Financial Health:

• Solid article published in a pathology journal, advising residents (but applicable to students and anyone else) on financial health. Some take home points: be careful who you choose as an advisor, manage medical school debt early, buy enough insurance, ignore the Joneses, and buckle down and budget. Free full text at the link above. 

Carry some weight:

• My favorite exercise to end on at the gym is loaded carries. Dan John is big on farmer’s carries, where you just grab a couple of dumbells or kettlebells and walk around the house or gym. You can pick up a person and do the fireman carry, as seen in Living with a Seal. Or you can purchase a weight vest and wear it around. Here is a post from MDA on wearable weights. 

Lose some fat:

• Short post here with three easy and very effective tricks on how to lose body fat:
1. Do something before you eat for 7-15 minutes (deplete some glycogen, and you might even eat less or not be hungry anymore)
2. Drink a protein shake before meals (appetite suppression)
3. No training, no carbs (My favorite succinct phrase is “earn your carbs”) 

Relax:

• If you haven’t heard of Amos Lee, you should immediately start a Pandora station or check him out on Spotify (or buy a CD). Amos has been around for many years, has multiple albums and excellent concerts. He’s just the right level of popular that he plays in the Palace Theater (March 13, 2019). His new album, My New Moon, has a song called Louisville. 

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger:

• Josh Mittledorf switched from physics to evolutionary biology years ago. His recent book Cracking the Aging Code is packed with dense but readable information related to aging and how we can avoid it. Aging is programmed into almost all animals. To go with the flow and allow what nature intended (usually a good “paleo” strategy) means to succumb to aging processes. In future newsletters we will cover some of the aging avoidance strategies proposed in the book, but today brace yourselffor an explanation for the science behind hormesis.
• Hormesis is “any process in a cell or organism that exhibits a biphasic response to exposure to increasing amounts of a substance or condition.” So something that in a very large amount would kill you (starvation, hypothermia, running for your life), actually improves health in a small dose (fasting, cold exposure, exercise). This is well known, all over the literature, and we have linked to a very cool website devoted to it. Though it is clear that hormesis is a thing, I had never seen an explanation for why humans work this way. 
• Humans are antifragile. Unlike a car or a building, we actually become stronger with stress exposure (bones, muscles, immune system). In fact, Mitteldorf didn’t say it in the book, but this repair function could be one way to define what life is. But why do we become stronger with stress? Why not just become stronger regardless of stress exposure? Why do we leave anything in the tank? The reason has to do with population flexibility and aging. 
• Picture two populations of organisms, A and B. Beings in population A have tons of food, do not have to chase any prey, have no extreme temperature exposures: they are living in abundance. Population B is struggling; they have cold winters, scant prey and therefore food supply, and are exercising a lot to chase down meals. If population A continues as it is, it will eat all of the prey, have a lot of offspring, and eventually deplete its resources. Population B on the other hand could run out of individuals due to death from starvation and exposure. 
• There exists what you could call a homeostatic population fix for these scenarios. Population A can kick in its aging genes, each organism can live a shorter life, and the population will not bust and become extinct. *Added bonus, aging and dying helps diversify the genetic pool. In fact, over thousands or millions of years, populations that did not evolve aging likely did become extinct, so they are gone (one example is the supepredator Rocky Mountain locust). Population B, in order to not become extinct, can slow down or turn off aging in its individuals. (Fertility is another modifiable factor and is addressed in the book). 
• These large scale processes occur in many different species and have been elucidated with complex mathematical models. This so called Demographic Theory of Aging relies on group selection, somewhat controversial in old school evolutionary circles that cling to the selfish gene paradigm. But it is becoming harder and harder to argue with Mittledorf’s publications and rationale. 
• The bottom line: Stressing your body in various ways signals your DNA to let you live longer, so your population doesn’t go extinct. Inversely, being in caloric excess, not moving much, and living in temperature controlled environments tells your body to age more rapidly, or else you will overpopulate. 
• Folks who are confused with the contradicting recommendations ask me what healthiest diet is. At this point in time, the most certain answer I have is that fasting is unequivocally healthy in the long-term. Intermittent fasting seems to carry the same benefits as prolonged calorie restriction, without many of the drawbacks. And winter is coming … get out in the cold and exercise.  

Quote: 

To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.

– Ben Franklin