June 2025
Friends and Clients,
Healthy Wealthy Wise provides applicable and to-the-point info to expand your knowledge on health and finances and inspire your heart and mind. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for following along!
Jon
Healthy
Today we dive into one of the most beloved drinks in the world: COFFEE! What a powerful beverage it is, so powerful that some historians even believe it fueled the Renaissance- and I’m not surprised by that idea.
Building on April’s blog about polyphenols in fruits and beans, coffee gives you those same powerful antioxidants PLUS bonuses like longevity support, brain protection, and even possibly - DNA repair?!
Here’s a great explanation of some of the powerful benefits from Dr Rhonda Patrick citing some great studies and diving into the science behind this:
Drinking THIS Every Morning Could Help You Live Longer (New Research)
Coffee & Longevity
People who drink one daily cup of coffee tend to show a younger biological (epigenetic) age—around 0.12 years younger per cup. Drinking 3 cups may slow epigenetic aging by up to a year Link
Review data from over 50 studies across the globe suggests that 2–3 cups per day could add up to two healthy years to your life by lowering risks for chronic illness Link.
Brain-Protective Traits
Thanks to caffeine and polyphenols like chlorogenic acid, coffee drinkers show significantly lower risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and stroke—one study cited around a 34–37% drop in Alzheimer’s risk if you drink 3+ cups daily. The long-running AIBL observational study (over 10 years) showed coffee drinkers to slower cognitive decline and 5–8% less buildup of amyloid plaques (linked to Alzheimer’s risk) Link
Reduction in cellular damage and all causes of death
In a month‑long trial, people who drank 500 mL of dark‑roast coffee daily saw a 23% reduction in DNA strand breaks—a key marker of cellular damage Link
15% Reduction in all cause mortality with 3.5 cups a day?! Link
Things to consider -
Morning only Aligns with cortisol levels & avoids messing with sleep. Half life of caffeine is 10-12 hours so cut off your intake within that time frame - ex If you go to bed at 10, consider stopping at 12p or 10a to be safe.
Use paper‑filtered brews
Stick with 2–4 cups/day
Removes cholesterol-raising oils while keeping antioxidant effects intact.
That sweet spot maximizes benefit without overdoing caffeine
Skip (or swap) dairy
Milk can inhibit the absorption of some coffee antioxidants.
As if we needed any reason to love coffee any more! But it’s quite cool to be able to link these health benefits to our morning coffee!
Wealthy
Time IN the market is more important than TIMING the market. The numbers are clear.
The news headlines seem to drive many investors’ actions (or inactions.) Much of it is based on a sense of urgency or complacency. However, the simple tried and true method of just staying the course and hanging on tends to outperform any short-term strategy enacted when you look across multiple years.
Oftentimes, the perceptions of downturns are that they’re more detrimental than they really end up being. On the flip side the upswings are made to be more dramatic and positive than they usually are. Like getting gym gains, reliable investment gains come from the accumulation of small increases and contributions across time. Starting and stopping, or going in and out of the market makes gaining momentum hard and often you tend to miss opportunities that come because predicting the markets is an impossible task.
Here’s some stats -
Capital Group looked at investors who contributed $10K annually to an S&P Index Fund over 20 years ending 12/31/2024 and found if they invested on the best day each year, returns averaged 12.25%/yr, growing $200K to $802,000.
If they invested on the worst day each year, returns still averaged 10.54%/yr, ending at $627,000
The lesson?
Even if you had perfectly BAD timing you’d still only cut your average returns 1.7% points per year. This is because many of the lowest days are followed by periods of significant rebounds. And if you’re not invested, you miss those too.
Vanguard and Rothschild report the best and worst trading days tend to come in clusters—often within days of each otherLink
The Cost of Flinching
Vanguard notes investors who move to cash after a downturn often underperform: Sitting in cash for 3 months after a drop, there's a 61% chance you'd underperform a 60/40 portfolio and 79% chance over 12 months—with average returns lagging by 9% Link
The last few months have brought waves of uncertainty and people typically make knee jerk decisions in these moments. To time the market consistently over the years is a literally impossible feat. Especially considering the hundreds of thousands of stocks that exist and the incredible overlapping of complexity of economic and geopolitical factors that can affect any of those stocks on a particular day. Although once in a while it’s possible to get lucky. (And anyone who gets lucky often might just be trading on insider info… looking at you Washington.
***This material was created to provide accurate and reliable information on the subjects covered but should not be regarded as a complete analysis of these subjects. It is not intended to provide specific legal, tax or other professional advice. The services of an appropriate professional should be sought regarding your individual situation
Wise
The orientation of all of nature to that which is difficult.
Many years ago, I read Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Of every brilliant line in that book that I could possibly glean wisdom from, this passage sticks with me to this day.
“It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us.”
Rilke hits on something that was innate in me, the observation of truth reflected in nature. Although we are a part of nature, humans have created a world that is somewhat of an agreed upon illusion. ex - the boundaries of property or countries, value of money, the existence of certain entities we affiliate ourselves with, the titles we hold and power of those in office above us…nature doesn’t live lies or create illusions the way humans do. The rest of the natural world is only capable of being itself.
Human laws and ideas shift throughout time and often don’t hold up to the changing complexity of our society, intelligence, and shifting values. They eventually break down and are replaced
with new ways of thinking of organizing ourselves.
But the laws of nature are constant. They are unchanging. And all nature is completely authentic without trying to be. It is itself, showing us the truth of the world we live in and the real terms we live by. And all nature has developed to do the difficult work.
A simple walk in the woods will show you these things.
Trees are oriented toward hardship -The bark on the trees develops from adversity and protects the trees from animals, insects or the elements like fires. The deeper the roots, the sturdier the tree in its place. The reaching to the sunlight for growth and the ability to remain rigid enough to stand, but flexible enough to sway with the heavy winds. Life, death, and rebirth… All there for us to see in totality. And we can learn lessons about our own life from these observations.
So it makes sense to live in accordance with the rest of nature and stop trying to exclude ourselves from its ways of being. We are nature.
So things like leaning into the difficulty or being patient in bringing forth something you are creating is just as innate in us as it is a tree, or at least it should be.
So lean into the difficulty in your life, you're made for it. And when you begin to become impatient on bringing something forth, remember this quote
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
— Lao Tzu
Vibes
Ancient Incan instruments that mimic animal sounds almost perfectly using only water and clay.
This is an astonishing artistic and engineering feat.
