Musings Report #35 9-2-13 The Three Miracle Health "Cures"
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The Three Miracle Health "Cures"
When I ponder human health, I am struck by the following "obvious" points:
1. Our knowledge of human health is still remarkably incomplete. For example, a recent study of LDL (bad cholesterol) found that the quantity of LDL was not the critical issue--it is the size of the LDL molecules themselves that increases or decreases risk. Exercise decreases the number of dangerous small LDL, couch potatoes have loads of small LDL. Two people with the same LDL reading can have entirely different risk factors.
2. New findings are rarely integrated into a whole-person understanding, and as a result they tend to spawn fads and media hype. They are also often based on very small samples and questionable protocols (of 12 people in a 3-week diet study of whiskey-soaked blueberries, 10 reported lower incidences of heart attacks!)
3. Our reductionist mindset drives the search for "magic bullets" to cure complex diseases. The "magic bullets" tend to reduce symptoms or specific metrics rather than actually curing the disease at the source.
4. This same reductionist mindset leads us to seek easily measurable metrics that become risk factors or yardsticks of health.
Cholesterol is one such questionable metric, as several readers were kind enough to point out in response to my mention in last week's Musings of reducing cholesterol via weight loss and increased fitness.
Does knocking down an overweight, unfit person's cholesterol really improve their health and reduce risk factors? Health isn't reducible to a handful of metrics.
5. If a contagious public health hazard threatened 36% of the populace (percentage of Americans who are obese) or 69% (percentage of Americans who are overweight), there would be a massive hue and cry for immediate action to alleviate the threat. Yet when it comes to the obvious connection between junk food/convenience food and poor fitness with chronic diseases, our government and media are silent except for lip-service statements: everyone should exercise 20 minutes a day, blah-blah-blah.
6. In a market economy where billions of dollars in profit are reaped from selling food that has been carefully engineered to trigger our reward centers (i.e. all the intense tastes that are scarce in Nature: sweet, salty, fatty), most people have an understandable difficulty focusing on the long-term benefits of abstaining from engineered food and acting on the consequences of their poor dietary/fitness habits. The attraction of these foods is so powerful that the only solution that works for me to not have them around the house.
7. This reward-centered food industry goes hand in hand with a "magic pill" pharmaceutical industry that reaps billions in profits by lowering largely irrelevant metrics (cholesterol for example) or knocking down the symptoms or consequences of diseases that could be cured by diet and fitness.
8. Humans seem particularly prone to taking questionable dietary principles to heart not only as fact but as quasi-religious faith; heretics and disbelievers should be burned at the stake or at a minimum shouted down.
9. All these metrics and principles play out differently in individuals.
I have found from multiple tests over the years that my body doesn't "like" weighing more than about 170 pounds. Adding a mere 4% (7 pounds) above this set point increases PSA (prostate antigens) by 24%, LDL by 11%, and so on.
In other words, very modest increases in weight and declines in fitness have outsized effects on health--just what we'd expect with the Pareto Distribution (4% has an outsized effect on 64%). For my body, a BMI (body mass index) of close to 22 makes everything happy. Pushing it to 23 makes everything unhappy. (I simplify here, but that's what my test data shows.)
This article illustrates why selecting metrics because we can easily measure them as yardsticks of health is just so wrongheaded and dangerous. Exercise, like eating whole, real foods, works on multiple, interconnecting levels that cannot be reduced to cholesterol or similar metrics.
We all know what the three miracle cures are:
I know this may seem difficult for the average American, but this simple test (push-ups and sit-ups to exhaustion, i.e. 2 minutes and a 2-mile jog/run) tests for core strength abd aerobic fitness. Check your age/gender minimums.
I personally score a 77 on push-ups (35 in one set) and 83 on sit-ups (50 in one set) for my age group (52-56 is the highest listed, and I'm 59.8 years old). I don't run that often but based on my bike rides up 800-foot hills, I think I can manage 2 miles in 20 minutes (the minimum score in all tests is 60).
2. A diet of unprocessed real food, with moderate portions of everything that is not found in a hunter-gatherer diet, i.e. massive amounts of meat, processed carbohydrates, processed sugar, etc.
3. Moderate levels of stress. It seems the West has forgotten that the mind and body are one, and chronic stress has been linked to obesity and diseases of the mind and body alike.
Remarkably little of what passes as "accepted fact" is actually based on the fundamental sciences of physics and biochemistry. An oftwominds.com correspondent with a PhD in Nutrition recently observed:
"Ever since I got a PhD in nutrition (after mastering molecular biology and teaching college biochemistry first), I have been impressed with the solid unambiguous science of how our bodies require a very different diet and how most of our problems come from this. For example, their is no "dairy group" but that is purely political to advance agribusiness mostly in Wisconsin. And half if not more of our health problems would disappear if our diet was more Asian-like.
There is an extremely interesting story from a molecular viewpoint: every plant and animal is trying to survive in a challenging environment, and polyunsaturated oils, (and LOW lysine protein) is necessary from that basic unambiguous perspective. Our bodies are designed to scavenge lysine (which is toxic) and is not used to saturated fats, which gum up reactions. This is so obvious I had expected that someone would teach this during the last 23 years."
While we navigate the flood of new information on human health, it's not a bad strategy to stick to what is already evident: the three "miracle cures" must all be pursued together; a perfect diet does not replace low-stress mental health or fitness, and vice versa. All three components work together.
If I had to give an edge to any one "magic cure," it would be exercise, as that elevates mental health and can also increase our willingness to pursue a healthier diet.
Market Musings
The stock market has been quite resilient in the face of plentiful negative news, which suggests a bounce in the making or a crash. In other words, the resilience may indicate buyers stand ready to push prices higher, or it may be a false dawn of sorts as buyers have held off sellers, but only barely.
There are no real extremes to help us identify a top or bottom; everything is middling (and muddling). My intutitive reading is another decline is due, but perhaps not just yet. The gaps at 1655 and 1680-85 on the SPX beg to be filled, and it would be somewhat unusual if the market were to leave those unfilled for long.
A pop back up to 1690 would form a right shoulder in a major topping pattern: something to ponder if the market bounces.
Interestingly, a "death cross" of the 20-day moving average falling through the 50-day MA is about to occur. Conventional TA would suggest this presages a significant decline, but the previous low in June proved that death crosses don't always presage declines--sometimes they mark the ideal buying opportunity.
There is no sense of panic in the air, so this can't be a real bottom, but the euphoria of a top is also missing. What seems likely is a bounce back up to form a right shoulder and then a decline to a bottom in sentiment if not fundamentals.
The best thing that happened to me this week
I finished the editing of my next book, The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy. MY copy editor left 600+ comments and corrections for me to work through. Whew.
From Left Field
Lockheed U-2 Flight - 70,000 ft (10 min. video) (via Michael H.) earth from 70,000 feet--quite spectacular and thought-provoking. Hmm, the atmosphere is really pretty thin, isn't it?
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." Napoleon Bonaparte
Thanks for reading--
charles
