Wellness & Longevity

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur was once asked to describe his Israeli partner. He said, “Like all Israeli men, he is short, intense, and balding.” I laughed out loud because it was an apt description of me and many of my Israeli friends and family. Within each Jewish diaspora (Ashkenazi, Syrian, Irani-Iraqi, Greek-Turkish…), members of the Jewish community, on average, are genetically related to each other as 4th or 5th cousins are, with some evidence of multiple lineages of more remote relatedness. My own diaspora, Ashkenazi (Central-Eastern European), is close-knit enough that my wife and I had to undergo a test...

On a recent cold evening, as I was rushing out the door, I grabbed my daughter’s jacket and put it on.   Outside, I nestled my hands in her jacket’s pockets, and felt something wrong. I was touching something that made me stop in my tracks.   I pulled out the item I had felt, and stared at it. It was a lighter. Why am I finding a lighter in my daughter’s jacket?   I instantly cancelled my outing and returned home. I showed the lighter to my wife. “Why was this in her jacket?”   My wife was mute...

I started the company to create great, healthy snacks.   To make them healthy, I couldn’t use sugar, honey, or maple syrup, which spike blood glucose. I also couldn’t use artificial sweeteners like aspartame, which the World Health Organization classified as, “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”   To make the snacks great, I couldn’t use stevia or monk fruit, which left me a bit of an aftertaste during experimentation. I also couldn’t use polyols (sugar alcohols), because the gastric discomfort they were causing wasn’t great.   So I was left with dates, which, to my happiness, were my sweetener of choice...

How to maximize pleasure and minimize risk when indulging.

After three decades of avoiding sweets and desserts, I have mostly lost my taste for them. I still crave something sweet every once in a while, but either my own products or fruits satiate me.

My one remaining weakness that has never gone away is a good tiramisu. In fact, I am experiencing a strong craving for it right now, at this very writing.

What makes a good tiramisu so exceptional for me is not only my extreme liking of it, but also my avoidance of it. I have it once every few months.

When I have it, my first spoonful of it is out of this world. It is one of the most heavenly experiences of my existence.

I had a tough childhood. I was happy to have enough food (as nutritionally deficient as it was) and second-hand clothes, and the luck not to have fallen prey to abuse, violence, and drugs.   I never expected much beyond struggle. This attitude made me strong. Later in life, when I had to deal with extreme difficulties, I was able to do so with equanimity and without letting the stress get to me.     When I encountered Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1888 saying that “what doesn't kill me makes me stronger,” it rang true.   In biology it has been shown...