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Getting hip: Can you prevent hip replacement surgery?
Plus: AI and the paradox of productivity
Geoff Girvitz
May 15, 2025
Today on Dad Strength
Getting hip: Can you prevent hip replacement surgery?
Hips have been on my mind lately. Orthopedically speaking, that is. The number of people I know with artificial hips is growing and I’ve been wondering if I’ll someday find myself on that same list. I’m an active guy in his late 40s with some wear and tear to show for it. I don’t expect to die with my joints in pristine condition – as if that were possible – but I also don’t want the wheels to fall off early. I want to get ahead of things.
So, I go on a quest to find out how healthy my hips are and what I can do to prevent hip replacement surgery in my future. Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear path toward a solution.
I start by asking my friend, emergency room doctor Sunita Swaminathan, about what kind of exploratory hip imaging I might get. She lets me down with superb bedside manner: “The health care system is really just designed for people already dealing with problems, not getting ahead of them.”
I learn that pesky incidental findings can result in a wild goose chase. Research suggests that if you take imaging of a bunch of 40-year-olds without pain or dysfunction, two-thirds will show spine degeneration, half will have disk bulges and one-third will have disk herniations. So, if getting documentation of a non-problem will have you lying awake at 3 a.m., the juice may not be worth the squeeze.
Next, I speak to Greg Lehman, a researcher and lecturer on pain science and rehab who describes himself as a “movement optimist.” I ask him what might signal the need for a future hip replacement.
The article is paywalled, so let me know if you have trouble accessing it.
AI and the the paradox of productivity
On our most recent call, we talked about AI. For us and for our kids. What stuck out was that everyone knew that at least part of it is a scam. You know this too because, like your smart phone, it is something deeply useful wrapped in crack — and it is extremely inconvenient and/or expensive to extricate only the good parts.
The promise of productivity becomes a lie when it is transformed into a continually moving set of goalposts. The time that AI saves you should theoretically translate into greater freedom. You may choose to re-invest this freedom into more work, sure. But if it’s real freedom, you should be equally free to invest it into your own health, relationships, interests or growth. But is that the case?
The time that AI frees up does not go to you. The value of your productivity goes into someone else’s pockets. Your increased efficiency, only gives you the option to produce even more.
If our role as fathers is to give our kids what we didn’t have, it must now expand to helping educate them about how not to be harnessed into someone else’s pyramid scheme.
I know this all sounds pretty dramatic and I am well acquainted with the up-side of AI but tell me if you’re aware of anything else of true value that has ever been rammed into products and places where you never asked for it.
On a related note, OpenAI just announced a new product that combines crypto and retinal scans. Why? Probably because the same internet that AI is digesting and shitting back out is also making it tough to differentiate real people from fake people. In other words, Sam Altman and Co. are selling you the cure for the disease they’ve created. Nothing to worry about folks. It’s probably fine. Forget I said anything.
THREE POWER STATEMENTS FOR PARENTS
As a parent, you want to have a great feedback system for your kids: something that helps them build skills and feel good about the process. And the higher your expectations, the more support you’ll need to provide. Developmental psychologist, David Yeager, describes this in his book, 10 to 25, as the Mentor persona.
Based on this, I’ve crafted 3 power statements — and how to make them authentically your own. Words matter but how you say them matters more.
What’s it worth? If it levels up how you communicate with your kid, it’s priceless. What am I charging for it? Sign up to the Community Edition of Dad Strength ($5/month) and I’ll send you the resource.
Two things:
You can totally cancel your membership right after you get this and I am at peace with that. It’s fine by me.
If you don’t love this resource just let me know and I’ll refund you. Deal?
Review: Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power
Author, Augustine Sedgewick, is an academic with a keen eye for historical detail and a genuine ability to get that detail across in a readable way.
The book successfully connects the dots between historical figures and how they considered fatherhood. It covers both the ancient (Socrates to Plato to Aristotle to Augustine) and modern (Darwin to Freud). Thomas Jefferson is in there. So is Bob Dylan.
In choosing to focus only on white males (although Plato et al. are a bit more debatable), Sedgewick explains that “the West has been the world’s dominant patriarchal tradition.” However, this often left me feeling like we were bringing beautiful focus to the existing pieces of an incomplete puzzle.
The questions around fatherhood as an identity — and the flow of responsibility, information, feelings, and even blame between father and child — is, of course, worthy of examination and Sedgewick is successful here.
What I’m reading/watching:
Untold: The Liver King
This Netflix documentary (at least the 20 minutes of it that I’ve watched) seems to hold a balance on the unmistakably hard work and the absolute grift created by Brian Johnson. It also seems to be as good a glimpse as any into masculinity as cosplay.
Will Congress Legalize Mark Zuckerberg As Your Therapist?
Spoiler alert: probably
Egyption goslings walk along the Main riverbank in Frankfurt AP Photo/Michael Probst
A quote
“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days.
The three extra days were for leap years.”
A 1963 mom joke
This happened to a cousin in about 1963. He had fitted his bike with a speedometer and would race home for lunch. One day, he burst through the door and yelled, “Mom, mom! I did it! I broke my record!
His mom said, “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Larry. Lunch isn’t ready yet.”
Take care of yourself, man!
Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com