The Long Game 75: Chronic Pain, Project Blueprint, Changing Your Mind, Tech x Bio
The Long Game 75: Chronic Pain, Project Blueprint, Changing Your Mind, Tech x Bio🌐 The Wires of War, Cold Plunges, Japan, Giving a Presentation, Outliers, and Much More!Hi there, it’s Mehdi Yacoubi, co-founder at Vital, and this is The Long Game Newsletter. To receive it in your inbox each week, subscribe here: Greeting from Mallorca 🇪🇸 where we’re currently having our first company retreat! 📣 We are hiring at Vital, help us build the “Strava for Health.” We are now looking for:
We are offering $1,000 in Bitcoin if you refer to us a candidate we end up hiring. In this episode, we explore:
Let’s dive in! 🥑 Health🤕 A New Chronic Pain StudyI suffered three years of chronic back pain. I couldn’t go a week without having painful episodes; I struggled to find good sleeping positions, working positions. I couldn’t squat, deadlift, run. It was hell. At some point, I almost accepted that this would be for the rest of my life. Last January, I came up with a few resolutions for 2021, and the most important one—by far— was to fix my chronic pain for good. I talked about the books I planned to read and the approach I planned to take. Thankfully, my friend Ivan saved me a lot of time and recommended Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by Dr. Sarno. I will be eternally grateful to him. Seven weeks after reading the book, I was entirely cured. No more back pain, running every other day, lifting heavier than ever. This has been one of the most significant experiences in my life. I planned to write a long-form post about this but haven’t got the time recently. I still plan to do it because it always saddens me to see people waste their time and money on things that won’t give them long-term relief. The idea in the book of Dr. Sarno is that pain originates in the mind and comes from repressed anger and anxiety. I know that said like that, you immediately want to call it BS, but just read the Amazon reviews and watch the thousands of Youtube videos of people who fixed their decade-long chronic pain this way. Thankfully, a very well-conducted study has been published recently in JAMA, and I hope it will push the skeptics to reconsider their stance. Here’s the abstract:
I used to have chronic back pain for 3 years (debilitating / preventing me from exercising well), and then I read about the mind-body connection by Dr. Sarno.
I was *fully cured* in 7 weeks. Side note: more than ten people (subscribers of TLG and friends) told me they fixed their back pain thanks to the book, so if you currently have chronic pain, read the book—with an open mind. 🌱 Wellness🧬♾ Project BlueprintBryan Johnson, the founder of Kernel that I already mentioned in the newsletter many times, came up with a fantastic initiative called Project Blueprint. In short, here’s what it’s about:
The idea of ‘community + health optimization’ is dear to us at Vital, and we firmly believe that quantified communities are the future of health. We look forward to seeing where Bryan brings this project and enable people to do this together on Vital one day. 🧠 Better Thinking🔃 Changing Your Mind“What’s the last thing you changed your mind about?” is one of my favorite interview questions. It can tell you a lot about someone. Changing your mind doesn't mean you've abandoned your principles. It may mean you've learned something.
It's better to contradict yourself and be accused of hypocrisy than to stick to your guns and sacrifice your integrity.
The hallmark of integrity is honesty, not consistency. ⚡️ Startup Stuff👽 Spotting The OutliersTwo weeks ago, we talked about dream teams, how important they are and how hard they are to build. Rohit from Strange Loop Canon had a great piece on this concept. Here’s the TL;DR:
Unrelated to hiring outliers, but still in the ‘startup stuff’: I found this tweet very interesting and mirroring a feeling I’ve had for a few months. Instagram has started its slow decline the same way Facebook did a few years ago. The question is, what comes next? Well, we believe it will be the era of verticalized social networks. Public, Strava, Matter, Saturn, and soon Vital for health. Calling it now: Instagram has started the slow decline to irrelevance.
Most of my friends no longer post regularly - my feed is full of ads, “recommended” posts from hashtags, and meme pages.
Very real opportunity for the next big social app 👀 📚 What I Read🇺🇸🇨🇳 The Wires of WarThis is the most important book I’ve read this year. It won’t explain something you’ll be pleased to hear, but it will clarify something we all need to hear. China is on the verge of reaching world domination, and the consequences of this would be disastrous. I've been waiting all year for this book to come out, and it did not disappoint. The technology war with China is perhaps the most pressing and underrated issue of our time. We waste time on useless topics while the global infrastructure of information and control is at stake. The author does an excellent job of explaining the nuances of the issues at stake. I will try to review the book in the next few weeks. The future of hard power is CCP, and the future of hard money is BTC.
After years of bickering and infighting, the US government has silently lost control of events. The world order is now just sliding on ice and could move very fast with the right hit. Michael @mmay3r Submitted without comment. https://t.co/wZx6zHWxtQFor more: this thread debunks all of the classic arguments predicting a Chinese decline (demographics, Evergrande, underestimating China, etc.) 🧬 The Coming Age for Tech x Bio: The ‘Industrial Bio Complex’A new age is coming:
🎙 Podcast Episodes of the WeekThis week in podcasts:
🍭 Brain Food🌍👶 The Planet and Having ChildrenI saw this headline last week, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Thankfully, Slate Star Codex came up with Please Don't Give Up On Having Kids Because Of Climate Change to explain why the initial idea doesn’t make sense.
Who is going to overcome the challenges of humanity if we stop having children? What this made me realize is the power of narratives. Unfortunately, the Green/Degrowth people did such a great job that many kids are depressed and think the world will collapse soon. They feel they have no agency and can’t do anything about it. That is absolutely wrong. They can become nuclear scientists, work on carbon capture, and other ways to produce energy in a clean way, or become nuclear influencers. There is no going back to the forest and living in trees. We need to show the younger generations that they can have a lot of impact in the world and not scare them to the point of depression and not wanting to have kids. Spoke to some really smart college kids recently.
Almost universally, they had a belief that climate change was an unstoppable disaster and the most pressing issue of our time. To conclude this environmental part, here’s a great article and a thread: Everything you have been told about stopping climate change is wrong.
Buying a Tesla doesn’t matter. Not flying/eating vegan/turning off lights doesn’t matter.
As a serial climate entrepreneur (raised over $200 million), I speak from experience.
Only one thing matters. 👇🏻👇🏻 🎥 What I’m Watching🇯🇵 Why Japan Isn’t Ready for WarLearn why Japan isn’t ready for war while still having a correct defense budget. 📈 How to Give a PresentationA great video from Vinod Khosla showing how to give a great presentation. 🔧 The Tool of the Week🥶 The Cold PlungeAll the resources you need to get into cold water plunges. Winter is coming back, now is the time to challenge yourself with the cold! Morning cold showers never get easier, but that’s the point. 🪐 Quote I’m Pondering
If you enjoyed this newsletter, make sure to subscribe if you haven’t 👇 👋 EndNoteThanks for reading! If you like The Long Game, please share it on social media or forward this email to someone who might enjoy it. Podcast reviews are also gratefully received. You can also “like” this newsletter by clicking the heart just below this, which helps me get visibility on Substack. Feel free to email me or find me on Twitter if you have any feedback or questions. Until next week, Mehdi Yacoubi PS: Lots of newsletters get stuck in Gmail’s Promotions tab. If you find it in there, please help train the algorithm by dragging it to Primary. It makes a big difference. If you liked this post from The Long Game by Mehdi Yacoubi, why not share it? |
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The Long Game 74: Vital, Knowing Yourself, Narrative Distillation, Biology, Endurance
Monday, October 11, 2021
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The Long Game 73: Hacking Darwin, Dream Teams, Inspiration4, Good Predictions
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The Long Game 72: Air Quality, the Cream of Life, Science Fictions, Getting Luck on Your Side
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The Long Game 70: Free Time & Happiness, Health Optimization, Dopamine, Optionality
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📈 Inevitable Trends that Will Shape the Future, Eating disorders, Zen, Supplement Reviews, China, Anxiety and Much More!
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