Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

1) Collabrity. Collaboration among celebrities. Used to describe a bunch of my colleagues at a conference.

Should be a word.

2) BLUF. Bottom Line Up Front. Mandatory strategy when presenting to the Department of Defense. Probably not a terrible strategy for slightly lower pressure presentations like our discussions a couple of weeks ago about how to educate our colleagues on mite-eradication.

Lower pressure, that is, unless you see a mite.

3) Beaker. Wordless Muppet’s character with hair that looked oddly similar to frozen vertical gummy worms. Strangely and consistently hilarious.

And apparently the inspiration for the most au courant hairstyle of the young male.

4) Healthspan 5. Supplements. The Holy Grail of longevity, right? Just give me a pill. No exercise. Eat whatever you want. Sleep when you’re dead. 300 yard drives until your 80, right out of a bottle. People have been talking about this since I was in grade school. Every single longevity “expert” has at least one chapter on this. Some, like Sinclair, have made their biggest marks doing research with this as the ultimate goal.

For the moment there is no magic bullet; what we have at the moment is supplements.

No reason to embellish, this is a pretty straightforward area at the moment. While there is literally a laundry list of stuff you COULD use, the list of stuff that is reasonable to add in at this stage is actually rather short. Over 40? Take one baby aspirin per day. Got any reason to take a statin? Just say yes. Metformin, the ubiquitous medication for Type 2 Diabetes has been shown to lengthen the telomeres, the end caps on chromosomes. Longer telomeres mean a younger chromosome. 500 mg/day, 1000 if you have an abnormal HbA1c or fasting glucose. There are almost no side effects and Metformin is so old that it is usually free.

How about stuff that is singularly associated with longevity and Healthspan? Nicotinamide Mono-nucleonside (NMN) is an NAD facilitator, increasing the efficiency of cell metabolism. 1000mg/day. Tirmethylglucolyte (TMG) facilitates the activity of NMN (500mg/day). Resveratol, the antioxidant made famous by 60 Minutes is somewhat controversial, but in my reading it is either beneficial or neutral; add in 1000mg/day. Round out your kit with 4-5000IU of Vitamin D3, 180-360 IU of Vitamin K2, and ~2500mg of re-esterified Omega-3 fatty acid and you have a cutting edge but conservative longevity supplement strategy.

Note that none of this is FDA-tested let alone approved. I am not providing medical advice or writing a prescription. This is my take-home from extensive reading and it is what I am doing at the moment. I am investigating “Fatty-15”, a newly discovered omega fatty acid found in healthy dolphins and will return someday with my thoughts.

I mean, if you could be as cool as a dolphin just by taking a pill…

5. Discoarse. Conversation or communication that is uncouth, unsavory, and impolite. Should be a word.

I think discoarse as I have defined it is a very apt description of the state of our national conversations. All of them. I find almost all of them to be lacking politesse in all ways. My granddaughter Lila once asked me what it sounded like if you were “reading cursive”. I really love that. The speech writers who backed people like JFK and Reagan spoke in cursive. Heck, Churchill THOUGHT in cursive and simply told the world what he was thinking. Now? There’s no elegance or style. Everything is a full-frontal assault. It’s as if everyone we read about on all sides of government is speaking in the big, bold, not very precise block letters we see in kindergarten homework.

It’s all so very coarse.

And so very personal. Vindictive and personal. It’s as if all of governance has been distilled down to nothing more than one zero-sum game after another. A policy installation is only successful if it knocks out an incumbent statute, a “game” that makes the writer of the new rule the winner at the expense of whoever wrote the prior one. As if a signature goal of every new policy is to turn the creators of the older policy into losers. What ever happened to working toward a common good? You know, something we would all rally around. I seem to remember that non-zero pursuits, the rising tide lifting all boats and all, I remember when that was how our leaders talked to one another and to us.

It’s been a very long time since all of us peasants out here in the villages were entirely in the dark about what actually went on in D.C. That all probably went away in the late ’60’s with Viet Nam and all that came with it. Would we have thought about “Camelot” in such romantic ways if we knew as much about what was going on as we came to know about the Nixon or Clinton administrations? Doubt it. But come on, they at least made an effort at smoothing out the bad news. Now? Language as if drawn by the literary equivalents of brutalist architects, laden with invective and shouted in ALL CAPS from the social media site of the moment. Next thing you know we’ll have a Senator channeling Khrushchev and pounding a podium with his shoe, or a couple of Members paying homage to Jackson era political battles by throwing down MMA style in the aisle during a House session.

Good idea, bad idea, idea you simply don’t care about, the discussions are toxic. Honestly, it just makes all of us Chez bingo unhappy; I don’t think we are alone in that. It’s ugly and unseemly and it reflects poorly on all of us, not just the folks who are supposed to be looking out for the common good. You can argue about who started it all and when, but whoever and whenever, it is now so coarse that it makes many (most?) people unhappy just from the listening.

Our public discourse has become coarse bordering on vulgar. We are all the lesser for it.

I’ll see you next week…

1) Leveret. A juvenile hare. No reason, really. Just thought you might like to know.

2) Coterie. A small group of people sharing a common interest, often exclusive, which is sometimes the point.

We were just in the Palm Beach area. Totally get it.

3) Buffet. When I look at Warren Buffet I always think that he looks happy. Don’t you think? For what it’s worth I always thought the same whenever I saw a picture of his corporate foil and friend Charlie Munger who died last year at 99. Munger always seemed to have a little edge, be a bit cranky or grumpy, but behind it I always sensed a little twinkle in his eyes as if he was playing with his audience. Warren Buffet and Charlies Munger always look like they are having fun.

Why does it seem like all of the other billionaires in our midst aren’t?

I look at any number of these “masters of the universe” and they all seem to be missing something. Wanting something. Other than the joy of garnering greater riches–especially if it comes in the form of some kind of victory over someone else who loses money–it just seems as if they aren’t all that happy. Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, the Google/Alphabet guys old and new. Or Tim Cook, the guy who runs Apple, worth a couple of billion dollars on the low side: have you ever seen a picture of him smiling or read a story about whatever it is that makes him happy? Neither have I.

For sure there are some billionaires out there who seem to be yucking it up and having a grand old time. Steve Ballmer may be getting more joy out of owning a professional sports team than any other person on the planet. Still, for every Steve Ballmer there are two dozen Stan Kroenkes walking around as if they are constipated. Searching for the thing. Seeking whatever’s next. Never enough. Nothing to really make them happy more often than they are not. Some seem to be trying really, really hard to at least LOOK like they’re happy, but I’m not too sure if it’s working.

With his beautiful and very bright fiancé balanced on his newly bulging biceps as he juggles the billions in his bank account, Jeff Bezos just never seems to have that Charlie Munger twinkle in his eye, no matter how hard he seems to be trying.

4) Second. In a Sunday NYT Magazine interview Denzel Washington was proving to be a difficult subject for the reporter. Notoriously reticent and progressively less transparent as he has gotten older, Washington turned the tables on the reporter and began to interview HIM. “What is your SECOND favorite thing? Everyone can name their favorite; I want to know what your SECOND favorite is.” It’s a great question, one that engages the reporter (and yet another question that Denzel declines to answer!) and keeps the interview moving. I’ve been mulling it over for about a week after returning home from our excellent visit to Hortilano’s winter home.

Denzel is right, your favorite thing is an easy call for almost everyone. Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that my favorite “thing” is Beth and our marriage. Hands down. There is a big gap, at least for me, between numbers one and two, which is why I spent a little bit of time thinking about it. My second favorite thing is “connecting”. Either creating a new connection for myself, or fostering a connection between two or more people I know and like who might benefit from making a connection themselves. At this stage in my life, having made and tried very hard to keep track of all sorts of connections both personal and professional, it’s kind of fun to offer up those introductions and then watch to see if they take the ball and run. Typically there is no benefit accruing in any column for me, just the satisfaction that I was able to share a tiny bit of myself while trying to help in a tiny way.

I’ll bet your favorite thing jumps right out whenever you are asked. Let me connect you with Denzel Washington: what is your SECOND favorite thing?

5) Nemesis (HT Rachel Feintzeig). Irish dementia: you forget everything except the grudges.

You are likely a very nice person. Really. I’ll bet you are. Your successes have been achieved through hard work and perseverance, and you have made herculean efforts to reach whatever peak you’ve been aiming for without having resorted to climbing on or over others who may have been on the same path. Your goal was arriving at your successes by taking the high road. Then you look around and maybe you haven’t climbed quite as high as you’d dreamed and you look at the super successful for clues to why that might be.

Maybe you need to take a page out of Michael Jordan’s playbook and either find or create a nemesis. Jordan was infamous for taking even the most trivial things personally and using them to fuel the fire. Ever wonder why underdogs sometimes topple the top dog? It’s all about taking umbrage at the fact that you’ve been declared “less” which gives you the incentive to prove that whoever did so is wrong. You don’t necessarily need anything special in your nemesis; either a mortal or a venal nemesis, a bit of a grudge that was created or arose organically, will do.

Something to light a fire under your ambition.

6) Non-Zero. So much “I win/you lose” in our world today, eh? Not that it’s really new, but it has certainly been stripped of any of the veneer of politesse. Made me think of a piece I wrote some years ago about “non-zero” approaches to interactions of all sorts. I reprise it here:

“Do you know people who seemingly can only feel good about themselves if someone else has fallen? Folks who cut others down in an effort to build themselves up? Everything, every encounter big or small, is a little Zero-Sum game. There can only be a winner if someone loses.

Have you ever listened to them talk? Their words are like little knives, meant to produce tiny injuries as they convey information. Many times these injuries are purposeful; other times they constitute collateral damage. What is notable is that the only effort that is apparent is the effort to wound, never an effort to protect or cushion or even prevent unintended injury. No opportunity is too small, and the effort to prevent injury seemingly too great, to miss the chance to inflict damage. You never know when that damage might helpfully/hopefully weaken someone to whom you might some day be compared.

Content and tone are inextricably mated. How you communicate expresses not only your thought but also your intent. Kindness, or not even that but neutrality, puts the content squarely in focus. Central. Untarnished. Funny, but speech meant to communicate and harm is often preceded by some qualifier such as “no offense” or “bless your heart”, as if that somehow makes the speaker blameless for any damage downstream.

The sad thing about this whole gig is that the person who seeks to elevate himself by bringing another down, seeks the win by creating the loss, achieves nothing of the kind. At best…at the very best, the situation created results in a loss for the other, but no more than a draw for the instigator. Which, if you’re keeping score, is actually NOT a Zero-Sum game at all, is it? Nor is it a Non-Zero Sum game, one in which both sides win, or one wins to the other’s neutral “draw”.

Nope, tearing another down in the vain hope that such a thing will boost you up, get one in the “win” column, is actually the third type of game, the Negative-Sum game. NOBODY wins.

Who would want to play THAT game? Who wants to be THAT person?”

7) Healthspan 5. As long as I’m sitting here with some time on my hands, how about a quick entry into our Healthspan series on the importance of sleep. Pretty on point with some of the stuff above, right? I mean, how’re you gonna win if you’re getting plenty of sleep? Well, as it turns out, some of the biggest winners in every competitive arena are also some of the most effective sleepers.

Lots of what we know about sleep is actually old news. Humans sleep in 90 minute cycles, plus or minus a few minutes. Each cycle includes a light or shallow phase, a rapid-eye movement or REM phase during which we dream, and two deep-sleep phases. A successful night’s sleep will entail sleeping through some multiple of 90-minute cycles. For instance, your sleep-driven recovery is actually much greater if you sleep for 7 1/2 hours (5 cycles) than if you sleep for 8 hours because you are awakening mid-cycle from a deep sleep phase.

Sleep is where our myriad systems recover and prepare for the coming day. Physical recovery is easy to understand: we really don’t move in our sleep. Our central nervous center recovers as well. Indeed, we can measure the quality of our autonomic nervous system recovery by tracking our Heart Rate Variability (HRV), the beat-to-beat variation of our heart rate. Higher is better. HRV is what all of our fancy monitors measure to give us our “readiness” value. This is how you can examine individual factors from the previous day and how they affect sleep and recovery. For example, the two things that typically reduce your HRV are very intense exercise and alcohol consumption.

Do what you have to do to sleep without interruptions for 4, 5, or 6 cycles each night. Go to bet and awaken at roughly the same time each day. Measure your sleeping patterns with some sort of tracker (Whoop is the most versatile all-purpose tracker on the market, probably followed by the Apple Watch), and keep track of things that detract from high quality sleep (like alcohol). Remember that you are playing the long game, trying to not only live longer, but in the doing also pushing back the onset of the ravages of the chronic illnesses associated with longer lives.

You know, so you don’t fall asleep on the loo.

I’ll see you next week…

1) Salubrious. Healthy or health-giving. Always thought it kinda meant the opposite, actually. That middle “loo” make me think of lubricated. Gonna add this to my working vocabulary.

2) Botulism. A disease in which there is an infestation of bots (HT Joseph Epstein). Given our success in preventing the original I see no reason why we shouldn’t re-purpose this perfectly appropriate word for our modern world.

3) Pronk. A vertical leap without a running start. Associated with the African gazelle-like Blackbuck which is capable of clearing a 6 foot fence by springing straight up from all fours, making them terrifically difficult to keep them contained.

Should be re-purposed as a description of a far-fetched statement or other declarative over-reach. “Ivermectin as a cancer cure? What a pronk!”

4) Bland. Scrolling while riding shotgun (Beth does a super-majority of the driving when we are out of town) I came across something about the de-colorization of the Western World. Probably on Xter. Pretty funny that it happened while we were driving in South Florida, too. When I was a young boy visiting my grandparents in Miami I was always amazed and delighted by how colorful everything was compared with the rather drab tableau of the dying mill town where I grew up. Pastels were the thing, but here and there you’d find a grand slash of bright primary colors as well.

And the cars! The post I read had a graph of the decline in the number of colors we now see on the roads. Back in the ’60’s and 70’s it seemed as if every third car was some outlandish orange or green. And not just in Miami but everywhere, even in Southbridge. Now? White, black, and grey lead the way. Even the reds, blues, and greens are muted, as if grey or black was mixed in with the primary colors resulting in something which is less, you know, colorful.

It made for a fun little driving game over the last couple of days in Florida. We pointed out each joyously, outrageously colored vehicle. Each time we saw one we described a car from our past. Parking lots were just a big blank canvas of dull with only the very occasional spark of color. Where did this come from? Where did all of the colors go? And it seems to be price and scarcity agnostic; the Ferraris and Bentleys were just as bland as the Hondas and the Hyundais. As if adopting the colors of the herd somehow concealed the fact that you were in a Maybach.

Thank Heavens for the dune buggies, the last vestiges of color on the road.

5) Healthspan 4: Fitness. Not gonna lie, when I embarked on this Healthspan series I envisioned consecutive weeks of posts culminating in a nice, tidy progression and conclusion. Funny, stuff just kinda got away from me along the way. For those who wish to have things a bit more organized and accessible, and for both of you who miss my long-form posts, at some point after I finish I will put them all together in what I hope will be a more cohesive, coherent manner. For the moment, on to fitness.

Those of you who’ve been hanging around here and the CrossFit.com site of years past are probably slightly surprised and perhaps amused that it’s taken the poet laureate of fitness so long to address the physical aspects of prolonging lifespan in this series. Count me as both. Still, if you read parts 1-3 you will see a very clear and strong influence from some of the earliest foundational writing about what it is that made (and perhaps still might make) CrossFit a touchstone for the kind of physical attributes one might seek to enhance in order to push the inevitable ravages of age and chronic disease further into one’s future. While a super-majority of those who seek to guide us to a longer life lived better put the biggest premium on aerobic fitness/VO2 Max kinda stuff, if you read all the way through you eventually find an admission that one must also be strong, at least adequately strong, in order to continue to move through the paces of aging.

Indeed, they almost sound like CrossFit adherents: work capacity across broad time and modal domains.

In reality only two discrete fitness metrics have been adequately studied by researchers who study aging, aerobic fitness and strength, and so I will limit my advice accordingly. The first of these is rather easily addressed because the bar is actually quite low: get off the couch. Peter Attia has called exercise the most powerful anti-aging drug yet discovered. Countless studies have found that rather low levels of activity lead to significant increases in longevity and decreases in the effects of chronic disease.

If you want to be more analytical about this than simply counting your daily steps start with determining your max heart rate (HRM). Unless you have done VO2 Max testing or had a recent cardiac stress test you can do a quick and dirty calculation by subtracting your age from 220. There are five HR “Zones” or target levels, but it looks like only two of them really matter: Zone 2 (60-70% HRM) and Zone 5 (90-100% HRM). Sure, you can geek out on the subtleties of the other three, and good on ya if you’re going to exercise enough to do so, but you don’t really have to. 75-100 minutes of Zone 2 exercise each week, with 2 sessions lasting 10-15:00 in Zone 5 and you are likely to garner more than 90% of the possible healthspan benefits in the kitty. Walk, jog, bike, row swim, dance, it doesn’t matter. You’re off the couch.

But of course, if your skeleton and your muscles can’t cart cart around your crazy strong heart and bellows-like lungs your endgame is still gonna be lousy. The goal is to be able to lift your caboose off the loo when you are 92. To do so you will have to channel your inner Arnold and “pick things up and put them dowwwwn.” In some way, shape or form you need to incorporate resistance exercise along with your aerobic efforts. Want a fancy body post-50? Go for it. Judgement-free zone here on the blog. Be a body builder and lift weights (with proper form) to your heart’s delight.

Just never, ever skip leg day!

Classic calisthenics (pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, air squats), power-lifting (especially squats and deadlifts), or a well-rounded program using resistance bands (check out the program on billrussell.com for a joint-friendly, mature athlete-friendly program) are all options. The bottom line is that it makes no sense to be able to run an 8:00 mile at age 70 but be too weak to pick up a case of beer to celebrate. 3 sessions per week is probably an optimal schedule, neither so much that you risk injury nor too little that you risk becoming delicate.

No one should expect to pronk at 80, but getting your butt off the couch and doing both strength and aerobic exercise is a salubrious endeavor. While you’re at it, why not exercise in bright red or iridescent green kit. You know, like the bathing suit you wore while driving your baby blue VW Beetle to Spring Break in Ft. Lauderdale back in the day.

I’ll see you next week…

“Quitting on top is not the same as quitting.” Bob Myers, former Golden State Warriors GM to Adrian Wojnarowski, St. Bonaventure Basketball GM and former ESPN NBA analyst.

Media of all shapes and sizes is simply filled to the brim this weekend with questions about what will become of the players, coaches, and other various “names” if the Kansas City Chiefs win an unprecedented third Super Bowl in a row. Will Travis Kelce drop to a knee at midfield and deliver a diamond to the left hand of his girlfriend, sending them off on the next phase of their fairy tale? Or how about Andy Reid, the storied coach who brought the trophy to both Philadelphia and KC? I mean, no one, not even Don Shula or Chuck Noll pulled off three in a row. Dropping the mike and exiting stage left at that point would be the epitome of “quitting on top”.

And yet, neither is likely to happen.

Who among us is not familiar with the saying “winners never quit; quitters never win”? You don’t have to come from a sports-crazy family to have heard that at least once from your parents. Heck, even my in-laws, two educators who were raising three daughters, with only a passing interest in sport of any kind, and that only as spectators, almost certainly used that exact phrase when it was time for one of the girls to suck it up and carry on. But the reality is that everything eventually has a logical conclusion, a time when being done is simply the only conclusion, that is not really quitting at all.

Think of a pair of wrestling shoes left as the retiring wrestler leaves the ring one final time.

Wojnarowski, Woj to millions, had reached a kind of peak in the world of basketball commentary. This had been his stated goal since early in college, and he spent nearly a decade at the top. Unlike the athletes who provided the fodder for his missives, Woj left his shoes in the ring while still performing as well, or better than his earlier years, and showed no signs of having lost a step on the competition. Why did he leave the arena while still at the top of his game? It seems that his particular “top” was a plateau rather than a peak, and it took just as much time and effort to remain on that flat as it had taken to arrive there. Time he’d not given to family or friends. A plateau that, however wide, still had little room for anything or anyone else if one was to stay. Having given what it took to get there he looked around and saw other places to put that time, other places to be that had room for others to join him, and he climbed down.

Does that mean he quit? I admit that I have never experienced the kind of peak that Woj reached. Certainly not as an athlete or in the professional world of my day job. Never a valedictorian or MVP, busiest, richest, or firstest. And yet I get everything about both what it was that Woj set out to achieve, how he pursued it, what it took to get there, and why and when he decided that he was, indeed, on top, could stop and move on.

Some people carry on because they simply can’t think about what else they might move on to. Doctors are notoriously like this. Come to think of it, so are lawyers and politicians. Athletics and athletes provide an excellent window through which to observe this. Why, for instance, does Lebron James still toil in the NBA? Near the top, but no longer truly there, player or team. For every Barry Sanders who walked away from the NFL when he was by far the best running back in the league, or Andrew Luck, the Colts quarterback who retired because he looked ahead and simply didn’t see enough added to his life by playing any longer, there are a dozen Brett Favre’s or Aaron Rogers who simple play on until their battered bodies are scraped off the field, legacies diminished by not quitting while on top.

One is left to wonder why as much about Tom Brady and his last few years as one wonders if, say, George Blanda would have mustered on for 26 years had he made Tom Brady money. Woj walked away from the money, too. Not Lebron James or Andrew Luck money, but Barry Sanders money for sure. Is it the fame? The rush of the bright lights? Of, I dunno, mattering? It brings to mind “Encore”, a lesser known song written by the great Stephen Stills: “Whatcha gonna do when the last show is over? And whatcha gonna do when you can’t touch base? And whatcha gonna do when the applause is all over, and you can’t turn your back on what you face?” I’d be willing to bet that the endorphin rush of seeing something you wrote being tagged a massive “Woj bomb” was comparable to nailing a 3-pointer at the buzzer in a mid-season NBA game or being summoned back to the stage for an encore.

So why now? There were surely more “bombs” to drop just as Mr. James will surely drop more game winners and Stephen stills will play one more song, before he leaves the arena. Adrian Wojanowski hasn’t reached out to let me know, and for sure Lebron James won’t be any more likely to take me into his confidence or take my advice than he did back in his first stop in Cleveland (search “Random Thoughts” for “It’s Not About the Money”). But still, I think Woj has shed enough light on his decision (written in places such as the NYT, WSJ and Sports Illustrated) to see that he might very well have been reading my drivel all along: Woj realized that he is more than what he does, and that reaching a summit that turned out to be a high plateau was enough. Especially one that only had room for one.

And so congratulations and good luck with your Bonnies, Woj. Someday you will quit that job, too, whether or not you make it to the top there, too. Who you are and what you do will continue to intersect over your lifetime. You know what else folks say about this kind of stuff? “It’s lonely at the top.” If you get to the top and discover that there isn’t room there for you and the people you love, well, quitting at the top might turn out to be the ultimate type of winning after all.

I’ll see you next week…

Thoughts while walking on a beach past the sandcastles of those who would be gods…

I try to live a life that others could emulate. It is not the only life worth emulation, but it is my hope that it is one that could be. After all, I have children. I have grandchildren. I often find myself at professional meetings among colleagues, many of whom are 5, 10, and 20 or more years my junior. I see in many of them the shadow of my younger self. Driven and focused, mostly in the pursuit of “more.”

It’s more than a little trite, but man, if only I knew then, when I was a child, when I was a younger professional, a younger parent, what I know now about “more”.

Don’t get me wrong, “more” is good. It is usually decidedly better than “less”. Having had both at various times in my life this is pretty clear. What I’ve learned, though, is the overarching value of “enough”. “Less” and “more” always come in the context of a comparison with some thing or some person, a time or place against which the you and the now are measured and compared. Under the microscope, always trying to measure up, both “more” and “less” can feel kinda lousy.

“Less” is obvious in the lousy feeling arena; no need to expand there. If you think about “more”, ever “more”, there is no end to it. It’s a hopeless chase, an endless endeavor, forever chasing “more”. You are Sisyphus; the boulder will never reach the summit.

“Enough”, though, is sublime. Personal. Poetic. “Enough” lives within you. It might mean more to someone and less to another, but in the end it is a wonderfully liberating concept. “Enough” is a one-word Emancipation Proclamation for a life.

“Enough” is a feast.

I’ll see you next week…

“You can’t out train a lousy diet.”–Greg Glassman.

To entertain both a long and a healthy life one must address how we go about fueling said life. Ya gotta eat. It’s WHAT you choose to eat, and let’s face it, HOW MUCH you eat that determines the effect of nutrition on your Healthspan. Add in at least a little bit of thought about WHEN you eat and you have the basic outline of how you can design your own personal plan for eating your way to a longer life that is freer from the ravages of chronic disease.

Or so says the guy who chose to not only have that extra glass of wine, but did so after consuming a bowl of ice cream after the stop time of my eating window had passed.

Let’s lay down some stipulations before we start. First, there is really no settled science behind any recommendations on what constitutes the one, best nutrition plan. Literally, none. This is me, giving you my distillation of my research and a view of what I am trying to do for myself and Beth. In this effort we probably represent the area under the fattest part of the curve (pretty good, huh?) of folks who live in North America. We looked at obtaining all manner of “properly” sourced foods (e.g. prairie-raised naturally fed protein sources) and found the process to like paying for the privilege of having a second job. So we shop in a grocery store and buy what is available there. We eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are a couple of allergies that force us to be a bit particular about recipes but don’t affect our Healthspan-driven options.

Start at the beginning: how much should you eat? Easiest answer ever…LESS! You almost certainly get more food through your pie hole than you need. Heaven knows I do. To know how much you should eat it is first necessary to know how much you are consuming now by measuring literally everything containing calories that you consume. There are any number of apps you can use (we used MyFitnessPal). Prepare to be shocked at what you find. Your 1800 calorie macro diet or 14 block Zone more than likely only represents 75% or less of your actual consumption. Knowledge is power; you need to know the baseline.

Eat primarily to fuel your life. Eat to support your daily activities and your efforts at fitness. I know, eating (and drinking) can be a source of meaningful pleasure, especially when it is done with friends and loved ones. Don’t give that up. What we are talking about is your regular nutrition. Think about the challenges that being less strong will pose for you as you get older. You are most likely under-serving protein. We lose muscle mass as we age, even if we strength train. Everything I’ve read says that we should be eating more protein.

What kind of protein? Again, my choices are driven by the reality of my suburban life. It is just too hard and too expensive to eat red meat from animals that provide the same quality protein as they did 100 years ago. By and large it seems that we should all be eating more plant-based protein at the expense of industrially produced animal-based protein. Fill in the spaces as you will. We eat fish and some poultry chez us.

Processed foods, while extremely convenient, all seem to contain stuff we just don’t need, and many are specifically engineered to encourage over-consumption. Sugar is mostly not great. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is straight up bad. While some will exclude most, or all carbohydrates (so-called carnivore diets), most of us prefer a diet that contains carbs of some sort. Learn the Glycemic Index and choose foods that have a low GI. Oranges and apples over bananas and mangoes. Green beans and Brussel sprouts instead of rice or pasta. Mushrooms. How about fat? Sure! Again, just be mindful about the fat. Don’t let some manufacturer mass-produce your fat intake. Avocados and macadamia nuts.

You get the picture.

How about the “When” to eat. Man, what a mess this is. Total see-saw. Eat when you are hungry vs. eat on a schedule. Traditional 3 squares or time limited. If you think the research on fasting makes sense (there is data suggesting that fasting increases longevity to a degree that is greater than just the caloric restriction) do you do a traditional long fast or do something like Intermittent Fasting? And if it’s IF how big is the window during which you eat? FWIW I find the evidence for fasting, specifically time-limited eating or IF, to be moderately compelling. Not more than the HOW MUCH or WHAT research but enough to dabble in IF most days. YMMV.

I guess it’s time to talk about alcohol. Listen, I do love me a delicious glass of “Tuesday wine” or a well-made “Side-swiped”. Research is all over the map on low-consumption levels, but heavier consumption levels have pretty much always been found to be bad for you. Stuff like liver disease we all know about, but there are some really nasty cancers (tongue, throat) that are definitely strongly associated with heavier drinking, to say nothing about not-so-great behaviors like driving under the influence. What is controversial is the question of low to moderate consumption. One or two drinks per day. All of the research, and I mean all of it on both sides of the conclusion fence, is flawed. Poorly controlled, under-powered studies that fail to filter out confounding factors are the rule.

I’m afraid there are no absolutes when it comes to alcohol. For every study that says every drop of alcohol, whether it’s pear vodka or Puligny-Montrachet, is poison there is one that purports to show that moderate consumption reduces all-cause mortality when compared to no consumption. Every “social coin” has a “heads” picture of close friends sharing a bottle of wine as they commune over a shared meal on the other side of a “tails” depicting a family destroyed by some drink-driven debacle. Can you effect temperance, or are you more aligned with Samuel Jackson who would say that forbearance is the easier path? For the time being, at least with moderate intake, the science isn’t helpful enough. You will have to be thoughtful and decide for yourself.

Test to help stratify your health risks. Eat to support your daily activities including the exercise that we will discuss in Healthspan Part 4. Remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for all of your friends and family members who want you to stick around and be healthy as long as possible.

1) Anniversary. Our beloved daughter Megan and son-in-law Ryan celebrated their 10th wedding Anniversary yesterday. 10 years! Man, what a ride for them. For us. The first of our kids to marry, Megan was singing along to the radio on the way to school when she promised me that “Butterfly Kisses” would be our Daddy/Daughter song. And in a blink of an eye, there we were, holding each other so tightly, dancing all alone to “Butterfly Kisses”, just like Megan promised.

Their light continues to shine. Happy Anniversary!

2) Ask. Ask for it. This comes up every now and again. If you want something, at least something that is reasonable to want, go ahead and ask for it. Thinking about this always makes me think about Wayne Gretzky: “you miss every shot you don’t take.” Mr. Gretzky didn’t score every time he got a shot on goal; sometimes the goalie made a save. For sure life is like this.

No one gets everything they ask for. I made a big ask of someone I am just getting to know in my professional world. We both acknowledged that, but he thanked me for making the ask because it made clear my commitment to both the endeavor we were discussing and my willingness to commit to both it and to him. Had I not asked he might not have gleaned that knowledge from the rest of the conversation, and for sure the likelihood of achieving my personal goal would be close to zero.

Take the shot. It’s the only way to score. Ask for it.

3) Temperance. This week’s “musings…” continue my exploration of extending Healthspan, the combination of longevity with health and well-being, as I tackle nutrition. Trust me, nutrition following on last week’s mini-rant on “Dry January” is pure coincidence. I will touch on the alcohol pseudo-controversy below, but I stumbled on this gem from an earlier time that sets the stage rather nicely. To be honest I actually tried to find this post last week. Herewith, gently updated thoughts on temperance:

“Beth and I have been on an adventure cruise, a quest of sorts. We’ve been exploring the wonders of the classic cocktail. Equal parts alchemy and indulgence, our trip has been more exciting (as all adventures are) because of the little bit of risk involved.

What if we find one (or two, or…) we really like?

Like many pleasures to drink is to willingly hold the proverbial double-edged sword in your hand; in this case the sword just happens to look like a martini glass. Alcohol as both a substance and a subject is complex and rife with controversy. It’s legal, but only to a point. It’s beneficial, but with a caveat–people who drink just enough live longer than those who drink more or not at all. As a chemical it’s a depressant, and yet in many circumstances it imbues joy in those who imbibe. It all comes down to a fine and delicate balance, not unlike a perfectly aged wine.

The matter of regulation intrudes on the pleasure. Knowing the existence of the second edge and maintaining an awareness of its cut is both necessary and nettlesome. If you find this lurking behind every glass it may rob you of the joy; if you careen from joy to joy you will inevitably suffer and bleed. Temperance, then, is the essential ingredient, the co-pilot who must be ever present on this particular trip.

Ah, but temperance, willful self-control can feel like a 50 MPH governor on a Ferrari, especially if you make the Indiana Jones-like discoveries we’ve made. It might be so difficult and so distasteful that you decide to roll your dice on the “not at all” line. “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” Samuel Johnson. Indeed, temperance is so often fueled by the wraith “guilt.” There’s joy and pleasure to be had, but what if there’s too much? Ah, guilt.

It’s all so complicated, not unlike the math involved in the archaic elixirs we’ve been experiencing. So very hard sometimes to ease off the throttle without the aid of the governor. If the “Gizmo”, the “Sideswiped”, and the “Carro del Lô” be guilty pleasures we might ask my interesting discovery, the socialite Charlotte Stockdale, what she thinks of such things.

“I don’t have a guilty pleasure. I don’t really feel guilty about anything. What’s the point?”

As out of the corner of your eye you see it, the shadow of the double-edged sword, one edge Samuel, the other Stockdale.”

5) Healthspan Part 3: Nutrition*. “You can’t out train a lousy diet.” –Greg Glassman (and likely others)

To entertain both a long and a healthy life one must address how we go about fueling said life. Ya gotta eat. It’s WHAT you choose to eat, and let’s face it, HOW MUCH you eat that determines the effect of nutrition on your Healthspan. Add in at least a little bit of thought about WHEN you eat and you have the basic outline of how you can design your own personal plan for eating your way to a longer life that is freer from the ravages of chronic disease.

Or so says the guy who chose to not only have that extra glass of wine, but did so after consuming a bowl of ice cream after the stop time of my eating window had passed.

Let’s lay down some stipulations before we start. First, there is really no settled science behind any recommendations on what constitutes the one, best nutrition plan. Literally, none. This is me, giving you my distillation of my research and a view of what I am trying to do for myself and Beth. We shop in a grocery store and buy what is available there. We eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are a couple of allergies that force us to be a bit particular about recipes but don’t affect our Healthspan-driven options.

Start at the beginning: how much should you eat? Easiest answer ever…LESS! To know how much you should eat it is first necessary to know how much you are consuming now by measuring literally everything containing calories that you consume. There are any number of apps you can use (we used MyFitnessPal). Prepare to be shocked at what you find.

Eat primarily to fuel your life. Eat to support your daily activities and your efforts at fitness, not the production of fat. Think about the challenges that being less strong will pose for you as you get older. You are most likely under-serving protein. We lose muscle mass as we age, even if we strength train. Everything I’ve read says that we should be eating more protein.

What kind of protein? Again, my choices are driven by the reality of my suburban life. By and large it seems that we should all be eating more plant-based protein at the expense of industrially produced animal-based protein, especially red meat. Fill in the spaces as you will. We eat fish and some poultry chez us.

Sugar is mostly not great. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is straight up bad. Learn the Glycemic Index and choose foods that have a low GI. Oranges and apples over bananas and mangoes. Green beans and Brussel sprouts instead of rice or pasta. Mushrooms. How about fat? Sure! Again, just be mindful about the fat. Don’t let some manufacturer mass-produce your fat intake. Avocados and macadamia nuts.

You get the picture.

How about the “When” to eat. Man, what a mess this is. Total see-saw. Eat when you are hungry vs. eat on a schedule. Traditional 3 squares or time limited. FWIW I find the evidence for fasting, specifically time-limited eating or IF, to be moderately compelling. Not more than the HOW MUCH or WHAT research but enough to dabble in IF most days. YMMV.

I guess it’s time to talk about alcohol. I’m afraid there are no absolutes when it comes to alcohol. All of the research is flawed. Poorly controlled, under-powered studies that fail to filter out confounding factors are the rule. For every study that says every drop of alcohol, whether it’s pear vodka or Puligny-Montrachet, is poison there is one that purports to show that moderate consumption reduces all-cause mortality when compared to no consumption. Can you effect temperance, or are you more aligned with Samuel Jackson who would say that forbearance is the easier path? For the time being, at least with moderate intake, the science isn’t helpful enough. You will have to be thoughtful and decide for yourself.

Test to help stratify your health risks. Eat to support your daily activities including the exercise that we will discuss in Healthspan Part 4. Remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for all of your friends and family members who want you to stick around and be healthy as long as possible.

I’ll see you next week…

*A stand-alone expanded post on Healthspan and nutrition is coming this week.

1) Martini. A classic cocktail containing gin and vermouth that is stirred. Typically garnished with a pimento-stuffed olive. Substitute a cocktail onion and you no longer have a martini; you have concocted a Gibson.

2) Bradford. If you shake your gin and vermouth cocktail you have made a Bradford. It may be just me (it often is), but I think James Bond would have been even cooler had he pointed this out in the very first Fleming novel, and asked for a Bradford thereafter.

3) Turow. Lawyer turned author Scott Turow introduced himself to us with “Presumed Innocent”, a novel I read in the caddy shack one summer. One wonders if his latest, “Presumed Guilty” will complete the arc of his career, not unlike Don Winslow who has taken his leave from staring at the “blank page” with the publication of his “City Trilogy”.

Either way, how cool would it be to see Harrison Ford reprise Rusty Sabich?

4) Commitments. No, not making some kind of grand January commitment on top of whatever resolutions you made (and have likely already forsaken). I’m talking about the movie from the early ’90’s that followed an Irish start-up band that played classic R&B while their “manager” pined for a meeting with Wilson Pickett. Did you see it? I stumbled upon the soundtrack after listening to the Blues Brothers, and now Beth and I have it on while I pound away at my MacBook.

We definitely won’t be watching football tonight.

5) Dry. “I find abstinence to be as easy as I find moderation to be hard. ” –St. Augustine

“I have to admit to never giving much thought to where juniper comes from. It seemed good enough to know that without juniper there is not gin; without gin there are no Martinis; and absent Martinis you have a dystopia too awful to contemplate.” –Eric Felton in the WSJ

“I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never drink it–unless I’m thirsty.” –Lily Bollinger

Dry January is confusing. At least to me it is. I mean, if you abstain on a schedule without any larger incentive or inspiration than the randomness of the Roman calendar, is it even abstinence? I get traditional fasts like Ramadan and the various abstentions Catholics impose on themselves during Lent. There is a cultural significance, an ancestral gathering of sorts. Totally get it.

But Dry January? Sorry, I don’t get it.

Now please don’t conflate this with the notion that I somehow don’t understand the need for abstinence when true substance abuse or addiction is in play. There has been a bunch of all sorts of that in our extended families, and our living relatives so afflicted would agree with St. Augustine on the choice of abstinence. And I don’t really have any trouble or quarrel with folks who use January as a way to re-set their relationship with alcohol, or Pringles for that matter. It’s just another part of the declaration of better intentions made on behalf of yourself, and by extension those who care about you, in which we indulge as we hang a new calendar on the fridge.

Nope, it’s the nagging feeling of being nagged that sours my mood as surely as too much citrus fouls any number of classic cocktails. In truth it took Tressie McMillan Cottom’s column in the Sunday Times for this realization to bubble to the surface. I’ve always felt a certain unease with the way people publicize their Dry January plans and progress. Not everyone of course, but enough folks not just celebrating their decision but doing so from the pulpit. Preachy and judgy is how Ms. Cottom describes articles and posts. People who always, or nearly always abstain, because of addiction or otherwise, typically just say “no thanks” or simply order a Diet Coke. Dry Januarians seem compelled to tell you all about “why”.

Perhaps I’m a bit more cranky this January, coming as it does a couple of weeks after the Scolder…er…Surgeon General declared that minimal to moderate alcohol consumption raises the risk of multiple cancers so high that a newer, more damning warning should be put on every bottle or can. Just in time for Dry January. He did so despite an announcement literally only weeks prior by the NHI saying that with the possible exception of breast cancer, those who consume small to moderate amounts of alcohol have a lower “all cause” mortality than teetotalers, a conclusion reached with “moderate to strong certainty.”

I’ve always gotten a kick out of the George Thoroughgood song “I Drink Alone.” It’s catchy, has a couple of neat guitar licks, and rather than being an anthem for solo drinking it pokes fun at the very notion. At least for me. Have you watched the Netflix documentary on so-called “Blue Zones” where people tend to live longer, happier lives? With the exception of a Quaker community, all of these places tend to be ones in which people gather regularly and routinely, whether or not they are tippling. But tipple they do, in the company of friends and family. Do they get together in order to drink, or do they drink because they are together? The author of the study from which the documentary was made doesn’t examine that nuance.

Again, I honestly don’t care if you do or don’t choose to drink. It’s really a very personal choice, one that can be made for innumerable reasons, none of which are really anyone’s business. When I was a kid I chose not to indulge in cannabis, and as I got older by extension not to partake in any of the other various mind-altering substances available to those so inclined. Doesn’t really matter why, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really talked about it with almost anyone. And that’s probably what grates about Dry January, those that need to tell almost everyone all about it.

There is one circumstance where you are quite welcome to share your Dry January plans, though. If we are together, out for dinner or taking in a ballgame either at the arena or in one of our buddy’s living rooms, feel free to let us all know that you won’t be having a cocktail, glass of wine, or a beer. We are hanging out, not checking out each other’s InstaFace Tokster posts, and we are likely friendly enough that face to face we will forgive you a little victory dance. Your’e sober, after all; how crazy are you gonna get.

We’re all just thankful that you’ve volunteered to be the Designated Driver for 31 straight days.

Damp or dry, I’ll see you next week…

“How was your Birthday, Dr. White?”

It’s amazing how, where, and why so many epiphanies arrive. Honestly, I’m not sure why this surprises me. I really haven’t had all that many of what could or should really be called epiphanies, but the few that I have had have all kinda snuck up on me out of the blue mist of the mundane. For example, while playing golf with my Dad the week after 9/11 I was stopped in my tracks when a very simple, altogether reasonable question–do you want to play the Ocean Course again–delivered to me a two part gem. The stuff that makes me unhappy brings me down lower than the stuff that makes me happy picks me up. You can’t necessarily make the happy stuff happy all the time, but you can surely make an effort to avoid at least SOME of the unhappy stuff once it’s been identified.

I hated the Ocean Course; no, thank you, I’d rather not play it again.

And so it was that I found myself answering all kinds of folks who were genuinely interested in how my 65th birthday went. What did I do to mark the occasion? Did I enjoy the day? How was I feeling about 65? Normal questions asked in good faith by decent folks. I spent a goodly part of each day answering each person with some version of “good” or “great” or “you know, it’s just a number after all”, and “that’s very kind” when they expressed disbelief at the number in question. It was nice, actually, to receive those tiny gifts of interest from so many people, most of whom live lives that only intersect with the professional and not the personal version of who I might be at any given point.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve become a bit kinder to myself, especially when it comes to time. It’s a cliche, of course, but time is really the most valuable thing no one has enough of. A very nice benefit of being my own boss is the ability to give myself the gift of time during my birthday week even though I was returning from a lengthy Holiday break. Some of that time was quite productive (I reviewed a very complex case as an expert witness), some of it was put to practical use (I’m rebuilding the fitness habits that fell apart along with my hips), but the real gift was the luxury of indulging in tiny little pleasures, like my love for finales.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find “lasts” so fascinating? Beth is endlessly tickled by how hard I will work to watch the last episode of a television series I barely followed, or read the final entry of a long-running serial or book series. I think it started with the finale of M*A*S*H. The most recent favorite has to be Ted Lasso. Did you ever read that series about the female detective, maybe she was a doctor, where each book was titled with a letter? You know, “C Is For Whatever”, and so on? When the author got to “Y” I was literally going to read “A” so that I could read “Z” so that I could then see how she closed out her epic trip through the alphabet. I swear that I was as saddened by the author’s passing before she started “Z” as any devoted reader who’d made it from “A to Y”.

All of which is a build-up to the gift of watching the recording that I made of Hoda Kotb’s final 3 hours as co-host of NBC’s Today show. We are Today Show watchers, Beth and I. Hoda’s story is a good one. She seems to be a genuinely nice person, someone who truly likes, nay loves, most of the folks around her. Someone who is grateful for the life she gets to live. Unlike so many famous TV personalities she was leaving the show on her own terms for reasons that I can personally understand and support: she wished to be home with and for her two grade-school daughters as they grew up.

And then, there it was. Pretty much the last guest was a country music star, a guy named Walker Hays. Now, I am not the country music guy in the family, although everyone will likely agree that I’ve become at least conversant with the genre as it has become more “pop” in recent years. Still, I needed to Google Hays to “remember” that his big hit is “We Fancy”, or something like that. But here he was, strumming a guitar as he entered stage left, singing a song that he and Hoda had written together called “Wednesday”* and bringing with him my epiphany: Most days are just Wednesdays. A truly happy life is one where you are grateful, truly grateful, for the Wednesdays.

“Some days are the best days. Some days are ‘she said yes’ days. Some days are ‘it’s a girl, good Lord how in the world did I get blessed’ days. Some days are the worst days, on the taillights of a hearse days.

Most days are just Wednesdays. Get up and do the same old same again’s days.

If tomorrow ain’t nothing new, I’m just glad I get to do, just another Wednesday with you.”

Seriously, how good is that?! I went through half a box of tissues, me and everyone in that studio audience just yanking ’em out of the box, watching and listening as my big old epiphany landed. Most days are just days. Events, happenings, milestones might be what we remember, might be how we track our stories, but it’s all of those plain old every days that make up a life. Finding the joys of those every days, and more importantly being grateful for the micro joys that make up those days, is the key to happiness.

“What did you do on your birthday?” I went to work. It was a Tuesday and so I went to the operating room, and then I did a bunch of lasers, and after that saw a bunch of folks in the clinic. I got to help some really nice people be healthy. I spent the night with my Better 95%. We had dinner at home. Chicken. Not a birthday dinner but a recipe we have maybe once a week. Had a glass of “Tuesday Wine”. Watched a TV show we’ve been enjoying. It was just another Tuesday, nothing new, in a place that makes me happy and with the person I love more than anyone or anything, like so many Tuesdays I’ve been lucky to have over so many years.

Thank you for the Birthday wishes. It was just another Tuesday. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ll see you next week…

Twelve hour drive home yesterday after visiting Megan, Ryan, Tracey and Steve in the Low Country. 20ish degree high for the day, much too cold to brave the garage gym. A few errands, 11 or 12 newspapers to get through, groceries and laundry, a possible EPIC step toward landing the plane, and all of a sudden I realize, no “musings…”!

I came upon this gem and I think it is as applicable today as it was some 10+ years ago. Did you make any resolutions? I did. Well, sorta kinda did. If I didn’t work out today does that mean I already punted one of the big ones? For whatever it’s worth I’m off tomorrow and will doubtless squeeze something that looks like exercise in, so I’m going with “no” on that one. Last year ended pretty OK, and so far 2025 is starting off pretty OK, too. I’m just gonna go with that.

So rather than stress myself out by postponing a well-deserved, much welcomed “Sideswiped” I’m just going to help myself (and you) to a little dish of New Year’s leftovers with this re-post from the past:

Tons of random stuff banging around between my ears, so much that it’s a little difficult to wade through and make sense of any of it. One little thing keeps bubbling up to the surface, long enough at least to be noticed: the lowly comma. Mathew McConaughy describes himself as a “comma person”. I get that.

What with all of the New Year’s resolution action, here and, well, everywhere, it can get to feeling like there really is a discreet finish to a year. A ‘period’. Full Stop. Does it seem like that to you? Everyone gets all in a rush to finish off a year, in this case 2013, so that they can get started on the next one. All kinds of retrospectives, writ large and small, come cascading down at the end of the year. As if it really was an end. Capped by a ‘period’, you know?

The thing is, though, that I don’t really feel all that different. It doesn’t really feel like anything was all that completed on December 31st. Or, for that matter, like there’s any huge new start, re-boot, or even a mulligan just after that ‘period’. Sure, there’s a really convenient opportunity to take stock, maybe make some adjustments or even re-route, but the longer I’ve been at this New Year thing the less it seems like anything is ever really at Full Stop.

More like a pause. That’s it. Not a ‘period’ so much as a ‘comma’ leading into whatever comes next.

A sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, or the whole darned story ends with a period. The year is over and the last box has been checked, but the story continues on New Year’s Day. Even the most severe pivot is still connected to the other side of the angle, the beginning of the line. The line, the sentence, the story and the life do not really stop at all; New Year, Birthday, whatever. We may pause, indeed we do pause, sometimes quite often. Full stop? Nah. Not us.

That’s what’s got me thinking about the comma. The story goes on and on, one big run-on sentence with an occasional pause but never a stop. It’s connected front to back, side to side, and start to finish by those pauses, by the lowly comma. I think I get what McConaughy is getting at. New Year’s Day is a comma place for sure, but neither time nor life hits a ‘period’ there, either. We just keep on going. The comma means there’s more to come.

I think I might be a “comma person”, too.

And there you go. Not bad, eh? Seems like I used to be pretty good at this “musings…” stuff. For what it’s worth when I re-read this I found myself nodding along. I will likely never have the pleasure of meeting Mr. McConaughy, let alone chat with him, but heretofore I’m going to think of the two of us as “brothers in comma”.

Happy New Year. I’ll see you next week…