Over the last few months it seems like Barron's has expanded its coverage of retirement related issues including a lot of content about health and fitness. This is an important part of the equation of course, one I spend a lot of time trying to learn more about and hope that more people take an active interest.
There have been a couple of articles this weekend, one was about the costs of biohacking and some potential investment angles too. The other article was a simpler look at exercising.
The biohacking article is far beyond what I am interested in doing. There was mention of a company called Radence that has a $50,000 entrance fee and then $50,000 annual fee to use tech to find problems earlier than other means (how it was represented in the article but I can't vouch for that), do countless blood tests and so on.
There was a mention of Bryan Johnson who might be the most well known biohacker. He is constantly taking blood samples, tracking just about everything in his body and he takes "upward of 100 supplements a day." There is a documentary on Netflix about Johnson called Don't Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever. It's difficult to watch
A little less dramatically there was talk of the role GLP1s now play in everyday life and the various wearables that people can use like Garmin or Apple.
GLP1s seem to be miracle drugs. I am not even a little bit dismissive of that, they work. The side effects are brutal though, that is something not to be dismissed either. They seem to be constantly finding new things that GLP1s might help with beyond Type 2 Diabetes and obesity like Alzheimer's and most recently cancer. These are all things that a ketogenic diet address too. I've seen commentary that says GLP1s mimic keto diets but Gemini says no. Fair enough but if you can get the same or similar benefits with keto without the side effects of GLP1s, that's worth looking into.
I don't use any wearables. I have nothing negative to say about them, I just don't feel the need to monitor my stuff in that manner. My wife has a Fitbit watch but doesn't go all in with her metrics, it's convenient for getting texts bluetoothed from her phone, but she does track her sleep closely.
Over optimizing has a lot of negatives and I think what Johnson does is way beyond that line. Doing 1/4 of what he does is way beyond that line. I don't think wearables go down that road. The idea of spending thousands of dollars on a recurring basis seems like throwing money away.
The article on exercise didn't have a lot of depth to it. As we get older, certain things naturally diminish and vigorous exercise can slow the diminishment which is probably obvious. It goes deeper than that though. The article didn't get into it and you can follow @mangan150 on Twitter for more details but weightlifting triggers countless metabolic processes that have the effect of slowing down the aging process both at the metabolic level but also in terms of appearance.
The article mentions grip strength as being an important indicator but it did not include retaining the ability to walk fast. Both are important and easily worked on.
If it's useful for anyone, this is my typical weightlifting routine, I do it twice a week, Monday and Thursday.
- Skip rope
- Deadlift
- Romanian deadlift
- Incline dumbbell benchpress
- Pushups
- Landmine squats
- Leg press
- Dumbbell rows
- Farmers carry
- Landmine rotations
- Chin ups
- Narrow incline bench (triceps)
- Squat with a dumbbell on a wedge (kind of like goblet squat, not sure the proper name)
Just one set each, it usually takes 50 minutes.
One most Saturdays I do a mini workout where I do a set of jump rope and then three or four of the above. Another mini workout includes cleaning the bar twice, then doing two front squats and two overhead presses all as one set. Most other days I do a longer jump rope session.
For diet, I usually don't eat until around 11:30 so a form of intermittent fasting but more precisely it's time restricted feeding. My first meal is usually either eggs with cheese (no carbs), a package of smoked salmon (packaged as one serving from Trader Joes) which is also no carbs or some combination of meat at cheese. With the meat and cheese, I usually put it in a low carb tortilla which has two carbs. I usually have a Quest bar (4 carbs) which gets me to the middle of the afternoon in the single digits of grams of carbs consumed. Contrast that with one bowl of Wheaties which has about 30 carbs. From there I am not too worried about dinner but I do avoid rice and pasta.
The list of metabolic benefits from reducing carb consumption seems to be endless, again follow @mangan150 for more details.
It is up to us to figure all of these things for ourselves. You might disagree with every conclusion I have made for myself but hopefully you actively engage for your own health outcomes.
The information, analysis and opinions expressed herein reflect our judgment and opinions as of the date of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. They are not intended to constitute legal, tax, securities or investment advice or a recommended course of action in any given situation.
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