Will exercise help you live longer?

The article below claims to have found that it will but the hazard ratios they report are so low that if there is an effect it is so tiny as not to be worth the bother. I have reached 80 without ever doing any significant exercise so the findings are no surprise to me. Apologies to the gym bunnies

Prospective Associations of Different Combinations of Aerobic and Muscle-Strengthening Activity With All-Cause, Cardiovascular, and Cancer Mortality

Rubén López-Bueno et al

Question What is the optimal combination of moderate aerobic physical activity (MPA), vigorous aerobic physical activity (VPA), and muscle-strengthening activity (MSA) to reduce the risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality?

Findings In this cohort study of 500 705 participants, balanced amounts of MPA, VPA, and MSA combined were associated with a lower risk of mortality. These risk reductions may be greater with aerobic physical activity at higher vigorous and moderate intensities than current recommendations for all-cause and cancer mortality, respectively.

Meaning Balanced levels of MPA, VPA, and MSA combined may be associated with optimal reductions of mortality risk.

Abstract
Importance Studies examining the associations of different combinations of intensity-specific aerobic and muscle strengthening activity (MSA) with all-cause and cause-specific mortality are scarce; the few available estimates are disparate.

Objective To examine the prospective associations of different combinations of moderate aerobic physical activity (MPA), vigorous aerobic physical activity (VPA), and MSA with all-cause, cardiovascular (CVD), and cancer mortality.

Design, Setting, and Participants This nationwide prospective cohort study used data from the US National Health Interview Survey. A total of 500 705 eligible US adults were included in the study and followed up during a median of 10.0 years (5.6 million person-years) from 1997 to 2018. Data were analyzed from September 1 to September 30, 2022.

Exposures Self-reported cumulative bouts (75 weekly minutes) of MPA and VPA with recommended MSA guidelines (yes or no) to obtain 48 mutually exclusive exposure categories.

Main Outcomes and Measures All-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality. Participants were linked to the National Death Index through December 31, 2019.

Results Overall, 500 705 participants (mean [SD] age, 46.4 [17.3] years; 210 803 [58%] female; 277 504 [77%] White) were included in the study. Compared with the reference group (doing no MPA or VPA and less than recommended MSA), the category associated with the lowest hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality was more than 0 to 75 minutes of MPA combined with more than 150 minutes of VPA and 2 or more MSA sessions per week (HR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.42-0.59). The optimal combinations for CVD and cancer mortality risk reduction were more than 150 to 225 minutes of MPA, more than 0 to 75 minutes of VPA, and 2 or more MSA sessions per week (HR, 0.30; 95% CI, 0.15-0.57), and more than 300 minutes of MPA, more than 0 to 75 minutes of VPA, and 2 or more MSA sessions per week (HR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.23-0.82), respectively. Adjusted mortality rates represented an approximately 50% lower mortality rate for all-cause and cancer mortality and an approximately 3-fold lower mortality rate for CVD mortality.

Conclusions and Relevance This cohort study demonstrated that balanced levels of MPA, VPA, and MSA combined may be associated with optimal reductions of mortality risk. Higher-than-recommended levels of MPA and VPA may further lower the risk of cancer and all-cause mortality, respectively.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807854

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Is Kratom Our Newest Addiction?

It used to be that you had to hang out at seedy joints and dimly lit street corners to get your high from marijuana. Eventually, though, the drug was legalized for medical use and has since been decriminalized in several states, despite legitimate questions as to its safety.

Now there’s a new substance on the block — one that’s as readily accessible as the corner convenience store, health food shops, and even specialty drink bars. As the FDA describes it: “Kratom is a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia. Consumption of its leaves produces both stimulant effects (in low doses) and sedative effects (in high doses), and can lead to psychotic symptoms, and psychological and physiological dependence.”

With its chemical ingredient, called mitragynine, natives of the area have used it for centuries to enhance their energy and increase their endurance, often chewing the leaves directly off the tree or brewing them into a tea — botanically, the plant is a member of the coffee family.

Those who use it, such as the patrons in a Florida bar called Kavasutra that sells only non-alcoholic botanical drinks, claim it has those good qualities. “It relaxes you,” says one of those patrons. “I feel like being more social and open to these cool conversations.” Another imbiber said while playing a video game, “I feel more focused; I’m more on point.” And a bartender says the tea “completely took away my back pain” from a degenerative spinal condition. Indeed, kratom is also allegedly used as a step-down drug for those in recovery from addiction to opioids.

While there has been a push for the FDA to regulate kratom as it would other supplements, thus far the effort hasn’t borne fruit, leaving uneducated consumers vulnerable to improper dosage. One tragic example of overuse resulted in a Florida lawsuit in which the plaintiff, whose mother died from “acute mitragynine intoxication,” was awarded $11 million. The kratom that killed the victim was sold to her in a small baggie hand-labeled as “Space Dust.”

Research has shown that the average kratom user tends to be 20- or 30-something, which also raises the question of long-term effects as well as its interaction with other medications being used by older Americans. And while some may compare kratom to marijuana because of its medicinal purposes, the former is on the opposite trajectory of the latter: While states continue to decriminalize marijuana, a few states have banned the purchase of kratom.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/99649

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The Best Presidential Candidate in the World Is Running in Argentina

The media would like you to know that Javier Milei, the upstart candidate who improbably won Argentina's presidential primary this week, is a "Trump admirer," "right-wing populist," "far-right outsider," "far-right populist," "rightist," "far-right libertarian," a "radical" -- and did they mention he's on the "far right"?

Anyway, I'm no expert on Argentinian politics, so this coverage sparked my curiosity. And it turns out, Milei -- also known as el Peluca ("The Wig") because he sports the hairstyle of a man spinning jazz-flute fusion records in his velvet-draped bachelor pad circa 1972 -- is far more interesting than headlines would have us believe.

An economist and rhetorical pugilist, Milei's philosophical outlook could more precisely be described as "doctrinaire ultraliberal," (the good kind) as Andres Malamud of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon recently put it. That is news because it is an exceptionally rare outlook.

Milei threatens to upend the political order in a country in the middle of another economic meltdown. Once-low poverty rates have exploded -- some estimates put it at 43% -- while the currency continues to lose its value. Milei, a longtime television personality, has made the case that Argentines are "hostages" to generationally destructive economic policy. (Interest rates were hiked to 118% this week.) He argues that politicians -- or, as he calls them, "rats" of the "parasitic, useless and useless political caste" -- have destroyed one of the richest countries in the world "with nefarious ideas to line their pockets."

Many of those ideas, Milei argues, can be found in Keynesian economics, which lies at the heart of most of Western society's ills. The candidate promises to shut down the central bank, dollarize the economy, deregulate markets, open up trade, cut taxes and pare the regulatory regime. Not incidentally, his English Mastiffs are named after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard and Robert Lucas.

When Milei was asked if happiness was more important than liberty, he responded, "They go hand in hand. You cannot be happy without being free." I'm skeptical that's the case for everyone. But Milei's placing of personal liberty as the prerequisite for not only a prosperous society but a virtuous one is welcome in a world where politicians increasingly look to bureaucracies, the welfare state and "industrial policy" to save us.

In the United States, big-government conservatives like to complain that "libertarians" like Milei aren't equipped, or are unwilling, to take on social issues. Yet the candidate not only does so, he frames his defense as both a moral and liberal imperative. "I am openly against abortion," Milei says. "As a liberal I believe in unrestricted respect for others. You can choose over your body, but not over the body of the other." When asked why he wants to shut down government "sex education" programs, Milei referred to them as "a mechanism" of propaganda that destroys the family and "comes down from the state with the intention of promoting everything that the line of the left and gender ideology has."

While Milei has a Trumpian disdain for "elites" and engenders loyalty from his fans, the Argentine does not share the former president's adoration for state power and believes (rightly) that free markets offer a massive positive upside for the working and middle class.

Milei has promised to raffle off his presidential paycheck, and 2.4 million Argentines have already registered to win $3,200 every month. "To me, that is dirty money," he explained. "From my philosophical point of view, the state is a criminal organization that is funded through taxes taken from people by force. We are giving back the money that the political caste has stolen." And along with rejecting climate alarmism as a destructive attack on modernity, he proposes an armed citizenry and calls for Argentina to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Both the United States and Israel, he says, are his "natural allies.")

Into my veins, as the kids say.

And what might seem surprising is that Milei's popularity is driven by younger voters. It is, of course, likely that part of that support is a protest vote against the failures of the Argentinian establishment rather than any ideological statement. Most ordinary people aren't "doctrinaire" about anything. Still, it shows that individual liberty -- mocked as antiquated and puerile rhetoric by both right and left these days -- can still have some currency.

All this radical liberalism talk has prompted President Alberto Fernandez to warn that Milei is "a threat to democracy" and invoke Adolf Hitler and totalitarianism, as one always does. As far as I can tell, with authoritarian ideas gaining ground at an alarming rate, we could use more charismatic populist liberals like Milei.

https://townhall.com/columnists/davidharsanyi/2023/08/18/the-best-presidential-candidate-in-the-world-is-running-in-argentina-n2627192

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‘Bidenomics’ Has Been a Disaster

After 40 years of “trickle-down economics,” President Joe Biden says, “Bidenomics is just another way of saying restoring the American dream.”

It’s not often that a politician openly pledges to bring the country back to a time of crippling inflation, high energy prices, and stifling interest rates. But this president is doing his best to keep that promise.

Unsurprisingly, “Bidenomics” is failing to gain traction among voters. This has caused consternation in the media. One thing to remember, though, is that “Bidenomics” isn’t really a thing.

Unlike, say, “Reaganomics,” which helped bring about the largest expansion of the middle class in world history, the president does not subscribe to any coherent or tangible set of economic theories or principles. The White House defines its economic policy as being “rooted in the recognition that the best way to grow the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up,” which is just platitudinous gibberish.

“Bidenomics” encompass anything and everything that’s convenient for Democrats. And in this moment, it’s convenient for them to take credit for merely letting people go back to work.

Biden, who once claimed that the Democrats $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan cost “zero dollars,” isn’t exactly a math whiz. But when he says stuff like “13.4 million jobs have been added to our economy” under his watch, more than “any other president in a full four-year term,” anyone with even a passing familiarity with the events of the years preceding 2023 knows it’s a lie of omission.

The notion that presidents “create” jobs is itself a fantasy. In this case, though, Biden supported efforts to shutter private businesses during the pandemic, basically closing the entire economy, not only while running for president but after winning office.

When Florida, and other states, attempted to ease some restrictions, Biden told them to “get out of the way” so that people could “do the right thing.” The pressure exerted on states to “do the right thing” was immense.

All of which is to say that the president and his allies had far more to do with destroying jobs than creating them. We don’t need to relitigate the efficacy of COVID-19 policy here, but approximately 10 million of the jobs that Biden now brags about overseeing are just people coming back to the workforce after state-compelled lockdowns.

Then again, if “Bidenomics” had meant doing absolutely nothing, it would have been the president’s greatest political accomplishment. But that would have meant allowing a crisis to go to waste. Instead, what “Bidenomics” did help create was the biggest four-year inflationary spike under any president in 40 years.

By the time the American Rescue Plan was passed, there was already too much money chasing too few goods. Tons of people warned about the consequences of dumping more money into the economy. Even when inflation began inching up, Biden dismissed it—“no serious economist” is “suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way,” he said.

Democrats, of course, wanted to cram through a $5 trillion progressive agenda spending bill. So, when inflation became a big, nontransitory political problem, the Biden administration began arguing that more spending would help ease inflation.

Again, the vital thing to remember about “Bidenomics” is that it makes absolutely zero sense.

Only after inflation became a political issue did the Democrats rename Build Back Better the Inflation Reduction Act. It still contained all the historic spending, corporate welfare, price-fixing, and tax hikes, but, more importantly, it also still had absolutely nothing to do with mitigating inflation.

None of this is to even mention the hundreds of billions “Bidenomics” “invested”—the enduring euphemism for spending money we don’t have—in social engineering projects that would force us to abandon modernity in the name of “climate justice.” This brand of spending was based on a (misguided) moral prerogative, not any kind of prudent economic decision making, to say the least.

A writer in The New Yorker recently asked, “Why Isn’t Joe Biden Getting More Credit for a Big Drop in Inflation?” Probably because there is no “Bidenomics” policy that has helped lower inflation. Quite the opposite. We’re still trying to recover from the president’s economic policy. It’s the Fed that was compelled to hike interest rates at a level not seen in 30 years to inhibit economic growth partly due to government-induced inflation. It, not Biden, brought down inflation.

Presidents who oversee strong economies, often benefitting from the luck of history or existing policies, will see fewer jobs “created” during their terms because space for growth is limited. Biden was given more economic headroom than any president in history—and blew it. That’s the real legacy of “Bidenomics.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/14/bidenomics-has-been-a-disaster/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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