00:00:00
Runners who only run are hurt a lot and it's usually due to emotion imbalance so
00:00:05
I always do this test to show them whether your butt muscles are strong enough to keep your pelvis straight and
00:00:10
whether you're strong enough to keep your knee from falling into this position I look like I'm drunk or something how are you doing this with
00:00:16
your heels on Dr vond Wright is a leading orthopedic surgeon and Longevity expert leveraging her expertise with
00:00:22
Elite athletes to revolutionize the way we move eat and train to live longer stronger and better I'm on a rampage to
00:00:28
make bones sexy again because in the United States at least 50% of women will
00:00:34
get osteoporosis along with 2 million men now osteoporosis is low bone density and studies show that people with low
00:00:40
bone density have higher cognitive decline it increases your risk of fracture if you break your hip 50% of
00:00:46
the time whether you're a man or a woman you will not return to preall function and 30% of the time you will die and
00:00:52
there's a lot that causes bone fragility such as aging not building enough bone in our youth it's our sedentary Lifestyles the myth that women have to
00:00:59
be teeny tiny and it's even things like a woman breastfeeding will lose 20% of her bone density in the first 6 months
00:01:05
but it's not inevitable and I will lay out a lifestyle that I call unbreakable it's about muscle bone nutrition but the
00:01:10
most important part is mindset I'm very very excited uh just to pause that is
00:01:16
there a link between menopause and brain density yes and it's because of the plummeting of estrogen which is critical
00:01:22
for muscle bone tendon ligament fat and without it it can have dire effects so
00:01:27
you need to know the following this has always blown my mind a little
00:01:33
bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor
00:01:40
before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the
00:01:45
Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to
00:01:51
make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that
00:01:56
you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music]
00:02:03
Dr vonder Wright yes for anyone that's unaware of what you do and who you do it
00:02:10
for what do you do and who do you do it for so you know in as a sports doctor
00:02:15
over the years we've learned how to take really high- performing athletes you know those are who are winning all the
00:02:22
time who need to continually get better and better and better at their craft and over the 30 years of my career we've
00:02:29
gone from really focusing on how they train the periodization of their
00:02:34
training to the last time I uh was at the University of Pittsburgh I was the
00:02:40
medical director of the UPMC Lemieux sports complex which is where the Pittsburgh Penguins are housed and it
00:02:47
had gotten so uh scientific they had a full-time Chef every meal from breakfast
00:02:53
lunch dinner every meal on the planes were prepared because when it comes down to split-second agility
00:03:00
top of brain thinking every little bit counts and so in the 30 years of my of
00:03:06
my medical career it's gone from just learning more about performance science of how to train to how to feed people to
00:03:15
how to recover people so instead of doing for instance I think Dara Torres
00:03:21
was talking about her uh Olympic runs in her 40s right she trained much differently when she was 24 and in her
00:03:28
40s after she had had a child it was much more about recovery not as much hours in a pool so I take all those
00:03:36
things that we've learned over this course of my career and now apply them not only to athletes but to people like
00:03:42
you and me who were in high performance jobs I need to be tip toop in every sphere of my life as you do and how do
00:03:49
we eat better recover better take the principles of performance that we've learned from athletes into high
00:03:56
performers and even mere mortal athletes like me I love of my work involves like cognitive performance making sure my
00:04:02
brain is sharp when it needs to be yes how much of your work crosses over into the cognitive realm you know I am not a
00:04:09
brain scientist myself but I am fortunate to be surrounded by people who are expert in that so from my own
00:04:17
perspective I've come to appreciate at a much deeper level personally um as well
00:04:23
as professionally the role of sleep in fact we've talked about my previous
00:04:28
books from the early 2000s before and when I wrote those books Mobility was King I wrote only about mobility and
00:04:36
then as I progressed in my career I got deeper deeper deeper into nutrition and then I would say okay nutrition is
00:04:42
number one and Mobility is second but at this phase of evolution of sleep science
00:04:48
and knowing how restoring the brain and providing adequate time and nutrients I
00:04:54
put sleep first sleep and Recovery first because you can't do any of these other things without a r well recovered brain
00:05:01
in fact somebody asked me the other day about timing of working out and is it
00:05:06
always necessary to do it in the morning like that's the Mantra get up go do your workout and my answer to that was you
00:05:14
have to know how your brain works for instance my brain is best between 5:00
00:05:19
a.m. and 2: p.m. that is when I'm going to get all my deep work done I'm going to be creative I'm going to think after
00:05:26
2 p.m. I could build you a house I can continue operating but if I'm going to write a book it's going to be early so I
00:05:33
do not work out in the morning because I'm not going to waste that brain energy on physical activity when I need
00:05:41
it for this deep work so that's the way I apply brain science but I I'm so lucky
00:05:47
to be surrounded in in the place I am now with people who put eegs on your head and map your brain and tell you
00:05:54
which brain Pathways you're too stressful on and and which brain Pathways we can train and you can train
00:06:00
the physical brain like a muscle you can train the physical brain like a muscle yeah so there's this company called
00:06:07
nestry that I just happen to have access to and they put EEG helmets on my
00:06:12
Precision longevity clients and we map their brains and look at for instance
00:06:18
here's an example things that are habitual take very little brain injury uh energy even if we need a lot of brain
00:06:25
energy they become so habitual our brain turns away uh energy from them versus
00:06:31
things we're learning or things we're stressed about we devote so much energy to that so once they this company Maps
00:06:39
our brains then they have this training program where it's almost like getting
00:06:46
your your cognitive brain out of the way and let your subconscious brain reapply
00:06:52
energy to the pathways that you actually need that you you've begun to to ignore
00:06:57
and it makes you more efficient and I'm being an adequate in explaining it but brain scientists believe that you can
00:07:04
retrain the brain like a muscle and devote energy to neurop Pathways so I
00:07:10
know we do this to athletes to try to squeeze performance out of them when you use that term Precision longevity what
00:07:17
does that mean so you know after the understanding of human DNA knowing what
00:07:23
we're truly made of it pushed us out of a time in
00:07:28
medicine where we've been for the last 150 years which is
00:07:34
Observe and one size fits nobody now that we've sequenced the human genome we
00:07:41
can develop Health Plans your health plan my health plan it's not generic
00:07:48
here's an example when I have people who want to talk to me about living
00:07:53
healthier longer and we and we draw a set of biomarkers it's not 6,000 biomarkers it's just a set of about 23
00:08:00
that are Beyond regular labs and I see that for instance maybe stevenh you have a high load of senescent cells well I'm
00:08:08
going to specifically design your Gap nutrition according to what you need you might not need anything for inflammation
00:08:15
because maybe your inflammation labs are good but historically what we would have done is say okay let's just give
00:08:21
everybody the same formula but now we are able to devise what your body needs at your time I do the same thing with
00:08:27
exercise I never say let's have you do 150 minutes of moderate exercise because
00:08:34
I have access to lactate threshold testing where you're walking on a treadmill running on a treadmill or on a
00:08:41
bike every four minutes we're pricking your finger and I can tell exactly what
00:08:46
when your mitochondria the little energy storehouses in your cells go from burning fat to burning Caro
00:08:54
carbohydrates and that place is called the fat Max and that is when your mitochondria your energy organel are
00:09:03
most efficient and that's where we want to work out 80% of the time so that's
00:09:09
just an example of how I'm going to tell you what heart rate you need to work out
00:09:14
in I'm going to tell you how to get fill the gaps in your nutrition instead of just doing broad guidelines because
00:09:21
that's the state-of-the-art right now when you think about personalization
00:09:26
I was thinking also not just about the individual but different phases of life and how maybe in my my 20s there's a
00:09:33
certain set of things I need to be thinking about more so than in my 30s my 40s and my 50s and my 60s is that a
00:09:38
useful way to think about it are there different things we need to be thinking about in different seasons of our life or is it the same things in every
00:09:46
season well I love that question and the one one word answer is yes every season
00:09:54
of our life is different let's take bones for instance we build build build build
00:10:00
bones yeah until in women we're about 28 and uh men 30 we reach Peak bone mass we
00:10:08
then reach a plateau where we keep our bone density and then in women it begins to plummet due to hormonal influences
00:10:15
for men men usually maintain their bone density until their 70s when they
00:10:21
plummet unless they have a metabolic problem an autoimmune disease or having had the need to take a lot of steroids
00:10:27
and then you see a big difference at 50 so in Bones that's a good example how
00:10:33
every few decades our bones are reacting differently muscle is the same way we
00:10:39
know that we can gain muscle at any time in our lives but we do it most easily
00:10:46
until we're about 30 right we also know of uh changes in the
00:10:53
way our gut functions as we age having to do with absorption and the uh the
00:10:58
ability of the microvilli in our gut to absorb nutrients and different kinds of nutrients women in midlife for instance
00:11:06
need vitamins that are something called methylated which means broken down a little more because our gut function is
00:11:12
less efficient so every phase of our aging were different well on that point
00:11:17
of bones that that sounded like you were saying men's bones maintain their density longer and women don't why why
00:11:24
is that and is that linked to menopause well men uh because of the influence of
00:11:29
testosterone and the genetics of having um XY chromosomes build more bone
00:11:35
initially thicker cortices more more absolute poundage of Bones and so um and
00:11:41
then because of the plummeting of estrogen which is critical for bone health women lose bone faster than men
00:11:48
such that after about age of 40 when we get to that Plateau women start to lose
00:11:54
bone density about 20% by the time they get to their menop pause and um that can
00:12:01
have dire effects for women but that is all due to the role of estrogen on controlling bone density so is this
00:12:09
inevitable is the loss of bone density inevitable for women it is not in um in
00:12:15
2004 we studied a very large group of Masters athletes meaning athletes uh 40
00:12:21
and older in the National senior games which is Olympics for uh people of that
00:12:27
age demographic and the National games you have to have won your State Games to qualify so these were pretty highlevel
00:12:34
recreational athletes so we did a study looking at their bone density across time and the first thing the first study
00:12:41
we found was that with chronic exercise such as these people did you can
00:12:47
maintain your bone density at a very high proportion into your 80s the second question we asked was okay if we know we
00:12:55
can do that what exercise is really important for that and so we divided Sports up into uh bounding Sports where
00:13:02
the bones were being impacted like like basketball running um volleyball
00:13:08
anything when you come down hard on your bones versus swimming bowling the less
00:13:13
biking and we found that bashing your bones impact was as important in
00:13:20
maintaining bone density as things you can't control like your age whether
00:13:25
you're born with XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes family history so impacting
00:13:32
bones causing them to build up over time is critically important for maintaining
00:13:37
bone density so to answer your question is loss of bone density inevitable loss
00:13:42
of estrogen is inevitable loss of bone density doesn't have to result in
00:13:48
osteoporosis fracture and Frailty so I want to get into why that's happening but just to pause there
00:13:54
because a lot of people don't think bones are that important oh like I think a lot of people see our bones as just some thing that yeah we can't influence
00:14:01
you don't think of them like muscles muscles I go to the gym I can expand my muscles I can get strong but with bones it feels like they're static you know so
00:14:09
how how would you refute that so that I start caring about my bones and what is the cost if I don't care about my bones
00:14:17
well you know what I'm on a rampage for this year that to bring to make bones
00:14:22
sexy again CU here from a very superficial level is why we should care and then I'll tell you from a more
00:14:27
scientific level you know we only think of our bones usually in a couple times like you look
00:14:34
in the mirror and somebody tells you oh your bone structure is magnificent look at this model's bones and or uh and
00:14:41
we're all touching our cheekbones or we think about them when we hear about a great archaeologist who's just
00:14:48
discovered a new people group and we can tell from our bones how they lived how
00:14:53
they died how healthy they were in fact in that setting bone is the last remnant
00:14:59
of your whole life it endures the longest I mean the hisory the history you talk about in your bones outlives
00:15:07
anything muscle goes away skin goes away everything except your bones which
00:15:12
remain that's fascinating right but the other reason we even think about
00:15:19
our bones is when they break right when they bones people think bones are silent
00:15:25
like a strong silent type just hanging back until they break and then they're
00:15:31
screaming at you right and and causing Frailty and here's some bone stats
00:15:36
because the real answer to the question is coming one in two women will have an osteoporotic fracture in her lifetime so
00:15:43
it's either me or your partner or me or your assistant right one in two will
00:15:49
have an osteoporotic fracture women have 70% of all hip fractures hip fractures
00:15:55
are one of the main contributors to ending up in a nursing home because you can no long walk and take care of
00:16:00
yourself right 70% are women if you break your hip 50% of the time whether
00:16:07
you're a man or a woman you will not return to preall function you cannot go live in that house where you raised your
00:16:13
children you may not be able to drive and go be totally independent right and 30% of the time it's a huge number 30%
00:16:21
of the time you will die either from the complications of the fracture from the
00:16:27
bed rest from the in infections you get the bladder infections just the sequele
00:16:32
of being that sedentary so those are those are not meant to scare people that
00:16:38
is the reality that I see every day as an orthopedic surgeon on call but there are other reasons to
00:16:44
carry about the bones because fracture is a big one bones and it makes sense nature is so
00:16:50
conservative bones are in our body from the top of our head to our pinky toe
00:16:56
right bones are master communicators we think of muscle which
00:17:02
we're all talking about now and Bone and adapost and everything as as siloed
00:17:10
organs that don't have much to do with each other except they live next to each other the fact of the matter is for
00:17:17
instance when we're talking about the musculoskeletal system bone tendon
00:17:23
ligament muscle fat cartilage muscle stem cells there are all all derived
00:17:29
from the same stem cell the mesenchimal stem cell so they're not distant
00:17:35
neighbors they're cousins and they all speak in the same language they may have different
00:17:41
dialects I was thinking about an example of of this you know how in the UK English is the language but depending on
00:17:48
what parish you live in or which country within the UK English sounds very different but it's the same language So
00:17:56
within musculoskeletal tissue isue muscle and bone are not separate they
00:18:02
are one ecosystem such that when muscle releases a protein
00:18:10
called irisin it talks to the Bone when bone releases a protein called
00:18:15
osteocalcin it talks to the muscle but in the case of bone osteocal if we just stick with that
00:18:23
protein it talks to the whole body when your osteoblast s the bone building
00:18:30
cells in your bones released osteocalcin it goes to your brain and has a neuroprotective effect by decreasing
00:18:37
inflammation it goes to your brain and causes the synthesis of neurons in the
00:18:44
hippocampus it goes to the pancreas and helps with insulin insensitivity it goes
00:18:50
to the muscle and helps the muscles scoop up glucose out of the blood right
00:18:56
if you're a man osteocal can travel to the testes and that organ the litig
00:19:02
cells under stimulation of osteocalcin will produce testosterone so it's like a
00:19:08
miracle and a wonder that we just think of Bones as the strong silent type that
00:19:14
hold up our muscle because actually bone and and the proteins that it produces are Master
00:19:22
communicators and it makes so much sense because we have bone everywhere in our
00:19:27
bodies why wouldn't our body bodies use it like that I thought it was just a frame well and it is a frame right
00:19:33
what's Muscle without bone just a heap a metabolic tissue right it makes us gives us our statue but it's a master
00:19:41
Communicator the framework is almost a secondary job in my opinion the bone is
00:19:47
releasing stuff I got this um this little analogy I'm going to put on
00:19:54
the table in one of the one of the tubs I've got some mineral some and then this
00:20:00
is the body yeah so could you explain to me how the the bone is releasing
00:20:06
something into the body so we've talked about the bone being structural right it holds you up it gives you your stature
00:20:13
we've talked about bone being a master Communicator another job of the bone is
00:20:19
as your body's Storehouse to really really important maybe if we just talk about one of them
00:20:25
calcium calcium is is a critical mineral in our body we need it for muscle
00:20:31
contraction for pushing um molecules across cell membranes but we've got to store it
00:20:37
somewhere so when we eat food our body pull our intestines pull it out of the
00:20:43
food we eat and stores it in our bones and so our body is always sensing how
00:20:50
much calcium how much phosphorus do we have what do we need when our body senses that we need more it goes to the
00:20:56
Bone it tickles the osteoclastic and say osteoclast we need some more calcium the
00:21:02
osteoclast breaks down some bone releases calcium and it goes into the
00:21:07
body for use and then the body has enough to use the body does not just keep piling it in
00:21:14
because hypercalcemia causes heart arhythmia it's bad right the body is perfectly in
00:21:20
homeostasis in Balance so when the bone has released enough it sits back and
00:21:26
keeps storing it right the calcium your body doesn't need if the bone is
00:21:33
full it's excreted through the kidneys and this is a really fine balance
00:21:38
between building bone releasing the storehouse of minerals into the
00:21:44
bloodstream or saying oh we've got enough let's send it out in our urine
00:21:49
the body is such a miracle like that so if I don't have enough calcium or some of these other minerals does that mean
00:21:56
that my bones are going to become fragile so you know there are lots of things
00:22:01
that go into bone fragility or osteopenia and one of them is not laying
00:22:07
down enough bone in our youth if we T you asked me earlier about changes across a lifespan when it comes to Bone
00:22:15
what's interesting is that I get very very young women in my clinic for 25 28
00:22:22
whom for various reasons I do a bone density test on and they are already
00:22:27
have brittle bone I know it's it's it's shocking well I think that happens for a number of
00:22:33
reasons number one we didn't build enough bone there is still a myth in this country that women have to be teeny
00:22:39
tiny that we have to starve ourselves and when that happens many women do not have consistent menstrual cycles and
00:22:47
estrogen which then helps us lay down bone so that's number one we don't estrogen plays a role in laying down but
00:22:54
yes it does critical role so we're not laying down enough or maybe we're athletes we're in we Title 9 which
00:23:02
is the law that um equalize sport for women in college is 53 years old so
00:23:09
maybe young women are not laying down enough bone because they're expending so much energy 10,000 calories a day and
00:23:16
then they're not refeeding in the way so they're always living in a state of energy
00:23:21
deficit and not laying down enough bone or maybe young women are coming to my
00:23:26
office with not enough bone because we are raising an entire generation of sedentary children who are sitting
00:23:33
around in their basements on playing games building brains but not building
00:23:40
bodies that is borne out by looking out of the University of Wisconsin
00:23:46
Orthopedic researchers there studied which women's sports build the best bone and it's
00:23:53
gymnastics it is the pounding and the feeding of those athletes that builds the best best bone so we have trouble
00:24:00
with not enough brittle bones in adolescence because we're not building it the second place in the lifespan that
00:24:08
we may become low in bone density and hear me people I am not saying not to
00:24:15
breastfeed I mean I in my children I my child I breastfed for a year it's really
00:24:20
great for babies but a woman breastfeeding will lose 20%
00:24:26
of her bone density in the first 6 months of breastfeeding and if she's not really careful to get 500 milligrams of
00:24:32
calcium a day in her food or through supplementation she will not build it
00:24:39
back and then if you have children in ear in succession because many women are
00:24:44
waiting until 30s to have their first child and then have less time we may never build backbone so that's another
00:24:51
key point that people don't realize could be dangerous to the bones and then
00:24:56
finally yes is this period about around per menopause starting around 45 when
00:25:03
estrogen levels become very chaotic and then ultimately zero that can cause the
00:25:09
rapid decline in bone density and Bone weakness that you're actually asking me
00:25:16
about and that's because estrogen is critical for controlling the absorption
00:25:22
this part the absorption of bone and without estrogen
00:25:27
controlling the absorption it just keeps breaking down bone faster than the
00:25:32
osteoblast the building cells can build it so there's an an unbalance a
00:25:38
disregulation so I want to go into all of that starting with the point you made about um having doing Impact Sports when
00:25:44
we're younger yeah because like people often say if you do Impact Sports when you're younger especially some of them there's other consequences like injury
00:25:51
or hitting your head so you're saying that we should be running or jumping when we're younger to build our our bone
00:25:58
strength absolutely to build everything oh it's you know we we uh make
00:26:04
mitochondria most the energy of ourselves we make a lot of mitochondria in our youth if we're not active in our
00:26:10
youth we don't have the anabolic stimulus as much to make as much mitochondria if we are sedentary
00:26:17
children we will make bone but we will not build bone to the extent we do if we're bashing it every day and I and I
00:26:24
think the data out of Wisconsin is a good illustration of that and is in all seasons of life if I'm 60 years old
00:26:30
should I still be bashing that bone playing basketball abs and that's what my study from the national senior game
00:26:36
shows that by impacting your bones across your lifespan you can change your bone density so on that point of
00:26:42
pregnancy which was your second point there during my pregnancy after my pregnancy what do I need to be doing is
00:26:49
it drinking milk yeah so if and this is the data I gave you was specifically for breastfeeding okay so for breastfeeding
00:26:56
mothers uh you will lose about 500 milligrams of calcium a day as you're
00:27:02
making milk for your child you must replace that I like people to replace
00:27:07
their calcium with whole food right with prunes and dates and and high calcium um
00:27:14
Dairy if you will if you simply cannot do that okay take a supplement but if you forget to do that I mean I get it I
00:27:21
was a young mother I'm exhausted I wasn't a young mother I was a 40-year-old mother exhausted you have to be so mindful as
00:27:28
your the baby's latching on to eat some calcium eat your yogurt eat your calcium
00:27:33
chew from Whole Foods if you will so that you rebuild your bone which you're completely capable of doing studies show
00:27:40
you will rebuild your bone but not if you're not aware not if you're in the I've got to lose the baby fat starving
00:27:46
phase let's not do that you talked to about how bone has an impact on various
00:27:52
parts of the body and I've had you talk about this phrase the bone brain axis yeah what is the bone brain AIS well if
00:27:59
we just talk about um just choose one of the the proteins that bone makes
00:28:07
osteocalcin so as that's released into the bloodstream one of the places it goes is into it through into the brain
00:28:15
and it can cause it can Aid in the neuroprotective effects so what is that
00:28:22
mean under normal metabolism we um develop free radical
00:28:29
through du due to normal metabolism cell work um we develop oxidative stress and
00:28:37
osteocalcin works to decrease that oxidative damage to repair cells in the
00:28:42
brain so that's number one number two it stimulates the release of something
00:28:48
called brain derived neurotropic protein bdnf factor which stimulates the growth
00:28:55
of neurons in a part of the brain called the hippocampus which is involved in memory and here's here's the opposite
00:29:02
side of it we know in people that have low bone density they also have higher
00:29:09
brain cognitive dysfunction with age and vice versa there's an association in the
00:29:14
literature with osteoprosis and cognitive decline and vice versa I heard
00:29:20
you in the The Business Insider interview do describe there being a critical decade yes for bone health mhm
00:29:28
what is the critical decade I think the critical decade for most of our health Stephen is no later than 35 to 45 for
00:29:34
men and women that's because um we know for
00:29:40
women that's when estrogen starts to decline or become chaotic so when we're
00:29:46
in our 30s to 40s that is the time to get all of our health habits together it's time to get a physical to see what
00:29:53
your Baseline labs are I think it would be critical for men and women particularly men to get a baseline
00:29:59
testosterone so that in the future when we're thinking about supplementing testosterone we're supplementing back to
00:30:05
your particular level because in the future let's say when you're 50 a man's testosterone could be 600 which Falls
00:30:13
within the normal range but if he's still feeling low energy not himself a lot of tendon and ligus injuries well
00:30:21
his young testosterone might have been 800 or a th000 so I like people to get
00:30:27
baseline lab if they've never been to the doctor before uh around 35 all
00:30:32
things so that we know what we're returning you to number one number two
00:30:38
if you have been so busy with your career and stepped away from any semblance of mobility and resistance
00:30:44
training now is the time because had I known then what I know now when I was 40
00:30:52
I was training for triathlons I was an aerobic athlete right I ran I biked but
00:30:58
what I would have done then if with what I know now is I would have been lifting a lot of weight to build maximum muscle
00:31:06
while I still had the most hormones to start at a better place because you can build muscle but it's better to start
00:31:12
from a higher average so get some Labs make a relationship with the doctor get all your preventive screening
00:31:20
do not uh blow that off um develop the habits that are going to carry you
00:31:25
through a lifetime whether it's smart anti- inflammatory nutrition whether it's getting into a resistance training
00:31:32
program building up your cardiac machine I saw that you were running a
00:31:37
lot now and we want the highest possible V2 Max that we can as we enter into
00:31:44
midlife because we never want as we age to cross something called the fragility
00:31:50
line so V2 Max is the measure of it's the ultimate
00:31:57
measure of fit how much oxygen you are capable of pulling out of the air and diffusing
00:32:03
across your lungs into your blood world class athletes I was just at the US uh Olympic Center in Park City
00:32:10
Utah those athletes have a V2 Max of 75 80 sometimes 90 right mere mortals are
00:32:18
considered excellent when they have a V2 Max uh of around 50 for women around
00:32:24
50 so you can build V2 to Max and should in the critical decade because once we
00:32:31
hit midlife we will decline 10% a decade
00:32:37
if we don't consistently build it up so what does that look like so if I started
00:32:42
at 50 50 years old my last V2 Max was when I was at when I was 50 and it was
00:32:48
50 it was pretty good because I was an endurance person right just in whole numbers by the time I turn 60 it's going
00:32:55
to be 45 70 40 80 35 I never ever ever
00:33:02
want to hit 18 if I'm a man or 16 if I'm a woman because that is the level of V2
00:33:11
Max when we can't get up from a chair by ourselves we when we can't walk across the room because that takes cardiac
00:33:17
function and so the higher we get our V2 Max in our youth the more Runway we have
00:33:23
even if we don't continue to build it up yeah I've got a family member that can't walk upstairs without being out of
00:33:29
breath and it's so debilitating because when you have grandkids and the grandkids start running around and you
00:33:34
want to play with them it's so sad watching this particular family member see the grandkids come the
00:33:40
grandkids say let's play the grandkids run off and this person can't go after them so they just have to watch they
00:33:46
literally watch the the grandkids playing in the garden because they can't play with them and I think it's s such a
00:33:51
sad thing it's one of my big motivators to try try and stay healthy is just to be able to extend my health span that's
00:33:58
right so that I can be healthier hopefully until the day that I die thatd be great but would I want to talk about
00:34:04
running I want to talk about V2 Max to close off on the subject of Bones there's two terms that I that I want to
00:34:10
hear one is this term osteoporosis yes now I have no idea what osteoporosis is I've heard it a couple of times in my
00:34:16
life but I don't know if it's something I should be thinking about worried about um or what it means yes osteoporosis is
00:34:23
the word we use to describe low bone density Okay so so the way we measure
00:34:29
osteoporosis is uh using an x-ray called a DEA scan a dual X-ray and it just
00:34:35
measures it Compares your bone density to that of a 30-year-old healthy person
00:34:42
and it gives us something called a t-core so it's it's like when you're in school and you're graded on a bell curve
00:34:48
and the center of the curve is average and that's the average for a 30-year-old when you get a dexa scan
00:34:55
score and it's positive fan fantastic you have bones of a 30-year-old if you get a t-core on a
00:35:03
dexas scan that's from 0 to minus1 it's okay minus one is the
00:35:09
definition of osteopenia meaning watch out your bones are getting weak the
00:35:15
definition of osteoporosis is minus a t-core of minus
00:35:20
2.5 increases your risk of fracture by 40% or more all the bad statistics that
00:35:26
I talked to you about come with osteoporosis and how many people have
00:35:32
osteopenia osteoporosis in over the age of 50 in America well two million men have osteoporosis interestingly isn't
00:35:39
that interesting you don't think about it as a men's disease and uh one in two women will have an osteoporotic fracture
00:35:46
so at least 50% of women but it's not inevitable that's why I'm so interested in in Catching people early in the
00:35:54
critical decade it's not inevitable but it will be inevitable if we don't catch it but here's the thing that's
00:36:01
bothersome in the United States and in many other countries uh with people I deal with you cannot get a dexa scan
00:36:08
paid for until you're 65 by 65 the damage is done why are we
00:36:13
waiting even with people who have had a fracture there's a gap in followup such
00:36:19
that they should all have a dexa scan because the number one thing that predicts future fracture is past
00:36:26
fracture so Public Service Announcement if you've had a fracture get a dexa scan even if
00:36:33
it was a traumatic one like you had b a car accident but definitely if you have fallen if your dog pulled you down if it
00:36:39
was a low trauma fracture get a dexa scan because then at least you'll know
00:36:44
where you are and can then plan a course for building your bone are there any early warning signs that I might be
00:36:51
suffering from osteoporosis or on my way to osteoporosis you know I think you can get Clues from your own family okay if
00:36:59
your mother shrank if you if you used to be able to look your mother in the eye like me my
00:37:04
mother looked me in the i54 and now she's way down here we lose height in
00:37:10
both men and women due to uh compression of her spine vertebrae we lose height so
00:37:16
if your dad shrank if your mother shrank that's a good indication that you have a family history where osteoporosis can
00:37:23
exist or if your mother had a hip fracture or or if for some reason maybe
00:37:30
asthma you've had to be on uh high dose steroids your whole life or an autoimmune that's very bad for bones so
00:37:38
from a medical standpoint from a family history standpoint from a personal standpoint usually fracture what about
00:37:44
if I'm a smoker does that have an impact on my bone health and chances yeah I'm really glad you asked that smoking is a
00:37:50
poison to Bone healing whether it is fracture will heal more slowly in fact
00:37:56
we have a very a much higher rate of non-union which is where we fix a fracture and it still doesn't heal in
00:38:02
smokers we know that uh there is a big body of data within the orthopedic literature for people who have spine
00:38:08
surgery who are smokers they are not only less healing but they're more infected so the the noxious chemicals in
00:38:15
smoking are very bad for bone good thing I don't smoke is that
00:38:21
smoking vaping or is it it's all vaping might be more dangerous we just don't have as much literature
00:38:28
okay and the the last thing before we talk about running in fe2 Max and endurance and sports and all those
00:38:33
things is the link between Alzheimer's in bone health is there a link that goes
00:38:40
back to what we were talking about before and there's a correlation we I don't believe we worked
00:38:46
out the causation but there's a correlation we see people with
00:38:52
Alzheimer and people with uh dangerous osteoporosis are sometimes the same same
00:38:57
group 30% of the time people with brain disease also of osteoporosis and it may
00:39:03
do be due to this uh connection that we've talked about uh between the two organ systems you had an aunt that
00:39:10
passed away from Alzheimer's I do my aunt Ida she was brilliant she was a teacher and she stopped remembering she
00:39:16
didn't remember herself she didn't remember the farm that we were all raised on that's a really hard thing to
00:39:23
witness um sometimes people with Alzheimer's lose the inhibition and they become
00:39:30
angry and enraged and afraid she never did that but um but that's a hard thing
00:39:35
to witness how how did that experience change you or change your focus or add
00:39:41
to the sort of what reservoir of thoughts concerns reference points in
00:39:47
your life well you know what it has done it has put an urgency and even it still is a day-to-day battle I don't want I
00:39:55
think sometimes think people think for me personally that because I talk about these things all the time and I do lift
00:40:01
heavy and I do the thing I live the life I prescribe for people that it's easy and it's not easy you know I just I told
00:40:07
you IID finished this book I was writing and there was a big gap in the consistency of this lifestyle but what
00:40:14
motivates me to get back is the question of what would it be like to live without
00:40:21
a brain that's preserved I mean I don't know sometimes I think about if I was aging and I had
00:40:28
to choose one would I choose an able body or an able brain isn't that hard I
00:40:34
don't know that you do have to choose but I can't fathom what life would be like without an able brain and so for me
00:40:41
that motivates me to lift to make my skeletal muscle secrete the uh proteins
00:40:47
that go to the brain and build better brain to eat the foods that are not going to clog my arteries it's just as a
00:40:53
motivator because I want to be this way until I die mhm what would you choose if you had to
00:41:00
an able body or an able brain my it was super clear for me I'd rather have the able brain me too me too relationships
00:41:08
that is that is the fullness of Life protect but these things are also
00:41:14
fundamentally interconnected aren't they that's why when I look at the alimer stats around bone health I think well if you were had osteoporosis or something
00:41:20
and you weren't moving as much maybe yeah maybe you know what a huge motivator for my patience is now that
00:41:26
you've brought this up is Alzheimer's disease is thought of as
00:41:32
the third phase of diabetes right and so everybody is aware of diabetes and it means you don't process sugar and you
00:41:40
have glucose intolerance and your pancreas is no longer functioning and and the bad sequella that can come with
00:41:46
that what people are not aware of as much at least as a people who come to my
00:41:51
clinic is pre-diabetes and if you don't mind me diverging a little bit because it's so important to disc question you
00:41:57
just asked me and can we prevent it and and if we got to choose what would we
00:42:02
choose but I have people coming into my office all the time and I look at their labs and they have a fasting glucose
00:42:09
they've had their Labs drawn they've done what we've said get in front of your critical decade they've had their fasting glucose drawn and it's
00:42:16
110 which is I'm going to tell you and and their hemoglobin A1c is nearing six
00:42:23
so fasting glucose is the glucose that remains in your blood after you haven't eaten for 12 hours in a normally
00:42:30
functioning pancreas metabolic system we want our fasting glucose to be around
00:42:37
85 right that's normal means we eat something insulin comes out of our
00:42:43
pancreas the sugar is put into our muscle and then the blood sugar is around 85 if it's staying up 110
00:42:52
consistantly we know from the literature that you have a 70 to 100%
00:42:58
chance of developing full-blown diabetes within 10 years but what I see in people
00:43:04
coming into my office is I'll say did anybody ever tell you you were pre-diabetic and either the answer is no
00:43:11
or the answer is oh yeah somebody told me they said just make a few you know
00:43:16
focus more on your exercise and and what I think the reaction to pre the
00:43:22
diagnosis of pre-diabetes should be is running and screaming to get healthy
00:43:27
because if we know that with a consistent blood sugar in the pre-diabetic range and we're casually
00:43:33
told by our healthare provider oh just go try to exercise more you know just
00:43:39
casually approach this don't eat so many carbs that is not serious enough because
00:43:44
we know from a preventative standpoint from a Precision longevity standpoint which is all about prevention we can
00:43:51
prevent you from getting to diabetes in the next 10 years if we're really really serious about lifting weights about
00:43:59
cardio Health about anti-inflammatory nutrition following so I don't view
00:44:04
pre-diabetes as a casual thing at all because if in a 10 years you're going to
00:44:10
get diabetes and in 10 more years you're going to have Alzheimer's disease and I could have prevented that by paying
00:44:16
attention when I was 40 it's almost inexcusable that we're not paying more attention to it 96
00:44:23
million people in the United States have pre-diabetes 96 million 96 million according to the
00:44:29
American Diabetes Association I just gave a talk at their annual convention 96 million have a
00:44:36
preventable characteristic that we can prevent them from becoming diabetic and getting
00:44:42
Alzheimer disease and yet it is too casually spoken of that's like almost one in three that
00:44:48
means that there's three of us in this room so Jack's got pre pre-diabetes perhaps potentially
00:44:55
you're an you an an urance athlete wouldn't you say I was an endurance athlete and I'm I've been I don't have
00:45:00
it today it ran out but I'm a little obsessed with continuous glucose monitoring so I've been wearing it for
00:45:06
about 18 months and and uh it's so interesting I told you that you know I
00:45:12
just finished this book and I've gotten a little bit off my regular intensity and it changes my blood sugar so I run a
00:45:20
little I because I haven't been lifting four times a week only twice a week because I haven't been sprinting twice a
00:45:27
week like I Norm my normal regimen is I lift heavy four times a week I on the
00:45:32
other days I do about four days of Bas training Zone too two of those days I Sprint I always eat a lot of protein
00:45:39
that is my lifestyle and my blood sugar is 85 when I do that and I'm a midlife woman and
00:45:47
you know the metabolic things that happen to midlife women even backing off a little bit starts to creep up my blood
00:45:53
sugar so this is a constant daily habitual lifestyle that we all need to
00:45:58
lead and so when I see that and someone as healthy as me when my patients show up and they casually been told that they
00:46:07
have something that's going to kill them I don't think that's enough attention
00:46:12
that's what I've been thinking a lot about recently is what diet is going to lead me to better cognitive performance
00:46:17
to someone that spends a lot of my time talking yes but then also I'm on stage I'm in boardrooms and in meetings and in
00:46:22
negotiations I'm reading emails and writing books Etc so I'm always thinking if I can just get 5% Edge well I can
00:46:28
tell you for instance the the dietitians and chefs that make the food for the pro
00:46:33
athletes that I've taken care of across my life they're not only eating meat
00:46:39
they have a very well-balanced diet that includes lots of vegetables lots of high protein they they take amino acid
00:46:46
supplements if they need to fill in the gaps right if they're not getting enough Lucine or something but they just don't
00:46:52
go down one one pathway I haven't seen that in the Pros that I take care of he
00:46:59
to has given me a very sharp mind has it an extremely sharp mind it's so interesting as a podcast when you sit
00:47:04
here and you have all these conversations because some days you show up and sometimes these conversations last for four hours and your brain and
00:47:11
mouth just don't feel like they're connected yeah and then on other days I come here like boom boom and it's
00:47:16
automatic yeah it's like I don't have to think and it's just flowing off off my mouth and the variance the big I said so
00:47:22
the causal factors are obviously sleep is one of them the other one is how many carbohydrates I've had in recent yes
00:47:30
hours so if I've had a lot of carboh hydrates something you know like if I've
00:47:35
had bread my mouth and my brain have no connection if I've had lots of sugar my mouth in my brain are completely done
00:47:42
agreed agreed you know because of this CGM thing I found that if I only eat
00:47:47
protein for breakfast which uh egg white omelette or you know whatever just
00:47:52
protein that I needed a little complex carbs in order for about 10:00 in the morning to be
00:47:59
able to function at a high level with my patients so now I've added 50 gr of carbs in the morning but that's not a
00:48:05
lot of carbs not very much I just needed that little complex but uh interesting
00:48:10
right and what do you eat I eat 130 grams of protein a day there's no upper
00:48:16
limit on how much protein you can eat in a single setting I try to get at least 30 because there is a lower thresholds
00:48:22
for 30 and so if I do that uh it takes three meals and a couple SN a day I
00:48:28
that's a lot of volume of food so I try to eat really dense so uh a cup of Greek
00:48:34
yogurt is like 18 grams and a really pure beef stick is another 16 so at this
00:48:40
time I at this point I've memorized the most dense foods that I can to get that much protein it's a lot
00:48:46
of protein it's a gram per pound it's a gram per pound and that's what I need to
00:48:52
build muscle Studies have shown that uh eating high protein Al without lifting
00:48:57
as much as I want myself and others to do will help maintain muscle and then I eat a lot of vegetables I don't now I
00:49:06
hope people are not going to throw them at me but I don't eat fruit except blueberries fruit is Nature's dessert so
00:49:12
if we're going to eat fruit eat it as dessert I eat I eat blueberries with my yogurt but um and then carbs I only eat
00:49:19
complex carbs if I eat them at all quick one I want to talk about something we all need to take seriously
00:49:26
which is cyber security whether you're a first-time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional
00:49:32
who's been through it all staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated I have to say and that is where vant comes in who is a
00:49:39
sponsor of this podcast vant takes the pain out of security compliance automating the tedious but essential
00:49:45
process of proving your business is secure across over 35 Frameworks like sock 2 ISO
00:49:52
271 centralize your workflows answer security questions up to 5 times faster
00:49:57
and protect your business without losing focus on growth and this is really a critical part of this a new IDC white
00:50:04
paper found that companies using van save over $535,000 a year and it pays for itself
00:50:11
in just 3 months for a limited time my community gets $1,000 off vter at
00:50:16
v.com that's van.com for $1,000
00:50:22
off you're um a very big advocate of muscle you know when we talk about
00:50:27
longevity something that you continually come back to as the most important thing for people's longevity I think I would
00:50:34
put muscle and bone near the same category because you can have all the muscle you want but if you break your
00:50:40
hip you still have the downstream effects now you're much Les less likely to break your hip if you're strong but I
00:50:46
think muscle or bone are really important what if you 65 years old 70 years old and you
00:50:53
haven't got MH strong muscles right now now your muscles have um declined let's
00:51:00
say over the last couple of decades is it too late never it's never too late it is never too late your body will always
00:51:07
rise to the Strategic stress you place on it so there are a lot of and growing
00:51:13
number of what used to be anomalies all over the Internet of people in their 60s 7s 80s and Beyond in a gym powerlifting
00:51:22
becoming uh competitive bodybuilders so even if you're starting
00:51:27
not being able to get up out of a chair over a very short amount of time 6 months a year you can reverse the
00:51:34
trajectory of your Frailty but it takes consistency right I do wonder that I
00:51:39
think about think about my father and he's approaching his 70s now and I don't
00:51:45
think he's done weight training for the last 15 15 years yeah and there is a part of me that did wonder is it too
00:51:51
late now to to start doing weight training because it's almost like a a two-sided problem in the fact that you
00:51:58
haven't done it yes so you find it harder so you don't do it so you find it harder and then you sort of spiral down
00:52:04
to this sedentary State well and you know what you do for that is nobody expects you to start with powerlifting
00:52:13
squats deadlifts nobody expects that moving our body through a range of motion doing body weight progressing to
00:52:21
free weights progressing to like kettle bells progressing to bands when once you
00:52:26
see that your body is capable of adapting and progressing you will get there pretty
00:52:33
rapidly I used to do this program called a start where I would take people fresh
00:52:39
off the couch and over three months we would get them to a 5K race because 5K
00:52:44
is a meaningful distance for people who are sedentary and over that course of 3 months we did a series of um body weight
00:52:53
and kettle bell type exercises in a Circ followed by walking and people started
00:53:00
with 51% body fat not being able to get through the warmup not be able to hold
00:53:05
himself up in a plank and in three months they could plank for 2 minutes they could walk for three miles they
00:53:11
could keep going for the entire 10-minute circuit without having to stop
00:53:17
so there is never an age or skill level when our body will not respond to the Strategic stress you put on it so uh get
00:53:25
a trainer for your dad if he'd accept it if he would accept it I'll call him after this if I am trying to build
00:53:32
muscle are there a certain amount of days of the week or repetitions I
00:53:37
need to do to build the muscle I think about this a lot when I'm out here in La I'm I'm I'm trying to make sure that I
00:53:43
don't lose my muscle but I spend a lot of time sat down in here recording podcasts so is there a certain amount of
00:53:49
times I need to work out that muscle before I lose it you know I was just reading this morning actually that um
00:53:55
even with a 10 week Hiatus from let's say you're lifting consistently even with a 10we Hiatus uh you will retain
00:54:02
muscle memory so that you don't make serious declines which is little relief to me because it's been a little while
00:54:08
with this book so you retain muscle memory and you can quickly once you get started again get back up to the place
00:54:15
you were um so all is not lost if you take a few days off
00:54:22
but the minimum if we're really working at it is a couple days a week
00:54:27
progressively lifting harder for men in midlife it's about eight reps four sets
00:54:32
for women once we've trained to the place we can lifting heavy four reps four sets and when I say that out loud I
00:54:40
get a lot of comments about somebody's going to get hurt well it's true but you have to work your way up to that like
00:54:46
any sport you have to work your way towards that level because what we're trying to do by lifting heavier
00:54:52
especially for women is replace the anabolic stimulus that estrogen
00:54:57
was you must work hard enough estrogen creates growth we must signal our body
00:55:03
by the intensity of our work to build muscle and lifting heavy does that so if
00:55:09
you're starting on the couch uh start with bands start with
00:55:15
light weights start with the Mambi pami pink weights that I rail against but don't stay there continue to work your
00:55:20
way up in a progressive way to heavy lifting total body at least twice a week to maintain
00:55:26
do I need to increase the weight load to build muscle because I wonder when I go to the gym sometimes you know I might be
00:55:34
using smaller dumbbells but I'm doing more repetitions yeah is that still going to build muscle well it depends what you want so so lighter weights
00:55:41
higher reps is uh will will uh function for hypertrophy
00:55:47
for big bigger total muscle but not necessarily power and strength in Lo in
00:55:53
midlife and Beyond I am Lifting for longevity EMP power so I'm not as
00:55:58
interested as I once was in the bigness of my muscle I'm interested in can it
00:56:04
move powerfully over times can I get up off the floor can I lift my suitcase above my head so Lifting for power is
00:56:13
lower reps higher weights so it just depends what our goal is you may be focused on hypertrophy right now which
00:56:18
is fine because you've not reach the critical decade so if I'm looking for hypertrophy yeah higher reps lower
00:56:24
weights so 12 12 15 reps low weight and
00:56:30
then if I was looking for power then maybe 6 eight 6 eight that's right how many do you do I do four you do four mhm
00:56:36
so big weight four big weights four reps four sets interesting I didn't know that
00:56:42
M interesting and just to give some sort of
00:56:47
foundational knowledge as to why muscle is so important because some people still might not um be aware of the link between longevity and muscle a lot of
00:56:55
this is to do with from what I understand glucose so it has to do with
00:57:02
muscle as the snc for glucose uh it is a key factor in
00:57:08
preventing insulin resistance not to mention strength staying upright not falling down causing a fracture right so
00:57:16
muscle is a metabolic endrocrine organ it releases when it releases um you know one of the things
00:57:23
that releases is skeletal muscle contraction by curls causes the transcription of a protein called clo
00:57:29
which is the longevity protein about 30 years ago it was described in nature it
00:57:34
is the protein when muscle contracts that's transcribed it works on every organ we know that it's critical for the
00:57:42
longevity and repair of organs because mice who are born without the ability to
00:57:47
make clo die old very young chronologically they're
00:57:53
very young mice but they die very old mice because they have not enjoyed this
00:57:58
protein clo we make clo by the contraction of skeletal muscle here's a
00:58:04
study I did uh years ago that showed that I measured clo level circulating in
00:58:10
the blood of older Masters athletes people 60 70 80 younger Master's
00:58:17
athletes 40 and sedentary people and what I found that the highest levels of
00:58:22
circulating cloo the longevity pro protein we're in young athletes not surprising
00:58:31
the second highest level of longevity protein clo were in Old Masters athletes
00:58:39
70 80 the lowest level of longevity protein were in young sedentary people
00:58:45
so even old athletes had more circulating cloo than young sedentary people so just
00:58:52
the contraction of skeletal muscle can add to your longevity through this protein another Protein that's released
00:58:59
with skeletal muscle contraction called ginin it is transcribed goes to the
00:59:06
brain works at a place called the nucleus culus which is critical for
00:59:11
resilience it makes you more resilient it helps you able to problem solve and
00:59:17
then you know a very popular uh protein that is transcribed with skeletal muscle
00:59:22
contraction is called irisin it's the exercise protein which you know it works
00:59:27
on bone it works on fat to Brown fat from white fat to Brown fat which is has
00:59:34
higher thermogenesis it has higher mitochondrial load it so muscle just in
00:59:40
doing its thing not just looking pretty in a gym mirror does all these metabolic functions and so that's why we think it
00:59:47
has such a key role in longevity so if I'm trying to protect my muscle as I age
00:59:53
are there any supplements that I should be taking I mean do they sell cloo supplements
00:59:59
they don't you have to make it oh F contract your own muscles well uh you
01:00:05
need to feed your muscles I always quote people one gram per ideal pound because listen I I I'm
01:00:12
an actual practicing person doctor and here's what I know people need really
01:00:18
Specific Instructions and they can't be confusing so is there a range of protein people
01:00:24
need yes there is but people can remember one gram per ideal pound so you got to feed your muscle with protein
01:00:30
high quality protein the highest quality protein has the greatest percentage of
01:00:36
an an essential amino acid called Lucine Lucine is not made by the body it has to
01:00:41
be taken in from the outside it's a branch train amino acid and you get it from whey protein the best source in the
01:00:49
universe of Lucine and whey protein is mother's milk but most of us don't drink that as adults so we get it from dairy
01:00:55
products you can get it from plants for everybody that is a plant lover you just have a much lower percentage you have to eat a
01:01:01
lot more of it so high quality protein number one number two there's a lot of research uh for uh creatine
01:01:09
supplementation for both men and women when I first started being aware of creatine in 1992 it was during the
01:01:17
Olympics I was working with a bunch of wrestlers at that time um we would give very very high doses we would cycle the
01:01:23
creatine we would come on and off now steadily five uh grams a day will help
01:01:29
build muscle it will help build brain it's really interesting a couple of uh months ago I asked the people in my
01:01:36
office if they used creatine yeah and a couple of the guys put their hands up none of the women put their hands up huh
01:01:43
and I asked them why I said why didn't use creatine they said that they thought it was for bodybuilders well it started out for
01:01:50
bodybuilders but it's for everyone actually it's very well studied so I
01:01:55
actually had this um debate with my girlfriend last year at Christmas time um because I was taking creatine and asked if she wanted some and she made
01:02:01
the same comment to me that it was for bodybuilders and I she put on weight if she had it and then I said no that's not true so she Googled it and she saw that
01:02:07
it's good for like cognitive performance skin hair muscle bone etc etc and now
01:02:13
she takes it every day perfect I think there's a big um re-education piece to be done there because we us we almost
01:02:18
used to think of it like uh a steroid or something and it's not at
01:02:24
all you know what despite podcasts like this and despite me screaming from every
01:02:31
Mountaintop I find that there still is a an incredible knowledge deficit in the
01:02:36
general public about the principles of how to be the healthiest we can be and
01:02:41
an even bigger Gap in the ability to take action for ourselves I mean and
01:02:47
it's not a judgment it's simply an observation that we know what to do but we don't do it and we know what to do
01:02:53
and we don't do it even if we see in our family someone who's going through the throws of diabetes or even on the
01:03:00
Alzheimer's it's still not enough motivation and I think that's the real problem to solve motivation how'd you
01:03:07
solve that sometimes sometimes we solve it by scarce right you know someone has a
01:03:13
tremendous health problem but sometimes that's not even enough I have found that it is never
01:03:20
going to be motivating enough to try to say okay if you do this today in 20 years you're going to be much better
01:03:26
there's this temporal disconnect people just don't get it what they're going to be like at 70 I think we have to make
01:03:31
you feel good every single day it's like when we were talking about your brain when you're doing heavy work and
01:03:38
cognitive work if you can feel better every single day you'll continue the behavior not for a promise so I think
01:03:45
that is the that is the way to talk to anybody way I talked to my patients can I make you feel better
01:03:51
tomorrow can I make you feel like a badass cuz you lifted heavy weights today um it's hard though with things
01:03:58
like bone you're telling someone that they need to be getting I don't know their calcium and stuff like that they
01:04:03
think well I can't see my bones and osteoporosis is so far away that yeah it's hard until you see someone fracture
01:04:09
or you fracture yourself I agree with you vitamin D as well as crucial isn't it for bone health I was reading that
01:04:14
there it is it is magnesium vitamin D magnesium uh lesser known things
01:04:21
strontium zinc Boron and micronutrients but big thing
01:04:26
vitamin D magnesium sleep sleep talked about that a little bit as well how
01:04:32
important that was um you mentioned that I'm running now yes you are thank you for noticing you'd never mention it and
01:04:38
a million others are supposed to join you I noticed yes we're going to try and get a million people running that's great you're going to save a lot of
01:04:44
lives oh thank you um but much of it because of the work that people like you do and that come on my show and inspire me to think about things like my va2 Max
01:04:52
and I'd definitely been just weight training for the last couple of years not really thinking about my bones or my
01:04:57
V2 Max so this has been quite a big shift for me yeah but when I think about running I definitely hated it I still
01:05:04
hate it a little bit but I I hate and love it now which is progress what are the things I should be
01:05:11
thinking about CU people talk to me about Runners knees and stuff like that and I don't want to get injured right
01:05:17
but I'm running quite a lot so I hear uh from a lot of Runners that oh okay I'm going to lift
01:05:23
with my arms because I'm running so that means my legs are going to get stronger
01:05:29
well what I know from 30 years in practice is that Runners who only run
01:05:34
are hurt a lot and here's why running builds a big
01:05:40
cardiovascular engine but it does not build muscle mass
01:05:45
below your belly generally unless you're running uphill all the time and you're building glutes
01:05:51
but so what happens running is a single leg sport if you if you look at a gate analysis you're on one
01:05:59
leg at a time you're never on two legs and walking you're in two legs on running you're in one leg so if this is
01:06:07
if my hands are on someone's pelvis when we're running we can't be going like this every single stride sort of
01:06:14
oscillating oscillating like we're walking on a catwalk in Fashion Week we want to be running like this straight
01:06:22
well that takes tremendous glute strength butt string because it's the glutes that balance the pelvis if we
01:06:29
were in my office and you came in with pain as a runner I would stand you on one leg to see even if in a controlled
01:06:37
POS uh environment you could do a single leg Squat and keep your pelvis stable
01:06:43
without your knee falling in and if you can't it just tells me that we have a lot of butt core and hip strength to do
01:06:50
and my lower back something I think about because when I train especially I'm training for a football match at the
01:06:57
moment oh um in the UK and I always seem to get a glute injury so I and it's all
01:07:05
it's almost like 100% predictable that if I don't stretch properly even even if
01:07:10
I stretch a little bit but don't stretch fully yeah when I run on that football pitch within five minutes I feel like a
01:07:15
little it's almost like a little tear in my glute yeah almost yeah what am I doing what do you think is happening it
01:07:21
might be useful to you as you're training to have a motion analysis to have someone stand you on one leg and
01:07:27
look at the way that that one motion pattern is different from the other because if it's predictable like that M
01:07:33
there's an imbalance in you and so it can likely be trained I mean I can give
01:07:39
you an example in my life if you want to see how that works so when I run and when I increase my my speed and
01:07:47
distances I predictably predictably get left Achilles
01:07:53
tendinitis and I get right hip flexor sharp stabbing pain predictably that is
01:08:00
because my left big toe from wearing high heels all my life has arthritis so
01:08:08
when I run I don't run through the center of my foot I run through the side of my foot where your pinky is where my
01:08:13
pinky is so instead of running through like this I run through like this puts extra stress on my achilles tendon
01:08:20
changes my gate enough that it's tight all up through the left side of my body
01:08:26
and my right um hip flexor is taking the brunt of that that is a motion pattern
01:08:32
deficit that I know I have so if you were predictably getting the same injury all the single time it's probably due to
01:08:39
Something's too tight on one side something's too weak on the other side and if you get it evaluated you could
01:08:45
probably train it out of you you have athletes and people that come you stand on one leg to test something yeah what
01:08:52
is that do you want to see it yes yeah let's do it so to test whether we have muscle
01:08:58
imbalances that could cause injuries when we run because I had said Runners are very hurt athletes that I take care
01:09:04
of this is called the Trendelenburg sign and it tells us whether your glute your butt muscles are strong enough to keep
01:09:11
your pelvis straight and whether you're strong enough to keep your knee from falling into this position okay which is
01:09:17
called vagus so collect yourself we're going to stand all stacked up on our
01:09:23
left knee my left knee yeah oh gosh yep and then we're going to do some single
01:09:28
leg squats without falling over so what happens is people drop
01:09:33
their hip and their knee Falls like this it goes blop yeah a thousand steps a
01:09:41
mile so you can imagine if your knee's like this a thousand steps a mile your little kneecaps getting pulled off and
01:09:47
we can't balance we're getting our balance a thousand steps of Mile so we can train this let's do the other leg
01:09:54
engage sit single leg squat you look like I'm drunk or something yep there you go now you're
01:10:01
compensating but the goal in the mirror is not to have the hip drop and not to have the knee fall in I feel like this
01:10:07
one's way stronger and that's why it was easier it it looks that way so that means this glute this rear end glute is
01:10:13
stronger than that one that's the one that always gets injured my left one yep because it's not functioning as well and
01:10:19
it leaves this side unprotected so what have I got to do so uh double leg squats
01:10:25
are good but single leg step UPS single leg lunges as in like so if we had a
01:10:31
step we would be holding a we could start with no weights like
01:10:37
this and you're tall you could start low you could go up here I usually usually use an 18 and then when you feel
01:10:44
comfortable and your hips not bouncing up and down take your your we weight
01:10:49
your barbell and step up and step down okay yep y right cuz it's Single Leg so
01:10:57
I'd have my weight and I'd be going like this MH and then I step down step down
01:11:03
with the same foot and what am I what am I doing here I'm I I'm just you're strengthening one
01:11:09
side at a time okay because if you step up if it and you're wobbly M then that's
01:11:14
what's happening when you're running okay and so you can do step Downs too I mean you can come this way and then come
01:11:22
like this okay yeah and then we do uh there are lots of things like this a
01:11:28
good physio but if we're up here we can do things like um hip hitches where you
01:11:33
put your leg down I am in heels today but we go down like this without going down like this yep
01:11:42
okay thank you so much let's get the table back in your gut and my gut is the home of
01:11:47
our digestion and it's also a gateway to Better Health but it can be hard to know what's going on in there Zoe who
01:11:53
sponsors this podcast has one of the largest microbiome databases on the planet and one of the world's most
01:11:58
advanced at home gut health tests their blood sugar sensor which I have in this box in front of me goes on your arm so
01:12:04
you can see how different foods impact your blood sugar then there's the at home blood sample which is really easy
01:12:09
and analyzes your body's blood fat and of course the famous blue Zoey cookie which tests your
01:12:18
metabolism oh and I can't forget there's also a poo sample which is a critical step in understanding the health of your
01:12:23
microbiome and you post it to Zoe and you get your results back which will help you to understand your body's response to different foods using your
01:12:30
results Zoe's app will also create a personalized nutrition plan for you and this is exactly why I invested in the
01:12:36
business so my question to you is how healthy is your gut head to zoe.com to audio your kit and find out and because
01:12:42
you're one of our listeners use code Steven 10 for 10% off your membership head to zoe.com
01:12:48
now I've invested more than a million pounds into this company Perfect Ted and they're also a sponsor of this podcast I
01:12:54
switch over to using matcha as my dominant energy source and that's where perfect headed comes in they have the matcha powders they have the matcha
01:13:01
drinks they have the pods and all of this keeps me focused throughout a very very long recording day no matter what's
01:13:07
going on and their team is obsessed with quality which is why they Source their ceremonial grade matcha from Japan so
01:13:14
when people say to me that they don't like the taste of matcha I'm guessing that they haven't tried perfect head unlike low quality matcha that has a
01:13:20
bitter grassy taste perfect Ted is smooth and naturally sweet and without knowing it you you're probably a perfect
01:13:25
head customer already if you're getting your match at places like blank Street or Joe and the juice but now you can
01:13:31
make it yourself at home so give it a try and we'll see if you still don't like matcher so here's what I'm going to
01:13:37
do I'm going to give you 40% off our matcher if you try it today head to perfect ted.com and use code
01:13:43
steven4 or if you're in a supermarket you can get it at tesos or Holland and Barett or in the Netherlands at Albert
01:13:49
Hine and those of you in the US you can get it on Amazon on the subject of OB it and
01:13:55
weight we talked last time really fascinating thing that you said to me which stayed with me is that the more weight we're carrying the more harm it's
01:14:02
doing to our bones in a really disproportionate way could you clarify that again but also talk to me about
01:14:08
give me the case for keeping my body fat down as I age so what we were talking
01:14:14
about is uh joint health yeah and the fact that every bone if in your knee for
01:14:20
instance if your Fe if this is your femur the end of every bone has a bumper of cartilage cartilage is a matrix of
01:14:27
collagen fibers that has cells in it and its entire job is to shock absorb so the
01:14:33
bones don't do so much of this bones are pretty fragile but they Glide cartilage
01:14:39
has a in physics a coefficient of friction that is less than ice so it's
01:14:44
smoother than ice it Glides right if it's perfect cartilage is very subject to the
01:14:52
forces of weight such that in our Laboratories when we were doing cartilage research and wanted to damage
01:14:57
cartilage all we had to do is drop a marble on it so it doesn't take much so if we're carrying around a lot of heavy
01:15:04
extra weight and we don't have the muscles to support that instead of muscles actually like a shock absorber
01:15:10
and protecting our cartilage we're banging more now remember banging is good for bones it's not good for
01:15:16
cartilage so we want to make sure that we have a healthy weight so that we're not exerting so much load because it's 7
01:15:24
to n we talked about last time 7 to n times uh body weight pressure across the
01:15:30
joints and so that's why we want to compose our body and have a body
01:15:36
composition not a weight a body composition of of more muscle than at
01:15:42
aost tissue yeah this kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier because you can say these things but still
01:15:48
changes still far away from many many people and I was just wondering in the people that you've seen make radical
01:15:53
changes that you've worked with are there key things that happen we talked a
01:15:58
little bit about someone hits Rock Bottom they get a bad diagnosis they're forced but is there is there anything
01:16:04
else that one can do to will themselves to change to keeping a journal some kind
01:16:10
of exercise I think it's really helpful to know as much about yourself as possible so if I'm intaking someone into
01:16:17
a program we're going to build I don't I weigh them but what's most important is
01:16:23
I do a body composition so that we can go through step by step and say in your current body you have I'm making these
01:16:30
numbers up 32% body fat you have very little lean muscle so even though you may be okay with the way you look in a
01:16:37
mirror you're skinny fat meaning you have two little muscle and too much
01:16:42
adapost tissue and and we just and we talk about all the things we've talked about about why we need to build more
01:16:48
muscle but when you see those numbers numbers don't lie nor are they judgments
01:16:53
but if you're just looking in the mirror you may say oh that's okay or you may hate the little belly roll but it's not
01:16:59
you don't hate it enough but when you see that you have very little muscle mass and a very high percentage of fat
01:17:06
those data alone are sometimes a motivation and then if we know that
01:17:12
we're going to redo that test in three months or six months and track changes over time that can be an added motivator
01:17:20
besides tragedy data can be a motivator wanting to feel like yourself again in
01:17:27
in women in midlife someone sometimes just say I just want to feel like myself again well we're different people after
01:17:34
our estrogen goes away and so it takes a different kind of work to feel like ourselves again but at the end of the
01:17:40
day so tools wise I think journals are are helpful tracking uh keeping a record
01:17:45
of how you felt on a day what you did that day cgms and stuff as well anything that turns the lights on has been really
01:17:52
that's right data cgms are you you know I learned what I was going to learn at 3 months but I've had it on for 18 months
01:17:58
just cuz that data Spurs me on like oh I that was a really stressful o day my
01:18:04
sugar spiked up even though I wasn't eating I must have been very high cortisol I'm releasing so much from my
01:18:09
liver it's just informs me about the inner workings of my body but also at
01:18:14
the end of the day you have to love yourself enough Stephen and I can't make you love yourself and I can't a number
01:18:21
of harassments in my office cannot make make you value yourself enough to invest
01:18:27
in yourself daily and at the end of the day that's what it's going to take I've talked quite extensively on
01:18:33
this podcast about menopause it's really fascinating to me I think in part because I didn't even know what it was
01:18:39
yes even it a couple of years ago probably a year and a half ago I had no idea what it was what are some of the
01:18:45
pervasive myths about menopause that people still need to sort of get past despite everyone talking about it
01:18:52
despite you having lots of ation about it I still find a lot of people who have
01:18:58
never heard of Perry menopause which is the decade leading up to the day of menopause which is 365
01:19:07
days after your last men menstrual cycle on average in this country it's about
01:19:13
51 people have not heard of per menopause they've never heard of hormone replacement therapy and they don't know
01:19:20
what to do about it and they're ashamed to talk about it because
01:19:25
somehow needing things in this country if you're a
01:19:30
woman have gone unnoticed for instance like oh I'm just going to suffer through my mom never talked about it so I think
01:19:38
the myth that you have to suffer is a myth there is more known now than
01:19:43
there's ever been about how using lifestyle to feel better I always
01:19:48
encourage women to make their hormone replacement decision based on science and not fear and to make it early
01:19:55
how I I encourage my patients even in the mid 40s to read the books watch the
01:20:02
podcasts identify a clinician so when it's time for them to make their
01:20:07
decision they've got everything um lined up and you can take hormones while
01:20:13
you're still menstruating and there's no reason not to in fact that's what birth control is birth control is is 10 times
01:20:21
the dose of hormone replacement therapy so under careful supervision you can make
01:20:27
your decision very early what I want people to do uh is educate themselves I
01:20:34
call it menopause literacy because we have a very low level of menopause literacy in this
01:20:40
country I want them to make their hormone replacement decision meaning am I going to go on them where
01:20:47
am I going to get them can I find a clinician to help me number three I
01:20:52
would like them to as we talk talked about earlier build their unbreakable
01:20:58
lifestyle develop the habits early not when they're in the throws of menopause and feeling desperate but early of
01:21:04
lifting weights of cardio that includes base training and Sprint intervals
01:21:11
anti-inflammatory nutrition early so that it's just the way you live so that
01:21:17
when you're feeling so bad you're not trying to learn all these things at once and there is a significant link
01:21:23
between menopause and bone density because you lose some of those critical
01:21:30
hormones like testosterone like estrogen and testosterone so estrogen on Bones acts to control the cell that
01:21:38
breaks down bones we talked about in bone health there's a cell that breaks down Bones called the osteoclast with a
01:21:44
c and a cell that builds bones with called an osteoblast estrogen helps control the
01:21:50
osteoclast so even in menopause when there is no estrogen we're still
01:21:56
building bone but breaking down bone out strips building bone so replacing
01:22:02
hormones helps rebalance bone breakdown and Bone
01:22:09
rebuilding and if we lose our estrogen around the time of this per menopause
01:22:16
menopause we can lose 15% of our bone density and if we don't catch it because insurance only pays for
01:22:23
dexas scans when we're 6 5 Which is far too late in my opinion we're behind the eightball so I encourage everyone once
01:22:30
they start going through par menopause to get a dexa scan whether they have to pay for it at their gym save up their
01:22:35
coffee money it's worth knowing your bone status what are some of the most um
01:22:42
obvious but pertinent muscular skeletal syndromes of menopause I'm glad you
01:22:48
asked that in July my group and I created a nomenclature called the muscular
01:22:53
skeletal syndrome of menopause because women were showing up in my office saying things without prompting
01:23:02
because I I'm a doctor who listens I sit down on a stool we have a conversation I do not chart in front of you so
01:23:09
people talk to me and out of nowhere women would say to me Doc I feel like
01:23:15
I'm falling apart and I don't know what's going on but I feel like I'm going crazy because
01:23:21
I've been told nothing's wrong with me and I started noticing that more and more as women started coming
01:23:28
in with their shoulders not moving which is an entity called frozen shoulder and
01:23:34
so as I started looking at this pattern and reading the very few studies that were
01:23:40
done we've known for 30 years that the incidence of arthritis inflammatory
01:23:46
arthritis in women after 50 is much higher than inflammatory arthritis in men we've known it for 30 years and as I
01:23:54
started researching remember how I said earlier that every muscular skeletal tissue is derived out of the same type
01:24:00
of stem cell the mesenchimal stem cell all of those tissues muscle bone
01:24:07
tendon ligament fat muscle Drive stem cells are all
01:24:13
sensitive to estrogen and without it several things happen there's something called arthralgia which is total body
01:24:20
pain meaning your body hurts so much that you can't even get out of bed that
01:24:25
was one of the biggest things I had I'm an athlete and I could barely get out of bed because I was so
01:24:31
inflamed due to the lack of estrogen estrogen is a huge anti-inflammatory
01:24:36
agent so I was totally inflamed my body hurt that's called arthralgia women come
01:24:42
in and I'm not kidding they come in they say my arm won't move literally it won't
01:24:47
move or I can't hook my bra that is due to the inflammation of losing estrogen
01:24:53
in Asian cultures it's called the 50-year-old woman's shoulder because it happens to 50-year old women it is a
01:24:58
sign of the inflammation of losing estrogen we know about sarcopenia the
01:25:03
loss of lean muscle mass about 20% when you lose your estrogen we've talked about loss of bone density we have
01:25:10
increased incidence of tendon and ligament problems Achilles tendon tennis elbow patellar tendon because the
01:25:18
collagen fibers of Tenon and ligament have estrogen receptors on them and so
01:25:23
everything starts to work less well without the presence of estrogen so I
01:25:29
saw all of those things and we gathered the world's data which isn't a lot a lot
01:25:35
more research needs to be done and we gave it a nomenclature we called it and published it as the muscul skeletal
01:25:42
syndrome of menac cause because I tell you for sure Stephen if someone goes into their doctor's office which in this
01:25:48
country is so restricted in the time that we can spend and says I have this
01:25:54
and this and this and this and this six things in 15 minutes it is difficult to
01:25:59
get through that but if someone comes with a nomenclature of I think I have
01:26:05
the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause my arm doesn't move blah blah blah immediately you don't have to go
01:26:13
through a differential diagnosis of 600 things you're like oh as a doctor this paper on the
01:26:20
musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause has currently been downloaded almost 300,000 times and to put that in
01:26:28
context some of the biggest journals in the world medical journals in the world documented they did a a survey of how
01:26:34
many times their best articles had been downloaded the best scientific journals
01:26:40
their articles are downloaded about 10,000 times this muscular scal syndrome of menopause has been downloaded nearly
01:26:47
300,000 and it's not because yes it's a good paper the need is so great Stephen
01:26:54
to communicate what the heck is going on with people that I made it open access
01:27:00
meaning you don't have to pay to get this article and I encourage people to
01:27:05
Google it it'll come up number one to print it to read it to give it to your doctors so that they can understand that
01:27:12
you're highly inflamed that's why your total body hurts that your shoulder doesn't move because you're inflamed
01:27:19
that your knee hurts because you have the arthritis of menopause and just to
01:27:24
build the understanding of what is actually going on with people fascinating I didn't mean 300,000
01:27:31
downloads I know it's amazing it's like a New York Times bestseller bestseller
01:27:37
research paper 30,000 p over or something crazy crazy yeah congratulations well you know what
01:27:43
research is a team effort and and we all work together but thank you it's needed
01:27:48
used a word there arthritis which we've not talked about yet but but used it to describe your big toe as well yes I did
01:27:55
what is causing arthritis I don't want to get arthritis oh who does there are there are two kinds of arthritis there's
01:28:00
an autoimmune meaning your body is identifying yourself as not yourself and
01:28:06
that's called rheumatoid arthritis that is very different than the way I used it today which is osteoarthritis which is
01:28:13
wear and tear arthritis okay so wear and te arthritis can happen through thousands and thousands of repetition uh
01:28:21
on a joint uh we were talking earlier about running it's a thousand steps a mile it can happen due to trauma I have
01:28:28
a lot of I used to take care of the University of Pittsburgh football team and I had a lot of 20-year-olds with
01:28:33
knee arthritis because the impact was so great as linemen hit each other that
01:28:39
they would wear out their cartilage so wear in ter arthritis osteoarthritis is loss of the cartilage
01:28:47
layer on the end of bone it causes aching pain it causes swelling it causes
01:28:56
stiffness uh and then to the degree that you have it we can treat you
01:29:02
conservatively through a variety of ways or at the end of the road we can
01:29:07
replace your joints I want to just circle back on we were talking there about the collection of symptoms that
01:29:12
are associated with menopause and you were talking about how arthritis is a is a factor are you telling me that to
01:29:19
avoid the muscular skeletal symptoms of menopause I should be taking hormone replacement
01:29:26
therapy here's what I'm telling you I'm telling you that
01:29:31
every musculoskeletal tissue has Alpha and beta estrogen receptors we know that
01:29:38
when those sit empty you will manifest some of the muscular skeletal syndrome of menopause 80% of us
01:29:45
do what I'm telling you is that estrogen sitting in those receptors
01:29:51
can prevent bone loss can prevent muscle loss can decrease the inflammation of arthralgia and frozen shoulder so
01:29:58
everyone gets to make their own decision people are thinking beings they
01:30:05
have agency they get to make that decision to get out of pain and to prevent the musculoskeletal syndrome of
01:30:12
menopause based on science and not fear one of the um one of the things I'm
01:30:20
a little bit concerned about these days is back pain yeah lower back pain in
01:30:25
particular um I read that lower back pain is the single leading cause of disability globally significantly affecting individual's quality of life
01:30:31
and productivity which was published on the World Health Organization yeah
01:30:36
article in 2020 lower back pain affected 69 million people globally and its
01:30:44
prevalence is increasing due to a number of different factors one being aging but also I just think generally how we're
01:30:50
living more sedentary lives and sitting on these chairs and stuff like that mhm back pain yeah common thing only seems
01:30:56
to exist in the Western World I had someone come here from the who studied the hadza tribe in Africa and they don't
01:31:02
have back pain there yeah how do they live not like this right they squat yes they don't have chairs
01:31:08
yes well back pain is endemic in our population due to our lifestyle we're
01:31:13
sitting here for several hours I'm probably sitting like this all hunched over at some points our our cores are
01:31:20
relaxed we're not our our front cores are relaxed relaxed our our lower back
01:31:26
is relaxed there's no stimulus to keep our core strong sitting in a chair and
01:31:31
we do this 10 hours a day at least right that's number one number two then
01:31:38
70% of people do no meaningful exercise any time of the week so we never rebuild
01:31:43
it so we get low back pain due to muscle weakness and another reason we get low
01:31:50
back pain particularly in women or very elderly men is compression of our vertebrae compression fractures of our
01:31:57
spine that can be very painful it presents as low back pain I want to
01:32:02
differentiate for people listening the difference between low back pain and and nerve impingement that needs surgery low
01:32:09
back pain is that aching in your low back the stiffness when you go to a doctor with
01:32:15
low back pain there should be telling you how to get stronger sending you for
01:32:21
physical therapy to stop smoking if you're smoking CU that poisons bones right all the lifestyle
01:32:27
things if you have pain starting in your back but shooting down your leg like
01:32:33
electricity down the back of your leg like literally think about how lightning would feel that is because a nerve is
01:32:40
being impinged as it comes out of your spinal cord that is something that needs
01:32:46
to be examined and looked at but I just want to differentiate that because a lot of people um mistake the tube to and a
01:32:55
lot I think it was 80% of westerners will experience lower back pain and it got me thinking about standing desks and
01:33:02
things like that do you advise people to use standing desks I do and walking treadmills um because there's so much
01:33:08
work that we do during the days that isn't deep work we're emptying out our email we're returning some phone calls
01:33:13
we're doing the less heavy brain heavy parts of our job all can be done
01:33:19
standing or I've encouraged uh groups of people that I work with to hold their
01:33:24
meetings doing wall squats just don't sit at the board table pull up a wall everybody's squat better be a pretty
01:33:31
quick meeting because that that takes a lot of strength but to build in that kind of Mobility the only time we really
01:33:38
need to sit is when we're solving World Peace yeah the rest of it we can stand
01:33:44
and in fact Studies have shown that if we're trying to learn something it's better to be moving as we learn because
01:33:51
the kinetic energy of learning is better for our brain for instance I used an
01:33:56
example uh yesterday actually when I I was teaching people how to time manage
01:34:02
and I said when I'm listening to long form podcasts like this I can't sit for
01:34:07
three hours but I can walk and listen and I retain more for instance
01:34:14
so that that been proven that if we're in exercise we retain more in terms of
01:34:19
studying oh okay you've done a lot of studies they're so fascinating H have
01:34:24
you got a favorite the very first one we did on Master's athletes answering the
01:34:30
question at what age do we really slow down because if you believe
01:34:36
Hallmark and all the uh rest in peace balloons that go around on your 40th or
01:34:41
50 birthday slowing down is an inevitable part of aging but the fact of
01:34:47
the matter is and our study showed that when I looked at track and field
01:34:53
ath in every race from 100 m to 10,000 M and I looked at the top eight finishes
01:34:59
in every age group in every race that we do not significantly slow down until
01:35:07
we're past 70 so between 50 and 70 the guy who won the one mile race
01:35:16
finished it in four minutes and 34 seconds the same year of the study the kid that won the high school mile race
01:35:23
did it in four minutes and 17 seconds the 70 70-year-old who won the one mile
01:35:28
race did it in a little less than 7 minutes it just shows you that if we're
01:35:34
slowing down dramatically before our 70s we've either decided not to train so hard we're just not trying anymore we've
01:35:41
been terribly injured right and we can't but it's not because of biology because
01:35:47
of psychology exactly no light bulb goes off we think though we think that when
01:35:53
we experience that first twinge that first pain we start to get a little bit tied we think it's natural so we kind of relent to it we just give in and then
01:36:00
that's that slow spiral downwards into a lifestyle which becomes self-fulfilling I guess we stop trying hard we stop
01:36:06
playing hard because we stop trying hard because we think it's inevitable we think no aging is inevitable how we age
01:36:13
is is up to us you're working on a book aren't you you've just handed in the manuscript for we're very very excited
01:36:19
about this book unbreakable unbreakable go strong live long age with power and
01:36:26
it really picks up the conversation of aging and Longevity that I've been talking about for a long time but really
01:36:33
focuses on the longevity of women so the book is framed around the
01:36:40
pillars of Aging which I call time bombs the time bomb of metabolic dysfunction
01:36:47
uh the time bomb that we think means our DNA as our destiny which it is not we can modify ourselves and several others
01:36:55
and really explain the science of what's going on and that aging is not an inevitable decline from Vitality to
01:37:00
Frailty unless we cop to that attitude right and then the second part of the book lays out a lifestyle that I call
01:37:08
unbreakable it's about muscle it's a bone it's about nutrition but the most a very important part is what you just
01:37:14
said it's about attitude and mindset and so I help
01:37:20
people set standards and goals for for what they want based on their values if
01:37:25
I didn't Value Independence if I didn't value having my brain till the very end
01:37:31
and all the other things that I value then my goals would be uninformed
01:37:37
I could say oh I want to run a marathon at 80 but that's not enough unless it's connected to my values and then further
01:37:44
along we talk about building resilience because brain resilience can be built in
01:37:49
the same way that skeletal resilience can and I believe it takes both both of those things to progress and to age with
01:37:57
power and then the final sections of this book really take us to the next level how do we now that we've optimized
01:38:04
our health and decided that we are not the
01:38:10
victims of time I don't believe that I believe we can shape our future how what do we do
01:38:18
for Peak Performance how do we continue to squeeze performance out and what are the cool techniqu technologies that can
01:38:24
help us I'm very very excited yay can we pre-order it yet uh not yet but you can
01:38:29
get on my wait list on my website okay I'll link that below for anyone that's Keen to get that book I I'll be on that
01:38:35
list as well I'll give you one is there anything else that we should have talked about that we haven't Dr
01:38:41
vunda last week I was uh speaking at the American Diabetes Association and
01:38:48
talking about midlife and menopause which you and I have talked about and all the metabolic changes that go on
01:38:53
when estrogen walks out the door and we've already talked today about pre-diabetes and how we need to put on a
01:39:00
big alarm because of all the metabolic changes that will lead to diabetes and Alzheimer's but when I look at those two
01:39:06
things separately per menopause and all the metabolic changes and the lipid changes and the fat distribution and the
01:39:12
insulin insensitivity and pre-diabetes they are nearly identical and what we
01:39:18
know is that this is another alarm to sound if we have not paid attention in
01:39:24
the critical decade of our lives and become pre-diabetic and then are a woman and lose our estrogen it compounds the
01:39:32
normal metabolic changes that happen with insulin resistance to the loss of estrogen and after menopause women have
01:39:40
more diabetes and therefore more Alzheimer's and so if I can back all
01:39:45
this up and start people thinking about it when we're 35 that is work worth doing that's exactly what you're doing
01:39:52
it's exactly what you're doing I think you know the reason I'm so compelled by menopause as well a secondary reason is because I have so many wonderful women
01:39:58
in my life incl including my partner who yeah might not be as fortunate to be exposed to all the information that I
01:40:03
get exposed to by doing this so many of the questions I'm asking you almost pre-
01:40:08
preparing me to be a supporting act in her in her life she's what 32 now so you
01:40:15
know critical critical years you know what Stephen if I could get more men to take the attitude that you've just
01:40:21
expressed to have the Curiosity it to learn about the changes in midlife women
01:40:26
and not only bodily changes but but attitudinal and the sexuality changes I
01:40:33
think we could save a lot of marriages but I find that there is for the lack of knowledge there is amongst the women
01:40:39
there is even less knowledge among the men but if it's a partnership so I think
01:40:45
your attitude and curiosity is is laudable because I think we could save a lot of relationships if everyone felt
01:40:51
that way yeah cuz if for me it has created a ton of empathy MH and with
01:40:56
empathy you approach challenges differently with a different perspective yeah and there's less blame and there's
01:41:02
more yeah I think supporting um encouragement so that's really why I
01:41:07
think it's important as well for men to understand these things because when you start noticing
01:41:13
differences maybe in someone in way she she's feeling or your mother or yeah grandmother or even your
01:41:19
daughters you might not be some of those you know naive doctors who think someone's losing their mind or that
01:41:25
they're just being different or it's their personality and you might understand that there's something deeper going on um and also something that's at
01:41:32
least in part you can do something about absolutely which I think is the most important conclusive point we have a
01:41:39
closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest with not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question left for
01:41:45
you is how do you know when is enough I think how you know when it's
01:41:51
enough when it becomes if it pertains to work or striving for something or is
01:41:59
when you don't love it anymore when it becomes a grind and you don't love it that's when it's enough because it's
01:42:06
not feeding you
01:42:12
amen Dr Vite thank you so much for the work that you do um you're such a star
01:42:18
and I think everybody should go follow you on Instagram because you built an incredible community over on Instagram where you give away so much of this
01:42:24
knowledge absolutely free of charge but I also think everybody should go to your website thank you they should buy this
01:42:30
book I know this book is um maybe they should just get on the wait list for the upcoming book as well unbreakable unbreakable um and they can get on that
01:42:36
weight list on your website right now yes they can join your Instagram Community which I think is phenomenal it's so wonderful to see yeah um how
01:42:44
because you know usually people have a following but I really feel like you have a community yes I see it in the comment sections I see that people are
01:42:50
really really engaged and there as you saw from the amount of people that downloaded that paper that you published
01:42:56
there's a real thirst and hunger for this information and I get so many
01:43:01
messages when from the last conversation we had yeah but from these conversations generally about from women from their
01:43:09
husbands who are so thankful for you oh like so thankful it's you know because I have lots of conversations about lots of
01:43:15
things but this particular conversation provokes a certain type of energy that is very atypical oh you know what I mean
01:43:22
you understand it because you feel it every day but I really feel it as well so thank you for doing the work that you do and for turning the lights on for so
01:43:28
many people that are living in the darkness as it relates to information
01:43:33
and that information is no doubt undoubtedly saving many millions of people's lives I hope so and that's work
01:43:39
worth we're doing so thank you so much Dr vond thank you this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that
01:43:45
listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor if you like the show and
01:43:51
you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to
01:43:57
you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to
01:44:04
your feedback we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so
01:44:09
much some of the most successful fascinating and insightful people in the world have sat across from me at this
01:44:14
table and at the end of every conversation I asked them to leave a question behind in the famous Diary of a
01:44:20
CEO and it's a question designed to spark the kind of ation that matter most the kind of conversations that can
01:44:25
change your life we then take those questions and we put them on these cards on every single card you can see the
01:44:33
person who left the question the question they asked and on the other side if you scan that barcode you can
01:44:39
see who answered it next something I know a lot of you have wanted to know and the only way to find out is by
01:44:45
getting yourself some conversation cards which you can play at home with friends and family at work with colleagues and
01:44:50
also with total strangers on holiday I'll put link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at the diary.com
01:44:59
[Music]