Mangan lists his 20 principles of Rogue Health:
- Maintenance of a lean body mass with a relatively low level of body fat is important both for health and for slowing aging.
- While having too much fat is bad, having too little muscle may be worse.
- We all lose muscle as we age, and most people do nothing about it.
- Insulin sensitivity is important for health and aging.
- Weightlifting, also known as strength training and resistance training, is the best form of exercise for staying lean, maintaining and growing muscle, combating the frailty of aging, and maintaining good insulin sensitivity.
- High intensity training (HIT), is a very effective form of exercise and can be used as an adjunct or, for some, a replacement to weightlifting.
- Aerobic exercise, that is exercises such as running, walking, or the use of cardio machines in the gym, have health benefits, but as such they come in a distant second to weightlifting and HIT.
- You can’t outrun a bad diet.
- If hunger always wins, then to lose fat one must choose a way of eating that dampens hunger.
- The cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease is nonsense.
- Paleo is a healthy way to eat.
- Aging is a multifactorial process, but much of it seems due to a growth-longevity trade-off.
- Calorie restriction (CR) robustly extends lifespan in lab animals, but intermittent fasting gives most or all of the benefits of CR without any of its nasty side effects,
- Quit eating all the time.
- Aging is characterized by a decline in the process of autophagy, the physiological process used by cells to rid themselves of cellular junk and to recycle it.
- Hormesis is the process in which a low dose of a toxic compound or stressor elicits a beneficial response from the body, and it is critical to health and anti-aging.
- Aging is controlled in part by AMPK, which is a cellular nutrient/energy sensor.
- Testosterone is important for men.
- Iron can reasonably be suspected as being a primary cause of aging, as well as the cause of the lower life expectancy and higher heart disease and cancer rates versus women.
- Stay active.
Excellent advice, except for 10, 16 17, and 19, which are pseudoscience, and 11, which is brand advertising. The best advice is 14, followed by 20 and 8. I’m fascinated by the assertions about weight training made in points 2-7, and becoming more and more convinced they are true. Although I’m a lifelong cardio addict, I’m considering going the weight route as I head into old age. Finally, if I were to add a 21st point, it would be: Stop drinking. Why? Your liver.
22nd: stop listening to random dude bro comments.
One thing I learned this past year is how much extra food I was eating and how little food I actually need. My biggest discovery was the fallacy of a balanced diet. Rather than trying to get all the food groups in one day, varying different types of food on different days or weeks is what our bodies are really adapted for.
Faze, if you think 10 and 19 are pseudoscience, then you’re not familiar with the science. Mangan has posted a lot of material in support of both, and there is even more information available with a simple Google search.
The thing that I keep in mind about Mangan is that, while he produces some interesting material, his use of studies is highly tendentious, i.e studies that contradict his argument have problems and should be disregarded while studies that support his argument are authoritative and don’t need to be investigated further.
3.We all lose muscle as we age, and most people do nothing about it.
If you want to see an example of someone who does do something about it look at Charles Bronson, well known prisoner and fitness fanatic.
From his Wikipedia page:
In 2002, he published the book Solitary Fitness, detailing an individual training process with minimal resources and space.[121]
“I’m the king of the press-ups and the sit-ups. I’ve already said I once did 25 press-ups with two men on my back, and I’ve squatted with three men on my shoulders! I’ve been making prison fitness records for as long as I can remember. Show me another man – a man half my age – who can pick up a full-size snooker table. I can. Show me another guy who can rip out 1,727 press-ups in an hour. I can … I once went eight years without using weights, then I went into a gym and bench pressed 300lb ten times. I’m 5ft 11in, I weigh 220lb and I feel as strong as did when I was 21 … There’s something deep inside me that pushes me on. I’m a solitary fitness survivor.”
—?Writing in 2000, aged 48, Bronson describes the outcome of years of training in the confined spaces in prison.[122]
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Salvador#Occupations_and_projects)
Solitary Fitness the pdf & a documentary about him:
Charles Bronson: Britain’s Hardest Man
He proves my theory that real tough guys look more like Larry the cable guy than Arnie…