Musings Report #8 2-22-14 The Healthy Role of Exertion/Stress/Dissent

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The Healthy Role of Exertion/Stress/Dissent

To say that exertion/stress/dissent is not just healthy, but essential for maintaining health sounds counter-intuitive. On an individual level, we try to avoid exertion, stress and crisis, and on a larger systemic level, our institutions devote enormous resources to minimize systemic stresses and crises.

In other words, the notion that exertion/stress/dissent are to be avoided is scale-invariant: it works the same for individuals and the Federal Reserve.

What got me thinking about this was the revelation that short bursts of physical exertion several times a day yield the same positive results as 20+ minutes of strenuous workout in the gym. Doing some strenuous exercise for 60 seconds a few times of day triggers the same immune and repair systems that longer duration exercise engenders.

Why does this matter? On a practical level, many of us have a hard time finding time to go to a gym every day. Those of us over 50 find that sustained vigorous exercise increases the odds of injury.

On a natural-selection level, the benefits arising from "short bursts of strenuous exercise" fits into our basic survival need to be ready to sprint, lift a heavy object, etc., that is, perform some brief exertion. In the hunter-gatherer world, calories are too scarce to squander on 20+ minutes a day of vigorous workout; the payoff simply isn't worth the expenditure of calories.

So the fact that three 60-second bursts of exertion are enough to maintain strength and endurance makes sense in a natural-selection trade-off in which the minimum number of calories are consumed to maintain the optimum sustainable fitness for survival.

There is another form of survival fitness, of course, the ability to walk/jog for miles/kilometers a day, day after day. We clearly need both types of fitness to be resilient and healthy.

The key to the benefits of short bursts of exertion (doing as many sit-ups or push-ups as you can in one set, doing 50 jumping jacks or 20 burpees, etc.) is that this signals the body to rebuild stressed muscle tissue and fire up various immune responses to the damage caused by the exertion.

Anecdotally, I've found that these brief exertions maintain strength despite gaps of a week or so; remarkably, missing a week or two (due to illness, travel, etc.) doesn't degrade one's core strength that much, once a certain level of fitness is reached. In other words, the number of calories needed to maintain strength and fitness are relatively modest once relatively high levels of fitness/strength have been reached.

Exertion stresses the body's major systems (heart-lungs, insulin, arteries, etc.), in effect pushing all the major systems out of steady-state default settings.

This aligns with what we've learned about how systems respond when feedback and information are limited or suppressed. This is one of the key insights of Nassim Taleb's work on "black swans" and risk. In manipulating systems to maintain a steady-state of financial stability, the Federal Reserve and the state have doomed the entire system to collapse.

Taleb explained why in the June 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs: “Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks.” As Taleb explained, the very act of suppressing fluctuations renders systems extremely prone to large-scale disruptions that are viewed as low-probability events, the infamous “black swans.”

In terms of human health, the systemic fragility that arises from a low-stress/exertion lifestyle is masked by steady-state normalcy that appears superficially low-risk. The fragility/risk is only revealed when the individual does some strenuous work, and the brittle systems, unable to respond positively to the stress, suddenly fail (for instance, a heart attack).

Political economies in which dissent, volatility and the stresses of financial panics and failures have been suppressed or artificially eliminated (for example, allowing banks to mark their assets to fantasy rather than to the market value of the assets) become increasingly fragile, as the repair/reform responses triggered by stress, dissent and financial failures have been eliminated from the system.

In a healthy economy, dissent and the volatility of insolvency and bankruptcy act just like bursts of exertion, stressing the system enough to trigger repairs/reforms. Stripped of these signals, the systems ossify and become too brittle to absorb the shock of dissent/volatility/stress when these forces break through the suppression.

Diseases such as diabetes seem to be fostered by a steady-state lifestyle of a corrosive diet and no strenuous exercise. Since no signals of repair/reform are triggered, the individual/household/enterprise/economy gets more brittle and prone to failure with every passing day, even as the risks of collapse/disease appear low on the surface.

It is important to note that anyone who is out of shape cannot just jump into a routine of strenuous exercise. Resilience, flexibility, strength and endurance must be built up slowly over time. It's important to stretch and warm up before any exercise, especially strenuous exercise.

The individual/system that never experiences exertion, dissent, volatility or stress is systemically unhealthy and prone to sudden "gosh, I didn't see this coming" collapse. The individual who walks daily (i.e. aerobic exercise) is healthier than the couch potato, but the individual who routinely engages in short bouts of strenuous activity has the added benefits of triggering rebuilding and repair responses.

Political economies, government agencies, enterprises and communities are all systems, and all systems respond the same way: either growing brittle and vulnerable in steady-state sclerosis or maintaining strength, resilience, flexibility and adaptability with the feedback provided by dissent, stress, exertion and crisis.

Summary of the Blog This Past Week

From the Garden to the Table in 20 Minutes 2/22/14

Why Banks Are Doomed: Technology and Risk 2/21/14

Banks Are Obsolete: The Entire Parasitic Sector Can Be Eliminated 2/20/14

How to Make a Million: Extortion Creates its own Antidote 2/19/14

Higher Education: America's Problem That Isn't Being Solved 2/18/14

The Devil's 2014 Missive to His Minions 2/17/14

The Devil's Missive attracted around 20,000 reads, plus visits on other sites, but the Big Story of the week is the way Status Quo systems suppress feedback and centralize sclerosis, ensuring future collapse. This includes banks, higher education and sickcare.

Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week

I discovered a patch of red potato plants in our (slightly unkempt) garden. I'm not sure where they came from but I am delighted to find them thriving despite the poor rainfall and cold weather.

Market Musings

Some of you may recall my suggestion last year to stock up on coffee, as it was drifting to multi-year lows. Although it was impossible to predict when low prices would end, it was fairly certain the trend would reverse at some point. That point was this month, as coffee futures have soared over 50% in just a few weeks. Those holding the ETF JO or coffee futures profited handsomely from their patience.

From Left Field

Local groceries, all winter long (via John D.) -- for those who can't have winter gardens...

Who Owns Organic Now? New Info Graphic Tracks the Corporate Takeover of Organics

Gawker’s sworn affidavits explaining why its greedy interns didn’t deserve to be paid (via Wayne A.) -- the new serfdom--unpaid internships with no real career track...

Public Sector Cuts Part-Time Shifts to Bypass Insurance Law (via Joel M.) -- what will the public-sector unions do once they realize ObamaCare is a catastrophe for their memberships?

Self-Pay Patient (via Steve M.) -- alternatives and work-arounds to ObamaCare are popping up....

So This Housing Flyer Is Depressing -- San Francisco rents enter bubble territory: one-bedroom flats for $3,995 to $4,995/month -- S.F. heading for an epic crash, even as tech-watchers are infinitely confident there is no bubble...i.e. the hubris that marks the top of a bubble....

Housing Foreclosure Filings Jump as Investors Eye Exits -- the collapse of the rental market was baked in once everybody from Mom and Pop to large funds went on buying sprees...

South Korea’s housing market: Landlords are having to ditch a century-old rental system -- talk about a ripoff traditional system....

Love in a time of neo-liberalism: "We are infinitely sentimental about ourselves, but methodically ruthless towards others." Ouch....

Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’: “It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.

The All-or-Nothing Marriage: "Our central claim is that Americans today have elevated their expectations of marriage and can in fact achieve an unprecedentedly high level of marital quality — but only if they are able to invest a great deal of time and energy in their partnership. If they are not able to do so, their marriage will likely fall short of these new expectations." -- unrealistic expectations erode all systems....

Hamburg, Germany plans to “eliminate the need for automobiles” within two decades -- perhaps unrealistic but even a significant reduction would offer huge benefits....

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." Cicero

Thanks for reading--

charles