CONTENTS
🟢 A no nonsense guide to exercising for wellness
🟢 “Take this job and shove it”
🟢 Tapping into brain activity through the ears
🟢 The Nobel Prize is not beyond reproach
🟢 Second helpings - some good reading from the web
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LEAD ARTICLE
The flood of information, tools, and technology for exercising can be confusing, even overwhelming. Magazines, newspapers, journals, websites—there's hardly a day when you won't come across some article, news item, or comment. Rightfully so, because exercise forms one of the main pillars of wellness, along with nutrition and stress control.
Here's a guide to what works and how well. Evidence-informed advice that can surprise you with how little you need to stay fit.
✅ How often? “Most days of the week” is a sane statement that gives you latitude in terms of skipping or missing days. This means about four of the seven days, although, as you will read subsequently, there is flexibility even here.
✅ How long? The good news is that the effects of exercise are cumulative. 10-15 minute sessions, two or three times a day, are as effective as one long stretch. The old rule of clocking 150 minutes or more each week is still a good rule of thumb.
✅ What kind? Just about anything that involves good muscular activity: climbing stairs instead of using the lift (elevator in the USA); walking to the store instead of driving; actively replacing mechanical ambulatory aids with your own body. All these bits add up to the daily tally.
In an earlier issue, I had mentioned "blue zones"—parts of the world where people have very long, productive life spans. One facet of their lifestyle, regardless of where in the world, was the routine of incorporating physical activity into the many elements of daily living: walking or biking instead of using vehicles; active gardening and food production; cooking the natural way with unprocessed food; drawing water; and so on. They add up.
Walking speed or intensity has no major effect on the health benefits. According to the findings of recent research, we must attempt to "push ourselves to go faster than we think we can." Walk; don't amble; don't run. About 100 steps a minute will suffice.
✅ When? The time of day does not matter very much, but avoid hot and humid periods. As a rule, avoid exercising when you are physically worn out or down from a minor illness like a cold or the flu.
✅ What kind of equipment? None, really. The cheapest, easiest, and most accessible is walking, preferably in nature, like a park. Swing your arms or use light weights to give work to your upper limbs.
There is a technique called Nordic walking that uses hiking sticks in each arm. (Any number of videos are there on YouTube.) The energy expenditure goes up by 30–40 percent for the same duration of exercise, and your whole body is made fit. The only problem I have encountered is explaining to people that I am not so disabled that I need two sticks!
Home gyms are good in principle, but I see so many homes where expensive exercise machines end up as clothes hangers. (More on this in the FAQs.)
Fitbits and other "wearables" are a fad. In my opinion, they are merely personal data-gathering tools that are fed into marketing algorithms to make you buy more stuff.
✅ Mix and patch routines to avoid the curse of all exercise regimes: boredom and eventual quitting. Walk one day, bike another, go to a gym, on the third, swim. Make a cocktail. Don’t get into a tizzy if you miss out some days.
View exercise as a tool, not a goal.
✅ Sitting is suicide. The data makes it clear that the more you sit, the worse off you are. Studies show that people who sit actively by getting up every 10 or 15 minutes wake up their metabolisms and enjoy better long-term health than those who sit inertly for hours on end.
In addition, leisure-time sitting (being a couch potato) is more strongly associated with negative health outcomes than work-time sitting.
FAQs
❓ Do we really need to do 10,000 steps a day? 10,000 steps a day has become the de facto goal for many people throughout the globe who want to stay fit, healthy, and active as they age. This is a myth. It was more of a marketing gimmick than science-based health advice. Yamasa Corporation, a Japanese business, used the energy of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics to launch a promotion for their new step-tracker—yes, they had one even then. The brand name of the pedometer, translates to "10,000 steps metre" in English, and a new craze began. There is no scientific evidence to support this number. Recent studies show that even 3000–4000 steps a day is good: a very doable number.
❓ What is high-intensity interval training (HIIT)? An effective alternative has emerged that has been documented as a good choice: high-intensity interval training (HIIT). 7 minutes a day, using nothing more than your body, the wall, a chair, and the floor, will keep you fit and conditioned. The routine will keep you in shape but is not enough for those requiring higher levels of athletic performance or weight loss. Here’s one nice infographic from The NYT. (I don’t think it is paywalled. If so, there is a huge amount of free stuff on the Internet.)
❓What about standing desks? Good in principle but needs reorienting your work style. There is emerging evidence that continuous standing without much movement can damage your hip, knee, and ankle joints.
There are models of standing desks that incorporate a treadmill while you are working. I don't know whether I could stand, walk, and do my work.
❓What's the value of music during exercise? Headphones and earbuds have become part of exercise outfitting, along with tracksuits and sneakers. There is interesting evidence about music and exercise. The optimal beat rate should be around 120–140 beats per minute. Exercise mixtapes are set to this rhythm.
However, focused thinking and problem-solving are not possible. Your thoughts will flit from one to the next. New ideas may be spawned.
If you need to solve problems or focus on a specific issue, then exercise in silence.
❓ Can exercise cancel out the harm of sitting?
No; exercise does not counter sitting. A recent review of 47 studies on the subject of sedentary behaviour showed that increased exercise blunted but did not completely eliminate the excess risk associated with sedentary lifestyles.
❓ Should I join a gym? Will it do more for me? Yes, there are definite advantages to working out in a gym under the eye of a good trainer. But studies show that almost 45% of members will use the facility less than four times during their annual membership. Only around 15% are regular users. Don't quote me, but it's probably why you see so many gyms in every locality: a great business opportunity. Put in the equipment, sign up people, and Ka-ching! You don't have to worry about your equipment wearing down.
❓ Beyond cardio-respiratory benefits. A physically inactive lifestyle is associated with maladaptive patterns of personality development over relatively short follow-up periods. A study of 8723 people extended the period by examining whether this association persists over 20 years. A physically inactive lifestyle was related to steeper declines in conscientiousness and declines in openness, extraversion, and agreeableness. The study provided evidence of long-term detrimental personality trajectories.
Attitude matters
I will end by paying homage to a remarkable lady-scientist, Ellen Langer. Over a lifetime research career, she has established the value of positive psychology and mindfulness in health and wellness. In one memorable study, by having chambermaids call their everyday activity “exercise” rather than “labour,” Langer found that the chambermaids experienced a myriad of health benefits, including "a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio—and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure." It's how you view it that makes all the difference. See exercise as pleasure, not pain.
That's it—the best {P}rescription for a healthy life.
WORKPLACE BLUES
Hell,no! I won’t go back. The pandemic showed us clearly that white-collar work can easily be done from home. Life got back to normal, but the years at home made many people ask existential questions. “What am I really doing?” “Why am I a wage slave?” Employers reacted with, “Get your a…e back into the office.” Employees responded, “Like hell. We can WFH and find someone else who will let us.” Quiet quitting and mass resignation began.
Labouring in vain. Throughout the twentieth century, there has been a recurrent refrain that the majority of work done in modern society is useless toil. The COVID epidemic brought things to a head and made a sizeable portion of the workforce ruminate over the possibility that their labour was non-essential.
Bullshit jobs. David Graeber collectively classified these unrewarding jobs with the attention-grabbing rubric of “bullshit jobs.” He defined them in a long-winded fashion as, “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.” Or, simply put, “I hate my job.”
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Graeber’s numbers for these jobs were as high as half the workforce. Subsequent studies by others showed a wide variance of 5 to 20%—nowhere near his figures. A lot of the dissatisfaction is related to issues like autonomy and alienation, not the job itself.
The “sunk cost fallacy” commonly keeps people from throwing in the towel. Here’s an infographic that explains this mindset.
Here’s a thoughtful piece on this difficult decision.
MORE HERE
▶️ The art of quitting. Full article
🔽 “Quick bite” - click on the excerpt below to view my notes from this post
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💬 “.. this nonsense of earning a living. ... this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery ... people should ... go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Buckminster Fuller
MATRIX RELOADED
The airwaves are full of to-and-fro arguments about ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, spelling the end of humanity. Yes, the prospects are scary, especially with our well-known ability to take a tool and use it on the “dark side.” Only time will tell us how this is going to play out.
Here’s something even scarier. Researchers have developed a small wafer that can be layered on ear buds and used to monitor and record electrical activity from the brain. From here, it is only one small jump to feed back messages into your ears. The technology is only in its prototype stage, but so was ChatGPT a few years ago.
This article goes into more details.
MORE HERE
▶️ A window on the mind through the ear. || Full article
🔽 “Quick bite” - click on the excerpt below to view my notes from this post
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💬 “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” ― Aldous Huxley
SINS OF OMISSION
A dissenting view point on the ultimate prize.
MORE HERE
▶️ Some Nobel winners are great intellects, others are lucky. There’s more to science than these prizes. || Full article
🔽 “Quick bite” - click on the excerpt below to view my notes from this post
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💬 “An omission is not the same thing as a lie … It’s a manipulation.” ― Victoria Schwab
SECOND HELPINGS
The best {P}rescription for staying out of doctors' clinics. Stick with it.
Very useful tips and I’m happy that I’m doing the right things ! 🙏