Category Archives: Health

Tying Up Loose Ends: Food for Thought and Brief Hiatus

Since moving to the new domain (www.JeremiahStanghini.com), this has been the longest time between posts. The last post I wrote was on April 5th. The hiatus from posting will continue for a little while after this post because I’m working on the last requirements for finishing my MBA. There are about 3 weeks left until the end of exam period, so I’ve got a few papers/presentations to finish and a lot of grading of papers/exams.

Whenever I open my computer I see the list of posts that I’ve been meaning to write. In an effort to “clear out some mental space,” I thought I’d do what I’ve done a couple of times in the past and flush out my list of posts to write. In this way, the list will be fresh for when I come back (save for the few cognitive biases that I still want to write about). So, without further adieu, here are some of the things that I had planned on expanding upon. I hope you enjoy!

Cars and Transportation — It’d be really cool if they could *feasibly* develop a car that could transform. A car that could be a single-passenger when commuting, but it could expand/transform into 2, 3, or 4 seats when it necessary.

Political Ideology — What if a given political ideology’s thoughts/plans don’t work unless they can be fully implemented? And because there’s a split in Parliament/Congress, it’s worse. But what if when either party had total control, it’d be worse than this middle-ground between the two ideas?

LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan — A few weeks before the conversation about LeBron vs. Jordan started, I’d had it on my to do list to write about it. I was a bit peeved when the conversation started (without me), but there were some interesting (and some not) things written about it. I think it’s extremely difficult to compare players across decades. It’s akin to comparing players across sports! I remember a few years ago when there was talk that Alex Rodriguez would be the greatest baseball player ever. I think it’s safe to say that conversation has died down a little.

Fear of Public Speaking — I was thinking back to one of the first times I had to stand up in front of a group of people and give a speech. I don’t even remember what I spoke about — but I do remember one of the speeches from my classmates who did quite well (it was about the NBA dunk contest). As I watch some folks present in front of rooms, I can empathize with their nervousness. Heck, even I still get a bit nervous sometimes. One thing I’ve learned — it’s really about repetition. The more times I’ve spoke in front of groups of people, the less nervous I get the next time I go up there. (On a slightly related note: I’d say another key factor in minimizing fear of public speaking is the extent to which you’re prepared to speak on the topic. Read: know your stuff!)

Focus on Labor — I’ve never been the CEO or a highly placed Vice President of a company, but from an outsider’s perspective, I always have a hard time understanding the lack of focus on the labor force. At times, it really looks like labor is the key to success. If the labor force is well taken care of, production and profits tend to do well. It reminds me of that post I did about sustainability and pitchers. The relation here is that when management takes care of the labor force, it is with an eye towards long-term sustainability.

Life, Liberty, and Property? — Why is property so valued? What about nomads or North Americans who show us that land isn’t to be owned? What about animals? They don’t seem to own land.

Star Trek: Inheritance — This is an episode from the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The gist of is that Data has to decide whether or not he’s going to tell his mother that she is an android (when she believes she’s a human). In thinking about this episode, I wondered about the ethics of telling someone they aren’t who they think they are. What about an adopted child?

Social Entrepreneurship — George Mason University‘s Center For Social Entrepreneurship has a massive open online course (MOOC) in social entrepreneurship. If you wanna learn about social entrepreneurship, this is a great place to start!

“I AM” — I saw the movie I AM quite some time ago and there were some cool things that stood out to me. I’ll be brief:

  • The HeartMath Institute — check them out! They’re doing some fascinating work.
  • Animals are more likely to cooperate than we may have first thought. There was a reference to a journal article about how a herd of deer decided to go in a given direction after hydrating at a water hole.
  • Rumi poetry is medicine for the soul.
  • I am continually amazed at the kinds of things that are correlated with Random Number Generators.
  • Did you know that the word “Love” appears 95 times in Darwin’s “The Descent of Man?”
  • A great quote that Desmond Tutu read: “God looked at me and said, all I have is you.”

And so that clears off most of my list. Look for a new post sometime in the next month, but probably not for the next 3 weeks. Happy end of April and early May!

Protection from Nuclear War: Look to the Cockroaches

Yesterday, I saw a post from Mental Floss about whether or not cockroaches would be able to survive a nuclear war. That is, not whether or not the cockroaches would put up a fight in a nuclear war, but whether or not they would survive the radiation from a nuclear war that happened where they existed.

The post cited research done by MythBusters that concluded cockroaches have a much higher tolerance for radiation.

Does anyone else see an opportunity for innovation here?

If I were a scientist, (aside from ethical conundrum), I might be interested in seeing how much radiation cockroaches could withstand before it affects their ability to function. Why? Because then I would want to study what it is about the cockroaches that allows them to withstand such radiation. Then, I’d want to see if I could design some sort of protection for humans. To be fair, it’d be very hard to get this to pass through any kind of Institutional Review Board (IRB). That is, the IRB would probably balk at any kind of research where humans were being used to test the strength of some kind of cockroach shield. Though, I imagine that scientists might be able to work around this by using human cells in the lab, right?

Maybe We Don’t Need to Workout At All

About a week ago, I wrote a post about the perfect exercise routine. My point was that there is no universal perfect exercise routine because there are so many different people on the planet, but that there may be some universal principles that could be applicable across peoples. It turns out that one of those “perfect” exercise routines might just be not exercising at all. Curious?

I recently came across a post from Harley Pasternak in, of all places, People. The post has a great opening illustrating just how sedentary our lives have become — amounting to the fact that we spend 45 minutes at the gym and the other 23 hours and 15 minutes sitting at our desks or sleeping. I really encourage you to read it because it paints quite a picture.

After I read it, I was reminded of the post I wrote a week ago that I referenced above (perfect routine), but also of the post I wrote about the obesity crisis. In that post, I focused on the neuromarketing aspect. That is, the idea that consumers may not have an *unbiased* choice to make when they reach for that bag of potato chips or for a second piece of chocolate cake. My main point in that post was that neuromarketing is having a large impact on the choices that are leading to the obesity epidemic. Pasternak argues that are innovation is also leading to obesity. Because we’ve worked so hard to make it easier to do things, we’ve cut out a lot of the time we spend getting from A to B or completing task A and completing task B:

They take leisurely daily walks, do their errands on foot, and walk, bicycle, or take public transportation to work. To make my case, consider this: the average European walks 237 miles every year and cycles 116 miles. The average American walks just 87 miles and cycles just 24 miles. No wonder Europeans are healthier – they’re three times as active!

It never occurred to me that public transportation would be linked to a country’s health, but I guess that just goes to show you the power of externalities and unintended consequences. This revelation makes me think that it’s even more important for the US to get on with advancing the infrastructure of the public transportation in the country.

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This brief bit about public transportation increasing a country’s health does remind me of something I read recently about the amount of time that patrons spend walking to and from public transportation. Something to the effect of it doubling the number of steps they take in a day. I couldn’t find that particular article, but I was able to find something from the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) that supports that finding:

Walking to and from public transportation can help physically inactive populations, especially low-income and minority groups, attain the recommended level of daily physical activity. Increased access to public transit may help promote and maintain active lifestyles.

The Perfect Exercise Routine – *Guaranteed

Almost two years ago, I wrote a post about the perfect diet and because I’d been seeing  lot of news about the “single most efficient exercise regimen,” I thought I’d write a post along the same lines as the one I wrote in June 2011. So, here goes!

There are over 11,900,000 returns when you type perfect exercise routine into Google and over 29,000,000 returns when you type best exercise routine into Google. Exercise routine by itself gives you 35,700,000. Clearly, people are not only interested in exercise and how to do it, but the best way to do it. This is great.

Exercise is such an important part (or at least it should be!) of our lives. Without it, we’re sure to not live nearly as long as we could. Now, maybe some people don’t want to live as long as they possibly can and would rather spend their time doing other things. I understand that. But exercise is not just about living longer, it’s about living better (or healthier), i.e. quality of life. 

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Certainly there are innumerable exercise routines. In fact, on one of those searches I mentioned above, there was a result near the top that said “1000+ exercise routines.” However, which one’s the best? Is there a best exercise routine? Well, sure there is. If you want better abs, you only have to come through about 10,000,000 Google results to find the best one. I could go through this for every major part of the body, but I’ll spare you the time. I would contend that there is no *perfect* exercise routine for everyone. That is, there isn’t one exercise routine that will be the “best” for everybody. Instead, I’d argue that there are as many perfect exerciser routines as there are people… so, more than 7 billion.

Some may quibble that I’m playing semantics, but just as is the case with food, each body has different things that it needs to thrive. Sure, there may be some general themes for bodies that live in northern climates vs. southern climates and general themes for women’s bodies vs. men’s bodies, but on the whole, I think that finding the perfect exercise routine is about finding what works best for you.

*Disclaimer: Because America is known for being a society of litigation, I thought it necessary to say that I cannot be held responsible for your decisions based on reading this post. I am not a physician, nor do I hold any degrees in exercise, so before making any changes to your exercise routine, I would be remiss if I didn’t recommend you consult a physician or educated professional.

Why Aren’t Ergonomic Keyboards Ubiquitous?

I’ve done a lot of typing in the last few days and the thought occurred to me, “my wrists would be so much happier if I could rest them with the width of them perpendicular to the desk.” Note: I didn’t think in such specific terms, but if I don’t describe the image I was thinking, this opening paragraph will fall apart quite quickly. And so then I thought, “THAT would be a really cool keyboard.”

I made a note to write something about my “brilliant” idea and left it. When I came back to it, I thought I’d do a little bit of research and see if someone had already invented the ergonomic keyboard I was imagining. Turns out, they have: ErgoSplit Keyboard. I’ve included a picture of it to the left. At first, I was a little disappointed because I thought I’d come up with a great idea. Then, I was happy – someone already did it! Then, I was disappointed again. How come ergonomic keyboards are more prevalent?

I haven’t worked in an office in some time, but when I imagine a computer workstation or when I see pictures of computer workstations, rarely do I see an ergonomic keyboard. I would think with the research that OSHA (and others!) have done, there’d be a higher demand for ergonomic keyboards. And on that note, when most folks think of ergonomic keyboard, they think of the picture in the first paragraph (at least I do). How come there aren’t more people who are interested in ergonomic keyboards like the one in the second picture? When I imagine using it, it feels like it’s a more natural position than the “original” ergo keyboard and leaps and bounds more ergonomic than the plain keyboard.

New Perspective on Healthiness: When You Get Unhealthy, Your Spouse or Your Kids Pay For It

I’m certainly a fan of behavioral economics, behavioral finance, and especially the ideas in Richard Thaler‘s book, Nudge. After reading Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human earlier this winter, I was thinking about how to combine some of the principles of those books in tackling what is a self-inflicted crisis: obesity.

Last month, I wrote about the importance of considering neuromarketing in the discussion of obesity, but I think there’s another way to frame this discussion. More importantly, at first blush, when framing it this way, I think it could motivate some people to take better care of themselves (at a minimum, it helped to motivate me to do so). I don’t remember how I came to this idea, but I know that it combines some of the things that I’ve read in the books I mentioned above (and was why I made note of them).

The idea: a marketing campaign in which we tell people that, when they get unhealthy, their spouse or their kids will have to pay for it.

Most people don’t want to burden their spouses (or their children), so I thought that by drawing to their attention that their spouse/kids will be the ones who’ll have to take care of them (and maybe pay for the cost of their care?), it might sway people away from making those choices that negatively affect their health.

When I had a conversation with someone about this, they raised the important point that many people don’t have spouses and many people don’t have kids, so this campaign might not be as successful as I first thought. Those are very valid points, but don’t we think that many people will — eventually — have spouses? If we can agree to that we then could add “future” spouse or “future” children to the campaign. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the underlying principle of the idea. Do you think that people care that their spouses/kids will be left to take care of them?

How Does a 25-Hour Workweek Sound to You?

Vocation is a very important part of our lives in today’s society. Vocation, usually, gives our lives a sense of purpose. At times, however, our vocation can get in the way of our lives. How? Overwork. This past summer, I linked to a couple of articles at The Atlantic that illustrate this point quite perfectly. The first: No-Vacation Nation: Why Don’t Americans Know How to Take a Break?. And the second: The Case for Vacation: Why Science Says Breaks Are Good for Productivity.

There’s a really important graphic from the first link. I’ve included it below, (but if it’s too hard to read, click on it and it will take you to a bigger version of it).

If you’ll notice, the US is absolute last on this list of OECD countries. Certainly not something that the US should be proud of.

Earlier this fall, I posted a TEDTalk of someone from the New Economics Foundation arguing for a 21-hour workweek. A couple of weeks ago, I came across a news release that the head of the Max Planck research centre was arguing for a 25-hour workweek. There are some key points:

When you’re 20, you would rather spend more time with your friends. When you’re 35, you want time with your kids. But then when you reach 70, you have far too much time on your hands.

This scenario probably sounds familiar to many people today. But there are good arguments for changing this. We should aim for more leisure time in our youth and instead work a bit more when we get older.

…

”There is strong evidence that elderly people who work part-time are healthier than those who don’t work at all and just sit at home. This is simply because working improves people’s health,” he says.

“The benefits are not just psychological because being an active part of society makes you people feel good about themselves, but also physically, since you use both your brain and your body when you’re working.”

There are also some good interpersonal arguments in support of spreading our working hours over a longer period in our lives.

”The main argument is that this would give young people aged 20-30 more time to care for their children, do sports and other important activities that improve their lives,” says the professor.

”The way it is today, young people are slaving their way through work, looking forward to a long retirement. But why not move that retirement period around a bit so that young people get more valuable time off work?”

How does all of that sound?

The thing is, there’s a culture of overworking. Working 60+ hours a week should not be a badge of honor — it should be a badge of ludicrousness (save for some extreme examples). Vocation is important, yes, but so are other things in life. And, if productivity is what you’re after, it’s important to understand that overworking one’s self is the perfect way to limit productivity. Remember that second link I share above:

It’s typical for families to celebrate the month of August by shutting down the computer and skipping town. From a raw numbers perspective, this counts as lost work. But that’s a short-sighted view, psychologists now say. In fact, by serving as the least productive month for millions of workers, August unexpectedly serves as a productivity-booster.

Just as small breaks improve concentration, long breaks replenish job performance. Vacation deprivation increases mistakes and resentment at co-workers, Businessweek reported in 2007. “The impact that taking a vacation has on one’s mental health is profound,” said Francine Lederer, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles specializing told ABC News. “Most people have better life perspective and are more motivated to achieve their goals after a vacation, even if it is a 24-hour time-out.”

As with most things in business and in life, understanding the different between long-term gains and short-term profits is of the utmost importance with regard to the issue of the workweek.

If Laughter is the Best Medicine, Why Don’t Doctors Specialize in It?

A couple of weeks ago, I heard the old adage that “laughter is the best medicine.” And then I thought to myself, if that’s true, then why aren’t there any doctors of laughter? Is there an degree-granting institution out there that issues doctorates in laughter? Shouldn’t there be?

I realize that idea is a bit off-the-wall, but bear with me for a moment. If laughter is the best medicine, shouldn’t we have comedians/comediennes in hospitals? Can you imagine that a doctor doing their rounds consisted of going to a number of patients and telling jokes? Wouldn’t that be fun(ny)! I wrote about medicine in the 22nd century a few days ago — maybe by then, we’ll have doctors who specialize in making their patients laugh. Probably not, but wouldn’t that be something?

So the whole idea of doctors who specialize in laughing may be a bit too far, so then I thought, wouldn’t it make a good bit? That is, wouldn’t it make for a good stand-up comedy bit. I’m certainly no expert in stand-up comedy and I’m sure that stand-up comedians often get their friends telling them (hey this might be funny) even though it’s not, but I think, with the right comedian, that bit could be really funny. To make it really work, I think the comedian would have to be really serious when telling the bit (but isn’t that true of most bits)?

Now that I think of it, I don’t know what I’d rather see more: an article that details a clinic in some remote village that has an LD (Laughing Doctor) or an article that details a comedian that’s a big hit because of the comedian’s bit about a doctorate in laughing.

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As an addendum to this, I saw a tweet this past week that makes the case that laughter isn’t just related to medicine!

 

Stop Consuming — Get Busy Creating

In one of those ubiquitous end of the year posts, Joshua Brown (financial advisor) and all-around fun guy (at least from what I can gather by following him on Twitter) wrote:

The news is mostly not news. Believe me, I traffic in this stuff online and on-air every day.

But let’s say it was all “real news”…then what? It isn’t as though you’re able to react to it, at least not all of it. In fact, the less of it you react to, the better off you probably are. My friend David Merkel talks about making as few decisions as possible, thus limiting the amount of bad or forced ones. This is the kind of advice that sounds so simple and obvious that it can’t possibly be true – but it actually is true.

Brown is writing this inside of a larger point — stay away from the news. His audience in this paragraph is specifically those who are stock traders, but I think, with some minor tweaks, we can expand the audience to everyone (or at least a lot of people). It’s pretty hard to create things, if you’re always consuming. If you’re endlessly following the news on Twitter or reading what’s going on in the world around you, it makes it quite a bit harder to make something yourself.

In an interview with Esquire magazine last year, Ricky Gervais (!) made a plea for people to be creators*:

You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening — everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, ‘I did that.’

I certainly think Gervais is right — we’ve each got something unique and creative to contribute to the world. Let’s tie this back into Brown’s point about staying away from the news. In fact, Brown includes a tweet that supports his point and I think exemplifies mine:

Another place where this point is made, albeit in a longer way, is in a TEDTalk that Susan Cain gave last year. The subject was on introversion and it was very powerful. If you need more support for the point about “spending time away” from things, then I’d definitely watch her talk.

*Note: I realize that I’ve not linked to the Esquire Magazine article. Since I first came across this quote from Maria Popova, I wanted to link back to it on her site. She tirelessly works to curate an enormous amount of content. In this case, it felt right to link back to her site — especially because she includes a link to the Esquire interview.

What Will Medicine Look Like in the 22nd Century?

Every now and then, I like to watch some old episodes of Star Trek. I should clarify: I watch “The Next Generation.” I’m a little young for the original series. The Next Generation aired during my younger formative years (and how grateful I am for this). I often think that my strong sense of morals has a lot to do with the fact that I was often presented with ethical dilemmas through the vehicle of this show.

A few weeks ago, I happened to catch an episode from near the end of the final season: Thine Own Self. One of the two featured plot lines for this episode is Data‘s visit to a ‘primitive’ village. Data, suffering from amnesia, is taken in by this village. Maybe I should back-up and tell you how he got there. Data was sent on a mission to recover some radioactive material from a probe that crashed on the planet. Having suffered injuries during this recovery attempt, Data walks to this village (miles and miles away), carrying a box that says radioactive.

As I said, this village welcomes Data — at least for a little while, but I won’t get into all of that. The parts I want to focus on are those that occurred with the town’s healer. Because Data doesn’t know who he is, he is taken to see the town’s healer. Listening to her assessment of Data’s injuries and the like is a real treat. The way the healer reasons that this is causing that because of something unforeseen is just what you might expect from a pre-industrial society. That’s not meant to sound pejorative — societies do the best they can with what they’ve got.

I looked and looked for a clip of the healer diagnosing Data or of the healer diagnosing the members of the village (as some of them get radiation poisoning), but couldn’t find it. However, I was able to find a clip of the healer teaching some of the children about the elements.

Strange, eh?

After seeing this episode again, I had to think to myself, what are our assumptions in medicine today that will seem laughable in 100 years. What about in 300 years? What about in other fields? Will we laugh that we ever used to think that we weren’t able to communicate telepathically? What about seeing things at a distance? Will there still be poverty? Hunger?

Whenever we start to take ourselves and our assumptions too seriously, it’s important to remember the humble beginnings from which we come.