Welcome to the 10th edition of “Stuff I Like”, where I talk about products, people, services or shows that I like. I have no financial relationships with any of these companies/brands. Whether you get them or not – I don’t care.

Float Valley

Float Valley is a facility in Markham that originally started out as a float tank (you just float in a water tank filled with magnesium water). Since then, they’ve really expanded to offer a lot more, from massages, to infrared saunas, to IV therapy, yoga classes, and more.

I recently went for a massage there, and was thoroughly impressed. First of all, I’m not a person who really notices atmosphere. I’m usually just at a place for the direct service for which I have an appointment. So for me to notice the atmosphere means something. For me to be impressed with the atmosphere means even more. And boy, was I impressed.

When you walk in, you can help yourself to a variety of teas. When you go to the washroom, they have real towels to wipe your hands with (not paper towels). Finally, the room where I was getting a massage had a light that projected onto the walls and ceiling, with colours that make you feel like your massage is happening during Aurora Borealis. Plus, my massage therapist, Mara was very good as well.

I’ll definitely be visiting again.

 

Painscience.com

I’m a huge science geek. I love research, and generally stay away from mainstream information about anything health-related. In fact, when I dig into most mainstream health information, I find mostly misinformation. For example, mainstream advice on osteoporosis is:

  • Take calcium
  • Go for a walk
  • Don’t fall

In other words, REALLY bad advice. In fact, whenever I write a book, inside each of my books is an entire chapter busting the myths of mainstream health information.

That’s why I really like the site painscience.com. It’s written by a former massage therapist-turned-researcher, and he gives great, science-based information on his website, without bias. He’s not a fan of traditional medicine or alternative medicine. He’s a fan of scientific medicine. He gives very balanced views on different conditions, as well as approaches to treatment. He explains when something works, when it doesn’t work, what kinds of people it works for, and who it doesn’t work for.

I can’t say enough good things about this fantastic resource.

 

Consensus

As I mentioned in the previous section, I love to get scientific answers to lots of my questions. Mainstream answers are either plain wrong, or lose a lot of the nuance of the real answer. I want nuanced answers, like “X intervention works in these cases, but not in these cases. The magnitude of the effect is Y.”

Previously, I’d get those answers with Google Scholar and Pubmed. However, that was extremely time-consuming. I’d have to enter my question a few different ways, until my search query yielded the kinds of papers that had the potential to answer my question. After that, I’d have to look at the abstract (for non-scientific folks, the abstract is the summary of the paper) of each individual paper to see whether indeed it had the answer I was looking for. If it looked promising, I’d read the paper. And sometimes it had the answer I was looking for. Other times, it didn’t. By the time I had finished one paper, 15-45 minutes may have passed, and I’m no further along.

That’s why Consensus is a game changer for me. It’s an artificial intelligence tool where I type in my question, and if finds the most relevant studies for me. It saves me a ton of time finding the right papers, and finding the answer to the question that I had.

To put things into perspective, before I used consensus, for me to do in-depth research for one of my books took 3-4 months. With Consensus, that time has shrunk to about 7-10 days.