Category: Health

“Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That’s the other guy’s problem. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the absolute carnage you are about to witness. Super Bowl, World Series – they don’t know what pressure is. In this building, it’s either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you’re up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?” – Trading Places

It’s a new martial art – we call it “Slap-foo.”

I’ve been posting on health topics weekly for, well, over a year every Friday, which is well over fifty posts on health (my basic math is still intact, so my senility is at least another week off).  The Friday health posts have examined some important relationships between all sorts of issues, and generally attempt to tie back to things that impact (or will impact) our health, health care, and the future of what technology might do to health care and longevity.  It’s a pretty big topic, and well within the blog’s mission, which was stolen shamelessly from Benjamin Franklin’s “healthy, wealthy, and wise” quote.

But what I haven’t done is look at health from a bigger picture.  Health as a human system.  Let’s examine the human body as if it were a Tesla® Model 3™ or any other engineered system.  That car rolls off the assembly line (or not, if it’s a real Tesla©, they seem to be having trouble making them) in as good a condition as it ever will be.  Every moment, every mile degrades a system in one way or another.  The tires get worn down by the road.  The batteries experience a slow failure as they are charged and discharged.  Your Elon Musk™ bobblehead gets faded by ultraviolet rays.  The paint gets chipped by a rock from the road.  And yet, we can look at the systems that impact the life of the car in a dispassionate way because they’re governed (mostly) by things that we can analyze, failures that we can predict based upon way we use and treat the car.

So how is a human body different?  In many ways it isn’t.  Human longevity depends on many predictable, controllable factors that determine how long and how well a human will function.  It reaches its peak genetic health at birth, its peak physical health between 16 and 30 (depending upon the system) and then ages.  What determines how long this machine lasts?  How much of it do we control?

Quite a lot, really, and it’s simpler than you might imagine (though I didn’t say it was easy):

Diet – if I were to pick my number one choice for something to focus on for longer human life, it would start here. “You are what you eat.”  “Don’t be such a pig, John Wilder, and save some for the rest of us.”  “No, you don’t have to finish off the second plate of fettuccini alfredo.  That’s not the way to stick it to Olive Garden®.”

I’ve discussed this on numerous posts – and it appears that a low carbohydrate diet is demonstrably the best in many respects.  But sugar tastes so good, even high fructose corn syrup.  Obesity is one that more and more people struggle with every year.  It’s a major factor in heart disease and cancer, too – the number one and number two killers.

If you want to live longer, start with diet.  It’s hard, and society is making a frowny face at you if you don’t conform.  But in the end, you (and I) control the fork . . . .

Here are a couple of relevant posts from the past:

Doritos, Obesity, Addiction, and Nic Cage

Diet, then Exercise. Diet first. Atkins and Paleo work.

The Link Between Sugar, Cancer, and the Kardashians

Exercise – this is my number two on the list. Exercise tones and trains the body, so that when you die you will look awesome at your funeral and also helps you lose weight so that you don’t need thirty pallbearers.  I kid.

Exercise is clearly related to a stronger body.   It’s clearly related to a healthier heart (though it’s not a cure all for heart disease).  It’s clearly related to lower incidence of cancer.  And it’s clearly related to smaller pants (which helps with stress, below).

If you’re not exercising and are healthy enough to do so, exercise.  Duh.

Russian Wrestlers, Pylometrics, and You’re Probably Not Trying All That Hard

Sitting? Death. Get up. Neal Stephenson says so.

Stress – third on my list of factors influencing how long you live, stress seems to be a byproduct of modern life. But many of the things that stress us are chosen, and most of those things we choose to stress out about are based on future consequences that will never happen.  Stress is dangerous for nearly every system that you require for operation:  your brain and memory deteriorate under long-term stress.  Your heart and blood pressure are aggravated by stress (and stroke risk increases).  Negative behaviors like eating a whole cake, or living on a diet that consists entirely of pre-made frosting tubs (chocolate sour cream, of course) increase with stress.  Tobacco use increases.  Alcohol/drug consumption increases.

Sure, you say, but what are the negative behaviors?  I kid.  But long term consequences of stress and the behaviors that we engage in to cope with stress kill 4 billion people a year.

Okay, not 4 billion people a year.  But it’s not good.  According to one source, stress-related conditions are responsible for 75% of doctor visits.  Stress is a contributor to the top deadly conditions (heart disease, cancer, accidents, suicide) in the United States.

So what do you do?

Surviving Stress, Still Proudly Caffeinated

Superpowers, Stress, Ben Franklin’s Nails

Relationships and Social Engagement – having friends is key to living longer. While it may be related to stress reduction, I think it’s more than that.  Engagement in something that gives your life meaning and purpose is inherently fulfilling.  And it gives you something to look forward to each morning when it’s time to get up.  Being married is also key.  Having people you can share with – you can confide in – makes you stronger.

Recently, however, people doing more social interaction on places like FaceBlock® or Tweeter©, and these interactions don’t and can’t replace taking a five mile hike with your son or a spirited conversation with your family, just like you can’t fight evil with a macaroni duck.

Lonely? Ditch Facebook, Find Real People. Live Longer.

Friendship and Health – and When Friendships are Made . . .

Lifestyle – other lifestyle factors can greatly influence your lifespan, especially if you overdo them:

• Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking – I would say these might void the factory warranty, but Keith Richards is still alive. I also had a relative that smoked several packs of cigarettes a day.  And slipped in the shower and died when she was in her mid-seventies.  Those are outliers – be moderate in your vices.  Ben Franklin and his Thirteen Virtues

• Sleep – Get enough. Too little will hurt you and make you fatter over time. Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies
• Be Wealthy – everything is easier if you’re rich, and that’s part of the mission of this blog. So get a lot of money, or change your name to Richard.
• Personal Safety Habits – I had a dream that my youngest son was using my table saw to turn trees into planks. He kept putting his fingers near the blade.  NOOOOO!  Don’t do that.  Be . . . at least a little
• Supplements – Might some help? Sure, but you have to have your basics (above) in place.  Vitamins and You

Sure, there are things you can’t control and that are difficult to assess:

• Bad luck –
  • Accidents,
  • Meteors,
  • Being a skinny marathon runner who has a heart attack
  • Being Job, that guy from the Bible. (Never be the subject of a bet between God and Satan – it’s like being Dan Ackroyd from Trading Places.)
• Genetics – Ever see a family of fat people? Or skinny people?    Some people just have those genetics.  And if you’re lucky you’ll have the “only allergic to being stabbed and are impervious to cancer” genes.  Heck, I’d settle for Keith Richards’ genes.

Luck aside, if you control your diet, exercise, stress, relationships, and lifestyle, you could live 10 to 20 years longer – you can get a lot more mileage out of your Tesla® if you take care of it.  That is, if you can get one . . .

Again:  I am Not a doctor.  NOT A DOCTOR.  Not a doctor.  Not a doctor.  Not a doctor.  Doctor. 

NOT A DOCTOR.  So see a real one if you think you need to.

“Did I never tell you? I suffer from sleep apnea.  That’s why I had to bring this guy with me. My CPAP machine.”

“Oh, my God.  Did you just rent that so you could have your own bed?” – The League

So, to demonstrate how sleep apnea occurs, I cut a cartoon cadaver in half.  It’s messier than it sounds – ink went everywhere.    Fortunately I had lots of ACME towels to sop it up.  But then the towels exploded.

It looks like this cadaver died from being shot in the mouth with blue arrows.

Recently, The Mrs. sat me down and said that she was worried that I might be snoring . . . a bit too hard.  I disagree – I assured her that I had never heard myself snore, so she must certainly be in error.  Especially when she indicated that the snoring had, on several occasions, triggered tsunami alerts in Hawaii, and we live firmly in flyover central northern Upper South Midwestia.

I started doing some research.  Snoring’s not dangerous, right?

No.  Snoring can be deadly.  Very deadly.  Like 40,000 deaths a year in the United States (at least).  That’s more people than Rosie O’Donnell drives to suicide monthly.  Wow!

How does snoring kill you?

Cardiovascular disease.  Car accidents.  High blood pressure.

Huh?

Turns out that snoring, especially loud snoring, is a sign of sleep apnea.  Sleep apnea is where the “sleeper” periodically stops breathing for 10-60 seconds, up to 80 times per hour.  This, in turn (simply, neither of us are going to med school) causes a plethora of piñatas problems.  Increased carbon dioxide causes parts of your brain to die.  It also causes your heart to freak out, and beat harder and faster to get more blood moving.  It may even lead to shots of adrenaline that keep you from sleeping soundly.

The end result is you’re tired, all the time.

Your heart is getting stressed out, every night.

You are getting (subconsciously) stressed each night as you periodically are suffocated.  By yourself.

The causes of sleep apnea are fairly common.  Be an aging dude, be overweight.  Have allergies.  Have a thick, football player neck.  In turn, this leads to more weight gain, daytime sleepiness, heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents from drowsy drivers.

So, you’re saying, “John Wilder, you’ve convince me that this can kill me.  What on earth can I do about it?”

I’m so glad you’ve asked.

Give up drinking, smoking.  Lose weight.  Sleep on your side.

See the problem?  Drinking is certainly possible to give up, but why would you want to?  (I mean besides all the documented health benefits).  Losing weight is hard enough, but sleep apnea actually changes your body chemistry so it’s harder to lose weight.

What’s the solution?

CPAP.  (I’ve most often heard people pronounce this as “see-pap” as in “See Pap’s eyes as he has another heart attack???”)  The symptoms (including snoring) that you might need CPAP are being drowsy during the daytime, drowsy driving during the daytime, nodding off after Thanksgiving Dinner, and generally being able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.  I thought I had a skill – I could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, generally in thirty seconds or so.  It turns out that it might just have been sleep apnea, curable by CPAP.

CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Air Pressure, and not Constant Peer Alcohol Provision, as one might think.  Uncharacteristically, it is one of the three things invented by Australians that don’t involve alcohol, marsupials, or Australian Rules Football.

Back when ESPN® was good, it would show Australian Rules Football at 1AM.  All the guys on my high school football team watched it, mainly because the referees were so . . . amazing. 

As I was saying, Dr. Colin Sullivan, AC/DC fan and uncle of Angus Young (I made that up to make him more interesting) was a guy who treated people with sleep apnea.  At that time, the prevailing treatment method was a tracheotomy.  Yes.  They would cut a hole in your throat to stop the apnea.

So, Dr. Sullivan figured that there had to be a better way, even if it was less cool than slitting the throats of his patients.  He experimented with dogs (dingoes, maybe?) and must have found a group that snored but that didn’t drag off babies.  Here was the first CPAP.

After he got it to work with a patient whose throat he was going to cut open.  He put that first CPAP on the patient, and the patient had seven great hours of sleep in the first time since forever.  Unlike throat slitting, this was a medical procedure with no significant adverse side effects.  None.  Sadly, Dr. Sullivan deprived thousands of doctors of the joy of cutting open patients as the first commercial CPAP machines went on the market in 1985.

Now the crazy facts:

• 22 million Americans are probably suffering from some degree of sleep apnea.
• Machines are relatively inexpensive, with many costing less than $350.
• Only 10% or so of sleep apnea sufferers have machines.
• Sleep studies (required for the prescription of this harmless but helpful machine) cost between $600 and $5,000.
• 40,000 Americans a year die from sleep apnea.
• John Candy died from complications related to sleep apnea.
• William Shatner has sleep apnea.

The facts speak for themselves.  Lifesaving technology is being kept hostage to gatekeepers that could be replaced by software or a cellphone app at very low cost?  Where have we seen this before?  If we let Silicon Valley “disrupt” sleep apnea treatments we’d probably have machines costing less than a $100, since your cell phone would become the machine brain and the data would be uploaded to some cloud site and analyzed and tweaked in real time to provide even better performance and better apnea control (hint: as a business idea).  Heck, it could even provide a real-time alarm if it saw actual life threatening patterns developing.

Oh, yeah, when I wrote about optometrists (LINK).  There’s a low-cost way to get a very accurate (I can attest) prescription.  But they want to scare you.  As would anyone who saw a lucrative meal ticket floating away.  Such as anyone who does sleep studies.  These are gatekeepers that server a very limited role in society today – their skills can be replaced inexpensively by technology.

I talked to someone I know from work (he doesn’t work at the same place as I do, but we talk frequently.  I asked him if he had ever used a CPAP.

“Man, that’s the best thing ever.  I love it.  I have been using it for years.  If you travel you will forget your toothbrush, your underwear, your deodorant, but you will never forget your CPAP.”

John Wilder:  “How was the sleep study?”

Him:  “Sleep study?  Didn’t get one.  Just ordered one off of my dad’s prescription.”

He described a fairly tough few days getting adjusted to the machine.

“But the first day you sleep through the night?  Oh, man.  You feel like you’re sixteen again.  Energy!  I woke up after four hours – more refreshed than I’d been in years.  I love it.”

As for me?  I think this system where you have to pay an artificial gatekeeper for proven, safe technology is immoral and strangles market competition and innovation.  And, as the facts would say, also fattening.  Quite literally, this market manipulation to serve a few medical professionals kills thousands of people a year, but since they have nice jobs and serve on the PTA nobody recognizes them for the killers they are – more efficient than organized crime.  More deadly than gun violence.

And the people in Hawaii are probably getting tired of the tsunami warnings, what with the volcano, they have enough on their hands.  They should take up a collection for a sleep study for me . . . or in a sane world, I’d just walk down to the store and buy a CPAP.

But the Sleep Mafia won’t let me . . . .

Repeat to yourself:  John Wilder is NOT a doctor.  Do NOT take medical advice from humor bloggers on the Internet.

“Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat.  It’s not a damn seminar.  Stop trying to control everything.” – Fight Club

One of the oldest digital pictures on my computer.  I think these folks are from my mother’s side of the family . . . she said they were farmers.

There was a moment in time when it was almost . . . just too much.  My moment was at 10pm one night in March in the (now) distant past.  I had been up since 6am, and at 10pm was the first minute I had that was for me that day.

The day started early – I had to get my daughters up and ready for school – and then drop them off at the day care right as it opened at 7am (I’d made their lunches the night before).  Then, off to work.  Work lasted until 5:45pm, which was the last time I could leave and not miss the day care closing time, which was 6pm.  I was a manager, so work meant long hours.

I’d take my daughters shopping for groceries once a week.  The three of us ate for (generally) about $25 a week – which involved no eating out and quite a lot of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese® or Hamburger Helper™.  Lunches for the girls were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Pretty much daily.

After shopping?  Back to home to cook dinner, do dishes, and work on homework with the girls.  Then make sure they bathed and toss ‘em into bed while I did a load of laundry.

Then it was 10pm.  Me time.  On Saturdays I’d get up with the girls and make breakfast (either cereal or pancakes) and then fall asleep, exhausted, while they watched cartoons.

Financially, I was in debt – the most of my life.  I had a home payment, a car payment, a student loan payment, and a lot of credit card debt.  A lot.  Divorces are expensive.  Why are they expensive?  They’re worth it.  I mentioned the $100 food budget, but every dollar was spoken for.  I wanted to play rugby for the local team, but couldn’t.  There wasn’t enough money for both rugby club dues ($45?) and eating.  So, eating took priority.

I remember distinctly being flat on my back in bed – arms outstretched, staring at the ceiling fan.

I was at the bottom.  No money.  No time for anything.  And an endless stretch of days just to start digging myself out of the mess.

Again – I was at the bottom.  And I gave up.  How stupid was I to get in this situation.  I prayed.  “I can’t do this.  I need help.”

The next day, a check for exactly the amount required arrived in the mailbox – it was a rebate from AT&T – I was in some sort of long distance plan that gave me a rebate after so long.  And here it was.  I could play rugby.

But who would watch the girls?  Good friends (who I still owe!) would.

Every day after I hit bottom got better.  Every day.  It seems that when you’re at the bottom, every step, in any direction, is a way up and out.  Eventually I got enough money so we weren’t living close to the edge.

I got promoted at work.

I got raises.

I got in shape.

I met The Mrs. – at the exact time and place where I was a better guy, and the world was headed my way.

Eventually, I clawed my way out of debt.  And the lessons I learned walking out of the bottom of the pit, however slowly, are with me today.

When you’re at the bottom – the only way is up.  What can you pick up down there and bring back up with you?

“Good evening, sir. My name is Steve.  I come from a rough area.  I used to be addicted to crack but now I’m off and trying to stay clean.  That is why I’m selling magazine subscriptions.” – Office Space

Now I’m gonna hum that song all day long.

What if . . . your food is actually an addiction, like heroin, tobacco, the metric system, or Lady Gaga songs?

I heard just a little bit of a radio talk show where the guest made that comment.  Well, kinda made that comment.  I embellished just a bit.

How on Earth could your food be addictive?

Humans have been eating food for as long as there have been humans.  Before that, they ate rocks.  Small ones, better for the digestion.  But humans were stupid, so our ancestor’s brains encoded subtle signals that made them think that sweet things were amazingly good.  That meat tasted wonderful.  That eating enough fat should make you feel full.

These signals directly from the food, sometimes.  Cheese contains casein.  I know that “casein” sounds like what you do to a bank before robbing it, but in this case it’s a protein found in milk.  And casein is found in dairy products, like cheese.   When you eat it, your body begins the process of digesting it.  And in digesting it, it turns it into opiates called casomorphins.  Yes.  Your body turns cheese into drugs that make you want to eat cheese.

When I eat sugar, I can feel it.  There’s a reason that parents think that kids are hyperactive, and that’s because they are.  Sugar hits the bloodstream very quickly, and stimulates an insulin response that plays hell with the endocrine (“Endo” is from the Latin for “Stupid name that George Lucas would use to name an Ewok® or something” and “crine” comes from being sad, as in “it’s a crine shame”) system.  We certainly didn’t have sugar in quantities 5,000 years ago, so our bodies developed a strong, positive response to this extremely energy-dense and reactive group of molecules.

It’s my guess that we’ve changed (via breeding) the nutrition that we get from our plants.  The corn (maize) of today doesn’t look much at all like the grass-looking plant that humans started breeding thousands of years ago to turn into the massive ears of corn.  It’s certain that the protein balance and other aspects of vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrate content have changed as we made corn what it is today.

So far, we’ve only touched on foods that were at least related to stuff we ate 5,000 years ago.  A native American from 1500 B.C. would recognize corn, kinda.  He’d recognize meat.  But he’d have no clue about what to think about a Ding Dong®, Twinkie™, or Nachos BellGrande®.

Bold John Wilder Assertion:  Modern foods have led us to a place far enough and fast enough that our digestive systems, brains, and hormonal system can’t even remotely begin to cope.

What evidence is there for this assertion?

Doritos® have more than 40 ingredients.

Wonder Breadâ„¢ has over 14.

The bread the Amish make has five.  Remove sugar, and you’ve got four.  And that makes yummy French bread.

Let’s think of the processed food that we buy in the supermarket (or convenience store) differently.  These foods aren’t the same as they were forty years ago.  They’ve been faced with the ultimate evolutionary system that the modern world has to offer:  the free market.

Markets are amoral.  They provide the product that people purchase, not the product that people need.  Markets are ruthless.  If no one buys a product, the product will cease to exist, quickly.

And what do we buy?  We buy things that we like.  Things that taste good.  Things that we crave.  What could be a better seller than food that has been taste and market tested to be something that is . . . addictive?

If you look at the data, you can see plainly that obesity had accelerated greatly in the United States.  If you were planning on hurting the place, you couldn’t have done a better job.  Sadly, there are too many changes that have happened during the time period to be absolutely certain about what happened.  The Internet hit.  Smart phones were invented.  High fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in lots of things (and it is different than sugar in how it is metabolized).  Air conditioning became more common.  Nicolas Cage started doing movies.

This isn’t good.

It isn’t getting any better.

It’s entirely possible that our changing food consumption has nothing to do at all with our changing obesity rates.  It’s probably all due to Nic Cage.

Maybe the food sticks to your ribs?

As I’ve pointed out before, there are many, many mysteries about being human.  It doesn’t make it easier to track down what’s going on in this experiment when the world is changing so very fast.  My take?  Our parents were skinny (mostly).  Why?  They ate food with mostly few ingredients.  Steak.  Eggs.  Broccoli.  Potatoes.  Lettuce.  Butter.  Milk they just got from a cow.  And they also expended more calories without washing machines or dishwashing machines.  And they were colder in winter and hotter in summer.

So, of the things that have changed, I’d bet that food is at least a part of it.  Heck, they had Coke®, but they served it in 8 ounce glass bottles, not 2 liter plastic jugs.  Mass quantities, like maybe an addict might want.

Or maybe (ounces to liters?) . . . it’s the metric system that’s making us fat?