“In the end, obviously, laughter is serious business, and the inability to laugh, at the world and at ourselves, is often, I believe, a sign of mental illness.”
Richard Russo author of The Destiny Thief
Survival strategies
Scary Charts – 12.10.22
Millions of US Millennials Moved in With Their Parents This Year – https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/millions-of-us-millennials-moved-in-with-their-parents-this-year/ar-AA14Y5JT#comments
Most Expensive Zip Codes — https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/most-expensive-zip-codes
Quote for Today 12.09.22 AND Scary Charts
There is no mystery to controlling inflation. You just have to stop spending money you don’t have…stop lending out money at interest rates below inflation…and stop ‘printing’ up extra money to cover the holes in your budget. Instead, most governments continue to spend and print. Inflation is on the rise almost everywhere. And for the first time in modern history, much of the entire world’s middle class – the people who make the world work – is facing a grim period of higher inflation and lower real standards of living.
Three Strikes, You’re Out! More on the government’s middle class massacre – Bonner Private Research https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/p/three-strikes-youre-out
But wait…it’s worse in North America.
I’m just thankful I haven’t retired yet.
Millions Suffer – Junk Food Industry Profits
Increased consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) was associated with more than 10% of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019. That is the finding of a new peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Examples of UPFs are prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals, hot dogs, sausages, sodas, ice cream, and store-bought cookies, cakes, candies and doughnuts.
UPFs have steadily replaced the consumption of traditional whole foods, such as rice and beans, in Brazil.
Millions Suffer as Junk Food Industry Rakes in Profit, by Colin Todhunter — STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC
Here is a link to the original study https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(22)00429-9/fulltext
Statin or Supplements?
So, which is most effective? Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic set out to answer this question by comparing statins to supplements in a clinical trial. They tracked the outcomes of 190 adults, ages 40 to 75. Some participants were given a 5 mg daily dose of rosuvastatin, a statin that is sold under the brand name Crestor for 28 days. Others were given supplements, including fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, plant sterols or red yeast rice for the same period.
“What we found was that rosuvastatin lowered LDL cholesterol by almost 38% and that was vastly superior to placebo and any of the six supplements studied in the trial,” study author Luke Laffin, M.D. of the Cleveland Clinic’s Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute told NPR. He says this level of reduction is enough to lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The findings are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Statins vs. supplements: New study finds one is ‘vastly superior’ to cut cholesterol – https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/06/1134094540/statins-vs-supplements-new-study-finds-one-is-vastly-superior-to-cut-cholesterol
Sometimes diet and exercise alone are not enough to keep cholesterol in check. I currently take a low dose statin 10 mg daily. My test results from 09.27.22: cholesterol 197, HDL 71, LDL 102, triglycerides 69.
Oh, and continuing the theme of full disclosure the thing on my leg Image Challenge – November 2022 was MUD.
What is the Optimal Diet for the Prevention of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease? — The Skeptical Cardiologist
The skeptical cardiologist was asked to give a lecture in July on diet to the cardiology fellows in our training program at Saint Louis University. Needless to say, I didn’t hew to current recommendations from the American Heart Association or the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. For example, these recommendations are still promoting the narrative that…
What is the Optimal Diet for the Prevention of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease? — The Skeptical Cardiologist
Great lecture. Thank you Dr. Pearson.
Quote for Today – 10.29.22
Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself.
From a speech delivered in 1963 by a Louisiana State University business professor Leon C. Megginson at the convention of the Southwestern Social Science Association. The text of his address was published in the quarterly journal of the association. — https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/04/adapt/
The quote above cites Darwin as the source of the phrase in bold.
Darwin never said it. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/about-darwin/six-things-darwin-never-said
Aging Well
Previous studies on aging have found that how people thought about themselves at age 50 predicted a wide range of future health outcomes up to 40 years later — cardiovascular events, memory, balance, will to live, hospitalizations; even mortality.”Previous research has shown that people who have positive views of aging at 50 live 7.5 years longer, on average, than people who don’t,” said Karen Hooker, co-author of the study and the Jo Anne Leonard Petersen Endowed Chair in Gerontology and Family Studies at OSU.
Oregon State University. “‘Aging well’ greatly affected by hopes and fears for later life.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121150929.htm (accessed January 23, 2021).
Journal Reference – Shelbie G. Turner, Karen Hooker. Are Thoughts About the Future Associated With Perceptions in the Present?: Optimism, Possible Selves, and Self-Perceptions of Aging. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 2020; 009141502098188 DOI: 10.1177/0091415020981883
Factors associated with food choice among long-term weight loss maintainers
Quote for Today – 09.22.22
Charlie Munger, the billionaire partner to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, describes his friend’s day as 80 percent reading—often five hundred pages. Before he invests his client’s money in a company, Buffett puts the odds in his favor by reading everything he possibly can about the company itself and the broader industry. He is not always right, but he is always informed. We might imagine him flying around on private jets, wheeling and dealing, when in fact he is more likely sitting at his desk, reading everything from the great books to technical analysis.
Mr. Buffett’s reading habit provides a powerful lesson for all of us. But most Americans read almost nothing. A friend who teaches at a large public university thinks less than half of his incoming freshmen have ever read a single book in full.
Jeff Deist President of the Mises Institute. Five Keys to Professional and Personal Development accessed online 9/22/22 — https://mises.org/wire/five-keys-professional-and-personal-development
Some good advice, no matter what stage in life you find yourself. This talk was delivered on September 2, 2022, to a student workshop at the Ron Paul Institute conference in northern Virginia.
- Sift
- Read
- Learn Continuously
- Avoid Arguments
- Promote People, Not Just Ideas
lifeunderwriter.net 
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