Quotes About Health

physical stamina

Do you resort to liquor, narcotics, or cigarettes to quiet your nerves? If so, why do you not try will-power instead?

Primitive societies are largely free of cardiovascular disease, cancer, dental cavities, economic theories, lounge music, and other modern ailments.

Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health

We ingest probiotics because we don't eat enough "dirt" anymore.

Modernity's double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer.

Mother Nature does not develop Alzheimer's—actually there is evidence that even humans would not easily lose brain function with age if they followed a regimen of stochastic exercise and stochastic fasting, took long walks, avoided sugar, bread, white rice, and stock market investments, and refrained from taking economics classes or reading such things as The New York Times.

I once procrastinated and kept delaying a spinal cord operation as a response to a back injury—and was completely cured of the back problem after a hiking vacation in the Alps, followed by weight-lifting sessions. These psychologists and economists want me to kill my naturalistic instinct (the inner b****t detector) that allowed me to delay the elective operation and minimize the risks—an insult to the antifragility of our bodies.

Montaigne also detected the agency problem, or why the last thing a doctor needs is for you to be healthy: "No doctor derives pleasure from the health of his friends, wrote the ancient Greek satirist, no soldier from the peace of his city, etc." (Nul médecin ne prent plaisir à la santé de ses amis mesmes, dit l'ancien Comique Grec, ny soldat à la paix de sa ville: ainsi du reste.)

It turns out, as shown by Karsenty and others who have since embarked on the line of research, that the reverse is also largely true: loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones also causes aging, diabetes, and, for males, loss of fertility and sexual function. We just cannot isolate any causal relationship in a complex system.

For instance, having an intense emotional shock from seeing a snake coming out of my keyboard or a vampire entering my room, followed by a period of soothing safety (with chamomile tea and baroque music) long enough for me to regain control of my emotions, would be beneficial for my health, provided of course that I manage to overcome the snake or vampire after an arduous, hopefully heroic fight and have a picture taken next to the dead predator.

loss of mental function, taste for Frank Sinatra music, and similar degenerative effects.

loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones also causes aging, diabetes, and, for males, loss of fertility and sexual function. We just cannot isolate any causal relationship in a complex system.

Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort—a disease of civilization: make life longer and longer, while people are more and more sick.

It was calculated that actors who win an Oscar tend to live on average about five years longer than their peers who don't.

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

they unarguably saved more lives than were lost.

in real life, every single bit of risk you take adds up to reduce your life expectancy.

Every additional glass of wine harms you more than the preceding one

Every single risk you take adds up to reduce your life expectancy.

Cancer from smoking seems more likely than cancer without a cause attached to it

once a man crossed the forty-year mark, he had shown that very few ailments could harm him.

so the gains in life expectancy are more societal than from the result of scientific advance.

Whenever possible, replace the doctor with human antifragility. But otherwise don't be shy with aggressive treatments.