Slashing Bad Cholesterol By 62%, U.S. Median Income, And Rockefeller Didn’t Have Advil
Hi all,
27 interesting things I learned over the past few weeks:
A daily pill cut "bad" cholesterol by about 60%. A wave of 2026 treatments all target one protein, PCSK9, which controls how much LDL your liver clears. One is a pill, where current PCSK9 drugs are injections, and a separate one-time gene edit dropped LDL 62% in early trials. (NEJM, 2026)
The people who eat the most fiber die the least. In a large NHANES analysis, the highest-fiber group had 35% lower all-cause and 49% lower cardiovascular mortality than the lowest. (NHANES analysis)
An mRNA vaccine, the same tech as the COVID shots, is showing stunning early results against pancreatic cancer. That cancer usually kills fast, about a 13% five-year survival rate. The shot is built per patient: after surgery, scientists sequence the tumor and train the immune system to hunt its leftover cells. Half the patients responded, and 7 of those 8 were alive six years later. (Nature, 2024)
Sitting all day isn't wrecking your back. An umbrella review of 41 systematic reviews found no reliable link between sitting and back pain, and one even found it slightly protective. (Swain et al., Journal of Biomechanics, 2020)
The peptide everyone's injecting has almost no human evidence. BPC-157 has three small, uncontrolled human studies for pain, all from the same lead author, and the FDA placed it on its Category 2 list over safety concerns in 2023. . (Natural Practitioner, 2024)
"Upper and lower crossed syndrome" doesn't cause your pain. Those "bad" postures show up just as often in people with none. Compare backs with and without pain and there's no meaningful difference in spinal curve or pelvic tilt. (Laird et al., BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 2014)
The richest man alive once lived worse than you do today. Rockefeller had no penicillin, no sunscreen, no Advil, no reliable electricity. By almost any measure, now is the best time in history to be alive. (Morgan Housel)
For most of history, about half of all children died before age 15. Roughly a quarter died before their first birthday. That was the baseline across nearly every society until very recently, and it's one of the clearest measures of how far medicine and living conditions have come. (Our World in Data)
Wisdom is prevention. Most good outcomes come from dodging predictable disasters, not escaping them cleverly after the fact. (Attributed to Munger, unverified)
The best math you'll ever learn is the future cost of today's decisions. Most choices feel free because the bill shows up later. (Morgan Housel)
Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. To predict behavior, watch what people are rewarded for, not what they say they value. (Charlie Munger)
Winnie the Pooh was a real kid's stuffed animals. Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, and Tigger were actual toys owned by A.A. Milne's son, Christopher Robin. Only Owl and Rabbit were invented. The originals sit in the New York Public Library today.
Most Americans earn less than you think. US median household income in 2024 was $83,730, meaning half of all households made less. (US Census Bureau, 2024)
You have everything five-years-ago-you wanted, and you're still not satisfied. Worth asking whether the problem is the goal or the belief that arriving is what makes you happy. (Alex Hormozi, paraphrase)
Your best years start when you decide your problems are your own. You stop blaming your mother, the economy, or the President. (Albert Ellis)
The most powerful story in the world is the one you tell yourself about yourself. Too much self-criticism kills ambition, too much arrogance blinds you. (Shane Parrish)
Patience is not passivity. Patience is pushing hard while results take time. Passivity is doing nothing and calling it faith. (Jay Yang)
You wouldn't call it a win if it was easy. The difficulty is the whole reason it means something (Alex Hormozi)
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Get everything out of your head so it can do the part it's good at. (David Allen)
People want what you have, but not what you went through to get it. The gap between wanting the result and paying its price is where most people stop. (Jimmy Carr)
"How you do anything is how you do everything" is a lie. Whether you make your bed says nothing about the care you bring to the work that counts. Most decisions don't matter; a few matter enormously. (Jay Yang)
AI killed the know-it-all writer, and that's a gift. The survivors won't be the ones who know the most. They'll be the ones weird and specific enough that only they could have said it. (Jonathan Goodman)
The more novel your experiences, the more interesting your work. Lived experience is the raw material AI can't fake. (Jonathan Goodman)
Good writing is just brevity. Whoever says the most in the fewest words wins. (Morgan Housel)
Value per word. Everyone's busy, tired, and stressed, so distill the idea into as few words as you can. That's where the value lives.
Build like you'll only ever have one client. If your only way to grow was that client referring others, what would your service have to become? (Alex Hormozi)
Describe their pain better than they can. Nail the problem and people assume you have the solution. (Alex Hormozi)
Best,
John
P.S. In case you missed it, my take on shoulder impingement stirred up some controversy.
