Latest / CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered. / The Wellness Industry Is Misleading You w/ Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Author, Eat Your Ice Cream

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The Wellness Industry Is Misleading You w/ Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Author, Eat Your Ice Cream · CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.

• 0:07
  John: Welcome to Care Talk America's home for incisive debate on healthcare, business, and politics.
• 0:12
  John: I'm John Driscoll, the chairman of Yukon Health and the co-host of Care Talk.
• 0:16
  John: And today we are delighted to welcome our longtime friend of the show bestselling author, uh, polemicist policy expert, and now expert on ice cream, Dr.
• 0:27
  John: Zeke Emanuel.
• 0:30
  John: Zeke, welcome to the show.
• 0:32
  John: What drew you to, why?
• 0:34
  John: Why'd you write the book?
• 0:37
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Well, there are, uh, the, the very narrow question of how I came to write this book, uh, has to do really with, uh, anger at the, uh, wellness industrial complex and the fact that it's, uh, such a machine, you know, uh.
• 0:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Estimates are between one and $2 trillion in the United States is spent on wellness, which is a shockingly hard number, even if you're very conservative, it's over a trillion dollars.
• 1:01
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, but I'm also, but see, there are so many worried wealthy people who want to be pampered.
• 1:07
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I mean, why are you picking a fight with the worried wealthy?
• 1:11
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: No, I'm not picking a fight with the word wealthy.
• 1:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I'm picking a fight with the people trying to sell them all sorts of crap.
• 1:17
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, like uh, supplements or special tests or special diets.
• 1:22
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, wellness is some, it's age old.
• 1:24
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So one of the things I'd like to point out is, you know, Aristotle and Hippocrates new, well looks sort of core elements of wellness.
• 1:31
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Aristotle talks extensively about friendship.
• 1:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And the importance of social relations in a good, virtuous life, but also in a, uh, healthy and happy life.
• 1:41
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And Hippocrates talks about sleep and exercise and food, uh, and eating well.
• 1:47
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So these aren't new.
• 1:49
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: What is new is how much we actually understand about them and how we understand how they connect.
• 1:54
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I mean, one of the things that certainly, uh, uh.
• 1:58
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Is important in my view, is so little attention in the books, you know, whether it's, uh, outlive or what have you, uh, focus on social relations and yet they are the number one, uh, effector, uh, for healthy, happy.
• 2:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, and long life, uh, statistically, and I, as I like to say it, it's not in the mind.
• 2:20
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: This is actually physiologically
• 2:22
  John: social.
• 2:22
  John: I so wanna get you provoked about Dr. Peter Attia, but maybe we could dig a little deeper into Aristotle and your father for a moment.
• 2:32
  John: I think one of the most powerful things I've read of yours is your.
• 2:36
  John: Anecdote about your father, and maybe you could talk a little bit about what you learned from your father, the doctor, and uh, expert in social relations and how that could kind of give us insights into how to live a happy and healthy life.
• 2:49
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: My dad, uh, uh, was a extrovert, uh, in the classic sense.
• 2:54
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, he loved to talk to people.
• 2:56
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He was not a, uh, a thinker in terms of, you know, what's true about the cosmos, what's true about, you know, human evolution, the big bang.
• 3:04
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He couldn't care about that.
• 3:05
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: What he did like to care about is what are the people around him?
• 3:09
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: What is motivating their lives, uh, what's in their lives?
• 3:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: What makes it go well and not so well?
• 3:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and he would.
• 3:16
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You know, very easily strike up conversations with people.
• 3:19
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Ask them about, uh, what was happening in their life.
• 3:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And almost everyone was thrilled to talk to him, partially'cause he was very disarming.
• 3:29
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It was not an FBI interrogation.
• 3:31
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um.
• 3:33
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And, you know, that was, I think something that really drove him.
• 3:36
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And you know, as I've been out there, I've been, well, well it
• 3:38
  John: sounds like it drove you crazy as a young man
• 3:41
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: embarrassed me.
• 3:42
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You, you know, but that's how your parents embarrass every child, right?
• 3:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I mean, it's by nature.
• 3:47
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You think that God, they're doing something weird and you know, I'm associated with it.
• 3:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um.
• 3:53
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You learn a lot just by watching and watching how people interact.
• 3:57
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I will tell you, you know, he died about six years ago, uh, at 92.
• 4:01
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And the overwhelming turnout at his memorial service patients, colleagues, people who worked at the hospital with him, um, just, and everyone more or less had the same thing.
• 4:14
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He was just a warm, funny, uh, embracing person who was interested in them.
• 4:21
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I think that's a, a very, very special quality.
• 4:24
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And, you know, I've come, as I've grown older and wiser, come to appreciate it in a way that as a young kid, it, it just sort of made me, you know, wanna crawl under the carpet.
• 4:35
  John: Well, I, I think you've gotta have some Irish in you.
• 4:37
  John: My Irish grandmother would always count how many people give an estimate of how many people showed up at the funeral and the wake as an estimate of a good life.
• 4:45
  John: But maybe you could also just that, that I, I love the, the, the reflections on your dad and your mother, but maybe talk about like.
• 4:54
  John: The sharpest criticism or, or the, the sharpest warning in your book is about loneliness, and maybe you could talk how, how dangerous is the epidemic of isolation and loneliness in the United States?
• 5:07
  John: 'cause it, according to the last Surgeon General, not the current one, I don't even know that they've got a doctor as Surgeon General actually anymore.
• 5:14
  John: Um.
• 5:15
  John: Is that we are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness, not just because of COVID, because of media, but how dangerous is being lonely to your health?
• 5:25
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Oh yeah, the, yeah, I mean the statistics are overwhelming.
• 5:27
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: If you look at the people who have seven or eight close friends, which is sort of the limit of close friends you can have and the people who have, you know, 1.5 or less close friends, statistically, um, the mortality rate is about, uh, 25% more over the subsequent eight years.
• 5:45
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um.
• 5:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And there are myriad studies beginning with the Harvard Adult Development Study, the sort of longitudinal study that began in the 1930s following Harvard grads, then their spouses and children.
• 5:57
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh.
• 5:58
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Studies in China, studies in Sweden, all come to the same conclusion, which is that people who have friends, uh, and have close friends and visit with them, talk with them, uh, live a lot longer.
• 6:10
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And it's, uh, astonishingly high.
• 6:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And one of the things I point out in the book, first of all.
• 6:17
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Having good close friends is good.
• 6:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Now, it's not like you gotta wait for the benefit, uh, long into the future.
• 6:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Like with exercise, it's good now and it's good in the future.
• 6:27
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And the third benefit is it's good for the other person.
• 6:30
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It's not just selfishly good, you know, it's good for me, but it's actually, you know, there's an interaction here and the other person is gaining.
• 6:37
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Benefit.
• 6:38
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So I think those are all really, really important.
• 6:41
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I do think of ve Murti, uh, the Surgeon General under Biden's report on loneliness, uh, and social relations is gonna go down as one of the landmark
• 6:51
  John: reports.
• 6:51
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Incredibly powerful.
• 6:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, yes.
• 6:54
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And, and you know, so there is this also statistic, which is, uh, uh, brought out, uh, from BBYU of Brigham Young University researchers that.
• 7:03
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Being lonely is equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
• 7:07
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And as you point out, John, the trends are terrible.
• 7:10
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: The trends are fewer close friends for, uh, most young people, more eating alone, uh, whether at home or out in restaurants.
• 7:20
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, less time spent with other people.
• 7:24
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and all of these are bad indicators and one of the things I say is look.
• 7:30
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: We all need close friends that you know, someone who you can reveal yourself to, who can support you through thick and thin.
• 7:36
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: But the casual social interactions are also wildly important.
• 7:40
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I mean, literally just the other day we were going out buying bagels and I was just joking.
• 7:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: With a guy, uh, who was taking the order, and he was joking with me.
• 7:50
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He says, we, you're your father's son.
• 7:53
  John: He says,
• 7:54
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: we're gonna give you gold gilded bagels today in honor of the president.
• 7:58
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I'm like, oh,
• 8:01
  John: please.
• 8:01
  John: So stop me now.
• 8:02
  John: I I, I, uh, is there anything, just, just, just building on the family thing, is there anything you learned, um, from your brothers about, about healthcare or about healthy interactions?
• 8:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Yes, I will tell you, uh, this is a, something that happened like 25 years ago.
• 8:19
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: My youngest brother, um, we got into an elevator, I forget where it was.
• 8:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: There's probably some meeting and other people, and there was a couple of people standing there.
• 8:27
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And he walks right up to them, puts out his hand, and he says, hi, I'm Ariel Emanuel, how are you?
• 8:32
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And it was like, whoa.
• 8:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And you know, it's like.
• 8:35
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Incredibly powerful, uh, moment.
• 8:38
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And, uh, as I recall, recount in the book, you know, I had one as I was writing this book one day I was rode into the, my bicycle into, uh, work and got into the elevator.
• 8:49
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It was freezing.
• 8:49
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I was like zero degrees.
• 8:51
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And someone casually gets in and says.
• 8:53
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Wow, that's pretty, uh, you know, pretty courageous of you to ride in the cold.
• 8:57
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I said, yeah, and pretty stupid to ride without gloves.
• 9:00
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And she just casually says, you'll never do that again.
• 9:03
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And gets off the elevator at her floor.
• 9:05
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And it was like that, just sort of, you're right.
• 9:08
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And that'll boost me for the rest of the day, that casual observation in little joke.
• 9:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So it's that kind of thing.
• 9:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Yeah.
• 9:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And to, and you, you, you think you learn.
• 9:17
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So social, a social interaction from your brother Ari.
• 9:22
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Ah, I think I learned.
• 9:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Don't be shy about it.
• 9:25
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Don't take yourself so seriously that you know, you think this is your ego's on the line.
• 9:30
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Your ego's not on the line, you know?
• 9:32
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And if you remember, other people like to talk too.
• 9:36
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It's just that they're also shy about starting a conversation.
• 9:39
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So if you are an initiator.
• 9:41
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Again, it's good for you and good for them.
• 9:43
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I think that is something kids today really don't understand is how to initiate a conversation.
• 9:50
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and it doesn't have to be deeper profound.
• 9:53
  John: I think your, your advice actually is, you know, just initiate.
• 9:57
  John: It's not like, don't think about it.
• 9:58
  John: Just kind of go for it.
• 10:01
  John: And I, I, I think what's interesting about your advice sq, whether it's, and we'll get into ice cream 'cause everybody wants to talk about that, is that you're very focused on.
• 10:11
  John: Health advice that's easy and a little bit self-reinforcing.
• 10:15
  John: So maybe you could go through your, your, your top five or six tips to, to what one is interaction and social interaction.
• 10:23
  John: I think that's incredibly powerful in the book.
• 10:26
  John: Ice cream talk.
• 10:27
  John: Talk a little bit about what, how, how that comes up, and then we'll get into, don't be a schmuck in some others.
• 10:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Well, um, I don't know, October 23 or 22 or some, some, a few years ago, the Atlantic Red, this piece about ice cream being good for you and it was a.
• 10:44
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Pretty interesting piece.
• 10:45
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And some of the people who were quoted in it, I knew and I called them up and they said, yeah, we've known about this in our, uh, epidemiological data.
• 10:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Just haven't called a lot of attention to it.
• 10:55
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Some people would say they actively, uh, didn't call any attention or suppressed it.
• 10:59
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, and then if you uncover what's behind it, well, ice cream is a dairy product.
• 11:04
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and dairy actually turns out to be good for you.
• 11:07
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Now, not everyone agrees with me about how good, um, and Walt Willett, one of my old professors from brilliant Harvard School, brilliant Health, yeah.
• 11:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Has a, has a very good, uh, review of it in the New England Journal from about, uh, four or five years ago.
• 11:22
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And he's a little more, he's much more equivocal than I am, maybe even slightly negative.
• 11:26
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, but look, dairy is shown to make.
• 11:31
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: People taller, uh, which is why the Danes and the Dutch are much taller than Americans now.
• 11:37
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, in addition, it's known to prevent diabetes, uh, type two diabetes.
• 11:42
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It also is preventative against colorectal.
• 11:45
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Cancer, there's a lot of good things in, uh, in dairy and ice cream is, or gelato is dairy.
• 11:53
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and yes, it does have sugar in it and therefore it's not good to eat all the time.
• 11:59
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, but it is generally, uh, positive and favorable for.
• 12:04
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: People, uh, to eat.
• 12:06
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and I think that's one of the elements.
• 12:09
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And then if you look at the whole dairy category, that's another one where, you know, yogurt is particularly good.
• 12:14
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It's the number one food for weight loss.
• 12:17
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It's fermented.
• 12:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And so good for your microbiome, which is probably how it, uh, transmits the weight loss as a lot of.
• 12:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Protein, uh, in it, um, as well as calcium and other, uh, nutrients.
• 12:29
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Keer similarly good for the microbiome.
• 12:32
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And so I think, again, once you unpack this, there's a lot of good things, uh, in dairy, uh, and I think, you know, it's something.
• 12:42
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I, we should be eating more of.
• 12:44
  John: Well, I love that because I grew up in a family of, of, of tall ice cream eating, uh, uh, the Driscolls.
• 12:50
  John: Um, so I, we, we, we, we appreciate that as an endorsement of our family activity.
• 12:55
  John: But a couple of other things in the book, I mean, you, you encourage exercise, but you're not focused on zone two, VO two max health monitoring, throwing all kinds of devices.
• 13:05
  John: You're just saying walk, move.
• 13:07
  John: I mean, it's, I, I, again, the, the, the, the, you're, you're pretty clear that America's sitting on its butt,
• 13:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: right?
• 13:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Well, it's not me, it's just the data are overwhelming that, uh, the vast, you know, three quarters of Americans don't get enough exercise and a lot of people there downtime, even though they have, uh, jobs.
• 13:28
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Make them sit at desk.
• 13:29
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Their downtime is more sitting on video games or scrolling or whatever, rather than getting up.
• 13:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So the biggest health benefits are from going horizontal to any exercise and getting that heart rate up to a moderate level.
• 13:43
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, then there are people who are, you know, regular exercisers and they do well.
• 13:49
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: One of the things I like to, that I think is.
• 13:51
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Really important in the book is to point out, uh, the problems of too much exercise, which we don't speak enough of.
• 13:58
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: There's a plateau to how much benefit you're gonna get from exercise, and the more you do after you hit that plateau, actually the more at risk you are for injuries, which is not a good.
• 14:09
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Thing and you're wasting time on exercise that's not gonna benefit you, which could be better spent doing other things
• 14:16
  John: like social interaction.
• 14:16
  John: I find it deeply ironic that my, my, my cycle crazy friend Zeke is, is advising people not to exercise too much.
• 14:24
  John: How do you define, what's that line?
• 14:27
  John: 'cause I think is a pretty intense cyclist.
• 14:30
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: There is a, there is a line, it's about 300 minutes, uh, of vigorous exercise per week, which translates to five hours.
• 14:39
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I don't go anywhere near five hours unless I'm doing a century or I'm doing two days of intense bicycling.
• 14:45
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um.
• 14:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: But that, so that's what it is.
• 14:48
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: When I go out, when I go out riding 30, uh, 40 miles, it's typically a two hour ride.
• 14:54
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Well, two and a half hour ride if it's 40 miles.
• 14:57
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And the important thing there is, yeah, that's probably gonna be most of my weeks exercise in that ride.
• 15:04
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And so I think, uh, it's important to not go overboard, but it's important for the people who are horizontal just to begin to do something.
• 15:12
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I said, you know, the, the easiest thing to do is.
• 15:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Go out for a walk one to two miles and bring someone else with you and make it a habit to do it, uh, three or four times a week, um, and make it a social event.
• 15:25
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And that is you are gonna encourage the other person, they're gonna encourage you.
• 15:29
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, you're gonna get.
• 15:30
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Good, uh, uh, exercise, aerobic exercise.
• 15:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You probably won't get any muscle strengthening, but that's the place to begin.
• 15:38
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And then you can increase it.
• 15:39
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You can go jogging, you can go running, you can do swimming.
• 15:43
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Someone was just writing me and talking about the pleasures of tennis.
• 15:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You play against someone else and then you finish the games and you go off and you, you know, have a beer or have a, a coffee together.
• 15:53
  John: I wanna dig a little bit into this p Atia guy, 'cause he certainly was super popular.
• 15:59
  John: In fact, no O'Donnell kept trying to force his advice on you the other day.
• 16:02
  John: On, on, on CBS on Sunday morning.
• 16:05
  John: She was quite entranced with with him.
• 16:08
  John: Um.
• 16:08
  John: What do you think the dangers of the, the Peter Atia, I was gonna throw him in from he to Aubrey De Gray, let's live to 150.
• 16:17
  John: Brian Johnson, please buy my supplements and sign me up for a hundred to $200,000 a year of, in, of advice on, I guess God knows what, but they, there's no question that there's a substantial, um, elite.
• 16:32
  John: Longevity community with Peter Attia and Brian Johnson's picked the two most popular.
• 16:39
  John: What's what's wrong with their advice and, and how dangerous is it?
• 16:44
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, I would say that there are, uh, three or four things wrong.
• 16:47
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: The first and most important thing that's wrong with it is it makes, uh, wellness and living a long time your obsession and focusing on it.
• 16:57
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: That is not life.
• 16:59
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You know, wellness is about a lifestyle.
• 17:01
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: It's not about the goal of life.
• 17:02
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And Peter Att in particular says, you know, the only thing we should care about is to outlive.
• 17:07
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And I'm like, that is the, that actually that line more than anything, just, you know, ticked me off in his.
• 17:14
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: That is wrong.
• 17:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: There are many bigger it, uh, goals in life, bigger values you should aspire to.
• 17:20
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So it's this obsession, making it the focus of everything you think about, you know, recording every movement you make, recording every d dietary consumption, all your supplement that is wrong.
• 17:31
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You've got other things to worry about.
• 17:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And, uh, when I asked, uh, uh, one of them, uh, Brian Johnson about, you know, well, why live a long time?
• 17:40
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He actually was silent.
• 17:42
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, I would say the.
• 17:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: That's right.
• 17:47
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: The other two things I would say is they tend to complicate wellness.
• 17:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So, you know, uh, they have all these little, uh, tweaks to your exercise routine or tweaks to the supplement you take wrong.
• 18:00
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh.
• 18:01
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You're gonna do these activities for decades, you should not be worrying about little tweaks.
• 18:07
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: They won't make a difference as to they won't give you five days, much less five years additional.
• 18:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, you should get a good, healthy routine that you can stick with.
• 18:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: That's the most important thing.
• 18:19
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Stick within it.
• 18:21
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Sticking with it over.
• 18:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Decades.
• 18:23
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, and as I like to say,
• 18:25
  John: Zeke, Zeke, Zeke, you've got a, you're all, it's almost Atomic Health Habits by Dr. Zeke Emanuel.
• 18:30
  John: I mean, if you think about James Clear how habits, you know, you form habits than habits form you, it's an incredibly powerful
• 18:39
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: through line in your book
• 18:40
  John: for, for at least for me.
• 18:42
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Yes, I agree.
• 18:43
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Just you have to get these habits.
• 18:45
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And again, here we are at the start of the year.
• 18:47
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: How do you get habits?
• 18:48
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You commit to doing something.
• 18:50
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Don't commit to doing everything.
• 18:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Commit to one thing, okay?
• 18:54
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And write down when you're gonna start, you know, January 16th, that's the day I start at four 30.
• 19:01
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: I'm going to exercise, I'm going to cook my first meal, uh, at home or whatever it is.
• 19:08
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, then.
• 19:09
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You initiate, and I think most people who, certainly people who are getting the book are already motivated and committed to initiating.
• 19:16
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And then the issue is repetition.
• 19:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: You have to do it three or four times a week for about six weeks, and then you've built your day around it and you can continue to do it for the long haul.
• 19:28
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: That is the sequence that we need and I think, you know that we can't, will.
• 19:35
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Constantly willing ourselves to do more and more willpower, easily fatigued.
• 19:39
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: We have a lot of data and a lot of research on it.
• 19:42
  John: Yeah, I mean, everything about, about, about initial I, I want to pivot a little bit to Ben Franklin.
• 19:49
  John: He was a surprise late in, in guest in your book.
• 19:53
  John: Like, what can we learn from Ben Franklin about how to live along in, in healthy life?
• 19:58
  John: I thought that that was a really, I mean, what, what does Ben, what can Ben Franklin teach us today?
• 20:04
  John: In this century about how to live a better life.
• 20:06
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: First of all, early on in Ben Franklin's life, if his autobiography is to be believed, he was incredibly strong.
• 20:13
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He believed in wellness.
• 20:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He, for example, was a vegetarian.
• 20:16
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He did not drink alcohol.
• 20:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, he swam, he was one of the original swimmers.
• 20:21
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And everyone in London, when he swam the tens, uh, very frequently, wanted him to teach their kids how to swim.
• 20:28
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He actually invented swim fins for the hands to go faster.
• 20:31
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Um, so.
• 20:33
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Here are the things that Ben Franklin can teach us.
• 20:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: First is try to get a good life.
• 20:36
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He also.
• 20:38
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Listed out 13 virtues and evaluated how well he did.
• 20:41
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So you know, this sort of self-improvement.
• 20:44
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Make it a habit.
• 20:45
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Don't do each of the virtues or don't do all 13 virtues at once.
• 20:48
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Do one at a time.
• 20:50
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: But he's told us three important things.
• 20:52
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: One is stay curious, stay.
• 20:55
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Keep mentally sharp, stay engaged with the world, try to think through things in the world and understand whether it's people or events or, uh, uh, electricity.
• 21:05
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: In his case.
• 21:06
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Uh, second, uh, he was all about moral growth, about growing, about constantly improving yourself.
• 21:14
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Don't.
• 21:15
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Rest.
• 21:16
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Try to figure out what you're not doing right and improve yourself.
• 21:19
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And he is, his writings are filled with, you know, I used to think this and then I watched, and now I've changed my mind, his speech to the constitutional convention.
• 21:30
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Last great, uh, speech he wrote in the end of the constitutional convention.
• 21:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: He begins by saying, you know, the older I get, the more I listen to other people.
• 21:38
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: They've got a lot of wisdom.
• 21:39
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And um, I know that I've changed my view by listening to other people and growing.
• 21:43
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So it's be curious, grow.
• 21:46
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And the last one he said is, commit your life to being useful.
• 21:50
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: How are you making the world, your community, your city, your family, and the larger country?
• 21:57
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Better and think about that.
• 22:00
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: So, you know, the thing about Peter Attia is he's thinking only about yourself and making yourself, you know, outlive.
• 22:07
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: But Franklin is just the opposite.
• 22:09
  John: That's the dirty little secret about the worried Wealthy Wellness community is it's a, it's a form of weird narcissism, narcissistic.
• 22:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Yes.
• 22:18
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And, and part of what we know about wellness and health and longevity is the more you engage with other people with your community, the more you try to improve it.
• 22:27
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: That's the meaning of life goes up and your longevity goes up with it.
• 22:33
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: And so that's the thing.
• 22:34
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: Being oriented towards others rather than oriented towards yourself is the key to wellness.
• 22:40
  John: Zeke, you, you, you as as always, are a wonderful, wonderful guest.
• 22:44
  John: I think of, you know, em Forster's, you know, only connect, but to lead, yeah, to lead with connection and purpose.
• 22:52
  John: To, to start with taking down Peter Attia and end with lifting up Benjamin Franklin.
• 22:56
  John: Uh, thank you for joining Care Talk, uh, uh, this morning.
• 23:00
  John: Thank
• 23:00
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: you, John.
• 23:00
  Dr. Zeke Emanuel: This has been terrific.
• 23:02
  John: And, and if you liked what you heard or you didn't, we'd love you to subscribe on your favorite service.
• 23:08
  John: Thanks, Zeke.