Amazing, amazing feedback. Thank you so much for the insightful information regarding green and white tea. I’ll be sure to explore it more, and likely will write a chapter on it (crediting you, of course)! I’ll contact you now to introduce myself and learn more about your friend’s project in So-Cal. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help out.

If I absolutely need an energy kick, I drink green or white tea, whose leaves are fermented more lightly than black tea and thus have less caffeine. A tablespoonful of raw or buckwheat honey helps too if lack of focus comes from hunger or low blood sugar, as it provides a quick, digestible shot of carbohydrates that has an excellent ratio of fructose to glucose to helps efficient liver metabolization. Ancient Greek athletes are reported to have eaten honey to improve performance. I eat it plain, or with cinnamon or peanut butter on a lightly salted rice cake if I need a pick-me-up that won’t get me in a food coma by drawing all the blood to my stomach for digestion. Breakfast is usually oatmeal and fruit or some complex carbohydrate plus a little fat and protein and a glass of water.

I had fatigue problems, and my physician recommended taking 3 capsules (1000mg each) of purified fish oil with meals and 2 Vitamin D/Calcium supplements daily plus eating iron-rich foods along with vitamin C rich foods to ensure that my body absorbs the iron. Maintaining a good ratio of Omega-3:Omega-6 fatty acids is essential for brain health. Women need more Vitamin D than men do. It boosts energy levels, especially if one lives in an area with a long winter period. I try to eat plain yogurt or kefir to maintain digestive health because I wonder if a healthy digestive tract helps to maintain alertness. Doctors also recommend eating a light carb snack or skim milk before bed helps the body to fall asleep too. I’ve tried this for 23 days now (plus with diaphramatic breathing exercises), and my fatigue is almost gone. I’m sleeping 8 hours a night and waking up easily and the number of mid-afternoon power naps is almost zero.

You might want to check out the website http://www.whfoods.com (World’s Healthiest Foods). What I like about the site is that it posts foods that are not really exotic (stuff you can get in an average grocery store, and not those fancy organic grocery stores like I had in the Bay Area), and that it summarizes actual medical research (peer-reviewed journal articles) about these foods without being too gimmicky.

I’m really excited about this book…sorry that I’m flooding it with comments. My friend is located in SoCal, and he’s kind of working on a similar project. He was an operations engineer who is trying to develop a program of life skills, goal setting, and time management based on the idea of “doing” and “action” and renegotiating “habits” rather than escaping to “find” oneself.