My morning oatmeal, and what it's reminding me about the tyranny of too much information

Plus, a recipe for my favorite overnight oats & why I love making them in the rice cooker

A while back I had a full blood workup: the usual suspects, plus about eight extra vials of blood (at least, that’s how it seemed) to check everything from hormone to lead levels. After the results came back, my doctor spent an hour¹ going over every single number and explaining what they meant. There were a few surprises - when initially looking over my reports, I’d glossed over a few numbers that were within “normal” ranges but weren’t quite as optimal as my doctor hoped for; while other numbers that looked high to my untrained eye didn’t concern her much - and all in all it was an empowering and educational experience. While I’m basically healthy, I came away with some concrete ideas for how I could feel even better - starting with my nutrition.

Months later, though, all that solid advice and information has become a bit…fuzzy. Every day I’m barraged by microdoses of health and wellness information, doled out in two- or five- or ten-second long bursts: headlines I quickly scan, emails I mostly delete, reels I scroll past without so much as a pause.

But even without giving those bursts of data much of my conscious attention, they still register somewhere in my brain…and in aggregate, all that information takes up a lot of space, even if I logically recognize a lot of it as dubious.

And no matter how reputable the data or reliable its sources, the fact is that it’s all a lot more theoretical than the personalized guidelines and advice my actual doctor had given me based on my actual, personal health data.

Which, I realized the other day, I could no longer remember.

And that brings me to my morning oatmeal.