Never Forget All Facets of Health Are Interconnected
By Kevin Kolodziejski
When a deep-thinking, laid-back dude says, “Enjoy the ride, my friend,” he’s doing more than just ending a conversation. He’s sharing his life philosophy.
That holds true even if he says it while you’re standing in an airport terminal, amusement park, or velodrome parking lot.
When a very cerebral and mellow fellow named Ryan DeWald founded a cycling team back in 2013, he used “Enjoy the ride” as its motto. Since then, Team Skyline has grown and grown and grown and is now, in the words of Wikipedia, “one of the most internationally active [professional] American teams . . . capable of animating races at the highest level despite limited resources.”
When I raced for Ryan, “Enjoy the ride,” was printed across each shoulder of our racing jersey, one of which I still wear occasionally. The last time I took it off a hangar, I thought about what it is that easygoing intellectuals are suggesting when they say that phrase to you. To let go, to give up control. Then I remembered a time when Ryan DeWald needed to take total — and I do mean total — control.
A Time to Take Total Control
For in April of 2014, you see, DeWald was feeling so bad both on and off the bike that he went to the doctor. The doc heard him out, ran a combination of blood tests, and then told the 14-year cycling pro he had Type 1 diabetes.
Now this is more than an unexpected bump on “Enjoy the ride” road. For even a recreational cyclist, it’s more like a series of sizable potholes. For a pro back in 2014, it could’ve been a Road Closed sign.
But DeWald didn’t see it that way. Instead, he worked with his doc to best learn how to ride with an insulin pump, contacted Novo Nordisk — a pro team designed to create increased awareness of the disease — and guest rode with them from July until the end of the season. And did taking control like this ever pay off on the bike.
The Insulin Pump Payoff
That season, DeWald finished first in 4 criteriums and in the top five in 13 other crits. Those placements earned him the title of best Category 1 criterium rider in Pennsylvania and placed him seventh nationally out of nearly 1500 Cat 1 riders. So what in the world, besides a double dose of inspiration, are you supposed to get out of DeWald’s health and cycling success? That if you follow his lead and take more control of your health, amazing things can happen.
Just be aware that one of them is probably not living to the ripe old age of 1759.
Could You Really Live to Be 1759 Years Old?
According to a paper still being edited and soon to be published by Nature Briefing, 1759 years of age is our “theoretical non-aging baseline” if we could eliminate somatic mutations, those DNA changes in the cells of the body’s tissues and organs caused by environmental factors or improper cell division — but that we’ll never be able do that. What we could do one day, however, is eliminate the diseases that lead to early death. Then the soon-to-be-published paper predicts median lifespans will be “approximately twice current human longevity,” and up to 194 years of age — which would indeed be truly amazing.
So is this statistic from another study, one published on July 15 online by JAMA Cardiology — just not in a positive way. It suggests that eliminating one of the diseases currently reducing lifespan will never happen.
The Dejecting Statistic
Of the 473,000 deaths from coronary heart disease in the United States in 2023, 88.7 percent of them “were attributable to modifiable risk factors,” with risk factors like high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol levels, and poor diet “being the greatest contributors.” In other words, about 90 percent of the deaths from coronary heart disease in 2023 didn’t have to happen.
That’s why what I’d like to see happen is for you to exert the sort of control over your health DeWald did upon learning of his diabetes diagnosis even if you got a two-thumbs-up at your last checkup. For the fact of the matter is, my friend, you can never be too diligent when it comes to your health, for all facets of it are interconnected.
Proof of this is found in a study published on July 7 online by Annals of Internal Medicine.
Lack of Sleep Is Connected to More Than Weight Gain
In it, 95 adults who tended to sleep at least seven hours a night were instructed to delay their bedtime by 90 minutes for the next six weeks. After that, they were told to sleep as they usually did for six more weeks. Prior to, during, and at the conclusion of the 12-week study, the researchers measured participants’ waist circumference, weight, and body composition, as well as fasting levels of the hormones leptin, ghrelin, and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), all of which help regulate hunger. And during the study, all participants wore wrist monitors that tracked their physical activity and sleep.
What was revealed at the end was more than just an average 1-pound weight gain and an increase in the hunger hormone leptin during the six weeks of sleep restriction. During that time sedentary time also had increased by nearly 30 minutes for the males and the postmenopausal females in the study. Yet these participants didn’t necessarily expend significantly less energy overall during the sleep-restriction period, which suggests the lack of sleep led to increased calorie intake.
And that remembering what today’s title tells you never to forget is a really important thing to do.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
