#28: 🧓🏻 Work Longer = Live Longer?
#28: 🧓🏻 Work Longer = Live Longer?
Plus: Why Ketamine Clinics are Closing
💬 In this note:
🧓🏻 Does Working Keep Us Alive?
💉 The Rise and Fall of Ketamine Clinics
📚 The Peripheral
🧓🏻 Work Longer = Live Longer?
Retirement is meant to be the time to finally relax and live life as you please.
However research suggests that delaying retirement may actually lead to a longer and healthier life. Retiring just one year later, at 66 instead of 65, dropped death rates by 11%
Chenkai Wu, a researcher from Oregon State University, analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study which is a longitudinal survey of Americans age 50 and over. Nearly 3,000 people began the study in 1992 and subsequently retired by 2010 with a majority of the participants retiring at age 65.
The 11% lower death rate is the population average of the study group. Even medically unhealthy retirees saw a 9% decrease in lower mortality risk by delaying retirement.
There may be certain individuals that are sick of working and want to retire as early as possible. For people in this group, early retirement may still be beneficial.
While this study shows a correlation, it doesn't prove causation and raises important questions about the social benefits of work.
Work can provide an environment where individuals are active and engaging with others on a near daily basis. Losing this aspect of life can be difficult to cope with in retirement. It's possible that continuing to work, in any form, keeps both the mind and body active, delaying the onset of physical and cognitive decline.
The decision of when to retire is shaped by many factors, including cultural and institutional norms. It is believed that people feel happier and more in control if they retire at an age consistent with the culture of the country.
In countries like the United States, where work is seen as a necessary part of life, delaying retirement may be culturally desirable as Americans generally have more flexibility to retire when they choose. Early retirement has been the trend in the U.S. for the past decade, only in the last couple of years has there been a trend shift to retire at an older age.
In many European countries, there is a mandatory retirement age limiting the possibility to work for longer and retire later. China was recently looking to raise the mandatory retirement age believing it would help alleviate the financial burden on their social security system. Opposers argued it would lead to increased unemployment among both young and old people. Ultimately, the Chinese government decided not to go through with the change.
Retirement can be a bittersweet mix of good and bad things. While it may provide an opportunity to live life on one's own terms, it also means saying goodbye to a main part of daily life and for many people it can feel like losing a large piece of their identity.
Given the evidence that delaying retirement may lead to a longer and healthier life, it is important that, after someone retires they find a way to replicate the social benefits of work in a low stress environment with emphasis on socialization, learning and physical activity.
💉 The Rise and Fall of Ketamine Clinics
The U.S. Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, created to regulate online internet prescriptions, is enforced by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and imposes rules around the prescription of controlled substances through telepsychiatry.
This act was waived during the pandemic allowing for the prescription of scheduled substances via telemedicine without an in-person consultation.
Many mental health & telehealth companies began thriving in the COVID-era due to this waiver.
The Biden Administration is tightening the waiver of the Ryan Haight Act. Meaning only a 30-day supply may be prescribed remotely before an in-person consultation is required by law.
Ketamine clinics and at-home ketamine providers are heavily impacted by this change.
In late 2022, an at-home ketamine therapy provider, Peak, was one of the first to close its doors due to these changes in federal and state regulations. Other large in-person ketamine clinic providers faced challenges, such as Field Trip Health & Wellness and Delic Holdings Corp.
Field Trip decided to close five of its nine clinics in North America, with additional clinics planned for closure in April 2023, to reduce expenditures and preserve capital.
Field Trip's Freedom program, which offered customers ketamine lozenges to take at home or in a group setting at their clinic locations, was suspended as it relied on The Ryan Haight Waiver.
These recent developments suggest a pessimistic outlook for the commercial viability of ketamine clinic companies, especially those using telemedicine and fast growth strategies.
Psychedelic news source, Psychedelic Alpha, predicted at the end of 2022 that the infrastructure set up by ketamine clinics would be used for the roll-out of other psychedelic-assisted therapies, such as MDMA or psilocybin, in partnership with other companies. The closure of these clinics could hinder the fast roll-out of these therapies after FDA approval.
📚 Book of the Week
The Peripheral by Willian Gibson
2 / 5 Stars
…because I liked the series more than the book, and I never say that.
A book turned series on Amazon Prime, The Peripheral centers around a post-apocalyptic world where it's possible to visit the past in different timelines via VR in a body called a Peripheral. A mysterious murder leads two teams across two separate timelines to work together to find the murderer.
⚡️ Check This Out
If you found your partner’s journal, would you read it?
Cynthia discovers her boyfriend Max’s journal in the episode Points of Egress by the Love and Radio Podcast.