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Speaker 1: yours today. At what age are we actually all?
Speaker 2: I believe that our perception of aging has to do
Speaker 2: with what we feel in the future.
Speaker 1: Is there something that happened in our thirty five to
Speaker 1: forty five range that our sleep starts to become less consistent?
Speaker 1: How do we lose that stubborn belyfa.
Speaker 2: Weight is not the measure for me, it's body composition.
Speaker 2: I never say lose weight. I say we're going to
Speaker 2: recompose your body.
Speaker 1: Why is it that the high intensity interval training not
Speaker 1: having the desired result.
Speaker 2: Listen, many people die for twenty years. Jay.
Speaker 1: What's something you used to believe to be true about
Speaker 1: health that you don't today. If someone listening right now
Speaker 1: is between the ages of twenty to thirty, what are
Speaker 1: those specific healthy habits that we need to invest in
Speaker 1: the non negotia, That.
Speaker 2: Is the perfect time to figure out your life habits.
Speaker 2: Learn to prioritize your health over those things that are
Speaker 2: going to tear you down.
Speaker 1: If someone said to you, I want to lose weight,
Speaker 1: what is the best, healthiest quick way I can do it?
Speaker 1: The number one health and wellness podcast, Jay Sheidy, Jay Sheidy, Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to
Speaker 1: become the happier, healthier and more healed. I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: to have your ears and your eyes for the next
Speaker 1: hour or so. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Today's guest is doctor Vonder Wright, an accomplished orthopedic surgeon, author,
Speaker 1: podcast host, and researcher recognized for her expertise in sports
Speaker 1: medicine and active aging. Doctor Wright is a motivational speaker
Speaker 1: and author of the successful book Doctor Right's Guide to
Speaker 1: Thrive four Steps to Body, Brains and Bliss, which helps
Speaker 1: readers use practical advice to take action, change their attitude,
Speaker 1: and measure their achievement for a more fulfilling life. Please
Speaker 1: welcome to on Purpose, doctor Vonda Wright. Doctor Wright, it
Speaker 1: is great.
Speaker 2: To have you here, truly my pleasure.
Speaker 1: So thankful to have you. And there are so many
Speaker 1: things I want to ask you about I was sharing
Speaker 1: with you earlier. I really appreciate your clarity. I appreciate
Speaker 1: your contextual advice to thoughtfulness with which you approve it,
Speaker 1: your incredible academic background as well. And I want to
Speaker 1: dive straight into a question that I'm asking almost because
Speaker 1: I think it's something we all subconsciously believe, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, at what age are we actually old?
Speaker 2: I believe that our perception of aging has to do
Speaker 2: with what we view of the future. I have never
Speaker 2: believed the myth that is pervasive in this country that
Speaker 2: aging is an inevitably climb from vitality of youth to frailty.
Speaker 2: I've never believed that, And there have been so many
Speaker 2: examples of people in my own life, and the athletes
Speaker 2: I've taken care of, and even the regular people I
Speaker 2: believe we can change the trajectory of our future investing
Speaker 2: in ourselves today. I think that, and I've seen this.
Speaker 2: Not only research I say I think this, but research
Speaker 2: has backed this up. That when we invest in our
Speaker 2: health as a daily basis, whether it's our mobility or
Speaker 2: our sleep, or our nutrition or a variety of relationships
Speaker 2: we have, that we don't have to go down this
Speaker 2: slippery slope to frailty in which many people in our
Speaker 2: country die for twenty years jay between sixty and eighty.
Speaker 2: It's just three doctors visits a week. I believe that
Speaker 2: we can be healthy, vital, active, joyful, and hopefully die
Speaker 2: peacefully in our sleep. But that takes intention, That takes
Speaker 2: purposeful activity every day, because time will take over if
Speaker 2: we just let physics take over.
Speaker 1: I really love that perspective that you have, and I've
Speaker 1: had experience of that. I remember in my early twenties
Speaker 1: obviously feeling accept personally healthy from a natural standpoint, in
Speaker 1: my late twenties to early thirties, almost experiencing a dip
Speaker 1: because of a lack of focus and a lack of attention,
Speaker 1: and then now in my late thirties feeling the best
Speaker 1: that I've ever felt. And it's really fascinating to see
Speaker 1: how even our ideas and language around aging. I think
Speaker 1: we used to say, oh, well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be thirteen, and people still feel that, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm turning thirty. And then people will say, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be forty. Now, oh now I'm fifty.
Speaker 1: And now people we age ourselves by how we talk
Speaker 1: about age, how we dress, how we think about our age.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you, if someone listening right
Speaker 1: now is between the ages of twenty to thirty, what
Speaker 1: should their priorities be? What should they be focused on?
Speaker 1: And we'll focus on other generations next.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, if you're in your twenties going into your thirties,
Speaker 2: you know, think about that time of life. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of uncertainty in that time. Right, you're just finishing
Speaker 2: your education, you may or may not have the job
Speaker 2: of your dream, you may be living with your parents.
Speaker 2: But that is the perfect time when there are probably
Speaker 2: still other people taking care of you in some way
Speaker 2: to figure out your life habits. Right, that is not
Speaker 2: the time to skate along on your youthful zest or
Speaker 2: your youthful biology, but learn to sleep learn to prioritize
Speaker 2: your health over, for instance, those things that are going
Speaker 2: to tear you down. I mean, listen, we're all young,
Speaker 2: we all want to go out, we all want to
Speaker 2: burn the midnight oil. But now is the time to
Speaker 2: respect yourself enough to make the decisions to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: five days a week, I'm going to focus on my career.
Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on getting ahead. I am going
Speaker 2: to take care of my body. And because I'm young,
Speaker 2: I can play around a few days. But if we
Speaker 2: do that seven days a week, we end up a
Speaker 2: decade later with no habits, probably this beer belly we
Speaker 2: never wanted, and you're getting teased with our friends. So
Speaker 2: I think it's time now, as we're enjoying our youth,
Speaker 2: to develop habits that will last a lifetime.
Speaker 1: How much harder is it in our thirties and then
Speaker 1: in our forties to shift to those healthy habits than
Speaker 1: if we started earlier.
Speaker 2: I think if we start earlier, it's just our lifestyle,
Speaker 2: it's how we live, right. It often, and I tell
Speaker 2: people of this at any age that as we're layering
Speaker 2: on our health habits, it may seem like a lot
Speaker 2: at first, but if it's just how we live, then
Speaker 2: it's no extra stress. Right. For instance, if you're used
Speaker 2: to mobility almost every day, if you're used to making
Speaker 2: food choices that do not involved a lot of fried foods,
Speaker 2: or you understand that you can't be drunk every night
Speaker 2: and still be healthy, then it is no effort to
Speaker 2: live that way versus, oh my gosh, I've got to
Speaker 2: do these five or six things. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But biologically, how much harder is it to like, say,
Speaker 1: lose that beat.
Speaker 2: The good news is is that recently a study was
Speaker 2: released that showed our first big hit of biologic aging
Speaker 2: is about forty. Now that doesn't mean that mean that
Speaker 2: means at a cellular level, the repair mechanisms become less efficient.
Speaker 2: It means that our pluripotent stem cells, which we have
Speaker 2: not only from our bone marrow but in every cell,
Speaker 2: are actually less young. That being said, lifestyle can rejuvenate
Speaker 2: those and we've done our own we've done that's part
Speaker 2: of my research having done those studies. But so when
Speaker 2: I say at forty it's the first big hit, our
Speaker 2: actual intracellular biology becomes less efficient. We are able to
Speaker 2: clear the toxins of metabolism less efficiently. We're able to
Speaker 2: reduce the proteins that our cells make in normal living
Speaker 2: from our DNA less effectively. So I don't want to
Speaker 2: give thirty year olds a pass. I call the the
Speaker 2: time between thirty five and forty five the critical decade,
Speaker 2: just to get everything established, to get in the best
Speaker 2: shape of your life, so that you're actually starting midlife.
Speaker 2: Because when you look at life expectancy, midlife is forty, right,
Speaker 2: and so we tend to think, oh, when I get old, well,
Speaker 2: forty is midlife. If we arrive there having taken care
Speaker 2: of the habits, it is significantly easier. Now it's easier
Speaker 2: to start at forty than it is at sixty five.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be discouraging to people if you've
Speaker 2: missed the boat on twenty thirties, but that's what I
Speaker 2: mean by biologically, there's a big hit about forty four.
Speaker 1: So I'm thirty seven right now, I'm seventy years away
Speaker 1: from the first of that. From that first hit, yeah,
Speaker 1: what would be the top priorities for someone between that
Speaker 1: thirty five to forty five? What are those specific healthy
Speaker 1: habits that we need to invest in that are non
Speaker 1: negotiables with.
Speaker 2: The experience of age and working this long, your top
Speaker 2: priority is to figure out how to sleep through the night.
Speaker 2: Because secondarily, if I tell you to go build muscle
Speaker 2: mass and to work on your VO two max, which
Speaker 2: we can talk about all those things, if you're exhausted,
Speaker 2: if you are not aware of your circadian rhythm and
Speaker 2: when you should be going to sleep and when you're
Speaker 2: waking up, you will not have the energy or the
Speaker 2: brain power to do the secondary things, which number two
Speaker 2: is mobility. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. It's top of mind
Speaker 2: for me where everybody's talking about it. Now we are
Speaker 2: to building muscle mass, but what people forget about is
Speaker 2: this is prime time in both men and women's lives
Speaker 2: to build your bone. We top out at bone density
Speaker 2: around thirty So what does that mean. Well, we need
Speaker 2: the thickest, strongest bones because we literally do live off
Speaker 2: that for the rest of our lives. Now we can
Speaker 2: get into this, but you can build bone back, but
Speaker 2: you need the best bones, and that's what I would
Speaker 2: focus on, muscle and bone. And then finally, everybody needs
Speaker 2: to not treat their bodies like a garbage can. We
Speaker 2: are not a trash disposal. Everything can't go in. This
Speaker 2: is a temple, This is a meticulously designed machine. And
Speaker 2: just like we would take care of the machines of
Speaker 2: our cars by what we put in it, many people
Speaker 2: don't think of their bodies in the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so well said, and so simply put, I deeply
Speaker 1: appreciate how practical and thoughtful they are. Let's dive into
Speaker 1: each one of them. Is there something that happens in
Speaker 1: our thirty five to forty five and onward range that
Speaker 1: our sleep starts to become less consistent?
Speaker 2: Well, particularly for women, forty to forty five becomes a
Speaker 2: critical time that they might not even be aware of.
Speaker 2: Because what we know, and you've probably heard of this before,
Speaker 2: I've heard it on your podcast, women are born with
Speaker 2: the amount of eggs that we're ever going to have
Speaker 2: at birth. It's a miracle, right, and we slowly use
Speaker 2: those such that at age forty we only have one
Speaker 2: percent left. Well, it's our eggs that make our estrogen.
Speaker 2: So as our total number of eggs decline, so does
Speaker 2: our estrogen. And that's about the time when women go
Speaker 2: from this normal cyclic pattern of hormones up and down
Speaker 2: to haywire. And that's when we don't build muscle as well.
Speaker 2: We don't build bone as well, but our sleep becomes
Speaker 2: disturbed because our circadian rhythm is off, and so it
Speaker 2: is not uncommon for women in their forties. This is
Speaker 2: such a common time. We're all waking up at three
Speaker 2: point thirty seven in the morning, not only because our
Speaker 2: sugar is dipping and our bodies are waking us up
Speaker 2: to save our lives, but because of the hormonal fluctuations.
Speaker 2: So sleep becomes really difficult. But think about in our
Speaker 2: early forties, because many women have chosen to put off
Speaker 2: child bearing, they may have just come off of the
Speaker 2: time when their children are up all night, and now
Speaker 2: they're plagued by not being able to sleep. So becomes
Speaker 2: a real big problem for men. Men don't realize it,
Speaker 2: but men can start losing testosterone in their early forties too.
Speaker 2: And the caveat to that is your testosterone may still
Speaker 2: be in the normal range two fifty to over one thousand,
Speaker 2: but most people don't. Most men don't check their testosterone
Speaker 2: when they're twenty or thirty, so you still may be
Speaker 2: in the normal range. But your normal I'm making a
Speaker 2: random person ut here. Your normal maybe eight hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty and now you're four to fifty, So for your body,
Speaker 2: it's a dramatic change and that affects sleep cycles and everything.
Speaker 2: So that's that's why sleep in our forties becomes more difficult.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating. I don't think I've ever heard both
Speaker 1: those explanations for it in that way. So what do
Speaker 1: we do about it? Because I know so many people,
Speaker 1: so many friends that are going through exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Their sleep is started to decline, they wake up more
Speaker 1: often in the middle of the night, they find it
Speaker 1: harder to go back to sleep. What changes do they
Speaker 1: need to make? Because if sleep is the pillar of
Speaker 1: everything that we're about to talk about, I think it's
Speaker 1: really important that we help people figure that out.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you because there was a time
Speaker 2: in my life when I didn't sleep in graduate school
Speaker 2: and then I had a baby, and then I was
Speaker 2: in residency, and it frightens me how much sleep I lost.
Speaker 2: Because we know now it's so critical for longevity in biology.
Speaker 2: But the things I'm about to say to you are
Speaker 2: not rocket science, and yet I find there heard for
Speaker 2: people to get in a habit of doing science shows
Speaker 2: us we must go to bed and wa up at
Speaker 2: the same time to set our daily clock. You know,
Speaker 2: during the night we build up a protein called adenazine.
Speaker 2: We wake up and it's at our highest we try
Speaker 2: to see the sun unless it's the dead of winter,
Speaker 2: and to start our day. But if we have uneven
Speaker 2: sleep schedules, then that clock is off. So protecting your
Speaker 2: go to bedtime and protecting your waking up time. So
Speaker 2: for instance, I live on the East Coast, we're on
Speaker 2: the West Coast. I have stayed on East Coast time, and.
Speaker 1: That happens to me when I come there.
Speaker 2: You will do that, yes, and then you're not exhausted
Speaker 2: or jet lagged. It's a little weird if you have
Speaker 2: to do business or go out. But if I'm having
Speaker 2: a party at my house, I'm like, see yourselves out, guys,
Speaker 2: you have fun. I'm going to bed. It's nine thirty,
Speaker 2: so for our house it's nine thirty to five. Like
Speaker 2: clockwork number one, number two. I am not a holder
Speaker 2: to intermitt and fasting. But what I am a holder
Speaker 2: to is time restricted, meaning I'm going to eat as
Speaker 2: early as possible so that by nine point thirty everything
Speaker 2: is out of my digestionis system. I am spending no
Speaker 2: energy and that helps us sleep better. Number three, I
Speaker 2: always say, don't throw rocks at me. But in midlife,
Speaker 2: especially for midlife women, alcohol is a total sleep destructor.
Speaker 2: Because when we're young, we think, oh, of course it
Speaker 2: makes me sleep better. What it does is it makes
Speaker 2: us pass out. But if you're tracking your sleep, you'll
Speaker 2: see that you're not entering into the really deep sleep levels.
Speaker 2: And this is being talked about a lot lately, except
Speaker 2: I don't see people adjusting to it. I mean when
Speaker 2: I find that when I work with my longevity patients,
Speaker 2: they're willing to do almost anything except give up the
Speaker 2: glass or two or four of wine at dinner because
Speaker 2: it's so cultural, it's so almost like a ritual, and
Speaker 2: people come to believe that they need that to relax,
Speaker 2: when in fact it inhibits their sleep. So timing of sleep.
Speaker 2: We talked about not eating three hours, We've talked about alcohol,
Speaker 2: and then you know something, I do something that's very
Speaker 2: helpful as I take my magnesium, which is a supplement
Speaker 2: that I think most people need, especially for bones, at night.
Speaker 2: I also suggest that women, if they're taking progesterone, take
Speaker 2: it at night, and then all the other lifestyle things
Speaker 2: blue glasses, turn off your phones, which I find hard
Speaker 2: to do personally, but those are all legitimate ways to
Speaker 2: help regulate. And then as things as silly as if
Speaker 2: you find you're waking up at three point thirty seven
Speaker 2: every morning like clockwork. You know what the clock is
Speaker 2: going to say. That may be your blood sugar. And
Speaker 2: I know it's my blood sugar because I often wear
Speaker 2: a continuous glucose monitor. So if you eat a little
Speaker 2: bit of protein right before bed, just a titch, not
Speaker 2: a meal, not enough to disrupt this other advice I've
Speaker 2: given you, that will make your sugar not dip so low,
Speaker 2: and your liver will not and your body will not
Speaker 2: wake you up, because your body wakes you up. I
Speaker 2: know because I wear a CGM. When I wake up
Speaker 2: that way, my blood sugar is fifty or forty and
Speaker 2: my body's just trying to save my life.
Speaker 1: And what do you want it to be when you
Speaker 1: wake up?
Speaker 2: Well, a fasting blood glucose should be eighty five or lower.
Speaker 2: That is the level that we should all strive for,
Speaker 2: not one hundred, not one hundred and ten, which many
Speaker 2: people walk around within midlife. Eighty five.
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Speaker 1: sure you use the code on Purpose. When we're talking
Speaker 1: about people struggling with falling asleep and waking up at
Speaker 1: the same time, you're a mother, I am. You've we
Speaker 1: were talking about your wonderful daughter earlier and other children.
Speaker 1: And when you look at that and you look at
Speaker 1: that time in your life when you were staying up
Speaker 1: and taking care of your kids and having erratic wake
Speaker 1: up and sleep times, how do you get that back?
Speaker 1: Can you get that back? Or is that just a
Speaker 1: period that you write off and accept that I.
Speaker 2: Lost that sleep? You know, I don't believe there's any
Speaker 2: research that shows that I can restock eleven years of
Speaker 2: not sleeping. But my obligation to myself now is to
Speaker 2: start today. We can reverse the hands of time by
Speaker 2: the lifestyle we do today. I can become biologically younger,
Speaker 2: but I don't honestly think that I can get back
Speaker 2: eleven years of sleep. But if we continue in those habits,
Speaker 2: we just perpetuate the badness, right.
Speaker 1: What can we do during those years for the women
Speaker 1: that listening, the parents that are listening, what can you
Speaker 1: do during those years where that piece of advice is
Speaker 1: going to be impossible to follow naturally? What can they
Speaker 1: do to cushion that impact well?
Speaker 2: And this is so pertinent. I live through it. I
Speaker 2: have daughters who are having children. Now. Simple things like
Speaker 2: children can be scheduled. They will learn to go to
Speaker 2: bed at a certain time and wake up at a
Speaker 2: certain time. Not newborn infants, but once they get big
Speaker 2: enough about three months, six months, depending how big they are,
Speaker 2: they can learn as schedule. So let's schedule them. They
Speaker 2: might wake up in the middle of the night, it
Speaker 2: always happens, but if there's no schedule, children feel a
Speaker 2: little insecure and will wake up more. So that's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, give yourself the grace. I want to talk
Speaker 2: to all young parents. Give yourself the grace that when
Speaker 2: your child goes down for a nap. Young children less
Speaker 2: than three years old usually have two naps to day.
Speaker 2: Give yourself the grace that the minute they go to sleep,
Speaker 2: you don't have to go clean the house or get
Speaker 2: on email, and lay down and sleep too. Just collect
Speaker 2: sleep right, and then all the other habits. You know,
Speaker 2: if you may feel like you need a glass of
Speaker 2: wine to relax, that's just going to disrupt your sleep more. So,
Speaker 2: those are simple things. I think the biggest thing that
Speaker 2: I just said, as young parents, please give yourselves the grace.
Speaker 2: It's an imperfect time in your life. You can't be
Speaker 2: in control of everything, and your child is not going
Speaker 2: to break. Children are so resilient. So as an old mother,
Speaker 2: I'm saying that to the young mothers, there's no perfect way.
Speaker 2: The young parents, there's no perfect way, but have the
Speaker 2: grace to take the rest, lead the dishes in the sink.
Speaker 2: Do not think that everything has to be perfect in
Speaker 2: that really chaotic time in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one of the things that is really
Speaker 1: challenging people right now is our coltis are levels are
Speaker 1: so high. We think of or we've trained ourselves to
Speaker 1: believe that certain things help us rest and decompress, but
Speaker 1: as you're saying with alcohol, they don't really. And I
Speaker 1: think the SAME's true for watching something. And I used
Speaker 1: to always feel like, Okay, well I can stay up
Speaker 1: because I want to watch my favorite show, But actually
Speaker 1: that decompression that I get from watching a show versus
Speaker 1: if I change that for sleep, the sleep would have
Speaker 1: been far more relaxing and rejuvenating. So say, I finish
Speaker 1: all my daily chores and everything that I have to
Speaker 1: do at ten pm. If I had the choice to
Speaker 1: get into bed at ten and fall asleep or watch
Speaker 1: a show for an hour and a half or an
Speaker 1: hour or whatever it is, it'll be better for me
Speaker 1: to go to sleep. But we've trained ourselves to believe, no,
Speaker 1: the drink or the show will make me feel better.
Speaker 1: How do we kind of deal with that emotional feeling
Speaker 1: that makes us say, well, the show and the glass
Speaker 1: of wine is better versus like, no, this rest is
Speaker 1: actually going to do more work than any of that good.
Speaker 2: I think rituals is, which is what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: You have a ritual of relaxing with wine, a ritual
Speaker 2: of watching a show. I think rituals in life are
Speaker 2: actually helpful. The bedtime ritual cannot be stimulating, right. It
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that you can't watch twenty minutes of something
Speaker 2: that's relaxing, but please do not overstimulate your brain with
Speaker 2: some murder mystery or some you know, I don't even
Speaker 2: know the shows where people shoot each other. Right, that's
Speaker 2: not going to relax your nervous system, right, we want
Speaker 2: so the ritual of slowing down, maybe some rom com
Speaker 2: or something non stressful, or some something with beautiful music.
Speaker 2: It's okay to have a ritual of drinking something, but
Speaker 2: I find hot tea or something soothing. The ritual then
Speaker 2: will help you train your body to go to sleep.
Speaker 2: But the ritual can't be stimulating, is self defeating. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry. Because of streaming, the show will be
Speaker 2: there tomorrow. It's not like it's the only time you'll
Speaker 2: have it available. Yeah, it's not like it used to be.
Speaker 1: Absolutely And what's alcohol actually doing? Why is it disrupting
Speaker 1: our sleep? Why is it that we can't get deep
Speaker 1: sleep with alcohol? What's actually going on? You know?
Speaker 2: And I'm not a sleep expert, but I think it
Speaker 2: changes the way we enter into rem sleep. It changes
Speaker 2: the depth of us being able to descend into the
Speaker 2: deeper and at a molecular level. I don't know. But
Speaker 2: what I do know from having reading enough and watching
Speaker 2: my own I don't want to say brands out loud,
Speaker 2: but watching my own device, I can see that. And
Speaker 2: I don't drink anymore actually, but I used to see
Speaker 2: how I just would never end into up in deeper sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, definitely. I think it's really fascinating to
Speaker 1: hear that. What's the we're talking about this powerful decade
Speaker 1: of thirty five forty five, what's happening to our bones
Speaker 1: and muscles? Yes, during that time, if we do nothing, well.
Speaker 2: If we sit around and do nothing, then most of
Speaker 2: us in this country live in relative energy excess. Right.
Speaker 2: It's not that we're in DT relative energy deficiency, which
Speaker 2: is its own set of problems, but excess. So are
Speaker 2: with excess and sedentary living, our body has to get
Speaker 2: rid of the glucose we consume. So in our bodies,
Speaker 2: whether we're eating protein or fat or carbohydrates, it's all
Speaker 2: used for fuel. And when we overfuel, it's going to accumulate,
Speaker 2: so we're going to gain weight as fat. And I
Speaker 2: want to distinguish that for all of us, that weight
Speaker 2: is not the measure for me. It's body composition, because
Speaker 2: it's I once was invited to fashion weight and I
Speaker 2: was a fish out of water. But one of the
Speaker 2: things I observed is that there were very very thin
Speaker 2: women who if I put them in a body composition
Speaker 2: machine probably had very very low muscle mass, so it's
Speaker 2: very possible to look thin but be mostly fat, which
Speaker 2: is metabolically unfavorable. So imagine what happens if we're actually
Speaker 2: visualizing that at a post tissue and you know, as
Speaker 2: we age, there is a syndrome called sarcobesity, which means
Speaker 2: we have too much out of post tissue and too
Speaker 2: little muscle. So if we're in relative energy excess, we're
Speaker 2: going to accumulate that unhealthy metabolic tissue and not make
Speaker 2: enough muscle. I'm going to tell you, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: a surgeon, right. Our bodies with energy excess, they're like scrambling.
Speaker 2: The closets full, the cupboards are full. Where are we
Speaker 2: going to put this fat? I find it in the
Speaker 2: shoulder joint, which is not supposed to have that much fat.
Speaker 2: I find it infiltrating muscle as I'm operating, because our
Speaker 2: body is just trying to stick it places because there's
Speaker 2: just too much of it. That's what happens, especially because
Speaker 2: many many jobs now are sedentary jobs. They're brain jobs,
Speaker 2: they're not laborish jobs. We're actually getting up and using
Speaker 2: our bodies, which frankly, is what we're designed for. We
Speaker 2: are designed to move, so it's kind of against nature
Speaker 2: to sit around all day, but that's what happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's so scary to hear. Yeah, because, as
Speaker 1: you said, the older we get, the heart it will
Speaker 1: be to lose.
Speaker 2: But here's the good news. Yeah, you can totally reverse that.
Speaker 2: But I hate the reason I pointed out weight is
Speaker 2: because the words we use are I'm going to lose weight.
Speaker 2: I never say that. I say we're going to recompose
Speaker 2: your body. We are going to build muscle, and in
Speaker 2: doing so, we will replace muscle with fat. Muscle weighs
Speaker 2: more than fat for per volume, and so your weight
Speaker 2: may not change, but your composition will be vastly different
Speaker 2: and therefore your metabolism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've been working on that consistently, probably just for
Speaker 1: the last six months. Yes, and I saw drastic shifts
Speaker 1: in my skeletal muscle mass. My weight practically stayed the
Speaker 1: same exactly, but my body composition is what was changing.
Speaker 2: And doesn't it feel and look different.
Speaker 1: It feels and looks different completely. But it was fascinating
Speaker 1: to me, and it was exactly what you were saying.
Speaker 1: It was weight training, eating more protein in my diet,
Speaker 1: cutting out sugars, and it was simple changes, but it
Speaker 1: was incredible to see how it looked different on paper.
Speaker 1: It felt different, it looked different in real life, but
Speaker 1: my weight was exactly the.
Speaker 2: Same, exactly right, and it doesn't take that long.
Speaker 1: What would you say if someone says, I want to
Speaker 1: change my body composition? If someone said to you, I
Speaker 1: want to lose weight in their words, in your words,
Speaker 1: change the body composition. I want to lose weight. What
Speaker 1: is the best, healthiest, quickest way I can do it?
Speaker 2: I work mainly with midlife people forty to sixty five,
Speaker 2: and in midlife people, here's the secret, sauce. We are
Speaker 2: going to lift heavy. We're going to stop doing the
Speaker 2: youthful twenty reps fifteen reps of a weight we are
Speaker 2: going to do for women, my recipe is four reps,
Speaker 2: four sets. For men, it can be eight reps four sets.
Speaker 2: But what does that mean? Of the four compound lifts?
Speaker 2: A push pull with the upper body, so bench press,
Speaker 2: pull ups or some pull right, that's the upper body
Speaker 2: compound motions, meaning in simple words, that we use multiple
Speaker 2: muscles across multiple joints for the leg. I gets squats
Speaker 2: and deadlifts four reps four sets at least twice a week,
Speaker 2: better four if we can fit it in, but I'll
Speaker 2: take two if we can't do four, and then we
Speaker 2: augment those with supportive lifts. So for a bench press
Speaker 2: for reps four sets heavy weights, the supplemental lifts are biceps, triceps,
Speaker 2: led your cosmetic muscles that we see consistently doing that
Speaker 2: number one. Number two, you have to feed that muscle
Speaker 2: built with protein, right it's all that everybody's talking about
Speaker 2: it right now. It's the truth. Great research has shown
Speaker 2: that even and I don't suggest this, but even a
Speaker 2: higher protein diet alone will help your body build muscle
Speaker 2: mass even without lifting. I don't suggest it, but that's
Speaker 2: what the data show. Here. Here is something that is
Speaker 2: the recomposer. So you're lifting, you're feeding, and you're sprinting
Speaker 2: and sprinting I know, right, Sprinting does not mean you're
Speaker 2: running down a track like you sain Bolt. Sprinting is
Speaker 2: a heart rate function. So I like people to do
Speaker 2: their cardio really in three ways, but it's layered on
Speaker 2: number one. Eighty percent of the time we're spending in
Speaker 2: low heart rate based training. This is based on endurance
Speaker 2: athlete data from an ego, San Martino, who has a
Speaker 2: lab in my building. That's why I use this method,
Speaker 2: but low heart rate. Eighty percent of the time. Twice
Speaker 2: a week we sprint, which means we're getting our heart
Speaker 2: rate up as fast as it can go. Now, I
Speaker 2: happen to do mine on a treadmill and I'm running
Speaker 2: as fast as I can without falling off the back.
Speaker 2: But you could do it on a rower, you could
Speaker 2: do it on an elliptical, you could do it on
Speaker 2: one of those alpine machines, or on the road running
Speaker 2: up these hills here. It doesn't matter. But you are
Speaker 2: leaving nothing in the tank. That is different than high
Speaker 2: intensity interval training when you're going at seventy five to
Speaker 2: eighty five, and that's when a lot of people get
Speaker 2: hurt and have to come to the orthopedic surgeon because
Speaker 2: they do that five days a week. What I'm asking
Speaker 2: you to do is do strategic stress as high heart
Speaker 2: rate as your heart or your cardiologists will let you
Speaker 2: go twice a week. It is that stimulus coupled with
Speaker 2: heavy lifting, coupled with feeding that's going to recompose your body. Well.
Speaker 2: I've seen it time and time and again.
Speaker 1: Why is it that the high intensity interval training is
Speaker 1: not having the desired result.
Speaker 2: It is too intense to truly be restorative, to truly
Speaker 2: that the base training to truly which is about sixty
Speaker 2: sixty five of your maximum heart rate, to truly be restorative,
Speaker 2: to truly allow your mitochondria, which are the energy of
Speaker 2: organelles in your body, to become efficient to use all
Speaker 2: the food substrates. But it is not stressful enough to
Speaker 2: really stimulate your body, especially for women in midlife who
Speaker 2: have lost their estrogen by and large, or for men
Speaker 2: whose testosteroni is You need that kind of stimulus for
Speaker 2: your body to think, oh my god, I really need
Speaker 2: to lay on some muscle and change my body composition
Speaker 2: and listen. I used to do high intensity interval training
Speaker 2: every day because I get bored and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna sprint this out. But it wasn't at the
Speaker 2: top of my heart rate. It was just below it.
Speaker 2: This is what happens. You do that five days a week,
Speaker 2: you develop muscle imbalances, you get hurt, You come to
Speaker 2: your orthopedic surgeon. They say rest, which I actually don't
Speaker 2: believe in I believe in active recovery for three weeks. Well,
Speaker 2: your brain gets angry at you because it's used to
Speaker 2: the daily dopamine hit and it's just a miserable way
Speaker 2: to cycle in and out of injury. So this eighty
Speaker 2: twenty method is not only backed up by great scientists,
Speaker 2: but I've seen it in me. I've seen it in
Speaker 2: the people I take care of it. It is the
Speaker 2: key to recomposition. So we've got the eighty percent low
Speaker 2: heart rate, we've got the twenty percent sprinting. When you've
Speaker 2: got that down and it's your lifestyle, then what I
Speaker 2: would love for people to do is work on their
Speaker 2: VO two max.
Speaker 1: Told me about that max is.
Speaker 2: The absolute measure of your fitness. It's oxygen. How your
Speaker 2: oxygen is diffusing from your blood to your lungs, and
Speaker 2: your heart's using it right. VO two max unaided, unsupplemented
Speaker 2: will decline ten percent per decade as we age. We
Speaker 2: just get less efficient. Yes, our stroke volume, which is
Speaker 2: how much blood your heart pumps out x releases per pump,
Speaker 2: the diffusion across your lungs. It all declines with age
Speaker 2: unless you work on it. But why is that important?
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, God, my votwo max. Why is that important?
Speaker 2: Here's why it's important. There is a line called the
Speaker 2: fragility line, the frailty line, after which you can no
Speaker 2: longer take care of yourself, which none of us it's
Speaker 2: hard to fathom now in midlife or in use, but
Speaker 2: many seventy eighty ninety year olds get to it and
Speaker 2: what it means with the voto max less than eighteen
Speaker 2: for the man, less than sixteen for the woman, which
Speaker 2: is the frailtea line, you can't take care of yourself.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to move out of this house, or
Speaker 2: move in with your children, or God forbid, move to
Speaker 2: a nursing home. Because if you can't get up from
Speaker 2: a chair, you can't take care of yourself. So here's
Speaker 2: how it goes. I usually give people my example just
Speaker 2: so the numbers mean something. So when I was fifty,
Speaker 2: I did the last time I did my VO two max,
Speaker 2: and it hurts, so people don't like to do it
Speaker 2: very often. But my votwo max is forty five. If
Speaker 2: I did nothing by the time I was sixty, using
Speaker 2: round numbers, it would be forty at seventy, it would
Speaker 2: be thirty five at eighty it would be thirty ninety
Speaker 2: twenty five. At no point in my life will I
Speaker 2: cross the frailtea line. So we got to work on
Speaker 2: that because you can increase your VO two max. So
Speaker 2: you never reached that frailty. So how do you do
Speaker 2: it? It's a different kind of working out. So sprinting, you
Speaker 2: sprint for thirty seconds and then you completely recover four times.
Speaker 1: Right in between.
Speaker 2: Way you just you just get off the treadmill and
Speaker 2: you rest, you recover, your heart rate comes back down.
Speaker 2: Takes me a couple minutes, two or three minutes. For
Speaker 2: VO two max training, it's four minutes as hard as
Speaker 2: you can go, so it's slower than your sprint, but
Speaker 2: it's still full out for four minutes, and then you
Speaker 2: only recover for four minutes and then you do it again,
Speaker 2: so twice three times. So it's very stressful, but that's
Speaker 2: what will build your VO two max. So it seems
Speaker 2: like a lot to say it all at once, but
Speaker 2: once you layer it on, you do VO two max
Speaker 2: once a week. J Yeah, I just do it on Mondays.
Speaker 1: How did we evolve to need that kind of training
Speaker 1: because it seems so specific and mathematical and.
Speaker 2: Well it's specific and mathematical because some brilliant peace has
Speaker 2: figured out that this is how you do it. But
Speaker 2: I think that historically, when we had to hunt our food,
Speaker 2: not being able to get up out of a chair
Speaker 2: is a bad thing for hunter gatherers, right, and so
Speaker 2: I think we would just get it in our lifestyle.
Speaker 2: We would be walking all day to forage. We would
Speaker 2: be stalking something and then we're sprinting to go catch it, right.
Speaker 2: I think it's the way we lived, Yeah, and we're
Speaker 2: don't live that way, So now we have to have
Speaker 2: this formula.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, No, that's what I was trying to place.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's so fascinating that this foreman is
Speaker 1: formanutes off and when you hear about these things, you
Speaker 1: go go, how did humans get there? That's kind of
Speaker 1: where my mind goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's the way a lioness hunts. Yeah, if
Speaker 2: we do an analogy to a hunter, lioness will stalk
Speaker 2: their prey for a very long time and then they rush.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well I never thought about that, but it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense and not running after our
Speaker 1: food but.
Speaker 2: Not most days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the people that are going to be mad
Speaker 1: if I don't ask this question, Okay, how do we
Speaker 1: lose that stubborn belly fat?
Speaker 2: Number one, Let's give ourselves some grace that this is
Speaker 2: the way the human body is. Any person who's had
Speaker 2: a child is going to be transformed, and that is
Speaker 2: that is just the way it is, right, don't crucify yourself.
Speaker 2: That being said, if we're living in a time of
Speaker 2: excess energy all the time, the way that I've described
Speaker 2: for you the high intensity interval, let's clarify that the
Speaker 2: sprint intervals plus the weight lifting is what's going to
Speaker 2: transform your body. And you may never get rid of
Speaker 2: that extra little inch, but you'll get rid of most
Speaker 2: of it. You'll get rid of the back fat, you'll
Speaker 2: get rid of the heavy hips people don't like, and
Speaker 2: you will decrease. Visceral fat, the fat that is inside
Speaker 2: smothering your organs, will decrease. And that's what we really want. Right.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between the good fat and the bad
Speaker 1: fat around our belly? Because I feel like we don't
Speaker 1: know the difference.
Speaker 2: The peripheral fat is that which you can pinch, whether
Speaker 2: it's on your hips or in your belly, around your
Speaker 2: belly button, that's not the fat that's going to really
Speaker 2: kill you. That's the annoying fat. That fat does make
Speaker 2: a protein called leptin, which is bad for your metabolism,
Speaker 2: It is bad for your bones. But it is the
Speaker 2: visceral fat, the fat that you can only see on
Speaker 2: a body composition or an MRI. That literally, we've got
Speaker 2: this apron in our body. Under our skin. Under there's
Speaker 2: a layer called fasci. It's white like you would see
Speaker 2: on a steak. It's an apron of fat over our organs.
Speaker 2: It's a protective well that gets thicker and then fat
Speaker 2: is deposited around our organs. And that fat, the visceral fat,
Speaker 2: is metabolically different than the preferle that you can pinch,
Speaker 2: and it's that visceral fat that is what causes chronic
Speaker 2: inflammation that leads to disease. So yes, cosmetically we want
Speaker 2: get to get rid of the peripheral fat, but metabolically
Speaker 2: we got to control the deep visceral fat.
Speaker 1: You've worked with so many athletes, and I just want
Speaker 1: to I want to kind of go in front a
Speaker 1: tangent before we come back. But I wonder with the
Speaker 1: athletes you've worked with and to your earlier comments around
Speaker 1: models and being at fashion Week, I was going to
Speaker 1: ask you which sport do you find the actually healthiest
Speaker 1: people in versus just fittest, or what is the difference
Speaker 1: in How.
Speaker 2: Do you see something about that? Yeah, I'll give you
Speaker 2: three examples, and I'll tell you why. I think soccer
Speaker 2: players have the best cardiovascular machine because on average, a
Speaker 2: high level soccer player will run six to ten miles
Speaker 2: on the pitch over the course of the ninety minutes
Speaker 2: at different speeds. Right, maybe they're jogging up the pitch
Speaker 2: and then they're sprinting, right, So they're getting it all in.
Speaker 2: And usually they're muscular people, but they look more like
Speaker 2: runners than people who lift weights, even though I know
Speaker 2: they do right. So that's one group. The other group
Speaker 2: that I've had the privilege of taking care of that
Speaker 2: I think get it all in are rugby players. They're
Speaker 2: running up their pitch, they're sprinting, but they have to
Speaker 2: be full of muscle because if you've seen both male
Speaker 2: and female rugby players, they are physically lifting each other
Speaker 2: up as they have. No one's seen rugby, they're not
Speaker 2: going to know what I'm talking about, but you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they lift each other up to catch the ball
Speaker 2: in the air. That takes tremendous strength, not to mention rucking,
Speaker 2: and I mean just the engagement they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I played rugby growing up at BIT.
Speaker 2: I love rugby so much. They're just pent ultimate the
Speaker 2: other group of athletes, but I think are tremendous both
Speaker 2: in cardiovascular and muscle. Believe it or not, I've taken
Speaker 2: through care of three professional ballet companies. The Pittsburgh, the Atlanta,
Speaker 2: the Orlando Ballet Dancers are some of the best athletes
Speaker 2: I've ever taken care of, and they do it such grace.
Speaker 2: You would never know how hard it is. But it's
Speaker 2: aerobic and it's muscular.
Speaker 1: What are the sports where you see the least healthy,
Speaker 1: least fit, Well.
Speaker 2: You know, I think at an elite level, all athletes
Speaker 2: are healthy because do not be fooled by the field athletes,
Speaker 2: the shot putters, the discus, the javelin. You may think
Speaker 2: that they're not fit because they're carrying extra body fat,
Speaker 2: but they are tremendous specimens right, so body morphology can't
Speaker 2: predict it. Gosh, I'll get in a lot of trouble
Speaker 2: for this. I was once twice the head football doctor
Speaker 2: for Division I schools at Pittsburgh and Georgia State, and
Speaker 2: linemen are not always the most healthy people. They're strong,
Speaker 2: carrying a lot of extra weight, and that bears out because,
Speaker 2: on average is the sad statistics. On average a professional
Speaker 2: football linemen, offensive or defensive, they die of metabolic syndrome
Speaker 2: in their fifties and sixties. They turn out not to
Speaker 2: be that healthy, and so I feel like as a
Speaker 2: sports medicine community, we need to do better for them.
Speaker 2: But to answer your question, maybe it's.
Speaker 1: That yeah, yeah, No, I was just intrigued and curious
Speaker 1: because I think we have a vision of what we
Speaker 1: think fitness and health looks like, and like you said,
Speaker 1: often we think people are the leanist, or people are
Speaker 1: the skinniest, or people who are the most built, or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. And I think that's partly our
Speaker 1: challenge when we talk about these things, because most of
Speaker 1: us are wanting to get healthy, either from an esthetic
Speaker 1: point of view, you want your summer body, you want
Speaker 1: your whatever it may be. And then from the other side,
Speaker 1: there's this feeling from some of us who are just
Speaker 1: like I just want to be healthy. I want to
Speaker 1: be fit enough to take care of my kids. I
Speaker 1: want to be healthy enough so that I can spend
Speaker 1: time my grandkids. How should someone measure their fitness and
Speaker 1: health right now? If they're listening, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people will say, especially when they're younger or on the
Speaker 1: younger side, they'll say, well, I feel okay, So how
Speaker 1: do I know if I'm okay? Safe, unhealthy? Like what
Speaker 1: do how do I feel that or experience that?
Speaker 2: You know what? I love that you said okay, because
Speaker 2: I find a lot of people come to me or
Speaker 2: maybe you're asking someone the street, how are you? I'm fine?
Speaker 2: You know that fine? I think many people because we're
Speaker 2: so busy, we're taking care of other people. I'm not
Speaker 2: blaming them, but we live in this state of fine.
Speaker 2: We learned either hot nor cold where this lukewarm health.
Speaker 2: We're not dying, but we are not truly optimized. Right.
Speaker 2: So if you're exhausted, if you have trouble sleeping, if
Speaker 2: you don't have enough energy to do the things that
Speaker 2: you truly believe that you enjoy in life, maybe you're fine.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should invest some time and actually get some analytics.
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes when I'm bringing people to surgery in
Speaker 2: the preoperative time, we're asking them questions about their health
Speaker 2: and do you have this, do you have that? And
Speaker 2: people will say I have no health problems. Well, if
Speaker 2: you've never been checked, if you've never had labs drawn,
Speaker 2: if you've never been examined, it's not that you're not
Speaker 2: that you have no problems that you don't know. So
Speaker 2: I would answer that question by saying, if you don't
Speaker 2: have enough energy, if you're dragging at work, if you
Speaker 2: can't truly enjoy life, if you don't some days feel
Speaker 2: like a total badass because you're full of energy and strong,
Speaker 2: and maybe you're fine, but you're not optimized, and let's
Speaker 2: invest some time and see where you are.
Speaker 1: What's the ideal length of work out if someone's working
Speaker 1: out four days a week.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's an ideal length. You know, some
Speaker 2: days my weightlifting takes me thirty minute. That's because I
Speaker 2: power through it, and sometimes it takes an hour. I
Speaker 2: think ideally, if we're talking about this cardio eighty twenty regiment,
Speaker 2: it's forty five minutes of base training, and if you're
Speaker 2: adding sprinting, that usually takes another fifteen minutes, So weightlifting
Speaker 2: can take I don't think you have to be there
Speaker 2: three hours unless you just want to hang out in
Speaker 2: the gym, So it doesn't take forever. And it's not
Speaker 2: about time, it's about what you put in that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think a lot of people are feeling
Speaker 1: like I only have twenty minutes a day?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Is that enough?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Do you tell me?
Speaker 2: Do we only have twenty minutes a day? I've been
Speaker 2: doing this a very long time, and I tease people
Speaker 2: that you can't out excuse me because over the I've
Speaker 2: been practicing twenty five years and I've had the privilege
Speaker 2: of taking care of probably one hundred thousand people. I
Speaker 2: have heard all the excuses, and there are sometimes when
Speaker 2: you legitimately do not have time. But I would say
Speaker 2: that is the fraction of the time time, not the
Speaker 2: reality of the time. And to the I don't have
Speaker 2: twenty minutes, I ask you to examine how literally, and
Speaker 2: I'm guilty of this, how long we're scrolling, how long
Speaker 2: we're washing our dishes. Do you really have to spend
Speaker 2: three hours every night cleaning your house because that's what
Speaker 2: makes you feel not anxious at the expense of your health.
Speaker 2: So I think you have more than twenty minutes. If
Speaker 2: that's what you tell.
Speaker 1: Me, it is so interesting. I was looking at it
Speaker 1: from the point of view of relationships. I was looking
Speaker 1: at some research that was talking about how, you know,
Speaker 1: we say we don't have it time together, but the
Speaker 1: amount of time as a couple we spend in front
Speaker 1: of the TV is astronomical. It's like, I think it's
Speaker 1: something like nineteen minutes a day minimum, and we're missing
Speaker 1: on together time, We're missing out on connection time. And
Speaker 1: I was looking at it from a purely romantic, intimate perspective.
Speaker 1: But then when you look at it through health, and
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of us, what I've found
Speaker 1: it is is allowing our friendships and our romantic relationships
Speaker 1: to be around fitness. I remember a friend, a couple
Speaker 1: of my friends in the city. We've decided that whenever
Speaker 1: we're hanging out together, we're playing pickleball for one and
Speaker 1: a half hours, two hours, and we may go out
Speaker 1: for dinner after that, but we're playing pickleball for a
Speaker 1: consistent amount of time. We're all getting a workout, or
Speaker 1: we're going on a hike, and that's not become our
Speaker 1: form of bonding and friendship rather than oh, let's go
Speaker 1: out for dinner, and the dinner was great, we got
Speaker 1: to enjoy it. But now we're sedentary. We're sitting there
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours. Maybe some people I don't
Speaker 1: drink and most a few of my friends don't drink,
Speaker 1: but the ones who are, they're now drinking. Whereas if
Speaker 1: we're out playing sports, they wouldn't be thinking about that.
Speaker 1: And same with me and my wife. We found that
Speaker 1: cold plunging together or going to the infrared sauna together,
Speaker 1: taking a book or taking our journal or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. We had to start replacing activities because you
Speaker 1: may not have enough time to do it all. But
Speaker 1: the main form of connection can be around a fitness
Speaker 1: activity and actually you both end up feeling better about yourselves,
Speaker 1: you feel better about each other. And whether it's a
Speaker 1: friend or a partner, I feel like everyone walks away
Speaker 1: from that experience having gained something rather than you know,
Speaker 1: doing anything else. And so in the beginning, it may
Speaker 1: take a reframe, but it transforms your relationships and it
Speaker 1: transforms your health.
Speaker 2: And if you're just beginning a relationship or a friendship
Speaker 2: or even deep into it, the endorphins that you're released
Speaker 2: from the strategic stress actually increase bonding. So it's like
Speaker 2: a triple goodness. It's fitness, it's relationship that's increased bonding
Speaker 2: at as a chemical level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, explain tell me what tell us more about that.
Speaker 2: When you exercise, our body releases hormones that are endorphins.
Speaker 2: It's that high you feel and having that shared experience.
Speaker 2: Or what if you're doing something like rock climbing and
Speaker 2: it's a little terrifying, and the oxy tocin and the
Speaker 2: bonding chemicals that are released because you're terrified in this experience,
Speaker 2: those actually bond people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's why people that go through hard experiences together end
Speaker 2: up as a band of brothers or a or a
Speaker 2: tight knit group. So that can happen in relationship. So
Speaker 2: advice out there if you if you want to bond
Speaker 2: with this person, do something frightening with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. I I completely agree with that. One
Speaker 1: of my first dates that I went on with my
Speaker 1: wife when we were dating was we went to a
Speaker 1: ropes course. Oh my goodness, and it was so much
Speaker 1: fun because there was like trusting each other, helping each other,
Speaker 1: and there was that sense of thrill and I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more that. I think when you do. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time me and my wife when skydiving, we
Speaker 1: did it together. The first time we cold plunged, we
Speaker 1: did it together. And you're so right. It creates a
Speaker 1: different connection when you've both done something hard together. And
Speaker 1: also something that's I think as couples we do people
Speaker 1: have to go through so many emotional hardships together. It's
Speaker 1: nice to do something physically together exact that isn't carrying
Speaker 1: this emotional weight or stress, because that's something you probably
Speaker 1: have on in the background anyway, and so this applies
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah. I think if you're someone that struggles
Speaker 1: with finding time, think about the way you spend time
Speaker 1: with the people you love. And maybe you don't have
Speaker 1: an extra twenty minutes or thirty minutes, but you can
Speaker 1: change the thirty minutes you spend with your friend, or
Speaker 1: you don't have an extra hour, but you can change
Speaker 1: the way you spend the hour with your partner, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, everything's changing.
Speaker 2: It's meaningful.
Speaker 1: It's meaningful. Yeah, it's meaningful, and like you said, it's
Speaker 1: giving us so many other benefits. You mentioned magnesium earlier,
Speaker 1: I did, and we were talking about the need for
Speaker 1: stronger bones. Yes, what can we do to strengthen our bones,
Speaker 1: because I don't think that's a conversation that we're having
Speaker 1: that you know what, I am gonna.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you came back to that, because we
Speaker 2: think of bones as just like the strong, silent type
Speaker 2: hanging out holding up our muscles. They don't say so much.
Speaker 2: That's right, don't pay attention to our bones. But the
Speaker 2: fact of the matter is that without bones, muscle, which
Speaker 2: we're all enamored with right now, it's just a quivering
Speaker 2: pile of metabolic tissue. The structure of you. The fact
Speaker 2: that people recognize you, it's because your bones are holding
Speaker 2: up your soft tissue, right, And I love to bear
Speaker 2: with me. I like to think about the importance of
Speaker 2: bones as even culturally, I mean Halloween in this country,
Speaker 2: you view bones as this scary death object. But bones
Speaker 2: are living. They replace every ten years. They are the
Speaker 2: source of all the minerals that your body needs. They
Speaker 2: are the housing of our internal organs. They are where
Speaker 2: our immune system is made, our humatopoetic system is made
Speaker 2: in our bones. Our bones are master communicators, releasing many proteins,
Speaker 2: including one called osteocalcin. Osteochalson from the bones can go
Speaker 2: to the brain and cause release of brain neurotrophic factor
Speaker 2: which builds neurons. It can go to the pancrease and
Speaker 2: the muscles and help you with sugar levels, and for
Speaker 2: men it goes to the testicles and helps produce testosterone.
Speaker 2: So just when we think bones are kind of boring,
Speaker 2: bones are amazing. But even culturally, many cultures Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism,
Speaker 2: many Eastern cultures talk about the reanimation of bones. Bones
Speaker 2: are are thought to house the soul in some cultures,
Speaker 2: and so it's only here that we're like, oh, skeletons,
Speaker 2: and you know what, when we die, everything goes away
Speaker 2: except the bones. It's the last record of ourselves. Right, So,
Speaker 2: how do we build better bones? And that's why we
Speaker 2: need better bones right.
Speaker 1: To that's click for me.
Speaker 2: That's all those reasons are why. But how how we
Speaker 2: build better bones? Let's talk Nutritionally, bones are fifty percent protein.
Speaker 2: It goes back to the same principles. We're not adding
Speaker 2: on more principles, We're just can we please pay attention
Speaker 2: to eating protein? Can we eat a non inflammatory diet?
Speaker 2: So we're not eating seed, oils and fried foods and
Speaker 2: those things with make gus hot red fire inside. Can
Speaker 2: we please make sure we're getting enough vitamin D? Even
Speaker 2: in sunny places we slather ourselves, we stay inside. We
Speaker 2: need vitamin D. We need magnesium, A lot of trace
Speaker 2: minial minerals like selenium and boron and zinc. We get
Speaker 2: those in our food. If you really want to be conscientious,
Speaker 2: you eat six prunes a day. But nutritionally, that's how
Speaker 2: we take care of our bones. Our bones must have impact.
Speaker 2: One of the early studies I did on active aging
Speaker 2: ask the question can we maintain our bone density? And
Speaker 2: if we can, what does it take? And I studied
Speaker 2: masters athletes forty and over and I found that number one, Yes,
Speaker 2: we can maintain our bone density into our eighties. How
Speaker 2: do we do it? Impact exercise, So I add to
Speaker 2: every regiment that I've already told you most of it, right,
Speaker 2: the lifting, the aerobic, the nutrition. I add to every
Speaker 2: regiment a jumping practice, whether it's box jumping for impact,
Speaker 2: whether it's jumping up and down twenty times a day,
Speaker 2: whether it's ten minutes three times a week where we're
Speaker 2: jumping over little hurdles or in a plastic hexagon. It
Speaker 2: is the impact, because this is how bones work. There's
Speaker 2: a law called Wolf's law that just summarizes that the
Speaker 2: mechanical stimulation, biomechanical stimulation is translated by our little bone
Speaker 2: cells osteo sites into biochemical messages. Biomechanical stimuli like jumping
Speaker 2: up and down is translated into biochemical stimulus that tells
Speaker 2: the bone building cells, which are the osteoblasts, to build
Speaker 2: more bone. So literally, get out the jump rope, jump
Speaker 2: up and down, run up and down the stairs, and
Speaker 2: it has to be a little impactful. Literally, you gotta
Speaker 2: bash your bones a little bit. That's how you build
Speaker 2: better bones.
Speaker 1: Is that why functional exercises like squats and stairs and
Speaker 1: things like that are somewhat better than machine exercises inside gyms.
Speaker 2: I prefer functional with free weights and bar bells because
Speaker 2: it requires then you work all of your muscles, and
Speaker 2: it requires neuromuscular pathways to keep you upright right. It
Speaker 2: requires balance versus a machine. You're sitting there on a
Speaker 2: leg press and frankly, we need to work our muscles
Speaker 2: in the way that our body works our muscles. And
Speaker 2: there is no time in the history of people that
Speaker 2: your quadrceps are working sitting on a leg press. They're
Speaker 2: always squatting, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's the more natural movement it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So as much as your workouts are mimicking natural, natural movements,
Speaker 1: that's a healthy exercise.
Speaker 2: You know, even bench press. Think about it. I've been
Speaker 2: traveling a lot lately. I need to lift a fifty
Speaker 2: pound suitcase above my head into the bin without falling
Speaker 2: over hitting somebody with it. Yeah, and so you practice
Speaker 2: that with bench pressing and overhead lifts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You spoke about neural pathways there, and I know
Speaker 1: you took a lot about the body brain connection. What
Speaker 1: are we losing out? Because if you look at when
Speaker 1: we're talking about aging, brain aging is such a big
Speaker 1: part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, war and frightening.
Speaker 1: And frightening, very frightening. I mean, I've had so many
Speaker 1: countless family members, mentors, family friends who've had Alzheimer's, dementia,
Speaker 1: stage four brain cancer. It's painful to watch the people
Speaker 1: you love go through it. What is happening? What is
Speaker 1: that body brain connection? What are we losing out in
Speaker 1: the brain when we're not doing the things we've talked about, you.
Speaker 2: Know, loss of cognitive function, is multifactorial. Dementia is different
Speaker 2: than pure Alzheimer's with the plaques that accumulate. But we
Speaker 2: know for sure, and there's just so much research that
Speaker 2: we can maintain our brain with the physical activity we do.
Speaker 2: I mean, for instance, I talked about the role of
Speaker 2: bone releasing osteocalcin, which goes to the brain. There is
Speaker 2: another protein that is stimulated to be it's called transcribed.
Speaker 2: When DNA makes a protein when skeletal muscle contracts. It
Speaker 2: also causes the transcription of a protein called CLOTHO, which
Speaker 2: is the longevity protein. Part of clotho's role is to
Speaker 2: go to the brain and stimulate neuron development. So there
Speaker 2: are studies out of the University of Pittsburgh that showed
Speaker 2: a six week walking program will grow the hippocampus, which
Speaker 2: is the memory part of the brain, in double digits.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know the mechanism that's worked out,
Speaker 2: but I think at a very basic level, I mean,
Speaker 2: we'll go back to the hunting analogy. That kind of
Speaker 2: that kind of strategic stress on the body tells our
Speaker 2: body that we're still living. We're not curled up in
Speaker 2: a ball in some cave waiting on winter to die.
Speaker 2: We are active, we have enough strategic stress that we
Speaker 2: have to maintain because our body is so highly conserved
Speaker 2: that if our body doesn't think we're using something, we'll
Speaker 2: lose it. It will start resorbing.
Speaker 1: Like bone.
Speaker 2: If I put a cast on your leg, you will
Speaker 2: resorb the bone in your leg. Yeah, so I think
Speaker 2: the brain is the same way. So back to what
Speaker 2: maintains a brain. Well, muscle releases a protein that maintains
Speaker 2: the brain. Bone releases a protein that maintains the brain. Right,
Speaker 2: fascinat isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 1: Fascinating?
Speaker 2: Food has a role. But when we think of midlife,
Speaker 2: we have to start talking about hormones, and the work
Speaker 2: of Lisa Mosconi, who is at Cornell in New York,
Speaker 2: has shown that in women and probably in men, but
Speaker 2: her work is in women. The brain is covered in
Speaker 2: estrogen receptors, so as we lose our estrogen, it affects
Speaker 2: the brain. That's why we When I was going through perimenopause,
Speaker 2: there was a short period of time when I wasn't
Speaker 2: on hormones yet I'm in surgery and I know that
Speaker 2: I want the thing that does this, but I could
Speaker 2: not remember that it was called an atsent think how
Speaker 2: frightening that is, you know, for a brain person like me.
Speaker 2: I use my brain to help people make a living.
Speaker 2: That was my estrogen receptors being totally empty. But once
Speaker 2: I replaced my estrogen, my brain is a black box again,
Speaker 2: you know. Isn't that frightening? But so I think it's
Speaker 2: multifactorial when we lose it. But I also think that
Speaker 2: all the lifestyle things we've talked about have proven out
Speaker 2: in studies to be able to make a real impact
Speaker 2: on our cognitive function.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think a really big thing about for me
Speaker 1: and all of this as I'm hearing from you, is
Speaker 1: just what you said earlier about how little we know
Speaker 1: about our bodies, about ourselves, and how we base it
Speaker 1: on just how we feel, which isn't the healthiest check.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you're driving your car and it feels fine,
Speaker 1: but there's so much going on behind the scenes that
Speaker 1: if you didn't take it to the garage and get
Speaker 1: it checked, you wouldn't know. And it was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I recently invested in function health because I
Speaker 1: just wanted to find a way to make access to
Speaker 1: information so much more easy for people. Yes, and just
Speaker 1: having access to those lab results and those lab tests
Speaker 1: so that you can actually go to your doctor and say, hey,
Speaker 1: this came up, what does this look like? Or I
Speaker 1: don't understand this or what about this? And I think
Speaker 1: that's what's helped me so much. You were just with
Speaker 1: Darsha and doctor Shah who's been my doctor, and I
Speaker 1: find that he's able to flagged to me so many
Speaker 1: things early on, which means we can deal with it
Speaker 1: as opposed to end up in a position where it's
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Child or harder to reverse. I also find in myself
Speaker 2: and the people I care for that become a little
Speaker 2: addicted to our data, which is a good thing, right,
Speaker 2: become a little competitive with myself when I'm wearing my
Speaker 2: glucose monitor. Can I keep my glucose at eighty or
Speaker 2: below versus it shoots up to one hundred and something
Speaker 2: because I've eaten something disastrous and I don't want that, right,
Speaker 2: So you can't change what you don't know. So I
Speaker 2: think data is amazing for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we're living in that time as well,
Speaker 1: where it's more specific. It's not just oh how many
Speaker 1: steps did I do or whatever? R It's so much
Speaker 1: more specific and You're so right that the only way
Speaker 1: to hold ourselves accountable is to see the change. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, if I eat this, I remember I
Speaker 1: was eating. I was testing it out when I was
Speaker 1: wearing mine. I don't wear it now, but I was
Speaker 1: testing it for like three months and I was eating
Speaker 1: what was claiming to be I was in the UK.
Speaker 1: It was claiming to be a low sugar cereal that
Speaker 1: was you know which which on the box looked like
Speaker 1: you should have been fine. I don't eat cereal that often,
Speaker 1: but I do when I travel because it's sometimes harder
Speaker 1: to find something. I had this low sugar, low fat
Speaker 1: CEI or whatever it was, my glucose spike.
Speaker 2: It was a lie.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. Well it's probably because it was rice based,
Speaker 1: but yeah, either way, it was just like crazy spike.
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh wow, like I would have thought
Speaker 1: eating that every day would have done nothing to me.
Speaker 1: And just you don't know what have been some of
Speaker 1: the data points that have really helped you to make
Speaker 1: changes in your life.
Speaker 2: Well, I've talked several times about this CGM, but I
Speaker 2: think to your point, I think everyone should do it
Speaker 2: for three months. They're not that expensive, but they're so
Speaker 2: critical and it helps people really understand the effect of
Speaker 2: food on them because from wearing mine and I got
Speaker 2: I wore it for a year because I was just
Speaker 2: so fascinated. I I know exactly when my blood sugar
Speaker 2: is going to rise by what I do. My blood
Speaker 2: sugar rises in surgery because it's stressful. Of course, I
Speaker 2: am so sensitive to carbs. I try to eat only
Speaker 2: fibrous carbs, complex carbs, but even that, I'm very sensitive too,
Speaker 2: and I literally am a little crazed about it. I
Speaker 2: never want to spike, although spiking and recovering is normal.
Speaker 2: I just don't like how I feel when I'm like this,
Speaker 2: so I like to be like this. But I'm very
Speaker 2: sensitive to carbs, so I eat mostly protein green leafy vegetables.
Speaker 2: I personally, because of my sensitivity, don't eat a lot
Speaker 2: of fruit because it's nature's sugar. For some people, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't matter for them. That's how I know that. In
Speaker 2: the middle of the night, if I wake up, my
Speaker 2: blood sugars fifty and I needed to supplement a little
Speaker 2: bit so I don't drop that low. I want to
Speaker 2: say something now about because I definitely want to talk
Speaker 2: about this is sometimes people will find oh they're blood sugars.
Speaker 2: Oh it's one hundred, it's one hundred and ten. It's fine.
Speaker 2: Or their doctors may say to them, oh, you know what,
Speaker 2: you're a little borderline. You're one hundred and ten. Just
Speaker 2: do better. That is not warning enough in my mind,
Speaker 2: because you would ask me earlier, what do I want
Speaker 2: my blood sugar to be? I want it to be
Speaker 2: eighty five or below, because studies have shown that for
Speaker 2: every point above eighty five that you are, your fasting
Speaker 2: blood sugar is consistently that is a six percent chance
Speaker 2: of developing full blown diabetes melodis type two in ten years.
Speaker 2: So if eighty five is what we want and one
Speaker 2: hundred is what you are, fifteen times six is one
Speaker 2: hundred percent chance of getting diabetes if you don't change.
Speaker 2: Diabetes is a precursor to Alzheimer's. And so I'm just
Speaker 2: so frantic when my patients say to me, oh, because
Speaker 2: I look at their labs that their doctors have given them,
Speaker 2: it's one hundred and ten. Oh, they said I was
Speaker 2: pre diabetic. We don't need to worry. I'm like, you
Speaker 2: do need to worry, and here is why. And so
Speaker 2: I don't mean to scare people, but I think a
Speaker 2: little fire is sometimes necessary.
Speaker 1: I think so too. I think so too. I've heard
Speaker 1: the same where people are like, oh, I'm pre diabetic,
Speaker 1: and then nothing.
Speaker 2: Changes, right because it's not a warning.
Speaker 1: It's not warning. Yeah, yeah, it's and I and sadly, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just you have the control, then you have the power.
Speaker 2: Then Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things I wanted to bring up with
Speaker 1: you is this question of as we age about mobility,
Speaker 1: because I feel like you kind of take for granted
Speaker 1: how your body works, and then especially hip mobility. Yes,
Speaker 1: what are some of the things we can do to
Speaker 1: improve our mobility?
Speaker 2: So when I prescribe exercise, especially in midlife, it consists
Speaker 2: of four things. Flexibility and mobility, aerobics. We've spoken about
Speaker 2: carrying a load, which is what I call weightlifting, and
Speaker 2: equilibrium and foot speed. So let's talk about F and E.
Speaker 2: The acronym is face. Let's talk about efny. Flexibility and
Speaker 2: mobility means that all of our joints to move well
Speaker 2: in aging need to be able to go through their
Speaker 2: full range of motion. You need to fully extend your knee,
Speaker 2: fully bend your knee. Our hip needs to be able
Speaker 2: to at least bend to ninety and fully go straight.
Speaker 2: When you see people who are aged shuffling down the street,
Speaker 2: it's often due to muscle weakness and because their joints
Speaker 2: just don't move anymore. So how do we prevent that? Well,
Speaker 2: simple things like going through daily dynamic warm up, which
Speaker 2: is simply putting all your joints through their full range
Speaker 2: of motion every single day. Things like tai chi and
Speaker 2: pilates and even yoga are amazing for maintaining that full
Speaker 2: range of motion. It's not only the bones, however, It's
Speaker 2: not only the capsule that just the surrounding of the joints.
Speaker 2: But with time, the crosslinking and I'll explain more in
Speaker 2: our tendons and ligaments become stronger. So tendons and ligaments,
Speaker 2: which tendons connect muscle to bone, ligaments connect bones to
Speaker 2: each other, are made of fibers of collagen in sheets.
Speaker 2: The bonds between those collagen titan with age, So tendons
Speaker 2: and ligaments get stiffer unless we continually put them through
Speaker 2: their full range of motion so they don't lose that motion.
Speaker 2: So the natural progression of aging is tightness and tightness
Speaker 2: and tightness. But we can reverse that in the ways
Speaker 2: we talked about. It's a daily practice, or at least
Speaker 2: to three or four times a week practice.
Speaker 1: Right, If someone's feeling exceptionally tight in certain areas of
Speaker 1: their body, what else can they do to loosen it up?
Speaker 2: So I like every workout to start with a dynamic
Speaker 2: warm up, meaning we're going to warm everything up. So
Speaker 2: I'll just for instance, it may sound simple, but it
Speaker 2: is full arm circles, meaning it's pretending to be Michael Phelps.
Speaker 2: You're putting your arms to your right, full arm circles,
Speaker 2: trunk rotations, bending back and forth, twisting side to side,
Speaker 2: hip rotations. I just grab a stable surface and bring
Speaker 2: my hip forward, circle it all around, just ten reps even,
Speaker 2: or if you want to sit on a ground, there's
Speaker 2: this great hip mobility stretch called a ninety ninety. You
Speaker 2: just you just bend your knees to ninety and you go,
Speaker 2: you go back and forth, and so the same with
Speaker 2: our knees.
Speaker 1: I think my train has been listening to you, yea
Speaker 1: sill of those things that makes me very heavy, yes.
Speaker 2: And then there's this wonderful stretch that it just feels
Speaker 2: so good. It's called a bookend. Stretch. You lay on
Speaker 2: a flat surface with arms out to the side like
Speaker 2: a cross. You bend your knee up and then you
Speaker 2: just roll it over and that stretches your lumbar spine
Speaker 2: so you have full mobility. That's a dynamic warm up.
Speaker 2: It's not hard, but you must start every workout with
Speaker 2: that so that as you're spring or as you're lifting,
Speaker 2: that everything is primed and ready. So that's the flexibility part.
Speaker 2: The e face is equilibrium and foot speed. We've talked
Speaker 2: about muscle. We've talked about bone and fragility. Many people,
Speaker 2: even with low muscle mass, even with low bone density,
Speaker 2: may be okay until they fall. One critical fall can
Speaker 2: be and don't I can tell you all kinds of stories,
Speaker 2: but it can mean the difference between life death, living alone,
Speaker 2: not living alone. So what do we do about it?
Speaker 2: We got to retrain our balance. Simply as standing on
Speaker 2: one foot when you brush your teeth, literally you're standing
Speaker 2: there tree pose hand, going back and forth. You will
Speaker 2: retrain the neuro muscular pathways that degrade starting about in
Speaker 2: your twenties. Yeah, easy. You must and alternate legs on
Speaker 2: different days of the week. Right, you will retrain your balance.
Speaker 2: So quickly, because we should be able to balance on
Speaker 2: one leg for about twenty seconds, because what happens when
Speaker 2: we reach over and we just fall over. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: don't want to do that. The other thing is it's
Speaker 2: very common to see all kinds of athletes doing agility drills.
Speaker 2: You've seen it on the field, jumping up and down,
Speaker 2: jumping over barriers. People like you and me need to
Speaker 2: retrain the ability to have foot speed and agility so
Speaker 2: that if you're like me and you leave your work
Speaker 2: bag by the edge of your chair and you get
Speaker 2: up too quickly, you can catch your foot and hop
Speaker 2: over it instead of catch your foot and land flat
Speaker 2: on your face.
Speaker 1: It's great to hear that there's so many simple ways.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and some of this can just be built
Speaker 1: into our lifestyle rather than having to find out the
Speaker 1: time that's right. Wonder you said this earlier, and I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about it as we've been talking, because I
Speaker 1: think you've given such great practical advice. People can get
Speaker 1: more depth inside your book, which I highly recommend. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and we'll be putting the link in the caption so
Speaker 1: you can order it. As you've been listening. I'd really
Speaker 1: like you to dive into it for the specific advice that,
Speaker 1: as you can tell, Vonder is so tactical and practical
Speaker 1: it's great. But really a lot of this comes down to,
Speaker 1: as you said, it's not time now, it's not knowledge.
Speaker 1: We have it, you're sharing it freely right here. It's emotional.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is we eat our feelings.
Speaker 1: We feel exhausted because of stress in our life, so
Speaker 1: we don't work out, We maybe lack self love, We
Speaker 1: don't have a vision, as you said earlier, of a
Speaker 1: healthier life ahead. A lot of us talk about our
Speaker 1: college days as the best times of our lives. Everything's
Speaker 1: in the past, and so much of what we've talked
Speaker 1: about today is practical and tactical. But I kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to get to this point of just how do
Speaker 1: we transform our belief systems into recognizing that we're worthy
Speaker 1: of a healthier life, that we deserve a healthier life,
Speaker 1: that we're capable of one. And I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about the similarities between vision costing as you call it,
Speaker 1: and manifesting.
Speaker 2: I love that you've had it in this direction because
Speaker 2: when I said earlier that I've been practicing a long
Speaker 2: time and you can't excuse me. I think that people
Speaker 2: make excuses or don't invest time in themselves for a
Speaker 2: lot of reasons. One may be busyness, But what that
Speaker 2: means is you are prioritizing everything else in your life
Speaker 2: before yourself. And I think that people in relationships do that.
Speaker 2: Parents do that, mothers do it a lot. But if
Speaker 2: you don't invest in yourself, you will not be able
Speaker 2: to invest in others. So sometimes it really is as
Speaker 2: simple as I've got so much to do, I just
Speaker 2: can't fit it all in. I'm going to get that
Speaker 2: done first, a matter of priorities. Sometimes I believe you.
Speaker 2: I believe what you said, which is it's self love.
Speaker 2: I often say things like, until you believe you are
Speaker 2: worth the daily investment in your health, nothing else will matter.
Speaker 2: You have to put value in yourself. And whether we
Speaker 2: were raised that we should be seen and not heard
Speaker 2: because we're not valuable, or that women are told we
Speaker 2: must be little and cannot take up space and therefore
Speaker 2: we're not valuable, we need to do the inner work
Speaker 2: to understand that we have value, not only to each
Speaker 2: other but to ourselves. We inherently are created with value,
Speaker 2: and that takes a lot of inner work, right. I
Speaker 2: also think that for people who start out on a journey,
Speaker 2: they've learned what they need to do, they're like, I'm committed.
Speaker 2: We're right after the new year, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: do this thing. What happens, I find I'd be interested
Speaker 2: in if you think this will start out, we'll do
Speaker 2: the hard thing. We'll do some harder things. When we
Speaker 2: do hard things, sometimes we revert to the last place
Speaker 2: that we felt safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if we revert to the safety of the couch
Speaker 2: with the bond bonds, because psychologically and anxiety wise, that's
Speaker 2: our safe place. Sometimes it's our safe place that will
Speaker 2: kill us. Wow, it's just where there's the least mental turmoil.
Speaker 2: So those are some of the reasons that I.
Speaker 1: Hit really hard. Yeah, And I really empathize with people
Speaker 1: because I know when I didn't prioritize it. And it's
Speaker 1: almost because we're so good psychologically showing up for other people, Like,
Speaker 1: that's generally the only time anyone does anything is because
Speaker 1: they have to show up for someone else. We show
Speaker 1: up to work because we're expected to be there. We
Speaker 1: show up for our kids because you love them, and
Speaker 1: show up for your partner because you feel a response's ability
Speaker 1: to them. But we haven't been trained or taught to
Speaker 1: show up for ourselves because it almost feels.
Speaker 2: Less done, or we feel guilty. We feel guilty that
Speaker 2: we're being selfish. Yesh, it's here's what's selfish? Gosh. And
Speaker 2: I'm not really lecturing people, but people say a lot
Speaker 2: because I do take I take call, I take care
Speaker 2: of people who have broken big bones, and they say
Speaker 2: things like, oh, I just never want to be a
Speaker 2: burden to my children, and I understand that right. Sometimes
Speaker 2: I respond to them like, well, you took care of
Speaker 2: them for most of their lives, maybe they can take
Speaker 2: care of you. But the reality is that if we
Speaker 2: do not want to be a burden to other people,
Speaker 2: then we must take care of ourselves. Because time and
Speaker 2: physics and energy rolling downhill, there are time bombs of aging, inflammation, sinescence,
Speaker 2: are stuff themselves. Get old that if we do not
Speaker 2: reinvest in ourselves, the worst can happen. And if that
Speaker 2: worst for you is being a burden to your children,
Speaker 2: So if you want ensurance against that, then rise above
Speaker 2: that feeling, you know, prioritize yourself.
Speaker 1: Wonder what have I not asked you about today that
Speaker 1: you feel cold to share.
Speaker 2: I think that if I could find a way to
Speaker 2: help people understand that they were worth it, that would
Speaker 2: be the end of my work, because it's You're right,
Speaker 2: I do. I'm a communicator at heart. I'm a teacher
Speaker 2: at heart. I like to connect people with their bodies
Speaker 2: because listen, no wonder people are confused. The language of
Speaker 2: medicine is Latin. What is the breakial plexus? What is
Speaker 2: all these Latin anatomy words? How are people supposed to know?
Speaker 2: My job is to connect you with your body and
Speaker 2: to love it and understand it. But I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you for sure, that's still fifty percent of the time,
Speaker 2: whether it's a reg doctor's visit or people have paid
Speaker 2: a lot of money to get the best advice in
Speaker 2: the world, they somehow don't take action, and they know
Speaker 2: what to do and don't do it, and know what
Speaker 2: to do and don't do it. And so I get
Speaker 2: to the place where I meet them in the emergency
Speaker 2: room with their broken hip, and they're laying there in
Speaker 2: excruciating pain, frail, And if I could have just gotten
Speaker 2: them to believe that they were worth the daily investment
Speaker 2: in their health, that would be work worth doing. But
Speaker 2: here's the deal. I can't make them. I've come to
Speaker 2: understand I can't make you love yourself. I can't make
Speaker 2: you care about your well being more than you care
Speaker 2: about other peoples. I can just encourage you to do
Speaker 2: the work, if that's what it's going to take to
Speaker 2: realize that. Safety is often being strong, Safety is often
Speaker 2: being mobile. Safety is preservation of your brain.
Speaker 1: Well said wonder Thank you so much. It's been such
Speaker 1: a joy talking to you today. Oh I've learned so much.
Speaker 1: You've blowned my mind multiple times. I'm so excited for
Speaker 1: people to read your book. I'm so excited for people
Speaker 1: to follow your work. We end every episode of On
Speaker 1: Purpose with a final five or a fast five, and
Speaker 1: so each one of these questions has to be answered
Speaker 1: in one word to one sentence maximum Okay, and so,
Speaker 1: doctor vonder Wright, these are your final five. Questionable one,
Speaker 1: what is the best health advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: Love yourself enough to give yourself the same grace you
Speaker 2: give other people. To know that your efforts are not perfect,
Speaker 2: but that it matters. Just trying matters.
Speaker 1: Question number two, what is the worst health advice you've
Speaker 1: ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: The worst health advice I've ever heard are all the
Speaker 2: wacko diets, the grapefruit, the pickle, the soup diet. We
Speaker 2: are all anything ending in a diet, suppose is an endpoint.
Speaker 2: What I am helping people do is build a lifestyle
Speaker 2: how we live, not a set amount of time.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that for a bit. Do you think
Speaker 1: that diets can be useful to get people to a
Speaker 1: lifestyle or do you think they always kind of boomerang backwards.
Speaker 2: I think that if you are on a stringent diet,
Speaker 2: you develop a mindset of austerity, and instead of thinking
Speaker 2: about food occasionally, it's you obsess about it. And that
Speaker 2: is counterproductive because if you are hungry all the time
Speaker 2: or obsessed with oh I have to only eat half
Speaker 2: a grapefruit, it takes over your brain. Versus if you say,
Speaker 2: the way I eat is that I get a gram
Speaker 2: of protein per ideal pound, and what does that mean? Oh, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to have an egg white omelet that's thirty grands.
Speaker 2: This is just how I eat. Here's an example. When
Speaker 2: I go out to dinner with people who know what
Speaker 2: I say, they always are watching what I what I'm ordering,
Speaker 2: and then They'll say things like, oh, I feel so
Speaker 2: guilty I want to have and I say, don't feel guilt.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I am just eating the way I eat.
Speaker 2: This is it's not a sacrifice. It's just what I do.
Speaker 2: So you do you, and I'll do me. But it's
Speaker 2: a funny reaction people have. So do I think diets
Speaker 2: can be helpful. I think a plant, a nutrition plan
Speaker 2: can be helpful. Here's how many protein, Here's how much carbs.
Speaker 2: These are the amazing sources. But a six week diet,
Speaker 2: I think you get to the end, you may have
Speaker 2: lost some weight. You've probably lost a lot of muscle.
Speaker 2: Then you'll gain it back, and you'll gain back more
Speaker 2: fat than you lost in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what are we losing when we lose muscle.
Speaker 2: We're losing the ability to uh, We're losing physical muscle.
Speaker 2: We're losing the metabolic power to process our glucose. We're
Speaker 2: losing muscle of volume to produce irison, the protein that
Speaker 2: muscle produces that goes to the brain in variety. We're
Speaker 2: losing the metabolic capacity, and we're losing strength so that
Speaker 2: we can't get ab out of a chair. We fall
Speaker 2: down more easily. We lose a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish I knew that when I was young. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish someone had told me that that's what muscle
Speaker 1: did I know?
Speaker 2: It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just thought it was aesthetic when I
Speaker 1: was young. I had no idea, and it is.
Speaker 2: But that's the icing, that is not the cake.
Speaker 1: Question number three, can running be bad for you?
Speaker 2: I want to dispel a myth right now that is
Speaker 2: so common in the population. That is, there is no
Speaker 2: evidence that running causes arthritis right running itself in studies
Speaker 2: have shown that runners have on the whole, have less
Speaker 2: heart disease, have left metabolic disease. They also, if they
Speaker 2: don't lift weights, have less muscle. So that is the
Speaker 2: only reason in my mind that running can be bad
Speaker 2: for you, because unless you eat, unless you lift weights,
Speaker 2: your body will eat the muscle that you have. And
Speaker 2: that's there's a first serious runners there. They have a
Speaker 2: body type. They're all thin, very low muscled. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean they're not fast. But that's the only time I
Speaker 2: can think of question before.
Speaker 1: What's something you used to believe to be true about
Speaker 1: health that you don't today.
Speaker 2: I used to believe that six days a week of
Speaker 2: high intensity interval training was what was going to make
Speaker 2: me the healthiest, And that's simply not true.
Speaker 1: What did it actually do.
Speaker 2: It made me hurt, It made me exhausted, and I
Speaker 2: didn't recompose my body at all. I stayed the same composition.
Speaker 1: And why is that? Why does why did it not
Speaker 1: recompose your boy?
Speaker 2: Because it wasn't intense enough, It wasn't sprint intervals to
Speaker 2: really stimulate my body. And when we do the same
Speaker 2: thing all the time, we we develop imbalances, and that's
Speaker 2: where injury comes from. So when I did high intense
Speaker 2: cinnreiical training five or six days a week, I would
Speaker 2: always develop left achilles tendonitis write hip flex or pain
Speaker 2: because I have these imbalances and I was augmenting that.
Speaker 2: I was pounding that five or six days a week.
Speaker 1: Fifth and final question, Yes, if you could create one
Speaker 1: law that everyone in the world had to follow, what
Speaker 1: would it be.
Speaker 2: We should walk everywhere. We should be like New Yorkers
Speaker 2: and Europeans walking.
Speaker 1: All the time, walking all the time.
Speaker 2: We're designed for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard in some cities.
Speaker 2: It is hard. We've made it that way.
Speaker 1: But we're going to find a way up the stairs,
Speaker 1: down the stairs, that's right right.
Speaker 2: Get up from the desk. Our body doesn't care.
Speaker 1: I love it. The book is called dor Right's Guide
Speaker 1: to Thrive, Four Steps to Body, Brains and Bliss. Doctor
Speaker 1: vonder Wright, thank you so much for coming on purpose.
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back again and again.
Speaker 2: Oh I would love it.
Speaker 1: And I genuinely learned so much from you today. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, my pleasure. If this year you're trying
Speaker 1: to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check
Speaker 1: out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor Peter
Speaker 1: Attia on how to slow down aging and why your
Speaker 1: emotional health is directly impacting your physical health. Acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition
Speaker 1: and health, and people are going to be shocked to
Speaker 1: hear that, because I think most people think the exact
Speaker 1: opposite