Speaker 1: Have you ever tried out a new diet or health
Speaker 1: fat or turned yourself into a bit of a guinea
Speaker 1: pig to find out what's not agreeing with you? I
Speaker 1: personally have done so many experiments on myself in the
Speaker 1: name of good health, from eliminating certain foods through to
Speaker 1: pricking my fingers to test my blood glucose levels multiple
Speaker 1: times a day. Pretty nerdy, I know. Now, one man
Speaker 1: who takes health a little more seriously than most is
Speaker 1: Michael Moseley. He's a best selling author and BBC broadcaster
Speaker 1: who regularly puts his own body on the line in
Speaker 1: the name of science. Recently you may have spotted him
Speaker 1: on SBS's Australia's Health Revolution, where he swaps his usual
Speaker 1: health routines for a typical Australian diet, take away pies
Speaker 1: and all interest in his BBC series Eat Fast and
Speaker 1: Lived Longer resulted in the health book that most of
Speaker 1: us have probably heard of or seen on the shelves,
Speaker 1: The Fast Diet, and his latest book focuses on the
Speaker 1: diet you can't miss these days, Keto the Fast eight
Speaker 1: hundred kto now being a fellow human guinea pig, I
Speaker 1: have been a fan of Michael's work for many years.
Speaker 1: And I even learned when I spoke to Michael that
Speaker 1: the very expensive but clever exercise bike ione called Carol
Speaker 1: was inspired by Michael's research. So I had a lot
Speaker 1: of questions for Michael. I wanted to know how does
Speaker 1: one of the world's most famous health journalists think about
Speaker 1: his own health, And what is Michael's routine when it
Speaker 1: comes to sleep these days, and how can simple things
Speaker 1: like standing on one leg and enjoying time in nature
Speaker 1: have huge benefits for all of us. My name is
Speaker 1: doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder
Speaker 1: of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this is how I
Speaker 1: work a show about how to help you do your
Speaker 1: best work. So Michael regularly puts his own body on
Speaker 1: the line to experiment with in the name of health research.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what other things that Michael thinks
Speaker 1: about before diving in to any of these experiments.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things I do is I consult
Speaker 2: with my wife, Claire, who's a gippy and who I've
Speaker 2: been married to for over thirty years, and so we
Speaker 2: discuss it whether this thing is really stupid? Is it
Speaker 2: potentially dangerous and is it reversible. So most of the
Speaker 2: time she's kind of happy for me to do so
Speaker 2: there have been a few tricky episodes. There was an
Speaker 2: occasion when I was doing a film on parasites, and
Speaker 2: as part of that I had agreed to infest myself
Speaker 2: with very parasites, so headlines she was okay about. She
Speaker 2: was not keen on pubic lice, which I passed on.
Speaker 2: But the third one, which we discussed a bit, was
Speaker 2: infesting myself with tapeworm because there was a risk that
Speaker 2: I would infect her as well, which she obviously wasn't
Speaker 2: very keen on, but it was a very small risk.
Speaker 2: So she agreed in the name of science, to let
Speaker 2: me go ahead if you like. But that's one of
Speaker 2: the first things I think about. I mean, obviously I
Speaker 2: think about things like, is there a point to this?
Speaker 2: Why am I doing that? What is this going to illustrate?
Speaker 2: And this is some sort of scientific principle, because I
Speaker 2: don't just do it because you know, for the hell
Speaker 2: of it, if you like, it has to have a reason.
Speaker 1: How much science or evidence does there have to be
Speaker 1: behind something for you to try something out?
Speaker 2: Quite a lot, so I spend my time talking extensively
Speaker 2: to scientists anyway, so I wouldn't be in did in
Speaker 2: doing something where it was plainly a little bit bonkers.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, no, for me, it has to be
Speaker 2: something which I'm not sure it's necessarily going to work,
Speaker 2: but where I'm pretty sure that it will come up
Speaker 2: with an interesting result.
Speaker 1: And so what does that look like practically, like how
Speaker 1: much science or evidence is enough for you to take
Speaker 1: something on board.
Speaker 2: I think if there are sort of published papers, if
Speaker 2: I have talked to leading experts in the field quite often.
Speaker 2: For example, in the parasite film, the professor who was
Speaker 2: going to help me get infected, he had himself infected
Speaker 2: himself a tape one, but he hadn't told his wife.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you know anything about the
Speaker 2: life cycle of the tapewe, but what happens is it
Speaker 2: grows inside your gut, then sheds cysts which come out
Speaker 2: of your bottom. And in his case, the first thing
Speaker 2: his wife knew about it is they're driving along the
Speaker 2: motorway in one of these crawls out of his trows leg.
Speaker 1: Oh god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there was a scientific reason for the experiment,
Speaker 2: because there's quite a lot of evidence that investing yourself
Speaker 2: with worms is a good way of manipulating your immune system.
Speaker 2: So we were looking at that I suffer from hay fever,
Speaker 2: and we showed that when I had the worm inside me,
Speaker 2: the HATI kind of went away and I didn't respond
Speaker 2: to pollen. So he was part of a wider group
Speaker 2: look here, I think called drugs from Bugs, and the
Speaker 2: idea there is can we develop drugs or other insights
Speaker 2: into the immune system by deliberately infesting volunteers with different things,
Speaker 2: And so that was kind of the purpose of the experiment,
Speaker 2: and he was a kind of leading expert, so I
Speaker 2: was comfortable. I was also comfortable because he'd done it himself.
Speaker 1: Out of everything that you have trialed on yourself, what
Speaker 1: has surprised you the most.
Speaker 2: I think possibly the tapeworm experience, just because it was
Speaker 2: quite bizarre and out there. And more recently I did
Speaker 2: a film for a DDA series for SBS called The
Speaker 2: Australian Health Australia's Health Revolution with Dr Michael Mosley and
Speaker 2: still available on SBS on demand, and the idea was
Speaker 2: I would go and find eight people in Australia and
Speaker 2: try to help them reverse pre diabetes and diabetes. And
Speaker 2: as part of that, I also agreed to put myself
Speaker 2: on a sort of junk food diet for a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks and see what that did to me. And
Speaker 2: I had everything measured before and afterwards, and I was
Speaker 2: surprised by how quickly my health deteriorated, so that within
Speaker 2: two weeks I'd put on about three kilos, but my
Speaker 2: blood pressure had also sowed, and my blood sugars had
Speaker 2: moved into sort of pre diabetic nearly diabetic range. So
Speaker 2: I was surprised that such a short period on junk
Speaker 2: food did that. And then I put myself on my
Speaker 2: own sort of you know, fasty andred keito diet and
Speaker 2: I managed to reverse it all in about two weeks.
Speaker 2: But it did show, you know, this was not an
Speaker 2: extreme diet, but we're exploring the impact that junk food
Speaker 2: has on your body. And incidentally, the eight people who
Speaker 2: took part in the dabetes reverse experiment, they did extremely
Speaker 2: well on the diet that I was helping them with.
Speaker 2: So the series went out on SBS and did really
Speaker 2: remarkably well, and I was grateful for the opportunity to
Speaker 2: do it. But as I said, I think it was
Speaker 2: discovering what junk food does to you and also mentally.
Speaker 2: And I started the snoring. I was sleeping badly, and
Speaker 2: I started to crave this stuff and he got super hungry.
Speaker 2: So all of those things are things I've written about before,
Speaker 2: but not something I'd ever done seriously before.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. And for those that are not familiar,
Speaker 1: can you explain what the fast eight hundred kto diet is?
Speaker 2: A few years ago I read a book called The
Speaker 2: First eight hundred and the idea there was a rapid
Speaker 2: weight loss diet in three stages. It's actually been the
Speaker 2: most popular diet in Australia and New Zealand for the
Speaker 2: last years. So the idea there is that you start
Speaker 2: on a kind of rapid weight loss diet where you're
Speaker 2: eight or nine hundred carriers a day, and then he
Speaker 2: moved to intermittent fasting, and then he moved to a
Speaker 2: med training style dit what I call the way of life,
Speaker 2: and this one the fast Under kito, you start on
Speaker 2: broadly a kito diet, so it's very low car but
Speaker 2: also low calorie. And what is impressive about kito diet
Speaker 2: is that when you're in kytosis, that suppresses your hunger hormones,
Speaker 2: particularly a hunger hormone called grellin, so within a remarkably
Speaker 2: short period of time and you stop feeling hungry.
Speaker 1: Now, you host a podcast called Just One Thing with
Speaker 1: the BBC where you cover I guess they're little health hack,
Speaker 1: simple things that can make us healthier, and I'd love
Speaker 1: to know what are some of the things that have
Speaker 1: stuck with you that you've researched for that podcast.
Speaker 2: The idea of Just One Thing is that each week
Speaker 2: I undertake just one thing, something which is relatively easy
Speaker 2: to fit into your life, and I get a volunteer
Speaker 2: to give it a go, and I also interview an expert.
Speaker 2: So these have included things like going out for a
Speaker 2: brisk early morning walk to reset your internal clock with
Speaker 2: the light, particularly going out in green spaces that's been
Speaker 2: shown to be very good for mood but also for
Speaker 2: your immune system. Cold showers every morning. That was fairly brutal,
Speaker 2: but it's certainly quick. Singing loudly. You can combine the
Speaker 2: singing loudly with the being in the cold show, because
Speaker 2: there is a lot of evidence showing that singing out loud,
Speaker 2: particularly in a quir but just kind of doing it
Speaker 2: by yourself has you know, leads to improvements in mental health,
Speaker 2: but also again in your immune system, in your physical
Speaker 2: well being. Getting some potted plants into the house, getting
Speaker 2: those are psychologically beneficial seeing those sort of little green
Speaker 2: darlings there, but also particularly in an office space where
Speaker 2: you have sealed units, and if you can get sort
Speaker 2: of five or six potted plants in the avancy, is
Speaker 2: that improves productivity and helps to clean the air. NASA
Speaker 2: did an experiment with potted plants back in the eighties
Speaker 2: and showed that it was very good at kind of
Speaker 2: removing or reducing the CO two content of the air
Speaker 2: and carbon monoxide and also some of the gases that
Speaker 2: get produced by everyday household products. Plants seem to be
Speaker 2: wonderfully able to remove some of these things. So those
Speaker 2: are just some of the things I believe. In Australia,
Speaker 2: you can also download the podcast and listen to it,
Speaker 2: so it's proved enormously popular, I have to say, some
Speaker 2: of like ten million downloads in the UK loan. So
Speaker 2: there's obviously something. There's something about the idea of just
Speaker 2: one thing which obviously grabs people, and it's a sort
Speaker 2: of small good board, but you don't have to do
Speaker 2: all of them, and in the quite a few of
Speaker 2: them I tried, and they didn't really do anything for me.
Speaker 2: Having a warm bath before going to bed that was
Speaker 2: recommended to me by a sleeping and leading sleep expert,
Speaker 2: you know, it really didn't help me sleep very much.
Speaker 2: And if I was going to have a warm bath
Speaker 2: in the evening and a cold show in the morning,
Speaker 2: I was going to get really super clean. So I
Speaker 2: decided it was going to be one or the other,
Speaker 2: and I'd stick with the cold sharp as I find
Speaker 2: that gives me a real boost. Wow.
Speaker 1: So can we maybe go through a typical day in
Speaker 1: the life of Michael Moseley because I like and let's
Speaker 1: make it one of your best days, because obviously, for
Speaker 1: all of us that you know that have habits, some
Speaker 1: days they kind of they're there and they're not. So
Speaker 1: tell me what happens from the moment you wake up
Speaker 1: and what time do you wake up?
Speaker 2: Normally around seven in the morning, and then open the
Speaker 2: curtains and sometimes I wake Claire sometimes she is awake anyway,
Speaker 2: and I sort of breathe in the light. I do
Speaker 2: some deep breathing. There's a next size called four two four,
Speaker 2: where you breathe within through your nose for four, hold
Speaker 2: it for two, breathe out for four, and do that
Speaker 2: for a minute to so and it just kind of
Speaker 2: resets everything. Often we will then do a program of
Speaker 2: seven exercises, which is it's called a seven minute workout.
Speaker 2: You can find free apps almost everywhere. And that combines
Speaker 2: doing press up squats and you know, the plank, all
Speaker 2: sorts of different things and it's all over in seven minutes.
Speaker 2: But it's a very good workout. It's aerobic, but it's
Speaker 2: also a strength building exercise. Then often go out for
Speaker 2: a kind of walk with the dog. Claire, depending on
Speaker 2: how busy is she is, will come with me, and
Speaker 2: that's the early morning walk. Can we go out for
Speaker 2: about twenty minutes, come back, probably have breakfast by now
Speaker 2: it's about eight thirty. So I practice something called time
Speaker 2: restricted eating, where I tried to prolong my overnight fast,
Speaker 2: so I have breakfast by eight thirty, often something like
Speaker 2: the scrambled egg and smoked salmon and some homemade soaercrat
Speaker 2: which I like, and that is all super low car
Speaker 2: if you're interested in that sort of thing, which I
Speaker 2: guess I am, and then I kind of go after work,
Speaker 2: I assuming I'm not filming, I go off and do
Speaker 2: my sort of zoom calls or my emails, and then
Speaker 2: about eleven we'll meet for coffee. I try not to
Speaker 2: have coffee straight off, because if you get up first
Speaker 2: in the morning, you don't really need coffee. With your
Speaker 2: coodzol levels really high, you don't need further stimulants. And
Speaker 2: I also know that caffeine really raises my blood pressure.
Speaker 2: I kind of tested myself and within half an hour
Speaker 2: of drinking coffee, my blood pressure goes up by at
Speaker 2: least ten to twenty points. So clearly you know, I
Speaker 2: like the flavor, but I really don't need my blood
Speaker 2: pressure being pushed up.
Speaker 1: And so what's your time, like your optimal time for
Speaker 1: having a cup of coffee? Then, given what's happening with
Speaker 1: our cords, our levels, the first thing in the morning.
Speaker 2: About nara an hour after you wake up, No sooner
Speaker 2: than hour after you wake up, if you can delay
Speaker 2: it a bit even better.
Speaker 1: And do you have a cutoff for when it's just
Speaker 1: too late in the day to have caffeine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, generally about eleven thirty. The half life of caffeine
Speaker 2: in your body varies enormously from person to person. So
Speaker 2: some people can drink caffeine and you know, two hours
Speaker 2: later it's kind of cleared the system. Other people can
Speaker 2: drink caffeine and twelve to fourteen hours later it's still there.
Speaker 2: You probably know which type you are because caffeine will
Speaker 2: keep you awake. You can also have yourself genetically tested,
Speaker 2: which I have, and I'm a sort of fast metabolizer,
Speaker 2: but I'm also extremely sensitive to caffeine and that's why
Speaker 2: my blood pressure shoots up, but then I get rid
Speaker 2: of it fairly fast.
Speaker 1: Ah. Is that like the worst of both worlds?
Speaker 2: Oh, the best of both worlds? Absolutely. So Caffeine is
Speaker 2: a kind of, you know, the world's most popular drug,
Speaker 2: but it needs to be handled carefully as well.
Speaker 1: And so you're having a cup of coffee and I
Speaker 1: noticed that you're sort of getting straight into your your
Speaker 1: emails and zoom. At work? What chronotype are you? When
Speaker 1: do you do your best thinking work?
Speaker 2: Oh, in the morning. So I'm definitely a lark. Claire
Speaker 2: is more of an owl. So if you go to
Speaker 2: a party, I want to go home and go to
Speaker 2: bed by sort of eleven eleven thirty, where she will
Speaker 2: quite happily stay until two or three. But she kind
Speaker 2: of has slowly over time accommodated to me, so she
Speaker 2: kind of gets up to save time and broadly goes
Speaker 2: to bed at same time, but probably sits up reading
Speaker 2: for a while. Well, I zonk over. So no, I'm
Speaker 2: undoubtedly a luck.
Speaker 1: Okay, excellent. I feel like I'm a lark as well.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, oh, I would never stay at a
Speaker 1: party till eleven thirty. I was that one last night
Speaker 1: and went home at nine, and that was quite late.
Speaker 1: So what's happening. So you've had You've done some work,
Speaker 1: You've had a coffee. What are your routines that of
Speaker 1: around the middle of the day.
Speaker 2: So at the middle of the day, I get up
Speaker 2: and I kind of walk around, stroll, have a chat
Speaker 2: with Claire Wring someone. I try to get up and
Speaker 2: knot sit down. I have working a standing desk, which
Speaker 2: I sometimes use sometimes not depending And so you know,
Speaker 2: we then have lunch about one o'clock, and that again
Speaker 2: tends to be kind of left over from supper, So
Speaker 2: that might often be some fish or some vegetable soup
Speaker 2: or something like that. So it's normally kind of quite
Speaker 2: a light lunch, and we don't spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time putting it together. It's an assembly of stuff. Claire
Speaker 2: is a very very good cook, and she writes all
Speaker 2: the recipes for our books, so I don't always defer
Speaker 2: to her, but generally when I'm cooking, I say, well,
Speaker 2: do you think this will go with this? And she goes, yes, no,
Speaker 2: why don't you try that? So she's very inventive. She's
Speaker 2: not a great one for sort of doing stuff from
Speaker 2: recipe books. She's very much a case of throwing flavors
Speaker 2: together and foods together and things like that.
Speaker 1: What are you then doing after the lunch?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 1: Are you a believer in naps or are you to
Speaker 1: straight back into work? What does that look like?
Speaker 2: No? I find that napping just makes me feel tired.
Speaker 2: Claire leg snap. She finds that if she has a
Speaker 2: twenty minute nap that sets her up for the day,
Speaker 2: whereas if I have it, it just makes me feel woozy.
Speaker 2: So again, there's quite a lot of research around that.
Speaker 2: I'm showing that some people do benefit from naps, other
Speaker 2: people don't, and you very quickly discover which you are.
Speaker 2: The rule is broadly no more than twenty minutes to
Speaker 2: half an hour, and ideally no more than you know,
Speaker 2: no later than three o'clock in the afternoon, otherwise it
Speaker 2: will remove your sleep drive. So in the afternoon kind
Speaker 2: of more work. And then often we'll go for another
Speaker 2: walk at about sort of four in the afternoon or
Speaker 2: something like that, and occasionally that will be a run instead.
Speaker 2: It sort of depends, but I like to do several
Speaker 2: walks a day, and they're typically twenty minutes twenty five
Speaker 2: minutes half an hour each, so that's kind of a
Speaker 2: brisk walk and we chat or if I'm just listening
Speaker 2: to a podcast like yours, or I'm listening to music,
Speaker 2: then I try to go along at a pace of
Speaker 2: about one hundred paces a minute. Brisk walking is where
Speaker 2: you get most of the benefits, you know, and you
Speaker 2: kind of admire that you and stuff like that, but
Speaker 2: you should be a little bit breathless.
Speaker 1: How are you monitoring how fast you're going? I mean,
Speaker 1: I imagine now you probably know, but how did you
Speaker 1: figure that out? Initially?
Speaker 2: The easiest thing is to download music from Spotify or
Speaker 2: something like that. You choose a beat, so you choose
Speaker 2: something which has a beat of one hundred and ten
Speaker 2: beat per minute one hundred and twenty if you're going
Speaker 2: staying live, staying in live ha ha ha ha. You know,
Speaker 2: and things like Spotify will tell you what the beat is.
Speaker 2: You can't kind of listen to it and work it
Speaker 2: out yourself, but the music drives you and you're just
Speaker 2: trying to keep going to the beat.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Now, what's happening around dinner time? What time are
Speaker 1: you eating?
Speaker 2: Normally about seven? We used to eat later, but as
Speaker 2: I said, I'm kind of interested in time restricted eating.
Speaker 2: So we try to aim eat at seven and have
Speaker 2: finished eating by eight and then not eat anything after that.
Speaker 2: So that finish eating by eight, not eating again next
Speaker 2: morning till say eight thirty nine. That gives you a
Speaker 2: sort of twelve to thirteen hour fasting window. And there's
Speaker 2: a lot of research now showing that extending your overnight
Speaker 2: fast gives you all sorts of health benefits and also
Speaker 2: gives your gut a bit of a downtime and helps
Speaker 2: improve sleep. It also reduces inflammation. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: research on the carried out I love it in Australia
Speaker 2: but also in the States. Salt Constitute and I've been
Speaker 2: looking at this since twenty twelve, so I committed to that. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: we normally eat about seven thirty and it's normally a
Speaker 2: sort of fish, sometimes a vegetarian thing with plenty of
Speaker 2: veggies and not very much in the way of starch,
Speaker 2: and then maybe a bit of yogurt with some fruit
Speaker 2: for dessert or something like that. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: what I described as a sort of Mediterranean style. Plenty
Speaker 2: of olive oil, plenty of oily, healthy fats, plenty of veg,
Speaker 2: not too much starch.
Speaker 1: And you've written a lot about sleep, So what does
Speaker 1: your I guess your wind down routine look like.
Speaker 2: So broadly speaking, I'm heading to bed about sort of
Speaker 2: ten ten fifteen. You know, you brush the teeth, you
Speaker 2: get yourself mentally prepared. I like to read for about
Speaker 2: sort of forty minutes before I keel over, And that's
Speaker 2: kind of it pretty much.
Speaker 1: What else are you doing in the evening to make
Speaker 1: sure you get a good night's sleep, or even what
Speaker 1: if you tried, but maybe you don't do religiously like
Speaker 1: you mentioned hot baths, but that obviously didn't work for you, that.
Speaker 2: Didn't work for me at all. I mean you know,
Speaker 2: down years, I made a lot of programs about sleep.
Speaker 2: So I've tried lots of things, and most of them
Speaker 2: were just ludicrous. There are loads and loads loads of
Speaker 2: over the counter supplements, and to be honest, there's almost
Speaker 2: no research for any any of them work, and certainly
Speaker 2: in my experience, none of them work, and if they
Speaker 2: work at all, the remarkably ineffectual. There are lots of
Speaker 2: crazy ones, like eating two kiwi. There was a study
Speaker 2: at of Singapore suggested my magnesium supplement a week. There's
Speaker 2: loads of loads, as I said, of crazy stuff out
Speaker 2: there on the internet, and I would have said, pretty well,
Speaker 2: none of them work. It's all about going to bed
Speaker 2: at the same time, getting up at the same time,
Speaker 2: establishing a routine, practicing breathing exercises. If you kind of
Speaker 2: find go to sleep, because if you do these breathing
Speaker 2: exercises and this kind of arranging them, then you'll find
Speaker 2: that that really slows your heart, and that it's the
Speaker 2: slowing of the heart which triggers sleep along with the
Speaker 2: drop in core temperature. That's kind of why hot bars work.
Speaker 2: Was when you get out in the hot bath, you
Speaker 2: have to have it about forty men before you go
Speaker 2: to bed, because then your body temperature drops, your core
Speaker 2: temperature drops, and that kind of induces sleep. That's for
Speaker 2: thought behind the hot bath. It's not really the relaxation,
Speaker 2: it's a change in core temperature which seems to be
Speaker 2: doing it. I wrote a book called Faster Sleep in
Speaker 2: which I go into the science of it and the
Speaker 2: various things and if you're a kind of chronic in
Speaker 2: some of it, we know most of them. What it
Speaker 2: is called sleep hygiene. Most people who have any problems
Speaker 2: with sleep know what those things consist of. Basically dark room,
Speaker 2: cool room, you know, regular going to bed, working up.
Speaker 2: And to be frank, they don't really work, or they
Speaker 2: work in a very marginal way with some people. But
Speaker 2: to be honest, it's kind of the best that people
Speaker 2: can offer at the moment. The things which really work,
Speaker 2: and I write about and Fast Asleep are probably things
Speaker 2: like sleep restriction therapy, where you actually restrict the amount
Speaker 2: of time you spend in bed, and by doing that
Speaker 2: you kind of reset your clock. Because what you've got
Speaker 2: to do is you've got to persuade your brain. You
Speaker 2: god teach your brain that the bed is for sleep
Speaker 2: and for sex and for nothing else. That's why you
Speaker 2: shouldn't have any entertainment it And people who drift into insomnia,
Speaker 2: they basically have got out of the habit of falling
Speaker 2: asleep sleep with the very natural process. So sometimes you
Speaker 2: have to reboot, and the best way to reboot is
Speaker 2: through sleep restriction therapy. But it's quite tough.
Speaker 1: It's awful. I tried it in my twenties when I
Speaker 1: had insomnia and saw a couple of sleep doctors. But
Speaker 1: I tell you what, it worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it was horrible.
Speaker 1: But it absolutely worked and sort of re taught me
Speaker 1: how to sleep. I guess now you mentioned exercise, your
Speaker 1: seven minute exercise routine in the morning, and you've written
Speaker 1: a lot about exercise. Can you tell me why? Why
Speaker 1: the seven minute routine?
Speaker 2: So the seven minute routine was developed by an next
Speaker 2: science physiologist in Texas. He's actually British, and he did
Speaker 2: it because he originally called it his hotel room workout.
Speaker 2: So it was intense of people who are busy on
Speaker 2: business and couldn't fit much else in. So the idea
Speaker 2: is you alternate your top half in the bottom half,
Speaker 2: so you're doing squats followed by press ups, followed by
Speaker 2: lundes followed by you know, get the up and down
Speaker 2: on a chair. And it was always intended to be
Speaker 2: done using nothing but your body weight. But the reason
Speaker 2: it's so brilliant is because it is it combines resistance
Speaker 2: exercise with aerobic exercise. It is quite brutal. You well,
Speaker 2: you can push yourself as hard or as not hard
Speaker 2: as you want, but you basically just have a voice saying, okay,
Speaker 2: do this exercise, and it then gives you a kind
Speaker 2: of countdown thirty seconds, then you have a five to
Speaker 2: ten second break, and then you do the next one.
Speaker 2: So it's quite tough. And has said what allows you
Speaker 2: to do is push yourself as hard as you want
Speaker 2: to do. But the joy is it's over in seven minutes.
Speaker 2: And for many of us, unless we love exercise, we're
Speaker 2: not going to find the time in the day to
Speaker 2: do it. And I find if I don't do it
Speaker 2: first in the morning, I'm never going to do it.
Speaker 2: I hate the gym. I am not somebody who ever
Speaker 2: gets any pleasure from running. I do it, but not
Speaker 2: because I for a single moment enjoy it, but simply
Speaker 2: because I know it's good for me. I do enjoy
Speaker 2: a breastwalk. I do enjoy a hard cycle, and I
Speaker 2: do enjoy this workout sort of a little maybe, but
Speaker 2: I would never go down the gym. I just hate
Speaker 2: jim So. And again, I think a lot of the
Speaker 2: benefit of exercise comes from being outdoors, so you can
Speaker 2: also do this out in the park, but mainly, you know,
Speaker 2: for me, the pleasure comes from going through breastwalk in
Speaker 2: the woods with the dog or going for a run
Speaker 2: through the woods. And because I'm in the woods, I
Speaker 2: can ignore the fact that my lungs really hurt, my
Speaker 2: legs hurting them and I'm not enjoying.
Speaker 1: Myself now enjoy a bent aside. Is there a type
Speaker 1: of exercise that has been proven to be more beneficial
Speaker 1: and just a better bang for our back in terms
Speaker 1: of the time that we're dedicating to it.
Speaker 2: The best bang for your buck is almost certainly a
Speaker 2: hit high intensity interval training and the seven minute workout
Speaker 2: sort of that if you push yourself, and this is
Speaker 2: based on you know, eighty years of research really, and
Speaker 2: it shows that what you do is you do short
Speaker 2: bursts of exercise followed by a recovery period and then
Speaker 2: another short burst. By short, I mean as little as
Speaker 2: fifteen to twenty seconds. So I did a film a
Speaker 2: while ago called it was called The Truth Bad Excise. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so as part of that they measured my aerobic
Speaker 2: fitness and also my blood blue coat levels. And then
Speaker 2: I was asked to do three bursts of twenty seconds
Speaker 2: with an interval in between. And I had to do
Speaker 2: that three times a week. And that sounds like nothing,
Speaker 2: but it was actually quite hard because you're pushing against
Speaker 2: considerable resistance. And that was enough to improve my aerobic
Speaker 2: x my aerobic fitness by about fifteen percent, and also
Speaker 2: my blood sugar levels. And the expert who was doing
Speaker 2: it was said you would have to run for forty
Speaker 2: minutes a day, five days a week to get similar benefits.
Speaker 2: If you're just jogging, the intensity is what it's about.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of what I do.
Speaker 1: Was I like, and I do it.
Speaker 2: When I'm out for a jog. I will sprint up
Speaker 2: a hill. Hills are good because that's when you really
Speaker 2: push yourself and the benefit comes from getting your heart
Speaker 2: rate up. Also, what happens when you're going intensely is
Speaker 2: you're smashing the glycogen stores in your muscles and you're
Speaker 2: releasing signaling proteins which the next time you do that
Speaker 2: burst will actually lead proliferation of muscle tissue. So a
Speaker 2: lot of science behind HIT and in the fast and Akito.
Speaker 2: I go into that because I find it utterly fascinating.
Speaker 2: And I started writing about HIT maybe nine years ago,
Speaker 2: and since then it's kind of taken off in a
Speaker 2: big way. But you can overdo it. So I'm at
Speaker 2: the sort of the more moderate end of HIT. I'm
Speaker 2: not doing sort of psycho workouts.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Michael in a moment where
Speaker 1: we'll be chatting about whether just imagining ourselves exercising is
Speaker 1: enough to actually gain some real health benefits. And if
Speaker 1: you're looking for more tips to improve the way that
Speaker 1: you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains
Speaker 1: three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better,
Speaker 1: ranging from interesting research findings through to gadgets and software
Speaker 1: that I'm really loving. You can sign up for that
Speaker 1: at Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co.
Speaker 1: Now I think I've heard you say that imagining yourself
Speaker 1: exercising also works. Is the truth behind that.
Speaker 2: Sort of It's one of the things we looked at
Speaker 2: in just one thing. It is something again that's been
Speaker 2: explored for at least eighty years, and what appears to happen,
Speaker 2: for example, is we got a young guy who's goalie
Speaker 2: and he wants to be scoring goals. He wanted to
Speaker 2: be in his local team. So what I advised him
Speaker 2: to do, who was to go out there into the
Speaker 2: garden and imagine kicking a football and scoring goals. And
Speaker 2: the reason behind this is that it does seem to
Speaker 2: kind of train just thinking about it, but you have
Speaker 2: to kind of do it for a couple of minutes
Speaker 2: a day. Just thinking about it seems to prepare your
Speaker 2: muscles for the action when it happens. It's you know,
Speaker 2: just thinking about going for a run is not the
Speaker 2: same as going for a run, I can tell you that.
Speaker 2: But it's mainly aimed at sports based activities. So again
Speaker 2: with tennis, if you visualize yourself hitting the ball, and
Speaker 2: it's even more effective if you go and to the
Speaker 2: tennis court and you visualize yourself is the ball without
Speaker 2: actually hitting the ball. There is some a reasonable amount
Speaker 2: of evidence that this can be affected.
Speaker 1: And what about standing on one leg? Why should we
Speaker 1: try standing on one leg? More of it as we
Speaker 1: get older.
Speaker 2: Sure, So we talked about erubic exercise, which is running, cycling,
Speaker 2: swimming where you get your heart and lungs going, and
Speaker 2: resistance exercises which press up squats which helped preserve your muscle.
Speaker 2: But the third form of exercises which really important is balance.
Speaker 2: And from the age of twenty five thirty onwards, if
Speaker 2: you don't work at it, you're going to lose it
Speaker 2: very much use it or lose it scenario. And the
Speaker 2: second commonest cause of accidental death in the world after
Speaker 2: traffic accidents, is falling over and that obviously happens when
Speaker 2: you get older. But your sense of balance begins to
Speaker 2: go unless you work on it. And so the one
Speaker 2: legged regime is essentially a way of improving your sense
Speaker 2: of balance. So I do it when I brush my teeth,
Speaker 2: but I brush my teeth a couple of minutes in
Speaker 2: the morning in the evening, and I stand one leg
Speaker 2: than the other leg, and that's how I kind of
Speaker 2: keep my balance going. It's also a good test of
Speaker 2: life expectancy. Strangely enough, they did a study which would
Speaker 2: published in a medical journal where they got a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of fifty year olds and did a range of tests
Speaker 2: in them, including seeing how long they could stand on
Speaker 2: one leg with first their eyes open and then their
Speaker 2: eyes closed. And then they came back fifteen years to
Speaker 2: see who was still alive, and they found that it
Speaker 2: was the people who could stay on one leg for
Speaker 2: longest who were more likely to be alive. It was
Speaker 2: the single best predictor of life expectancy of all the
Speaker 2: tests they run.
Speaker 1: Do you remember how long they could stand for people
Speaker 1: that want to challenge themselves at home, because I do,
Speaker 1: after hearing that.
Speaker 2: You should be able to manage thirty seconds with your
Speaker 2: eyes open. If you're over fifty, you'll find it challenging
Speaker 2: to do more than ten seconds with your eyes closed.
Speaker 2: You stand on one leg, basically you get somebody else
Speaker 2: to time you. You put your hands on your hips,
Speaker 2: You stand on with the matter with left or right leg.
Speaker 2: Make sure there's you know you can grab something, close
Speaker 2: your eyes. You will be astonished how quickly you fall
Speaker 2: over because without your eye operating, it's very difficult to
Speaker 2: maintain balance, particularly with one leg. So the people who
Speaker 2: did spectacularly well, people who were doing under five seconds,
Speaker 2: they were the ones who were most likely not to
Speaker 2: be alive. Fifteen years later, whereas one who could do
Speaker 2: more than ten seconds were broadly better. These were fifty
Speaker 2: year olds. Young people should be able to do much
Speaker 2: better than that.
Speaker 1: And how high do we have to lift our leg up?
Speaker 2: Oh, it doesn't matter, just off the ground, just off
Speaker 2: the ground. The test is basically as soon as you
Speaker 2: shift your planted foot or as soon as you have
Speaker 2: to put your foot down, then the test is over.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, I'm definitely going to be trying out
Speaker 1: and timing myself after we've finished this interview. Now. In
Speaker 1: fast eight hundred kto there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: recipes designed by your wife, Claire. I'd love to know
Speaker 1: what are some of your go tos because I must
Speaker 1: say I've tried some and they're delicious. To know what
Speaker 1: are your go tos?
Speaker 2: Oh? For me? You know, for breakfast, I often have
Speaker 2: as I said, I like eggs, I like fish. I've
Speaker 2: had to go at the keito pancakes, which I never
Speaker 2: thought I'd enjoy. But there's one there quito pancokes with
Speaker 2: yogurt berries, and that's made with almonds and cream, cheese
Speaker 2: and eggs. And it doesn't sounds that it should work,
Speaker 2: but it works brilliantly, brilliantly well. I also like the
Speaker 2: sort of the butcher. When it comes to main courses,
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of fish these days. Never used to
Speaker 2: like fish before, but there's a kind of thaie salmon
Speaker 2: dish which is fab and I'd really like anything frankly
Speaker 2: with chicken in it as well. I've tried to go
Speaker 2: more vegetarian, and there are vegetarian options, but the main
Speaker 2: thing is you've got to keep up your protein. What
Speaker 2: I'm recommending is that you need to be consuming at
Speaker 2: least fifty grams of protein a day, preferably more like seventy,
Speaker 2: and that it's harder to do on a quito sort
Speaker 2: of vegetarian diet because you know, things like meat, eggs, fish,
Speaker 2: they all have high percentage of protein. Vegetables sadly not
Speaker 2: nuts not bad, but if you're a vegan then you're
Speaker 2: kinda have to use tofu or temper as a substitute,
Speaker 2: and that's obviously goes extremely well with most of the recipes. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Tofis are very very flexible, and the great thing about
Speaker 2: those two is they're also very high in protein, whereas
Speaker 2: a lot of the things you get in a Bigan
Speaker 2: diet are not rich in protein. I did a film
Speaker 2: recently with a Veigan and her protein was terrible. She
Speaker 2: was extremely of weight, and unfortunately, as I explained in
Speaker 2: the Fast hundred Kita book, protein is one of the
Speaker 2: major drivers of hunger. You need protein. People worry about carbs,
Speaker 2: they worry about fat, that actually they should worry about
Speaker 2: protein because protein is totally essential because you need it
Speaker 2: not so much for fuel, but for replacing your red
Speaker 2: blood cells, your white blood cells, for muscle, for growth,
Speaker 2: all sorts of things. And as I said, it is
Speaker 2: probably well it is the primary braver of hunger. If
Speaker 2: you're not being eating enough protein, you're going to get
Speaker 2: starving hungry.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've got the opposite problem to the Vegan.
Speaker 1: I ate a lot of protein, and I do that
Speaker 1: because I do weight training four times a week. But
Speaker 1: in your latest book, you say that you can eat
Speaker 1: too much protein. What does that look like? How do
Speaker 1: I know if I'm eating too much?
Speaker 2: Michael, broadly speaking, anything between you know, if you're a
Speaker 2: bloke like me, I'm eighty kilos, so anything between seventy
Speaker 2: and one hundred and twenty one hundred and fifty grams
Speaker 2: of protein. If I was working out, if I was
Speaker 2: a weightlifter, of I was doing what you're doing it
Speaker 2: you'd probably be up to two hundred grams. Broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: the rule is that you want to be aiming for
Speaker 2: around twenty percent of your calories in the form of protein.
Speaker 2: So if you're consuming two thousand caalories a day, then
Speaker 2: you are four hundred grams to be in the form
Speaker 2: of protein. There are sorry four hundred calories in the
Speaker 2: form protein. There are four calories in every grammar protein. Therefore,
Speaker 2: you want one hundred grams of protein. I do kind
Speaker 2: of go into the calculations, but twenty percent is probably optimal.
Speaker 2: You can go up to thirty percent beyond that, and
Speaker 2: most of the studies suggest, certainly the animal studies suggest
Speaker 2: that what that does is it activates the sort of
Speaker 2: go go mode, which is kind of nice. You've got
Speaker 2: rapid cell turnover. You're suppressing your appetite, but at the
Speaker 2: same time it's also pushing you on the path towards cancer,
Speaker 2: heart disease, and also rapid aging, and those are all
Speaker 2: associated with go go mode. Because humans basically have two pathways,
Speaker 2: we can go down go go mode or repair and Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: very high levels of protein push you towards really go go,
Speaker 2: And if you want a short, sweet life, then that's
Speaker 2: probably the way to go. But if you actually want
Speaker 2: to lead along in healthy life, then that probably not
Speaker 2: the way to go. And the healthiest art on the
Speaker 2: planet is the Mediterranean diet, without doubt, full of oily fish, nuts, legumes,
Speaker 2: and that's broadly twenty percent protein, forty percent fat, forty
Speaker 2: percent carbs.
Speaker 1: Now, I would imagine as a health journalist you would
Speaker 1: be sent a lot of the latest health tech and
Speaker 1: apps and all those kinds of things. I'd love to
Speaker 1: know what over the last few years you've tried and
Speaker 1: actually found quite useful.
Speaker 2: I had a sort of bit activity monitor for a
Speaker 2: while which I got into. It also measured my sleep,
Speaker 2: which I kind of found a bit interesting. But the
Speaker 2: reality is I lost it about six months ago and
Speaker 2: I never felt the need to replace it. So the
Speaker 2: answer was I quite enjoyed it for about three months.
Speaker 2: And there is a danger with some of these wearables
Speaker 2: that you get obsessed by them. I was talking to
Speaker 2: a friend who's a sleep specialist, and he says, people
Speaker 2: come into and see them now and they say, look
Speaker 2: my fitbit tells me, I didn't. I'm not getting enough sleep,
Speaker 2: And he said, but how do you actually feel? And
Speaker 2: they go, But there's a name for it. It's called orthosomnia. Basically,
Speaker 2: apparently it's a thing that people no longer prepared to
Speaker 2: listen to their own bodies. Best indicating whether you had
Speaker 2: good night sleep is how do you feel next day?
Speaker 2: Do you feel sleepy? Do you feel how do you
Speaker 2: feel eric Wall? Do you feel hungry? If you feel
Speaker 2: none of those things, then you probably have a good
Speaker 2: night sleep. And whatever your fitbit says, it's utually irrelevant.
Speaker 1: And for all the health tech that's out there, because
Speaker 1: I imagine I know that I get served a lot
Speaker 1: of ads when I'm browsing on the internet or on
Speaker 1: social media for various health devices, how do I, given
Speaker 1: I'm not a trained medical doctor, how do I evaluate
Speaker 1: whether any of these devices are actually going to improve
Speaker 1: my life and my health.
Speaker 2: I think you'd have to work out why you're doing them.
Speaker 2: So the things I have, and I know the reason
Speaker 2: why I have them is I have a home blood
Speaker 2: pressure monitor, and that's because I'm sixty four. I have
Speaker 2: a family history of heart disease and stroke and I
Speaker 2: have had two close friends recently who have died from
Speaker 2: undiagnosed hypertension. So it's really important that you know what
Speaker 2: your blood pressure is and you can go and see
Speaker 2: a doctor, but you know, not always reliable because you know,
Speaker 2: you get this what's called white coat hypertension. So you
Speaker 2: can buy these kits, they're pretty good, they're very cheap,
Speaker 2: and probably buy it for less thirty dollars and just
Speaker 2: regularly check on your blood pressure see what it's doing.
Speaker 2: And you might discover, like me, that when you drink
Speaker 2: coffee your blood pressure goes crazy, or it might be
Speaker 2: the it goes up and down at certain times of
Speaker 2: day and night. So broadly I try and keep my
Speaker 2: blood pressure in the sort of healthy range. Recently it
Speaker 2: crept up. I put myself on the fast under Kyto
Speaker 2: and knock ten points of it. Now for every five
Speaker 2: points you can reduce blood pressure by it knocks reduce
Speaker 2: your chance of heart attack and stroke by about twenty percent.
Speaker 2: It's that big, and it's that big a number. If
Speaker 2: you're going to look at one number, that would be
Speaker 2: the most critical one your blood pressure. And around half
Speaker 2: of all Australian's adults have either high potentsional or in
Speaker 2: the hypertensive range and don't know it, And it is
Speaker 2: one of the things you can do to me about
Speaker 2: particularly if you know you've got it and it has
Speaker 2: no symptoms, so you can be hypertensive and be totally
Speaker 2: unaware of it until you have a massive stroke or
Speaker 2: a massive heart attack or something like that. So measuring
Speaker 2: my blood pressure is hugely important. I also have a
Speaker 2: blood sugar measuring kit because ten years ago I had
Speaker 2: type two diabetes. Got rid of it by inventing a
Speaker 2: five to two came across intimate and fasting lost ten kilos.
Speaker 2: Have broadly been kept it off ever since, and that
Speaker 2: reversed my diabetes, but I'm well aware that it could
Speaker 2: creep back up, so I prick my finger every few
Speaker 2: months to just check my blood sugars in the decent range,
Speaker 2: and once a year I get an HBO one see
Speaker 2: test done. But I found it very useful recently because
Speaker 2: I've been I have been doing it losing some weight
Speaker 2: with the fascet amnikito, and I was surprised by how
Speaker 2: rapidly my blood sugar's improved. Blood sugar is really really important.
Speaker 2: Was again about a third of Australians over the age
Speaker 2: of twenty have either pre diabetes or type two diabetes
Speaker 2: and most of them don't know it, and so if
Speaker 2: you don't do anything about it, then so those that's
Speaker 2: another really important number to go on. And to be honest,
Speaker 2: that's it. But tape measure is very low tech. Other
Speaker 2: alternative which are measuring your waist, and I would have
Speaker 2: said those were by far the three best things you
Speaker 2: can have. Everything else is kind of geeky and probably
Speaker 2: quite fun, but at this moment in time, holy unlable.
Speaker 2: I got sent to a watch which bost measure my
Speaker 2: blood pressure. I compared it to the cuff and it
Speaker 2: was just crazy. It was so inaccurate. I can't imagine
Speaker 2: how they got the rights to sell it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and the other thing I'm using at the moment is
Speaker 2: key sticks urine sticks. That's just because I'm doing this
Speaker 2: experiment on myself, putting myself into kytosis. Super helpful if
Speaker 2: you kind of want to do the Fast Day Underquito program,
Speaker 2: because you see the color change and that's very motivating. Also,
Speaker 2: time tells you again you can get breathalysers, you can
Speaker 2: get blood things. They're not very accurate, They're incredibly expensive
Speaker 2: and the keto strips cost about ten cents a strip,
Speaker 2: So why would you bother with the other stuff?
Speaker 1: Now, Michael, for people that want to consume more of
Speaker 1: what you're producing at the moment, what is the best
Speaker 1: way for listeners to do that?
Speaker 2: Okay, there are various ways. One is I'm on Twitter
Speaker 2: under Dr Michael Mosley. I'm also on Instagram again under
Speaker 2: Dr Michael Mosley Official, I think I'm there. And Claire
Speaker 2: if you're interested in recipes, Claire regularly post recipes under
Speaker 2: doctor Claire Bailey, and her name is obviously on the
Speaker 2: book along with mine, and so those are kind of
Speaker 2: the best ways of following it. If you want to
Speaker 2: watch teleprogram then it is SBS. They I'm sure an
Speaker 2: awful lot of programs with me in it, and SBS
Speaker 2: on Demand has a load of stuff. And obviously, as
Speaker 2: you're well aware, loads of books I have. Between me
Speaker 2: and Claire, we produced kind of ten books on the
Speaker 2: whole range of different subjects. So if you're interested in COVID,
Speaker 2: you're interested in sleep, you're interested in losing weight, you're
Speaker 2: interested in Tape two diabetes, I've probably reaten the book about.
Speaker 1: It amazing and I've probably read it. Michael. It's just
Speaker 1: been an absolute pleasure getting to spend this time with
Speaker 1: you after reading and watching so much of what you've
Speaker 1: brought into the world. So a huge thank you from me.
Speaker 1: You've certainly made me a lot smarter when it comes
Speaker 1: to help, so.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you very much, pleasure.
Speaker 1: Hello there, That is it for today's show. If you
Speaker 1: have not hit subscribe or follow to How I Work,
Speaker 1: you might want to do so because next week I'm
Speaker 1: sharing a real the interesting interview about life admin, so
Speaker 1: we'll be turning the tables from work act to looking
Speaker 1: at how can we actually be more productive just with
Speaker 1: all those things that build up in our life. How
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from
Speaker 1: Dead Set Studios. The producers for this episode were Liam
Speaker 1: Ridan and Jenna Koda, and thank you to mart Nimba,
Speaker 1: who does the audio mix for every episode and makes
Speaker 1: everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.