The blog is my personal opinion, it does not represent VCU. Information here also does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your medical provider before making any changes to your diet or prescribed medicine. I have been observing how obesity is tightly linked to the degree a person is addicted to sugar, and in general, carbohydrates. When we think of addiction usually we think of it as other people’s problems. When we think of other people’s problems it is easy to judge them and say they cannot handle their addiction. Addiction to smoking, video games, cosmetics, shopping, Turkish dramas, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube Shorts.. These are all highly likely in our age. How can a person stay able to control his or her instincts to resist the temptation to feed more of the content that the body is craving? The only way out is to give less and less of it. For screen time, you can easily manage your time by adding screen time limits. Notice this will only work if you agree that you want and need to limit your time. Unexposed depression will present itself as addiction to watching things in an uncontrollable way, and in that case you cannot think of screen time. If you notice a pattern, might as well reach out for help. Therapy as preventive care will be covered most likely bu insurance. Can people be addicted to sugar, carbohydrates, salt, bread, crunchy food, rewarding sensations, or squishies? The list can go on and on. It appears we can get addicted to anything and when that happens we lose control. We do not notice when to stop, cannot interpret the satiety and hunger cues. We start eating for pleasure and not for the purpose of feeding our cells to generate ATP. What happens if all of a sudden you decide to remove an addiction from your life? Initially it hits hard, so you may choose to have some replacements or gradual removal. But for example, if you get used to no salt or less sugar, your taste buds can adjust. The cakes you could devour easily are now too sweet to swallow. The food can taste too salty if you get used to the reduced amount. Another aspect you can still feed yourself proteins and fats and they do not seem to make you addicted. They are harder to crave. They make you full faster and keep you full longer. I have a hypothesis that if people all of a sudden stop eating sugar (carbs), effortlessly they can slim down. The same logic is applied in many books including the "How to lose weight for the last time". Mostly because we regain the ability to sense and be in control. The cell types in the brain that respond to fasting are called Agrp neurons. Overnight fasting results in the highest number of genes changing expression in these cells. Guess what, this is my brilliant student Riya’s work, the response is a lot more pronounced in women. Maybe there is a disadvantage that women experience the satiety problems more deeply at least in a psychological perspective, but we also have an advantage to respond to fasting the best. There are famous books like The Hunger code, Fast Like a Girl, that I did not yet read -> pointing in this direction. The first chain that needs to be broken to break free of metabolic inflexibility is the PPARγ activation. This is the key to Metabolic Freedom as in Ben Azadi’s book. To get metabolic freedom you have to be able to fast. For my diabetic mom, fasting was not an option but she still wanted to get her metabolic freedom back. Because she did not like to be on a clock with medicine and snack times. She started slow and easy. The nighttime is already our longest fasting time. So we gradually added more time to her fasting by removing the evening snack, then evening pill, then stretching the breakfast to later hours over the course of 6 months. Along with exercise specifically focused on belly fat, she was able to get her metabolic freedom back. So it is doable! You can get unaddicted to sugar. And if this is making you obese, you will get back to overweight kg in a short time. The other angle that I should have mentioned is the genetics. You might have noticed it in your family. For us, my brother and I have inherited a different background of genetics than our sisters. Among my kids my older daughter is more like me than my younger daughter. My sister’s middle daughter is different from her siblings. You can put a name on it like “this person eats whatever they want and they are still skinny”. The answer is probably some up-regulated basal metabolism and not having a tendency to store the fat. Bummer, yeah. At this point I would be super curious to know what kind of genetic variant makeup is bringing such a difference. It can be quite complicated but to simplify you can think of some carbohydrate response elements acting differently. How could we know about our genetic variations? One person sequenced their genome for about $3000. Yes this is luxury, and we cannot afford it. Good news is you can enroll in a population genomics study like the All of Us and they will sequence it for you!! Now the next question becomes "Is it going to be safe and secure?". The answer is "We hope so". A good chunk of our discussions in BNFO 411 is on data security, privacy and re-identification risk. The risk is real and there should be additional efforts to help with protection. Nevertheless, you can obtain your genome and study it to find variants which can help you understand your body better!! What if you are still saying "I actually like sweets, I do not think I am addicted". I will invite you to think again. How much of your brain is already captured when this sentence is formed there? There could be an evolutionary advantage to picking sweets over savory things like poisonous mushrooms. But those days are long gone. The sweets we have in stores are also nowhere near the wild strawberries. Obesity is a hijacking problem. See if you can regain power in your kingdom. You can start by challenging your assumptions!

Today my son was asking me to give him examples of things we can know using all 5 senses. I had to think for a while. Something I can hear, taste, touch, smell and see. To satisfy all 5 senses it had to be an animal that we pet first and then eat maybe 😬 As I walked to pick up my daughter from ice skating, I saw a restaurant, next to a massage place. That made me think which of the 5 senses they are targeting. Inside the ice skating area, there is an arcade; like the one with flashing lights and shaky chairs, water squirting hoses, 3D glasses. To attract humans, like butterflies being attracted to flowers, they are using things that alert the 5 senses as a trap! How can the music be aesthetically pleasing to a level that gives satisfaction? How can then deaf people enjoy the deaf concerts and gather for such events? How come ASMR is a thing now? What do we get by listening to soap being cut? Aha, what about the opposite like the chalk scraping against the chalkboard? What is happening behind the scene? Why do we spent so much dollars to smell good, plant fragrant trees, bushes, and add aromatic spices to our food? We could also add the other end of the spectrum, for example why the biggest worry for a middle schooler apparently is to smell bad at school? Maybe one big reason we wake up in a day is to cook and eat foods we enjoy. My mother in law spends 20 min to perfect a salad of boiled eggs and chopped greens. My daughters watch YouTuber chefs redo famous recipes and spend a great deal of time explaining the taste with facial expressions, detailed words and scores. Next to the massage place, there is a laser salon and a nail salon. The essential need to feel and look smooth, pretty, free of imperfections drags bodies from store to store. When picking pajamas, you might find yourself questioning how does it feel to the touch, is it soft enough? Why do we yearn the hug of a loved one and not a random stranger? Feeling the cold wind on her face, falling and getting back up, what is my daughter chasing on the ice rink? Maybe none of these were real worries for human beings in earlier centuries or in other parts of the world now. When the goal is to survive a war, a pandemic or poverty, how much could you be concerned about a chipped nail? If you had to spend your day in the field harvesting vegetables, likely you cared less that you might be needing a shower. As the world evolved, so did our needs for satisfaction. If we had a portal to do time travel neither community could thrive in the future or in the back. To adopt a life with no farming, we had to fill our schedules with piano lessons, waxing appointments and coffee meet ups. The connections we make using 5 senses in our brain is amazing. How about 6th sense then? The feeling of the unknown, seeing into future, reading people’s minds or emotions. When we connect with a person using 6 senses does that mean a deeper friendship? Are there more senses beyond the ones we could name? Islamic scholar Nursi mentions heart, soul, brain and letaif as additional sensors. Latife is like a receptor that can sense if available and functional, but could die off and become dysfunctional if exposed to specific toxins for that latife. These senses need to be babied and nurtured to remain capable. Well, I guess one would notice those additional senses if they can use it. Eventually, the big question is with the unique collection of all senses within us how do they all help us with our experience in this life? Let me know your thoughts below 🙏

I just finished reading the famous book Don't Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen. This is an easy to read book full of very deep sentences. You could read through them, or discuss for hours. One clear definition is being able to distinguish what a "thought" is from the action of "thinking". As a simple example, when I see water bottle. A thought is that it is a "water bottle". Thinking could go beyond and describe the color, size, how much it costs, does it match with the color of the outfit, can it sustain iced water long enough etc etc. You could imagine the thinking is a ruminating process that is extending from the original thought which arrived at the neuronal ends as a simple remembering act. It was registered as a water bottle and recollection is complete. Then the neurons start passing the ball around like crazy until it has no more stops to hit, or it reaches other memories to be unlocked. You may remember that you had the same brand water bottle but then lost it at a NASA open house event in the bathroom, for example. You might think, "Well, stopping at the thought step for a water bottle is easy". Then take the example of your image on the mirror. That is harder to be non judgemental. How could we regulate the process of letting mind follow this jumping ball, keep jumping from neuron to neuron? If we do not notice the pattern, it just keeps going.. Until it hits an emotional point where we refuse to think on that any longer. Like this brief closing of eye lids and shaking head side to side swiftly. Can you tell when you do this? Nick Ortner describes the same phenomenon as a mind that does not stop thinking and proposes tapping to intervene and physically give a nudge to move onto something else. Maybe this is similar in action the shaking head movement in terms of its output. Joseph Nguyen proposes the method PAUSE: pause and notice we are thinking, ask yourself if you want to keep suffering with your own thinking, understand that you have the choice to stop it, say the mantra "thinking is the root cause of suffering", experience the emotions fully (by observing not thinking). This is in a way similar to the Rumi practice where you imagine your heart is a caravan and emotions are (by passers) passengers. You allow them to stay in a non judgemental way. Oh, sadness, you have arrived. Welcome. Regardless of which way we choose to intervene, we have the power to notice thinking and get out of it. Being stuck in the thinking phase, if coupled with lack of communication or low quality communication is a recipe for relationship disaster. One keeps ruminating what the other one meant to do, say, while he or she being completely unaware. I wonder if addiction is a form of codependency of neurons to similar ruminations patterns, or a desire for an outcome. If this is game addiction, the desire might be to level up and score well. If this is move addiction, the desire is to close the loops and get to a satisfying end. If this is sugar addiction, I wonder if the non existence of the stimuli is bringing in sadness and hence the desire to keep eating. So the bumping of the signal from neuron to neuron is something we allow to happen and maybe desire and also something we can stop if we wanted. The main theme is the book is thinking is the root cause of suffering. Being hurt is inevitable, but to keep suffering is optional. Maybe an objection to this type of philosophy that if we stop thinking, we can end suffering is that; yes maybe we can control and postulate a positive mindset by moving from driving to a floating state, but we cannot control external situations. This has truth in it. But there is still a big deal of internal peace that can be rescued by noticing negative thinking, or thinking in general. The author suggests to follow our intuition, which is the universal (divine) guidance and follows a path that gives a bit of fear but is expansive in nature; compared with staying in the comfort zone, with safety bands around us, that limit this potential and maybe does not allow us to live fully. This is somewhat similar to Dogan Cuceloglu's definition of Joy of Life and how one could fight to obtain joy of life. On the other hand, Nguyen says this flow is natural, you do not need any effort to make it happen. Like the flow of a leaf on a stream, it just goes. The goal is to utilize these psychological methods to improve the quality of our daily life so we obtain a better mental state, no matter what external conditions are. Seeing the beauty in mundane things, tasks. Noticing pretiness, kindness, appreciating differences. (Here is a song to listen along for this imagination.) I know it is easier said than done. But knowing that we have tools to intervene is a good back pocket knowledge. I am supposed to be working on my posters right now, but the expanding buckets in my head wanted to dispose of a blog instead. This is my thinking in action to get back to work :)

Ever since we discussed the iron element in our Sunday School with the girls in my community, I have been thinking about composition, decomposition.. how everything comes together and falls apart in life. Let me walk you through. Imagine you are observing the universe. There are stars, dying stars, supernovas, collapsing and decomposing stars, pieces of an exploded star drifting into the void after the pressurized “BANG!”, some of them making little planets, some of them making other smaller stars and also the black holes.. Let’s zoom in on one star for now. Let’s maybe pick the sun. What happens is Hydrogen molecules fuse and make Helium. This is spontaneous and releases energy. This is exactly how Earth gets light and warming heat from the Sun. Technically, in stars the spontaneous reactions keep going. Helium and more Hydrogens make Carbon for example (just follow the logic, not meant to be perfectly accurate in terms of chemistry). Then Carbon and other elements come together make Silicon later on, then we get to the bottom of the hill and make Iron. Bottom of the hill means, to get something further from iron, you will, now, need to supply the system with energy and it will not happen spontaneously. (Here is a song to listen along as you imagine this.) Wow. This is eye opening. Everything that exists is just various compositions of elements? Elements are making each other? The iron sits at the core of the star, that is the inner most layer. The spontaneous reactions keep going but the elements cannot push through the iron stage. The tension builds up. There is gravity that holds things together, and then there is push from the neutrons that no longer like to be so closely bundled up is such a tight space. Like a pressure cooker, it gurgles and steams and gets ready to explode. What happens next is what we see a dying star with a big bang and decompose its contents into the void. This is something we can observe using telescopes as supernovas. All the colors. So magnificent. Iron is also the name of one chapter in Qur'an (#57). There Allah says "And we sent down iron." It fits magically with the supernova story. The Arabic word for iron is Hadid, which makes up to 26 in arabic letter math, and 26 happens to be the atomic number of iron. El Hadid = "The iron" makes 57. This was a mind blowing discovery for me. https://phys.libretexts.org/Workbench/De_Anza_-_ASTR10/13%3A_Stellar_Finale/13.02%3A_Evolution_of_Massive_Stars Everything on earth came from a dying star, which collapsed and banged releasing its elements. Then reactions kept going to get us further elements. If we only had Hydrogen, we could have made all the other elements. Elements come together and make molecules, maybe a glucose molecule. Carbons line up a special way and make coal, line up another way and make diamond. The same carbon. Molecules come together and make macromolecules. Starch from glucose, proteins from amino acids, DNA from nucleotides. Macromolecules come together and make a cell. Cells make the tissues, organs and the body. Humans come together make a family and society. To keep going, we need to eat. The foods we chew and decompose, like plants or other dead animals, we bring their contents back to (maybe not element stage but) molecule stage and use them in our cells. Mitochondria will generate a proton gradient across it two membranes, like a dam for potential energy. Then world's most efficient engine ATP synthase, as if singing a carousel song, will turn happily to produce ATP for us. ATP becomes the currency in all things we do inside the cells. But there is a next step in all this composition events. The reaction is bidirectional. If there is deterioration, organs struggle. Brain accumulate some plaques Alzheimer’s begin. Calcification in the spine, neurons cannot regulate walking, knees hurt. Heart arteries clogged, cannot pump blood well. Human body eventually gives up. After death now the decomposition is at peak. Bacteria can just decompose the whole body back to single elements or molecules. Elements mix in with the elements of the earth. Back to square 1. On the other hand, what seems to be happening in a black hole? That seems like a one way ticket. Swallowing the elements back to nothing? How can this happen in an ordinary fashion, not BLOWING our minds away? Let me know what you think below.

Imagine a world of a single color, or shades of gray. That would have been pretty dull, simply put. How can contrasts, colors at very different wavelengths come together in a specific way and look pretty? A pink rose popping on a green stem, the moon light in midnight darkness, white cloud on blue sky, mallard on a pond, coral reef underwater, snow piled on brown tree branches. What is it that the human eye or the aesthetic pleasure center in the brain is looking for? What is it that we are chasing when we spend money to visit some unique sight seeing places? Or a piece of music playing the same note.. even if at varying rhythm, same note will be boring after a while. How can a specific combination of notes make “music”, does not itch ears, or even reach the pleasure state in the brain? There is a craving for variability to hit the aesthetic pleasure. Hardship in differences At the same time, when one color or style is off, we can spot it and say this does not fit with the rest. So we need things to vary but still come from a set of suitable candidates. So the distribution has constraints. Variability within limits. There is still a craving for harmony. How do these observed tendencies impact human behavior? I could be a little different, but still should be in general agreement with the rest. What would it cost to be unique and fearless? There is a Turkish saying, for a sheep that leaves the herd, would be captured by a wolf. How about opinions or different practice? Do they always mean conflict, disapproval or a force to change the other? Could we feel perfectly content in a room full of ideas pulling in different directions? Beauty in hardship How does rarity also add to the definition of beauty? A rare emerald stone is definitely more expensive but does that mean it is more beautiful? Outliers can also earn a special spot. Would we have enjoyed our lives if there was no hardship? “Congratulations you won” on everything, all traffic lights are green, nothing to worry about, maybe nothing to try harder for and nothing to look forward to. There is a harmony of the balance of differences and hardships that keep life interesting and challenging to pursue. Maybe this is tailored to human brain, maybe human brain adopted to this heterogeneity. What is different for you today? Did you notice any beauty in it? What was a hardship that you actually enjoyed? I would love to hear your perspective 👍

I’ve been thinking about the difference between courage and faking it. Can someone be called courageous even if she is, in some way, pretending? Another image comes to mind—a bird (why do I always imagine birds?). This bird claims to be strong, but if you gently lift her feathers, you see carefully placed, inflated balloons instead of muscles. It’s a way of appearing strong. It doesn’t have to be about physical strength, but the image makes the idea easier to see. Chat GPT imagined a different version: So what does “fake it till you make it” really mean? If we were completely honest all the time, would we risk losing? Looking weak? Is there an expectation of “role-playing” as we move through life and try to get what we want? For example, could you persuade your husband to do something he would otherwise not agree to? If that sounds reasonable, then where does authenticity fit in? Is life full of small performances and carefully chosen behaviors? What about social pressure and the need to belong? Can someone truly be authentic if that authenticity doesn’t align with the norms of their social circle? Would you feel comfortable sharing your thoughts if you knew you would face strong disapproval? Or would you slowly begin to adjust—silently reshaping your thoughts to fit in? And if so, do you gradually lose the courage to hold different opinions? Do people change depending on the circles they enter? And what is a “norm,” really, if it shifts from one group to another? If you resist, is that courage—or simply being seen as unfit? Imagine a social norm where you’re expected to serve six homemade dishes at a gathering. If that doesn’t align with your values or energy, how much resistance do you feel? Maybe it comes down to what matters more: meeting the need for social adaptation, or maintaining alignment between your values and your actions. Most of us probably live somewhere in between, moving back and forth. Courage might be the voice that stops us when our integrity feels compromised—when we think, “This is too much.” Yesterday, while we were walking, my daughter asked for a new pair of Crocs. I asked, “Does it have to be real Crocs, or anything that looks like them?” She said, “It’s better if it’s the real one.” That reminded me of my childhood. We used to buy sweatpants from street bazaars—imitations of well-known brands. They would still say “Adidas,” but not quite the “real” version. In Turkish, other kids used to joke about this by saying, “Is this Adidas, or ‘aadi das’? (fake-das)”—a humiliating way of pointing out you got it from the bazaar. So what is it about authenticity when it comes to brands? Why do we value the “real” product over a careful imitation that costs much less? When I was living in Türkiye, this felt like a big social signal. Wearing original brands suggested wealth; wearing bazaar versions revealed something about your financial reality. I remember watching a documentary that said the cost of making sunglasses is often quite similar, yet the price can range from $10 to hundreds of dollars. So what makes us stop at $10—or keep going? There is a hidden paradox here, if I try to be authentic and wear real brands, I am also not authentic to myself because I am wasting extra money to produce an image that does not align with my values. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel touches on this idea. He suggests that showing off what you spend actually highlights what you no longer have. Real wealth is what you save—quietly, invisibly. Luxury spending, especially when driven by ego, can become a kind of trap. You try to look rich, but in doing so, you spend more and feel more pressure, all while maintaining an image, you become gradually poor. He shares an example of Rihanna, who nearly went broke at one point due to financial mismanagement. Her advisor reportedly said, “Did someone need to tell her that if she keeps buying the things she wants, she’ll end up with the things—not the money?” So perhaps this is about balance, not just wealth. Ronald Read—a janitor and gas station attendant who quietly became a millionaire through disciplined saving—is an extreme but powerful example. We don’t all need to be Ronald Read, but there might be a potential for added savings when we accept to care less about what other people think of us. Wearing fake imitations might seem like a solution in that sense. But how about the flip side, faking emotions, knowledge, thoughts, strength.. That feels inauthentic in a similar way. Deliberately being authentic and rude is also not going to work all the time. A paradox loop that goes on and on. In our search for authenticity that clicks, in trying to be ourselves without becoming outsiders in our circles, maybe there is a middle ground—a place where we can exist as ourselves, aligned with our values, virtues and goals. Remember this alignment is one of key correlates of happiness in life. This was what was floating in my brain this morning, how about yours? Until next time "Aadi" yos, friends :)

Tonight we watched The Pursuit of Happyness at home during movie time. Will Smith delivers an incredible performance, capturing the emotional weight of poverty while also showing something even more powerful—resilience. That quiet, stubborn determination to keep going, no matter how many times life pushes back. From https://medium.com/@LilyLii/a-dive-into-the-pursuit-of-happiness-106090232749 His job is to sell these expensive bone density scanners to doctors. Just selling two in a month would be enough to cover basic expenses like groceries. But the sales don’t come. Instead, things fall apart one by one. He loses some of the machines while rushing through city buses, constantly moving, constantly trying, yet failing again and again. At home, the pressure builds. His wife, overwhelmed and exhausted, eventually leaves. The landlord kicks them out. And still—he keeps going. What struck me most was not just the hardship, but his focus. In the middle of all this chaos, he is laser-focused on getting an internship at a stock brokerage firm. He keeps showing up. He asks people simple but powerful questions: “What do you do? And how do you do it?” He waits outside the building just for a chance to talk to a manager. One day, he manages to ride in a cab with one of the firm's partners. During that ride, coincidental but as an unrelated opportunity, he solves a Rubik’s cube that the man had been struggling with. It’s not his resume. Not his background. Not his experience. It’s his persistence—and his ability to solve a problem—that leaves an impression. Watching his journey made me stop and think: What does it mean to "pursue" happiness? Do we have to chase happiness to get it? The Bird That Carries Us I started imagining it like this: A wild, tropical bird—colorful, strong, flying forward with purpose. And I am riding on it. Each part of the bird represents something different. The left wing is support and trust—family, friends, even pets. The quiet forces that keep us balanced when things feel unstable. The right wing is financial stability and mental health. Without these, flight becomes shaky, unpredictable. In that case, laser focus on goals and the resilience helps (as in the movie). The legs of the bird are effort and resilience. The ability to keep pushing, to keep trying, to stand back up after failure. And the bird’s head—its direction—is everything: Goals, dreams, meaningful contributions. That thing in the distance that gives the flight a reason. But the bird is not flying in still air. There are winds. On one side, forces that can push down—risk, rejection, feeling unqualified, being excluded, comparing ourselves to others. On the other side, forces that lift and help —luck, opportunity, being supported, starting a little ahead, being seen. So the question becomes: How Do We Keep Flying? Maybe it’s not about perfect conditions. Maybe it’s about learning how to move with what we have. We lean on support when we feel weak. We build stability from within when things outside are uncertain. We keep showing up—even when results don’t come immediately. We adjust. We adapt. We try again. And maybe most importantly, we learn to let go—of comparison, of the feeling of being behind, of the constant voice saying “I am not enough.” The Equation of Happiness In the book The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel presents a simple equation that inspired me: Happiness = Results – Expectations Such a simple idea—but so powerful. So we DO have a lever here. If I cannot always change my results, maybe I can adjust my expectations. Because the opposite is also true. We can easily make ourselves unhappy by constantly increasing expectations. Wanting more. Comparing upward. Looking at the “next table.” The book talks about people who had everything—wealth, success—but kept chasing more, looking at billionaires while being millionaires, and eventually losing everything. Not because they didn’t have enough—but because they didn’t know where to stop. The Power of “Enough” The lever to keep the expectations balanced is to say "Enough". What I have is enough. What I’ve done is enough. Where I am right now… can be enough. I remember as a child, struggling with washing dishes cleanly—and my mom would say, “Good enough.” Enough is not giving up. It’s knowing where to stop asking for more. What Money Really Gives Another idea from the book: The greatest intrinsic value of money is not luxury—it’s freedom. Freedom, flexibility, and time. The freedom to choose.The flexibility to adjust your life.The time to focus on what truly matters. And those three things are deeply connected to happiness. In that case we can definitely say money will make us happier. In Var Misin? Dogan Cuceloglu lists many factors unrelated to happiness: age, gender, being beautiful or not, IQ level, education level. There are 7 things, including money are correlated with happiness: 1) Family relationships 2) Up to a certain point: income ($60k/year.) 3) Finding your job meaningful 4) Close friendships 5) The courage to exist and be independent 6) Health 7) The alignment between your values and your actions So there is a correlation of money with happiness in second place, mostly for giving us the power to regulate our time. Secondly, in Rewired, Nick Ortner says "our relationship with money" is one of the biggest stressors, so in a way money can release the mental distress due to our bodies' survival instinct in our modern daily life. We are not being chased by bears, but bills and credit cards. Up to a certain point, yes, money correlates with happiness. Conversely, what about "greed?" and keep asking for more? Does that correlate with sadness? This brings us back to the "enough" point. Letting Go of the Self There is a Turkish saying: “Without a goal, the mind is filled with self.” When we don’t have a direction, we turn inward too much. We compare. We overthink. We feel behind. We question our worth. But when we move toward something meaningful, towards something bigger than ourselves, that noise quiets down. Back to The Flight There are many things we cannot control. The winds will not always cooperate. The path will not always be clear. But we are not powerless. With what we do have—a direction (laser focused), a willingness to adjust (using the lever), and the resilience to keep going (this was good enough)—we can hopefully continue flying toward something meaningful.

I woke up at 5 am to write this blog :) Like the lady in Guldur Guldur show. If you have watched this episode, you will understand the joke here. She says she woke up at 5 am to make bread for her husband, she made the eggs from scratch herself, even the water from scratch putting H and O together :) No worries, we are not going to talk about "that" level of productivity. I wanted to share one insight I have gathered observing my CGM (continuous glucose monitor, you can also buy some here for yourself). And yes, you can wear a CGM as a healthy person! I will give an example of a productive day. For me this is maybe an uninterrupted focused writing day, being able to finish a good chunk in a paper. There have been days like this where I could write a whole introduction, or 1/2 of results, while needing to edit or redo figures or reanalyze the data. What you can notice in this graph is that the blood glucose fluctuations were not very high in magnitude and they were short lived. This (somehow) improved my focus and productivity. To get to this quietness level, my total carbs needed to stay pretty low (~50-55 gr/day). The sleep quality feels better, although I do not have sufficient data to compare. However, if I make slightly worse choices and eat things that give me "spikes"; I start seeing some purple mountains. This could be like eating one little brownie like topkek as one of my childhood memories. Just one spike per day is still (I guess) manageable and does not redirect a lot of brain energy to other avenues. But things get louder if I have 3 spikes in a day. Then I find myself googling for some other childhood indulgences that I urgently and truly need. How can I get the Sultan Market in NJ to ship me some of their delicious eclairs? I ordered some food from Turcamart, only to notice the package is shipped from Bursa Turkiye. Oops, I did not pay attention. I guess you can see the rest of the story. The higher and wider the peaks are, the bigger toll on mental clarity, productivity and overall happiness. The sadness can bring in the big peaks as well as big peaks in return amplify the phantom reasons for sadness. I am noticing there is a clear link with my glucose spikes and my productivity and happiness. This is not my invention. Glucose goddess wrote about a research study describing associations of mood swings, moodiness, risk of depression in women. Similar increased risk of depression for diabetic people was reported before. There is clearly a connection that other people noticed documented as well. From a practical stand point: is it too hard to maintain a pretty flat curve everyday? There is a some difficulty, but there are helpful resources. I started by reading 10 glucose hacks that Jessie is describing here. Logistically, I had to switch from normal bread to Hero breads and chocolate bars to Nick's protein bars or Trubars (these two are recommended by my new dietician Helen Harloe) or Nola Bars. Taking vinegar pills, Jessie's anti spike pills, fiber pills, adding grape vinegar to my salads, peanut butter with no sugar, eating 1 tbsp of tahini per day, adding coconut oil to my coffee, making keto pancakes, a keto brownie, and something I have recently discovered (from my friend Ebru) using the eincorn flour. instead of regular genetically modified wheat flour. It sounds like the "original untouched wheat" is good and on the contrary also the resistant wheat that has been engineered to not be broken down. There are simpler solutions to lower your peaks, such as drinking lots of water, squeezing in 15 jumping jacks or 20 squats, taking a short walk in the evening. But considering the load of life, sometimes it is simpler to just not get started on the peak, rather than trying to bring it down costing extra time. To keep the total carbs down, I had to pretty much quit on fruits. I remember having a real difficult time keeping loyal to my diet list when I had several medjoul dates in day. Nowadays, I would sometimes eat blackberries from our back yard and that is pretty much it. I am sure there are a ton of other beneficial things that I have not discovered yet. There is also a possibility that some of these things might have detrimental ingredients that I have not learned yet. One such ingredient is Sodium Nitrite. How come no one told me about it? It is used as a preservative in sausages. My kids grew up eating many. Now we are searching for options without Sodium Nitrite, which is a challenge. There was the Sultan Market in NJ which carried some butcher's sausage. There is always the option to make it yourself. I am teaching my son his responsibilities in life. He says out: "I take the responsibility of feeding my body." Maybe I should say it along and if you will, you can join me as well: "I take the responsibility of feeding my body well." Until next time, take care my friend. PS: CGMs could show a glucose number lower than what you would measure using a finger prick to measure your "blood" glucose, since they use the "interstitial fluid" rather than blood itself. Still the patterns and purple peaks are telling a story. PS2: These are personal insights and are not meant to be medical advice. Please consult your physician for medical guidance.

How should we live this life? This is the question floating around in my head as we drive back home from New Jersey. During this trip, we visited what felt like two extremes of a normal distribution: the American Dream Mall and an Amish Village. I'll describe both experiences, but first let me explain what I mean by "two extremes on a normal distribution plot." You've probably heard statements like, "Assuming the samples have a Gaussian distribution, we can perform this statistical test." Yes, this is the same normal distribution I'm talking about. If we could somehow plot all the different ways people choose to live their lives, and if that distribution happened to be normal, we might find some people living near the center and others living at the far extremes. There can be scientific value in studying the extremes. As geneticist Helen Hobbs famously pointed out, important discoveries often come from studying outliers. So let's see what we can learn today. The American Dream American Dream is a gigantic mall containing everything from Nickelodeon attractions to indoor skiing and luxury shops you may or may not need. The desire to satisfy and stimulate every possible neuron is evident. The indoor amusement park is packed with rides. Because it's indoors, the constant screaming of excited children echoes throughout the space, creating an almost overwhelming level of stimulation. The architects had to be incredibly creative to fit all the twisting roller coasters into the building without having them collide with one another. Once your brain is fully stimulated, you get to choose: do I want even more excitement by being flipped upside down while falling sideways at high speed? For my son, however, the most exciting attraction wasn't the giant roller coasters. It was the Paw Patrol Lookout. We spent most of our time there. Watching people move through the mall was fascinating. They would emerge from one store and immediately dive into the next. The only other place we absolutely had to visit was the Lego store. The Lego experience is interesting because it successfully satisfies our need to be creative while simultaneously encouraging us to follow detailed instructions. Somehow, both needs are fulfilled at the same time. The Amish Village After satisfying our Turkish cravings at several Turkish markets, we drove to the Thomas the Tank Engine event. Following a peaceful ride with Thomas, we headed to the Amish Village Museum, where we were given a guided tour of an Amish home. I learned that Amish communities were originally invited to Pennsylvania to escape religious conflicts in Europe. Today, tens of thousands of Amish people live in Pennsylvania. They follow a branch of Christianity that emphasizes simplicity, humility, and devotion to God. Their goal is to remove distractions from life whenever possible. In that context, electricity, technology, and many of the conveniences we take for granted can be viewed as distractions. Imagine living without a phone. They largely live without electricity. Some communities have found practical solutions, such as using power generated from nearby streams for limited purposes, or gasoline-powered devices such as lamps and irons. Inside the house, there was a boys' room and a girls' room. Multiple children shared each room. There was only one mirror in the kitchen, and it was primarily used by the father while shaving. Looking at oneself in the mirror too often is considered vain. As I thought about this, I couldn't help comparing it to my daughters' vanity tables, complete with lights and accessories. The Amish clothing also carries simple messages about a person's stage in life. One tradition that I found particularly elegant involves young women reaching marriage age. Around sixteen, they begin wearing a more decorative style of dress that signals they are ready to begin considering potential husbands. What I found especially interesting was that the young woman plays an active role in the process. She is expected to evaluate potential husbands and determine whether they possess the character and practical skills needed to build a family. Eventually they marry, raise children, farm, and continue many of the same traditions that have existed for generations. But what if someone decides they no longer want to be Amish? They can leave. And what if someone wants to become Amish? That is also possible, although it requires a deep understanding of their faith and way of life. There is evolution within Amish traditions as well. One example we learned was that young children no longer spend hours shaking milk by hand to make butter, a task that used to be common. Even simplicity evolves. Where Do I Stand? So now, looking at the bigger picture, I find myself wondering: Where do I stand on this distribution? What is the benefit of living at either extreme? What is the benefit of living somewhere in the middle? After this four-day trip, are we the best parents in the world? No. As I write this, my son is yelling that I am "Poopy Pants."😂😂 So it is clearly not that easy to satisfy the younger generation once the bar for excitement has been raised so high. Perhaps that's part of the lesson. Too much stimulation leaves us constantly searching for the next exciting thing. Too much simplicity might cause us to miss opportunities for creativity, discovery, and growth. Maybe the goal isn't to live at either extreme. Maybe the goal is to understand both sides and then intentionally choose our own place on the curve. Almost like building your own life from lego blocks, following some instructions. Still feel the creative fulfillment, while being guided. What do you think? How should we live our lives?

Yesterday I went to a reunion in my Postdoc lab at UVA to listen to Dr Gary Owens give the Robert M Berne lecture and saw many of my lab-mates from that time. 🤩 A reunion is almost like time travel, except time indeed passed. Gary is now much older, it has been almost 10 years, but still incredibly sharp. He weaved a beautiful story of decades of work from his lab to paint a picture where inflammation is both necessary and also detrimental when it comes to atherosclerosis and heart disease. After the talk, during the reception, Gary asked me: “Where did you end up?” As a former postdoc who once worried about being a “kid in a candy store,” I felt proud to say: “I am at VCU, teaching Bioinformatics.” I took my time explaining to colleagues how my transition has been going. That conversation made me reflect as well. This semester I took BIOS 667 — Statistical Learning and Data Mining. Ahh… to be honest, this course was tough. Probably because I was missing a whole chunk of college-level linear algebra that I never formally took. One topic that challenged me was Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors. I can bet the word is not even English. My life changed when I discovered a website I needed to review for coursework. I also went back to Khan Academy, only to realize these were basically the vectors we learned in my high school Physics classes. Thanks to my awesome physics teacher, Ayse Yazici. The gist is that we use eigenvalues and eigenvectors to decompose vectors into a form where matrix operations become easier to understand and perform. Imagine two vectors encompassing a space in a traditional x-y coordinate system. After transformation, we are now looking at that same space through a different coordinate system. The transformed version still covers the exact same space, just from a new perspective that makes the mathematics cleaner and more interpretable. This becomes useful in PCA (principal component analysis), SVD decomposition, and many other methods. Sometimes the data looks messy in the original x-y coordinate system. Eigenvectors create a new set of axes that better match the natural directions of the data. Eigenvalues tell us how important each direction is. The data itself does not change — only the perspective we use to understand it. Changing My Perspective Last night before going to sleep, while my mind was overflowing with this blog I wanted to write, we read Jealous Ninja with my son. The book talks about having a small mindset versus a big mindset. A small mindset focuses on what is missing and skips gratitude. A big mindset believes resources are abundant and there is no need to be jealous. Instead of comparing yourself to others and feeling down, you can choose to 1) praise the other person, 2) practice gratitude, and 3) enjoy the moment. These ideas echoed concepts from The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, which I recently finished reading. My brain has been playing a symphony of:“Let them be… let me do this…” Initially, I was not impressed and thought the book was not academic enough. But several chapters genuinely stayed with me. Similar to Jealous Ninja, there is a section on comparison and what to do about it. Instead of sitting in jealousy, the answer becomes: “Let Them Lead, and Let Me get inspired.” The book also discusses relationships, breakups, helping struggling loved ones, and motivating people through inspiration and modeling rather than control. One eye-opening realization for me was how much power I tend to give other people simply by fearing their feedback, criticism, or reaction. Maybe this fear quietly stops me from fully being myself, sharing my insights, or having the courage to live more freely. My sister said creativity feeds the soul, helps to cling to life and find meaning in it. If you worry about being judged, this hampers this survival mechanism. It turns out many of us are deeply impacted by the question:“What will other people think?” That fear can slowly shape our decisions, silence our voices, or stop us from following our dreams. Let them suspect, let me grow. Let them lead, let me follow. Let them reject 1000 times, let me apply again. Let them not approve, let me not need approval. Mindset Transformation This actually ties back to Eigenvalue decomposition above. Here, we are doing a mindset transformation. Now we have two new axes: Let Them and Let Me. Earlier, whatever looked overwhelming in the original x-y coordinate system affects me differently because I chose to transform the way I look at it. It is almost like viewing life through a glass prism, where the same experiences suddenly refract differently. The challenge then becomes: How do I maintain this transformed mindset in practice? How do I move through life without constantly getting upset, controlling others, or hurting people? Here is a small bonus tip I discovered recently. I have been practicing 3 checkpoints lately, especially before sending a message: Does this sentence contain an assumption?Then I should ask and clarify. Does this sentence contain judgment?Would the person feel judged or take it negatively? Does this sentence contain assumptions and/or judgment about another person who is not even addressed?That is bloody gossip just prevented. Once the message passes these checks, there is a lower risk of hurting people. Still, they may get hurt. Still, I may get hurt. But at least the intention is no longer careless. Finding the Path to Myself According to German novelist Hermann Hesse:“The only real job each person has is finding the path to yourself.” In this self-discovery journey, I am starting Rewired by the Ortners next. It is the follow-up to The Tapping Solution. I am not even sure I fully learned how to tap successfully yet, but maybe this could become another life-changing step for me. I forgive myself when I make a mistake by tapping. I tell myself that I love my body and that it is already enough. I try to offer myself compassion and empathy instead of criticism. Maybe there is something almost neuro-magical happening behind the scenes — untangling old emotional patterns and slowly rewiring the way we respond to ourselves. Maybe healing is partly learning how to stop fighting yourself. Let me forgive myself. Let me be myself. And right there… that is the peace.

This year feels special. A good proportion of people from different faith traditions are fasting around the same time, which happens once in 33 years! There is something beautiful about that shared discipline. Ramadan, for me, is more than decorations, iftar gatherings, self-discovery, and celebrating identity. It is also a time to quiet something else — what many now call “food noise.” What Is Food Noise? Recently, I had a thoughtful conversation with my healthcare provider. She gently asked questions about my relationship with food and how I respond to impulses in my body. After reflecting, I realized something uncomfortable but true: Food occupies a loud space in my mind. Here’s what food noise can sound like: You’re at a dinner party. Chocolate cake with strawberries is served. Your brain begins: “That looks amazing… but I’m out of calories. Wait — strawberries are healthy. Maybe just the strawberries. But what about the glaze? Is that dark chocolate? Dark chocolate is healthy… Maybe I can take it home and portion it…Who am I kidding? I’ll eat it all.” Endless negotiation. Math. Strategy. Justification. If this sounds familiar, you know what food noise is . What I Learned from Reading Around the same time, I bought five bestselling books about obesity. I’ve finished 3.5 so far. What struck me most is this: For many people, food does not create this internal negotiation. Hunger and fullness cues are relatively quiet and self-regulated. That difference is not about morality or willpower. It is biology. We know this now, because patients report that after they start taking the new obesity medications, this whole speech bubble goes "pufff" . It is gone. They can focus on goals, activities, learn an instrument, plan a hike and so on, without constantly battling with their own brains. Once the loop of food noise is turned on, until it is controlled (mentally) or gone (with medications), no matter how much willpower we have, the cycle of gaining and losing weight just repeats. 📘 The Obesity Code  — Dr. Jason Fung This book reviews historical diet experiments and proposes a hormonal model of obesity — emphasizing insulin’s role. The central argument: Chronic high insulin levels may contribute to insulin resistance and weight gain. The tone can feel sobering — many diets “work” short-term and then fail long-term. His proposed solution centers on: Reducing refined carbohydrates Avoiding constant snacking Intermittent fasting 📘 How to Lose Weight for the Last Time  — Dr. Katrina Ubell This book is different in tone — deeply psychological. If I were to frame any sentence in the book it would be: "I stopped eating for emotional reasons." Dr. Ubell focuses on: Recognizing food noise Observing urges without reacting Building metacognitive awareness Choosing small sustainable habits I chose: Journaling food and weight Eliminating sugar and flour Plan your next day the night before The journaling has been eye-opening. 📘 Enough  (GLP-1 Perspective) by Dr. Ania Jastreboff This book discusses modern GLP-1 receptor medications and includes powerful anecdotes — including stories from Oprah. One that struck me: Intense exercise + severe calorie restriction did not produce weight loss. This reinforces a critical point: Obesity is a chronic metabolic condition — not a character flaw. Genetics, Evolution, and Environment We often blame genetics. But the rapid rise in obesity since the 1970s suggests environmental and hormonal factors play major roles. There is research showing: Maternal metabolic state during pregnancy influences offspring risk. Early hormonal exposure may affect long-term regulation. This is complex, multifactorial science — not simple inheritance. One Common Theme Across All Books Stop constant snacking. Three meals + three snacks keeps insulin elevated most of the day. Reducing eating frequency may allow hormonal cycles to normalize. That was another eye-opener for me. A Ramadan Reflection Fasting interrupts food noise; maybe by creating separated insulin peaks. It creates space between impulse and action. Certain foods, like sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, processed foods, can create special urges in the brain. If not controlled leads to over eating by numbing the centers that control hunger and satiety. One prevention is to recognize such food and just quit them. Another is to control the response in the brain, which is harder: When an urge rises, you let it pass. The wave comes.The wave goes. You remain. If these two sound like they may not work another suggestion is spiritual control. The book Sugar Fast for 40 days gives strategies from the spiritual Christian perspective. Whether your framework is scientific or spiritual — both paths acknowledge the same truth: Awareness changes behavior. A Final Thought In 2026, we are not helpless. We have: Behavioral tools Psychological insight Hormonal understanding Medications that work for many people Obesity, like diabetes or hypertension, often requires long-term management. Perhaps one day, we will understand prevention even better. Until then, if you notice food noise, pause. Name it. Let the wave pass. 🌙 Ramadan Mubarak.🙏 Peace to those observing Lent.🧧 Joy to those celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Hola, indeed, after a long time! I intended to write about my experience in Cancun, Mexico—hoping to paint a picture for curious minds and to amplify my internal gratitude. But before the beaches and crazy bus drivers, let’s reflect on my first semester teaching at VCU. I should probably admit that I had a lot of head scratching the first two weeks. The type of scratching that peels off the crust of a pimple that just healed. My anxiety and scratching gradually settled down to a manageable routine. Without the gracious and deep support from my fellow bioinformatics professors in SLSS, I would not have figured out a way to float this soon. Teaching bioinformatics is inherently different from the “same old” molecular and cellular biology lectures that I was used to giving. Being a visual learner myself, just looking at text and talking over text for long was different. I could not resist adding pictures to my Jupyter notebooks. Next challenge was: how can I still sing and make games about blocks of code? Well, we managed! As we kicked off the semester, I sang with the Take Down melody: “You are gonna be the master of Python coding… How can you sleep or live with yourself without knowing a line of Python coding?” Later, explaining how infinite loops work, we sang “I am unstoppable, I am Porsche with no breaks.” This gave me a chance to explain the break keyword in Python. Then, when we talked about try-except blocks, we sang “We can’t fix it if we never face it.” You could probably notice how I became a fan of Huntrix in the meantime. Teaching Bioethics was a whole new thing. We discussed several bioethics concepts: truth-telling, autonomy, confidentiality, beneficence, who gets to make a decision, who is impacted, how many layers of complications exist here, and how we even tease them apart. Ethics of stem cells, embryos, and embryo manipulation with the advances in gene editing have been dense topics. To empathize with a couple going through similar debates, we had a role play describing the decision-making process for donating frozen embryos for research. We were fortunate to have a field trip to University of Richmond. Dr. Jessica Flanigan was our kind host and gave us a speed lecture with active learning. The students had to move to the side of the room when they agreed or disagreed with an idea. Inside the classrooms, the group discussions and deep, thoughtful communications were the backbone of the course. Now that the semester is almost over, I am excited to plan for 301 and 420 courses coming up next. But for now, back to Cancun. We only stayed for 5 days at the Royal Cancun. What I liked most about Cancun was that it was very similar to Antalya, my hometown. The beach view is stunning, and there are so many opportunities to have fun on the sand, in a pool, on a canoe, or on a Captain Hook–styled party ship. The way you spend your time will depend on your intention. There are many luxury shopping malls and stores as well as a flea market where you would need to negotiate hard. The all-inclusive nature of the hotel is very humbling. I almost always wanted to pay for the dinner, but they kept saying, “All included.” Mexicans are very much like Turkish people: forgiving, generous, hospitable, and in a rush in traffic. We took the city buses to see around, and I kept telling my kids, this is the same as riding a bus in Turkiye. The roads are narrower, the buses are faster, and they even drive with the door open while a lady who just got on tries to get coins out of her purse while holding onto nothing. Mexicans are also very much into music and dances. The show at the Xcaret park rightfully demonstrated Mexican history and how they embraced Christianity while preserving the Mayan culture. I guess I am trying to put together in my head two very different experiences. If you decide to go to Cancun for a vacation, or jump into the unknown waters of the coding world, you are not alone! Each new thing is scary at first, and all initiatives are unsettling. Be courageous to take the first step, soon you will notice that the second step is actually not as difficult as the first one. Let’s wait and see what the next semester will bring. Until then, adios amigos!