Avoiding Preventable Deaths | Thoughts On Silent Killers

What's the current day equivalent of lead, radiation, asbestos or cigarettes?

In Episode #492 of 'Musings', Juan & I discuss: hidden dangers in our environment that can significantly shorten our lifespan, whether you can do anything to avoid things like microplastics, how 'Bad Science' shows media & exaggerated information is unhelpful for informed decision-making, the potential future 'silent killers' that could emerge with new technology, how our modern conveniences might come with hidden costs & the ultimate importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a defence against these unseen threats.

No boostagrams this week, very sad puppy.

Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:42) Environmental Factors and Longevity
(00:06:04) Vaping and Modern Health Concerns
(00:10:01) Microplastics and Future Health Risks
(00:14:46) The Impact of Prosperity on Health
(00:23:02) Calcium, Nutrition, and Media Influence
(00:27:34) Boostagram Lounge
(00:29:11) Researching Future Silent Killers
(00:33:41) Loneliness as a Modern Silent Killer
(00:37:07) Nutrition Myths and Realities
(00:44:54) Sugar and Insulin Sensitivity
(00:50:02) Personal Health Practices and Toxins
(00:57:50) V4V

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Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Welcome, Mere Mortalites,
to another round of the mere mortals musings. We are live here as usual on a Sunday morning, this being the 08/31/2025.
You have Kyrin on this side. You've got Juan here on the other side. Brilliant. And we are here to do a musing session for those who are unaware. Musings is where we deep dove into a particular topic that we have chosen. We give some practical philosophy, effective philosophy, thoughts

(00:32):
and ideas. And today I chose this one and we're talking about silent killers. Silent killers. About serial killers. No, wrong. We're not. We're actually going to be talking about
something I hinted that in last week's episode,
which was, asbestos, asbestos poisoning in particular,
who,
unfortunately my my old next door neighbor

(00:54):
when I was a kid,
passed away.
RIP Jeff. And,
yeah, that was kind of shocking. So I just had no idea. My dad mentioned it offhand. It was from sometime like last year. So just, you know,
it's it's kind of like,
it reminded me of like, you know,
I mum, my mum passed away last year as well. So,

(01:17):
there was two kids who I grew up with, one who was
close to my age, the boy,
Lucky and Tee.
Well, what was the age difference? I'm going to say like three years. I was just like, damn. Like, you know, he probably had a very similar experience these last couple of years is what I did. True. Watching watching a parent pass away slowly.

(01:39):
And, you know, his,
his father's
cause of death was related to asbestos, his actual work. So yeah, it just got me thinking more about like these kind of silent killers, things that
are in the everyday
atmosphere or in your house or things which could that can come and get you. And in particular,

(02:00):
you know,
I was really thinking about
stuff that shortens your lifespan by let's say, like
twenty,
ten years, twenty years plus, where
there's always going to be a silent killer. Someone's going to get you
eventually unless you're one and going to go go beyond

(02:21):
what's it called where you keep going beyond the.
Longevity, longevity escape policy. Yeah, that's the one. So unless you've unless you're like one and can do that,
most of us will pass away
of something. So it's more the
particularly environmental factors which I'm really thinking about now, which,

(02:41):
can get you. So,
I was reading this book, at the moment and book review coming out next week called
Bad Science, which is
ridiculing
and rightly so, most of the kind of quack ideas out there.
This is particularly being things like homeopathy,
of,

(03:02):
calling out like
journalists for
bad interpretations of science and then also the mainstream media of
hyper
like focusing on things which aren't actually a big deal and not focusing on things which are a big deal, a big deal. And because it's not sexy or it's not glamorous or it doesn't show,
you know, things like that. So yeah.

(03:23):
How do we think about it? How can one
examine
history to avoid these things or etcetera, etcetera? So,
I'll give a
little
demonstration of things across history.
Lead poisoning, radiation,
cigarettes,
smog.
I don't know if I'd call bloodletting

(03:45):
necessarily a silent killer. It's that's that's more, I guess, like a practice that people thought was good but actually
was,
so we could eat we could include in that things that are happening now, which people think are good for them but actually isn't. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Cholera from contaminated
water, for example.

(04:05):
And then there was two which I hadn't really heard of before, vinyl chloride and chromium. So
there's a whole list there.
Where should we start one? What's
what?
We'll start off with the easy one. Well, is there something now which is
a silent killer that you think will be a big deal? And well, I think 02/1930. Well, I think before I do, I think we have to define define it just slightly on the silent killer front. Okay. Because,

(04:33):
all or like all those ones that you mentioned,
it's
it's something that
in right now,
we we don't see it for whatever reason. We don't see it. We don't have the data. We don't have the,
the some sort of, like, latency on things starting to happen for it to then reflectively go, oh, shit. I guess the other the other way, it's like, what would what would our kids

(04:57):
ban that we are doing right now? Because if you look back at some of those, right, lead paint.
At the time, if you have people just be like, oh, we use this and whatever, and then information, data, whatever comes out, and then you just become aware. And today, I'm fairly sure that it's banned. Like, you don't you can't just go about buying lead paint. Like, people don't make paint that's got lead in it. But Yeah. I'm sure it exists in the world just like

(05:19):
asbestos
exists in the world still because of Yeah. Houses and places being built with it. There's probably still some warehouses full
of lead paint and
maybe
the I don't know if they'd be allowed to sell it. Probably not,
but certainly not produce it.
So it's probably. Yeah. So it's I guess I'm I was thinking on that. Yeah, what what are my kids gonna or my kids, you know, generation gonna, like, ban Yeah. That will then go like, oh, shit. Like, yep. We we should have been smarter if we if we had these things, but sometimes it's like, you're not gonna have it. So, yeah, I guess that's that's kinda like how I'm I'm coming about it. But, yeah, I guess we can go, like, one to one and just being like, what are things that you've thought or have come up or have seen and whatnot and

(06:03):
go from there? Yeah. Yep. Yep. So I guess one
the problem with the banning aspect as well is that
There's you can ban things, but people will still want to do
cigarette smoking, for example, like smoking just in general.
Banning, it's probably not like

(06:24):
it's it's hard to get past. Maybe it should be banned, but the because it'll save like the,
the health care of a nation
multiple probably billions, if not trillions
of,
you know, care and things like that. And a lot of times governments pay for,
but

(06:45):
you also want to give people free choice. And if they want to kill themselves by doing something, then, you know, how about it? So we don't we don't ban people from snowboarding, even
base jumping and stuff. So,
vaping. Would you put vaping into the category right now? So we know we know cigarettes and smoking,

(07:07):
can cause lung cancer and stuff.
Do you think vaping is going to be one of the ones where in
ten years, twenty years, thirty years time? Because it's
I've heard it's bad, but not as bad as a smoking.
See, this is what I'm
gonna put a disclaimer that a lot of the things we got about to talk is, like, health and scientific related, but not the now is detailed

(07:34):
knowledge of this. How because I was gonna say, what in a vape
would be cancerous?
I thought it was just flavored some nicotine. Yeah, I thought it was actually
the doing damage.
Wasn't the
oils were like
doing stuff to the esophagus and lungs. Once again, I don't I don't know much about this, but this is one of those ones where I was like, what's the difference between vaping and shisha?

(08:01):
I'm actually not sure. What's the difference between like just what's the difference between inhaling,
not not just, like, steamy air, but, like, oil infused
steam, which would, you know, they do at, like, really fancy,
massage places and whatnot? Like, what's what's the difference in in that? I'm not sure.
Actually, this this gets to a point which I, I think about with some of these things when I want to approach,

(08:26):
if I think something is good for my health or not, which is
I'll take a really broad stroke of something. So,
me for one, I hate inhaling
hot gases and actually even just hot things and liquids in general. Yeah. Yeah. So my general rule is, yeah, no smoking. And that doesn't matter if it's cigarettes,

(08:49):
cigars or
like marijuana
or and whether that be marijuana through a blunt
or through a bong.
As she saw, I put up in there as well.
Vaping.
I went for this
photo shoot with a friend of mine once. He was just amateur photographer. I wanted some photos and he was talking about, Oh, yeah, yeah, we can do this. And he brought a vape along and he was asking me like, Oh, hey, man, here, take this and

(09:17):
blow this and we'll get some, like, really cool photos with the, like, the smoke coming out. Yeah. And this was when vaping this was, what year? This would have been 2017,
maybe 2018.
And,
I remember just being like, I knew nothing about vaping at all.
And I just was going like my general rule at the time and still is,

(09:39):
I don't want to
inhale
like
hot gases or things. So I put it aside.
Is that going to
expand my life or extend my life or
well, probably not extend my life, but will it
prevent me from shortening my life?
I don't know.

(10:01):
But I feel this is one of the ones where if you'd done this across history, you'd you'd have saved yourself a lot of lung cancer and other
related things,
even though you couldn't have necessarily proven
45 well, let's let's say a hundred years ago that smoking is bad for you. So Yeah.
I was just as a quick little check, like, it does say that beyond nicotine vapes, you have something like the synthetic liquid propylene

(10:29):
glycol and
vegetable glycerine, and they do have some flavors, but it might have heavy metals just from the actual heating coils and some other carbon capital compounds and matter and stuff like that that they have. So maybe there's more than just the nicotine that might prove,
that I think because, again, the reason I was wanting to define it, which is different, because

(10:51):
when we say silent killers and why I was kinda going down the path of,
will that be a full band, but what people would wanna, like, shun away
is because,
like,
a lot of actions in life can lead to death. This is the thing. Right? So when we're saying, you know, what are the silent killers?
You know, one of the data comes out is like, oh, actually,

(11:12):
forty percent of snowboarders die if you're, like, snowboarding and, like, don't know what you're doing and you're going, we gotta help, man. And it's like, we should ban that. So it's like, not really. That's like a very like, you know the risk like a risk seem fairly obvious as opposed to something that's not. Yeah.
That's a silent killer aspect. It's it's silent because we don't we're not aware that it's a

(11:33):
a risk. Yeah. I guess I'd say. Yeah. Like I might I might put it I might put vaping as a silent killer. Yeah. But, but I'd also
I think there's probably already
I've heard enough things already that saying saying that vaping is not great for your your lungs.
Sure. Yeah. Your brain. So that that one is probably already in the like,

(11:56):
it's a it's a
fucking lousy,
lazy
burglar sneaking into the into the night killer. Like it's fucking hidden some things as it's walking in. Like it's a drunk burglar
or a drunk serial killer comes in, fucking makes a bunch of noise. So you got a bit of time to prepare. Yeah. Before it comes into your room. Yeah. It's not super silent, but like it's it's

(12:17):
it's advising that it's here.
The other one I guess I've thought would just be like microplastics.
So I
I would say that it would become a a sonic killer. A lot of this as well is
why will they be deemed more asylum killers is because,
people living longer. So, you know, if you take it, if you take it a thousand years back and people were smoking cigarettes,

(12:41):
probably no one would have known because everyone's dying. It was way earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So then
the the the cholera and plague is getting them before they are. If you if you had
to go back to, you know, let's go a million. That's a good point. Yeah. If you go back a million years
ago, it's probably wasn't a lot of people with cancer, right? Yeah. Yeah. Why was it? Because they're not living to have cancer. So.

(13:01):
And this is this is actually
kind of,
I don't know the term for it. It's like a scientific term where it's like this exact point.
Oh, there's like this tremendous amount of like increase of cancer in the world or increase of X, Y, Z.
This is terrible.
It's like,
yes, in in and of itself, it's a bad thing that people are dying. It's probably they don't want to or especially the way they're dying.

(13:30):
But
it's the
rise and increase is because people. Yeah. The problem is like, say like, say with
with any age born diseases, which is what like they they tend to say things like cancer or cardiovascular
disease or
Alzheimer's.
Yeah. Dementia.
Those are proportional to the extension of life, which makes it more available for people to have that. So again, you're not going to have you can have cancer and all of these other diseases when you're younger, but it is very rare, but it becomes

(14:02):
more so more prevalent in your 50, 60, 70, 80. And
for a lot of time, we just didn't have humans who existed. Like, the the general average wasn't that high and now it's becoming more and more and more. We're probably gonna see that more. So those
those are, we're not terming those silent killers. I guess we know about them. But I would say something like microplastics,

(14:24):
again, we haven't been using plastics for that long when you think about it from a human timeline perspective, but I think we'll start seeing that in fifty years time where we've now used a lot of plastics and a lot of the things we do that will start showing up in
humans like what we are like in our 60, 70 year olds and go like, oh shit, you've got like plastic related issues. What that looks like?

(14:48):
Like I don't know, I've heard people say like you can they can find,
microplastics in the brain, microplastics in blood,
in In your balls. In your balls, you know. So is that gonna start causing
those sort of problems after like a buildup of twenty, thirty years? I would put that down as a strong signal. I reckon that if we're already seeing today the

(15:09):
plastics in the body, I think that's going to cause some
some issues in long term down the line and we'll go shit. Yeah. We'll get to the point that they'll ban it.
Again, that's kind of like with smoking. I don't know if they will or not just because of the practicality,
but,
yeah, I would say that's a strong proponent. And at least for me personally,

(15:29):
I do try to avoid as much as possible plastics.
Am I still gonna buy water bottles in that whenever I have to? Absolutely. But I will undoubtedly, I will avoid,
heating now stuff in plastic containers. That's up. Absolutely. I'll not do that anymore. Sure. Sure. Glass and metal as much as possible
to hopefully combat some of that. Yeah. So this is a,

(15:51):
once again, our our strategies, I'm sure there's like doctors and people or someone who's right real into
the plastic.
Exactly. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It would be like I've heard I've heard I listened to
a four hour podcast on it from Peter O'Teer with someone else, and I listened to it at two x. I was like, I want to be aware,
but I don't wanna, like,

(16:13):
know the nitty gritty. And of course, like, you can go and listen to like ridiculous
levels of details on it on the like the pros and cons and how to avoid it and what to do and all that sort of stuff. But I think the thing they'll probably say is one,
the plastics like it's not in the actual Tupperware containers and heating up that that's going to get you that's not how it's entering your body. It's in the fucking water system for something or something like that where it's

(16:37):
I feel that's probably more likely,
trying to
get to the point of, just because you know about something, your
resultant actions
to avoid it as well
probably aren't going to be optimal
unless you're
highly detailed and know specifically in your area of Brisbane,

(17:00):
the water's connected up to this thing. So yes, I'll need a filtration system
and I'll also need to like make sure I'm not like touching receipts, for example, and getting BPA or whatever the fuck that is.
When when you hear something so like the microplastics sounds like you investigated this,

(17:23):
listen to a podcast. They probably had some recommendations of like, here's the
top things to avoid.
Was that on their list? You know, don't don't heat things in plastic containers. Yeah. Heating.
Heating. What about just storing things in plastic? The other one was as well. Just like as well. Yeah. Like so not so much the storing of it, but especially

(17:44):
purchasing food that is like wrapped in plastic as well. That's another big one just because it just sits with it for a long time.
Some of the other things I was saying about plastic.
I was thinking like for kids, obviously plastic toys versus wooden toys like that difference because kids are chewing the plastic or they eat the plastic and stuff like that. So there's that as well.

(18:05):
I think those are the main ones I can remember. Yeah. Yeah. And
this is where I just go, Okay,
Kyron from
I'm going to say like 2014,
sometime around then also was investigating this. And
I
have
stored
by and large

(18:25):
in
glass bowls and containers
for since then. So like ten plus years.
Has it made any noticeable impact on my health? No, it's not.
Has it,
also been a detriment? No. Once I bought all the glass balls and stuff. Fine. Yep.
So,
that's that's just one of those ones where it's like,

(18:47):
I just know
the amount of research I put into it at that time was so fucking minimal that
I don't know if that's actually had a significant
impact. Maybe I was aware of that this could potentially be a problem,
but my results and actions and changes were so half assed and baked that I don't know if it's actually

(19:07):
I've really done that much to
protect myself. I'll make like, have I got less microplastics in my system right now compared to them? You know, I haven't measured it like, you know, great.
Like this. See, I wouldn't term this as a silent killer,
but it's like a similar concept. So,
that
there is a

(19:28):
undoubted, again, we merge with machines or something changes.
There is a standard type of time when you hit sarcopenia
and, like, a reduction of your bone mass in all human. What's sarcopenia? Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle, us, and then you've got the equivalent as well from a bone mass perspective. Okay. It happens at around 70 years old, most humans. A little bit younger when you're female, a little bit older when you're a male. It just happens. There's not many you're gonna do about it.

(19:51):
But, you know, I I wouldn't turn that it's a silent killer
that you don't train enough, you know, in your youth, in your twenties, in your thirties
to gain the muscle, to gain the bone mass density that you need. In fact, bone density is grown when you're eight years old or 12 years old. Right? Like around that time is your
most
profitable part of gaining bone density. You continue to gain it on until, like, thirties, and and then it starts decreasing.

(20:15):
So I wouldn't have said it to silent killer, but
that aspect of it, hey, if you don't train and you gain
good muscle quality and muscle mass and bone density in your 10, 10 year old, 20 year old, 30 year old,
again, you probably won't notice and it'll be like, no one's having a conversation in the thirties and forties to be like, Hey,
my bone density is a bit low today. I can really feel it. No. And you don't say that, but when you keep your seventies and eighties, if you're lucky enough to get there,

(20:41):
then you're gonna notice because the difference between those who have good bone density and those who don't because you just start declining them matter what is between someone falling and breaking their hips and a dead in like fifty percent chance in dead in the year or you falling and not breaking your hip because your bone density is so high. So I wouldn't have said
that is a silent killer,
but it's the exact example of, hey,

(21:04):
that's gonna get you. You don't realize it, but that is gonna get you unless you're doing something differently now. I guess I see it in like the microplastics in that way. Absolutely.
Next ten, twenty years, we're not gonna bat an eyeball. I'm sure there's nothing that we're gonna probably see. But the silent killer aspect of it is maybe at the 70 or 80 year old, it's like, oh, there's enough buildup of microplastics

(21:26):
in your brain that now that's actually caused,
I'm not gonna say like Alzheimer's, but it's caused some deficiency in your brain that now is detrimental in whatever. That's probably the silent killer aspect of it that we won't see it in the immediacy, but we'll see it in twenty, thirty, forty years when maybe enough of that plastic build that causes that or causes,

(21:47):
you know, blockages in terms of arteries or it causes some other types of problems that it's like, oh,
shit, that's happened because of the gradual buildup of it. Okay. If I if someone says, oh, well, if you had glass, you know, the entire time for fifty years, you would have 30% less more. And so you wouldn't be in this problem. So I guess that's the the sonic killer aspect. As opposed to like cigarettes where it's now like obvious

(22:11):
that it's creating or like it's amplifying carcinogenic properties to give you cancer and lung cancer specifically.
I think it'll be not as
obviously like directly bad as that, but will create some havoc in the years to come. Sure.
Last kind of point of maybe the pass and then after the boost, Grand Lynch will go a little bit more looking forward and actions that we can take the you mentioned the

(22:36):
bone density there eight to 12. And the first thing that came to my mind was like calcium
is Vienna getting calcium. That's the that's the kind of thing that you need to do, right? Like if you want bone density, you need calcium.
And I have no idea. I'm
inclined to think that this is probably not the case is does it really matter if you're drinking milk
at
eight to 12 years old to get that calcium? Or can you just get it naturally through your food

(23:01):
Nowadays? I don't know. I just remember when I was a kid, it was a big thing.
Gotta get milk in your boy calcium, you need the calcium and calcium is important.
And
it just goes to
take Very I'll give you I'll give you some some some some details on that.
And again, people look it up to actually get the specifics because again, the bad science aspect.

(23:24):
The
the the milk, like the the milk, when you drink milk, the calcium that you do get because, yeah, for bone growth, you need calcium. Right? Part of that,
element is used to to build bone bone density. But when you also drink milk, there's aspects of the milk itself that actually leaches calcium from your bones as well. So, yes, you do get calcium. It also utilizes some of that as well. But to your point, no, you don't. Do you get calcium from just, like, your general eating?

(23:52):
You do if you've got a pretty balanced life. Any of you like your dark green,
leafy type things.
They've got a ton load of calcium. So, yes, you don't necessarily
really have to have milk, but you've got to get it from somewhere in your diet. And in general, as much as I understand it, we've got a balanced diet with enough
other ad items that have that are calcium rich, again, you can have like nuts and stuff like that,

(24:16):
then you're fine. Like, it's not like you absolutely need the milk to do that. It's just the most commonly known for a general human of like, oh, I've been told I've got calcium, so I've got to drink that. But yeah, there's loads of other ways you can get it. Yeah. And this gets to the media point, which is
I got two book recommendations.
And the
the reason I bring this up is we'll have to talk about, okay, how do we even hear about the silent killer aspect? Like where do we get our data from and things like this? Because

(24:47):
if you look back in the past, there's not only been, you know, a lack of knowledge, it's it's it's silent. No one's talking about it. No one knows about it. But then you can even have the opposite aspect where it is known, but you get a huge pushback by invested interest to make sure
for profit reasons that it isn't

(25:08):
regarded as something bad.
Look at the book Merchants of Doubt, and that really goes over the
how the smoking companies,
Philip Morrison,
the big brands,
really
squashed,
manipulated
science
and scientists and the media to

(25:28):
make it seem that there was just enough doubt that the link between
smoking and lung cancer was was tenuous, even though if you dived into it, it was pretty, pretty fucking clear.
So Merchant's Doubt, Naomi Oreski and
some other guy, I can't remember his name. And then in Bad Science, the,

(25:49):
Ben Goldacre's
was saying, okay, there was this, you know, woman from the twenty tens. She was talking about how turmeric can,
if
I'll get the exact wording wrong, but it was essentially like
if you take
more tumor, it's going to help prevent against
some sort of cancer.
And
it was like a very specific statement in a newspaper.

(26:12):
And he goes into it and he's like, Look,
there was this one study. It showed this.
She extrapolated from this or he extrapolated.
I can't actually remember the exact thing.
And to get the amount of
benefit that they're claiming, you'd need to eat like a handful of turmeric. Do you know how fucking hard that is? It's impossible.

(26:34):
It's kind of like eating a spoonful of cinnamon sort of deal. Yeah.
So,
the
not only is the,
like, interpretation of things
all fucking whack,
but you can you can get
the
media, the newspapers, however you consumer information podcasts nowadays,

(26:56):
books
the
if you just hear something
and it's like a one off thing and you go, Oh, that's something bad. I'm going to avoid that from now on. That's probably not a great strategy to have. If it's concerning enough, you probably should dive into it
more and put in
like hours of research into,

(27:18):
Okay, what exactly is the bad thing
about
X, Y, Z topic? And then
going forward from there. Yeah, especially helps. I mean, it's like pretty important. Yeah. Spend some time on it. Gets on to the general health topics, which is which are really fucking hard. So we'll jump into the boostgram lounge now.
And this is the area where we thank supporters of the show

(27:40):
for helping keeping the mere mortals running as well as giving us a bit of feedback and comments.
Was there any this week? There were lots of lots of streams, lots of streams that went through. But sorry, people. It's not going on. Nagano.
The the the Chuck's cloth beanie hat. Chuck stays off. Stays off. But, yes, lots of lots of streams that I could see coming through. Obviously, there's more streams

(28:01):
on on the separate stream, piles over those who are doing that. Thank you very much. Yeah. But, yep, no no boot screen. I think we talked about it in the monthly goals. Cole mentioned, yeah. It seems like the the utilization of BootScram is going exclusively at the moment to
Bitcoin specific podcasts, and we're not that. But the for those who support by comments, by watching this live, by sharing it as well, always appreciate it. So thank you very much for that. Yeah. For sure. So

(28:26):
we've talked about microplastics.
You actually mentioned,
okay,
if I was to say, you're right, one,
over the next like
week,
you got to do some research into
silent killers.
And what are some potential things?
But a young baby girl, Vienna, what are some things that you're going to look up research

(28:51):
so that she doesn't get impacted over the next, you know, forty years of her life, for example, let's say sixty years.
How would you go about trying to research
something like this?
Yeah. I'm interested in how would I go about

(29:13):
researching
it?
Is it something that can be done intensely as well? Because all of these things, the.
No. I think I think it has to be predictive. I think it has to be predictively. Like, I think it has to be
in association with what the continued life would look like in twenty or thirty years' time. Because some of the ones we've kind of already talked about, you know, I'm yeah. I've heard of them before. And the reason they're silent killers is because it's very, very rare to be able to see them in the moment until enough data builds up. So

(29:47):
all I can really think is if I was had to research it to set it up in a in a in the right way,
it would it would have to be
what is the potential
world look like in two thousand and thirty years time? And what are maybe like, practices
or things that are
from the past or like all the stuff that we talked about, what are maybe equivalent or

(30:11):
very
non naturalistic
methods of existence to the exist, I might continue that might make things well. So like an example.
And it's interesting because we live next to a main road. It could be one to be like the, like, pollutants,
pollutants from diesel and and everything else. So that could be one aspect that I go, okay. Well,

(30:32):
might be the the avoidance or,
what are those,
machines called? H packs or whatever for clean air filtration or something like that. You know,
there could be that idea of research of, like, okay, how much of an impact is that? So that could be something else that I study.
But to be honest, so this is one of the things that I was gonna say,

(30:54):
was
you want to be Yes, you want to be risk averse, but you also want to be realistic
in that how much of these things that we say, I don't know about plastics, but let's just say
bad air, like air pollution
or other things. How much of that just becomes null and void if you just
eat well and sleep well? Right? Like, if you have a good system of filtration

(31:18):
by just keeping yourself moving and being in a healthy state,
how much of that then just kind of negates all of these other things that we're talking about? Because yes,
we do think that they're silent killers, but do I do I think that anything I can think about right now is, like, as bad as
smoking and, like, a direct cause of, like, no matter what you're doing, if you're smoking, unless you have good genetics for it, you're gonna get cancer from, like, a lung cancer perspective. So unless you got good genetics. But

(31:46):
is there a potential that, okay, you might live in a in a noisy stress, you know, ridden world,
but you've got a really good practice of sleeping and exercising
to be able to, you know, filter your own system per se or just keep it strong, then it's kinda like, oh, then it doesn't matter. I almost thinking about it in that way. So like because the one I was gonna say was one of the silent killers that comes to mind is going to be, the excessive luxury

(32:12):
is going to be a prosperous world. That's going to be a silent killer. Why do I think a prosperous world is going to be a silent killer? Because you're going to have
a fast forward thirty years if AI does come to pass and all jobs,
disintegrate and everyone just becomes,
for want of a better word, more lazy. So, you know, less training, maybe more time people go partying. You have the more freedom to go and do you think I think a more prosperous world will lead to more silent killer top behavior as your

(32:43):
sleeping, training, eating behaviors just deteriorate. So
you could term it two ways. You could say silent killer is like reducing all of those things. Or I do feel like a more prosperous
world, I reckon, is gonna introduce a silent killer behavior in that just people are lazy byproduct of it. But I I don't know from a research perspective how I would go about doing that because I would cannot I really could only go with what I either predict and then maybe data that's related to that, but even that is

(33:11):
would be so difficult
to really extract right now. Yeah. The you mentioned
I'll jump back to the the researching.
I laughed initially
at luxury,
but
when I think of it, probably like what's one of the been the biggest silent killers over the last, like, let's say in ten years?

(33:31):
Loneliness. Loneliness is now one of those ones where
you can have serious data saying,
you know, it's more on the social aspect for sure. How do you know if someone's lonely? Well, you have to just ask them, like, what are your interactions are on a daily basis or a weekly basis? Do you have someone you could call a good friend?

(33:52):
What's your connection like with your family, etcetera, etcetera?
The work colleagues.
And
that is purely social from what I can tell. And it's not,
or perhaps it's like, you know, the loneliness
pauses you or
therefore like

(34:12):
incentivizes you or makes you do
other activities, which then
shorten your lifespan.
So
is the loneliness the direct killer? No.
It's
the associated things with being lonely that perhaps kill you or perhaps, you know, maybe it is. Maybe if you're just like sitting in on your own feeling bad,

(34:35):
your brain cells are actually deteriorating or something like that. I don't know that
that could be, you know. All those monks going and doing silent treats. Yeah. Yeah. They're killing themselves. But there's, you know, there's variations of loneliness, loneliness as well. Like,
an what is it? Involuntary loneliness. Yeah, probably much, much, much, much worse than,

(34:57):
voluntary loneliness. I mean, I feel like that would be more like solitude
as opposed to like. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So
that's one of those ones where it's like, okay,
the
and related to health as well. When I think of something like nutrition,
that's
it's got a section in the bad science book because nutrition is just one of those topics where

(35:18):
people always fucking get it wrong and make broad sweeping claims, interpret data.
And I think the thing with these silent killers is, okay,
the lead poisoning is going to fuck you up. It doesn't matter if you're from Africa. It doesn't matter if you're from Asia. It doesn't matter where you're from. Doesn't
man, woman, whatever.

(35:39):
Same with radiation. Same with like lung cancer and smoking. Yep.
If you
are on a like red meat diet or something or you you figure out that, you know, carnival diets, the the diet for you, you feel better
and you can prove like, oh, so many people have expanded their lifespans or something like this.

(36:02):
That's nice, but it doesn't work for everyone. And that's the problem with like the nutrition aspect when it comes to like silent killers. When it is, if you look back at the last forty, fifty years, you could say
it was eggs. Eggs are the bad ones, but now eggs are good nowadays.
And, you know, it was, it was like high cholesterol.
But no, wait, there's actually some good types of cholesterol nowadays or it's the fats. But no, it's, it's the saturated fats or polyunsaturated.

(36:28):
Like
it always fucking changes with this stuff. And that's because it goes through more of
a phases
type thing and it doesn't really work for everyone. So the data is all messy. The science is all messy. So those ones I go when when it comes to
nutrition,
I definitely think of along more the lines of,

(36:51):
general,
like as long as you're not eating stuff with, I don't know, magnesium
in it
or chunks of fucking metal
or contaminated
with salmonella or something like that, you're you're probably going to be fine. You just then need to work out what's the optimal diet for you. Yeah. Like, it's obviously like there's obvious

(37:12):
dumb ways to go about it that would become killers, like flat out killers.
Yeah. You can have silent killers for you, but that's that's an individual thing that you need to work out and
can't be applied broadly.
I do want to talk about sugar, though, because you mentioned that at some point.
The other one for me for research

(37:33):
with all of these things,
they come out over long periods of time.
Takes decades for people to work out. Oh, okay.
Smoking, not good. Lead poisoning, not good. Radiation, not good.
Other than maybe like radiation for
yeah, I suppose this one where it's like if you see people,

(37:55):
having bad effects
or changing their actions and they're more closely linked to it, that's where it can be a bit of an early warning sign.
Doctors
who operated,
and were
doing things related to, I don't know, a lung specialist, esophageal or something. I don't know. A doctor who's

(38:18):
related to the lungs and
esophagus and things like that,
they
showed signs of quitting smoking much earlier than doctors in general
because they were seeing the firsthand effects of, oh, okay, there's like
time. This swagger this. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one of those ones where it's like, okay, if you start hearing of, oh, is this thing dangerous or not?

(38:43):
Perhaps doctors studying microplastics
or
people in fucking
plastic factories, if you start hearing stuff or seeing stuff where they're Same with, like, silica, like, silica and other new new materials that we're using in in factories. Right? You've got silica, titanium,
well, like, all aluminum, like, say, all of these parts. Right? It used to be

(39:05):
other
type of materials that we'd be working with, but now in your factories, they've got all of those things. Right? Again, it's gonna be like, is it gonna be in ten years' time when, like, a buildup of silica or aluminum or something else in the body is, like, oh, now it's, like, real bad or you got, like, nettle poisoning or something else because of that.
Brand new things coming out as well

(39:25):
are
worthwhile having a bit of a skeptical take. I think
I vaguely recall when vaping was first coming out, it was hailed as this is going to save so many lives because people aren't smoking cigarettes.
It's like, okay, well,
yeah, maybe. Maybe like, is it that much better for you? Probably not. It's probably better just not smoke at all

(39:46):
or not to ingest
nicotine at all via by smoking. So I don't think the nicotine itself is doing anything different.
Yeah. Yeah. That
they're doing it for the nicotine hit, I guess.
So
when there's, you know, if there was a new product to come out nowadays of like this amazing glue that works really well or this, you

(40:10):
know, new type of nuclear
watch that you can have on or something like this,
Those are ones where it's like, okay,
you know, maybe let some other people try it out for a while. Well, it's like it's like brain chip implants, right? Yeah. Yes. Yes. There's lots of things about it. But again, what are the
five to ten years effects of having all that metal in your in your brain? You know? Or the the pulses of electricity going through on a continuous basis. Because again, even if in two months or three months or six months is, not too much of an issue, What happens

(40:42):
at ten years? You know, what happens in fifty years? Like, a lot of people say, like, selling killer is gonna be phones
in that, you know, we've only got a set amount of data that we've been using. Yeah. You know, all these electrical to our test Yeah. All the electrical things in, for the last, whatever it may be, twenty years. What happens in fifty years where if there's, like, coming on, be like, wow. You just, like, it's the
after forty years, all of that Yeah. Maybe small amount of radiation

(41:06):
or or, like, you know We're all getting hit by that occurred. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that that might be one of those silent kills. Like, I probably say, I don't know, but I haven't looked into it enough. And there's definitely lots of research that's been done on it. Yeah. That's for sure. And you've got the people who are like, oh, don't put your phone into your ear when you're talking to it. You know, we're doing loud speaker. So we had this guy and our

(41:27):
teacher
who taught one and I, in our ace class. And,
he I remember one morning he was talking about why he used Bluetooth
on his ears because we're all making fun of him because he looked like an idiot. He's got this fucking Bluetooth thing on it. And he was like, Yeah, I don't like these things are going to kill us. Like, I don't like having it near my body. And then he said he would shout into his phone from a distance because he didn't want to put it next to his ear. So I mean, that's what I mean. So is he going to die of loneliness first? Probably. This is actually silent killer. Yeah. Well, that's probably the thing. The the silent killers.

(42:05):
Yeah. Well, okay. Prediction time in
thirty years time
Or if if we can look back in over the next thirty, forty years,
will we say
there was just as many silent killers as the ones I've been talking about here, which are physical products?
Or have we gotten to the point where testing

(42:26):
the science with
science methods better? I think there'll be more. I think there'll be more. I think there'll be more. And and and pure purely, it's just gonna be, again, a a number saying it's people are gonna be living by default longer.
And because of that, there will be more prevalence of things that we never would have seen in the past. So I think
I I can't even tell you what it might be, but

(42:47):
let's say if I can cooking on a barbecue and the barbecue releasing toxins from the metal, right, and you just, like, get it from the smoke that comes up,
Maybe they can identify and, like, oh, yeah. But if you do that for 60 years, then enough buildup of this causes you this problem. Or it could be the buildup of, you know, when you cook a toast too much and goes black or you've got, like, really black bits on your food. And not if you do that, but you do it over sixty years and there's enough buildup of la la la la la that causes this problem. So I actually think it's gonna become more prevalent because we're gonna have more people living a little bit longer to show up all of these issues. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that'll be the case. Okay. Yeah. That's so sorry. Skip. That that's the same thing with, I think so from a sugar perspective, I think

(43:29):
the
again, is sugar in itself bad? No. Just like saying, I think red meat in itself is not bad. But to the individual
and to the over consumption of it to a certain degree, that's when you start building up those problems. And some of those problems are not seen until
way later down the track. Now
I do think the trend right now is that there's more people consuming more sugars and not just, again, sugars in itself is like a super simplistic tell term. You can have fructose. You can have, you know, manufactured type of sugars. You can have non manufactured type of sugars. It differs High fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn corn syrup.

(44:05):
To be specific, it actually what is dependent there is the length of the sugar, molecule or the structure itself. That's the big changes that it does and how much some of that takes a breakdown and whatnot is the impact that you see in sugars and your insulin sensitivity. So, you know,
do we have problems with insulin sensitivity in the world today? Yes. Do I think it's gonna become worse because people are gonna be living longer and have more insulin problems? Yes. I could say I would say, nope. That's gonna be a a silent killer. And to maybe your point is, like, of anything, maybe that's the one that I'm like, okay. I'm gonna be careful around what, you know, my my daughter eats Mhmm. In that I'm probably not gonna be feeding her tons of sugar early on in her life to try and avoid that insulin,

(44:47):
problems that might come with that. So, you know, that that to me, I was using in default. We're gonna see more more silent kills. Yeah. No. That's a that's a good one. I was thinking
we might see just as many, but they're gonna be hidden behind other stuff, which we're more worried about. Let's take something like
VR glasses and, you know, Apple's coming out with this new thing. Oh, my God. Like, it's,

(45:09):
but the headset pro or whatever.
Let's say that becomes like a wide, widely spread. Everyone's using it. And
I don't think it will, but
let's just say it
does. The
a lot of things you might hear is like from the media,
oh, like people are spending all their time indoors.
They're not,
connecting with people in real life anymore.

(45:31):
You hear all of like these social bad things. And then the thing that might actually be getting us is like,
let's say it's just a certain type of light is fucking us up. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's
I think there'll still be a strong
physical component to a lot of these things as we're trying to create more new fancy products for everything,

(45:52):
certainly more
consumer based than we were
one hundred years ago or at least access to different types of consumer products.
There's going to be just more
more shit around you. The part of the deal.
You know, even just things like this, I look at my water bottle, it's all mangled

(46:14):
Veneer of this paint type thing has fallen off. It's like a little bit rusty here. Like, is this something that I should be worried about at all?
Maybe. Maybe. I sometimes think about these things and
here's just some of my personal
stuff that I've changed over the years.

(46:34):
Number one has been a conscious effort to avoid certain types of environments. Used to work in coal mines and even back then, I remember like I would come home after certain shifts and I would be like, snorting out, snorting out. And it's just this black
shit coming out of me. I could even spit and it would have like this black tinge to it. Good. I have no doubt that was bad for me. And coal miners long

(46:58):
is a known thing. Yeah, they try and keep the, you know, particles per level, per volume
at certain levels.
If it's higher than this year, you are meant to wear a face mask and these sorts of things.
Even I was following all those practices and whatnot
still. Yep. I still don't think it's a good thing if I'm snoring up no black shit out of my lungs and, and things like that. So,

(47:25):
that
painting,
cleaning, even like if I've got big smells coming at me and I'm,
you know, painting like I've painted my parents house,
I go, Yeah, you know, I probably should have worn
a mask
doing that.
But the good thing with a lot of this is it's just a one off.

(47:46):
So.
Yep. Yeah. Asbestos
isn't really that bad. As long as you're doing a daily. Yeah. Daily removal of it or something. Same with like going, going to the beach and,
you know, going to the beach is fine once in a while. If you go in there every day and you're getting sunburned
on a weekly basis,
that's, that's terrible. Like the sun will get you, the fucking radiation will get you. So things like that.

(48:11):
Number one for me would probably be
the sugar.
Because I do have a sweet tooth.
I did get given five kilos of cake on Tuesday. And I've been working my way through that.
It's fairly good cake. That's like, again, I don't know what what has happened in my life, but for whatever reason, I'm just not a sugar person at all. Yeah. My brother isn't. He's more of a savory person. So like an individual thing. I think my mom was more of a sweet tooth as well. Sweet tooth. And

(48:40):
my dad said he used to be. And then over the years, like all he eats now is dark chocolate and like the darker the better. So. Okay. Yeah.
That will change for me. Yep.
So,
yeah,
I have tried to avoid other things like hair products.
Obviously, not a worry for me anymore. But when I did have hair, I'd try and avoid

(49:04):
soaps and just a lot of things where I was like, from smear and shit on my body, even sunscreens. I'd try and find like
ones with zinc in it and that were less
oily. I don't know. Like, this is so
ephemeral and not scientific, but I feel it probably was
making like

(49:24):
a decent,
it's like a decent rule of thumb to
avoid
putting shit onto your body as much as you can
to
not
expose yourself to X amount of environments which have a noticeable impact on you. The sunburn,
cold, cold, ice and stuff like that. So

(49:45):
the only other things I put baking soda under my armpits daily to stop the smell.
Is that something that could get me, you know, am I gonna get,
armpit cancer in
thirty years because of that?
Maybe
that's that's a risk I'm willing to take.
I think, look, I think just my my whole view on Silent Hills is that

(50:08):
you actually can't get away from toxins.
You can't get away from things that actually are detrimental to your body no matter what you do, unless you are living in a tube
with nothing inside of it. Right. And toxins is a very good
trigger warning word to look out for when it comes to science and especially at places like yoga and. Well, but this is the thing when it when it says like when

(50:31):
when you see like a juice,
theory and it's like, hey, this is detoxifying.
Shut the fuck up. A 100%. Right? So like a toxin
is something that comes into contact with the body or is ingested
that is in some way, shape, or form toxic. And guess what? A whole host of things aren't right. That's like, if you have an overconsumption

(50:52):
of potassium, that's toxic. You have an overconsumption of magnesium, that's toxic. If you have an underconsumption of these things, it's toxic. Right? So you can have lots of talk like, you can have the
smoke. Right? Toxic. If all of these things are toxic, and so there's toxins in the body, but the process of detoxifying
and, again, it's not because you fucking drink carrot juice
And kids? Or you sweat it out. Yeah. Like And the I guess, right. Detoxifying

(51:17):
is done by things like your liver. That's a detoxifying
process in that it picks up all of these toxics. So think alcohol.
You ingest alcohol, it has things that are not fantastic for the body, the liver grabs it all out, and then it excretes it out. That's you detoxifying.
So
I think the silent killers, and so what I was going to touch it with is I actually think it's going to be

(51:42):
just the progression of technology
and the advancements of life are gonna introduce all these silent killers because we're gonna tip somehow,
some way
over the barrier of what generally your body can do. As in, if we were all living in a very simplistic way, like we're living in the farmlands and everything else,
yes, there's other things that kill you. Yes. But if everything was going fine on like the new standards of health and living and, cleanliness and water, you know, pollution, all of that,

(52:12):
I think you would really be able to live quite a long time because
the generalness of your body's ability to just excrete things will continue as long as you're sleeping well, eating relatively well, and keeping yourself in a in a motion
filled world. Fantastic. But I think the advancements of technology will just introduce,

(52:32):
as you say, all these varying new ways of technology or things that we interact with that either, a, we haven't done before or it just starts to become
more than your body generally uses to be able to process. And so, like, once that load hits and this is on, like, environmental things, once it goes beyond that, your system's ability to get rid of it, I think that buildup of whatever it is will just create problems.

(52:56):
And some, I'm sure, will create, like, the silent killers. So they'll be like, oh my god. It's that load up of all of these that just a killer. I'm sure your your body does process microplastics out. Maybe okay and maybe maybe it doesn't, but maybe once upon a time when there was less of them in the world, plastics in the world, it was kind of like a non concern because, okay, yes, you build up. Maybe you don't get rid of them, but it's just so few and far between that it doesn't really matter. But if it moves now to a world where

(53:23):
let's just not say it's plastic. Let's say it's, yeah, titanium or aluminum and somehow
you do, you know, it does corrode a little bit and you ingest aluminum and after seventy years, you're gone because too much aluminum. You know, it's going to be like the advancement of all the things we use that are just different to what has existed that will come up slowly and get us. Yeah, you can think
from all of that, I'll just go natural, everything natural. That'll help me,

(53:48):
you know, save me off from all of this silent killers shit and all of these products. Fucking flakings. Yeah.
Well, you know what? You you go live that lifestyle and what do you you get? You get fucking mad cow disease because
you're fucking on the farm, you're eating that. And then next thing you know, you've got like, you know,
what was that? It was like a brain

(54:08):
bacteria or something that would fuck up your brain if you've got mad cow disease. Yeah. If you eat a cow that has mad cow disease. So
that's a silent killer as well. It's just really fast compared to the like a lot of these slow ones. So yeah, the I think
I. That's what I say. I've got like a naturalistic bent to me. Like if I can get something that's natural

(54:30):
and in a certain extent, I will but I'm under no illusion that most of this natural stuff
is
just as like there's,
there's gonna be trade offs with that as well.
Like my summary is what can you do about selling killers? Honestly, not much. If they are silent killers and we really don't know about them, they're not doing.
But the
thing that you can't control is maximize your ability for your system to be great and healthy to process things. And to do that, it's sleep well, train lots, eat relatively well for whatever that means to to your body. Obviously, don't do

(55:03):
the stupid things that then will encourage,
you know.
If it feels slightly dicey, it probably is in some way. Again, you're still coal mining. You know, it's probably going to there's probably going to be some other problems that come up out of it just beyond that.
If you're ingesting a kilo of sugar per day. Yeah. If if you're. Sure it's going to come up with some problems. If you spend so much time sitting down

(55:25):
at your job that when you get up in the evenings or
like after work and your back hurts or your ass hurts or you feel like
that, that's probably not good for you. If you stare at a screen so long that your eyes start to hurt, Probably not good for you either. Yeah. Right. Correct. Correct. So I think there's loads
of tiny habits and things that you can do that

(55:46):
help you out. I think that's honestly the only thing. Again, if I were to research about telling killers come, I think my answer would be more so I don't think I would waste my time. Trying to predict them. Yeah. I think I would just spend more time on, okay, well, how can you have the healthiest body now and continue that for the I'm sure what will happen of some other things to pop up that are telling killers and just kind of hope and pray that you've kept yourself in a state that your body has been able to process and work through that as best as it can. Agreed.

(56:15):
I don't think that listening to the media, mainstream media and even
not only mainstream media,
but just media in general, even the small podcasters and stuff like that,
they will go off on fucking unhinged rants about the most bullshit and sane things. There's the small ones. And then the the big mainstream media will get a whole shit ton of stuff wrong as well. So

(56:38):
trying to spend any time filtering it out
of
this is good or this is bad is
I wouldn't make that an active effort. It'd be like a passive thing. If I hear if I hear in five years time, oh, there's some current concerns about the light source from X device doing something
to your eyes.

(56:58):
Okay. Maybe that's something I'll like spend a little bit of time on. But yeah, to give you like an example, I'll listen to I was gonna listen to a podcast from Peter a long time back that was like three hours on sunscreen. I listened to a little bit of it, but I kind of went again
like, am I Do I use enough sunscreen? Do I use enough sunscreen? Is is is this really gonna be impactful? Like, I I don't believe so in the my way of living. So Yeah. But again, if you go into the beach every single day, okay, maybe get yourself trained up and understood on that. So I think it'd probably be whatever you do a lot of.

(57:28):
That that as well. Like tuning in on that and to to help you out. Yeah. Is it maybe potentially I'm getting like metal off the barbell
that I use all the time and like that's gonna create problems. If you're addicted to tuna
and fish
and you eat
that for every single meal of every single day. Oh, yes. You're gonna get mercury poisoning. You're gonna have some bad times. Yes. Yeah. So things like that. Yeah. Alright. I think we'll leave it there. I don't know if there's any comments at all left through while we're having a chat. No.

(57:54):
We'll leave it there. Thank you very much for tuning in again to this Musing Sessions. We go live at 9AM on Sunday. It is August 31. So if you wanna rock up and have a conversation with us, feel free to do so. If you've been listening to this after the fact,
feel free to free time. Live. Yeah. All the good things, share. If you wanna try out some bootstraps, you can. Use all the good apps out there. Yeah. Immortals.com

(58:15):
forward /support.
Immortals podcast. Immortals podcast. But you can put one on one and then it'll Correct. Correct. So you can if you wanna just see how that interacts as well, you can do that. Yep. Sounds good. We'll leave it there. Thank you very much for being immortalized. Be well. Bye now. Bye now. Bye.