Underrated life advice: Keep proof that good things happen to you. Old photos. Kind messages. Positive feedback. Notes from great days. Whatever. Store them in a single place. Call it a Rainy Day Folder. Pop it open on a bad day and watch your mood turn. It's a free reset button.
The person you will be in 5 years depends on:
• the food you eat
• amount of exercise you do
• how much sleep per day
• books or articles you read
• how much more you write
• money you save and invest
• who you work with
• friends you spend time with
• new skills you develop
• asking for help when you’re stuck
• connections you make and keep
• promises you make and keep
• where and how far you travel
• doors you open for others
• knowing when to leave
• new habits you develop
• quitting the stuff that holds you back
your brain is far more changeable than you think. it doesn’t just record your experiences, it adapts to them. what you repeatedly focus on, practice, and expose yourself to slowly becomes part of how you think and behave. so be intentional about what you feed it. learn difficult things. build better habits. choose environments that challenge you. keep showing up even when the change feels invisible. you are not stuck with the mind you have today. you are shaping the one you’ll have tomorrow.
Work with any executive team at a major company and you will quickly understand both the 80/20 rule and this tidbit:
“Your entire life will change when you realize the world isn't run by a bunch of geniuses. The world is being run by a bunch of normal people with abnormal bias for action.”
In only rare occasions is an executive wickedly sharp — the vast majority of them simply learn to play a different game to get there and are, ultimately, just normal people when you peel back the layers.
I'm a cardiologist. After 40, stop guessing about your health. These numbers tell you whether you're building a long, vibrant life — or quietly declining without knowing it.
I run these on myself. I run them on every patient I care about. Most are cheap bloodwork. All are available now. And together, they paint a picture no standard annual physical will ever give you. Print this. Bring it to your next appointment. Your 60-year-old self will thank you.
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𝗙𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝗶𝗻
Target: below 5 μIU/mL. Ideal: 3-4.
This is the 10-year warning bell your standard panel completely misses. Your glucose and A1c can look "normal" for a decade while your pancreas is working overtime to keep them there. Fasting insulin catches insulin resistance 5-10 years before your A1c moves. By the time A1c rises, the damage is already extensive.
𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗔-𝗜𝗥
Target: below 1.0.
Calculated from fasting insulin and fasting glucose. The single best measure of insulin sensitivity. Above 1.0 and your metabolism is already under strain. Above 2.5 and you're insulin resistant — even if every other number looks fine.
𝗛𝗯𝗔𝟭𝗰
Target: below 5.4%.
Not below 5.7% — that's the threshold where medicine calls you "prediabetic." By then you've been metabolically compromised for years. Optimal is below 5.4%. Blood sugar mastery is longevity mastery.
𝗧𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗹𝘆𝗰𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗲 : 𝗛𝗗𝗟 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼
Target: below 2. Ideal: below 1.
Your metabolic health crystal ball. This ratio predicts insulin resistance, cardiovascular risk, and metabolic syndrome better than any single lipid number alone. A ratio above 3.5 is a red flag regardless of what your total cholesterol says.
𝗔𝗽𝗼𝗕
Target: below 80 mg/dL for moderate risk. Below 60 for high risk.
I've written about this extensively. ApoB counts every atherogenic particle hitting your artery walls. A 2024 analysis found 54% of patients had dangerous levels that standard LDL testing completely missed. If you only know your LDL, you're driving with one eye closed.
𝗟𝗽(𝗮)
Test once in your lifetime.
100% genetic. 1 in 5 Americans are elevated. Triples heart attack risk independently of everything else on this list. Diet and exercise cannot lower it. The 2026 ACC/AHA guidelines now recommend everyone be tested. Most never have been.
𝗵𝘀-𝗖𝗥𝗣
Target: below 1.0 mg/L.
You can have perfect cholesterol and inflamed arteries silently preparing to rupture. hs-CRP measures the fire behind the plaque. The JUPITER trial proved that finding and treating inflammation saves lives — even when lipids look fine. If this number is elevated, your mouth, your gut, your metabolic health, and your visceral fat are the first places to investigate.
𝗩𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻 𝗗
Target: 50-80 ng/mL.
Not the bare minimum of 30 your doctor accepts. Suboptimal vitamin D is linked to higher inflammation, weaker immunity, increased cardiovascular events, worse mood, and poorer outcomes across nearly every disease I treat. Supplement D3 with K2 — without K2, calcium deposits in your arteries instead of your bones.
𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗻��� (𝗧𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹 + 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲)
Men: optimal range 600-1000+ ng/dL total.
Declining testosterone is an independent predictor of cardiovascular death in men. It's tied to insulin resistance, arterial stiffness, visceral fat accumulation, and systemic inflammation. DHEA-S drops 10-20% every decade after 30. Tracking these isn't about vanity — it's evaluating your body's systemic resilience.
𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲
Target: below 120/80. Aim closer to 110/70.
Every point above optimal is cumulative arterial damage. Buy a home cuff. Measure morning and evening, seated quietly for five minutes, arm at heart level. White-coat readings in the office miss what's really happening. The smartest $40 investment in cardiac self-care.
𝗩𝗢𝟮 𝗠𝗮𝘅
Men over 40: above 40 mL/kg/min. Women over 40: above 35.
Cardiorespiratory fitness is the single strongest predictor of all-cause mortality — stronger than smoking, diabetes, or heart disease as individual risk factors. A landmark study in JAMA found that extreme fitness was associated with the lowest mortality with no upper limit of benefit. You can estimate VO2 max with a timed mile, a rower test, or a wearable. Get faster every year.
𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
Target: as few as possible.
Every medication you're on should be earning its place. I just wrote about five commonly prescribed drugs that do more harm than good with long-term use. Bring your full medication list to every appointment. Ask: "Do I still need this?" Deprescribing is one of the most powerful and underused tools in medicine.
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Thirteen numbers. Most available through cheap bloodwork and simple tests. Get them once or twice a year. Here's what I want you to understand: these numbers don't just tell you where you are. They tell you where you're heading. A fasting insulin of 8 today becomes diabetes in five years. An ApoB of 120 today becomes a heart attack in ten. An hs-CRP of 3 today means your arteries are inflamed right now — regardless of how healthy you feel. The standard annual physical checks a fraction of these. It was designed to find disease that's already there. This panel finds the disease that's coming — years before it arrives.
What gets measured gets improved. Optimize with the foundation I write about every week on this platform:
Zone 2 cardio plus resistance training 3-4 times per week. High-protein whole-food nutrition. Sleep 7-9 hours — non-negotiable. Morning sunlight. Stress management. And the targeted supplements I've covered in detail — creatine, magnesium, CoQ10, D3+K2, glycine, omega-3, psyllium husk.
The breakthroughs coming in the next decade — gene editing for cholesterol, cellular reprogramming, senolytics that clear senescent "zombie" cells driving inflammation and aging, GLP-1 drugs rewriting metabolic medicine — will be most powerful for people who've already built the metabolic foundation to receive them.
The future of medicine is personalized. But it starts with knowing your numbers today. Print this list. Book the bloodwork. Own the data. Prevention isn't passive. It's the most aggressive thing you can do for the decades ahead.
LLMs are a multiplier for people who have deep experience in a specific field. An experienced software engineer is in a very good position to use AI agents to write code faster while maintaining quality and coherence.
An inexperienced coder can churn out the same amount of code with LLMs. But they won't have the taste and intuition to steer the AI in the right directions.
Code volume is not (and never was) an indicator of productivity.
Underrated life advice: Bet on yourself more often. Apply for the job. Start the business. Send the message. Take the trip. Ask the girl. You have to trust yourself enough to take the first step without knowing exactly where the path leads.
Simply ❤️ this, nails perfectly🎯
Time management is just another word for 'focus'.
Zero-in on your goals, that's what separates winners from the ones who are aimless & distracted. 💯
The results of the recent state elections have been dramatic by any measure.
But for me, this image will remain the most unforgettable outcome of the elections.
More than 166,000 votes were cast between the two leading candidates in this constituency in Tamil Nadu.
And history was changed by just one vote.
This image should be shown in every school in the country & perhaps around the world.
So that every child understands that when they grow up, the greatest power they may possess is the Power of One.
The power of their one vote.
Kids with an active dad are 3.5x more likely to be active themselves. With both parents active, that goes up to nearly 6x.
Your habits have a bigger impact on your family than you think.
You’re stuck you’re constantly on your phone. When you wake up. Before you go to bed. While you eat. While you walk. While you work. Whenever you feel the smallest sense of boredom. And so every time your mind almost has the space to come up with a novel idea, you interrupt it by whipping out your handheld dopamine casino. If that sounds familiar, try leaving it behind more often. Watch your creativity and happiness skyrocket.
BREAKING VIDEO: Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe becomes the first person ever to win a regular marathon in under two hours, setting a new world record at the London Marathon in 1:59:30!
Kenyans invented running™
Heading to the #LondonMarathon?
@OxUniMaths' Dr Josh Bull has a quick way to convert miles to kilometres as you run, using the Fibonacci sequence.
Good luck to everyone taking part 🏃♀️
🎬 | Oxford Mathematics (First published September, 2025)
Major cheat code in life: Understanding you can reinvent yourself at any time. New habits, new standards, new friend group, new career, etc. There's no rule that says you have to stay the person you've always been. You're allowed to decide––"I'm done being this version of me."
Be boring in the right ways. Go to bed early. Wake up early. Eat simple foods. Save money. Exercise. Read old books. Avoid drama. Boring is seriously underrated.