AT THIS HOUR
Friday Morning Forum On The Business Of Our Behavior
“I love a good nap. Sometimes it’s the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning.”
— George Costanza
October 23, 2026
24%: The portion of employees who are staying in their jobs in order to keep their health benefits, up from 16% in 2021, according to a new survey from Gallup and West Health. This so-called “job lock” is getting worse, likely due to rising health costs and–though if people are staying in jobs they don’t like, what will come of their mental health?
Science: Since we reported last week that marathoners have a higher incidence of, guess what, cardiac interventions, like stents, a group of elite runners said they have reached out to their physicians who said they’d never heard of this but a few ran some lab work and, voila, there were some markers showing high risk of a cardiac event - “I had a 400 CT calcium scan score, which is not good,” Mark, a long time marathoner said. The calcium score measures the amount of hard calcium plaque deposits in your arteries and it’s there typically for genetic reasons. It’s like a rusting of your heart I’m told and Mark was blown away. There are interventions - statins is a start, but there’ still more to learn and other testing and monitoring matters. Paul Thompson, MD, has done much of the research on endurance athletes and the link to cardiac care. PCPs polled about this had no idea - just 4% said they believed it, and 78% said it made no sense to them, but Thompson's research says otherwise. What do you think?
Sport: Yesterday's 30-minute call discussed the 20-year tracking study that uncovered a 10-fold higher incidence of adverse health outcomes from youth travel sports vs. rec. Go here for the recording and reach out with any questions.
Policy: MGM-15 is not the name of a suite at the Las Vegas hotel but the drug that tragically led to a fatal overdose in San Francisco this week. This is the first fatality from the potent kratom-derived opioid being marketed at smoke shops and gas stations. Naloxone is needed in these situations, if only we could avoid them entirely. Several states have been banning the drug and the stories of people affected by Kratom keep coming.
Perspective: The one about the time I backed into the electric pole. Essay here.