Health Fads and Fictions: VO2 Max, Supplement Mania, Sunlight, and Immortality.
You know what “they” say, “Common sense is not common.” Well worth a listen. Two critiques. They don’t pay enough attention to how to help sedentary people begin moving and there’s no mention of the role genetics play in longevity.
Vision Pro. John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, is the rare “Elements of Style” writer who says things simply and succinctly. Vision Pro’s importance is evident in what may be his longest post ever.
Quite literally, for AAPL investors, here’s the money paragraph.
“But I can recommend buying Vision Pro solely for use as a personal theater. I paid $5,000 for my 77-inch LG OLED TV a few years ago. Vision Pro offers a far more compelling experience (including far more compelling spatial surround sound). You’d look at my TV set and almost certainly agree that it’s a nice big TV. But watching movies in the Disney+ and TV apps will make you go “Wow!” These are experiences I never imagined I’d be able to have in my own home (or, say, while flying across the country in an airplane).”
Fast forwarding to Gruber’s final paragraphs:
“Spatial computing in VisionOS is the real deal. It’s a legit productivity computing platform right now, and it’s only going to get better. It sounds like hype, but I truly believe this is a landmark breakthrough like the 1984 Macintosh and the 2007 iPhone.
But if you were to try just one thing using Vision Pro — just one thing — it has to be watching a movie in the TV app, in theater mode. Try that, and no matter how skeptical you were beforehand about the Vision Pro’s price tag, your hand will start inching toward your wallet.”
If you know Gruber’s work, you know it’s not hype. However, the question Gruber and his fellow tech analysts never seem to get around to is whether it will improve our quality of life. Based on Gruber’s review, maybe it will if what’s keeping you from living a more fulfilling life is the unsatisfying quality of your home television and movie watching experience.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s interpretation of the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
The gist of it:
“Rather than being left behind as all the gains in the economy accrue to billionaires, they have in fact seen bigger wealth gains over the past three years than the top 10% of families. Indeed, the biggest wealth gains between 2019 and 2022 were among the approximately 13 million families in the 80th to 90th percentile of the income distribution. Their median wealth jumped 69% from 2019, adjusted for inflation, to $747,000 in 2022.”
They note, “. . . the increase in net worth for these families has far outpaced inflation.”
They conclude:
“Rather than being swallowed by the 1%, the economy, according to these numbers, is creating a growing upper middle class. Many people got there by pursuing college degrees, steadily building retirement accounts and purchasing homes. For the most part, they became wealthy slowly, and were well-positioned when pandemic-era stimulus programs boosted asset values.”
As a result of inheriting some of their families’ growing assets, their children may very well end upper middle class too. Especially if they’re college educated.
The unreported on story of course, is the utter lack of social mobility for the other 80%, many of whom are not college graduates. Historically, the default mindset in the (dis)United States has been an assumption that each generation would enjoy a higher quality of life. Now, understandably, parents worry that their young adult children will not enjoy their level of economic security.
A few days ago I was cycling southbound on the Chehalis Western Trail (CWT), a gem of Thurston County public infrastructure. And thanks to attentive parents, I successfully dodged a few 3 year-oldish riders on those amazingly small bikes that darn near enable babies to ride home from the hospital under their own power.
And I wondered what would it be like to be three years-old, to live through the 21st Century and check out sometime in the 2100’s? On the surface, probably pretty great since technology and medical advances continue to amaze and you don’t have to go the Department of Motor Vehicles in person anymore. And some of us don’t have to go to gas stations. And global poverty is way down. And despite Fox News propaganda, crime is down. And despite serious income inequality and low savings rates, people can find jobs and the economy is resilient.
And yet.
I wouldn’t want to be my tiny CWT cycling friends because if I had to capture the current zeitgeist in one word it’s “sad”. Despite continuing substantive improvements to our quality of life, a critical mass of people in the (dis)United States seem, for lack of a better term, sad. Why is that?
And why don’t I know the answers to that. Does my multi-layered privilege blind me? Short answer, of course.
I don’t think I’ll beat myself up for not knowing, because as I tell my students, “It’s okay to not be okay. And it’s okay to be okay.” Still, I would like to better understand why you are sad or why people you know well are sad. Is it as simple as the rent is too damn high or is it climate anxiety or is the answer more abstract, philosophical, even spiritual?
If you accept my premise, that we’re in the grips of a wave of sadness that shows no signs of abating, please enlighten me as to why. Thank you in advance.
“One can always take this defense of idleness too far and risk becoming like the lazy man who, when asked ‘What do you do?’ answers, ‘As little as possible.’ The trick is to avoid becoming either a workaholic or a layabout. It’s a question of finding balance between work and leisure, where neither is neglected or crowding the other out. Both should be on your to-do list, undertaken with purpose and seriousness in designated places and times.”
My friends who know me best worry I am a workaholic. My pledge to them, and the universe, is to try to strike a better balance from this point forward.
Why is President Biden framing geopolitics this way?
“I predict to you your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake. Not just with China. Look around the world. We’re in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution of enormous consequence. Will there be a middle class? How will people adjust to these significant changes in science and technology? The environment. How will they do that? It is clear, absolutely clear … this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies. That’s what’s at stake here. We’ve got to prove democracy works.”
Why do we have to prove democracy works? What’s wrong with sovereign nations choosing other forms of government that work well for them? What do we gain from trying to impose democracy on others who have no interest in it?
It’s ironic that Biden asks, “Will there be a middle class?” because China is rapidly building one while ours is shrinking. Would I want to live somewhere like China without the civil liberties I’ve grown accustomed to? No, I wouldn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that many people are willing to live with centralized power as long as their quality of life is improving.
I prefer our inefficient democracy, but it’s ethnocentric to assume our form of government is better than all the rest. Maybe in 2089, Tiananmen Square II will happen and the Chinese people will force a change of government.
Until then, improving quality of life is all that matters. Instead of framing geopolitics as a zero-sum game between democracies and autocracies, we should focus on diplomacy, 21st century environmental policies, demilitarization, creating jobs that pay livable wages, and reducing poverty home and abroad.
Granted, this is nitpicking. Biden is off to a great start. What a refreshing reset. Nevertheless, no matter how successful he is over the next 3+ years, I will never vote for an 82 year-old for President.
In the (dis)United States, we’re living in historic times, not just an every 50 year Civil Rights movement seeking racial and economic justice for people of color, but a slow and steady decline in our quality of life relative to other developed countries. Even though we’re too close to see it and too proud to acknowledge it, we’re a couple decades into a seismic, century long shift in our relative position.
Here are the numbers for those in denial like Michael Medved and Michael you know who.
The U.S. Is Lagging Behind Many Rich Countries. These Charts Show Why.
In today’s New York Times, David Brook’s explores our “crisis of the spirit” in “The National Humiliation We Need”.
He believes:
“Our fixation on the awfulness of Donald Trump has distracted us from the larger problems and rendered us strangely passive in the face of them. Sure, this was a Republican failure, but it was also a collective failure, and it follows a few decades of collective failures.
On the day Trump leaves office, we’ll still have a younger generation with worse life prospects than their parents had faced. We’ll still have a cultural elite that knows little about people in red America and daily sends the message that they are illegitimate. We’ll still have yawning inequalities, residential segregation, crumbling social capital, a crisis in family formation.”
I agree.
I’m on a nice little reading roll, meaning a book a week. This week I cheated though when I subbed in a fun, short read, for a long, dryish, academic one that I was plodding through.
Geezerball: North Carolina Basketball at its Eldest (Sort of a Memoir) by Richie Zweigenhaft tells the story of the Guilford College noon pickup basketball game that I played in between 1993-1998 when I taught at the “small Quaker college”. The game is 44 years old and counting and some of the participants have been playing most or all of those years. One of the game’s mottos is “You don’t stop playing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop playing.”
Richie, also known as “The Commissioner” is an accomplished author of several books on diversity in the American power structure. Now 75 years young, he’s the glue that’s held the game together over the decades.
Geezerball prompted a lot of reminiscing about those years and reflection on what’s most important in life. I remember 11 of the 29 players on the current geezer email list which is pretty remarkable given how bad I am with names. It also speaks to the game’s stability and what demographers have been telling us for awhile—that Americans aren’t moving nearly as much as in the past.
The game combines two of the very few things upon which most medical doctors and social scientists respectively agree—the importance of exercise to our physical health and the importance of close interpersonal relationships to our mental health.
“My wife says she expects to get a call one day saying I’ve died on the basketball court,” one geezer writes in the book. “If that happens, she’ll know I died happy.” In actuality, the game is probably extending the life of the participants. Even more importantly, it’s adding tremendously to the quality of their lives. Their friendships, and the humor that marks their interactions, are testaments to the power of community.
Among other remarkable aspects of the game is the fact that nearly all the participants are men. As a runner, I can’t help but notice more women running together; like the geezers, strengthening their bodies, their hearts, and their minds simultaneously. Same with the Gal Pal and her girlfriends who go on long walks every Saturday morning while catching up on the week’s events. I don’t know if it’s true, but it seems like men are more prone than women to prioritize their work lives, often to their own detriment. Given that, I find it inspiring that a dozen men in Greensboro, NC have been defying that norm every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 44 years.
The sort of memoir reminded me of exactly how cool of an addendum the game is to the participants’ lives. But now, upon further thought, I can’t help but wonder if when those men near the end of their lives, they’ll think of the game as one of the most essential parts of their lives, and their work as more of an addendum. Meaning, what if we all have it backwards? What if the GalPal’s Saturday morning walks, my Saturday morning group runs, my Tuesday and Thursday night group rides are the core and everything else is the periphery?
This line of thinking may be just one more example of my economic privilege at work, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we organized our lives around Geezerball-like communities, where we prioritized movement and friendship over material wealth and status? Put another way, how much is enough? When it comes to work hours and money, there’s always a point of diminishing returns. At a certain point, more work means more impoverished relationships with family and friends.
In contrast, when it comes to walking, running, cycling, swimming, surfing, or playing basketball or golf with friends, there is no point of diminishing returns. Our physical and mental health just keep improving. Our entire well-being. That’s the lesson of Geezerball.
From True Wealth by Juliet Schor:
“Not surprisingly, over the last twenty years, a large number of U.S. employees report being overworked. A 2004 study found that 44 percent of respondents were often or very often overworked, overwhelmed at their job, or unable to step back and process what’s going on. A third reported being chronically overworked. These overworked employees had much higher stress levels, worse physical health, higher rates of depression, and reduced ability to take care of themselves than their less-pressured colleagues. Adverse effects of long hours, stress, and overwork have found in a number of studies, for a variety of physical, mental, and social health outcomes.”
Phenomenon like that inspired this blog’s name many moons ago. So, as the calendar year draws to a close, let’s step back and process what’s going on.
Why do so many U.S. workers subject themselves to the “adverse effects of long hours, stress, and overwork”? Is it because, as one of my friends insists, they have no choice, because their families have grown accustomed to uber-comfortable, expensive-to- maintain lifestyles? Is it as simple as mindless materialism or trying to keep pace with one’s neighbors conspicuous consumption? What if my friend went to his family and said, I want to invest less time at work and more strengthening our relationships and my physical, mental, and social health?
Overworked U.S. readers, what is keeping you from reducing your personal or family overhead and going half-time at work? Or if your employer doesn’t provide a half-time option, finding a different job that would require less of you so that you could prioritize, rather than continue neglecting, your physical, mental, and social health?
I don’t think my friend would admit it, but I’m convinced, despite his sporadic complaining about his work, he greatly prefers being at work to not. He does not have many interests outside of work. He’s good at what he does. Being good at what he does gives him an identity.
Maybe the central challenge for the overworked American isn’t figuring out how to down-size his or her lifestyle, it’s how to craft an identity from non-work interests and activities.
Postscript: Mea culpa. I should’ve woven this sentence in from Schor too. “Of course, for many earning less money is simply impossible, because their wages are too low.”
As I wrote recently, modern life requires some dependence upon expert recommendations, but when it comes to our health, we’re too dependent upon scientists; when it comes to our money, we’re too dependent upon financial planners; and when it comes to our spirituality, we’re too dependent upon religious professionals.
A recent Wall Street Journal story described a study of older recreational athletes. The conclusion, past age 50, running more than 15-20 miles a week at faster than 7:30 per mile is associated with higher mortality rates. That makes sense since fast long distance running is a form of stress. So far, I’ve ran about 1,470 miles this year or almost exactly 30 a week. Most of those miles were in the 7:30 neighborhood (well, not the last 8 in Canada). In addition, I’ve swam about 185 miles and rode 5,272—all personal highs thanks to my Ironperson Canada prep.
According to some scientific experts, I’m killing myself in the predawn perpetual light rain, in the sense that I’m shortening my life. If you listen carefully, you can hear couch potatoes everywhere cheering lustily.
So do I dial things back? I accept the studies’ peer-reviewed conclusions, but I’m too skeptical to change my overly active lifestyle as a result of the study. When determining how far and fast to run, swim, and cycle; instead of living purely by science; I choose to live mostly by intuition or feel.
I know myself better than the scientists who conducted the study. Consequently, I’m just arrogant enough to think their study doesn’t apply to me. I’ve slowly built my endurance base over the last twenty years, I eat well, I prioritize sleep, and I’m pretty good about minimizing everyday stress. Regularly going semi-long contributes to the excellent quality of my life. I’m convinced I’m physically, mentally, and even spiritually healthier than I otherwise would be if I cut back based on this study’s recommendations.
I would like to live a long life, but I’m even more interested in maintaining a good quality of life. Late in life I want to remember my past; read The New Yorker; write regularly; and walk without falling down.
I could be wrong. About one of the most important decisions imaginable. The horrors, I may not be special. If some of you are at my funeral in two or twenty years, I give you permission to laugh one last time at me.
Saturday morning, I extended myself for only the second time since Ironperson Canada (the other was the Seattle Half Marathon two weeks ago). I ran 10 miles with my favorite right wing burners, inhaled a large bowl of oatmeal, and then celebrated Hob’s 52nd birthday by swimming 52 100’s. Dear longevity researchers, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Pressing Pause 