Ben Garves Podcast: Fitness, Nutrition, and Activism

Those of you who are parents know that your kids can be great at so many things. Chiefly among those skills, like saying the darndest things and sometimes being cute, is a unique ability to carry diseases home from school. Colds, flus, mono, and lice never discriminate, though how we handle them does.

NPR wrote a piece about kids and coronavirus. Because, yes, kids do catch COVID-19. They also experience milder symptoms unless they smoke, vape, have asthma, or other cardiopulmonary issues. But they are not immune and they do have the likelihood to carry it home with them. 

The gist of the article was that we just don’t have enough data to know how significantly kids spread COVID-19. There just wasn’t significant testing done when they were in school and we don’t have enough cases to draw a full picture of how their spread of the disease varies from adults.

The big takeaway here is that we just don’t know how safe a return to in-person classes will be. NPR wrote that the schools which do opt to open and the students who do opt to return will be the unwitting test subjects as the world watches with bated breath.

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.

I talk a lot about the importance of our efforts to diversify the communities we serve with our health and fitness work. Today I’m going to read you an op-ed piece from Jason Burns, the owner of Meddle Fitness (a CrossFit affiliate on the south side of Chicago), which seeks to serve a more diverse community than is usually seen in a CrossFit gym.

I thought he made some great points, so away we go. These are the words of Jason Burns. He writes:

“In Chicago, Black families lost between $3 billion and $4 billion in wealth because they were denied mortgages in the 1950s and 1960s. My journey in health and wellness begins here. I operate Mettle Fitness—home of Bronzeville CrossFit, the only 100 percent Black-owned CrossFit gym in the city. I wanted to contribute to the economic development of a community that has been plundered and bring functional fitness to it in my own way. As an entrepreneur, I’m now building a safe community for others, a place where people transcend even their wildest expectations

In a historic Black neighborhood, I’ve created jobs, enhanced quality of life, and started a fitness revolution. I saw the benefit of CrossFit as a methodology, but I also saw where the movement was lacking. I knew the power of the culture I grew up in could elevate it. For eight years, Mettle has done just that. But none of this would’ve been possible if I had spent my time looking for acceptance where it wasn’t gladly extended.

Today, CrossFit is wrestling with questions of inclusion, but that doesn’t bother me much. It was never about acceptance when I opened a CrossFit facility on the South Side of Chicago. The point wasn’t to assimilate Black people into the traditional, mostly white culture of CrossFit. I grew up with fitness all around me. My father was heavily involved in youth sports, and the camaraderie of being a part of a team has been a way of life for me for as long as I can remember. Bonds formed in college and NFL locker rooms gave me an appreciation for belonging.

Community-based fitness has the power to create those same feelings. Because of Chicago’s segregation, Black communities have lacked basic options and access. Individuals seeking these services often ended up in spaces where they didn’t feel readily accepted. These individuals simply wanted to get fit in an environment they felt comfortable in. As a proprietor, I felt obligated to provide my community with a space where they were welcome to be themselves while also providing a fitness experience that exceeded any other.

Mettle Fitness cannot restore the billions my neighborhood was robbed of in the years immediately before my birth. Still, Mettle’s existence is a powerful statement of defiance. In a city and nation that devalues Black life, it stands. In a sport that was headed by an individual who is (at best) apathetic to Black concerns, Mettle Fitness is undeterred. (Eric Roza has since purchased Cross-Fit.) The same spirit my parents instilled in me, the drive that carried me to the NFL and to master the sport of CrossFit, I’m bringing to my community. My journey never required acceptance or even fairness, although it would have been far easier with 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.

One of the cool things about branching out from the old WODDITY Podcast is that I get to help you with things that go above and beyond our old CrossFit focus. One of those topics is financial security. In March we watched one of the biggest market roller coasters in the history of our modern financial infrastructure, followed by an almost immediate surge to a 30 percent national unemployment rate. Swings like that affect real people and real jobs.

https://www.bengarves.com/should-we-prepare-for-a-market-crash/ 

But despite a third of Americans being out of work, the complete halt of tourism with the closure of hotels, resorts, and restaurants, and the near-total grounding of global air travel, the stock markets have recovered and a number of stocks are knocking on record high values.

So wait...is the economy bad? Or is the economy good?

Well, let's start by saying the stock market isn’t necessarily a direct indicator of how good the economy is. It represents the demand for ownership, or stock, of some of the largest companies in the world. Those companies can have business models or products which are quarantine-proof. 

Take Amazon, Walmart, Target, UPS, and FexEd, for example. Quarantine has only increased demand for online shopping and product delivery services. On the other hand, a company like Disney lost over $5 billion in projected revenue because their income depends significantly on their network of theme parks and on box office turnout for their films. Both being activities people have taken a step back from.

Then you have a company like Tesla, which has seen its stock jump from $300 per share to over $1,400. All the while, nobody is buying cars. You could argue Tesla was undervalued at $300, or that it’s such a new and exciting business prospect that investors are spending money on it despite a lack of demand for their products.

Either way, we know that with 30 percent unemployment, we’re likely to see a 30 percent decrease in goods made and services rendered, and therefore a potential 30 percent drop in the total value of business conducted in the United States. Which companies are impacted, where, and how deeply, then becomes an educated guessing game. We know the healthcare industry is in high-demand right now. We know fast food and eat-in restaurants are struggling, while meal delivery services are booming. 

But, what we cannot see directly represented in the stock market is the struggle of the estimated 30 million small businesses operating in the United States today. Those businesses don’t get the same visibility, but drive a significant chunk of our economy.

Any personal finance guru will tell you that you should be saving money for a rainy day. This is the time to start, if you haven’t started preparing.

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.

There seems to be a huge list of misinformation out there regarding COVID-19, antibodies, and immunity. So I thought I’d take some time this morning to tell you there is no evidence, there is no proof, and you are safer to treat this like the doctors recommend.

Let’s start with what an antibody is. Your body develops antibodies as a reaction to an invasion - it could be any form of infection, from bacteria and viruses to foods you have intolerances to. Antibodies are mostly unique to the specific invasion they’re trying to fight off. They latch onto the unwanted items and help the body break down and eradicate the infection.

In a lot of ways, antibodies are the crux of the modern vaccine. For example, the flu shot you get each year uses an inert version of the most anticipated strains of influenza. I say “most anticipated” because there are about 144 strains of the flu and the medical industry uses complex predictive modeling to determine which is most likely to lead an outbreak each year.

By injecting you with an inactive form of the flu bug scientists expect, they can get your body to proactively produce antibodies and have them ready to fight off any infection from an active form of the virus that year. 

Unfortunately, not all antibodies are created equal. Some stick around longer than others. That’s why we go back for a new flu shot every year, but can potentially go an entire lifetime getting chicken pox only once.

So then the questions we’re asking today are two important ones: how long do our antibodies for COVID-19 stick around in our bodies after we fight it off, and how effective are they at fighting off COVID-19 should we re-contract it.

At first glance, those would be easy questions to answer. But, anecdotes from people who say they got it twice or who say they had it once and should have gotten it a second time but never did are a far cry from good, statistical certainty. 

For that, we would need a highly accurate test, a large sample size of people who contracted the virus twice AND tested positive for it twice, or an even larger sample of people who tested positive for the virus once and have confirmed, long-duration contact with others who were infected through contract tracing.

So, no. Just because you heard a story about someone being immune a second time doesn’t mean it’s a real thing. Wear a mask.

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

More reading on catching the bug twice: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/22/can-you-get-coronavirus-twice/

 Is anyone else feeling just a little left out because they’re not rich enough to join this Peloton craze? Trust me. I’d tear it up on one of these bikes if I could, but I’m just apparently not cool enough. And I’m not sure it would fit in my toy-sized Brooklyn apartment. Not with the dog and the recording equipment.

 https://youtu.be/VsabBtdCAI4 

Is anyone else feeling just a little left out because they’re not rich enough to join this Peloton craze? Trust me. I’d tear it up on one of these bikes if I could, but I’m just apparently not cool enough. And I’m not sure it would fit in my toy-sized Brooklyn apartment. Not with the dog and the recording equipment.

So what to do, what to do? It points out a really interesting problem in the times of COVID. The same issues with financial and social disparity with boutique fitness gyms like F45, Barry’s Bootcamp, CrossFIt, SoulCycle, etc. have followed us into the pandemic.

Peloton, NordicTrack, AssaultFitness, Bowflex, and the like are all potent but direly expensive options for those who can afford to live their lives with easier access to fitness solutions. 

Just food for thought if you’re slumming it out with me on the streets, at the track, and with an old rusty kettlebell. You’re a fighter. You’re scrappy. And you don’t need a Peloton.

But yeah, I want one too.

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

You’ve probably seen or heard headlines the past few weeks that opioid abuse and overdoses have exploded over the course of quarantine. The stories seem to echo across the country. In Illinois’ Cook Country, home to the city of Chicago, overdoses are on track to double from last year. In Wisconsin, health officials are reporting overdoses have jumped 117% since the pandemic started.

 https://youtu.be/-CJzgofuWfM 

Andrea Palm the Secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services says financial pressures and isolation can exacerbate behavioral and substance abuse problems.

Not all researchers and experts agree that quarantine is the sole cause. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Kathie Kane-Willis, a drug policy researcher at the Chicago Urban League, said emergency response data showed that overdoses started to rise sharply in November, long before the pandemic began.”

She says the cause is a rise in increasingly dangerous synthetic drugs like fentanyl. She does agree that the pandemic has not helped. Along with the additional stress, it’s limited the availability of treatment and distribution naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses.

Well herein lies the rub. In July, NPR published a story titled “Doctors And Dentists Still Flooding U.S. With Opioid Prescriptions”. 

Dr. Jonathan Chen, a doctor and researcher at Stanford University Medical Center told NPR that patients are receiving about twice the amount of narcotics that would be considered normal. “We're 5% of the world's population, but we consume 80% of the world's prescription opioids.”

Researchers are pointing at doctors as enablers of the problem - using narcotics as a cure-all for chronic pain and as a quick fix for issues that should be treated with a healthier lifestyle: things like physical therapy, nutrition, and exercise. 

Also a problem? Dentists. Just in case you needed another reason to floss.

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Today, let’s talk about overtraining. It’s something many of us are facing right now with limited outlets for our time and energy. Personally, I’m nursing a strained MCL after going from a few CrossFit classes a week to running and walking 50-plus miles a week. 

 https://youtu.be/kvJjMZ9_iL4 

It wasn’t a smart approach, but it kept me sane and it really didn’t seem like much to someone who used to run ultra marathons. But I’m not that guy anymore. The last time I ran 26.2 was in November of 2015 or 2016. I’m a different person with a different build and different abilities. So it should go without saying I shouldn’t have expected my body to just leap in like it was yesterday.

This was the subject of a recent article in Inverse, given that COVID has so many people re-evaluating their relationships with their health and their fitness. Running and riding are up this summer. Group and studio fitness and weightlifting are down. Sudden changes to what we’re doing and how often we’re doing it has injuries just as popular jogging. Unfortunately.

The article says, “To try to reduce your risk of injury it’s important to track and analyze your average daily workload. This should be over the course of a week that you can then compare to the previous four weeks. This could be in distance or time and is referred to as the acute chronic workload (ACWL).”

At the simplest level, it’s recommended you keep your increases in cardiovascular strain between 5 and 10 percent each month. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like rapid growth every month, but you need to treat your fitness like it’s a lifelong game. If you increase your workload by 10% each month, you’ll increase your total work by over 250% by the twelfth month. So don’t go cranking the volume up to ten just because you have time. Crank it up a little bit at a time and you’ll be kicking butt in no time.

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow. 

Let’s talk more about racial disparity in our country.

It affects us in so many more ways than most people realize and recognize. Research recently published in the Journal of Pediatrics found healthy Black children are 3.5 times more likely to die within 30 days post-operation than their white counterparts.

 https://youtu.be/WNK_3tQ-Wa0 

The study looked at over 170,000 children from 2012 to 2017. The study’s conclusion writes, “Even among apparently healthy children, being African American is strongly associated with a higher risk of postoperative complications and mortality.”

Dr. Olubukola Nafiu, lead author of the study, pediatric anesthesiologist, and vice chair for academic affairs and research at Nationwide Children's Hospital wrote in a press release, “The expectation should be that complication rates and/or mortality among healthy children won't vary based on racial category — what we found is that they do.”

You can read the study itself - link is in the show notes, or I’ve also included an article from CNN digesting the information.

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Today on the podcast I speak with author and award-winning video producer Erik Eff about his new book "Pig with a Crown". This gorgeous book, illustrated by Irving Herrera, is a modern fable which expertly balances fun, moral lessons for kids with poignant social commentary for adults.

Support Erik and Irving by purchasing the book at: https://pigwithacrown.com/

What is it like participating in one of the COVID-19 vaccine trials running right now? Many people want to know as the world rushes to educate themselves in what the expedited vaccine development process looks like. Richard Fisher wrote a piece for BBC about his participation in Oxford University’s trial. 

The trial has ten thousand participants and is putting Oxford’s vaccine against a common meningitis vaccine as the control. Why not use a placebo? Well, researchers wanted to ensure both groups receive common vaccination side effects. 

Richard will fill out a weekly questionnaire, take tonsil and nasal swabs, and report for periodic blood tests for the next year. He writes: 

“It’s this necessary but long-term process that some people – many of them politicians – fail to understand about the coronavirus vaccine trials. You can’t throw money at the problem and hope results happen faster. While the Oxford vaccine trial has already shown promising safety results, and the tantalising possibility of a protective immune response, it was only in 1,000 people. To roll out a vaccine to millions (or the whole world), you need a level of confidence that can only come with patience and more data.

Public health officials will remember well the times that vaccine rollouts went wrong. In 1976, fears of a swine flu outbreak led the US government to accelerate vaccine development and inoculate tens of millions of Americans. The feared pandemic never arrived, but by some estimates, around 30 people died due to adverse vaccine reactions. Such mistakes may well have dented trust in public health advice and fuelled anti-vax fears too, which is the last thing you need in a pandemic.”

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.