Ben Garves Podcast: Fitness, Nutrition, and Activism

On top of a global pandemic and an election year, we had a small war for control of the Supreme Court in 2020. Woof. How is that relevant? Well, did you know Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett does CrossFit? Let’s unpack it.

Good morning and welcome to the Ben Garves Podcast - a daily show at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. I’m your host, Ben Garves

You probably haven’t missed the fact that it was an election year here in the United States and the general opinion on both sides of the aisle is that was an election which would define the heart and the soul of the country for decades to come. Lives are on the line, healthcare is on the line, the environment is on the line, and as if we didn’t need another thing to worry about, there was a battle for a Supreme Court seat after the sad death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

If you haven’t followed what’s been going on with the Supreme Court the last four years, here’s a quick catch-up:

• Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in February 2016.
• One month later, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s vacancy.
• Then begins a long fight in the Republican-majority senate, with Republican senators like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnel saying appointing a nominee 237 days before an election shouldn’t be allowed.
• Merrick Garland’s nomination was effectively blocked, then the position was filled by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch after Trump was appointed President by the Electoral College.
• With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018, Trump put up a second nominee, now Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This drove a fiery confirmation process as numerous allegations were made about Kavanaugh’s sexual assault of women and alcoholism.
• Then, only 45 days before the upcoming election and only seven days after the death of Justice Ginsburg, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett. Senator Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnel, once blocking a nomination 237 days before an election, then moved forward with Coney Barrett’s confirmation with less than 30 days left.

But those are just the facts, and not really the focus of this episode. Amy Coney Barrett. Anti-women’s rights, anti-birth control, pro-gun - her and I disagree funamentally on just about anything. But I was reading an article in TIME and figured I’d share part of it. TIME writes:

“Barrett and her husband Jesse, a lawyer, have seven children in South Bend, Indiana. Two of their children are adopted from Haiti and the youngest has Down syndrome. With a lot to juggle at home, the Barretts take turns going to work out in the morning—at a high intensity, CrossFit-style gym they both favor—and Amy takes the early shift, with classes sometimes starting in the 5AM hour, friends who go to the same gym say. Then Amy can come home and help get her kids up for the day, which once included a ritual with her son with Down syndrome in which she’d carry him downstairs by piggyback every morning.”

It’s just a reminder that sometimes you can dislike everything about a person’s ideologies but know they are still a good person managing their life and their community in the best ways they know how. I don’t fault Amy Coney Barrett for how she was nominated and I will likely disagree with every way she interprets the US constitution. But it seems like she’s a good human. And I can live with that.

That wraps it up for today. Thanks for listening to the Ben Garves Podcast, at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. Don’t forget, Fitness is for Everyone™.

If you’re a fitness tech fanatic like I am, you’ve been jumping into all sorts of mobility tools out there, like The Ready State, ROMWOD, and GOWOD. There’s a new one coming, and it’s something you may already own: your Apple Watch.

Good morning and welcome to the Ben Garves Podcast - a daily show at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. I’m your host, Ben Garves.

Did you know mobility is important? It is. And we’re not just talking about doing your stretches after going for a run. We’re talking ongoing efforts to increase and maintain flexibility and mobility. Fitness trackers like FitBit have now been around for a decade, which means we’re getting to a point with our technology where it can help us track not just our current fitness, but how well we’re aging. That’s the focus on a new feature on the Apple Watch, which tracks your functional capacity as an overall indicator of health and longevity.

It’s pretty easy to wrap your head around the fact that our mobility decreases as we age, something functional fitness programs like CrossFit seek to battle by actively having you train in movements you’d encounter in your daily life. These are things like squatting as a reproduction of what it takes to sit down in and and stand up from a chair, and a burpee as the process of getting down to and standing back up from the ground. It’s simple in your 20s, but slightly less simple when you’re in your 70s.

The new software on the Apple Watch will look at your VO2 max (which is how well your body is consuming oxygen), how fast you go up and down stairs, and how far you can walk in six minutes as an indicator of how you’re doing. VO2 max and the six-minute walk test are things doctors actively test all the time, but it’s now being brought to your wrist

We’re even seeing companies use tools like fitness trackers to incentivize healthy behaviors and give discounts when you use them. It’s a cool incentive.

That wraps it up for today. Thanks for listening to the Ben Garves Podcast, at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. Don’t forget, Fitness is for Everyone™.

With the rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccine in the US this week, media coverage has been incessant about distrust of our medical industry in the black community. I’ve noticed very few of them actually talk about why. Medical racism. Have you heard of it? It’s been around, it’s an ongoing problem, and it’s coming to light again with the treatment for COVID-19. Let’s talk about a horrific moment in American history, a 1932 experiment called the “Tuskegee Study of Syphilis in the Negro Male”. 

Good morning and welcome to the Ben Garves Podcast - a daily show at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. I’m your host, Ben Garves.

The best explanation of medical racism I’ve found is on the YWCA website. They write:

 “Medical racism is the systematic and wide-spread racism against people of color within the medical system. It includes both the racism in our society that makes Black people less healthy, the disparity in health coverage by race, and the biases held by healthcare workers against people of color in their care.”

So, in 1932, the Tuskegee experiment began with 600 Black men, 399 who tested positive for syphilis, and 201 who didn’t. It failed to tell those men they had syphilis, instead telling all 600 they were being treated for “bad blood”, which was a blanket term for a bunch of issues, like sickle cell anemia. The reality was, these men didn’t receive proper medical treatment of the disease researchers knew they had, and the six-month experiment ended up running for 40 years. It wasn’t until a story from the Associate Press in 1972 brought the study to light that a panel began to investigate. They found the men in the study had been misled and weren’t given enough information to give real informed consent for their treatment.

Here’s an example: penicillin, the antibiotic used to very easily treat syphilis, became widely used in 1947 and was never offered to the study’s test subjects.

That’s dark. It’s terrible. And it’s really just one story in a long list of behaviors in the United States which have fostered mistrust within the Black community. In 1966, Henry K. Beecher published a paper documenting 22 instances of unethical medical research in the New England Journal of Medicine, including Tuskegee.

Blind studies, basically studies where the recipient of a treatment doesn’t know if they’re receiving the treatment or a placebo, are important to proving if a treatment is effective and safe. But we need to ask questions about whether they’re ethical in a situation where we’re testing on a specific race or ethnic background, if we’re testing on a group which has been abused in the past, and if that testing continues when a viable cure is found without adjusting the experiment to inform the doctors, researches, and study participants about what’s going on.

That wraps it up for today. Thanks for listening to the Ben Garves Podcast, at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. Don’t forget, Fitness is for Everyone™.

The CDC has a write up on the Tuskegee study and the work related to it on their website, so I’m putting a link to that in my show notes, which you can find in your podcasting app or on bengarves.com. 

The Tuskegee Timeline from CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm 

People put in a lot of effort to push for vaccination every year when the flu season rolls around, but we’re seeing an even larger effort this year in light of COVID-19. Want to know why? That’s what I’m here for.

Good morning and welcome to the Ben Garves Podcast - a daily show at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. I’m your host, Ben Garves.

It’s probably not a surprise that medical professionals are recommending the flu vaccine for everybody this year, even in the midst of an emphasis on social distancing. Every year, only about 45% of American get a flu vaccine despite an annual death rate in the multiple tens of thousands. On top of that, there’s a marked disparity of vaccinations by race and ethnicity in the United States. For example, the 2017-2018 flu season saw only a 28% flu vaccination rate among our Hispanic communities. 

There are so many reasons to get a vaccine, even in a year where we’re not also concerned about COVID-19. Here’s a quick list.

1. It’s proven to be safe. The most common side effect is some muscle ache or soreness at the injection site, with more severe side effects occurring in less than 2 cases per million people injected.
2. It cuts down on the demand for hospital and emergency room staff, which frees up beds and time for COVID patients. Also - more space for your drunk uncle when he does something dumb while over-drinking egg nog this holiday season.
3. COVID-19 is a very different but potentially equality-contagious disease than the flu, which means it’s very possible for you to get both at the same time. Yes, you could get the two deadly diseases at the same time when at least one of them was preventable with a vaccine.
4. The flu vaccine is abundant. The CDC projects almost 200 million doses will be made available this year, up nearly 30 million from last year.
5. It’s free or at least very cheap. For example, stores like Rite Aid and Walgreens are offering free influenza vaccines in their pharmacies, and they’re available without an appointment. Just walk in and get your shot or nasal spray.

You really can’t beat that.

I’m putting some links to additional resources from the Centers for Disease Control in my show notes, which you can find in your podcast app or by visiting BenGarves.com. One of them is safety information about the vaccine, and the other is a quick guide. If you’re looking for a free flu shot, just Google, “free flu vaccine near me”.

• CDC Flu Vaccine Safety Information - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/general.htm
• CDC Flu Vaccine Guide - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm

That wraps it up for today. Thanks for listening to the Ben Garves Podcast, at the intersection of health, activism, and technology. Don’t forget, Fitness is for Everyone™.

It’s a huge day in the United States because it’s the day the Electoral College casts their votes in the presidential election, but also, front line workers around the nation will be punching the clock this morning and receiving the first American doses of the COVID 19 vaccine. There’s a lot to digest, so I’ll do this in Q&A format.

Who gets the Coronavirus vaccine?

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine for people ages 16 and over. Although, who can get the vaccine is very different from who does get the vaccine first.

When can I get vaccinated?

It takes time to ramp up production of a vaccine, in addition to some drama as Trump opted out of an opportunity to purchase more from Pfizer. Because of this, it’s going to be months upon months for the average Jane to be vaccinated. The first to receive doses today will be essential front-line workers at about 100 hospitals nationwide. Only about 2.9 million doses are being distributed this week, with an estimated 20 million going out by the end of the year. There are 21 million healthcare workers in this country, so we’re looking at that first segment continuing in 2021, when the next prioritized group will be the nation’s 3 million people in long-term assisted living facilities.

Is the COVID vaccine safe?

The studies and tests of the Pfizer vaccine included more than 44,000 participants. According to the FDA, a review of the safety and performance of the shot found no specific safety concerns. It’s important to remember that the studies conducted on the vaccine focused on people 16 and older and did not study people under 16 or pregnant women. If a study is conducted, it may prove the Pfizer vaccine is safe for children under 16 and for pregnant women, but until that trial is conducted, they’ll be excluded from vaccinations using this drug. There are some mild side effects, which I’ll talk about in a second.

What’s the COVID19 vaccine like?

Pfizer’s vaccine takes two doses, about 3-4 weeks apart. It gets injected into the arm, much like the contemporary flu vaccine and has similar but slightly more common side effects.

What’s the difference between the COVID vaccines?

With the global rush to find a solution to this outbreak, there are obviously more than one viable vaccine options out there in development. Pfizer is the first to market, but Moderna’s less-sensitive vaccine isn’t expected to take much longer for approval. Generally, the two are considered to be comparable in safety and effectiveness, but the Moderna vaccine doesn’t need the same super-cold storage temperature, making it easier to distribute because it can be stored in a conventional freezer. 

Where are vaccines available?

The vaccines have first been distributed to major hospitals, but plans are for vaccine doses to eventually be available at nursing homes and even at your corner drug stores. Both CVS and Walgreens have announced partnerships on that front. 

What are the COVID19 vaccine side effects?

There are side effects to the COVID19 vaccines, though they’ve been described as ‘mild’ and slightly more active than the flu vaccine. Those are things like soreness and redness in your arm where you get injected, fatigue and a mild fever that can be expected to disappear within 24 hours. They’re actually saying the symptoms are most-like one of the leading Shingles vaccines. 

Why are there side effects?

That’s a great question. Vaccine side effects are your body acknowledging the vaccine and ramping up production of the defenses which help you fight off possible infection. 

I recently watched the movie Air Force One, partially to reminisce on a classic Harrison Ford movie and partially to reminisce on what it was like to have a badass president. One of the most iconic lines from the 1997 blockbuster, which also features the likes of WIlliam H. Macy, Gary Oldman, and Glenn Close, is when President Harrison Ford practically looks at the camera and forces out a decisive, “we will not negotiate with terrorists.”

Well, ironically, if you haven’t been following it, Garmin (the fitness tracker and GPS company) has recently negotiated with hackers to release systems under attack by ransomware. That’s basically where someone gets access to your system and password-protects everything so you can’t do anything unless you pay them to either remove their software or give you the new password. Miserable? Yeah.

I had slated for an upcoming episode to talk about if you should get a fitness tracker, but this seemed more fun to talk about. If you’re a company trusted by hundreds of millions of customers with their private heart rate, GPS, and other personal information, what price tag do you put on the security of that data? What risk versus reward analysis do you do when it comes to investing in security and praying you don’t get caught with your pants down?

To Garmin, that price tag was to the tune of an estimated $10 million payment for access back to their systems. It has me asking two sets of questions:

First, what price would have been too high? At what point would a ransom for our information have been too expensive for a company to pay? And, not if, but when will the next hack happen to a company slacking on their protection of our data? Potentially a worse one than Garmin. Like Experian. Oh, wait, that’s already happened.

The second set of questions is simple. How much money could Garmin have saved if they had properly protected our data in the first place? And, how many times to companies have to watch these failures of their peers and what penalties will be harsh enough that they’ll finally learn the lesson to stop taking risks with our data?

Side note: get off my plane.

Thanks for listening to the Ben Garves podcast. Please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. It’s free to you and it means the world to me. Until tomorrow, behave yourselves out here.

Okay, is it just me, or does the world have an unhealthy aversion to the idea of aging? There’s a statistic floating around that the anti-aging products industry is expected to be worth $83.2 billion by the year 2027. That’s up thirty billion dollars from the projected sales this year. 

Let’s be clear here - these aren’t sales of products that help you stay active and fit into your nineties. These are hair dyes and anti-wrinkle creams hoping to cover up the fact that you’re aging

Now, I will always be a proponent for living in the body you’re most comfortable in, so please don’t take this as anti-age shaming. Or anti-shaming of age shaming? Shaming the shaming of aging. That’s what it is. Shaming the shaming of aging. 

I digress. It’s okay to age. Silver hair and aging naturally can be as sexy as anything else going on in the journey of your body. Icing on the cake? The United States makes up more than 27 percent of those total global sales of anti-aging products.. 

What does it say about our collective self esteem that we feel the need to cover up our seniority? We spend our teens striving to earn the respect for our free will and life choices. We spend our twenties and thirties trying to change the system and prove ourselves, then we spend every year past our fortieth birthday trying to hide the fact that we’ve collected half a century of experience and knowledge.

Be who you are. Love who you are. Love who’s around you and respect who they are. Appreciate the journey you’ve been on and the road still ahead of you. Know that only fitness, nutrition, and education can increase your abilities. Anti-aging products just paint over them.

Thanks for listening this morning. Please be sure like, rate, review, and subscribe. It’s free to you and means the world to me. I’m Ben Garves, and we’ll chat tomorrow.

Here’s an interesting read for you today: a story in TIME, titled: “COVID-19 Isn't the First Pandemic to Affect Minority Populations Differently. Here's What We Can Learn From the 1918 Flu”.

It rings especially poignant today, as TIME says now, “over a century later, Black people are dying at more than twice the rate of white people in the US.”

According to the article, this is a huge difference from the data we have on the 1918 pandemic, which showed white Americans were more likely to die from the Spanish flu. They work to reconcile the reason for the differences, writing:

“Public health agencies and insurance companies were operating under racist systems; statistics such as mortality rates are based on unreliable population estimates; and the pandemic struck so furiously that health agencies, hospitals and physicians could barely keep up with the stream of patients, let alone find time to compile thorough records.

Race data may be especially incomplete. Medical facilities were segregated, and the few Black-only hospitals that existed at the time were operating at capacity. Patients who couldn’t secure a place in the hospital and who subsequently died at home may not have been recorded, potentially resulting in under-reported fatalities—a phenomenon that’s sadly repeating itself with COVID-19.”

What’s important is that we continue to work to understand and rectify the fact that non-white communities are more deeply impacted by this virus.

Thanks for listening this morning. Please be sure like, rate, review, and subscribe. It’s free to you and means the world to me. I’m Ben Garves, and we’ll chat tomorrow.

When it comes to COVID-19, we talk a lot about the lung symptoms - the way the lungs inflame and fill with fluid, preventing oxygen from being passed into your blood system. What’s talked less about and has been found to be a huge problem in our bodies is how the virus impacts our hearts. Even in young, healthy athletes, we’re finding heart damage persists in the form of scarring and blood clots.

First, the virus can directly infect the heart, damaging and destroying heart cells. You can also see a vicious cycle where the inability to process oxygen through the lungs forces the heart to work harder, increasing its need for oxygen it won’t receive. The effect can be similar to a heart attack - with the cells in the heart dying from lack of oxygen. A study from the American Medical Association’s Cardiology Journal found that, in a group of 100 mostly-healthy people diagnosed with COVID-19, 78 of them had heart abnormalities even 10 weeks after their initial diagnosis.  

In case you needed another reason to take care of your cardiovascular system, put this one on the pile.

Thanks for listening this morning. Please be sure like, rate, review, and subscribe. It’s free to you and means the world to me. I’m Ben Garves, and we’ll chat tomorrow.

Canada is doing something I think the whole world can learn from, but take it with a grain of salt. They’re changing the way they look at obesity to say it’s not just measured on a scale and with a tape measure around your waist. Obesity is as much from a lack of good nutrition and exercise as it is from emotional issues and genetics.

Here’s the problem: they’re saying the idea is that the best weight a Canadian can achieve is not necessarily the ideal weight for them to achieve. That I disagree with. I’ve seen too many people change their workouts and nutrition and lose 200 lbs to say its not something everyone can do. They can, if they’re given the right support and education.

That being said, I’m for one a huge proponent of distancing ourselves from the body mass index, or BMI, which falters when taking into account a person's level of fitness and just looks at their height versus their weight. You can look fit and have an unhealthy heart, and you can be fit and have your body mass index tell you you’re out of shape.

None of these are a problem if you’re eating right, sleeping right, and exercising often. If you can achieve those three things, you’ll always see progress.

Thanks for listening this morning. Please be sure like, rate, review, and subscribe. It’s free to you and means the world to me. I’m Ben Garves, and we’ll chat tomorrow.