Why women don't flex: 4 Friday thoughts

Plus: walking faster slows aging? | NYT's "creativity challenge" | CBD gummies in Vienna

In conversation with Anne Marie Chaker, whose new book, “Lift,” is out this week.

This week’s Fun Friday comes to you from Vienna, Austria, the European Union’s coffee and pastry capital. Let’s get straight to the intentionally provocative headline of this post.

1 | “What would you think if you saw a woman flexing?”

I got into a friendly dust-up with Anne Marie Chaker, a former journalist turned professional, tournament-winning bodybuilder, about the reasons she, by her own admission, wouldn’t think to flex her considerable biceps in the gym mirror….even after watching a litany of underachieving 20-something bros regularly do exactly that.

Here’s a short clip of our exchange:

Catch the entire interview with Chaker on AGING with STRENGTH this weekend.

2 | Walking faster may reduce your biological age

An Inc. magazine story last week caught my attention because it claimed that researchers had discovered a causal link — not just a correlation but a substantiated cause-and-effect link — between two things I’m rather keen on: walking fast and aging slower.

At first, I was skeptical if the reporter had overstated what this walking study, published in Communications Biology in 2022 — yes, Inc. published a post this week based on a three-year-old study — but after reading the study in greater detail, it appears to show strong evidence that:

1. Walking pace influences the length of telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that play a crucial role in cellular aging and overall lifespan.

2. Faster walking over years resulted in longer telomeres, lowering the biological ages of those for whom brisk walks were a long-term, regular part of their lifestyles.

3. A lifetime of brisk walking could lower biological age by several years, and even a previously inactive 60-year-old person who begins walking briskly for 10 minutes every day may be able to add an additional year of life expectancy.

So, if that’s not a good reason to walk like a New Yorker, I’m not sure what is.

3 | The New York Times’ “Creativity Challenge”

Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of this series of guided “creativity challenges” — one for each day of the work week — that I found in this week’s New York Times online. At first it struck me as kind of goofy, kind of simple and very unsupported by a compelling explanation of why people need to take up this kind of challenge.

But then I thought: there’s a reason I was compelled to click that headline link and explore each of the five challenges. And that reason is that, as I’ve written explicitly in a previous AGING with STRENGTH column, keeping a child’s view of the world, open and alive to wonder and exploration, is an incredibly necessary and powerful element in aging with strength in all forms.

One of the five challenges is making time to daydream. I need that reminder as much as anyone, and when I listen to myself and actually make time to just think, without a mobile device or other distraction, I always always find it time well spent. You can’t be creative if you’re addicted to your hourly digital scroll.

So maybe The Times deserves credit, not approbation or eye rolls, for introducing the need for creative thought and mindful seeking of creative expression throughout life.

What do you think?

4 | CBD gummies in Vienna for jet lag

Last week, I warned you that I would be spending the next couple of weeks in Europe, with my 82-year-old mom and 9-year-old daughter, on a three-generation vacation that will likely be the last of its kind for us three. Here’s the report from the front lines:

• The Habsburg palaces here are not air-conditioned, owing to the fact that they were built some 600 years ago. If your mother is the kind that carries a battery-powered portable fan with her everywhere, reconsider whether a palace tour makes sense.

• Old Town Vienna has CBD shops across the street from the famous, gigantic Catholic church. The 15mg gummies are a terrific way to get one’s sleep schedule on European time. My mom bought a bottle of liquid CBD to alleviate her hip pain, from all the walking. She takes regular hits throughout the day…and they work!

• For my newly surgically repaired right shoulder, I always use ice before bed. But here, there’s no plastic bags, anywhere. Good for Mother Earth but bad for my chances of making an ice pack from the hotel ice bucket. Also, all the water bottles are glass, not plastic. Hard to argue against that. I guess.

• Most of the old-school Viennese coffee houses don’t have wifi. Patrons sit and read actual newspapers that are held together in old wooden bindings. It’s like a time warp to 35 — or 135 — years ago, which is a welcome vacation in itself.