Cool under pressure: Why sports are better than exercise



I was swimming at my athletic club the other day when I saw a woman on the second floor running on a treadmill and watching CNN. I always think that’s a weird thing to do. Like, would that make you less stressed or more stressed?

I mean, what fun is running on a treadmill? All that pounding on your knee joints. And for what? And then you’re watching TV? That can’t be good for your mental health.

Plus, it’s good mental health to be on a team. Doing something that involves skill, coordination, and strategy ... doing it with your team, against another team.

But you always see that in gyms. Thirty-something women running on the treadmill. Guys too. Guys who don’t like sports but know they’re supposed to “stay active.”

So they run on the treadmill. Their wife does it. Their co-workers do it. People on TV do it. So they do it.

I’ve been in that upstairs area. There’s a weight room too. That also seems weird to me. Lifting weights. Dudes sitting in front of a mirror, admiring themselves doing arm curls.

Not that swimming laps is much better. But I’m in my 60s. I’ve reached that age where I have to go easy. And at least it’s quiet and peaceful in the pool. It’s meditative. And no CNN.

The shape I'm in

Growing up in Oregon, I never saw a real gym. Not like you see in movies, with the grime and the sweat and the old guy with the broken nose.

In the suburbs of Portland, we had weight rooms in our high school gyms. I guess that counts. I remember bench-pressing 150 lbs once, during football season. That was considered good at the time, for someone of my small size and weight.

At college, in Connecticut, I played in alternative rock bands. Music and sports didn’t really mix in the 1980s. So if you were in a band, you wanted to avoid any overt “jock” behavior.

Still, at one point, I joined the local YMCA so I could “stay in shape.” I don’t remember why I did that. I was 20 years old. How “out of shape” could I get?

That was my first urban gym experience. I went there and swam and shot baskets, by myself mostly. Then I ventured into the mysterious steam room.

During the day, most of the patrons of the local Y were older black men. So it would be me and a bunch of white-haired black guys, sitting there in the dense steam fog, sweating into our towels.

Coffee and cigarettes

After that, I enrolled at NYU, where I began my career as a writer. This began a long period when I didn’t think about my health or my physical fitness at all.

I became a coffee and cigarettes person, which kept me slim and trim. I worked in nightclubs for a couple of years. I got pasty. I got pale. But that was good. I was the right age for that look.

It wasn’t until I’d sold my first novel at 32 and moved to Los Angeles that I once again signed up for some physical exercise. I joined the Hollywood YMCA.

Playing with 'the big kids'

There, I planned on swimming laps, maybe shooting some baskets, but within a week, I was playing in pickup basketball with out-of-work actors and recently fired movie producers. There were also some very talented ex-high school and college players in these games. So the competition was sometimes intense.

But that’s what I needed. Competition. I didn’t have the discipline to swim laps in my 30s. I needed something to get my blood flowing.

Those pickup games became the highlight of my week. Since I wasn’t a great basketball player, every time I was on the court, I had to hustle to make myself useful. It was like being a little kid again. Playing with the big kids.

Some of those guys could really play. In many cases, if I could do anything positive in a game, it was an accomplishment. And then I’d walk home along Hollywood Boulevard, glowing with excitement and satisfaction.

Swimming in it

Eventually, at age 37, I ended up back in New York, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Whenever physical fitness came up, people would talk about the Williamsburg pool.

So I signed up and started going there. It was a public pool and not the cleanest. At times, it would get super crowded. The good news was that Williamsburg was the coolest neighborhood in the world at that time (late 1990s).

So even at the public pool, there were interesting people around. Hipsters, weirdos, indie-rock stars, trust fund bohemians — a true cast of characters!

A young man's game

And then I learned to surf in my 40s, and that changed everything. I would never have to join another YMCA or a gym or a pool again. Or so I thought. Surfing took care of all your physical fitness needs. If you surfed regularly, you were in the best shape of your life, all the time.

Unfortunately, surfing is a young man’s game. It can become genuinely life-threatening in the big, brutal surf of the Oregon coast where I live now. I’ve had to cut way back and limit myself to only the mildest surf days.

Team player

So now I’m playing in a senior softball league, which has been great fun. Competitive sports, to me, are always preferable to just working out.

Basketball, softball, volleyball, whatever. Competition creates adrenaline. Adrenaline cleans out your body and clears your head. And generates testosterone, if you’re worried about that.

Plus, it’s good mental health to be on a team. Doing something that involves skill, coordination, and strategy ... doing it with your team, against another team ... what could be more fun than that? And better for you. Much healthier than staring at your biceps in a mirror.

Of course, being older, I can’t go super hard. That’s why senior softball is a good fit. But even senior softball involves speed, skill, split-second decisions, and physical dexterity under pressure.

That might be the most important thing of all: a chance to be cool under pressure. There’s nothing that elevates your confidence and self-esteem like calmly making a key play in a crucial situation. And you can’t do that at a spin cycle class.

In my opinion, exercise with no goal, no sense of victory or defeat, no risk, no danger, no moment of truth where you either make the play or you don’t ... to me that’s just moving your body around. It doesn’t enrich your life.

Old joy

But yeah, I’m in my 60s now. So I’m back in the pool, back in the hot tub, trying to soothe my joints and ease my stiff muscles between softball games. I sweat in the steam room. Now, I’m the old white-haired guy.

But I have to say, I never feel frustrated with my aging body or the physical limitations that seem to come faster and quicker as you age.

The main thing I think about is how lucky I have been. And all the joy I’ve experienced from sports and exercise and the thrill of competition.

‘The Substance’ Blasts Beauty Standards While 62-Year-Old Leading Lady Demi Moore Chases Them

'The Substance' suffers from one fatal and hypocritical flaw in the form of its leading lady, Demi Moore.

‘A Man On The Inside’ Poignantly Explores The Comedy And Tragedy Of Nursing Home-Dwellers

What makes the show worthwhile is its much-needed treatment of a neglected issue in America today: coping with old age.

Joe Biden – ‘a certified nut’



Mark Levin is a scholar of American history, and according to him, Joe Biden is one of a kind.

Just not in a good way.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in American history,” he says, pointing to the current president. “[Joe Biden] is a certified nut. ... He’s like a mannequin dummy they keep pushing out.”

“What is upsetting and stunning is the extent to which his cabinet won't trigger the 25th Amendment,” which allows a president to be replaced by the vice president in the event he is deemed unfit to serve.

And we all know Biden is unfit to serve. His list of blunders grows longer by the day.

But radical politicians and the left-owned media are trying to sell the false narrative that Joe Biden is the picture of health.

That’s “why Merrick Garland would rather drop dead than release the audio of Biden's interview with Robert Hur,” who stated himself that “Biden’s memory had been ‘significantly limited,”’ says Levin.

But how can they keep up the pretense of Biden’s cognitive soundness when he does things like indicate "he was vice president during the COVID-19 pandemic, which started three years after he left office”?

According to the Washington Post, “It was one of the numerous flubs in the single speech that prompted the White House to make corrections to the official transcript.”

Further, “In January, he mixed up two of his Hispanic cabinet secretaries, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra.”

“During a February fundraising in New York, he recounted speaking to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, at the 2021 Group of Seven meeting.”

“That same month at a different fundraiser, he said that during the 2021 G7 Summit, he'd spoken to former French President François Mitterrand, who died in 1996.”

“Here's my question,” says Levin. “Does he eat his oatmeal on his own, or does the wife have to feed it to him?”


Want more from Mark Levin?

To enjoy more of "the Great One" — Mark Levin as you've never seen him before — subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Researchers blame explosion of of cancer cases among younger people on 'accelerated aging'



Americans are increasingly suffering cancer at younger ages.

The journal Nature noted last month that the number of early-onset cancer cases will increase by roughly 30% between 2019 and 2030. Additionally, colorectal cancer, which historically has affected geriatric men, is now the leading cause of cancer death among men under 50 and is now the second-leading cause of cancer death among young women. Uterine cancer has increase by 2% every year for the past three decades. Early-onset breast cancer has reportedly jumped by nearly 4% annually between 2016 and 2019.

"If it had been a single smoking gun, our studies would have at least pointed to one factor," said Sonia Kupfer, a gastroenterologist at the University of Chicago. "But it doesn't seem to be that — it seems to be a combination of many different factors."

Various possible factors have been considered, including rising rates of obesity; dietary changes and corresponding alterations to gut bacteria; sleep deprivation; increased alcohol consumption; and vaccines.

A study presented over the weekend at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in San Diego suggested that the incredible spike in cancer among younger adults in the U.S. may be the result of "accelerated aging."

"We all know cancer is anaging disease. However, it is really coming to a younger population. So whether we can use the well-developed concept of biological aging to apply that to the younger generation is a really untouched area," Dr. Yin Cao, an associate professor of surgery at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and senior author of the research, told CNN.

Chronological age refers to the period of time an individual has been alive. Biological age, also known as physiological age, refers to the condition of a person's body and the state of his genetic material. A chronologically younger person who vapes, eats too much, doesn't get enough sleep, and/or is genetically predisposed to various diseases could, accordingly, find himself biologically older than someone who has seen many more sunsets.

While cancer has long disproportionately affected chronologically older people, Cao and his fellow researchers have come to suspect that the spike in cases of early-onset solid tumors among younger Americans may be the result of increased biological age, characterized by "accelerated aging."

"Multiple cancer types are becoming increasingly common among younger adults in the United States and globally," Ruiyi Tian, a researcher from WUSM on Cao's team, told the American Association for Cancer Research, referencing increased incidents of cancer in adults under the age of 55. "Understanding the factors driving this increase will be key to improve the prevention or early detection of cancers in younger and future generations."

"Accumulating evidence suggests that the younger generations may be aging more swiftly than anticipated, likely due to earlier exposure to various risk factors and environmental insults," continued Tian. "However, the impact of accelerated aging on early-onset cancer development remains unclear."

Tian and her colleagues examined data from nearly 150,000 people in the U.K. Biobank database and calculated each individual's biological age using nine biomarkers found in the blood: albumin, alkaline phosphatase, creatinine, C-reactive protein, glucose, mean corpuscular volume, red cell distribution width, white blood cell count, and lymphocyte proportion.

According to the Cleveland Clinic:

  • Albumin is a protein in blood plasma. Low levels may indicate kidney disease, liver disease, inflammation, or infection. High levels may indicate dehydration or sever diarrhea.
  • Alkaline phosphatase is an enzyme found throughout the human body. High levels of the enzyme indicate liver disease or possible bone disorders.
  • Creatinine is a natural chemical the body uses to energize muscles. High creatinine levels usually signify kidney damage.
  • C-reactive protein is released by the liver into the bloodstream in response to inflammation. Elevated levels suggest serious infections or inflammatory conditions.
  • Glucose or sugar is carried by the blood to all of the body's cells for energy. Elevated levels of glucose tend to indicate diabetes.
  • Mean corpuscular volume references the average size of a patient's red blood cells. Low MCV could be a sign of iron-deficiency anemia and other blood disorders. Alternatively, high MCV could mean a vitamin B12 deficiency, folate deficiency, liver disease, or bone marrow dysfunction.
  • Red cell distribution width is measured because inconsistency or high variation could be a signal of anemia.
  • White blood cells counts are executed to detect hidden infections, immune deficiencies, autoimmune disease, and other disorders. High and low counts alike indicate possibly serious problems.

The researchers, whose study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, identified individuals whose biological age — as indicated by these biomarkers — was higher than their chronological age as having accelerated aging.

According to Tian and her colleagues, individuals born in or after 1965 had a 17% higher likelihood of accelerated aging than those born born between 1950 and 1954. They further found that "each standard deviation increase in accelerated aging was associated with a 42% increased risk of early-onset lung cancer, a 22% increased risk of early-onset gastrointestinal cancer, a 36% increase risk of early-onset uterine cancer."

Tian speculated that certain cancer types had stronger associations with accelerated aging because of the natures of the affected tissues. The lungs, for instance, have a limited ability to regenerate, making them more vulnerable to biological aging.

"If validated, our findings suggest that interventions to slow biological aging could be a new avenue for cancer prevention, and screening efforts tailored to younger individuals with signs of accelerated aging could help detect cancers early," said Tian.

The American Cancer Society revealed in its latest annual report on cancer facts and trends that over 2 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed this year. In the previous three years, the estimate was 1.9 million.

Yale Medicine noted that younger adults are ostensibly the only age group with an increase in overall cancer incidence between 1995 and 2020.

This year, there are altogether expected to be 611,720 deaths from cancer in the United States.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!