Try This – 4 Things I’m Loving and Paying Attention To

This week I’m sharing a few tools I’ve been using in my own home, some really interesting research, and more. 

High level: 

1. Fascinating science looking at exercise and cancer

2. The best air quality monitor I’ve come across

3. How to protect your HVAC from creating mold

4. A fun YouTube channel that I’m enjoying
   
   

Number 1: How Exercise Lowers Cancer Risk (One Powerful Explanation)

Your muscles are doing something you probably never gave them credit for: fighting cancer.

Researchers at Duke-NUS in Singapore, publishing in Nature Communications, found that healthy muscle releases tiny packages called extracellular vesicles loaded with a molecule, miR-7a-5p, that actually slows tumor growth by blocking a protein cancers rely on to multiply. 

When they exposed colorectal, lung, and bile duct cancer cells to vesicles from healthy muscle, the growth was suppressed. Vesicles from aged, damaged muscle did almost nothing. 

And here's the part that stopped me: in older mice, exercise switched the whole system back on. Treadmill and wheel running reawakened the aging pathway, restarted the vesicle production, and slowed tumors. 

We already know exercise lowers cancer risk. A landmark study of 1.4 million people tied physical activity to lower rates of 13 different cancers, and that link is about as solid as it gets in this field.

What studies like this one from Singapore are trying to identify is how does exercise fight cancer? And what we are seeing is a concrete mechanism showing how muscle itself may be doing some of the protective work. 

Yes, this specific research is early and done in flies and mice, so treat the mechanism as promising rather than proven. But it lines up with a human dataset in the study where people with age-related muscle loss had higher rates of several cancers.

The headline is simple. Keeping muscle on your body as you age is not just about staying strong and mobile. It may be part of your defense.

Number 2: Product I’m Loving

I've always taken indoor air quality seriously because we spend so much of our lives inside. I'm constantly looking for ways to better understand my environment and catch problems before they become bigger issues. After hearing a few people I really trust recommend Airthings, air monitor, I decided to give it a try and am loving it. No affiliation btw, just a genuine recommendation. 

I now have Airthings monitors in my bedroom, my baby's room, throughout the house, and even in my office. One of my favorite features is tracking CO₂ levels. It helped us realize our bedroom CO₂ was getting much higher overnight than we expected, and making a few simple changes has noticeably improved both my sleep and my wife's. I also love having one in my baby's room so I can make sure the air quality stays in a healthy range while he sleeps.

The app makes everything incredibly easy to understand and, more importantly, gives you actionable insights instead of just data. If you want to consistently measure your air quality, I highly recommend it.

Number 3: Protecting Your HVAC System

Recently, through the help of the team at Lightwork Home Health,* I got connected to an incredible group of mold specialists (My Home Health) based in San Diego because I suspected that there was some hidden mold in my house. Through working with their team, we actually found some hidden mold in our HVAC system.

I'm still digging into the mold and finding out whether or not it’s connected to some random health symptoms that I've been experiencing over the last year (primarily eczema on my hand). Nonetheless, we're working on getting to the root of it and making sure the mold doesn't come back.

One interesting tip that I came across recently is to look into my HVAC filter—specifically making sure to not overtax the HVAC system by using too strong of an air filter, which I was 100% doing.

It turns out that if you're using too strong of a filter for your HVAC system, you cause it to overwork or potentially malfunction. I was using a MERV 13 air filter when I should have been using a MERV 8 or 9 filter, which was causing my HVAC humidity levels to go higher and condense more, contributing to mold growth.

Whether you rent your home or you own your home, it's important to make sure you're not only changing your filter regularly, but that you’re also using the appropriate air filter for your system.

Here’s a tip: if you take a photo of your air filter or enter the model number into ChatGPT, it'll give you a good breakdown of what's recommended. Often, manufacturers will also include their filter recommendation too.

Number 4. A YouTube Channel I’m Loving These Days

As many of you know, in addition to my passion for health, I'm also passionate about entrepreneurship and building companies.

One of my favorite entrepreneurs, Michael Girdley, has a super entertaining YouTube channel where he takes the top most successful businesses in our time and dissects their rise and fall.

Businesses like Topgolf and CrossFit, and even trends like pickleball and the collapse of the diamond industry.

It's such a fascinating channel for people who are interested in why a business succeeds, what causes it to fail, and what lessons we can learn as entrepreneurs, or even just as people interested in leadership. 

The videos are short (often less than 20 minutes) and filled with great storytelling and entertainment. I hope you check it out. 

See you next week. 

Much love, 

Dhru Purohit

* Heads up: I have an active partnership with Lightwork because I genuinely believe in their service. If you sign up through my link to test your home, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. As always, I only partner with companies and recommend services that I personally use, trust, or believe can provide real value.

Much love, 
Dhru Purohit

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice; please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any health-related decisions.