Category: Health

Health and fitness learnings for June: The more muscle you have, the lower your all cause mortality

First foremost — absolutely incredible essay on the bioelectric revolution in biology, thanks to my friendo Cedric for sharing it in his great newsletter:

Keep in mind a crucial point: in all these experiments, the genes of the worms are never edited. You get a wildly different functional worm with the same genes. And what’s even wilder is that some of these changes are enduring: without any further drugs or modifications, the two-headed worm produces offspring that are also two-headed, indefinitely. Think about what this means: we’ve achieved a permanent change in the structure of the worm, without changing its genes. We have transcended the genetic code and are instead learning to crack the bioelectric code of the body.

Now onto the health and fitness stuff I’ve learned this past month:

In summary walking stimulates, lymphatic system gets rid of toxins, optimizes our hormones and gets rid of bad bacteria, lowers SIBO by pushing it into the large intestines where it belongs, gravity.
https://x.com/asdrawingaf/status/1798721389525934513?s=46

Almonds are good for reducing wrinkles

The study analysed data from people aged 40 to 69 and found a causal link between habitual napping and larger total brain volume – a marker of good brain health linked to a lower risk of dementia and other diseases.

More muscle you have, lower your all cause mortality
Resistance exercise is closest thing to fountain of youth
Lift weights + Eat high quality protein

Late night food can disrupt sleep because it takes energy / muscles / systems to digest the food, which delays / disrupts sleep quality;
“Meal timing appears to be a modifiable risk factor for nocturnal awakenings and disrupted sleep.”

When we learn how to do something physical, whether it’s a karate kick or snapping our fingers, the cerebellum is hard at work. The cerebellum takes up just 10 percent of the brain’s volume, but it contains half of our neurons, which means it’s a densely packed area constantly buzzing with activity.

2/3 oz daily mushrooms = 45% less cancer risk
https://x.com/lorishemek/status/1797966646725800166?s=46

People with most saunas have lowest incidence of Alzheimer’s
Mercury detox — sauna is one of most effective ways to detox

Cold plunges — dramatically increases dopamine

Walk 15 miles a week, even if you do other exercise. There’s something special about walking that is distinct from running and other cardio. Humans are made to move slowly over long distances—it’s critical to longevity.

Stop drinking sodas and sugary energy drinks. After a few weeks you won’t miss them and a few months later they’ll seem disgusting. Sugar is enemy #1—it causes inflammation, which is the root of most disease.

Check posts categorized under Health for past updates

Health and fitness learnings for May: a 10 minute walk after a meal can reduce glucose response by 30-35%

Stop Eating All Day (and snacking your kids): Most Americans eat 11 times over a 15-hour period – this is stressful for the body; the body needs time for insulin and glucose to come down

The frequency of aerobic bouts seemed to be more important for their association with health outcomes than the overall duration of daily activity. Concordantly, recent research suggests that short bouts of physical activity can have a strong health-promoting effect

“Watching the news is how you stay on top of other people’s agendas. Taking a walk is how you stay on top of yours.” — Johnny Uzan

https://x.com/ChrisMasterjohn/status/1791625562466779494 — Creatine is needed to spread the impact of mitochondrial ATP production throughout the cell, including in the nucleus, where it is needed for DNA duplication, gene expression, and DNA repair.

10m walk after meal can reduce glucose response by 30-35% (source)

As basic as this sounds, full exhalations are seldom practiced. Most of us engage only a small fraction of our total lung capacity with each breath, requiring us to do more and get less. One of the first steps in healthy breathing is to extend these breaths, to move the diaphragm up and down a bit more, and to get air out of us before taking a new one in.

Meditation (mean rating = 5.8), bright lights in the morning (5), cold shower (4.7), and masturbation abstinence (4.1) also got impressive to pretty good ratings.

Side sleeping allow better glymphatic drainage. especially right side

Spermidine has most significant documented lifespan extension
-studied in naked molerats — don’t age because they produce enormous amounts of spermidine
-most naturally found in: beans; lettuce; wheat germ

This argues that ED and CVD are different manifestations of a systemic arterial damage and, due to the smaller diameter of penile arteries, ED occurs earlier than IHD, stroke or peripheral artery disease (PAD) with an equal extent of artery damage

Previous updates:

Health and fitness learnings for March and April: “the human body loses about 8 ounces of water per hour on an aircraft at altitude, mostly from breathing”

Snack on pumpkin seeds. One ounce of seeds contains more than a third of your recommended intake of magnesium. According to Mildred Seeling, M.D., author of The Magnesium Factor, magnesium deficiencies have been linked to most risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and the increased buildup of plaque in the arteries.

Jeff Wang: would NOT mess with ashwagandha. too many people i know got bad liver markers from them, including me. cycle off every 2-3 months if you do

Apple cider vinegar (ACV) can be an effective digestive aid. It can help to calm stomach discomfort associated with indigestion, reflux, bloating, or fullness. While studies have not been done to analyze how ACV works, the acidic nature of apple cider vinegar and other types of vinegar may support better stomach pH.

It takes 3-7 days from last drink to fully detox and remove alcohol from your system

The researchers…found that even if people walked as many as 20,000 steps a day, the health benefits continued to increase. They have not found an upper limit yet.

Because a lack of fiber brings on most cases of constipation in the diet, apple cider vinegar’s high concentration of pectin, a water-soluble dietary fiber, is believed to help improve digestion. Once the constipation has passed, pectin from ACV will help ensure the digestive system and colon are running smoothly.

Cranberries and pumpkin seeds can improve prostate symptoms

The chest should neither expand nor collapse during proper inhalation or exhalation.

the human body loses about 8 ounces of water per hour on an aircraft at altitude, mostly from breathing

When you’re healthy you have 10,000 needs, but when you’re sick you only have 1

When you consume alcohol you need to detoxify it. Two of the main enzymes are ADH and ALDH. Both require NAD as a cofactor, thus b3 is great to supplement. Another option: EAT CHEESE which massively stimulated both of those enzymes. The French get it.

Puzzlingly though, despite facing an increased risk of skin cancer, people who are exposed to lots of sun appear to have longer life expectancies, on average, than sun avoiders.

Previous updates:

Health and fitness learnings for February: “There’s concrete evidence that meditation calms your brain similar to valium”

They buried the lede on this new study. It’s not that exercise beats out SSRIs for depression treatment, but that *just* dancing has the largest effect of *any treatment* for depression.
Dancing Depression

Power and benefits of sprinting / HIIT: https://twitter.com/jaguarcadillac/status/1753894907784425618

The right brain is in charge of present-moment awareness, and this is the part of the brain that meditation takes to the gym. Essentially, the longer we meditate, the more we’re able to balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The result of this is more attention, awareness, and computing power for the task at hand.

Excessive nose picking can lead to infections and increased likelihood of developing Alzheimers (!!)
https://people.com/nose-picking-linked-to-alzheimers-disease-dementia-report-8558918

one study found that fidgeting or other non-exercise movement (which was more common among lean than obese individuals) could burn up to 350 calories a day (30-50 calories per hour)

There’s concrete evidence that meditation calms your brain similar to valium. Actual structural and measurable changes within brain itself

Herbs are often solely used as garnish but in actuality provide the perfect opportunity to deliver a boost of flavor and nutrients to any dish.
Nutrivore Scores:
Parsley 5491
Chives 3531
Basil 3381
Cilantro 2609

While aerobic exercise elevates neurotransmitters, creates new blood vessels that pipe in growth factors, and spawns new cells, complex activities put all that material to use by strengthening and expanding networks. The more complex the movements, the more complex the synaptic connections. And even though these circuits are created through movement, they can be recruited by other areas and used for thinking. This is why learning how to play the piano makes it easier for kids to learn math.

Now you know how exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus.

Of the six areas that the FitnessGram measures, two seem to be particularly important in relation to academic performance. “Body mass index and aerobic fitness really stuck out in our regression equation,” Castelli says. “They were the most significant contributors. I was really surprised it was that clear-cut

Paleolithic man had to walk five to ten miles on an average day, just to be able to eat.

I think the most interesting part of the paper is the finding that walking improves creativity not due to environmental stimulation, but due to walking itself. Whether outdoors or on a treadmill, walking improved the generation of novel and appropriate ideas. Surprisingly, this effect extends to sitting after a walk

Previous updates:

Health and fitness learnings for January: “tea consumption is associated with attenuation of biological aging”

Previous:

January:

Downsides of ashwagandha including acting like an SSRI: https://twitter.com/drcamrx/status/1667999241212686337

PeterAttiaMD: …his physical training program gives him a great VO2 max, his topical treatments give him much-better-than-his-genetics hair and skin, and his NAD+ precursor supplementation improves his rate of DNA repair.

Since at least the time of peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking, and writing. (In fact, Adam Gopnik wrote about walking in The New Yorker just two weeks ago.) “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!” Henry David Thoreau penned in his journal. “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Thomas DeQuincey has calculated that William Wordsworth—whose poetry is filled with tramps up mountains, through forests, and along public roads—walked as many as a hundred and eighty thousand miles in his lifetime, which comes to an average of six and a half miles a day starting from age five

New study found that tea consumption is associated with attenuation of biological aging.
People who consistently drank >4 cups a day aged 40% slower than those who drank none.

Some studies suggest that people who cook more often, rather than get take-out, have an overall healthier diet. These studies also show that restaurant meals typically contain higher amounts of sodium, saturated fat, total fat, and overall calories than home-cooked meals

Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex (aMCC): When you do something you don’t want to do, this brain area gets bigger
aMCC is smaller in obese people, it gets bigger when they diet
aMCC is potentially the “seat” of willpower and will to live

Walnuts are great for the liver — helping with fatty liver diseases due to antioxidants and fatty acid content (omega-3 and omega-6)

Gut Microbiome/Immune Health: consume 2-4 servings low sugar-fermented foods per day such as yogurt, refrigerated sauerkraut, and pickles, kombucha with low sugar

This replicated the encoding benefit and showed that it was predicted by time spent in slow-wave sleep. Our findings suggest that wearing an eye mask during overnight sleep can improve episodic encoding and alertness the next day

Going to the gym when you don’t feel like it gives you the greatest high

Cancer hates mushrooms — 2/3 an ounce a day = 45% lower risk of cancer


“Mushrooms are like the swiss army knife for treating diseases.”

I’ll always remember what Synthesis founder Chrisman Frank told me: “Still haven’t met anyone who has quit drinking and regretted it.”