Healthy at Age 80 -- Part I

A few years ago, I conceived of goal that I call "healthy at 80". I intend this to be the first in a series of blog posts about my progress and approaches to this goal.

By "healthy at 80" I mean that it is my goal to be in sufficiently good health at age 80 to enjoy most of the same spectrum of activities that I enjoy now, without significant physical impairment or pain. This would mean that I would continue sailing, hiking, yoga and regularly attending social, cultural and networking events. However, I do expect things to need to evolve over time. My sailing might not include aggressively roll-tacking in a Laser as it does now, and at some point I may need to give up running -- but hopefully these concessions are themselves a few decades away. And my already modest social drinking will probably become gradually more modest. I expect that you get the point.

I have chosen this goal because it is challenging (many people do not make it to 80 in good health), achievable, and something that I can affect by starting action now. A particular reason for pursuing this is that my daughter is 40 years younger than I am, and I would like to be enjoying a wide variety of activities with her until she is 40.

So far I would identify two major phases in my "healthy at 80" program.

The first phase began about 2-3 years ago, when I was 45 years old and first conceived the healthy at 80 idea. I already was trying to live a fairly healthy lifestyle -- including exercising regularly and eating reasonably well. But I started to think harder about how to make this a long-term program. At the time I tended to drink more often and greater quantities at social events, and I cut back on this, generally limiting myself to 2 drinks per day (and over time I have reduced alcohol consumption to well below this level -- generally only 3-4 drinks per week).

The second phase began about 9 months ago. I have long monitored my cholesterol, which runs high in my family, although most of my excess cholesterol is "good" HDL, which seems to mean my overall risk may not actually be elevated. However, last summer I had a cholesterol test which had high enough numbers that my doctor recommended that I start taking statins. I tried this for about 4-6 weeks and did not like the effects, which included hair loss (not generally mentioned as a side effect, because not seen as a health problem) and overall reduced good feeling. So I stopped statins, and decided instead to start a diet that involves mostly cutting out red meat and dairy products and otherwise reducing saturated fat, but not trying to limit caloric intake. At around the same time, I also started to regularly practice yoga. The combined effects of these steps has been truly great:

• My cholesterol dropped by around 25% in 3 months, including reducing my "bad" LDL to normal levels.
• I lost about 10 pounds of weight, going from average weight to quite slender (but very healthy).
• The increased flexibility from yoga has eliminated some minor but annoying aches and pains, and made flexibility-demanding activities like dinghy sailing much more comfortable. 
• The yoga has also contributed to a general reduction in stress levels, improved breathing, and improved presence and mindfulness. 

And the dietary and yoga program has become quite easy and automatic to follow. I plan to continue it for the foreseeable future.

Stay tuned for further developments!

Trends in Information Security

Yesterday I made my annual trip to Infosecurity Europe, Europe's biggest information security exhibition, and I observed a few trends in the information security market -- the biggest involving specialization and authentication/trust.

• Specialization. As the information security market becomes more and more sophisticated, and buyers become more knowledgeable about the real challenges, the solutions being offered are more and more specialized and focused on specific threats. Perhaps the clearest illustration of this is the fact that the two biggest infosec companies -- Symantec and McAfee (Intel) -- were not even present at the event. In the past, they have each had huge booths, advertising their varied, general infosec offerings. Threat-focused players like FireEye are now the companies that are selling most prominently.
• Authentication/Trust. As threats become more severe, it is becoming clearer that restricting network access to trusted persons and devices is one of the key ways to mitigate risk as part of a resilient security architecture. There have long been many vendors of authentication solutions, but they are becoming more and more prominent.

Other less prominent developments that I observed were:

• Compliance Up. Compliance with regulatory obligations and standards has long been a focus of infosec offerings, but this seems to be becoming more prominent.
• SIEM Down? The biggest trend that I noted last year was the growth of products and offerings in security information and event management (SIEM). There are many and increasingly-sophisticated offerings in this area, but the marketing of them seems somewhat less prominent, with solutions protecting against specific threats (see above) taking the limelight.
• DDoS Up? It seemed to me that a particularly large number of vendors are offering solutions to deal with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This is not a new threat, so I am not quite sure the reason for this trend.

Cuba and the US: Stranded in Time

For a couple of decades, I have assumed that the US embargo on Cuba was an anachronism that would end before long -- say, within a decade. Today, reading a 2007 review by Christopher Hitchens (in his superb final anthology of essays Arguably) of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, it occurred to me that I have likely been wrong in my assumption.

As Hitchens notes in his review, in 2007 Havana was "stranded in time", "compelled to remain very much as Greene described it" in 1958 (Our Man in Havana was published less than 3 months before Fidel Castro and his guerillas entered Havana in 1959). Like me, Hitchens assumed that this state of affairs is temporary, "until the day the dam breaks and the full tide of Americanization flows in".

But this temporary situations for a long time -- it has already been almost 55 years. The key reason for the impasse on Cuba is that neither Democrats or Republicans are willing to take the risk that policy change would produce electoral disadvantage in Florida, where many powerful Cubans still think of the days before the revolution. This is certainly not an idle fear. The US election of 2000 of course hung in the balance for months over the Florida vote and recounts, ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. And things were again very close in 2012, although Florida could not have changed the outcome of that election even if had gone to Romney rather than Obama.

So it suddenly occurs to me that the opening of Cuba may not happen in my lifetime, even if I am lucky enough to be around another 50 years. What a shame.

Starbucks in China: Too Expensive?!

See this post on Tech & Deal China

Overheard at the Frieze

I attended London's annual Frieze Art Fair yesterday and was underwhelmed by what I saw. There was some interesting, innovative work, but mostly the galleries and the artists that they presented seemed to be trying to be interesting without knowing what they were trying to say. In case that sounds bitchy, I'll add that I liked a lot more of what I saw at the Frieze last year.

Many Frieze attendees seemed to have a similar vice of trying to act and sound sophisticated without knowing what to make of what they were seeing. Of course views on art are subjective, but there have to be some standards of what is sensible. Here are some of the best things that I overheard:

"This for me is the most dense part of the fair. There is a lot energy here."

"Oh, really!? I mean Hong Kong. You think it's not Hong Kong?"

"Yeah, but it's not the kind of thing you would hang over your couch. You have to know the artist ... and you have to be ready to commit."

"I wanted to see a Chinese gallery, because I wanted to speak Mandarin. But I was so depressed by that one we saw that I didn't want to speak Mandarin."

Well, OK, the last one is something I said. A friend overheard and insisted that it be included in this blog. I really didn't know what to say either.

UK-China Cooperation: A Nuclear Landmark

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Dealmaking for the "Risk" of Success in China

See this post on Tech & Deal China