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This Will Make You Strength Train. Build Muscle Today And Live a Longer, Healthier Life · The LIVING Room Podcast | Inside The WNDR Lab

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Prevention's better than cure though.
0:01
SPEAKER_02: It should be exercise for life.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: Exercise is medicine.
0:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean it's as simple as that.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: Around 70% of our population are not getting enough exercise.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: There are so many media personalities.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: That's a big problem for us in the science field.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: The wearables, the digitals, the reality glasses, all these things are great.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: But at the moment, I think the icing on the cake.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: What is one unanswered question in your field?
0:23
SPEAKER_02: Why do some people get this buzz from exercise and others don't?
0:27
SPEAKER_02: Less can be more.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: Find something that you enjoy, you want to do, that gives you pleasure and enjoyment.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: The social aspect of exercise shouldn't be underestimated.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: Anyone listening in, age 35, 40 or over, if you don't already, start doing some resistance work.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: We're fighting a losing battle.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: The link between exercise in the brain and exercise and gut health is something that really exploded in the last decade.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: If stuff comes along to make you live to 250, well, then that's great news.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: But in the meantime, I'm telling you, there's still a lot of basic, boring, fundamental stuff that you can do to increase your health span.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: What is it underpinning?
1:01
SPEAKER_02: Brain chemistry, maybe.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: It's the lack of priority that we place on.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: John, welcome.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: Very nice.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad I bought the right jacket to uh match the colour scene.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: You're actually really nicely matching the art behind you.
1:24
SPEAKER_03: So camouflaged.
1:26
SPEAKER_03: Feels very intentional.
1:27
SPEAKER_03: Today we're going to talk about something that is very close to my heart, is a field that I studied in many years ago.
1:34
SPEAKER_03: And so I've always been a huge fan of your work.
1:37
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for coming and spending time with us.
1:40
SPEAKER_03: You're welcome.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: Why don't we start with why don't you do an introduction with in your own words on what you've spent your career studying?
1:48
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, I'll try and be as brief as possible.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: Um did my undergraduate work in the United Kingdom at Loughbury University, studying exercise biology, sports science.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: Did my master's degree in America, went to Bull State University, studied under Dave Costell, who is the proverbial grandfather of exercise physiology, I guess.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: And then went to the University of Cape Town Medical School, studied under Professor Tim Nokes, of late controversy, and spent 10 years there, did a PhD and a postdoc and was also director of the South African Institute of Sport.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: And now you are full-time ACU.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: Full-time researcher.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: I've got rid of a lot of the administration.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: I am a distinguished professor at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, yeah.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: Which I visited very recently.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: You did indeed.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh we didn't quite get you in our metabolic chamber, but maybe next time.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I would have loved to do that full suite of tests there.
2:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:43
SPEAKER_03: Um, because that is, you know, that that the metabolic chamber that you have there there is the only one in the southern hemisphere, right?
2:50
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: The only one, yeah.
2:52
SPEAKER_02: Two-bedroomed, uh two-bedroom.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: Built actually in the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and then shipped to Melbourne.
2:58
SPEAKER_02: And literally, this is a feat of engineering which I can now appreciate, dropped through the roof of the university.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh and it fits impeccably and worked at the turn of a switch.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: And it was a crazy setup there.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is incredible.
3:14
SPEAKER_03: Isn't that grossly expensive?
3:16
SPEAKER_02: Uh, it set the university back about five and a half million, yeah.
3:19
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, um yes, a large expenditure.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: So now the pressure's on to make it really work and do some great studies in there, which we are doing as we speak, hopefully.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: And some of my staff are actually working as I am sitting here chatting to you in New York.
3:37
SPEAKER_03: What um, you know, we had Louise who on our previous podcast talking about the impacts of nutrition through this metabolic chamber.
3:46
SPEAKER_03: Given your area of expertise and how you two work together, you know, how are you using that tool to then understand a bit more about exercise physiology?
3:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a good that's a good question, Chris.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, exercise physiology stands alone, and I think it's got an incredible body of evidence-based.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, and we were discussing this earlier.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: If you got exercise physiologists in the room, you wouldn't have too much argument about the main tenants of what underpins the discipline.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: Nutrition's not quite the same.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: So I guess where Louise and I sort of merge is the exercise nutrient interactions, and that's a really interesting field, not just from sport and athletic performance and recovery, but also, you know, in metabolically challenged individuals.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: So I think there's a lot of potential to a lot of really good work in the chamber, and literally from the continuum of the unhealthy, metabolically challenged to ride up to the elite athletes and the very, very fit people that we see on a day-to-day basis.
4:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:42
SPEAKER_03: Why don't you actually why don't we just explain quickly what this metabolic chamber is, just in case someone missed that episode.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
4:49
SPEAKER_02: A metabolic chamber is basically a very small cubicle, about two by three meters.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: Not quite sure what that is in your American units.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Um it's relatively small.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: And the reason for that is that in a normal environment or when we're testing in the laboratory, we normally have to wear a face mask and it determines our oxygen requirements and carbon dioxide.
5:11
SPEAKER_02: And without getting too technical, we can determine at any point in time what nutrients you're burning, what you're using, whether it's carbohydrate or fat or protein.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: In this, it's a free-living situation in that the subject comes in there, lives in it a little bit like an office suite.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: They've got a bed, they've got a bathroom, they've got washing facilities, they've got an exercise bike.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: So they can live, I guess, as as free living as you can in a very small space, and we can collect data minute by minute in real time.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: They've got a little window into the other suite as well, I remember.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: They can see uh they can see their roommate or they can and they can actually communicate with them by a butt.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: And I think we've got one of the best views of any chamber I visited.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: We overlook the MCG, which is a very famous iconic sports ground in Melbourne.
5:58
SPEAKER_02: And very importantly, from the scientific perspective, we've got natural daylight.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, because one thing that we do study is a circadian biology and how the circadian rhythms affect your exercise capacity or nutrition itself.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: But as you pointed out, not only can you see into the next room, but one of the features is that everything that goes in the chamber, food is passed through an airtight hatch.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: Sounds a little bit crude, but everything comes out.
6:23
SPEAKER_02: So we have toilets which freeze-dry your samples, so we can look at the gut microbiome and we can look at how food or different types of food affect the gut microbiome and do a whole lot of stuff which before would be impossible in the free living situation.
6:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:39
SPEAKER_03: No, it's a remarkable bit of kit.
6:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's super impressive and has so much carryover to for all of us, right?
6:47
SPEAKER_03: Like, I think you know, we are every day seeing new tools and technologies and protocols and interventions about how to optimize for our health.
6:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:58
SPEAKER_03: But, you know, I'm still of the opinion.
7:01
SPEAKER_03: I I suspect you agree that these major principles, these foundational principles of nutrition and exercise and sleep and you know, um uh circadian biology and stress, they they still they're the bottom of the they form the bottom of the triangle.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of the things that we've got now, you know, the wearables, the digitals, the the reality classes, all these things are great, don't get me wrong.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: In the next decade, we'll really see how much they play as far as translation into society, for example.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: At the moment, I think they're the the icing on the cake, if you like.
7:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:35
SPEAKER_02: And the cake is still the basic philosophical and physiological basis of exercise and nutrition principles, which which aren't rocket science, to be completely honest.
7:47
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think the challenge, though, is we're led to believe actually that it's more complicated than it is, right?
7:55
SPEAKER_03: I think like because there are so many people promoting so many different modalities by which we can live a healthier, longer life, yes, it's easy to get misled, I think, right?
8:05
SPEAKER_02: I think it is.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: And you know, we've had this discussion before, and we had it at a scientific forum last week in a in a meeting in the American College of Sports Medicine.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: It's almost got to the stage now of scientists have to be media savvy because we publish in journals, but no one reads what we publish in journals.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: The media occasionally picks it up, but there are so many media personalities, and it's almost a case of the person with the loudest voice wins, even though it's not based in science.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: So you could get a lot of stuff out there which is very gimmicky as we know.
8:36
SPEAKER_02: But if it's a celebrity or if it's a sports star, well, must be working.
8:41
SPEAKER_02: And that's that's a big problem for us in the science field.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: We generally don't communicate our results uh and translate them into everyday use very well, and that's something that you know we've got to get better at as scientists, I think.
8:53
SPEAKER_03: I agree, and and I think have been getting better at actually.
8:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but we had a low baseline.
8:58
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, and and also I think there is just more and more misinformation to compete.
9:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so you have to get linearly better.
9:05
SPEAKER_03: You know, one we we we spoke about this at dinner last night that you know we're certainly with this podcast, we're trying to democratize access to real science from real scientists, academics.
9:16
SPEAKER_03: The challenge even we're facing is we need people to watch the videos with the clips, the shorts, the YouTube, the long form for it to get shared.
9:26
SPEAKER_03: And to do that, you you know, certainly, and I think our our editors are amazing, um, but there is a temptation to make it a little clickbait, you know, that it has to be something that entices people to want to watch it.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
9:42
SPEAKER_03: And I think certainly when it comes to these foundational principles, people don't want to hear just you know, do more strength training or eat more nutrient-dense food or optimise for sleeve because it's not as sexy.
9:54
SPEAKER_02: It's not sexy, it's boring.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: And the other thing, Chris, is people want the quick fix.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they want it now and they want it in a sound bite which lasts no longer than 60 seconds.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's a big problem.
10:05
SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's something, again, that it's great that you guys are doing these podcasts and disseminating this to hopefully a much wider audience.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: But again, the scientific fundamentals haven't changed that much.
10:18
SPEAKER_02: But in all the years I've been working in this field, I still don't think we're getting the message out there.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: We're still being out-shouted, particularly in the last decade, by you know, large social media followers, celebrities with followers far greater than any of the scientists are ever going to get.
10:33
SPEAKER_03: You're so right about us needing to lean into these foundational principles.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: There's still around 80% of the US population are not getting enough exercise, right?
10:43
SPEAKER_03: And we have a remarkable corpus of evidence to suggest that exercise remains one of, if not the number one thing we can do to improve length and quality of life.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: Exercise is medicine.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's as simple as that.
10:57
SPEAKER_02: There isn't anything unless you're doing it to excess and get injured, where it will not have a positive effect, whether it's on the skeletal system, whether it's on the heart, cardiorespiratory, whether it's on the brain now, where the link, and this is you know an area which perhaps we can get into later, but the link between exercise in the brain and exercise and gut health is something that really has only exploded in the last decade or so.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: And we're now realizing that you know the muscles communicate and talk to other organs.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: When they contract, they release these things called myokines.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: And these really are the methods by which some of the cross-benefits of exercise to the other organs are translated.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: So we're we're discovering a whole lot more about not just when you work a muscle, the muscles moving, but how the muscle is literally talking, call it crosstalk, to other organs and conferring health benefits to them.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: Can we talk about two things then to start with?
11:50
SPEAKER_03: I think this is a good, a good way to begin.
11:53
SPEAKER_03: One is why should we be exercising?
11:57
SPEAKER_03: Why should the 80% of people that are not carving out time for this do so?
12:01
SPEAKER_03: Like what are the benefits across these different systems of biology?
12:05
SPEAKER_03: And then I want to move on to how we can make that feel a little sexier, you know, and what ways in which we can test and and uh integrate that into our life.
12:13
SPEAKER_03: Because I think that they do exist, right?
12:15
SPEAKER_03: And I think we're we we're doing a lot of them already.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: Look, we've known for you know, Hippocrates said a healthy diet with exercise and regular walks.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: This was, you know, known years ago.
12:27
SPEAKER_02: So it's not that exercise is new, it's just that we're not translating it out there into the world.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: That's the problem.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: And as you say, it's the same problem, you know.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: I'm from Australia, as you know, and we think that Australians are healthy and have an outdoor life.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: We have the same statistic, around 70% of our population are not getting enough exercise.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: So there's two, I guess there's two sub-questions here.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: Are the recommendations uh fit worthy of the population?
12:53
SPEAKER_02: You know, we can say that the epidemiological studies suggest that you should be doing 150, 180 minutes of exercise, but if that's unrealistic, we need to change the recommendations somehow to make them sexier and make them more amenable.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the last things that in this field, which is again not new because athletes were doing it at the turn of the century, is high-intensity interval training.
13:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: And people have the perception that when I talk about hit high-intensity interval training, that you have to be sprinting around a track or, you know, throwing up on a bike and doing high sprints, you don't.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you an example.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: We sit down with our people with overweight obesity and we say, we're going to do some high-intensity interval training.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: And they they look a bit aghast.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: I say, no, no, what this means for you is on your walk, you walk very fast between lamppost one and three, and then you slow down and recover.
13:44
SPEAKER_02: And they they said, that's not high-intensity training, that's high intensity training for you.
13:49
SPEAKER_02: In this moment.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: Yes, at that moment, excellent point, at that moment in time.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: You can build up to doing this on the treadmill, on the bike, or whatever.
13:56
SPEAKER_02: But again, the public has this perception sometimes that if you're not hurting, if you're not sore, uh and again, we've done a bad job at at managing this uh, I guess, belief system that it no pain, no gain.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: And I really let's get rid of that.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: In fact, in our lab, we have a sign that says, less is more.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: You don't always have to be doing hours and hours and hours.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: Every no matter what the discipline, whether it's nutrition, you know, religion, exercise, the extremes are dangerous.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: Too little, dangerous, too much, dangerous.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: There's a sweet spot.
14:31
SPEAKER_02: We've got to hit that sweet spot for the population and get the message out.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: And we're not at the moment.
14:36
SPEAKER_02: 70 or 80 percent of people don't exercise, so what are we doing wrong?
14:39
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we need a media consultant or we need to change behavior.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: We have enough evidence, a plethora of epidemiological evidence from decades of studies to show that exercise is beneficial.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: People don't do it.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: That is the hurdle.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Not the fact that exercise is medicine and exercise is good, but how do we make people do it?
15:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:03
SPEAKER_03: Why do you think that is?
15:04
SPEAKER_03: Because I don't think it's that we don't believe that it's beneficial.
15:09
SPEAKER_03: I think of those 80% of people, I would wager that they've all tried exercised before and they and likely have always enjoyed the outcome of the exercise, the feeling.
15:22
SPEAKER_03: Um so what is it that has caused them to not then go on to adhere to that?
15:29
SPEAKER_03: And I think I want to make it kind of clear, I don't actually love the exercise itself, and I've my whole career has been built around it, but I really love the feeling, yes, you know, and I I will often begrudge working out because it just feels like such an effort.
15:45
SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, personally, I I I very rarely exercise for more than 30 minutes at a time, and I feel like that's enough for me because I do it very consistently.
15:55
SPEAKER_03: Um, but why do you think even at that level, people aren't finding it motivating or compelling enough to do?
16:04
SPEAKER_02: I I I don't know, it's a double-edged question because I think once people get over that initial hurdle, we always say to our uh a patient population, those you know, metabolically challenged, that if you can get over the first six to eight weeks, you'll have buy-in.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: And often in our situation, and I'm talking at a university in a laboratory where we can give them a personal trainer and we give them one-on-one.
16:26
SPEAKER_02: Once you remove that support, that's when I think the motivation goes down.
16:30
SPEAKER_02: So at the moment, I don't think we have the infrastructure in place in society to enable people to exercise fully.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you an example.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: I went to a meeting which I previously mentioned last week, which was primarily an exercise and medicine meeting.
16:46
SPEAKER_02: Some of the sessions started breakfast sessions at seven o'clock in the morning, we finished at seven o'clock at night.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: There wasn't an exercise break in a meeting which you have 5,000 scientists talking about exercise biology.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: So if we can't fit it in, and another quick antidote: there's stairs and there's elevators or the whatever you call the electrical stairs.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: I was in the minority.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was in the minority walking up the stairs.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: People are still taking the elevator.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: And you think, hold on, we are trying to preach the gospel, and we sometimes not live in it.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: That was crazy.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: So I think this the infrastructure to directly answer your question again.
17:25
SPEAKER_02: I think once that support system's gone, it's very, very hard.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, our most compliant individuals are people who come with a partner, their spouse or their training partner.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: The adherence then is fantastic.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a really important aspect.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: The social aspect of exercise shouldn't be underestimated.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think we pay enough attention to that.
17:45
SPEAKER_02: We're very good at writing a prescription, writing a program, say, do this on a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Friday, and lift weights on a Tuesday and Thursday, whatever it is.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: But we don't pay any attention to the sort of holistic individual, if you like.
17:57
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where we sort of lost touch.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: I think that's where probably we need to pay more attention if we want to ensure that people do maintain a healthy lifestyle because it should be exercise for life.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Not just for the six or eight weeks where you think you've got a problem or the doctor said you need to do this for your blood pressure.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean, one of the major, uh, I guess, cathartic points of people starting exercise is when they get a shock, they have a stroke, they have a small heart attack, they fall, particularly in our older patients, so they've had an incident where balance has been a problem, and all of a sudden a light goes off.
18:35
SPEAKER_02: I should have done something.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: Prevention's better than cure, though.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: So it's a lifelong habit, it has to be.
18:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean, as you know, that creates the urgency.
18:44
SPEAKER_03: There's the the the fear factor.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: And that's probably the wrong way to address it because you know, like you, I sometimes think, okay, I get home from work, we've had long days, we work long hours.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: The last thing I feel like doing is going to the gym and sitting on the bike for an hour.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: I do double your workout, but that's because my VO2 is higher than yours.
19:03
SPEAKER_02: No.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: I was waiting.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: We'll we'll we'll we'll address that later.
19:08
SPEAKER_02: The point is I get off the bike an hour later and my evening's superb.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: If I don't do that, you know, I have the choice.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: I can either go in and eat and veg in front of Netflix or whatever, I can go to the gym.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: And you're right, as soon as I've done it, as soon as I start, I'm in that mode.
19:24
SPEAKER_02: I feel great afterwards.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: And it's that feeling I wish we could, you know, encapsulate and appeal and give to people and say, look, you know, if you carry on doing this, you're gonna feel good and you're going to want to keep doing it because you get that buzz, you get that endorphin release, you get the the whole benefit.
19:40
SPEAKER_03: I imagine that the the 20% of people or 30% of people that are listening that do buy into that, you know, are often find themselves in situations where they are preaching this to the friends or family members that don't because they um they need it, right?
19:58
SPEAKER_03: And like I need I do, like my mental health will go off a cliff if I don't find time to look after myself in that way.
20:06
SPEAKER_03: Do you think that there is anything biologically that you know, do you are there differences on that level where you know some people might not get that same reward?
20:17
SPEAKER_03: That's a really good question.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: I I actually don't know the answer to that.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: I suspect there is, yeah.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: Because, and I'll give you an analogy which we were chatting about with your team yesterday.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: If I give, you know, and the audience can't see there's several people in the room, you know, film crew looking at us now.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: If I give all these individuals the same exercise program, exactly the same, supervised, prescribed, there will be what we call responders and low responders.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: In other words, some people may increase their fitness level, their VO2 max by 10 or 20%, others by 30.
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Why is that?
20:57
SPEAKER_02: And that's the analogy I'm gonna give you for your brain response.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: Why is it some people have this sort of almost addictive behavior that they must exercise every day because they feel good?
21:07
SPEAKER_02: And others think, well, I hated that.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna do that again.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know, but I suspect it's something to do with this response, non-response, which we see in physiology, and it's a definite thing.
21:18
unknown: Yeah.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: If you look at the um, it's a series of studies done in the US by Professor Claude Bouchard at the Pennington Biomedical Research Institute, where he, the heritage study, it's called, he took a huge group of people, prescribed exactly the same exercise program, and looked at the spread of increase in their cardiorespiratory fitness, and it ranged from as little as zero.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: Some people didn't respond at all to a training program to as high as 45%.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: Now he looked at the genetics, and genetics couldn't explain everything.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: Is that right?
21:47
SPEAKER_02: So why?
21:48
SPEAKER_02: What is it about training that for some individuals elicits a huge response?
21:54
SPEAKER_02: For others, flatline.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: And that's discouraging because if you're in the lower end and you don't see positive.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Positive results, then I strongly suggest you're disinclined to continue.
22:04
SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: So there may well be people that, you know, have tried a number of times, I suspect.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: And then they just don't feel like they're yielding any return on their time.
22:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:16
SPEAKER_03: And given that we are so time restricted, then it's like I'm doing this hard thing that doesn't feel like it's helping.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: And it's not doing me any good, so I'd love it.
22:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:26
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I think it would be interesting to see objectively, is it helping?
22:31
SPEAKER_03: Right.
22:31
SPEAKER_03: So there are many systems that you reference that, you know, across our biology that excise influences, whether we feel it or not, I would wager that that is happening.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
22:40
SPEAKER_03: But it just must be so incredibly difficult for those people to then because we want that, we want that immediate return of value, right?
22:48
SPEAKER_03: We want that gratification that we get by actually putting in the effort.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: That's really interesting.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: We need to I'll give you a diet analogy though.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: We we did a study recently with people who were um individuals with overweight obesity who wanted to lose weight, and we asked them before they entered the study how many different diets they'd tried and had been unsuccessful before they entered a supervised study.
23:10
SPEAKER_02: How many do you think they'd tried?
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Half a dozen.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: Very good, but more double it.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: No.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: And add one.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: 13 on average.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: Some had tried 20 to 30 different diets, most of them fad diets, which you know have no scientific basis whatsoever.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:27
SPEAKER_02: So I guess I'm bringing this back around again.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: How many people have tried exercise, how many times, and then eventually given up?
23:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that would be an interesting stat to look at that.
23:37
SPEAKER_02: You've tried exercise, it didn't work.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've tried it again, still don't I've given up.
23:42
SPEAKER_03: Can we talk for a moment about something that you referenced, which was this concept of no pain, no gain?
23:48
SPEAKER_03: And I think you know, we all understand the benefits.
23:52
SPEAKER_03: I don't think we need to reiterate those necessarily, but at what cost?
23:58
SPEAKER_03: Like what is the amount of effort that is required to yield those?
24:02
SPEAKER_03: And as we've just unpacked a little, we don't truly know across every single individual, and that is the complex nature of biology.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: But would you say there is a kind of universal minimal effective dose?
24:15
SPEAKER_03: And I asked that because I know that's what you know, everyone wants to know what's the least amount of effort I need to put in to get the result, or is that way too nuanced?
24:26
SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I'll give you an analogy.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: You know, someone who's who's well known to you, Stu Phillips, has done a study where Loves to and he, yeah, he debunked the myth of that you have to lift very, very heavy weights to increase your muscle protein synthesis.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: And protein synthesis is to do with building up of new tissue and making you bigger and stronger.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: And when this study came out, I remember thinking, wow, this is really going to upset the bodybuilding fraternity sort of thing.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: Because as you know, he showed that if you exercise to fatigue with a very low workload, 30% of your 1 RM, which is you know a very, very low workload, and something that you can do 20 or 30 times, you've got the same protein synthetic response as when you lifted four reps of a very, very heavy weight.
25:13
unknown: Yeah.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: Now that would be my minimal dose if you if you know what I mean.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: As far as cardiovascular, I mean, look, work from again from McMaster in Canada at Marty Gibala's lab has shown that you can get away with six times one minute of high intensity training.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of the adaptations from high-intensity training are superior or at least of the same magnitude.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: And I'm talking, you know, blood lipids, cardiovascular, uh, and other factors as when you're doing 30, 40 minutes of continuous exercise.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to take you up on another point.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: You said, you know, we're all time poor.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: We are time poor, but lack of time is not the reason we don't exercise, Chris.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: It's the lack of priority that we place on exercise.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: I make it a priority every day.
26:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:03
SPEAKER_02: I've missed, as I said, probably two days in the last five or six years.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: It's a priority.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: It's like cleaning my teeth.
26:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: I will make time if I think it's important.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: If you think watching Netflix is more important, then that's what you'll do.
26:16
SPEAKER_02: So lack of time has been this, if you like, uh term that we think is everyone's reason for not ex it's not lack of time.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: It's like a priority that they place on other activities over exercise.
26:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: I agree, right?
26:32
SPEAKER_03: My one pushback, I think, would be.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: No, you don't agree.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: I can see you know, I agree.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: No, I do agree.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: Look, I think everyone should prioritize this because there's no debate that it will improve length and quality of life.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: We know that.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: My one pushback would be that we are bombarded with misinformation about what we should and shouldn't be doing to the degree that it creates a level of anxiety.
26:57
SPEAKER_03: Um so much so that often we get this paralysis.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: Like, I know that I should be doing things to optimize my health, but what are those things?
27:07
SPEAKER_03: And when you have someone selling you uh a course of IV drips or hyperbaric chambers or peptides or NAD, name any other supplements, different diet plans, saying that's the most important thing.
27:20
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
27:20
SPEAKER_03: And you also find it hard to, you know, have that level of willpower to do something that is, you know, sometimes can feel a little like hard work.
27:31
SPEAKER_03: Of course, people choose the path of least resistance.
27:33
SPEAKER_03: And so I think some of that is our responsibility to, you know, the proof is in the pudding, like educate people to understand why this is important and how we should how and why we should be carving out time for it, and just remove some of the noise and anxiety that goes with what we should be doing to optimize for our health.
27:51
SPEAKER_03: So I do agree, but like I think it's it's getting more challenging than ever to disseminate signal from noise.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: I couldn't agree more.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: And the social media, you know, it's it's a double-edged coin, isn't it?
28:04
SPEAKER_02: It can be used for good, it can be used for bad, you know, AI can be used for good, it can be used for bad, you know, you can hack with it or you can do wonderful things with it.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: So I I I entirely agree with what you're saying there.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: There is so much noise out there that to filter the good stuff, and as you said earlier, the good stuff often isn't sexy, it's just simple stuff.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: And people sometimes don't want simple stuff, they want the quick fix, remember.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, one thing that one of my I mean, I do to be clear.
28:34
SPEAKER_03: Like if there was a quick fix, you would take it.
28:36
SPEAKER_03: For sure.
28:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:37
SPEAKER_03: But if I if they if it was proven safe and effective, yeah, I would take it.
28:41
SPEAKER_03: And legal.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: And legal, yeah, of course.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: But I mean it would be legal if it was safe and effective, I would wager.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: Right.
28:47
SPEAKER_03: And I would.
28:47
SPEAKER_03: I I I don't I don't because I don't love the amount of time and effort it takes to get the yield from the thing that we know to work.
28:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
28:55
SPEAKER_03: But I don't, I'm not, I'm not saying that there aren't people like I work with a dozen a dozen team members over the road who love exercise.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'd be one of those.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, 30 minutes to me, uh you've got to be careful here because you're in the driving seat.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: But I I don't get off the bike in less than an hour.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: Right.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: I will not get off the bike 30 minutes.
29:18
SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking, well, I've got to have a shower.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just different.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: But again, I'm a you know, ex-competitive athlete who's been used to training once or twice a day.
29:26
SPEAKER_02: So my hour now is less than it was when my BOTO max was much, much higher than it was now.
29:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: I do think as well, like I'm arguing with myself here, sometimes when you, you know, you hate the prospect of getting into the gym or to the class or to the part run is more the prospect than it is the actual activity.
29:48
SPEAKER_03: Like, because I I will sometimes go and turn up and then 15 minutes in I'm high on life again.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: Right.
29:54
SPEAKER_03: And so I do, I do think it's like, how do we get over that initial hurdle?
29:57
SPEAKER_03: And I think some of that is removing barrier to entry, right?
30:01
SPEAKER_03: And I don't mean like accessibility, I mean um, you know, when I used to train competitively, I would wear my this just sounds ridiculous, but I would wear my kit to bed so that I woke up and I had it on.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of ridiculous.
30:14
SPEAKER_03: I don't think it was an alert or something.
30:17
SPEAKER_03: Um swim trunks.
30:20
SPEAKER_03: No, um, or I would leave it very I would pack everything the night before.
30:24
SPEAKER_03: So I it would it was it was less friction.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
30:27
SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of what what we're adding by adding complication is more friction, you know, more different supplements, more different diet plans, more modalities of exercise.
30:38
SPEAKER_03: And so I do think that that is that is difficult to filter down into the fundamentals.
30:45
SPEAKER_03: These are the things we know to work.
30:47
SPEAKER_03: And a question that I would add on to the end of that is we can see tremendous evidence for the value of social connection that we curate through exercise, right?
30:58
SPEAKER_03: Like we know more human connection typically leads to more happiness, at least, or joy, yeah, um, which has a big carryover to length and quality of life.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: But then thinking about it from a purely um exercise physiology perspective, I would say like the ideally periodized program plan looks very different.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: Totally different, yeah.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: And this is you know, we're having a discussion with your team yesterday about, you know, we've almost made physical activity so structured, there's no informal activity, and by informal activity, I mean walking to work, uh just doing stuff, you know, going to stroll along the pier here in New York, we've we're very structured now.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: It has to be, as you say, a periodized program where we do macrocycles.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: And my it doesn't have to be that difficult.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you an example, you know, she'll probably kill me for this if she listens to the podcast, but my PA wanted to lose a little bit of weight.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: So I said, Well, look, we're on the third floor of the building.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: Every morning we'll come in, and there's 60 steps because I counted them, because that's the sort of personal area.
32:01
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
32:01
SPEAKER_02: And I said, we'll climb these in the morning and we'll do it at lunchtime, and then we'll do it before you go home at work at night, and we'll just do that.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: And I said, That's not really exercise or training.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: You know, you can do it in your work clothes, you're not going to get it too much out of breath, you're not going to sweat, you're not going to need a shower.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: And we've lost that spontaneous joy for activity.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: And again, there was a survey done, and I can't remember who the first author was, looking at how many flights of stairs you'd have to be on at your workplace before you didn't take the stairs.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: All right.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah, yeah.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we live in an 82nd floor apartment in in Melbourne.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: We're not going to walk the stairs, possibly because we can't, and it's a fire risk.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, here's a question for you.
32:43
SPEAKER_02: Where do you think the cutoff point was?
32:45
SPEAKER_02: Where would you walk upstairs and not?
32:48
SPEAKER_02: And I should point out we're on the sixth floor here and we didn't walk up, Chris.
32:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I the I mean the only time I walk up the stairs here is when I'm in like a real rush because the elevator here is painfully slow.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, that's a good excuse.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: Not so I would say something around that number, five or six.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: Half it.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: Really?
33:07
SPEAKER_02: It's it's three.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: Under three.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: People will walk.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they did a mathematical average, but it was 2.8 flights of stairs before people said, nah, I'm taking the elevator.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: And you'll see people, I see people at the elevator in the morning in our building pressing the button, and pressing it twice doesn't make it come any faster, by the way.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: And I'm up and up my desk on my computer, and then they come, ah, hi guys.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: Been here a minute, but yeah, so how many floors are you climbing for?
33:36
SPEAKER_02: Only three, but it's 60 steps.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: And I'm a little out, a little out of breath at the end, but nothing that you know needs any shower or anything like that.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: I think a good takeaway then for listeners is you know, there are ways in which we can weave these non-exercise exercise um, you know, snacks into our day.
33:55
SPEAKER_03: And for the for the maybe for the people that aren't doing it with consistency, that's a great place to start, right?
34:01
SPEAKER_03: Like it's easy.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: Or even the other thing is just breaking sedentary activity.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: You know, the amount of hours that we spend, you know, sitting every day is kind of scary.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: And you know, I spend most of my time writing papers or grants, and I'm very, very guilty of it.
34:17
SPEAKER_02: And I will make a conscious effort, you know, where where all these gadgets and wearables come in is telling you to get up and move.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, you've been sitting for 45 minutes, get up, move, walk around the office, do something, or even you know, climb your flight of stairs or do whatever.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: I think the sedentariness of society at the moment is probably one of the most worrying factors.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: The fact that we have prolonged sit-in, you know, you can you can Uber to work, you can get the elevator up.
34:43
SPEAKER_02: We've we've almost engineered any voluntary physical activity or it what I call informal physical activity, completely out of our lifestyle.
34:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's it's incredible.
34:52
SPEAKER_03: Everything's about convenience, right?
34:54
SPEAKER_02: It's about speed and getting there faster and doing things.
34:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:58
SPEAKER_03: I I this is entirely anecdotal, but one thing I've observed over the years is that the people who are like really fidgety, who can't sit down for very long, who are like just moving around a lot, seem to be able to maintain this very lean physique.
35:11
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
35:12
SPEAKER_03: Is there some science to that?
35:13
SPEAKER_02: The fidgeters, yeah, absolutely.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, there's there's very, very, very good evidence for that.
35:18
SPEAKER_02: And of course, once you've are one of those fidgeters, you've probably got a a very high resting metabolic rate anyway, which helps.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: So uh again, it it all it's all pass and parcel of the same thing.
35:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
35:30
SPEAKER_03: Okay, can we talk about the 20% for a minute?
35:33
SPEAKER_03: And the people who are, you know, they are carving out time for this diligently, almost religiously, certainly for some people, but aren't maybe yielding as high return as they would like, right?
35:44
SPEAKER_03: And so I think we're all our us regular exercisers are guilty of this, of falling into a uh uh, you know, a comfortable routine or plateauing with our results.
35:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, what what would be your your sort of high-level advice for people that aren't making as much progress as they want?
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Well, firstly, is it they've got to choose a discipline that they want to do and they want to continue.
36:05
SPEAKER_02: That's the first thing.
36:06
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things, if I look back now at, you know, not just my academic history, but sporting history and putting it all together that I'd changed differently is is perhaps mixing it up a little bit more.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: You know, I was a runner and I ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and got injured and injured and injured.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: But if I look back on my career now, I'd probably do a lot more, if you want to call it cross-training, you know, I'd have got in the weight room earlier, yeah, I'd have done some resistive work.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: So often I think if a person hits a plateau in one sort of activity, if they're if they're a runner perhaps and they're trying to run a 10K and X and you're not getting any better, well, just try and mix it up.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: Do something a little bit different, take the pressure off as well.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: You use the word friction there, which is a that's a really interesting one as one of the barriers.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: But again, uh there's some friction once you've reached that point and you've plateaued off in your fitness or your goal or whatever.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: I think you've got to do something different to make inroads there.
36:59
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's got to be enjoyable.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: I think the fact that people don't exercise is perhaps because they pick something that perhaps they're not well suited to, body type, phenotype, muscle fiber type.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: You know, for example, we know we're going a bit off script here, but certain people we talked about earlier being high responders or low responders, we know that if you've got a muscle fiber composition which has fast twitch fibers, you're gonna hypertrophy and get bigger and probably look in the gym pretty impressive after three or four months, whereas a person with slow twitch fibers and that phenotype is more of your endurance athlete, you can put them in the gym for as long as you want with all the people who you've got employed with the best programs.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: They're not gonna get much bigger or much much stronger.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: So, going back to your question, I'd try and mix it up then, I'd add something to it.
37:48
SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're a runner, you're not improving, add some weight.
37:52
SPEAKER_02: See if you get stronger, if that improves your running.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: I guarantee it will.
37:56
SPEAKER_02: Do some plyometrics, yeah, do some stuff and mix it up and then come back and reevaluate.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: And I guess that like adding or or mixing up doesn't even necessarily have to be like a change of modality.
38:10
SPEAKER_03: It could be like, are you just doing the same workout every time?
38:14
SPEAKER_03: Like because you can't progress unless there's some kind of overload.
38:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: And that's where the highest.
38:19
SPEAKER_03: Can you maybe explain that principle, that progressive overload principle?
38:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, again, let's say you've got a beginner who is just looking to run a, I don't know, a 10-kilometer race in under 50 minutes in three months or whatever.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, you start them at very slowly, you start them at perhaps running three, four times a week.
38:37
SPEAKER_02: Really easy running.
38:38
SPEAKER_02: They can hold a conversation, they're running with a mate, etc., etc.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: As they get fitter and closer to their goal, you would add some more intense workouts, say you'd perhaps ask them to do one kilometer repeats at the pace that they wanted to run the race at, with a little bit of recovery in between.
38:55
SPEAKER_02: So definitely you mix it up.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: We do see this, Chris, with a lot of people.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: They come in and say, I seem to have stagnated, you know, my last test was so and so, I haven't gone out, haven't done this.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: You look at their program, and they're basically doing the same thing four or five days a week.
39:08
SPEAKER_02: So it's again, it doesn't have to be a different modality, it could just be variety.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: Put in some hills if you're a runner, put in some downhills, even if you're gonna run on a course which is undulating, put in some high-intensity interval training, do some do something different, but add some reps, add some set, add some volume, or you've got to overload.
39:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, the principle of overload is you either do it more frequently, you do it harder, or you do it uh with less recovery.
39:36
SPEAKER_02: In other words, harder again.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: So you've got to overload the system.
39:40
SPEAKER_03: Can I can I add something here that I think is one of the reasons we might see a little drop-off in some people?
39:48
SPEAKER_03: And that is I think we have been given a slightly confusing message about overload, and I think it blurs into no pain, no gain.
39:56
SPEAKER_03: Like it has to be harder for us to get a yield a return.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: And so sometimes people might overdo that.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: They experience, or even in their first session or the first few weeks of trying to like get into a new regime, they might go and do a class, for example, it's too much for their level of fitness.
40:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they wake up the next day, you can't walk down the stairs.
40:18
SPEAKER_03: The day after is even worse, right?
40:20
SPEAKER_03: This this um delayed onset of muscle soreness.
40:23
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think sometimes people are scared off by this idea that they must feel muscle pain the next day for it to have made any benefit.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: Could you maybe unpack that, explain that concept to people and why they're experiencing that pain and why that does not mean that they've necessarily done well.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, firstly, they've done too much too soon and they've overloaded far too rapidly for that point of time in their fitness level, there's no question.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: So you refer to it as I I called it DOM's delayed onset muscle soreness.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: That's muscle injury.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: It's when you've done what we call eccentric work, which is lowering your center of gravity or running under stress.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: This is concentric, that is eccentric work.
41:07
SPEAKER_02: You've actually caused structural muscle damage.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: And what happens physiologically is a lot a lot of things, a lot of enzymes go up remarkably quickly and drastically, peaking at about 24 or 48 hours.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned you know you can't climb upstairs, you have to actually go downstairs backwards.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: That's bad.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: Why wouldn't you be put off exercise for life if that's what it's causing?
41:29
SPEAKER_02: If you think this is what I'm gonna feel like after every session, why would I bother?
41:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and again, you've gone to either a class or a workout or whatever session you've done, which has been far too hard in terms of it, you know, intensity in that case to cause damage to basically make you think I don't want to do this ever again.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: So everything has to be done gradually.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, Rome wasn't built in a day, and often with the people that we see, mostly with the metabolically challenged, you know, you're overweight, you're obese.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: This didn't happen overnight.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: Don't expect us to overnight.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: And once they buy into that paradigm, Chris, they're very they are long-term adherers.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: There's no question about that.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: But it's a hard challenge to say, you know, and you have to do it very diplomatically, of course, because you, you know, you're trying to be uh you're trying to be a life coach rather than a disciplinarian and say, well, look, you know, you've come to us, you've got this metabolic problem.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: Can we help you?
42:32
SPEAKER_02: Undoubtedly, undoubtedly, there's absolutely no question.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: You will respond in ways that you don't even know.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: Your cholesterol will go down.
42:40
SPEAKER_02: Lots of things that'll happen that you can't see, you might feel them.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: But once they get on the scale, and I we can we're doing this surfing all around the place.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Get rid of your scales.
42:52
SPEAKER_02: Scales measure your mass, not your body composition.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: I say to people, don't worry about your weight.
42:59
SPEAKER_02: Let us do a DEXA, let us look at your body composition.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: You're losing fat mass, you're gaining muscle mass, you're gaining functional, day-to-day, good stuff.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: Don't worry about the scales.
43:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:13
SPEAKER_03: And I think this this is such a valuable takeaway is that we have to approach this over the very long term.
43:22
SPEAKER_03: This is a this is a forever game.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: It's a lifelong habit.
43:25
SPEAKER_03: So find something you love, do more of it, yeah.
43:28
SPEAKER_03: But do but do that responsibly, you know, like start slow.
43:31
SPEAKER_03: You don't know, but I I think we all want to have such a great result so very quickly in this day and age, especially with the with the rise of um the GLP one agonists, and like they are working remarkably well for the thing they were designed for.
43:46
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: Um, or the thing we're using them for, at least.
43:50
SPEAKER_03: Um yeah.
43:52
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, I that's the one frightening thing, and I don't want to sound like a broken record here for the people that have been listening to the other episodes, but lean.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: Tissue the loss of lean tissue and bone density, yeah, I think is going to be catastrophic for some people, um, especially those who are who are adopting these drugs later in life.
44:10
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't agree with you more.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: And I I think for the long term, once we start changing hormones, I you you don't play around with hormones in the body.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you see what happens to females when they undergo the menopause.
44:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, lots of stuff happens when you change hormones, and we're doing that now with the GLPs.
44:27
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not sure what the what the long long-term effects are.
44:31
SPEAKER_02: We've got data for three to five years now, but you know, come back in a decade and let's have a look at what's going on there with the people.
44:38
SPEAKER_02: One of the things, and it's analogous to the to the GLPs, is this whole thing about an exercise pill or an exercise mimetic, just don't get me going on that.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, it's just I've been in debates with with certain characters on this topic, and again, my caveat to them is once you stop exercising and take a pill, I will.
44:58
SPEAKER_02: There will not be a pill which would mimic all the effects of exercise, the enjoyment factor, the cardiovascular.
45:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I said in my lecture last week, and Stu Phillips was in the audience, I said once Stu starts taking a pill to get bigger, let me know.
45:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a great example.
45:16
SPEAKER_02: There will never be an exercise pill which puts tension on the muscle to get muscle hypertrophy, forget it.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: And the people who come into the lab often say, Well, you know, has there been a pill developed yet for this, that, and the other?
45:28
SPEAKER_02: And the answer is no.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: We can make rats run longer, and that's about it.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: Do you think there might be a pill that helps elicit a greater response to exercise?
45:39
SPEAKER_02: I would like to see a pill which targets the brain, which encourages people to exercise.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
45:47
SPEAKER_02: So that's my answer to that question.
45:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
45:51
SPEAKER_02: Look, you you can take some mimetics and they, you know, the resveratrols, there's various drugs now which have some isolated effects, but to call them exercise mimetics is a bit scandalous because they don't mimic all the effects of exercise.
46:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
46:05
SPEAKER_02: So I I'm firmly of the camp that yes, if used appropriately, and there were mimetics which did target certain organs and showed benefit.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are people who can't exercise, people have disabilities and this, that, the other.
46:19
SPEAKER_02: If there was something which would help that, fantastic.
46:22
SPEAKER_02: Don't get me wrong on that, absolutely.
46:24
SPEAKER_02: But I know of no human trials yet which have looked at mimetics, you know, in a stage two or a stage three trial to show that it actually works.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: So unless you're a rat, conversation's closed.
46:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, unless you're a big rat.
46:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, an eight kilo rat.
46:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that I I'm I'm I've become more optimistic about the future of these um molecules and therapeutics, but I agree with you.
46:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we've not seen anything compelling enough for the people who have discovered them to be taking them themselves.
46:54
SPEAKER_02: Well, we've seen great headlines, and again, you know, you can pick up the paper almost on a daily basis or on social media or whatever platform and see that you know we've discovered the gene for obesity or diabetes.
47:06
SPEAKER_02: We haven't.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if we had, we would know about it far sooner.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: So I think with the memetics, there's a lot of hype, and certainly the animal studies were very clever.
47:15
SPEAKER_02: It was great science, don't get me wrong.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: The people doing this work are incredible scientists, but has it translated out there into the community in the real world?
47:24
SPEAKER_02: And the answer's uh an emphatic no.
47:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, emphatic no.
47:29
SPEAKER_02: And I might get some pushback.
47:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, you know, I think if there were something that had been proven safe and effective for humans, we'd know about it.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'd be taking it.
47:42
SPEAKER_03: That's because you're lazy.
47:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, or time poor.
47:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a bit of both, I think.
47:47
SPEAKER_03: Um I'm kidding.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: So so maybe it's coming.
47:50
SPEAKER_03: Can you talk a little bit about the met you can you've mentioned metabolically challenged a few times with your um test subjects, patients?
47:58
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
47:58
SPEAKER_03: Can you can you explain what you mean by that?
48:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a sort of an umbrella which we use.
48:02
SPEAKER_02: I guess the analogy would be to you know, metabolic syndrome.
48:05
SPEAKER_02: A syndrome is something where you really don't know the exact cause, and it's a it's a cluster of of abnormalities or disorders.
48:12
SPEAKER_02: So when we say metabolically challenged, it could be someone with overweight obesity, could be someone with high tension, uh hypertension, high blood pressure, could be someone with hyperlipidemia, high high lipid concentrations and such like low cardiovascular fitness.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: So it's a cluster of conditions where they're metabolically challenged.
48:30
SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the problems that we've had, at least in the scientific literature, is when we do a study, and again, I don't want to bore your audience here, but we do a study and we set it up with a hypothesis that X is going to cause this or not.
48:44
SPEAKER_02: And as good scientists, we set up a hypothesis which says X isn't going to do anything.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: The hypothesis of no difference.
48:50
SPEAKER_02: But often we choose an outcome variable, such as cardiovascular fitness, VO2 max, and we may not see a change in that variable.
48:58
SPEAKER_02: So when we write up the study, we say the effects of X on VO2 Max or whatever were small or minimal or not different.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: Now that ignores a whole lot of other secondary variables, and that's why I'm talking about metabolically challenged and this cluster that have changed.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: So although we tried, you know, in the dartboard to get a triple 20, we got a treble 19.
49:22
SPEAKER_02: But all we've done is stress that we missed the triple 20.
49:26
SPEAKER_02: And that's a big problem in science.
49:28
SPEAKER_02: And editors like significant results.
49:31
SPEAKER_02: They don't like to say, we spent a squillion bucks and lots of my staff's personnel time doing this study, and we show no difference in that one variable.
49:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but that will be the headline, right?
49:44
SPEAKER_03: That's my problem.
49:45
SPEAKER_03: Study fails, this doesn't exercise doesn't improve VO2 max, like it's not worth doing.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: And then the social media, yeah, the anti-exercises or whatever you want to call them, they get onto this and say, see, told you it didn't work.
49:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: But look at all the other variables.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you and I don't get on a bike or whatever we do for exercise and think, oh, high density cholesterol is going up, LDL is going down.
50:05
SPEAKER_02: It's a side effect.
50:06
SPEAKER_02: And often when we look at the primary variable and perhaps it hasn't changed as much as we hoped or hypothesized or expected, we're missing a whole lot of stuff that's under the tip of the iceberg.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: And the problem is the media might pick up on the negative results.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: And editors like scientific, significant findings.
50:27
SPEAKER_02: It's a problem.
50:28
SPEAKER_03: It's a real problem.
50:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
50:31
SPEAKER_03: I always say to you know, certainly members but listeners now, to always take those headlines with a pinch of salt, right?
50:38
SPEAKER_03: And there's two pinches.
50:39
SPEAKER_03: There's nearly always more two pinches than meets the eye.
50:43
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
50:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
50:44
SPEAKER_03: And it's but it's hard for consumers, I think, to even be able to unpack those studies.
50:50
SPEAKER_03: And you you mentioned this earlier, you know, you publish it in a peer-reviewed journal.
50:54
SPEAKER_03: Who reads it?
50:55
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of hard to read.
50:56
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of hard to pass through all of that.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: We read it, you read it, scientists read it.
51:00
SPEAKER_02: And we already know that the scientists know this stuff.
51:03
SPEAKER_02: That's the problem.
51:04
SPEAKER_02: We're not reaching it.
51:05
SPEAKER_02: So I I guess in the new regime of AI and everything else and stuff going forward, we've got to translate our science better for the consumer, which is basically what we're sitting here trying to do now.
51:18
SPEAKER_02: But that's the if my legacy, I hope, will be, if I have one at all, will be that he got the message across to the public or he changed someone's life or people's lives for the better because they were able to understand that information that the study arose.
51:33
SPEAKER_02: Don't get me wrong, we have to do the research.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
51:36
SPEAKER_02: We need research, we need basic research and applied research.
51:40
SPEAKER_02: And I don't like calling them that because basic research, you know, lab looking down, is just research which hasn't actually been applied yet.
51:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
51:48
SPEAKER_02: But we need to get better at getting that message out there and you know translational pieces.
51:52
SPEAKER_02: Translational pieces, yes, lay pieces.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: People need to be educated.
51:58
SPEAKER_02: And I think once people have the tools of education and realize that exercise has so many benefits for so many conditions, I can't think of anything where it's a negative.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: I can't think why you wouldn't choose to do it.
52:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:11
SPEAKER_03: One one question that I I've I asked Louise, and that is, you know, I think a lot of people listening, myself included, have parents that are aging, right?
52:21
SPEAKER_03: And I don't think that they were in a position when they were in their 30s, 40s, they weren't in a position to get access to the science that we now know.
52:32
SPEAKER_03: It didn't exist, right?
52:34
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, now when I look at this um breadth of evidence, certainly for exercise, every indication is that you should start as early as possible.
52:42
SPEAKER_03: Well, not as early as possible, but you should start young.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: Right.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: The best time to start something like this was 20 years ago, the second best time is today.
52:48
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
52:49
SPEAKER_03: And so I think both of those things are important to know that it is never too late, but also it is not ever really too early, right?
52:56
SPEAKER_03: And I think an important takeaway from that is, you know, to think about applying the principles of exercise to build yourself this suit of armor, right?
53:06
SPEAKER_03: And I think we can in many ways do that, right?
53:09
SPEAKER_03: Like our lean tissue mass, our mobility, our heart and lung function, our bone density, our posture, you know, flexibility, balance, all of these things, when I think about longevity, need to be trending in the right direction, young to build that armor.
53:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
53:25
SPEAKER_03: Because if you think about, and I use this analogy all the time, every 90-year-old that you know, not many of them are running around a football pitch with their grandkids on their shoulders.
53:35
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, if we if we look at it purely scientifically, what is possible in the absence of disease and illness, we could all achieve that, right?
53:44
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
53:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I do agree.
53:45
SPEAKER_03: I'm with you.
53:46
SPEAKER_03: Um, and so, you know, how do we get that message across that like how urgent and important this is to either to start today, I think.
53:57
SPEAKER_03: Because I, you know, I and and I I say this a lot and I don't want to keep talking about them, but you know, my my dad is a great example.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: Like, I I have been trying to convince him to do resistance training, you know, three, four times a week, and he's very active.
54:11
SPEAKER_03: And I think that is, you know, I'm being hypercritical here because he he is in great shape and he's very active, but I really want him to apply that urgency, yes, you know, and and everyone in my life um because I know how valuable it is.
54:24
SPEAKER_03: How do we help people approach this with urgency?
54:28
SPEAKER_03: Knowing what we know.
54:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, let me give you a bit of science to start with.
54:30
SPEAKER_02: We start losing muscle mass, our peak muscle mass is probably in our mid-30s, and from then on it's downhill.
54:36
SPEAKER_02: And after the age of 50, you lose about 1% a year, and it's it's not good because that affects everything, as you said.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: And that's speed ability.
54:45
SPEAKER_02: It drastically speeds up after 60 or 70.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: So that's the first thing.
54:50
SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you an analogy close to home.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: As you know, I was born in England.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: We emigrated to New Zealand at the time there was a running boom.
54:57
SPEAKER_02: My father was a soccer player in England, he was actually on Leicester City's books, and he started running.
55:03
SPEAKER_02: There was this event called the City to Surf, and it was a seven-mile, 11, 12-kilometer run.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: And he kept running, and he kept running, and eventually he got semi-addicted.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: He ran marathons and this, that, and the other.
55:13
SPEAKER_02: Cardiovascular-wise, he was in incredible shape.
55:17
SPEAKER_02: At age 75, he couldn't get out of chair.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: He had the typical marathon runner's build.
55:23
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
55:24
SPEAKER_02: Lean, no muscle mass to speak of.
55:27
SPEAKER_02: So going back, what would I have told my dad?
55:31
SPEAKER_02: I would have said less running, more resistance exercise.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: But of course, at the time we didn't know that.
55:38
SPEAKER_02: And I think of my parents, you know, who'd be older than your parents are, Chris, now, and we just didn't know stuff there.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
55:44
SPEAKER_02: We genuinely didn't know things.
55:46
SPEAKER_02: Um, we knew that exercise was good and we knew that doing something was better than nothing.
55:51
SPEAKER_02: But we we were quite naive then.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, post-World War II, yeah, there wasn't a lot of exercise physiology stuff going on.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: It's a relatively new discipline.
56:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:01
SPEAKER_02: But having said that, you know, and going back to your question, I think the importance of resistance exercise and maintaining, if you can, or at least slowing down the rate of decline of lean tissue and muscle mass is absolutely important.
56:17
SPEAKER_02: It's important because once you lose that and you have your higher susceptibility to falling off a pavement, to injury, to just about everything.
56:28
SPEAKER_02: And I saw it again with my father.
56:30
SPEAKER_02: It limits your circle of independence.
56:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:34
SPEAKER_02: And once you lose that in old age, you've had it because then it's a mental thing as well.
56:39
SPEAKER_02: Loneliness, social connection, yeah.
56:41
SPEAKER_02: It's they're part and parcel of the same thing.
56:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:44
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I'm predominantly slow twitch fibers, and I go into the gym, and although my son tells me you can't see much of an effect, you know, I do get stronger, and it's something I will religiously keep up.
56:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's no question.
56:56
SPEAKER_02: And again, back to your minimal dose and everything.
56:59
SPEAKER_02: I think if you can do it twice a week, I'd love to do it three times a week.
57:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't always, but I always do it twice a week.
57:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:06
SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, anyone listening in, age 35, 40 or over, if you don't already start doing some resistance work.
57:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
57:15
SPEAKER_03: We're fighting a losing battle, right?
57:17
SPEAKER_03: I think with age.
57:18
SPEAKER_02: I think we are.
57:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
57:19
SPEAKER_03: And and one thing, I one thing I always talk about with the biology of aging researchers is, you know, there are, and and certainly big biotech founders and CEOs.
57:30
SPEAKER_03: And I'm I'm grateful that there is money being invested in trying to find these big solutions.
57:35
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think with the advent of AI, we're seeing that in that the pace of which we find new drug discovery and so on.
57:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
57:43
SPEAKER_03: And I'm so excited to see some of these advancements.
57:45
SPEAKER_03: Certainly when it comes to the the treatment of disease and illness, which I think we're getting a lot better at.
57:51
SPEAKER_03: Much better.
57:52
SPEAKER_03: But there are things we already know that will help us cross the bridge to access these developments in the future.
57:57
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: Right.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: And we all have to cross that bridge.
58:00
SPEAKER_03: And so if you can whatever you can do to protect your um physiology, um, we should be doing with urgency.
58:07
SPEAKER_03: And if we start young, like any good financial investment, yeah, we don't have to contribute as aggressively.
58:13
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you made some good points.
58:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the rate of progress in this field of you know, biotech and aging technology and everything else is fantastic.
58:22
SPEAKER_02: But I'd like to think of those as adjunct and complementary to what we can already do and already know.
58:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and again, I'm not saying they're the icing on the cake, they well, well become part of the cake, but at the moment they're not.
58:36
SPEAKER_02: So at the moment we've got the cake, and let's just keep, you know, doing good baking with the ingredients that we've got, the fundamentals of exercise and nutrition.
58:44
SPEAKER_02: If stuff comes along to make you live to 250, well, then that's great news.
58:49
SPEAKER_02: But in the meantime, I'm telling you, there's still a lot of basic, boring fundamental stuff that you can do to increase your health span, not necessarily your longevity.
58:58
SPEAKER_02: Health span's more important than longevity.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:00
SPEAKER_03: And a little easier to study as well, right?
59:03
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
59:03
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
59:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:04
SPEAKER_03: Can you talk a bit about um some of the tests that we see high translation to health span for?
59:10
SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I think a lot of people listening will have heard of this concept of VO2 Max.
59:16
SPEAKER_03: Um, but you know, there's a bunch of other tests that show good translation.
59:19
SPEAKER_03: Can you maybe touch on some of those?
59:21
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
59:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, look again, the VO2 Max is a test where you cycle to exhaustion, it's your aerobic capacity.
59:27
SPEAKER_02: It measures your cardiorespiratory fitness, and it is at the moment probably the single best predictor of of all cause mortality.
59:34
SPEAKER_02: So that's the number one.
59:35
SPEAKER_02: There are a strange group of tests, one of which is hand grip strength, which is a reasonably good predictor of longevity too.
59:43
SPEAKER_02: Now, don't ask me why, it obviously measures muscle strength and muscle endurance, but of itself, you wouldn't have thought that was a good test.
59:51
SPEAKER_02: There's one that's been published probably a decade ago in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
59:56
SPEAKER_02: So the number of press-ups or push-ups that you can do in one minute, because if you do that, not only is it strength of muscle endurance, but cardiovascular, it's a little bit taxing as well if you run fit.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_02: So they're three of the major tests.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_02: Having said that, and I went through this whole bank of National Institute of Health testing battery just before I came to America a couple of weeks ago.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the things which I certainly neglect is the balance component.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_02: The balance component is essential.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_02: And you know, I've got a few more years under my belt than you have, but the balance and the dexterity and the whole neuromuscular axis is really important.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_02: And again, you know, my hour on the bike isn't going to help my balance.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_02: I now get to the stage, and you know, your audience may laugh, but I clean my teeth on one leg, standing on one leg.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_02: I brush my teeth with my left hand.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: I do, I try and open the tin openers.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_02: And I often say, you know, to my wife, I said, Imagine this is really hard.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_02: I can't get the lid off this.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_02: Well, she will say that, I obviously can't.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_02: And and I say, Well, what are you going to be like in 10 years' time?
1:01:03
SPEAKER_02: You need to do some strength training.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: My wife, by the way, is a very good marathon runner.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_02: And if I can get her to do 10 minutes of resistance exercise a week, I'm I'm euphoric.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_02: It just doesn't happen.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_02: So things like that, balance and strength are really important.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_02: I think we've gone, I think the pendulum for many years was too much on cardiovascular.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: You know, heart attacks, blood pressure, blah, blah, blah vascular.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_02: If you're a male 40 to 50 and you're not had an event by now, you're probably reasonably okay.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
1:01:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_02: But at 70 or 80, you know, like my father, fantastic ticker, but he couldn't get out of the chair.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_03: I think what we could do probably for the audience, John, is put together five or six of these tests that can be done either at home or or point in the right direction.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_03: Because I think there's a there's a bunch that are great, easy ways to like benchmark.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: Simple.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_03: And some of these tools and apps for mobility and balance and very good um strength and power output are actually progressing really well.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_03: So why don't we figure out a little uh show notes?
1:02:02
SPEAKER_03: Because I think they're they're sort of things that everyone can access and and will and will actually might act as a motivator to go and do the thing if you if you feel like you're not failing.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_02: Okay and the nice thing about those, Chris, is that there's uh there's good normative data for them.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_02: So you compare yourself to age match populations.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_03: People of your age and gender, and it will either be motivating, not your age, I mean everyone's and on that note.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm mindful of your time here because I could speak to you all day.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna ask you these ten questions.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_03: Ten.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_03: There's ten questions.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_03: You've got a minute to answer each.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: Bullet point them very quickly.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: What is one belief that your peers that you have that your peers would disagree with?
1:02:41
SPEAKER_02: I think stretching is probably a bit of a waste of time.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_02: I don't think there's any evidence to show that having mobility greater than required for the discipline that you're doing either improves your performance or reduces the risk of injury.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_02: John, I would agree with you.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_02: But it's pretty trendy.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_02: Good.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_03: Do you think your peers would disagree with you on that?
1:03:04
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I think many would.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_02: I see people just doing ridiculous things.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_02: And I say, when are you going to get into that position?
1:03:09
SPEAKER_02: What are you?
1:03:10
SPEAKER_02: You're a you're a yogi or why do you need to be on the floor with one leg behind your fist?
1:03:16
SPEAKER_03: Specifically, I would say it could be counterproductive at times, right?
1:03:19
SPEAKER_02: For well, hypermobility is no good.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying a gymnast or a ballerina doesn't need the range of motion.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_02: They need the range of motion for their activity.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_02: But hypermobility, no, show me the evidence.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_02: Okay, good answer.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_02: What is the most underrated longevity hack?
1:03:37
SPEAKER_02: I think again, I'm going to go back to high intensity training.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_02: And we talked about it doesn't have to be no pain, no gain, making you feel sick.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_02: I think just doing some short bursts of physical activity, which get you breathing hard, take a bit of recovery and do it again, do it again, maybe half a dozen times.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_02: I think we underestimate that.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_02: That's 10 minutes a day.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, really.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_02: Everyone's got 10 minutes, surely.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_03: I'm actually a big fan because of my ties.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I'm with you on that.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_03: What's the most overrated longevity hack?
1:04:11
SPEAKER_03: One thing that you like to hear people saying all the time, you're like, I just wish you'd stop saying this.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure if it's a longevity hack, but again, going back to the exercise pill and the exercise mimetic, I just think we're we're out to lunch on that.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_02: I think we're so far away from that that it's that's not funny.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_02: It's not necessarily a longevity factor, but it's certainly something which mimics exercise, which of course would lead to better health and better longevity.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_03: What was one myth that you think everyone should stop talking about?
1:04:41
SPEAKER_02: It's not exercise, but I'll say the ketogenic diet.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_02: Because I firmly believe exercise and nutrition don't stand as isolated pillars.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_02: I think one without the other is doomed to failure.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_02: I think you've got to have both.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna cheat there and just take the cheat card.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_03: You deal with the clap back.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_03: Um was one finding throughout your career that's really surprised you.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_02: I think actually it's a relatively recent one.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: I think the link between exercise and both the gut microbiota and the brain.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we now know just very briefly that when you look at athletes, they have greater what we call microbioavailability and diversity, they have a greater number of bacteria.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: And at first we thought, well, maybe this is because athletes eat differently and they've got better nutrition, but when you remove the training stimulus, that diversity diminishes.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_02: So there is a definite, if you like, crosstalk between exercise and the gut.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_02: And that area is expanding, and I think very, very exciting.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_03: And we're we're able to capture more data for that now.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_03: Of course, yes.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: We still don't quite know what to do with all of it.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_03: No, we don't, we will know.
1:05:51
SPEAKER_03: I think the science will catch up there as well.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_03: Um if you could go back to the very first day of your career, but you know everything that you now know.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_03: How would you approach your own health differently?
1:06:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, I think to give me better longevity as an athlete, I would have cross-trained.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I competed at a very high level both in soccer and track and field, and I hadn't touched a weight until I was 22.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_02: I would definitely have done weights.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_02: I think they would have prevented injury, given me more muscular strength, given me more balance, core strength.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would have definitely done that differently.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_02: Cross-trained, if you want to call it that.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: Earlier the better.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_03: What is one unanswered question in your field?
1:06:37
SPEAKER_03: Something that you really would love to know the answer for, but we haven't yet got to study or finding for.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_02: I think the exercise brain axis, what makes, and you touched on it in our conversation earlier, why do some people get this buzz from exercise and others don't?
1:06:54
SPEAKER_02: And the other thing that we did discuss as well is why there are people who are very high responders and people who are low responders.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_02: And it's the low responders we need to be working with, not the high responders.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_02: So this physiology, and there are many studies on it now, of why people do respond and non-resp.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_02: And we could test for that, right?
1:07:15
SPEAKER_02: We can.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_02: It's not as simple as you think, though.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_02: And it's not all down to genetics, which makes it very, very tricky to sort of fathom out.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_02: Because if it's not underpinned by genetics, what is it underpinned by?
1:07:28
SPEAKER_02: Brain chemistry, maybe.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's why the exercise brain axis is, I think, an uncharted area.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_02: Really futuristic as far as longevity and health and everything.
1:07:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_03: Okay, if someone tuned into the last 60 seconds of this episode and were able to capture the essence of what you're what you're trying to get across here, what three high-level takeaways would you want them to leave with?
1:07:58
SPEAKER_02: Less can be more.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_02: Don't be conned into thinking that you have to hurt, that the more it hurts, the better you're gaining benefits and everything else.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_02: So less maybe more.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_02: A little often, I think, is better than you know a smorgasbord of activity for a month and then nothing after that.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think the third factor is find something that you enjoy, that you want to do, that gives you pleasure and enjoyment that you can do with others perhaps, and that you are likely to maintain as a lifetime habit.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_02: Under 60 seconds as well.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_03: John, thank you so much for coming in.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_03: It is a pleasure and a privilege to work with you and continue to work with you.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_03: I I want to do an episode two because I think there's so much to unpack here.
1:08:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_03: And obviously, we're both in this uh exercise, pro-exercise camp.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_02: Yep, no, it's been fun, Chris.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_02: I think we could probably carry on for another two or three hours.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_03: I would love to.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_03: No, it's good.
1:08:58
SPEAKER_03: I've got so many more questions.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_03: I just want to go back to the aging parents piece, right?
1:09:04
SPEAKER_03: If if you your parents are, because I don't think we quite capped that off, and I think it's really important.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_03: It's really important to me, and I think probably to a lot of listeners.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_03: You have aging parents, they didn't get access to these, uh, to this research, these tools, um, the understanding of the importance of particularly strength training, but exercise in general, where should they start in a way that you know is going to help get them a result but but remove some of the risk?
1:09:32
SPEAKER_02: I think there are excellent health professionals in a variety of disciplines and exercise, nutrition, and everything.
1:09:40
SPEAKER_02: So I would actually go to a health professional to start with.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_02: That's your first port of call because if you don't know what you should be doing and how much and how often and everything else, you do need professional advice.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_02: I think that will help with compliance as well.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_02: I think testing is very important to establish a baseline in this population.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:10:00
SPEAKER_02: And then you've got a a literally a ground zero where you can look at their progression and everything else.
1:10:08
SPEAKER_02: Um again, uh some of the messages that we've been talking about, it doesn't have to hurt, it doesn't have to be boring.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_02: Find something that you enjoy doing.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and invest in it, I think, at that age as well.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_03: You've got to buy into it.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, buy in it.
1:10:24
SPEAKER_03: You gotta buy into it.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_03: Um, and and that could mean financially invest in it as well.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_03: Like if you like, you know, a club or a professional or a coach, I think is a great place to start.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_03: And they you will never unlearn that.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_02: And my dad worked for a company where the logo is quality never goes out of style.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_02: So you usually get pretty much what you pay for.
1:10:42
SPEAKER_02: So make sure you go to a good health professional, get good advice, a good grounding and a good basics of exercise.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_02: And the other thing I guess I want to say, and I say this to all our uh patients, is ask questions if you don't know.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_02: We don't always have all the answers, but if we don't, maybe I can put you in touch with someone who does.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_02: So don't be scared of asking questions.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_02: And again, it's all about you.
1:11:07
SPEAKER_02: You want this to work for you.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:11:09
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we're not concerned with the average or the fact that 80% don't exercise.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_02: We're concerned with you.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_03: It is about or that you're starting late, you know.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_03: No, that doesn't matter.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_03: Better to start than never start.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_03: Quality never goes out of style.
1:11:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, love that.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you, John.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_03: You're welcome.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_03: Legend.