to have a wider grip (especially if one had long limbs) than that to do t bar rows correctly. No wonder I have been having trouble. I was doing it wrong.

Thanks for the example Francis!

[Dean Turner @DeanTTraining]

This is a great example of a working set of Chest Supported T Bar Rows

- Elbows driving back
- Chest glued to pad
- Controlled but not needlessly slow eccentric
- Explosive but still under control concentric

This is how it’s done, folks

THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE

[HighLevelWardrobe @HiLevelWardrobe]

@DeanTTraining REALLY APPRECIATE THIS DEAN!

[HighLevelWardrobe @HiLevelWardrobe]

@DeanTTraining Do you have a form breakdown video on the chest supported t bar row? Tried looking for it on your account

[HighLevelWardrobe @HiLevelWardrobe]

@WellBuiltStyle That rugby polo is 🔥🔥🔥

[Cooking with Chris @coookwithchris]

What markers you should test for based on your symptoms:

Slow metabolism / weight you can't lose

-TSH, Free T3, Free T4, Reverse T3 (full thyroid panel — not just TSH)
-Fasting insulin + glucose
-HbA1c
-Cortisol (AM)
-Sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone)

Bloating, gas, irregular digestion

-GI-MAP stool test (pathogens, parasites, dysbiosis, inflammation markers)
-SIBO breath test (hydrogen + methane)
-Secretory IgA
-Zonulin (intestinal permeability)
-H. pylori antibodies

Skin issues (acne, eczema, rashes, dull skin)

-GI-MAP (gut-skin axis is real)
-Liver markers: ALT, AST, GGT
-Sex hormones (androgens especially for acne)
-Zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin D
-Food sensitivity panel (IgG)

Fatigue / low energy

-Full thyroid panel
-CBC (complete blood count)
-Iron, ferritin, TIBC
-B12 + folate
-Vitamin D
-Cortisol + DHEA-S
-Fasting glucose + insulin

Mood issues, anxiety, brain fog

-Thyroid (low T3 tanks mood fast)
-Cortisol + DHEA-S
-Sex hormones
-B12, folate, iron
-Omega-3 index
-GI-MAP (gut produces ~90% of your serotonin)

Inflammation

-hs-CRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein)
-Homocysteine
-Ferritin
-Fasting insulin + glucose
-Omega-3 index
-GI-MAP (gut inflammation drives systemic inflammation)

Most doctors run a basic panel and say everything's normal.

"Normal" doesn't mean optimal.

[Cooking with Chris @coookwithchris]

THYROID HEALTH and SIBO are deeply intertwined

If you have SIBO, your thyroid is involved.
If you have hypothyroidism, your gut is involved.

Here's how they're connected:

Absorption

Your thyroid needs certain nutrients to produce hormone and convert T4 (the inactive form) to T3 (the active form).

Selenium: required for the enzymes that convert T4 to T3
Zinc: needed for TSH production and T4 to T3 conversion
Iron: required for the enzyme that actually makes thyroid hormone
Tyrosine: the amino acid needed thyroid hormone itself
Iodine: the raw material for T4 and T3

When the gut is inflamed, overgrown, or damaged (leaky gut, SIBO, H. pylori, parasites, low stomach acid), absorption of these nutrients is much lower.

T4 to T3 Conversion

About 20% of T4 is converted to T3 in the gut, specifically by healthy gut bacteria. When the microbiome is disrupted, that conversion drops.

This is why people on T4-only medication (Levothyroxine, Synthroid) can still feel terrible despite normal TSH. Their gut isn't converting it properly, so they have plenty of inactive hormone and not enough active hormone.

Inflammation

Gut inflammation causes systemic inflammation. Inflammation directly suppress thyroid function in multiple ways:

-They reduce TSH output from the pituitary
-They block T4 to T3 conversion
-They increase reverse T3 (the inactive form of T3)
-They reduce thyroid hormone receptor sensitivity at the cell level

So even if you're producing thyroid hormone, you can't use it properly when gut inflammation is high.

Now getting into how thyroid affects gut health:

Slowed Motility

Your small intestine has a cleansing wave called the migrating motor complex (MMC). It sweeps through every 90 to 120 minutes between meals, pushing bacteria and leftover food debris down and out of the small intestine.

Thyroid hormone is needed for this to work effectively.
When thyroid is low, the MMC slows down. Instead of bacteria being swept out, they continue to colonize.

Studies have shown hypothyroid patients have significantly higher rates of SIBO than the general population.

Slow motility allows:

-Fungal overgrowth, usually Candida
-Methane overgrowth (archaea, which cause constipation-dominant SIBO)
-Parasites
-H. pylori

Low Stomach Acid

Thyroid hormone is required for the stomach to produce hydrochloric acid.

Stomach acid is your first line of defense against pathogens. When food comes in, HCl is supposed to kill the bacteria, fungus and parasites.

When stomach acid is low:

-Bacteria and fungi pass through alive and colonize further down
-Food doesn't break down properly, leaving undigested material that feeds overgrowths
-Protein digestion fails, which later starves the gut lining of repair materials
-The signal to release pancreatic enzymes and bile goes down

This is a huge cause of overgrowths.

Reduced Bile Flow

Bile is antimicrobial and helps keep the small intestine clean.

Thyroid hormone affects bile production in the liver and gallbladder motility.

Sluggish bile means:

-Less antimicrobial activity in the small intestine
-Poor fat digestion (which can cause nutrient deficiencies)
-Bile stagnation in the gallbladder
-Toxins that should be excreted get recirculated

This is why hypothyroid patients have gallbladder issues and why bile support is necessary for good gut protocol.

Immune Function in the Gut

The gut is the home to the immune system; it produces secretory IgA, which is your defense in the gut.

Thyroid hormone is required for proper immune function.

Low sIgA means the gut can't defend itself against pathogens, opportunistic bacteria, fungi, and parasites.

I see this on my clients labs all the time; low sIgA, multiple overgrowths, and thyroid issues all coming back.

Tissue Repair

The gut lining turns over every 3 to 5 days. Rapid cell turnover requires energy and raw materials.

Thyroid hormone drives metabolic rate. Low thyroid means slower cellular repair everywhere, including the gut lining.

So the damage caused by overgrowths heals more slowly, leaky gut persists longer and inflammation stays high.

Constipation

Low thyroid slows the large intestine too, not just the small intestine. This causes toxins and hormones to get reabsorbed.

This creates:
-More estrogen recirculation (worsens hormonal issues)
-More toxins
-A better environment for methane-producing organisms, which slow motility even more

To sum it up:

When your thyroid is low, your motility slows, your stomach acid drops, your bile gets sluggish, your gut immunity weakens, and your tissue repair slows down.

This creates the perfect environment for bacterial, fungal overgrowths to happen. Those overgrowths then cause inflammation, block nutrient absorption, and damage your gut lining.

Now your thyroid can't get the nutrients it needs, T4 to T3 conversion fails, and the immune system is compromised.

This is why you can't fix one without addressing the other.

You can kill the SIBO with a perfect protocol, but if the thyroid is still not functioning well, it can come right back.

And you can take thyroid medication, but if the gut is inflamed you won't absorb nutrients or convert hormones.

This is another example of how truly healing requires a COMPREHENSIVE and HOLISTIC approach. Isolating and treating individual symptoms rarely ever result in truly healing.

[Cooking with Chris @coookwithchris]

A Comprehensive Guide to Thyroid Health

One of the most important things for your overall health and metabolism

Here's what it does, key nutrients that support thyroid function, markers to test for with optimal ranges, and lifestyle factors that influence thyroid health: