Archive for category Wellness
Bulky-bonneted NFL players—not a Super look
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized, Wellness on February 6, 2026
On Sunday the Seahawks play the Patriots in the Super Bowl. I will be on the lookout for any with oversize “bobbleheads”—a derisive term by J.J. Watt of the Cardinals for fellow players who wear Guardian Caps to protect themselves against concussions. The manufacturer of these soft-shell, foam-padded, helmet claims a 40% reduction in HARM—head acceleration response metric,* That is a very clever acronym, but does it really lessen brain trauma? The NFL thinks so, citing nearly 50% reduction in concussions for players wearing them. Many position players, for example, running backs and linebackers, must wear Guardian Caps during all practices involving contact—use in games remaining optional.
However, as recently reported by the New York Times,** “independent neurologists are generally skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of the benefits of any product claiming to reduce concussions because few rigorous studies have been done to demonstrate their effectiveness.” The rate of concussions in NFL preseason practices from 2018 to 2023—after the advent of Guardian Caps—declined between 54 and 62 percent. However, the statisticians who gathered the data admitted that the use of the protective covering did not significantly reduce concussions from helmet hits.
“There’s no question that every injury or injury reduction strategy is multifactorial.”
– Jeff Miller, NFL’s chief spokesman
I’ve suffered several concussions—the first one in 3rd or 4th grade (I forget) gym class diving at a dodge ball and smacking into the wall.
After that I joined a football team at a small playground that in my 8th grade made it to the Saint Paul City ‘superbowl’ the year of Superbowl I. However, every full contact practice and game caused me such headaches that I shifted over to playing ‘pickup’ touch football. This saved me (I hope) from persistent post-concussion syndrome turning into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Many years later playing with me buddies from General Mills Chemical R&D I knocked myself out diving for a softball hitting my noggin on a sprinkler head. (I am a bit too competitive at sports!)
My third concussion, the cause of which I’d rather not discuss, sent me to ER for dozens of stitches and a night in intensive care at Hennepin County Medical Center.
So, I can feel the pain and very much hope that further developments in head protection will protect contact-sports players of all ages from concussion and CTE.
*See their video on The Science Behind Guardian Caps
**“The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets,” Ken Belson, Feb. 3, 2026.
For a healthy 2026, resolve to lengthen your walks
I love to walk, cross-country ski or bike. It invigorates me physically and mentally. Thus, I found it interesting that, according to this October 2025 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, longer walks might provide more benefits than shorter ones at the same step counts.
But be careful drawing this conclusion because the results show correlation, not causation. Furthermore, the study focused on suboptimally active adults with step counts at 8000 or less per day. I am satisfied only by achieving at least 10,000 steps in a day.
I think a good new year’s resolution is to increase your step count per day by taking longer walks. However, on days when you cannot spare much time, try taking a number of short walks and do so a bit faster.
If you also like to walk and/or are resolved to do so this new year of 2026, see today’s post by RTÉ—the website of Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland’s National Public Service Media—on 5 ways to make your daily walk more beneficial in 2026.
Get a move on!
Swedish sleep researchers torture subjects with math problems
This is alarming news, literally: Researchers from Stockholm University discovered via studies involving over 1700 subjects* that over two-thirds of them, especially younger individuals, habitually hit the snooze button.
I am appalled at this lack of discipline and ambition! However, I must confess that in my younger days, I got in the habit of putting my alarm on temporary pause repeatedly, which often caused me to run late for class. That would not do! Therefore, I purchased a cleverly built clock called the Clocky that rolls away when ringing, thus forcing you to jump out of bad to hunt it down. Highly recommended!
Putting aside my negative attitude about snoozers, I do feel bad for those subjected to the sleep study because as reported by the New York Times: “Immediately after the participants woke up, the researchers flipped on the lights and presented them with math problems and other cognitive tests — a challenge even more grating than a shrieking alarm, and one the participants had to complete before having a cup of coffee.”** Oof!
The good news for you slackers who do not leap out bed like I do is that this new study provides a pass for delaying the inevitable: “Snoozing [for 30 minutes] does not lead to cognitive impairments upon waking.” Just do not sleep through your final exam on math. That would be a nightmare!
*Is snoozing losing? Why intermittent morning alarms are used and how they affect sleep, cognition, cortisol, and mood , Journal of Sleep Research, October 17, 2023.
**“You Snooze, You … Win?”, Dani Blum, Oct. 18, 2023.
Age vs happiness—some ups and downs
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on December 19, 2022
The “mid-life crisis” provides endless amusement from over-the-hill fellows trying to hold on to their youth via frivolous purchases (e.g., a sportscar) and foolish escapades (e.g., young women). A few years ago, economist David Blanchflower pinpointed 47.2 as the age when unhappiness reaches this minimum.* However, my re-analysis of his data indicate a very plausible complication to this picture: A late 20s dip creating a double “U” in the happiness curve.
After importing Blanchflower’s life-satisfaction data** into Stat-Ease software, I applied a 6th order polynomial model—not just the 2nd order quadratic typically used for simplification. This more sophisticated analysis reveals an initial dip at 24.1 years before the ‘mid-life crisis’ coming at 50.9 years of age.
Of course, all of us differ individually in our happiness throughout our lives, but it is interesting to see how we compare to the average person in this regard. Although I would not mind a rejuvenation to my mid-20s physical fitness, it really is great to be well past the unhappiness of those youthful days and the subsequent stress that comes at mid-life. Old guys really do rule for happiness by my reckoning.
Cheers!
*Research Shows People Become Increasingly Unhappy Until Age 47.2, Inc., 1/30/20.
**Figure 2: “US Gallup Daily Tracker Cantril’s 11-step life satisfaction ladder, 2008-2018, no control curve”, Is happiness U-shaped everywhere? Age and subjective well-being in 145 countries, David G. Blanchflower, Journal of Population Economics, v34, pp 575–624, 9/9/20.
Embrace coincidences to shore up your well-being
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on October 19, 2022
Being a believer in the power of positivity, I am always on the lookout for the bright side of life. For example, while out for a very chilly walk this morning, I was delighted to see a dozen or so bluebirds perched along a fence next to the sidewalk. I embraced this happy coincidence!
Professor David Hand, former Chair in Statistics at Imperial College, London, made a case that these little miracles occur daily.* You just need to be pay attention. I got some great reinforcement for collecting coincidences from a report last week by Wall Street Journal columnist Elizabeth Anne Bernstein.** She provided a great example of a fortuitous series of events that led to a wonderful meeting with a friend of her father, who passed away earlier this year.
“Surprising concurrent events can help us reach decisions, soothe us in grief and tighten our connections to others.
Elizabeth Anne Bernstein
Although some people believe in divine causes for coincidences such as Elizabeth’s,*** I think they occur at random and get selectively noticed due to personal biases. In any case, I am happy for anyone who gains comfort from them.
PS For an excellent breakdown of coincidence by serendipity (“happy accidents”) versus synchronicity (an acausal “falling together in time” see this 2021 Psychology Today explanation by Bernard D. Beitman, M.D. of Meaningful Coincidences.
PPS On a related, more humorous note, check out this ‘heads-up’ on the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Eery!
*See my 2014 blog explaining why Laws of nature lead to rare events that really ought not surprise anyone
**The Hidden Power of Coincidences
***For example, many believed in a heavenly arrangement for the simultaneous deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826—exactly 50 years after each had signed the Declaration of Independence.
New insights this summer on human limits to heat
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on August 19, 2022
These late August days in Minnesota bring back poignant memories of the treasured time after the dog days of summer with the start of school looming. The cool breezes of late summer provided welcome relief for the sleepless nights spent sweltering on the top level of my bunk on the second floor of our two-story house in our un-air-conditioned bedroom.
Now comes the bad news from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the average overnight temperature in the USA this July was the hottest on record.* But the good news is that the great majority of households nowadays (as of 2020) feature A/C. For the cool stats, see this 8/15/22 post by the Energy Institute on How Many U.S. Households Don’t Have Air Conditioning.
I never paid much attention to heat and humidity until my undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota. Then I came to appreciate the impact of ambient conditions. Our lab instructor taught us how to measure moisture in the air via a sling psychrometer such as the one demonstrated very delightfully “down under” here. The resulting reading is called the wet bulb temperature.
If you must venture out into the mid-day sun, be careful not to go beyond what your body can balance for the heat. As reported here on July 6, researchers at Penn State University (PSU) discovered that “heat + humidity gets dangerous faster than many people realize.” Their findings came from experiments on 25 young adults who each swallowed a small telemetry pill, which monitored their core temperature. Previous studies** suggested that most people can tolerate a wet-bulb temperature of up to 95 degrees F. But the new data from PSU lowers this limit to 88 degrees.
“When the body overheats, the heart has to work harder to pump blood flow to the skin to dissipate the heat, and when you’re also sweating, that decreases body fluids. In the direst case, prolonged exposure can result in heat stroke, a life-threatening problem that requires immediate and rapid cooling and medical treatment.”
– W. Larry Kenney, Professor of Physiology, Kinesiology and Human Performance, Penn State, and his PSU H.E.A.T Project team
The tolerance to heat and humidity is certainly even less for people over 65, who, according to the PSU researchers comprise 80-90 percent of heat-wave casualties. They will now shift their experimental focus to this older generation.
Be careful out there!
* “The U.S. in July set a new record for overnight warmth”, The Associated Press, August 13, 2022.
** Sherwood & Huber, “An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 5/3/10, 107 (21) 9552-9555.
Megastudy uncovers secret to motivation for exercise
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior, Wellness on January 10, 2022
Over half of all Americans making resolutions for 2021 made exercise their top priority according to this report from Statista. Unfortunately, most people who decide to work out more often after being ‘flabbergasted’* by the year-end holidays will fall off by the 17th of January—cruelly declared as “Quitter’s Day” by fitness tracker Strava.
However, the results of a new ‘megastudy’ reported by this report last month in Nature provides some hope for certain interventions getting folks back on their treadmills or the like. A team of scientists in collaboration with 24 Hour Fitness created a “Step Up” program that, with a small incentive ($1 in Amazon points), drew in 61,000 members. They then divided up the group into groups to test over 50 four-week programs aimed at increasing weekly gym visits.
Only 8% of the interventions led to participants making a significant change in their behavior. The most successful approach, increasing attendance by 27% versus the control group, came by giving people about 10 cents in reward points for returning to the gym after missing a workout. Surprisingly, a larger monetary reward (~$1.75) produced slightly less improvement.
“Try not to miss more than one workout.”
Advice from lead-author Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
I like the New York Times December 8th “Phys Ed” take-home on this megastudy. “Find small ways to reward ourselves when we exercise as planned. Drop a dollar into a bowl for every workout, for instance, and let the proceeds mount.” Better yet, make an appreciable monetary bet with a friend that you will keep up your workouts. Along those lines, why not make it mutual? Fun!
Since this study only involved people motivated enough to join a gym, it would be a stretch (fitness pun?) to expect similar results for those remaining anchored to their couch. Perhaps attaching a dollar bill to a reeling fishing line might lure these slackers into moving about a bit. Worth a try!
*A neologism (newly coined word) becoming popular in these pandemic times of chronic overeating meaning “appalled over how much weight you have gained.”
Raisin Bran sun wearing sunglasses and other shady “alternate memories”
Your mind plays many frustrating tricks. For example, as I detailed in How to arrest what’s-his-name’s [Ebbinghaus] forgetting curve, the brain purges valuable information far too quickly. A fellow statistical trainer recently refreshed my memory of the forgetting curve—citing this study that replicated the original experimental results from Ebbinghaus.
Coincidentally, I watched Friday’s episode of the quirky new “How to With John Wilson” HBO show*, which featured widely shared alternate (false!) memories such as:
- The Raisin Bran sun wearing sunglasses
- Stouffer’s Stove Top Stuffing mix
- Mandela dying in prison.
The last common misconception spawned a growing belief in what became known as the “Mandela Effect”. Check out this list with hundreds of other alternate memories and see if some resonate with your recollection. If so, you may be living in an alternate universe!
The “Mandela Effect” really plays tricks with your mind with memories that never happened but seem as if they did. However, it may not be evidence of a multiverse, but rather more mundane mental mistakes explained here by Healthline.
Never mind the Mandela Effect, the memory lapse that works for me is the forgetting curve—it doing its magic on the year of 2020.
“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”
― Kahlil Gibran
* Reviewed highly here by Vulture.
Moving averages creating coronavirus confusion
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on October 26, 2020
The statistics being reported on Covid-19 keep pouring in—far too much information by my reckoning. Per the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, I focus on positivity rates as a predictor of the ups and down of the coronavirus. However, the calculations for even this one statistic cause a great deal of controversy, especially in times like now with rising cases of Covid-19.
For example, as reported by The Las Vegas Review-Journal last week, positivity rates for the Nevada now vary by an astounding five-fold range depending on the source of the statistics. It doesn’t help that the State went from 7-day to 14-day moving averages, thus dampening down an upsurge.
“We’re trying to get that trend to be as smooth as possible, so that an end user can look at it and really follow that line and understand what’s happening.”
State of Nevada Chief Biostatistician Kyra Morgan, Nevada changed how it measures COVID’s impact. Here’s why., The Las Vegas Review-Journal, 10/22/20
My preference is 7 days over 14 days, but, in any case, I would always like to see the raw data graphed along with the smoothed curves. The Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center provided an enlightening primer on moving averages this summer just as State Covid-19 cases spiked. Notice how the 7-day averaging takes out most of the noise in the data. The 14-day approach goes a bit too far in my opinion—blunting the spike at the end.
I advise that you pay attention to the nuances behind Covid-19 statistics, in particular the moving averages and how they get shifted from time to time.
PS My favorite method for smoothing is exponentially weighted moving averages. See it explained at this NIST Engineering Statistics Handbook post. It is quite easy to generate with a simple spreadsheet. With a smoothing constant of 0.2 (my preference) you get an averaging similar to a moving average of 5 periods, but it is far more responsive to more current results.
Assessing the threat from Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) via quantitative analytics
“In God we trust. All others must provide data.”
Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, quoted by NY Times on 2/2/20 in their report that “Wuhan Coronavirus Looks Increasingly Like a Pandemic, Experts Say”.
Stay calm and carry on is a good mantra for these unsettled times. But it pays to keep an eye on developments with a critical view on the facts so far as they can be ascertained. Here are some interesting statistics and data-driven observations on the impact thus far and in future of 2019-nCoV from the New York Times:
- Fatalities now come to 425 in mainland China as of Tuesday morning according to this latest news, eclipsing Chinese deaths from SARS (349). For a view of its spread throughout Asia, see the Coronavirus Map via the link above.
- For a very enlightening interactive-graphical view graphics see this in-depth report.
Keep in mind that much remains to be determined. For example, it may turn out that 2019-nCoV for better (less fatal) or worse (more infectious) may turn out to be more like 2009 H1N1 Swine flu than SARS.
You, like me, may be curious about the effectiveness of wearing a mask. From this NPR investigation, I surmise that N95 respirators, such as those made by 3M, work best, but only if fitted properly and worn with great discipline in not touching one’s face. In any case during this flu season, we all need to wash our hands with soap and water often (hand sanitizers don’t work nearly so well by my reckoning) and stay home if we get sick.
For what it’s worth, that’s my take for now. You all must make your own judgments. All I suggest is that you not let fear rule—assess the data and adjust your thinking as more accumulates. But best you be conservative on the safe side.
PS. Those of you who fly frequently are well-advised to check out this advice from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. I am comforted by the statistic of 99.9% particulate removal and thus “the cabin air environment is not conducive to the spread of most infectious diseases” per the CDC. However, as always, it’s best to be careful during times when the flu and/or other viruses run rampant.