Books and papers on what the body has left to spend.
Retirement, Kindness, and the Last Day · Nonfiction · Twenty-three chapters · Complete manuscript, publication pending
What happens to a body when nothing is asked of it. Written for the years after the work stops, when the demands that kept a person capable quietly stop arriving and nothing announces their absence.
Nonfiction · Manuscript · Represented inquiries welcome
The argument underneath all of it: comfort is a design goal that, met completely, removes the demand the body was built to answer. A clinical book about what we are choosing when we choose ease.
O’Leary RT. The Preservation of Functional Reserve: A Control Systems Framework for Human Aging. Life. 2026;16(9):1457. doi:10.3390/life16091457
O’Leary RT. Is Immune Homeostatic Competence a Distinct Capacity? A Falsifiable Test for a Sixth Determinant of Functional Reserve. Zenodo, 2026. Preprint. doi:10.5281/zenodo.22728017
O’Leary RT. New Horizons in Reserve Variability: Point, Slope, and the Third Axis of Serial Functional Measurement. Preprints.org, 2026. Preprint. doi:10.20944/preprints202609.0581.v1
O’Leary RT. The Governing Minimum: Multi-Domain Rate Asymmetry Under Challenge as Functional Reserve. Preprints.org, 2026. Preprint. doi:10.20944/preprints202609.0084.v2
O’Leary RT. Unrecorded Load Exceeds the Reference Change Value: Condition of Measurement in GDF15 Research. Preprints.org, 2026. Preprint. doi:10.20944/preprints202608.0304.v1
O’Leary RT. The Gain–Loss Ratio: Defining a Missing Quantity in Human Capacity Dynamics. SportRxiv, 2026. Preprint. doi:10.51224/SportRxiv.1029
Further papers on functional reserve and its measurement are under review at peer-reviewed journals.
Essays at robolearydo.substack.com · On X as @RobOLearyDO · ORCID 0009-0008-9552-358X