The Digest - April 23

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  • I’m stuck in a high-rise and chained to a chair, and I need to do something about it.
  • Apparently I’m a “thrill seeker” because I like Siracha sauce. Hey that’s what science says!
  • Exercise will not help you lose weight… it’s not that simple.
  • Want to attract angel investors? You need to have these attributes.
  • Air quality in most gyms potentially toxic.
  • A reminder about something I always remind you to remember.

For the first time in over 10 years, my office is in a high-rise where I’m chained to a desk or board room for hours on-end. And despite the fact that I’m a triathlete who regularly exercises and adds yoga, strength and core training on a regular basis, I can already feel the negative effects of sitting and inability to take walking breaks, including stiffness, nerve impingement, reduced range of motion, etc... In my quest for remedies, I found this helpful infographic which contains a number of mobility and stretching exercises you can do at your desk for improved circulation and releasing tightness. Let them stare…

I love spicy food, and science says that probably means I have a personality of a “thrill seeker”. As a matter of fact, numerous studies have been conducted over the past decades to find correlations between personality traits and taste preferences. Here’s a summary of those findings.

An editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine discusses what any science-based health and well-being person has been advocating for a long time: you cannot out-train a bad diet. This editorial discusses and presents evidence which supports the argument that the key to weight loss and reducing obesity is diet much more than exercise. In particular, the authors argue that the massive increase in the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar are to blame for the obesity and diabetes crisis of the past 3 decades, and no amount of exercise can reverse that without a major adjustment to diet. I couldn’t agree more.

I’m often fortunate enough to mentor young entrepreneurs with innovative ideas, and I firmly believe that with the right guidance, many will go on to achieve great things. However in today’s highly competitive landscape, a start-up business cannot prosper without investors (typically angel investors and venture capitalists). However such investors are shown dozens of ideas every week and as such they’ve become highly discerning and “picky”. Here are 5 qualities investors would look for in an entrepreneur before investing, and I wholeheartedly agree with all of them.

I’m not a fan of gyms, never have been really. I try to get as much of my training done outdoors as possible. It’s bad enough that we’re cooped up in air-conditioned environments during the day (and night), we should maximize our time outdoors when we work out. In fact, we may be even doing ourselves a disservice when training indoors (in gyms etc), as it seems that the air quality in most gyms (including high-end ones) tends to be quite dismal and many (in many instances) be full of toxins, mold, high levels of CO2, etc.

Even though I've talked about this at numerous occasions, I always feel the need to remind people: if you use your smartphone within 60-90min of you bedtime, I guarantee you that your sleep is getting extremely negatively affected. As this article reminds us, the blue light emitted by smartphones (and tablets, computer screens, etc.) tells your body that it’s “daylight” and shuts down the production of melatonin (your sleep hormone). Furthermore, having a phone in your hand while you go to bed with “condition your brain” to be prepared to respond to a “notification”, like a text message, email, or FB alert: as such, part of your brain never really “shuts off” to allow peaceful and deep sleep.