Hi!

Welcome to the sixth edition. Here’s the fifth, if you missed it.

March Madness has begun, so I spent the day in my office watching it unfoldwriting.

If you like this newsletter and know someone else who also might, please forward it along.

Alright, now let’s get on with it …

Something I wrote: Blood Boys and Magic Yuppie Health Dust

In the last few issues of Men’s Health I’ve written one-page stories that shed light on weird but trending health topics. So far: Parabiosis, old people paying too much money to inject themselves with the blood of younger people, and adaptogens, exotic herbal powders that yuppies use to supposedly relieve their first-world-problem induced stress.

The stories are a blast to write. I get to suss out junk from science by talking to everyone from health wackadoos to legit scientists. I’m lucky to be doing more of these pages in the future. Check the May issue for one on a weird new fitness trend. Meantime, below are snippets of the published ones, which you can read in their entirety here.

From the parabiosis story:
Imagine an old lab mouse—the bad hair, the wrong turns in the maze, the lazing around. Now imagine that mouse surgically conjoined to another, more youthful one . . . and then seeing it, within weeks, start getting younger. When scientists did this, “they found the old mouse showed fewer diseases of aging, like diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s,” says Jesse Karmazin, M.D.
For Dr. Karmazin, the old mouse is you. This 33-year-old Stanford-trained physician has no plans to sew you to a college freshman. But he’s betting, based on recent research, that humans experience the same age-bending benefit from a dose of young blood.

From the adaptogens story
Seventy-nine percent of Americans say they’re stressed-out—thanks, work, screaming kids, social media, and deciding what to have for dinner tonight— which explains the rise of the multibillion-dollar anti-stress marketplace. With a bevy of attractive, shiny options, you can choose between established practices—therapists and an array of prescription pills—and more esoteric stuff like meditation, tapping, and yoga. The newest in the latter category: adaptogens, a group of (supposedly) stress-fighting plants that are showing up in today’s trendiest teas, coffees, and snack foods.

Adaptogens (a hard-to-pin-down category that even the dictionary defines only as “plant extracts that increase the body’s ability to resist stress”) come from obscure and god-awful-tasting plants, roots, fruits, and fungi that survive in harsh conditions, making scientists believe they help humans do the same. They’re sold for a too-high price with too-gorgeous packaging in too-precious web stores like Moon Juice and Goop. They have exotic, spelling-bee- finals names—including ashwagandha, rhodiola, reishi, Panax ginseng, and Cordyceps—and promise to take you back to your center and make you feel normal again, no matter what’s going on.

The Best Things I Read: Fast Food, The Men of 2020, Insane Runs, Fiber, and What You Can Learn From Eskimos. 

• Today’s combo meals are actually super super super sized. Bigger, Saltier, Heavier: Fast Food Since 1986 in Three Charts
• Yes to From Woke Bros to Cold Warriors: The Men of 2020, the New York Times opinion piece from Men’s Health Editor-in-Chief Rich Dorment. He explains why the 2020 democratic ticket is unique (beyond the historic number of women running) for having a range of expressions of masculinity. Beto, he writes, is “avocado toast incarnate — wholesome, trendy, Insta-friendly” while Joe Biden is “closer to corned beef hash.”
• This middle-aged man fought his depression by running 1,000 miles across Alaska … unsupported … in winter.
• Fiber: Its effects are kind of weird and gross, but the science of why it can radically improve your health is totally compelling. Fiber influences everything from your weight to your mental health, new science is showing. So read A Plea to Make Fiber Cool, a fascinating NY Mag interview with the author of Cultured: How Ancient Foods Can Feed Our Microbiome.
• Did you know that Inuits are super chill? They don’t get angry. Here’s how they do it.

The Best Thing I Heard: An Athro Cast

Nerd alert! The School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford has a podcast, and it’s basically the equivalent of majoring in anthropology at Oxford. We’re talking 237 lectures on topics like what you can really learn about health from hunter gatherers and why humans today are more materialistic.

I learned, for example, that trying to eat like our early ancestors is a lost cause (looking at you, Paleo diet). The diets of early humans varied wildly across time and space. Some people were complete vegetarians while others ate nearly all meat.

The Best Thing I Did: Rucking

I’m outside more often lately (thanks, March in Las Vegas!), doing lots of trail running and “rucking,” which is military speak for walking with a weighted pack on your back. US soldiers have been rucking since we squared off against the British, and it’s a hell of a way to harden up. Research shows that it burns far more calories and builds your endurance better than just walking (but doesn’t feel that much more difficult, depending on how heavy you go), builds way more strength and muscle than running, and can even prevent problems like back pain.

Just think about it from an evolutionary perspective. Humans evolved carrying heavy things over long distances. When we don’t do that we are weaker and not as healthy.

The beauty of rucking is in its ease and simplicity. Like … I’m going to walk my two dogs anyways, so I might as well toss on a heavy pack. I usually use 20 to 40 pounds, and the weight is always inside a GORUCK GR1 backpack, the best tool for the job. (Side note: The men and women at GORUCK make all kinds of killer gear and they do it right here in the USA).

A tip: Ease into the weight and distance, and use this calculator to figure out how many extra calories you’re burning based on how much weight you’re rucking with.

What I’m Reading: The Hungry Brain

Stephan Guyenet has long been one of my most trusted nutrition sources. His book, which I just finished, is the most convincing argument I’ve heard for why we get fat. In short:

The brain generates hunger and cravings, determines what and how much we eat, how much we move, and regulates body physiology, making it the primary determinant of how fat we become. Skyrocketing obesity rates are caused by a combination of our new food environment, which is packed with large portions of calorie-dense and tasty food, and our lack of movement. Together this causes us to crave more, eat more, and burn off less.

In Parting, One Context-Free Quote:

It’s not like bed rest and drinking a lot of water is going to straighten this out … You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute …

Until next, next Thursday …

-Michael