CEO Diagnosed With Heart Disease at 30: Health as a Business Asset

Boomer Anderson, chief executive officer, was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease at 30. The diagnosis, he writes in a first-person essay for Inc., reframed how he sees work, deadlines and the things that feel urgent.

"Other people should not need a diagnosis to reach that understanding," Anderson writes. His argument is straightforward: health is an investment, and improved performance is one of its returns.

What does the research say about sleep and judgment?

Anderson points to a 2003 study published in the journal Sleep. Researchers assigned healthy adults to sleep four, six, or eight hours per night for two weeks. The four- and six-hour groups developed accumulating deficits in cognitive performance. Their reported sleepiness did not fully reflect how badly they were doing. They lost ground without recognizing it.

That matters for executives. "Feeling capable does not necessarily mean you're bringing your best thinking to the decision at hand," Anderson writes.

A second study sharpens the point. In 2011, The Journal of Neuroscience published an experiment in which 29 healthy young adults completed a financial gambling task after normal sleep and again after a night without sleep. Sleep deprivation shifted their preferences toward pursuing larger gains and away from loss aversion.

Anderson concedes the limits. A laboratory task cannot reproduce the complexity of running a company. But it gives leaders reason to question whether exhaustion leaves their judgment intact.

Why does Anderson say health compounds?

Business people already understand compounding, he argues. Money earns returns. Knowledge improves the next decision. Relationships deepen through years of showing up.

Health works the same way, according to Anderson. The investments are ordinary: sleep, movement, decent food, recovery, and appropriate medical care. Their value grows through consistency.

The mechanism is concrete. Better rest brings more attention to a difficult problem, more capacity for a demanding day, and the ability to listen without waiting for the other person to finish. Those advantages create further advantages: a thoughtful conversation builds trust, better preparation catches a mistake, following through strengthens a relationship.

"That is what I mean when I say health compounds," Anderson writes. "The return reaches beyond the original investment."

The reverse also holds. Neglect accumulates, he notes, and its dues are paid by the leader and the family.

Can exercise improve executive function?

Anderson cites a 2019 randomized trial published in Neurology. Researchers followed 132 adults with below-median aerobic capacity. After six months, participants assigned to aerobic exercise showed greater improvement in executive function than those assigned to stretching and toning. The benefits were greater at older ages.

Executive function supports planning, managing competing demands, and controlling responses — skills a business asks its leaders to use daily.

The study measured sustained investment over months, and that required discipline. Anderson draws the parallel directly: the fact that benefits took time should sound familiar to anyone who has built something worthwhile. Health deserves the patience leaders give their companies.

Who pays the cost of neglect?

The personal dimension drives the essay. Anderson's diagnosis made the stakes concrete and changed how he understood the relationship between work and the people that work was supposed to serve.

His scenario is familiar to many executives: you spend the day providing for your family and arrive home too depleted to participate in a conversation. You can be physically present while your attention remains somewhere else.

"The people you love experience what is left of you after the work," Anderson writes. They feel your patience or its absence, notice whether you're listening, and share the consequences when your health needs attention.

He is careful not to overpromise. Illness can happen despite good habits. But investing in yourself is also an investment in what you can give your loved ones.

What should leaders actually do?

Anderson's advice is operational, not motivational. Put health into the schedule. Give sleep, movement, meals, recovery, and medical care a place alongside the commitments you already protect. Choose habits you can sustain within your circumstances, repeat them, and adjust when life changes.

Leaders also set norms. People notice when a boss celebrates exhaustion — announcing how little they slept as though it were on par with revenue growth. They also notice when that boss takes care of themselves and respects the team's ability to do the same.

Anderson learned at 30 that health belongs at the foundation of ambition. His closing pitch to readers is that the investment can start today, and the return flows to both the work and the people it was meant to serve.