Other mailbags can be found here. Keep in mind a lot of this is email conversations, comment replies, or some random interesting things I’ve found. By their nature they are not as thorough or complete as a post on one topic.
Here’s what’s covered in this installment:
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Fun marketing
Though it was plugged in. Maybe some day!
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Another example of the lengths pro athletes go to
“Of course, to stay on the field after an injury like that, well, you don’t think it’s just a matter of grit and perseverance, do you? No — it’s a matter of drugs, the whole dizzying pharmacopoeia that makes our weekend entertainments possible. Players can’t play without them. Monroe couldn’t play without them. He started taking them in college, when he was recovering from the reconstruction of his knee, and he kept taking them when he played for the Jaguars and the Ravens. On Sundays, he stood in line for injections of the anti-inflammatory Toradol, and the rest of the time he took the pills the team doctors and surgeons prescribed for him. A 10-year prescription for the anti-inflammatory Celebrex; another for the gastric distress the Celebrex caused; another for Ambien, when he was too jacked up or in too much pain to sleep; another for the migraines caused by his concussions; and then the prescriptions for pain, Vicodin and Oxycontin, when he was either trying to forestall surgery or trying to recover from it. His intake wasn’t out of the ordinary. It was typical, and so was the fact that it got him high.”
Regarding Eugene Monroe, former NFL player, in ESPN
In case you’ve never heard of Celebrex,
“Side effects include a 37% increase in incidence of major vascular events, which include nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or death from a blood vessel-related cause. Additionally, an 81% increase in incidence of upper gastrointestinal complications occurs, which include perforations, obstructions, or gastrointestinal bleeding as in all NSAIDs. In July 2015 the FDA strengthened the warning that non-aspirin nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can cause heart attacks or strokes.”
Feel free to scroll down to the Fabricated Studies section too! (Something I wrote about here.)
Athletes are not the epitome of health.
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“A doctor with a bad knee runs into one-size-fits-all medicine”
“A friend recommended that I see another physical therapist, a practitioner with more than 40 years of experience. I cringed at the thought of more physical torture, but I went.
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She carefully examined my knee, which was severely inflamed and still swollen, and then recommended that I stop all the weights and exercises I’d been instructed to do and start an entirely different, pain-free exercise program, along with a course of anti-inflammatory medications. The individualized nature of this new plan, which she would have initiated immediately after the surgery for me, was epitomized by her handwritten page of instructions, not the typical preprinted handout for one treatment fits all.
In a few days, there was a dramatic turnaround. She would text me every other day to ask how “our knee” was doing. We built on the initial success with additional gentle exercises. Quickly I began to sleep normally; the pain, swelling and purple knee all ended; and the range of motion substantially improved. I had been rescued.”
This is a common story seen in the comments of my The biggest mistakes ACL patients make post. People should not be put into pain in physical therapy!
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Seinfeld on straws
So you don’t have to lean over as far to drink. If it’s less metabolically costly…
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“Gyms That Make You Want to Exercise More”
“How gyms arrange their equipment affects how people work out; A new focus on data analysis shows common, if counterintuitive, mistakes like treadmills facing the windows”
Not sure most trainers wouldn’t be able to tell you a lot of these things -people want to check out other people on the treadmills, not look at a parking lot- but it’s cool this stuff is being looked at to this degree.
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Gainz in old age
–Resistance Training Increases Skeletal Muscle Capillarization in Healthy Older Men
Another thought: increased capillarization => increased ability remove waste => decreased risk of cancer?
Said another way, is losing muscle a risk factor for cancer?
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High resting heart rate and blood pressure linked to later mental health disorders
“The research used heart rate and blood pressure measurements from conscripts for the Swedish army, linked with information from national patient registers. The results indicate that men whose resting heart rate was higher than 82 beats per minute during their youth were 69% more likely to later be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder than men whose resting heart rate was lower than 62 bpm. The risk for schizophrenia increased by 21% and for anxiety disorders, 18%
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The study also shows that low resting heart rate was linked to an increased risk of substance abuse and convictions for violent crimes.”
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Vine has died
Talk about this some in Fitness industry and social media- why so serious? Where if you have an online prescence, or want to build one, be careful putting too much emphasis on social media. Overnight a particular channel can be taken away.
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Horacio Pagani
I mentioned Apex, a hypercar documentary, in another mailbag. Talked about one of the subjects, Christian Von Koenisegg. Pagani was another subject.
Looking into him, he started a car company because he didn’t like the direction his employer, Lamborghini, was heading. He took out what appears to have been a small loan -it was a single bank loan- and started a carbon fiber / composites shop.
During the Gulf War Lamborghini’s business was hurting, so Pagani decided it was the time to try and make his own car. Two decades later and he’s still going.
There are few businesses with greater overhead than automotive. The fact this guy started a shop with a single bank loan -one he got by walking out of work one day, going to the bank and asking for a loan- then rolled that into a car company, shows likely any business can be started with minimal investment. You don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Hubris in Artificial Intelligence
Two of the most known AI researchers:
I also caught this video:
Which has the description:
“Demis Hassabis offers a unique insight from the frontiers of artificial intelligence research, and shares his latest thoughts on AI’s potential to help solve our biggest current and future challenges, from healthcare to climate change.”
Yet all that’s discussed is how Google lessened its data center energy use. Meanwhile, they’ve used lord knows how much energy from their data centers to play video games. (And just because Google is trying to use solar doesn’t mean that’s enough. Energy = heat!)
On Hassabis’ company’s site, Deep Mind, in regards to healthcare they want to help improve medical research to diagnose diseases. According them the NHS in the UK performs an error with 10% of patients. So 90% of us are on the verge of experiencing ???
I want to see how AI is going to get people to eat less and exercise more, the primary issue in human health (in developed countries). So far, things like wearables are INhibiting weight-loss. So far, every time I see AI being used, it’s making people expend less calories. Look, this is fucking incredible, but the whole idea is people don’t have to be on their feet as long-
Pedros Domingos has repeatedly warned about over embellishing promises of AI. AI has a history of this, and each time has fell into “winters” because of it. Not sure the warning is being heeded this time either.
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Posted on December 7, 2016