00:00:00
a lot of people exercise because they believe it will help them to lose fat one of the biggest debates on the planet
00:00:05
what advice have you got for me so this is not a well-known fact but Daniel liberman he studies and teaches how
00:00:11
humans are supposed to live author and professor at Harvard University exercise disease sleep nutrition he has the
00:00:17
answers on all of those things that most of us care about we evolve to be very Physically Active working in the fields
00:00:23
hunting Gathering but now we live in a world where only 50% of Americans ever exercise and the rest of the world is
00:00:29
headed our way cancers depression anxiety can attribute that to less physical activity in fact women who get
00:00:35
150 minutes of physical activity a week have a 30 to 50% lower breast cancer risks and it's crazy right problem is
00:00:42
that we spend 3% of our medical Budget on prevention and yet 75% of the time
00:00:47
the disease is a preventable disease it's a completely backward stupid system when you started writing this book about
00:00:53
exercise was there any instant changes that you implemented into your own life strength training the more I study the
00:00:58
importance of doing weights especially as you age the more I start kicking myself for being lazy about that when
00:01:03
people retire they become less active they tend to lose muscle and then that starts off a vicious cycle so would you say we shouldn't retire it's a very
00:01:10
modern Western concept and yes we do pay a price for it so how does one go from having a negative opinion towards
00:01:16
exercise to becoming an exerciser as an evolutionary biologist there are multiple ways of doing that so Daniel
00:01:23
what are some of the biggest myths within exercise gosh there are so many one of the most common of course is
00:01:31
Daniel Lieberman he's been to every corner of the world visiting native
00:01:36
tribes to understand how humans are supposed to live and now he has the answers on all of those things that most
00:01:43
of us care about on sleep nutrition exercise disease you know on disease he says that 74% of them can be prevented
00:01:51
and he knows how to prevent them aging running are we born to run he tells me
00:01:56
the story of a CEO that forces his employees to exercise excise and the impact that that's had on that company
00:02:03
and he talks about how as humans we've evolved to either use it or lose it so
00:02:09
maybe maybe retirement is a really bad idea for many of us one of the most
00:02:15
thought-provoking pivotal conversations I've had on this show you're really going to take a lot from this one and I
00:02:22
suspect after listening you'll probably start running too for exercise or from
00:02:28
some of the decisions you've spent your life [Music]
00:02:37
making Daniel your work is so so incredibly impressive reaches such an
00:02:43
incredible depth Charters new territory and it's
00:02:48
been an unbelievable clearly very passion driven career you had so my first question for
00:02:55
you is why are you doing this um it's a good question um I um you
00:03:01
know I started off being obsessed by human evolution I ever since I was a kid I was really interested in human evolution and I spent much of my early
00:03:07
career working on skulls and heads and why they are the way they are and then I kind of got involved in public health
00:03:14
and issues of health and disease kind of through the back door I sort of slowly shifted my research trajectory toward
00:03:20
studying the evolution of running and then the evolution of physical activity and its relationship to health and
00:03:26
disease and and I've become part of a movement that's often known as evolutionary medicine which is how to
00:03:31
apply evolutionary theory and data to issues of health and disease evolutionary medicine I've never heard
00:03:37
that term before but I love it where has your work on evolutionary
00:03:43
medicine let's call it where has that taken you where where has it taken you to learn to research to study you know
00:03:50
so much of what we think about in terms of health and disease comes from a tiny fragment of the world's population
00:03:56
almost entirely like 90% of all the medical information comes from people from the United States Canada Europe and
00:04:04
Australia so in order to to study how bodies really work and how our bodies evolv to be you have to leave uh places
00:04:11
like Boston where I live and go to places like Africa or Mexico or wherever to look at at at other populations and
00:04:18
look at how those populations are transitioning to to Lifestyles like mine and so uh we've been working in Kenya um
00:04:25
for the last 15 years or so um I've traveled some other parts of the world as well India you know to kind of
00:04:30
collect some data but uh but mostly in mostly in Africa after doing all of this work and after taking in all of this
00:04:37
information how has it shifted your perspective on running exercise more
00:04:42
broadly what have there been any sort of significant cognitive perception changes you
00:04:48
know yeah um I actually had a I mean doesn't happen very often but I had kind of an epiphany moment um when I was
00:04:55
working in Mexico we were collecting data on the Taro very also famous for their longdistance running and uh there
00:05:02
was this elderly guy he's about 70 something years old and he's famous for his distance running and I was asking
00:05:08
him how he trained and I had asked this question of a whole bunch of other people and the translator I was working with was always struggling to ask that
00:05:14
question because it turns out there's no word for training in in that language the concept of training doesn't exist so
00:05:20
so so she was trying to explain to this guy what my question was um I could even without a translator I could figure out
00:05:26
just from his tone of voice he was like why would anybody run if you didn't have to and I suddenly realized yeah of course
00:05:33
exercise is a very weird thing right well if you're if you're a farmer and you're working super hard every day in
00:05:38
the fields without machines and whatever or if you're a hunter gather and you're walking you know you know 5 to 10 miles
00:05:44
a day and digging and throwing you know doing all kinds of hard work and you're barely getting enough enough food why on
00:05:50
Earth would you go for a needless five mile run in the morning I it's crazy right the most viewed videos of yours
00:05:58
and the most viewed moments in those videos address one question do you you have any idea what it might be no actually the
00:06:05
biggest myths in exercise right I think you actually pointed out one there with the um Insight you got in Mexico the way
00:06:12
we exercise going to gyms practicing is then natural or human but evidently
00:06:19
it's it's a consequence of the privilege of our lives and the Comfort we have of not having to seek out our dinner every
00:06:25
day what are some of the other biggest U myths with within exercise that um
00:06:30
you've come across in writing this book gosh there are so many I had to actually limit limit it to 10 so I think um if
00:06:38
you want to understand physical activity and exercise you also have to understand inactivity and I think one of the biggest myths out there is that you need
00:06:45
eight hours of sleep at night um and that sitting is than new smoking you know that that basically and I if if you
00:06:50
think about those two different myths U why is it that we're constantly told to sleep more and to sit less actually it's
00:06:57
seems a little contradictory to me right and it turns out that um um that let's
00:07:02
take sitting first so um you know there are all these uh you know the slogans like sitting as then you're smoking and
00:07:08
it's really bad for you and you know every time you sit in your chair you lose two hours of your life and whatever
00:07:14
uh turns out that um all animals sit right my dog sits um cows sit chickens sit every animal sits and hunter
00:07:21
gatherers also sit in fact if you some of my students actually put sensors on Hunter gathers and when we're doing some
00:07:28
research in Farmers as well well but they sit just as much as westerners um uh so sitting is there's nothing special
00:07:34
about being uh about today's life it's sitting that it's that we sit all day long and don't do anything when we're not sitting right so if you and
00:07:41
furthermore the the big distance difference is not so much how much we sit but how how we sit so turns out that
00:07:47
people who um if you get up every once in a while right interrupted sitting is
00:07:53
actually much more healthy than non-interrupted sitting for the same amount of time so in other words two
00:07:59
people might in in the west people sit for an average about 40 minutes at a at about whereas hunter gatherers for
00:08:04
example or farmers in Africa where we work get up every about 10 15 minutes and when you do that you actually it's
00:08:10
like turning on the engine of your car you don't drive it around the block you're you're your your um your turning
00:08:15
on all kinds of cellular mechanisms you lower blood sugar levels you all kinds of genes get activated and it turns out
00:08:22
that that is by far the most important um uh way to way to sit so just get up every once in a while just pee
00:08:28
frequently make a cup of tea you know pet your dog whatever thinking when I'm on planes and I've got a long flight I
00:08:33
just I always sit in the aisle right so I can get up a lot always and um what about sleep then so
00:08:40
sleep is another interesting one so this idea that you know um that you need eight hours of sleep has been around for
00:08:47
a long time it's been around basically since the Industrial Revolution um but um if you actually so so colleagues in
00:08:53
my field so in evolutionary medicine have put sensors on people who don't have have all the things that we're told
00:08:59
have destroyed sleep so think about it we're told that TV and lights and and uh you know our phones and all these things
00:09:05
are are preventing us from sleeping you know Edison destroyed sleep right uh so
00:09:11
so when you put sensors on people who don't have any electricity and they don't have TVs and they don't have phones and they don't have have any of
00:09:19
these gadgetry right electric they it turns out they sleep like six to seven hours a night um and um they they don't
00:09:26
nap um so this idea that natural human being sleep 8 hours a night is Just is
00:09:31
just nonsense it's just not true and furthermore when you start looking at the data 7 hours if you actually look at
00:09:37
if you graph sort of how many hours a night you sleep on the x-axis and sort
00:09:42
of uh you know some outcome like cardiovascular disease or just How likely you are to die it's kind of a
00:09:49
U-shaped curve so people don't get much sleep are are in trouble um but the
00:09:54
bottom of that curve is pretty much always about seven hours so people actually do better they sleep seven
00:10:00
hours rather than eight hours and yet we're told that if you don't sleep eight hours there's something wrong right oh
00:10:05
so you can oversleep well yeah I mean there's also some complexity to this too because of course people who are ill might be
00:10:11
sleeping more and so there's some there's some biases that creep into the how you analyze the data but but
00:10:16
basically it turns out that seven is for most people optimal but there's a lot of variation right every you know teenagers
00:10:22
sleep more older people sleep less it's complicated one of the things popular in culture as well is this idea of doing
00:10:28
10,000 steps a day yeah now that's fun you know that started because of a Japanese pomet podometer um so right
00:10:35
before the the Olympics were in Tokyo in the in the 60s uh they had invented the pedometer and they were in sitting in a
00:10:41
boardroom and they were discussing what to call the pedometer and they picked out of just out of the blue they picked 10,000 steps because that's apparently
00:10:49
an auspicious number and it sounded about right there was no science behind it interestingly it turns out it's
00:10:56
pretty good um if you act if you look at at step per day and health
00:11:01
outcomes um your average Hunter gather um walks between 10 to 18,000 steps
00:11:08
depends on male female Etc and and if you look at steps per day
00:11:13
and and outcomes um um about around seven to 8,000 steps the
00:11:18
curve kind of bottoms out right there's doesn't seem to be a huge advantage to taking more than that per day in terms
00:11:24
of you know large epidemiological studies so it turns out to be not that bad a goal but it's not a there's no
00:11:32
it's not a perfect number like a lot of things right it's just a kind of a it's a reasonable it's a reasonable goal to shoot
00:11:37
for when you um when you started writing this this book about exercise and running and all these subject matters
00:11:44
was there any instant changes or any real lasting changes that you implemented into your own life from
00:11:50
everything You' learned I I think about that all the time with this podcast I'll have a guest on I'll have these mini Eureka moments and then something will
00:11:56
stick so I'm I'm wondering having studied all all of these people all around the world and looked at their bodies and exercise and physical
00:12:03
exertion what have you taken into your own life that has stuck I would say that I've become more
00:12:09
serious about doing some strength training you know i' I've always loved walking and running and you know
00:12:14
endurance kinds of activities and I've always sort of hated doing weights you know I just don't like it and I'm I'm
00:12:21
I'm a wimp you know I'm not a very well I'm I'm not a very strong person and you know people tend to do what they like
00:12:27
right you get reinforcement from it and the more I study the importance of resistance training and the more I study
00:12:32
the importance of doing weights especially as you age um The more I've uh the more I started kicking myself for
00:12:39
for being uh being lazy about that so now I try to do good two strength workouts out of every week at least and
00:12:46
uh and take it more seriously because especially as you age loss of muscle mass can be really debilitating there's
00:12:53
a um the technical term for that is sarcopenia Saro is is the Greek word for
00:12:58
muscle and pinea is loss so muscle loss so as people get older they tend to lose muscle and when you do that you become
00:13:05
frail and you lose functional capacity and then that starts off a vicious cycle
00:13:10
right once that happens then you're be less likely to be physically active and then of course when you're less Physically Active your muscles begin to
00:13:16
waste away more and uh it's very debilitating so I think as we get older and I'm getting older it's more and more
00:13:23
important you know to to kind of incorporate that so I think that's the one thing that I've I've taken to Heart
00:13:29
yeah from what you said there it sounds like not doing resistance training not doing not lifting weights as you age
00:13:34
almost accelerates Aging in any sort of superficial sense but also in a
00:13:40
physiological sense you're you're increasing the speed of Aging yeah I'm
00:13:45
not sure if I'd think about it that way but it I think I i' kind of reverse it slightly which is
00:13:51
that you know aging is just the clock ticking on right there's nothing we can do about age but syence is the way the
00:13:58
way bodies degrade as we get older and what physical activity does actually
00:14:03
maybe the most important thing about physical activity is that it slows inessence especially for certain organs
00:14:09
and systems and there are different kinds of physical activities so there's endurance physical activities you know like running walking Etc swimming and
00:14:15
then strength or resistance physical activities and they have different kinds of ways in which they slow various
00:14:22
properties of sence which we you know colloquially call aging and all of them are important and I think one of the
00:14:28
things that's really interesting about humans in fact I think it maybe the most important thing about this book and you asked about myths earlier the most
00:14:34
important myth I think by far is this idea that as you get older it's normal to be less active and that is just not
00:14:41
true um we evolved to be grandparents we evolve to live one of the things that's most interesting about humans maybe is
00:14:48
that we evolve to live about 20 years or so after we stop reproducing no other animal does that except ex said orcas
00:14:53
maybe killer whales but with the exception of killer whales humans have this really weird life history we look
00:14:59
we we we evolved to be grandparents but grandparents in the old days weren't you know retiring to Florida or I don't know
00:15:06
where they but they do in England or whatever go to mayorca or whatever and you know kick up their heels and play golf or whatever with carts grandparents
00:15:13
in the in the olden days right or in many cultures still today are working right they're working in the fields
00:15:18
they're hunting they're Gathering they're getting food for their children and their grandchildren they're helping with child care and that physical
00:15:25
activity is you know that's what their job is to be physically active but but in turn that physical activity turns on
00:15:32
an amazing Suite of of of physiological processes that counter aging turns on
00:15:38
repair and maintenance processes that not only keep our muscles strong but also keep our DNA from uring mutations
00:15:45
keep our mitochondria numbers High keep um keep our the cells in our brain from
00:15:50
accumulating Gunk uh so that prevents Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia I mean for for every system of the body
00:15:56
physical activity has has benefits that slow the aging process and so when you stop doing it you acceler and that's the
00:16:04
way in which you it P you perceive it as accelerating aging but really it's the absence of physical activity which lets
00:16:10
aging run a muck in your first book in 2013 the story of the human body in
00:16:16
chapter 12 you said um use this phrase use it or lose it basically we we
00:16:21
evolved to use or lose our bodies and I was sat with um someone recently and I was trying to figure out why it appears
00:16:27
that when people retire or the other instance I've seen is when their their elderly partner passes away it appears
00:16:34
as if they don't live much longer yeah it's kind of like kind of folklore or something that once you
00:16:40
retire your days are kind of numbered yeah yeah and I was trying to figure out
00:16:45
the evolutionary reason for that but it sounds like it's kind of what you've explained there well I mean I think part of that is um is is depression right um
00:16:53
uh when you lose a partner I mean grief and depression your cortisol levels go up your immune system goes down I mean
00:16:59
you know it's it's it's really tough on your body I mean psychosocial stress plays a serious physiological toll but
00:17:07
but also as you just pointed out when people retire they become less active
00:17:12
and that that loss of activity has enormous effects on every aspect of our
00:17:17
our of our of our body I mean the and our on our minds I mean physical activity is important not just for physical health but also vital for
00:17:24
mental health and um I think a lot of the problems that U lot mental health issues we have today depression anxiety
00:17:32
uh some of them you to some extent uh we can attribute that to loss to less
00:17:37
physical activity and as people age becoming less Physically Active again makes them much more vulnerable to wide
00:17:43
sued of diseases so would you say we shouldn't retire well or if you do retire I mean
00:17:50
retiring is again another modern weird thing right nobody retired in the past I mean if you're a farmer it's like a
00:17:55
subsistence farmer and name it any place right it's not like something you hit 65 and all of a sudden you no longer have
00:18:01
to work in the fields you work in the fields until you're you know until you're dead right and hunter gatherers don't retire they they continue to be
00:18:07
physically active until until they die right or until they get too sick so it's a very modern Western concept um and um
00:18:14
and yes we do pay a price for it but you of course can replace you know work that you do with
00:18:21
with with challenging rewarding fun things to do the important thing is just not to not to stop being Physically
00:18:26
Active one of my favorite studies ever published without a doubt um is is a is
00:18:31
a study done by a guy named Ralph paffenbarger he realized that uh places like Harvard are fantastic for studying
00:18:38
aging because um Harvard like other private universities never lets go of
00:18:44
their alumni so until the day you die they're asking you for money on a regular basis and and so they're um um
00:18:53
and so he he got the Alumni Association the Harvard development office to let him follow series of Harvard alumni from
00:19:00
several years and can keep asking them in questions about their physical activity levels and also their diet and
00:19:06
whether they smoked and stuff like that and then you track them for 25 30 years and what he found was that the alumni
00:19:12
after you corrected for every Factor you could think of that as you as the alumni got older the effect of physical
00:19:18
activity on their health outcomes was bigger and bigger so alumni who were in their 20s 30s and 40s for example who
00:19:25
were were exercising here four or five times a week they had about 20% % lower death rates by the time that they got to
00:19:31
their 60s and 70s the alumni who were exercising more had 50% lower death
00:19:36
rates so as you get older so what and this has been replicated again many times but what he showed was that as you
00:19:42
get older exercise becomes more not less important for maintaining your health
00:19:47
been thinking a lot about this because I was I was saying to Jack my dad is 60-ish but he's very very out of shape
00:19:54
very very out of shape and I was in um I was in Indonesia and I was with my girlfriend and we went and we were going
00:20:00
white water water rafting so we had to go down this really big H Hill with all
00:20:05
these stairs it was like 300 Meers of stairs and I remember just thinking my my dad wouldn't be able to do this at
00:20:11
his age at 60 and I want to be able to go down those stairs when I'm his age because at the bottom of there was a fun
00:20:17
activity with someone I loved and to think that I'll get to a point in my life where not so far away in the grand
00:20:24
scheme of things um where I won't be able to go up or down some stairs because I'm 60 um because of my sort of genetic
00:20:31
predisposition as I saw it was quite was quite sad but having heard you say that it's really feels much more like a
00:20:37
choice than it is genetics yeah look we have this expression in my field which
00:20:42
is that genes load the gun and environment pulls the trigger right some of us have genetic predispositions
00:20:48
towards being you know more likely to get diabetes or heart disease or this or that or the other but our great great
00:20:54
great grandparents in different environments weren't getting these diseases or they were get getting them at much much much lower frequencies it's
00:21:00
not because they were dying earlier it's because these diseases were more less common so I think we too often blame our
00:21:07
genes for many of these these these diseases um or many of these health problems um and it's I'm not in any way
00:21:14
denying the role of genetics is but that environment is way more important and we have control over our environment to
00:21:19
some extent and so if you want to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease reduce your risk of diabetes reduce your
00:21:26
risk of Alzheimer's dementia you exercise isn't a Magic Bullet it's not
00:21:31
going to prevent you from getting those diseases completely but it lowers your risk quite quite quite substantially and
00:21:37
we know why too I mean we have an immense amount of data on why that's the case um for every single one of these
00:21:44
diseases we understand the mechanisms by which physical activity has uh you know important mechanistic effects on on
00:21:51
these diseases so it's there's epidemiological data there's mechanistic data there's personal data the problem
00:21:58
is that it's hard to do right it's it takes willpower to um overcome the the
00:22:05
the the inertia of of of of doing what's completely normal which is wanting to take it easy right I was I was just you
00:22:12
know I just flew yesterday from Denver to Boston and in the in the in the in the airport you know there are these
00:22:18
escalators right next to the stairway right and and and and um the escalator
00:22:23
and the stair it wasn't a huge stairway everybody's lining up to take the escalator and like the stairs are totally free so I being me I of course I
00:22:31
can't I'm not allowed to take the escalator unless you know I have to right so I run up the stairs but you
00:22:36
know it's but those people taking the escalator there's nothing wrong with them there they're not lazy it's just an instinct right it's an instinct to take
00:22:43
to take it easy when you can right because and we now live in a world where everybody can do that right because we have escalators and and lifts and cars
00:22:51
and shopping carts and all these wonderful devices to make our lives easier and now you have to overcome this
00:22:57
fundamental Basic Instinct to take it easy in order to be physically active and that's basically what exercise is
00:23:04
and so and and furthermore if you're out of if you're unfit and you're not really you know exercising isn't any fun right
00:23:10
it's it's it's it's unpleasant you you know you sweat you get hot and you're get cranky and you know um and and it's
00:23:17
not that rewarding uh until you get fit and so uh people hate it right um and U
00:23:24
and then we blame them for being lazy but they're actually just being they're just being normal I think we need to
00:23:29
have more compassion towards towards people who struggle to exercise quick one before we get back to this episode
00:23:35
just give me 30 seconds of your time two things I wanted to say the first thing is a huge thank you for listening and
00:23:40
tuning into the show week after week means the well to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined
00:23:47
getting to this place but secondly it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started and if you enjoy
00:23:53
what we do here please join the 24% of people who watch this channel regularly and have hit the Subscribe button means
00:24:00
more than I can say and if you hit that subscribe button here's a promise I'm going to make to you I'm going to do
00:24:06
everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future we're going to deliver the guest that
00:24:12
you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show thank you
00:24:18
thank you so much back to the episode this Basic Instinct to take it easy are we evolved to be lazy take escalator
00:24:26
Riders well I wouldn't use the word lazy but we are evolved to take it easy to to rest whenever possible right so we've
00:24:33
now got ourselves into a bit of a comfort crisis here because everything has in our lives is optimizing us for convenience and ease right right and
00:24:40
well it's also it's it sells right I mean Comfort I mean I mean who prefers
00:24:45
to sit in economy as opposed to business class right nobody right Comfort is nice right who prefers shoes that are
00:24:52
uncomfortable right we we we you know comfort's comfort's you know we love Comfort right but since when is Comfort
00:24:59
necessarily better for you right I mean are comfortable shoes actually better for you than going Barefoot are the comfortable chairs better for you than
00:25:05
or taking the the lift better for you than taking the stairs it in the short term or at least it appears to be today right yes because we often value the
00:25:11
short-term benefit over the long-term cost right um that's hyperbolic discounting is the technical term for
00:25:17
that but but um so we you know we live in a world where where we we we you know we pay extra for for Comfort or and
00:25:24
we'll we'll prefer it but um but now we also live in a world where we have to now go out of our way to be physically
00:25:31
active because it's no longer necessary and so again I go back to my original statement which is that people evolved to be physically active for two reasons
00:25:37
and two reasons only but it's necessary rewarding when we don't make it necessary we need to figure out ways to
00:25:42
make it rewarding and and that's hard it's very hard making it rewarding so
00:25:48
one way that you might make something rewarding is by looking at the stick and then the other side is maybe the carrot but just looking at the stick then you
00:25:55
were going through a series of diseases a second ago Alzheimer's um high blood pressure all of these kinds of things
00:26:00
cardiovascular diseases I almost think we've come to assume that these are inevitabilities of Life yeah we'll get
00:26:07
cancer one of us will get someone in here is going to get Alzheimer's and that's the way we live so we we're preparing to medicate when that day
00:26:14
comes that I get God forbid diagnosed with something that's absolutely right
00:26:19
in fact that's what medical students today are taught right if you go to medical school today you are taught that
00:26:24
as people get older their blood pressure goes up I can tell you that's just not true it's in the western world where
00:26:29
people are physically inactive and need crap diets that their blood pressure tends to go up but there are plenty of people I'm actually one of them right
00:26:36
who don't have high blood pressure as they age and guess what's the best way to prevent getting high blood pressure
00:26:42
as you age it's um you know it's not like a broken record but we have this idea that as you get older yes you're G to you're and we're lucky right you know
00:26:48
because we don't die from small poox when we're 30 we're lucky to get cancer when we're 60 right what we've done is
00:26:54
we've confused diseases that are more common with aging with age being a cause
00:26:59
of those diseases in the first place and they're not inevitable inevitable diseases um and many of them are
00:27:05
preventable and and the problem is that in our society we we don't value
00:27:11
prevention very much we we may talk about it but we don't really put our money where our mouth is right in the US
00:27:16
which is arguably one of the worst Health Care Systems is the worst Health Care System among the industrialized
00:27:21
Western World we spend approximately 3% of our budget our IAL Budget on
00:27:29
prevention And yet when people walk into a doctor's office 75% of the time the disease is according to the Center for
00:27:35
Disease Control a preventable disease so we espcially spend nothing to prevent
00:27:41
diseases that overwhelm our system and cause enormous amounts of misery it's a completely backward stupid system and so
00:27:48
and and the good news is it's not that hard to prevent a lot of these things um um it takes willpower and um takes
00:27:54
education and it takes access to to good quality food and what whatever um but um
00:28:00
so in the one hand it's very depressing on the other hand The Optimist in me says you know we really can do something
00:28:05
and people even if without even if they're not wealthy or whatever I mean there are simple things that everybody can do to improve their health outcomes
00:28:13
these diseases we we encounter today as we age and just generally in our society when you look at hunter gatherer hunter
00:28:19
gatherer communities or you look at certain tribes around the world maybe in Africa do you see the same
00:28:26
um the same types of diseases in the same um occurrence level of occurrence
00:28:33
or is there some diseases which just don't like I'm wondering if like if because you know cancer seems to be so
00:28:38
popular for ex as as disease and Alzheimer's and these kinds of things so I Wonder has that always been the case
00:28:43
throughout human history and is that the case in other parts of the world that is such a good question so first of all
00:28:49
some of these some of these diseases are really hard to to measure in non-western populations because we don't have the
00:28:55
diagnostic tools so nobody really knows how common cancer is in in in a lot of
00:29:00
parts of the world right there's just the data don't exist that said when you make estimates and you do look at the
00:29:06
studies that are out there and even if you look in in in historical records in in places like Europe where people have been keeping track of this there is no
00:29:13
question that cancer rates have been rising and that cancer rates are much much more common in the western world there's a strong association between
00:29:19
Cancer and wealth and that's because cancer is basically a disease of energy
00:29:24
right when your cells because cancer is basically natural selection gone arai in the body it's when cells start competing
00:29:30
with each other u in ways that that cause basically and start you know going
00:29:36
you know multiplying and dividing out of control right it's a kind of natural selection and what is it that those
00:29:42
cells are doing they're competing for energy and when you have more energy like when you're eating more and being
00:29:47
less Physically Active you can you basically feed those cells so um so can
00:29:53
a high levels of insulin insulin is highly uh related to to cancer High
00:29:58
insulin levels are are carcinogenic um high levels of of body of of energy you
00:30:05
cause women for example to increase the the amount of estrogen and progesterone that they produce men produce more
00:30:12
testosterone these are and these are these are hormones that um of course are for good for reproduction but they're
00:30:19
but again we EV we evolve to be to have as many babies as possible Right but that doesn't mean that translates into
00:30:25
Health right so more estrogen more progesterone increases risks of say breast cancer or testosterone increases
00:30:31
the risk of prostate cancer so if you look at most diseases right people are more physically active they have lower
00:30:36
levels of estrogen progesterone testosterone they have lower levels of insulin they have lower levels of blood
00:30:42
sugar all of these depressed cancer rates and on average people who are Physically Active have much lower rates
00:30:48
of almost every single kind of cancer that you can think of women who walk 150
00:30:53
you know get 150 minutes of physical activity a week have on average
00:30:58
about 30 to 50% lower lifetime breast cancer risks than people who are sedentary and yet for some reason this
00:31:05
is not a wellknown fact um and we we have we have epidemiological data we
00:31:10
have mechanistic data we understand how and why it works and yet and yet how often do you hear about cancer
00:31:17
prevention we talk about treating cancer which is all important if I get cancer I would like it treated too thank you very
00:31:22
much but why don't we spend more energy and activity and and and have more education about how to prevent cancers
00:31:28
in the first place physical act I've mean I've never heard that before so that's that's
00:31:34
really helped me um to add more value to exercise in my mind you're talking there
00:31:40
about insulin levels and how that has there's a link between your insulin
00:31:45
levels and your chances of getting cancer sugar glucose
00:31:53
inflammation bad yeah I mean I mean look if you want to if you want take like the three
00:31:59
things you should you know if you really care about your health don't smoke right that's kind of obvious I think everybody knows that get some exercise I don't
00:32:05
think you need me to tell you that right and and cut down on sugar on foods that are high in sugar and low in fiber right
00:32:13
that you know what we call high glycemic foods those are the foods that elevate your your your your blood glucose levels
00:32:19
your your insulin levels shoot up and Insulin insulin the basic function of insulin is is it's what we call an an
00:32:26
anabolic hormone it's its job is to is to store energy glucose glucose but also
00:32:34
fat okay all right okay so in insul what insulin does is to get energy into cells
00:32:40
so it's like a taxi it's like an Uber it's like a taxi yeah well I mean it it's not a TA it's like a it's telling
00:32:47
other cells to do that so insulin for example binds to other cells that are the actual taxis so it's like it's like
00:32:53
calling the Uber I would say maybe right um and um and insulin is is you know
00:32:58
it's the fund so when you when you eat food insulin levels go up because its job is to store that energy and when you
00:33:03
exercise insulin levels go down because because you want to then reuse that energy right so so uh so when cells get
00:33:12
more energy they're more prone to going out of control basically and and and and
00:33:17
inflammation is caused by basically by getting you store so much fat in your
00:33:23
cells that those fat cells start to swell and when those start to swell like anything right they start to rupture
00:33:29
they get damaged and that damage attracts the immune system and the immune system gets turned on and that
00:33:34
causes inflammation so so too much osity too much fat you know over swollen fat
00:33:40
cells is the is a primary cause of systemic inflammation and inflammation
00:33:45
is like the slow burn in our bodies that causes widespread damage to pretty much
00:33:50
everything you can think of and it turns out that so the two ways to deal with inflammation are one to prevent it right
00:33:56
so don't eat foods that are pro-inflammatory like anything with a lot of sugar
00:34:01
basically right that I mean that you know the sugar is highly inflammatory um or trans fats are highly
00:34:08
inflammatory but also turns out many people don't know this but you also want to turn down your immune system right
00:34:14
you want to turn the dial down and I don't know just give you one guess what it is that does that exercise exercise
00:34:21
and the and and and the way it does that is that when you when you're physically active you're using your muscle cells it
00:34:27
turns that muscles are also an endocrine organ your muscles are producing a molecule called interlukin 6 il6 that in
00:34:35
low levels is pro-inflammatory but at high levels it's actually anti-inflammatory it turns down
00:34:41
inflammation and your muscles because a third of your body there's muscle right when you go for a run or or swim or bike
00:34:47
ride or whatever you're producing a ton of this stuff and it turns down levels of inflammation so people are Physically
00:34:53
Active even if they're overweight are actually controlling and regulating their inflammation and we never evolved
00:34:59
to regulate inflammation because in this way because we never evolved to be physically inactive until recently
00:35:05
nobody was physically inactive until they unless they were dying right so so we never evolved an alternative
00:35:11
mechanism to regulate inflammation other than physical activity and we didn't live in a world with this much sugar we
00:35:18
never lived in a I mean it's astonishing you you pay more money for Foods today
00:35:24
that have less sugar added right I mean that's just ridiculous right cuz it's so cheap and sugar is you know we lost
00:35:30
everybody loves sugar I mean I've um I've gone hunting with um Hunter gathers you know you know H gathers and um and I
00:35:38
can tell you that they're honey addicts right I mean I've gone out with these guys and they go from you know if they
00:35:43
if they fail on their hunt like by 10 or 11 if you haven't killed an animal you know that's it for the day right and
00:35:48
then it come it turns from being a Hunting Expedition to a honey collecting
00:35:53
Expedition and they'll go from hive to Hive to Hive get smoked burn out the bees and just Gorge themselves on more
00:36:00
honey than I could possibly imagine to eat except these are a lean Physically
00:36:05
Active Hunter gathers and they they handle it just fine um but it's you know it's the it's the Paleolithic equivalent
00:36:11
of you know eating Mars Bars all day long but they've been out doing physical activity for how long that yeah I mean
00:36:17
the average day is about 15 kilometers of of walking with some running yeah so
00:36:23
so so they're you know they can they can they can cope with it how many hours is that oh that's two to three hours
00:36:29
probably okay so from that I have gared that I need to do 15 kilometers a day
00:36:34
for two or three hours every day well remember it's not a prescription right so that's a kind of like the Paleo
00:36:41
fantasy sort of naturalistic fantasy that if you live like a hunter gather somehow your your your world will be
00:36:47
perfect right that's basically what the paleo diet is sort of all about right and that's not true either yes you need
00:36:54
to be physically active but it turns out that certain amount you know if you're any any physical
00:37:00
activity is better than none right and if you look at the kind of any curve of any output any health health health
00:37:06
health outcome like how many years you live or whether you're likely to get cancer or heart disease or whatever you
00:37:12
know any little physical activity your curve starts to fall quickly right your your likelihood of cardiovascular
00:37:18
disease starts just you know a few minutes a day of exercise has big benefits but eventually that curve
00:37:23
flattens out right and it flattens out well before the hunter gatherer level so you don't need to be a hun gatherer in
00:37:28
terms of physical activity to get the benefits this is a I've asked a few people this question I don't think everyone's anyone's really answered it
00:37:35
um but I suspect you might be able to if if you were responsible for redesigning
00:37:41
the nature of our modern world to make it more matched and less mismatched what
00:37:48
are some of the first things you would do to help Society benefit in terms of our happiness and our
00:37:55
health I I think about this all the time because we we don't seem to be turning around we seem to be hurtling in a
00:38:02
direction kind of unconsciously towards artificial intelligence and moving less and being more s sedentary and taking
00:38:08
pills more to fix everything lonelier than ever before and I how you know if
00:38:14
we were to redesign it blank canvas piece of paper that's a tough question because
00:38:22
um we've essentially given ourselves what we want
00:38:27
right um I can go into a supermarket and I mean I can do something that's
00:38:33
unimaginable until recently I can have I I can have basically anything I I can eat better than the king of France you
00:38:38
know a few Generations ago I can I I can I me here like in New York there's like every Cuisine possibly available to me I
00:38:46
I don't ever have to climb the stairs I can take elevators I mean we've we've we've we've made our world so convenient
00:38:53
and comfortable um and yet there are consequences to the many of the things that we crave and want
00:39:00
so in an Ideal World you don't want to you don't want to REM I mean you have to
00:39:06
you have to honor and respect people's um um desires right I'm not a I don't
00:39:13
believe in in in preventing people from taking the elevator right or or forcing
00:39:19
them to you know eat eat whole grain bread as opposed to white bread right
00:39:25
but if you banned white bread and you banned elevators other than for those people that need it for accessibility reasons Etc they would do better over
00:39:32
the long term they' be healthier and happier they would right so the it's really a balancing act between between
00:39:40
um um respecting people's Liberties and choices and educating them and helping
00:39:46
them so in my world I would I would do more to nudge people right um I would
00:39:53
instead of banning sugar I would tax it more um instead of um uh
00:40:00
pushing uh all kinds of foods on people I would push I mean why don't we why
00:40:06
don't we advertise healthy foods the way we advertise unhealthy Foods right I
00:40:12
mean when's the last time you saw an ad for just how amazingly healthy asparagus
00:40:17
was right but that doesn't get the part of my brain going does it no it doesn't but um
00:40:23
but we could do more to to nudge and encourage and help people right you don't have to like ban sugar and cookies
00:40:30
right the way some people but but but simply promote um and help people help
00:40:36
themselves right most people want to eat healthier food most people want to exercise um but they live in a world
00:40:41
where it's hard to do it and they live in a world where um there are very few incentives I would make it such that
00:40:47
healthy food would be as as inexpensive as as unhealthy food and make sure that
00:40:53
that people had incentives and and make it also fun to be physically active like for example um every I mean who doesn't
00:41:02
like to dance right every culture in the world has dancing right dancing is a form of of of physical activity it's
00:41:08
social it's fun it's engaging why don't we have uh why doesn't every every town
00:41:13
in America sponsor dancing right um you know it would probably do an enormous
00:41:19
amount for people's physical health and their mental health I mean we could do that I mean that's just one example right so I would I would um I would I
00:41:26
would and and why is it that in medical schools doctors don't learn about they don't they don't study nutrition and
00:41:32
they don't don't study exercise and they don't learn um because that's because in our medical system is designed to treat
00:41:39
people after they get sick rather than prevent people from getting sick so so we need to you know reverse how we fund
00:41:46
health care right and so schools of Public Health are these kind of little marginalized places where you know where
00:41:52
where great ideas go to die right and and medical schools where all the money is right and doctors aren't taught to to
00:41:59
deal to to to I mean there are entire fields of medicine that don't have the word preventive associated with them I
00:42:04
mean you ever heard of preventive Orthodontics or preventive you know Optometry or prevent you know preventive
00:42:11
Orthopedics I mean it just doesn't exist right so we we could do a lot more um
00:42:16
and and have enormous benefits chapter 11 of this book you talk about someone who has taken their own approach to
00:42:22
getting people moving and exercising um in their own business the Bjorn Borg
00:42:27
company I love that bjor Borg company can you tell me about that that company yeah so I was um so I was I was curious
00:42:36
about this idea of how to get how to help people be more physically active right and again you know my my
00:42:42
fundamental hypothesis is that we evoled to be physically active either when it's necessary or rewarding and so I was
00:42:48
curious if there was any any companies in the world that have made physical activity necessary in other words what
00:42:54
if we forc people to be physically active and I found one so far I think there's only one company in the world that I know of maybe there's some others
00:43:00
but this is the only one I've ever found so far and it's the bjorg sports company in Sweden where the CEO of the company
00:43:07
is this crazy sort of exercise addict and he um he requires every member of
00:43:13
the company to to exercise they have sports hour every Friday at 11 o'clock so I actually um when I when I was
00:43:20
searching around and I was thinking you know right working on the book I actually you I got I found an article
00:43:25
about them and I you know I clicked on the on the company website and you know how most companies have a little contact
00:43:31
us M so I I clicked on the contact us and I wrote a little note saying you know dear Borg company I'm a I'm a
00:43:37
researcher an evolutionary biologist I'm interested in exercise and I'm and I'm fascinated by how your company um
00:43:43
requires people to exercise could I learn more and the next morning there was a an email from the CEO of the
00:43:48
company saying why don't you come and visit us so so I hopped on a plane few a
00:43:54
few months later went to Sweden and they they let me he was so nice you just let me just go anywhere in the company and I
00:44:00
I went to sports hour and I I talked to to employees throughout the company and it was fascinating I mean um a lot of
00:44:06
the employees of the company um first of all a bunch of people apparently left the company when he took over a CEO and
00:44:13
required this but it doesn't matter who you are you could be working in the mail room you could be the CEO you could be a visiting board member whoever you are if
00:44:19
you're there on Friday you have to go exercise with them and they have this pretty serious kind of exercise thing and apparently some people quit um but
00:44:27
but um but but prettyy much everybody else said you know it's actually a pretty damn good thing do you agree with
00:44:33
that approach well yes and no um every University in the world used to require
00:44:38
and every school right supposedly requires exercise right I'm sure you had physical ex you know physical some kind
00:44:44
of phed required in your school those standards are slipping around the world and more and more kids
00:44:51
are doing less and less in school uh universities were are no exception it used to be that all universi ities
00:44:57
required some degree of physical education mine was no exception in fact Harvard was a leader in that back in the
00:45:03
you know hund and something years ago and over the since basically the
00:45:08
1970s that's basically disappeared although most students if you ask them they think yeah that's actually a pretty
00:45:13
good idea so I don't know maybe we can bring back exercise as a and and the
00:45:20
thing is that if you get used to it right when you're young you're more likely to do it when you're older right
00:45:25
because you set those are the that's the age in which your habits become become well your habits become your habits
00:45:32
right and so there's a certain age where where if you can keep keep you know get
00:45:38
that making it make it a habit you're probably more likely to continue doing it for the rest of your life we kind of
00:45:43
see it as overreach don't we I was thinking about if I was to announce one of my companies that everyone is now
00:45:49
required to exercise it would seem like like tremendous overreach if I announce that everyone is required to read a
00:45:55
certain book they' do it and it' be fine and it might be seen as a positive thing right it might be a representation of
00:46:00
our values that we are Learners and we're innovators and we keep you know nourishing our brains but you turned around to your team and said listen
00:46:05
you're all required to you're all required to go for a run every day or something people would it just feels
00:46:12
personal yeah like that's not the responsibility of an organization to tell me to go exercise but we have we
00:46:19
have company you know Retreats I mean we do all kinds of stuff where people are required to do it so I don't know I challenge you try it what we do and what
00:46:26
we've always done we even do it with this team the D team is about 30 people so we have a fitness channel in the
00:46:32
company um slack channel the communication channel that we use and in that channel um and we did this at my
00:46:38
previous company as well where we would enable and facilitate so we we someone
00:46:46
started a women's football team so we enabled it and promoted it someone started a men's football team so we enabled it and promoted it and this this
00:46:52
also applies to non-physical sort of exercise related clubs like someone starts the reason reading club and we
00:46:57
enabled it and promoted it um and we also paid for it if they need to if they need new kits for example when the
00:47:03
women's football team needed wanted to have their own uniforms we paid for it because we saw a huge value in terms of
00:47:09
Staff retention connection community and all those things that actually lead up to staff retention if we could have more
00:47:15
Social Clubs outside of the office you know if you're thinking about leaving a job there's a number of things you weigh
00:47:21
up the pay the job whatever but you also weigh up how the community like the group of people I love and how much they
00:47:27
bring to my life and I actually think in the remote Working World um it's something that CEOs and leaders have
00:47:33
really not paid enough attention to that if they really want to retain their team members they should have them together
00:47:38
as much as they can even outside of the office bonding in a world where screens are on the rise and pubs are on the
00:47:44
decline and social activities and churches are on the decline there's less sort of uh institutions that connect us
00:47:50
socially work has a big opportunity to do to do that so one of my big things always in my head is like how can I get
00:47:56
the team members of my companies to hang out more and and a multiplier to that is how can I get them to hang out more and
00:48:02
move their bodies more because then they'll feel better right well well think about it it's play right play yeah
00:48:07
exactly and I mean and play is what is another thing we evolve to do right what
00:48:13
kids play and we're one of the few species that plays as adults right and what is play play is a way in which you
00:48:19
you you learn cooperation you you you you build community um but you also move your body right in the first chapter of
00:48:26
your book you say that you went to visit the Native American tribe and I'm going to try and pronounce this the
00:48:31
taraa Tarahumara and they're famous for their long running yes what did you
00:48:37
learn about running from them well it's you know they have been famous for well over 100 years I mean many uh people
00:48:44
have gone to study the taramara and have commented on their amazing ability to run but what I I really learned from
00:48:51
them is that um uh for them physical activity is spiritual um you know
00:48:56
there's this book Born to Run that uh that describes their their running and calls them a hidden tribe of super
00:49:03
superathletes they're not hidden and they're not super athletes um and um and the one thing that the book missed was
00:49:10
that the the main impetus for the for the for the running they do these famous long-distance races is that it's a form
00:49:17
of prayer um it's really very beautiful um and um and it's a it's a metaphor for
00:49:23
for life and um and and it's also a an opportunity to bet and sports and all that it's all wrapped into one and and
00:49:31
what I've learned was that this actually used to be almost Universal among Native
00:49:37
American populations right Native American tribes everybody had long-distance races and ball games and
00:49:42
and they were all had a spiritual element it's just that they've they've retained their traditions because
00:49:49
they're in a very remote part of of Mexico that's essentially inaccessible
00:49:54
we all used to do this all human used to do this and in fact if you think if you look around the world every population
00:50:00
has a tradition of endurance endurance events some of the subject might you talk about in your book but also outside
00:50:06
of your book is is how we used to run um in terms of you know I was at the foot
00:50:12
doctor what's it called I don't know what they're called orthoped pediatrist that's what I said
00:50:17
podiatrist what did I say but I went to the podiatrist the other day because I I
00:50:23
got this what's it called when you're I'm going to point at it on my foot this
00:50:28
part of my foot here started to get lots of pain every PL fitis that's it planter fitis I started to get some planter ftis
00:50:35
so fun and it was just this ongoing pain and they prescribed me some insoles I
00:50:41
stood on a couple of machines some soft stuff and they measured my foot and took this scan of it and said right basically
00:50:48
you're standing wrong um your arch is a bit too flat take these insoles and wear them in all of your shoes and I just I
00:50:54
always think in these moments when someone prescri describes me something that's not natural I
00:51:00
go why like where did I go wrong and I think that's the key question where did
00:51:06
I go wrong who lied to me to the point now that at 30 years old I have these
00:51:11
bloody insoles that have to put in all my shoes because presumably that's not natural presumably my my ancestors don't
00:51:18
have Bloody insults yeah so planter fasciitis is what I would
00:51:25
call a mismatch disease right a disease that's more common or more severe because our bodies are inadequately adapted to Modern environments and in
00:51:32
your case and as is the case with a lot of people you have a weak foot so so we
00:51:37
you know you look like you go to the gym looks like you're a pretty fit person right I'll make a bet you you strengthen
00:51:43
pretty much every muscle group in your body except your feet right comment right well but we don't right one of the
00:51:49
reasons is because we we encase our feet in stiff sold shoes that are very comfortable and and the reason the shoes
00:51:55
are comfortable is that you're your foot muscles have to do less work when you was using those shoes right we have shoes that are stiff soles they have
00:52:02
arch supports right and your your foot has four layers of muscles in them and those muscles are supporting your arch
00:52:08
and at the bottom of those four layers of muscles is this layer of connective tissue the plantar fascia and the
00:52:14
problem with the plantar fascia is that if it stretches too much it like anything else right it gets inflamed but
00:52:20
it's got almost no vascularization right so it it's very hard for it to repair itself when it gets inflamed to prevent
00:52:26
PL plantor fasciitis the best way to preventing it is having a strong foot a strong foot's a healthy foot so the way
00:52:32
to way to treat the disease on the long term is to strengthen your foot but if
00:52:39
you want to just alleviate the symptoms that's what your podiatrist did by giving you an insole right it's
00:52:45
basically preventing your mus your arch from collapsing as much making it more comfortable so your your plantar fascia
00:52:51
gets stress less and so it can kind of um alleviates that that that that that
00:52:56
stretching and hence the pain right so that's a typical example of what I call dis Evolution it's what what happens
00:53:03
when you treat the symptoms of a mismatch disease rather than their causes or preventing their causes so
00:53:09
podiatrists are a bit like drug pushers in that sense right because they're they're essentially putting your foot in a cast right and then and for the rest
00:53:16
of your life you kind of have to keep using them unless you strengthen your feet so I so so there's nothing wrong
00:53:22
with those you know treating the symptoms I mean pain is no fun so we are the insoles right kind of you know
00:53:27
alleviate the pain but also work on strengthening your foot and I think you'll find that the planter fasciitis
00:53:33
will will disappear and never come back so the plant of fitis fasciitis um has
00:53:39
now healed after about a month of wearing the insole um I no longer have the
00:53:45
insoles um with me here in New York and I don't have them in any of my shoes because I've also taken a bit of time
00:53:51
off um running on my feet I was playing a lot of football so now I'm at a point point where I can go to the preventable
00:53:57
stage prevent it happening again and you said to strengthen my foot how does one strengthen their foot good question so
00:54:04
there are some exercises um they're kind of foot doming exercises and things like which there you know I can send you some
00:54:10
links to videos showing you some good foot strengthening exercises so that's one way to do it um but the other way is
00:54:16
to wear more minimal shoes um to wear shoes that aren't stiff sold that don't have AR arch supports go barefoot a lot
00:54:23
right um and those that will naturally strengthen the muscles in your foot because you'll have to use those muscles
00:54:28
so you ever gone for like a long walk or run on a beach right and afterwards your your feet are kind of tired M right the
00:54:33
reason your feet are tired is because you're now working on a compliant surface right it's not stiff so your muscles having to work more to stiffen
00:54:40
your foot to push you forward right jack could you go grab my the black shoe out of my bag I just want to show him
00:54:46
something so um so wearing shoes that aren't has stiff sold they don't have arch supports will slowly strengthen
00:54:53
your feet but and this is a huge butt if you do too much to fast you will your planter F will come roaring back and
00:55:00
you'll hate me you'll like you'll never forgive me because um yeah there's a Vivo Barefoot um yeah I wear the same
00:55:06
shoes oh you you've got the same shoes on um great shoes yeah those are wonderful shoes those are those are the
00:55:13
those are the exactly the kind of shoes that will help strengthen your feet these are fairly a new addition in my life yeah they and they feel really
00:55:19
strange because you can kind of feel the floor yeah it's exactly what you've described is yeah but but you you can
00:55:24
transition if you have weak feet which I'm I'm guessing you do you if you go if you suddenly that's the only shoe you
00:55:30
wear all the time you'll probably regret it right so so slowly slowly slowly increase the percentage of time that
00:55:37
just like anything else if you if you like suddenly decide to lift you know huge weights that you can't lift before
00:55:43
you'll hurt yourself right the same thing is with your feet so so slowly it does it but you if you do it gradually
00:55:48
and slowly and carefully you can build up strength in your foot and um and you'll and you'll be a happier happier
00:55:54
person and this is this goes back to everything else you've said about how choosing Comfort choosing to have a nice
00:55:59
supportive shoe has actually just kind of deferred a problem off into the future for me it's the same with diet
00:56:05
it's the same with avoiding exercise and being seditary and and all these other things where when you choose the easy Road in the short term which is this
00:56:11
wonderful cushion shoe I've chosen the muscle hasn't built up in my foot and I've paid the price correct so I need to
00:56:18
again choose discomfort more in the short term go up the stairs run Barefoot
00:56:24
to avoid the late the consequences later down the line yeah I mean I don't think you have to run Barefoot but um though
00:56:29
it can be fun but um um but yeah I mean and I can think of plenty of other examples um we love Comfort but Comfort
00:56:36
is not necessarily good for us when you um when you look at these tribes are
00:56:42
they do you know who liver King is huge massive muscles talks about an ancestor living um what do our hunter gatherer
00:56:49
ancestors look like in terms of that not like him no okay I mean look think about
00:56:55
it muscle is it's really expensive right it's actually a super expensive tissue about a third of our body's muscle and
00:57:01
it's using up about about you know A fifth or more of the calories that we're expending right just just sitting there
00:57:08
not even using them right they're they're very costly tissues right and so if you have more muscle than you need
00:57:14
you're basically adding to your your cost of living right if you if you're a hunter
00:57:21
gather or even a subsistence farmer living on the margin of food security having more muscle than you need is
00:57:27
actually deleterious right remember the only thing that natural selection cares about is how many offspring you have who
00:57:32
survive and reproduce it doesn't care if you're strong or healthy or nice or loved or you know fun or whatever it
00:57:39
only cares about whether you have grandchildren that's it right that's the cold calculus of selection my brain is
00:57:45
going if I have big muscles I'll have more romantic opportunities than I'll have grandchildren well only up to a
00:57:51
certain point right so if more muscles if if they attract the opposite sex and and make them want to reproduce with you
00:57:57
yes that could be a benefit um I'm not so sure how much women are attracted to
00:58:02
the liver King but um um and that's not something I even want to know the answer to but um and certainly shouldn't ask
00:58:08
him but um um um but but there's a reason we have use it or lose it which
00:58:13
you mentioned earlier right because when we need when we increase our demand we
00:58:18
increase our capacity right when you go to the gym and you out right you build muscle but if you stop using those
00:58:24
muscles you lose it and that's an adapt right because you don't want to spend extra energy on muscles you're not using
00:58:30
right so you want enough but not too much you want to be economical with muscle mass right um and so our if you
00:58:37
look at the data um from Hunter gathers and people have done that they've done grip strength tests Etc and all kinds of
00:58:42
other fun things with like mini Olympics and we've done this too um people are
00:58:47
reasonably strong but they're not super strong and they're not they're not buff and built and bulked and all that sort
00:58:53
of stuff they've got enough muscle to do what they need to do but no more and the reason why people find muscle attractive
00:58:59
anyway is because it's a evolutionary signal isn't it of uh reproductive value and resources
00:59:06
maybe and your ability to go out and do you know what I mean why why does why does a woman for example find a man with
00:59:13
muscles or in good shape attractive in 2023 when we're not hunting for gazelle well I'm not a I'm not a I'm not
00:59:21
a psychologist or or so I'm not sure if I I'm qualified to answer that but I could I could Venture the guess that
00:59:27
obviously if you're trying to if you know we pair bond as a species and we have been for for millions of years
00:59:33
probably you want to pair bond with somebody who's going to because we also have of cooperation in food sharing
00:59:38
right you want to pair bond with somebody who's going to be able to you know bring home the bacon literally and figuratively right but but bringing on
00:59:45
the bacon does not mean looking like Arnold schwarzen at least back in the day Arnold schwarzer back in the day right being being bringing home the
00:59:51
bacon back in the day meant being a a persistence Hunter being able to to run long distances and being moderately
00:59:57
strong so they looked more like a marathoner or or a football player than they did a a weightlifter right so it's
01:00:04
conceivable it's conceivable that someone who is really really big is
01:00:09
actually um less attractive because they wouldn't have been able to hunt and run
01:00:14
and Hunt as well as someone who is a little bit Yeah you also have you have to feed more you have to feed them more
01:00:20
too yeah and that's a you know those are precious calories so I'm going to guess that uh look if you look in in in
01:00:26
non-western populations uh you don't see physiques like that this is a this is a privilege of people who are able to go
01:00:33
to gyms and um and you know e you know
01:00:38
you know whey powder shakes and all that kind of stuff to kind of build their crazy muscle mass but it's not something
01:00:44
that our ancestors were able to do on a regular basis that's for sure a quick word on hu as you know they're resp
01:00:49
sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company one of the things I've never really explained is how I came to have a relationship with
01:00:55
Hu one day in the office many years ago a guy walked past called Michael and he was wearing a hued t-shirt and I was
01:01:02
really compelled by the logo I just thought from a design aesthetic point of view it was really interesting and I asked him what that word meant and why
01:01:08
he was wearing that T-shirt and he said it's this brand called hu and they make food that is nutritionally complete and
01:01:14
very very convenient and has the planet in mind and he the next day dropped off a little bottle of hu on my desk and
01:01:21
from that day onwards I completely got it because I'm someone that cares tremendously about having a
01:01:26
nutritionally complete diet but sometimes because of the way my life is that falls by the wayside so if there
01:01:32
was a really convenient reliable trustworthy way for me to be nutritionally complete in an affordable
01:01:38
way I was all ears especially if it's a way that is conscious of the planet give it a chance give it a shot let me know
01:01:44
what you think there's another myth that you bust which I thought was really interesting because I think I know a lot
01:01:50
of people that have used this as a as a reason not to run they say it's really bad for your knees oh man that gets me
01:01:57
so mad right I mean I hear this from doctors all the time right oh yeah running is bad for your knees now it is
01:02:02
true that knee injuries are the most common running injuries um um but
01:02:08
arthritis which is really what they're usually talking about um it's absolutely definitively not true that running
01:02:15
increases rates of knee uh cartilage damage and arthritis so arthritis is caused by cartilage wearing away in a
01:02:21
joint right and it's it's a it's a myth that that running actually increases cartilage damage if you have arthritis
01:02:29
running is excruciating and problematic but if you don't have it running actually uh if anything may be slightly
01:02:35
preventive um because cartilage joints like everything else benefits from being
01:02:41
used right and so physical activity actually helps promote strong and healthy joints we used to think that it
01:02:47
just cause them to wear away but actually you know like cars you know wearing away their tires but now we know
01:02:53
that actually physical activity promotes um repair mechanisms in cartilage just as it does in other tissues in the body
01:03:00
and um um and of course the other thing about running is that I think a lot of people run incorrectly today so uh so
01:03:08
that's why we started studying barefoot running millons you know a long a few a bunch of few decades ago is because if
01:03:13
humans have been running for millions of years most of that time we were running Barefoot so kind of curious how did people run before shoes and what we
01:03:19
learned was that today shoes have these cushioned heels that enable you to essentially run
01:03:25
the way you walk right you land on your heel and everybody who's Barefoot sometimes lands on their heel but people
01:03:31
who are Barefoot often more often then not land on the ball of their foot and then then let their heel down it's
01:03:36
called A four-foot strike or a mid-foot strike and when you do that we worked out the bi mechanics of that and
01:03:42
published a paper on the cover of nature showing that when you do that you actually prevent your foot from crashing
01:03:48
into the ground causing what's called an impact Peak a collisional force you run lightly and gently so if you were to
01:03:54
take your shoes off and run up Lexington Avenue here I guarantee you you would
01:04:00
not be landing on your heels within a few steps you'd start landing on the ball of your foot because it hurts less
01:04:06
and so that's how we evolve to run we evolve to run in a cushion in a in a way that that doesn't involve you know
01:04:12
slamming into the ground with every step and the and that that causes less Force
01:04:19
around your knee um the tradeoff though because nothing comes for free everything has trade-offs is that it's
01:04:25
harder on your your ankles your calf muscles and your kiles have to do now a lot more work to let your heel down and
01:04:31
so people who switch from heel striking to four-foot striking often have Achilles tendon problems they get calf
01:04:37
muscle problems if they don't do it properly they'll get if their foot muscles aren't strong enough they'll get all kinds of foot problems right so you
01:04:43
can't just suddenly become a Barefoot Runner and start four-foot striking if you're going to switch you have to switch gradually and slowly and build up
01:04:50
strength and learn to do it properly another thing people do is they tend to run like a ballerina high up on their toes that's really hard on your ankles
01:04:57
and your calves so you got to do it properly but if you but it can have enormous benefits and so and we know
01:05:03
again if you run that way there put puts much less force on your knees and again knees are where people get injured the
01:05:08
most so I think a lot of knee injuries come from um um from the way in which we
01:05:15
run so would you recommend if you can to run more Barefoot especially if you have
01:05:23
those kind of shoes we just discussed well I think what matters is how you run not what's on your feet right so I would
01:05:28
say a Barefoot style how do I learn to run in a new way though well I mean there's some tricks so one of them is um
01:05:35
first of all I don't know how you run so so so maybe maybe you already run just fine um but um a Barefoot style tends to
01:05:43
be um a high stride rate or high stride frequency so um 90 strides per minute or
01:05:49
180 steps per minute roughly you know um 170 to 180 steps per
01:05:55
minute is about right um relatively short strides so you're not throwing your leg out and to me the most
01:06:02
important thing is not what we call over striding if you ask any coach on the planet they'll say over striding is bad over striding is when you throw your leg
01:06:08
out way in front of you and you land and that leg is a stiff leg so that a stiff leg means more Force right um and a and
01:06:16
um um and it's harder on your knees um and so if and so a good runner lands uh
01:06:22
with their with their shank with their tibia vertical so their ankle is below their knee when you do
01:06:29
that pretty much everything will work out properly right um it'll mean that you won't land hard on your heel it'll
01:06:36
mean that your your leg will be acting like an excellent spring you willon produce a lot of breaking force um it's
01:06:43
a it's a it's I to me I think the most important skill in running is not to overstride um and um so I actually tell
01:06:50
instead so don't worry about how you're going to hit the ground just worry about your overstride if you solve your over
01:06:55
DED you're more likely to run well what do you think's um what's the best kind
01:07:01
of sort of cardiovascular exercise for the promotion of good health because
01:07:06
I've been doing some CrossFit stuff I've been doing some hit workouts um I've been trying not to run because I've had
01:07:12
a few injuries and trying not to run as much because it seems to be a little bit more impact than if I'm bullshitting myself there but um so I've been doing
01:07:18
some like hit workouts every for 30 minutes a day when I leave here well you
01:07:23
do hit you hit hit hit works every single day pretty much every day at the moment we track it with a group of friends we have there's 10 of us in a
01:07:29
WhatsApp group whoever's L whoever does the least workouts every month is evicted and there's a raffle so there's
01:07:35
a raffle yesterday on the first was it the first yesterday yeah for a new member and we do that every month and
01:07:40
we've done it for three and a half years that's great I've been in there I was the first ever member so I've been in there for three and a half
01:07:46
years well I think you know I mean the most the best exercise the one you like doing is there one that's like better
01:07:52
you know like the you know I think you got to mix it up there is no one perfect exercise right I mean I think what you
01:07:57
do sounds actually pretty good right you got a mixture of of of you know low slow
01:08:04
intensity some some high intensity you want to have some strength training you want to have some cardio I mean we never
01:08:10
evolve to do one thing and our bodies are too complex to benefit from just one thing uh mixing it up is is the obvious
01:08:18
way to go right um I think the Bedrock for any kind of physical I mean you ask anybody right cardio is the Bedrock of
01:08:25
of of of of of exercise right it it promotes the most health benefits right
01:08:30
it's good for your good you know you're burning energy it's good for your cardiovascular system it's good for
01:08:35
controlling inflammation but but but there are different kinds of cardio in high intensity versus low intensity and
01:08:42
there's also strength training right uh which is also you know important so you know there's no look we've tried to
01:08:49
medicalize exercise right it's like a like there's a proper dose right you know take this pill this many mill migs
01:08:56
this many times per week right exercise it doesn't work that way there is no
01:09:01
there is no optimal dose everybody's different depends on are you more worried about heart disease or
01:09:06
Alzheimer's or diabetes or depression or you know are you previously injured are
01:09:13
you fit are you unfit there it's impossible to prescribe exercise in this
01:09:18
kind of medicalized way it doesn't work a lot of people exercise because they believe it will help them to lose fat ah
01:09:26
one of the biggest debates on the planet it has been a huge debate even on this podcast I've had multiple people come
01:09:31
and say a whole range of things about weight loss and cardio and I'm kind of I
01:09:37
don't know what to believe anymore well anybody who wasn't confused doesn't understand what's going on right
01:09:42
you know it's um it's sad that there such a debate um
01:09:47
but um but that's how science works right so um as you know I wrote about
01:09:54
that in this book um part of the explanation for the
01:10:00
debate is that again what dose are you analyzing in what population in what
01:10:07
kind of context right so the pretty much every major Health Organization in the world recommends that you get 150
01:10:13
minutes per week of fysical activity that's kind of like The Benchmark that's what the you know the wh who the World
01:10:20
Health Organization considers the the division between being sedentary versus active
01:10:26
so and and a lot of people are unfit and overweight and struggling to be physically active have struggled to get
01:10:33
150 minutes a week right so a lot of studies prescribe 150 minutes a week of
01:10:38
exercise walking for example a moderate intensity ex physical activity and then look at effects on weight loss and guess
01:10:45
what when you when you walk 150 minutes a week which is what 20 minutes a day of walking which is about a mile a mile a
01:10:51
day you're not going to lose much weight you're basically burning about 50 50 calories a day doing that right that's a
01:10:58
ping amount of calories compared to drinking a glass of orange juice right
01:11:03
so so surprise surprise those kinds of studies show that those doses of
01:11:09
physical activity are not very effective for weight loss however plenty of
01:11:14
rigorous controlled studies that look at higher doses of physical activity 300 minutes a week or more find that they
01:11:21
are effective losing for helping people lose weight but not fast and not large quantities so you're never going to lose
01:11:26
a lot of weight really fast by exercising it's just not going to happen because you know a cheeseburger has what
01:11:33
you know 800 900 calories you have to run you know 15 kilometers to lose that
01:11:39
to to burn the same number of calories you're going to be hungry afterwards too so you're going to make some of that back you have
01:11:44
compensation so so physical activity is a is actually there's just no way around it you have to be a flat earther not to
01:11:50
argue this way but there you know there physical activity can help you lose weight but it's not going to can help you lose a lot of weight fast and not at
01:11:57
the low doses that often are prescribed but the one thing that we do agree on and I think this would not be
01:12:03
controversial is that physical activity is really important for helping people prevent themselves from gaining weight
01:12:10
or after a diet from regaining weight and there are many many studies which show this one of my favorite was a study
01:12:16
that was done in in Boston on policemen you know policemen are kind of have a reputation for you know having too many
01:12:21
donuts and being overweight right and Boston is no exception so they did this great study at at at Boston University
01:12:27
right across the across the river where they got a bunch of policemen on a diet really severe diet the policemen
01:12:34
all lost weight but some of the policemen were were had to diet and exercise some just dieted alone and as
01:12:39
you might imagine the ones who dieted plus exercise lost a little bit more weight not a lot just a little but and
01:12:46
then they tracked them for months afterwards because most people after a diet the weight comes just crashing back
01:12:51
right the policeman who's kept exercising even after the diet was over and they went back to eating whatever the hell they wanted donuts whatever
01:12:58
they're the ones who kept the weight off but the ones who didn't exercise the weight came crushing back
01:13:05
another good example would be the have you ever seen the TV show The Biggest Loser uh yes where they people go on and
01:13:10
lose weight yeah so that so there's crazy show right these people you know this is like totally unhealthy they were
01:13:16
confined to a Ranch in Malibu and these guy these people lost ridiculous amounts of weight guy named um Kevin Hall at the
01:13:22
National Institute of Health studied them for for for years afterwards and looked at and most of them regained a
01:13:28
lot of the weight that they lost and there was one person on the show who did not and that was the person who kept
01:13:34
exercising right and that's you know just yet more when said one data point but there's lots and lots of evidence to show that physical activity what it's
01:13:41
other important benefit when it comes to weight is is preventing weight gain or weight regain when we talk about dieting
01:13:47
we talk about exercise or Diet exercise or Diet like why is it an or I mean why isn't it exercise and diet diet is of
01:13:55
course the Bedrock for weight loss but exercise also plays an important role and should be part of the mix on the um
01:14:02
police example and The Biggest Loser example I can relate in the sense that
01:14:07
when I exercise when I go through the the moments of my life where I'm most
01:14:12
committed to exercise I'm also most committed to my diet yeah because I if I
01:14:19
go to the gym I will not then leave the gym and have a donut or a pizza
01:14:24
absolutely not it seems like wasting the effort so if you look at the sort of
01:14:29
correlation between the moments in my life where I eat healthiest they're also the moments in my life where I'm most most focused on the gym and I noticed
01:14:35
there was a couple of months ago had a bit of a motivation slump managed to stay in our little WhatsApp group but
01:14:41
coasted down the bottom of the leaderboard for for a couple of months on and just like surviving every month by one um and through those moments my
01:14:50
motivation in the gym had gone down and my diet had gone down the minute I managed to get in the gym into a big
01:14:56
workout the same day my diet came back yeah of course right and they coary
01:15:02
right and and that's one of the reasons why when people do big studies of of you know what you know you can look at what
01:15:08
what what people die of right what's on the death certificate you know cancer heart disease whatever heart attack um
01:15:14
and then you look at what caused the cancer what caused the heart dis when people try to do that it's almost impossible to separate diet and exercise
01:15:22
because people who tend to eat better also tend to exercise more they're both in our modern upside down chopsy Turvy
01:15:29
world they're both markers of privilege people have money to go to the gym also have money to buy healthy foods and um
01:15:36
um and people who care about their physical activity also tend to care about their diet so so at that level
01:15:43
they're very hard to separate however if you're studying a particular component of a system in a randomized controls
01:15:51
trial in a lab you can separate them out and so we know that have independent and
01:15:56
also interactive effects what is the um the most important thing we haven't talked about Daniel I think the most
01:16:02
important thing is that we need to be compassionate towards each other I mean there's so much shaming and blaming and
01:16:09
prescriptions and you know um um you know the reason I entitled the book
01:16:16
exercised is that people we make people feel exercised about exercise we make them
01:16:21
feel uncomfortable and un confident and shamed and and you know here you and I
01:16:28
are having this conversation but I can tell that you you take you know you're you're I mean I know I've listened to
01:16:33
enough of your podcast you care about your your health and you care about diet you care about exercise and people may look at you and think gosh I wish I was
01:16:40
like him but it's just not me you know I can't I'm not I'm not there right and they may feel put off by our
01:16:46
conversation and I think that so often these discussions make people feel feel bad about about what they're doing and I
01:16:53
and I and I and I and I think that what we need to emphasize is that if you put
01:16:59
a you know if you put a chocolate cake and an apple in front of me here I would want to eat the chocolate cake and it
01:17:04
would I might eat the apple only because you're there but if you weren't there I would eat the chocolate cake right and
01:17:10
and and when I'm in the in the in my building at at Harvard my office is on
01:17:15
the fifth floor of this old Victorian building every single day I want to take the elevator and the only reason I take
01:17:21
the stairs is that if anybody catches me in the elevator I'll be a hypocrite it's not that I don't want to take the
01:17:26
elevator I do want to take the elevator right I guess you guys say Lift right um and and and we make people feel bad for
01:17:33
taking the elevator right um they shouldn't feel bad it's an instinct and so I think we have to figure out ways to
01:17:40
help people without shaming them and without blaming them and without bragging and whatever make you know you
01:17:46
know talking about you know the marathon they ran or this that or the other make them feel um less uncomfortable about
01:17:53
the topic and realize that you don't have to swim the English Channel or run a marathon or you know join your
01:18:00
WhatsApp group and do crazy hit workouts every day by the way you don't need to do hit workouts every day to get the benefit um um instead just you know
01:18:07
taking the stairs in your building every day you know anything is better than nothing and and you'll get benefits from
01:18:13
that and I hope that that's the message that needs to get out right anything is better than nothing and if you can get
01:18:19
started on that on that on that pathway then it'll it'll eventually become self-rewarding and and that and that
01:18:25
leads me to the other topic that we didn't talk about which is that the reward system of physical activity you
01:18:30
know you and I if we go like I'm I'm really looking forward to my run tomorrow morning in the park I love running Central Park it's one of the
01:18:36
best places in the world to run right a fantastic view from the top and it's just gorgeous right um but when I run
01:18:43
Central Park tomorrow I'm G to get a big dopamine hit I'm gonna my body is going to produce all this dopamine which is
01:18:49
the molecule that says do that again right it's a reward gamblers get dopamine hits right um people eat
01:18:55
chocolate cake get a dopamine hit hit right but if I were unfit and overweight
01:19:01
I wouldn't get that dopamine hit and so when people start exercising they don't get the reward that people who are fit
01:19:08
and accustomed to doing it get and then they're made to feel bad like you didn't enjoy your run around Central Park well
01:19:13
it takes months if not years before you actually get that reward really yeah because because uh just like being
01:19:21
overweight um causes you to become insensitive to insulin you become incens insensitive to all kinds of other
01:19:27
hormones and neurotransmitters and dopamine is one of them so so it it's not an instant like benefit right it's
01:19:33
hard and so we need to be compassionate again towards people who are struggling to become fit and struggling to get the
01:19:39
reward and also if you're overweight and you run around Central Park it's like like if I were carrying weights in running around Central Park it'd be much
01:19:44
harder right it's you know it's it's challenging and so we once you get you know into that state it's hard to get
01:19:51
back to the state of activity and so we we need as a as a society to to to help
01:19:57
those folks rather than judge them those folks that are struggling and I was one of those folks that were struggling for
01:20:02
many many years I would say to myself every year um pretty much all of my adult life that this was going to be the
01:20:07
year that I'd get fit I'd try all of these various different you know fad exercise things buy all this stuff I
01:20:15
announced in 2017 that I was going to work out every single day and that lasted for six months and then I yo-yoed
01:20:21
back out of that it never stuck with me until 2020 and that's I've been exercising six
01:20:28
days a week since 20 2020 82% of days and um I reflect and try and diagnose
01:20:36
how I went from someone who what was it that changed and if I can figure out what it was that changed at the most
01:20:43
fundamental level in my mindset or my attitude or my life or whatever it was then I can help other people figure out
01:20:50
that too or at least give them more sound advice or at least be more empathetic whatever is required to help them you know and I have a
01:20:56
platform here where I speak about exercise a lot and these things so what's your suspicion what's your suspicion on what it is that makes
01:21:02
people go from being you know maybe having a um a negative opinion towards
01:21:08
exercise or their ability to be disciplined with it to becoming an
01:21:13
exerciser do you know I have this is a question that obsesses me in fact we have a big project right now a big Grant
01:21:20
to actually study this really right now um because I the more I study it the
01:21:26
more I think it's social the more I think that um um again
01:21:32
I think people are Physically Active I.E in our modern world exercise for two reasons when it's
01:21:37
necessary or rewarding and what makes it rewarding for most people is the social aspect and that social aspect can take
01:21:44
many dimensions it can be running with a group of friends and you know you might
01:21:50
want to go only a mile but your friends convinc you
01:21:55
to run another Mile right and you end up running two miles right or you're feeling bad and crappy and your you know
01:22:00
your friends help you do it or I a running buddy right and I often you know meet meet friends for early morning runs
01:22:06
and I can tell you that the evening before it seems like a great idea to meet Aaron at 6 am on the corner of mass
01:22:12
Aven lenan the next morning at 6 am. I want to stay in bread with my wife you
01:22:17
know I don't want I don't want to meet this nasty smelly guy you know at 6:00 a.m. in the cold and dark but I I agreed
01:22:23
to meet him and out I go right and I'm usually glad I did it afterwards or um you know we can go on there other social
01:22:30
ways in which which is but or dancing right I mean nobody thinks of dancing as exercise but it's exercise right so
01:22:36
that's one important social Dimension and the other one though is accountability um I describe in the book
01:22:42
I'm there's a there's a a friend of mine in San Francisco who was struggling to to to exercise so she signed up for a a
01:22:50
a program it says company called stick.com I don't know if you've run across it where it's a commitment contract where you send like $1,000 doar
01:22:59
to them and they keep it in a bank account they probably invest it and make a lot of money on it too of course but
01:23:04
you set up a referee and and you agree that I'm G to not smoke or this or that
01:23:09
or the other or in this case exercise and if you don't do it and your referee
01:23:15
is you know what you know keeping track of what you do um you get to choose
01:23:20
something negative so in her case her husband is her referee and she doesn't walk can't remember what but every day
01:23:26
she has to walk a certain number of miles her husband will will tell her and and or tell the website and it'll send
01:23:32
$50 to the NRA that week oh my God and she hates the NRA with a burning passion
01:23:38
what is the NRA n the National Rifle Association they're the they're the people who are trying to prevent gun control legislation in the United States
01:23:44
and they have effectively prevented gun control legislation United States which is now kills more children than cars in
01:23:50
the United States so if she doesn't exercise she sorry she doesn't do it then then then money goes to this organization that she hates so this a
01:23:56
this is a stick if there ever was one as opposed to a carrot and I don't think she's every time I see her ask her you know you have you kept up the walk she
01:24:02
says oh no yeah hasn't gotten a penny right so for her it's been very effective so it's she's made a commitment contract that that stings
01:24:09
right that really hurts now I I think that might be a little on the extreme side and I wouldn't necess recommend that to everybody but but she's
01:24:16
accountable right she's made herself accountable in some ways and I think um people can find ways to make themselves
01:24:22
accountable to a friend a loved one a parent you know priest who knows what
01:24:29
right um You Might um or or hire a trainer that's mean that's kind of what a trainer does makes you accountable
01:24:34
right I think so so those are again social ways to help people be more physically active so I think there are
01:24:40
multiple ways of doing that and I suspect that is going to be the most effective sort of set of tools that will
01:24:47
help people one thing I actually do is the on the screen saver of my phone it has something that really inspires me so
01:24:54
I see every day and it's that reminder for me which reinforces my my why across my life it's actually my my home screen
01:25:00
on my iPhone is actually a bit of a mood board for me we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not
01:25:06
knowing who they're going to leave it for and I don't get to see it until I open the book um the question is what is
01:25:12
one aspect or feature of your life that causes you the most
01:25:19
friction SL discomfort and how can you change or fix it I would I would say
01:25:26
um it's my tendency to compare myself to others
01:25:32
um uh I you know you know life is short life is precious we're all experiments
01:25:39
of one and uh when I think about when I
01:25:44
when I when I engage in that oh so and so has such and such um that's um that's
01:25:49
a really bad habit that's a really bad trait and it never leads anywhere good it only leads towards either either I
01:25:55
think about how I have more of something than somebody else that leads to um uh I
01:26:00
think uh unhealthy um feelings of Pride or
01:26:05
feelings of jealousy um you know so and so has this award or such and such and and uh that's um that's kind of pricious
01:26:13
so I think that's a a bad habit that I uh I work hard to to
01:26:18
overcome because it changes your expectations of yourself and that change takes steals happiness it steals
01:26:24
happiness yeah it steals happiness thank you for the work you do Daniel very important
01:26:31
very very important and increasingly important I think um when we look at the the health outcomes especially here in
01:26:37
the United States of people I mean you actually share a number of them in the book which I didn't didn't we didn't
01:26:42
really go into but they're just horrifying yeah um that's scary out there especially as it Rel relates to
01:26:48
exercise um there was one in particular that I wrote down because it horrified me I can't it was just all the stats
01:26:55
around the current Healthcare only 50% of Americans ever exercise ever really
01:27:01
ever ever and only 20% meet those very
01:27:06
minimal World Health Organization standards where I we're a we're we're a nation of couch potatoes and the rest of
01:27:13
the world is headed our way but not if they get this book because it I think it is a real
01:27:20
perspective changer and it's a real eyea and it's a necessary one so thank you so much for w it you're fantastic at what you do and um I'm I'm now a huge fan of
01:27:28
your work after delving in deeper and deeper and deeper um so I can't wait to see what you do next well thank you and
01:27:34
I recommend everyone to go get this book exercised because um yeah I thought I knew a lot about exercise but uh but
01:27:40
from reading that and having that window into Hunter gather ancestors and tribes and other cultures it really that whole
01:27:46
idea of a mismatch life how mismatched my life is in so many fundamental ways from diet to exercise to socializing um
01:27:55
and these kind of books help to realign well thank you although it seems that you're doing a pretty good job I'm
01:28:01
trying you know I think we're so far from being human though that there's still a long way to go for all of us so
01:28:07
thank you Daniel quick one as you know Airbnb are
01:28:12
a sponsor of this podcast and I was actually in an Airbnb last weekend when me and my friends had a reunion in New York and it's from staying in airbnbs
01:28:20
over the years that led me to start hosting my own place I know friends of mine who actually Airbnb their own place
01:28:26
in order to pay for the Airbnb they use when they're away on holiday which is pretty smart and maybe you stayed in an
01:28:32
Airbnb before and thought this is actually pretty doable maybe my place could be an Airbnb it could be as simple
01:28:38
as starting with a spare room or your entire place you could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it whether you
01:28:44
could use some extra money to cover your bills or something a little bit more fun your home might be worth more than you
01:28:50
think and you can find out how much it's worth at airbnb.co slash host check it out find out how
01:28:57
much your home is worth and let me know what you think
01:29:02
[Music]
