Lifelong Learning

Thinking Styles – What’s Your Style?

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Read this thinking style pyramid and refer back to it as often as needed.

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We are all suckers for click bait. I started with this:

Older Adults Face Higher Cancer Risk From Alcohol, Even at Low or Moderate Levels – https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/older-adults-face-higher-cancer-risk-alcohol-even-low-or-2025a

Scary stuff if you’re an older adult! I should STOP DRINKING ALCOHOL.

But what if this study is wrong? See pyramid above. Sensing bias in the article I took a look at the comments. Dr. Bradley Fawkes’ comment was noteworthy. In the results section of the study you’ll find this:

“While no associations were found for low- or moderate-risk drinking patterns vs occasional drinking among individuals without socioeconomic or health-related risk factors…” Alcohol Consumption Patterns and Mortality Among Older Adults With Health-Related or Socioeconomic Risk Factors – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2822215

So in the absence of socioeconomic or health-related risk factors no associations were found.

Cheers!

When People Did Not Have Access to Mobile Internet, they Spent More Time Socializing in Person, Exercising, and Being in Nature.

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https://www.harmonyhit.com/phone-screen-time-statistics/

Our results provide evidence that blocking mobile internet from smartphones for 2 weeks can produce significant improvements for SWB (subjective well being), mental health, and the objectively measured ability to sustain attention. Even those who did not fully comply with the intervention experienced significant, though more modest, improvements. These findings suggest that constant connection to the online world comes at a cost, since psychological functioning improves when this connection is reduced. Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being – PNAS Nexus, Volume 4, Issue 2, February 2025, pgaf017, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf017

Excuse me please, I have to check my phone.

Obesity is Not a Disease

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David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM is a specialist in Internal Medicine, Preventive Medicine/Public Health, and Lifestyle Medicine – globally recognized for expertise in chronic disease prevention, health promotion, and nutrition. The founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, and past president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Katz is the founder of the non-profit True Health Initiative, founder of Diet ID, and Chief Medical Officer for leading food-as-medicine company, Tangelo. He is a senior science advisor to Blue Zones. He holds multiple US patents, including for advances in dietary assessment. He has roughly 250 peer-reviewed publications, has authored 19 books- including multiple editions of a leading textbooks in nutrition and preventive medicine, and has earned numerous awards for his contributions to public health, including three honorary doctoral degrees.

https://www.vumedi.com/video/obesity-is-not-a-disease-so-what-is-it

Diet until proven otherwise.

Diet and Healthy Aging

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In the journal Nature Medicine this week there was an important open-access publication about a large combined cohort of over 105,000 health professionals prospectively followed for 30 years. Only 9.3% reached the age of 70 years with “healthy aging” —without 11 major chronic diseases and no impairment of cognitive or physical function or mental health. Our Diet and Healthy Aging Eric Topol, MD – https://erictopol.substack.com/p/our-diet-and-healthy-aging

Dr. Eric Topol’s assessment of this study is well balanced and thoughtfully written. His bio is here: https://www.scripps.edu/faculty/topol/

Healthy aging in this study is described as reaching age 70 without developing any of 11 major diseases: cancer (except for non-melanoma skin cancers), diabetes, heart attack, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, kidney failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

My Half-Birthday is coming up soon. I’ll be 70.5 years young. The biggest take home lesson for me is this:

Beer is better for you than pizza.

My Cryptocurrency Investment

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My cryptocurrency investment was taking the time to learn and understand the bubble. Charles Mackay’s bestseller Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds discussed many historical bubbles and was published in 1841. The book sits on the shelf and remains a reminder not to get caught up and swept away by the madness of crowds. THERE ARE IDIOTS: Seven pillars of market bubbles is a good article and much more recent than 1841 https://www.acadian-asset.com/investment-insights/owenomics/there-are-idiots-seven-pillars-of-market-bubbles.

Greg Hunter’s https://usawatchdog.com/ is neither Democrat nor Republican, Liberal nor Conservative. Before creating and producing the site, Greg spent nearly 9 years as a network and investigative correspondent. He worked for ABC News and Good Morning America for nearly 6 years. Most recently, Greg worked for CNN for shows such as Paula Zahn Now, American Morning and various CNN business shows. The following is an edited excerpt from an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts.

Bailout of the Big Boys. Be careful out there. Don’t get screwed.

“This is literally a Bitcoin for land-grab swap. . . . So, they take our retirement savings, what’s left of it, and they take our taxes and use it to buy Bitcoin.  The Bitcoin billionaires sell their Bitcoin into that at the same time they are taking advantage of the monetization of all the land and minerals.  They sell their Bitcoin at the top, and what can they do?  They can buy the land. . . . They want out of digital assets, and they want real assets.  Right now, the whole race on the planet is to grab the real assets such as land, mineral resources, water resources, etcetera, etcetera. . . . The land ownership of the top 100 landowners of America doubled.  They are not buying Bitcoin.  They are buying land.  Bill Gates is buying farm land.  The Harvard Endowment is buying farm land.  What you are really seeing is a discussion to sell the unreal assets to the taxpayer and the real assets to private parties.  If this succeeds, it will be the biggest robbery and financial scam in the history of the country. .  . The smart money is trying to control the real assets.” Catherine Austin Fitts former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Administration) https://usawatchdog.com/smart-money-buying-up-real-assets-not-bitcoin-catherine-austin-fitts/

Catherine Austin Fitts is the founder of Solari, a private company. Link to her company website is https://home.solari.com/ where I found the absolute best summary of the history of Bitcoin and what Fitts calls the BITCOIN BAILOUT: Why a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Is a Bailout of the Big Boys https://home.solari.com/bitcoin-bailout-why-a-bitcoin-strategic-reserve-is-a-bailout-of-the-big-boys/

Smartphones, Ultra-Processed Foods, Diminished Family Bonds and Mental Wellness

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As mental well-being has remained largely static across the world since 2021, so too have the rankings of countries. At the top of the rankings are many Latin American and African countries while much of the core Anglosphere ranks in the bottom quartile. With national wealth indicators such as per capita GDP negatively correlated with average mental well-being scores (see our 2021 report), this year we have made substantial progress in our understanding of why this is so. Two key findings published in Rapid Reports in 2023 show that younger age of first smartphone ownership and ultra-processed food consumption are two major contributors to our mental health challenges. In wealthier countries, the age of first smartphone ownership is much younger and ultra-processed food consumption much higher. Other contributing factors are the relatively diminished family relationships in wealthier countries that are highlighted in our 2022 annual report. The Mental State of the World in 2023 – https://mentalstateoftheworld.report/2023_read/

Another Sunday morning, just reading and connecting the dots.

I’ve downloaded several of these reports and plan to do a deep dive later.

Read these reports and think about it.

Now do something about it.

What’s Your America? (there are 10 Americas) – Updated with Scary Charts 02.01.25

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Asians and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders definitively outlive other Americans. Is there anything we can learn from them? A confluence of factors may be at play. They tend to have relatively higher socioeconomic status, lower rates of obesity, and the lowest smoking rates of any racial group in the U.S. Healthier traditional cooking may also contribute to their longevity. When it comes to life expectancy, there are 10 Americas – https://bigthink.com/health/ten-americas-for-life-expectancy/

Attention Mortality Risk Experts

Sharpen your pencils and don’t ask me what a pencil is.

Updated 02.01.25 with Scary Charts

Nonrandom Thoughts on Retirement – Nov. 2024 (scary chart too)

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Americans are split over the state of the American dream — https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/02/americans-are-split-over-the-state-of-the-american-dream/

Are you familiar with the self-fulfilling prophecy in psychology/sociology? Simply stated a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when what you believe about your future causes it to happen. When you believe something will become true, you’ll act to make it a reality. Look at the chart above. Looks like around 50% of the survey respondents under the age of 50 will never achieve their American Dream.

They will make choices and act in ways to ensure they will never achieve the American Dream.