Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / The Most Important Health Metric That You Should Be Tracking To Balance Stress, Optimise Health And Live Longer, With Dr Torkil Faero

Transcript

The Most Important Health Metric That You Should Be Tracking To Balance Stress, Optimise Health And Live Longer, With Dr Torkil Faero · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Doctor torkel Farah, Welcome to the podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Paul, so nice to be here.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: You are, actually, you know what, you are, the second
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: person I've interviewed from Norway, but the first Norwegian. I
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: had interviewed an Australian friend of mine who was living
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: in Norway, but you're actually the first Norwegian living in Norway.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: This is actually a long overdue podcast topic. I have
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: been wanting to get somebody on to talk about heartbreat variability,
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: and then I discovered you and your book and I thought, oh,
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: I got to get this guy on. But before we
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: get into that, just tell people a little bit about.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Your journey, so particularly professional journey.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I'm a general practitioner doctor, emergency physician.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: So what I do is I work a lot around
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Norway in smaller communities maybe you know, counties of two
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: thousand people, and I will be on call twenty four
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: to seven, you know, for one or two weeks all
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: the time. So then I can see then the diseases
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: in the society. You know, they get back to me.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I give them some medicine and they come back. So
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: I'll get a good view on what makes people sick
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: and what makes them healthy. So this I've been doing
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: as a freelance doctor, as a local doctor as you
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: would say in Australia for twenty five years.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: And also yeah, I combined it with a career as
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a photographer and a teacher in photography and teaching workshops
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and so on, so I had kind of parallel careers.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: And the last ten years I've actually been an author
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: as well, writing books, and I've been writing one book
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: on the Camera Cure and how to use photography therapeutically,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: and then that actually led into my latest book on
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: the autonomic nervous system. Because as you do photography, you
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: know you're you're hunting, you're gathering, you're using all parts
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: of your nervous system. So I got very interested in
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: the nervous system. And then I got to know this
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: concept of heart rate variability. Just five six years ago,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I had never heard of it as a even as
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: a doctor, and understood that heart rate variability is so
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: important for our general health, for preventative healthcare, and now
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: that we have heart rate variability in the wearables that
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: almost everyone is already using, then I wrote the book
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: The Polest Cure on heart rate variability, how to use
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the wearables, how to use it combined with the best
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: lifestyles changes that we now know is so healthy that
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: can give us like a couple of decades of extra
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: time and extra lifetime. So yeah, so I'm very you know,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: currently I have the garment watch, the order order ring,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: whup band. So so I'm just fascinated by this.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, interesting, So we will we will dive into
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: a little bit later on the different devices and measurements. Right,
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: So I have had an Apple Watch. I've also used
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: a an over a ring. I also had a biostrap
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: what I'm using in my PhD. But that's for a
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: little bit litter in the podcast, tell us you you
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: did a little stint in Angola with Doctors without Borders.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Talk to us a little bit about that.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in nineteen ninety six, still as a student, I
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: was the first Norwegian to go out with Doctors without
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Borders with the Norwegian Department of It. I worked in
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Angola in the war torn country. The had just ended
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: just briefly before that, and I was working in the
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: children's department. I saw two three children dying every day.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: So it was poverty, it was war wounds, mine injuries,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: this is where Princess Diana went for her anti mining
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: campaign at the time. And then I just saw the
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: completely different side of the global health system, you know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: people starving, war injuries. But the big surprise was for
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: me when I got back home. So when I got
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: back from Angola, that was a big surprise because I
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: was prepared for going to a war torn country and
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: see the misery. The surprise though, was that they had
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: a joy of life. There was so much happiness, some
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: much dancing, some much singing, so many happy people in
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: that environment. Had this just blew my mind. And then
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: when I got back home, I was surprised to see
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: where we have everything. People were unhappy, people were depressed,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: people were anxious, even though if there was no bombs around,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: you know, And I just was so curious what is
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: happening here? Because the problem in Angola was quite obvious,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: you know, it was a war going on. Everybody had
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: lost friends and family. But in Norway, why would we
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: be so unhappy? Why would we need to prescribe sleeping
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: medications and antidepressants and so on, tranquilizers and everything. So
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I got very curious about that. So that has probably
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: shaped my medical career after that, because my plan was
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: originally to become a war surgeon, you know, to work
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: in for doctors without borders. But now I got more
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: curious about what makes us sick? Why are we so
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: more sicker than ever? You know, even even if you
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: have the opportunities to live wonderful lives, you know, all
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the opportunities, you know. So that was my learning from
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: from Angola. And I also got like vaccinated against you know, complaining,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: you know, when you when you had seen these people
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: living under those circumstances.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: So yeah, absolutely I couldn't agree more with that stuff.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: I think for me, doing a fur bet of travel
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: in third world countries does give you a bit of
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: a vaccination against winging, doesn't it. And it gives you
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: a real sense of gratitude just around the stuff, which
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: I think we have to be consciously aware to continually
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: be grateful for the stuff around our surroundings. Otherwise the
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: human braind just just slips into negativity, right.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because our ancestors, you know that was looking at
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: what they didn't have, also wants who survive better, So
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: we are kind of prone to be ungrateful and not
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: seeing what we already have so we have to make
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a conscious effort, you know, to be grateful to see
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: what we already have. You know, I think it's a
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: need to said that we're living like if you're sitting
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: on a test of gold begging. You know, we don't
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: see what we have, you know, And this is just
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: an ancient trait of our nervous system, our brains. So
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: we have to just be smarter than that, you know,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: and look look for the good things.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, And look, I have written a book which I
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: think you would like call Death by Comfort, why modern
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: life is killing us and what we need to do
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: about it, right, And it's the fact that we have
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: this ancient genome plunked into a modern world. And if
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: you're a key of man, it's good to seek comfort
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: and be negative and all of that because it really
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: helps with your survival.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But when we're in this world where.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: There's comfort everywhere and opportunities to just to sit on
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: the couch and eat crap food and all of this,
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: and it really doesn't serve as well.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: But anyway, I digress slightly.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Let's get back and talk about the nervous system, and
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: particularly our autonomic nervous system. So if you would just
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: step our listeners through the autonomic nervous system what it does,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: and then we can then take into the parasympathetic and
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: sympathetic branches of it.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so in the bottom of our brains we have
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: the autonomic nervous system that we share with all vertebrates,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: you know, all like lizards and mammals and and all
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: kinds of animals. An ancient system that is the on
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: and off system in our in our in our nervous system,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and it will innervate all the organs of the body.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And then we of course have the parasympathetic system, as
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: you said, mediated by the vagus nerve. And then we
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: have the sympathetic system that activates us, which also goes
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: through the sympathetic you know, chain out all the organs
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: in the body. And the good thing is that heart
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: rate variability can tell us whether we are in the
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: parasympathetic state or in the sympathetic state by something as
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: easy to measure as a heart rate, you know, and
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: the heart rate variability the variation between heart beats and
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: when we are in the parasympathetic RESTful state, the recovery
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: state when we breathe in the heart rate goes up
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: a little bit, and when we breathe out and there's
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: less oxygen in the lungs, the heart will slow down
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: a little bit, save some energy. And this variation between
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: heart beats is measurable by our devices, our variables. But
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: if we're in the stress state, then our ancient body
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: physiology will interpret it as this organism is in danger.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: We don't know if it will survive, you know, the
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: next minute, so we need to use all available forces
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: even though we are breathing out and there's less oxygen
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: in the lungs, so it will breed. The heart will
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: have a very steady pace in the sympathetic mode, and
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: this of course is sliding scale from deep relaxation until
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: very high stress. And this is what our wearables can
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: pick up then to see whether you are in the
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: stress state in the moment and throughout the day, throughout
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: the weeks and months, whether your stress balance is sustainable,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: you know, compatible with good health. Because what gives us
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: its estimation is that seventy eighty percent of the diseases
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: and which treat as doctors has a connection to a
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: too high stress level in the society, not necessarily a
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: very big stressor but to slow, you know, a little
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: bit high stress all the time, consistent citizen stress. So
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: to be able to regulate this by seeing your physiological
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: speed in the moment and day and night is so
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: important for us to be able to live healthy.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: I think, yeah, And I use the kind of analogy
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: when I'm explaining the autonomic nervous system to people that
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: the sympathetic nervous system, which isn't very well named, really
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: is it because it's not very sympathetic. It's about the
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: stress response, right, But I say that's the accelerator of
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: the nervous system, and the parasympathetic is the break as
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: you rightly said, it's that rest, digest, recover. And it's
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: really key that we have balance between those two systems.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: If you don't have enough sympathetic activation, you know, you
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: just you won't get out of bed, you won't be
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: able to mount a stress response, which are an arousal response,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: which is very necessary for dealing with all of the
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: things of modern life. But it's that ability to again
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: flip into a parasympathetic state that I think a lot
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: of us are really missing, and a lot of people
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: are just in that sympathetic overdrive and as you said,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: when we spend too much time in a sympathetic state,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: that is what drives the creation of these stress related diseases.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: There's a really interesting research paper that was looking at
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: it was publish a number of years ago looking at
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: the the similarities between athlete overtraining syndrome and corporate Bernard
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: and is a really cool research paper. I don't know
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: if you've seen it, and if not, I'll flick it
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: to you, but it basically talked about the the etiology
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: or the development of these diseases and the how it presented.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: So in corporate burnout as well as an athlete over
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: training syndrome, performance dropped, whether it was physical performance or
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: cognitive performance in the In the athlete, there were sleep disturbances,
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: there was sickness, sicknesses and sensitivity to infections, cardiovascular changes,
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: changes in hormones, and more systemic inflammation in both populations.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: And I think it's got real relevance for us because
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: with an athlete, if an athlete is being trained professionally,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: they can manipulate the intensity of the workout or the
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: duration of the training, the frequency or the volume, and
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: also the recovery strategies which I think have advanced greatly.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: But with us, when we're working, we can't manipulate the
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: intensity of our work, the volume of work, the duration,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of that is out of our control.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: So as I say to people, the one two that
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: we have in our toolbox is recovery, and I think
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: that's where our heartbread variability comes in beautifully. So can
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: you just explain in a little bit more detail just
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: how the power sympathetic nervous system is a measure of
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: recovery or heart read variability particularly.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, First I will say that the example that
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: you show here about the burnout. You know, if I
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: have twenty patients a day in my practice, I'm sure
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: five of them will be in this burnout situation. So
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: this is a daily occurrence at the doctor's office, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: they will usually have been going way too far until
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: they come to the doctor's office. They will have been
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: struggling for maybe a year or a half year before that,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: and what they could have seen from using the weariables,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: they would have seen that their heart rate variability is
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: lower as a symptom that they are under too much strain.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And it's often you know, lack of sleep, stress, anxiety,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: and it's a vicious circle, you know, because when they
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: sleep worse, then they get more stress during the day
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and they will tend to have a lower build power,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: which is also coupled to heart rate variability. So they
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: will eat crab food, you know, to keep going. They
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: will need to drink coffee, you know, so they will
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: again disturb their sleep. So it's like a like a
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: whirling you know, situations where where they go down in
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: a vicious, vicious circle.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: And they exercise as well, they exercise.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Exercise, exercise less, you know, so the first thing they
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: will cut down is exercise and sleep and rest exactly
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: what they need to get out of this situation, you know.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: So so this will then show, as I said, in
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: heart rate variability, So I can often then if I
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: see that my patients use a wearable, I can just okay,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: give me your phone, and I can show them the
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: development of this stress situation. And as doctors, you know,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: it's so so useful for us to be able to
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: see this because we have no laboratory test, no radiological
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: test for this situation. The only thing that can demonstrate
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: the effect of this stress is heart rate variability. So
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: it's such a useful tool. So I'm so happy that
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: more and more doctors become aware of this and that
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: they can use it. I'm surprised that it took so
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: long for us to understand that the heart rate could
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: have such a diagnostic value, you know, the heart the
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: heart rate kind of responding to everything. You know, we
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: really should have known it a lot earlier. But anyway,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: it will would have shown this situation. And if they
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: have then been coming earlier to find the recovery, you know,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: to use breath work, to use cold, the water immersion,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: you know, to use naps and sleep and all that,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: they would have seen their hard rate variability improve and
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: go up, and they may have been able to avoid
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: this because so much of what stresses us it comes
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: from a surprising source. You know, you could be alcohol,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: because the same person we'd probably you know, after having
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: all these cups of coffee, you know, we'd be using
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: one or two glasses of wine to try to wind
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: down and thinking that they are calming down, but that
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: would just create more stress. You know that you would
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: see on the weariables, and so they will be able
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: to identify what stresses them outside the obvious stress, because
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: what we have found is that most of the stress
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: sources come from other things. And what we generally think
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: of as mental stress is poor food. You know, it's
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: it's junk food, its ultra processed food, is like candy,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: it's like crisps, eating late at night, you know, all
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: these kind of things. So when you start seeing this
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: on your on your monitor, then you are able to
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: to to regulate it and to avoid getting into that situation.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: So so you know, the first profound insight that I had,
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: I was using a heart rate variability monitor and it
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: was very early days and those that none of the
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: warribles had them, and I had. I was using a
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: heart rate monitor with an app that that actually I
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: would have to connect to it, and I was taking
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: my morning heart rate variability. I can't even remember the
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: name of the app, but there was a week where
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: my heart rate veriability.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Was really good. It was green, green, green, and then
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: it just went red.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: So the app was giving you, you know, whether you're
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: training up or down, and it dropped massively and then
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: went green and green, and then another couple of days
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: later dropped massively. And then I looked back and I
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: thought well, why what what was that? And I then
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: remembered the first one was when we had a young
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: baby and I was on night Judy feeding him with
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: the bottle and he was up all night and I
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: had a terrible night's sleep and I saw it just
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: plummet and then recovered the.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Next few days. And then I looked back at.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: The second one was when the British Scenaris Lions rugby
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: team were touring Australia and I went out into Melbourne
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: with the maids and had a night on drinking alcohol
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: and crap sleep and that had a horrendous effect on
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: my heart ability. So I am totally in sync with
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: you that it is a real window into how your
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: nervous system is coping with all sorts of different stressors.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: And I think that's the key thing for people to understand, right.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: If you have the only wind is the only window.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Other than subjective feeling, which a lot of people can't have,
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: but this whole idea that.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: You know, if you have one day where your heart.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Rate variability drops, that is either saying you had a
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: really hard workout yesterday that you're not recovered from physically,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: or a hard day psychologically or your recovery. Your sleep
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: was bad because of all those things we talked about.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: And if it's bad over a period a week or more,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: that is a sign that stress is loading your body
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: right negatively. And as I said to people, if you
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: see someone with low heart rate variability for months, it's
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: one of the best predictors of an impending heart attack,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: isn't it.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And all kinds of other diseases as well. So
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: I think I heard on some other podcasts that we
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: cannot really tolerate high stress or a period of more
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: than two or three months, then something will happen. You know,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: you could get cancer, heart disease, or immune diseases and
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: so many diseases because your immune system is down. The
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: immunologist Jenna Machioki has written wonderful books on the immune
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: system and has gone through the immunology chapters in my book,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: says that hearteed variability is an indirect measure of the
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: quality of the immune system, so that because the immune
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: system is kind of malleable, that it's kind of you know,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: maintenance is what goes first. You know, if a business
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: gets into trouble, you know, you cut down on maintenance
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: and it's kind of the same in the body as well.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: If you're under strained from a lot of other things,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: the immune system and the quality of the immune system
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: goes first, you know, the natural killer cells in the blood,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: you know, and the circulating immune system will go down
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: because the to prioritize you know, immediate survival, you know,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: or the instance tactics for it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: On that point, the classic wound healing studies would be
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: and I remember ones done on university students around exam time,
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: and they would bring them in early in the semester
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: and use this little device to put a one or
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: two centimeter long cut in their body and with a
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: particular specific depth, and then they would come in every
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: day and they'd measure how quickly that it healed, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: then they would do it again an exam time, and
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: they found that wound healing took longer an exam time.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: And that's because of the psychological stress impacting the immune system.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly what you said, right.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so, and this is why I know it's
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: so important to be aware of this and then that
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: we ourselves have this instrument, because theiggest shift here is
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: not only from reactive medicine, until proactive medicine. But it's
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: taken the power of your health from the healthcare system
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: into your own hands literally, and from only knowing what
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: is going on, you know, by the doctor's word every
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: three months, until that you understand this yourself. You know
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: all the time, you know in real time. So this
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: is a way that you can control the quality of
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: your immune system indirectly through heart rate variability.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, we will get into manipulating in a
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: little bit, but I just wanted to talk about particularly
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: the impact on mental health of stress, and that was
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: really brought home to us. I mean I understood that
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: as a physiologist in neuroscientist for years, but a couple
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: of years ago, my twelve year old at the time
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: got diagnosed with Cushion's disease, which you will be familiar with,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: but many people won't. You know, it's a very rare
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: disease one in a million adults, one in five to
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: ten million kids, and a tumor on the petuitary grand
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: that hypersecretes act hits, which tells the adrenals to hyper
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: secrete cortisol. And two things happened. Two things happened. How
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: we noticed something was wrong was his mental health, which
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: had been brilliant his whole life, massively deteriorated in a
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: short period of time with no explanation whatsoever, none whatsoever.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: And it was only when my wife showed me a
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: photograph of him three months apart and I saw it,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: I went, shit, that's cortisol because he had developed a
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: moon face. And I didn't notice here because you're living
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: with them every day. But the other thing that happened
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: with the cushions disease is he started developing fungal infections
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: in his toe, and that is the suppression.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Of the immune system, right. But it just really brought.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Home to me the massive, massive impact of stress on
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: people's mental health. And I wish we'd have been doing
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: it the time. But if we'd have measured his heartbeat variability,
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: we would.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: See would have seen it. You would have seen it, absolutely.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: And the first place that I heard about heart rate
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: variability was I was reading the book of Bessel founder
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Kolk The Body keeps the Score, you know, the probably
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: one of the worldwide best setters. And that's the first
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: place I heard that. American psychiatry, they used heard veriability
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: as a measure of the mental state. If the patients
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: were all accessible for treatment, you know, because if their
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: heart rate variability was very low, and then it was
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: no use starting a discussion, you know, because they would
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: not be in the right place for that, in a
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: receptive state for that. So they would wait until the
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: heart rate veriability was better and then they could talk,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: you know, because because also is if you are in
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the stress state, the connection to your prefrontal cortex is poorer.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: You don't have the good enough access to your thinking brain,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: you know. And that's probably what everybody can can know,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: you know intuitively that if you've been in a stress state,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: you make poorer choices and you're not thinking clearly. So
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: so it's important to get this because so many people
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: often in the book, I write that you often think
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: is it physical or is it mental? You know, but
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: is it physiological? That may be the more importance question.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of the saying that physiology drives
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: psychology and psychology drives physiology.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Right there is exactly you.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Know, trying to separate those two things, right like as
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: if as if the brain and mind is completely separate
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: to the nervous system. It's just crazy, right, completely bonkers.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and we'll put too much us wait on
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: talking our way out of problems, you know. So the
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: way because what happens if you're in a physiological poor
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: state is that this will give you thoughts. But the
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: solution to this is not talking, you know, the solution
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: can be getting your physiology right and these thoughts will disappear, yes,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: from getting into a better stress balance.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so look, let's not dig into it a
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: little bit for people in terms of so just to
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: recap a little bit for people, because you dig over
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: quite quickly. It's it's the time interval between our heartbeats,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: when the heart is beating and the blood is pumping.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: That time interval. A lot of people think, if you're
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: a heart rate resting heartbread at a sixty beats a minute,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: that it's once a second.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: And if that's the key is, then you're in big trouble. Right.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: There should be.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Those little minute variability between the heartbeat. So that's what
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: we're talking about, and that's why devices can pick it
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: up because they're pretty damn good at measuring our our
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: heart rate and therefore our heart rate variability. They get
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: less accurate at very high heartbreats. You know, at at
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: high exercise level. But that's you know that that's native
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: here and the there are. It's really about using those
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: devices to measure it. And so I noticed you have
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: a garment, you have an ore ring, and you also
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: have a wopland. Have you noticed because and I think
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: it's important for our listeners to understand how they measure it.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: You know, the world of heart rate variabilities, you'll know,
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: is very very complicated. There's there's high frequency, there's low frequency.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: There's our M S S D and all of these things. Now,
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: most of the devices I think use r A M
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: S S D except Apple Watch, right, yes, and they
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: and they use different A lot of them don't give
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: you the raw data and they'll they'll use their own algorithms.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: And I think the widbine will give you a readiness stick.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: Just just talk us through a little bit how these devices,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: how they present the information and what are you looking for?
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: In those different devices?
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: They will present information. Most of them will give you
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: like a sleep score based on how riskful you have
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: been sleeping, whether the sleep faces you know with deep
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: sleep and sleep have been okay, and then they will
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: give another measure of your readiness. The Garment has the
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: body battery system that I think is superior, and it
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: comes not from Garment Bit, it comes from First Bit.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: So Garment has bought the algorithms from First Bit and
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: put them into their ways, so that that's the secret
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: to it. So the body battery system, so it will
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: give you you can see in the morning how much
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: battery do you have and in the evening how much
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: battery do you have left you? So that's a very
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: good way to measure it.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Is that is that battery a combination of HRV and
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: sleep or is it just HRV.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Mostly mostly HRV. Yeah, So you will get two separate
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: scores kind of the body battery and the SEP score,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: and the same with AURA and the whoop. They will
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: give you a readiness in the morning. Yeah, the whoop
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: will say recovery and the Aura will say readiness and
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: I will and that's the only score you get kind of.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: So so this morning I think I got eighty five
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: on on both of them, and then they will not
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: have kind of a readiness in the evening, so you
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: won't get that score, and they will have a sleep score.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: So if you don't want to kind of have the
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: access to the exact score you know, throughout the day,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: then the order ring and the whoop band is good,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: you know, you check it in the morning, and you
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: check it again in the evening. The whoop band actually
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: have Also they will measure the strain throughout the day,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: so you will get a measure of how much strain
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: you are putting on yourself throughout the day, and it
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: will tell you, okay, now that's enough strain. You know,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't do anything more, or it can tell you okay,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: you can you can put on some extra exercise today
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: because you have not strained yourself so much. So they
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: will give you these numbers from the heart a variability
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: and sleep and a bit different fashion, you know, And
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: that is I think is useful.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the Apple watch the note just gives you
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: straight HRV. Do you know, I'm not sure if you
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: know the answer to this question. So I be much
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: more interested in waking HRV the stuff from say the
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: whip band, where it's looking at at readiness throughout the day.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Does it differentiate between whether I'm stress psychologically or I'm exercising.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: That was always my question with these things, right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: It will not whether it's exercise mental stress or food
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: stress or alcohol stress or whatever it will it will
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: give the same results. You know, it will look looks
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: the same. So if I've been drinking alcohol or if
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: I'm having a dinner with lots of chili in it,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: you know that I find out that is a big
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: stress for me, it will look the same. The key
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: to that the garmen. You will be able to see that. Okay,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: the stress that you had was from one o'clock until
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: three o'clock, for example, and then you can identify so
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: much easier. Okay, it was this factor that that was
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: a problem. It was a meeting will take dismus energy
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: from me, you know, or a lecture or whatever you have.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: So so we'll also have they have a kind of
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: daytime stress also, but it's not as accurate. I find
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: that the garment watch out.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: So so yeah, look, we know there's there's lots of
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: different devices and and and as you rightly said, they
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: have their their own algorithms. The one I used for
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: my PhD was something called biostrap one because it was
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: just purely focused around HRV.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: But two things that I really liked about it. One
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: is it give me the raw.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: Data, which I can use in my pH D, which
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: Apple and garment wouldn't give me that. But secondly, you
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: can wake up in the morning and just press the
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: button and do a spot check and get your waking
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: HRV right there. Now, I can kind of do that,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: and you could probably do it as well just looking
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: at your your Apple watch or your garment right there
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: in and of the moment. But this actually does a
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: sort of a three minute spot check. Do you find
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: there's any value of that? Do you mean, do you
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: put more emphasis on morning HRV on the average HRV
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: throughout the day? What's what you're thinking on this?
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So my thinking of it is that when you
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: just measure it like that in the morning, it's kind
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: of like you go to the store and you're big
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: do a big shopopping and the only result you get
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: is the total at the bottom. You don't know what
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: anything costs. You know, you don't know if egg is
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: egg expensive, or meat or alcohol or toilet paper. You know,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: you don't have the itemized some you know of the
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: of the prices. So the important thing is to have
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: a device to measure it throughout the day that can
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: give you graphs or where the stress was and when
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: you were relaxing, because then you can see, okay, I
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: need to do less of this and more of that, you.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Know, more insights, right, more insights.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: And I think that's where Garmin probably really art performs.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: The Apple Watch.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Or the Apple Watch can do it because they have
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: There is one app called the Athletic, you know, the
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: combination between athlete and analytic. Athletic that that is quite good.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: It will give you a graph, you know, like twenty
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: four hours graph that looks very much like the Garment one.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: I think that is the closest clostage you can get
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: with an Apple Watch. So it's the way they presented
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: and this is the system of first bit. You know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: for the first couple of years tracking my HRV, I
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: used an ECG device, first beat device, and I could
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: see that once I understood that they had the same
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: system in the watches, I used it parallel. And then
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I saw that the Garment you know had you know,
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: it was so accurate that I could put them on
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: top of each other, so I could have found that
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: there's no use to use the CCG device, you know,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: it's much more cumbersome to use.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Of course, Yeah, that actually reminds me when you were
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: we were talking about Actually I was looking at first
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: peed for my PhD as well, but you just reminded
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: me of a very cool study and if you haven't
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: seen it, I'll flick it. It was looking at soldiers
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: who were going through a selection for special Forces training,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: which as you will know, is very very very stressful.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: And what they did is that the at the end
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: of it, they go through interrogation training, which I had
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: been through a shorter version when I was in the military.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: But they wired them up with those devices and they
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: looked at their autonomic nervous system throughout that stressful period,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: and then afterwards they went back and they analyzed the data.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: So at the end of that, that's the very last
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: part of selection training, which is a six month process
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: in the UK, right, and it's very very stressful, and
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: what and they get a straight pass or feel right there.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: And what they did is they went back and looked
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: at the data and they found that the elite of
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: the elite, the guys who passed all of them, were
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: in a more of a higher vagal tone parasympathetic state
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: at rest. And then as soon as they knew something
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: was about to happen, boom, they switched into sympathetic drive
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: and they maintained that sympathetic drive throughout the I don't
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: know is twelve hours or whatever of the high stressful period,
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: but then as soon as that stress finished, they flipped
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: back into parasympathetic states. So I often with the with
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: the nervous the autonomic nervous system set of people, it's
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: the ability to engage, mentee and then disengage the stress
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: response that's critical because lots of people don't have an
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: issue with engaging, but it's when they get home at night,
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: they've had a stressful day, they're working late at night,
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: they close their laptop, they think I'm going to be
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: asleep in two minutes, they hit the bed and their
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: head just goes on fire. Right, It's that inability to
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: turn off that's that's really important.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Ability to turn off, right.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And there's so much research that the military
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: has done, you know, both in the US and probably
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: in the UK because they're so dependent on soldiers that
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: are in the balance, you know that can that can
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: turn off, so that you know, the military have breathing
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: exercise says that they can do to quickly come into
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: the part sympathetic mode to rest, you know. So that
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: is so much research coming out from the from the military.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: So and now you know they use the same for
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: the athletes. Also that the key to becoming a great
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: athlete is the way that you recovered.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: So that.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: So they use you know, cold water immersion, breathing exercises,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: just sleeping and resting and napping, you know. So it
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: seems like the ones who are best to kind of
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: turn themselves off and come into recovery, they are the
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: ones who will will perform better.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: And on that point, Toko, I remember Jim Lower, who
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: was a performance psychologist, used to work with a lot
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: of elite tennis players and he showed, having wired up
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: the tennis players you might be familiar with this, that
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: the best of the best, the ones in the top ten,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: were able to reduce their heart reate between points ten
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: to twenty bits more than the people outside the top ten.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: So to your point, is that ability to recover momentarily
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: as well as I talk about micro recovery and macro recovery.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so your ability you know, to to rest, you know,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: maybe throughout the day, you know, if you have an
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: office worker or whatever, to take you know, one minute
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: or so with breathing exercises to calm yourself down, close
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: your eyes. You know that I think would be so
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: important to regulate it. And of course when you see
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: it in real time on your watch, you know, it's
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: so much easier to be motivated to do this when
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: you see the results in real time, because we're not
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: You mentioned that you could feel your stress level, but
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: we're not really equipped to do that. You know, from
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: our physiology, our senses have throughout history been directed outwards
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: to the outward threats, you know, to animals, to enemies,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: to contaminated food. You know, you could smell threats, you know,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: from other animals and so on, and the attention to
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: your own inner state would just be in the way
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: of these senses. So, you know, we can really feel
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: our heart. I would not know if my heart rate
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: is sixty or eighty five. You know, I'm concentrated on
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: living my lives, you know, and talking to you or
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: whatever I'm doing, and I cannot estimate my own heart rate.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: And that tells you. Because we can see like like thousands,
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: if not millions, shades of green. You know, I think
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: our sense of smell has like trillions or different different smells.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: So we have very very good good senses. You can hear,
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: you know, to breaking it a far away. But whether
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: we have sixty or eighty five in our heart rate,
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: we don't know, And that represents a very big difference
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: in stress level and function.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: That's a great point actually that I didn't really consider
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: is our interoception is pretty poor compared to our judgment
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: and awareness of external stressors. Now, interestingly, people who meditate
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: and tend to who do it as a practice, they
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: tend to get better at inter reception. Have you seen
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: any data about meditators and heart rate variability?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: You know, are they connected.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Or is it just that they're they're they're connected? But
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: it depends, you know, how you feel. Because I see
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: that a lot of people get stressed by meditation. So
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: if you put one hundred random people and say that
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: you're not going to meditate for twenty minutes every day
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: for two weeks, and we see what happens, a certain
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: percentage of them would have great use of it. A
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: certain percentage would just be stressed by it.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Now, when you get the results back as a doctor,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: you get the average, but the average has nothing to
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: say how you are reacting to it. So these devices
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: will tell you a personalized version of what happens when
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: you do this or that, you know, because a lot
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: of people just get stressed by it if they're not
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: used to it, of course, if they are trained.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to meditate and I can't get rid
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: of my thoughts and it's stressing me out, which brings
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: us nicely into breathing because I'm not a good meditator
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: at all, but I can do breath work and I
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: find that it has the same impact. And actually Andrew
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Hubertman's lab showed they did a study where they got
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: a bunch of people doing one of three different types
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: of breath work or meditation for five minutes a day,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: and they measured positive and negative affect and they showed
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: that all the breathing types were slightly superior to meditation.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: So talk and I would imagine it's a heart rate
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: variability impact. Talk to us about different types of breathing
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: that we can do around our heart rate variability. And
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: I'm interested whether you have a preference for any type
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: of controlled breathing.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: I think the most important is to breathe slowly. There
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: are lots of different techniques, you know, like four seconds in,
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: hold the breath for seven seconds, then bring out eight seconds. Yeah,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: so this is complicated. There's like box breathing, you know,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: four seconds in, hold, hold for four seconds, four seconds out,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: and so on. But I find that the simplest one,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: you know, is the easiest one. So breathing five seconds in,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: five seconds out, you know, or six seconds in for
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: four seconds in six seconds out. You know, that is
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: the outbreadth is a bit longer. It's supposed to be
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: better for the heart rate variability. The most important, I
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: think is to do it, you know, and to do
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: it in a way that feels good for you. Because
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: the coherent breadth is supposed to be be an individual
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: length of breadth. You know, it's somewhere around six breadths
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: a minute, but you can often feel it. You will
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: feel better when you get into the rhythm that is
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: yours and that seems to be the same rhythm throughout
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: your life.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: It's a little bit of variation there, and I'm sure
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: there are different devices that will help you to find
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: the exact one, but I think there you can also
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: feel it. So my favorite is four seconds in six
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: seconds out somewhere close to that, then I feel calmer.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mine is exactly the same.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I think it's worthwhile double clicking on resonant frequency breathing
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: or coherence breathing, because I think for our listeners understanding
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: the projections of the vegus nerve into the heart and
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: the lungs, and the understanding that by breathing in certain
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: rhythms and when you sink your breathing to your heart rate,
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: we get this coherence and really good activation of the
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: vegus nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. And as you
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: rightly pointed out, everybody's just slightly unique, but six breaths
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: a minute seems to be a kind of a catch
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: all that the vast majority of people will get really
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: good benefits. I think most people are. I think everybody's
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: between four and a half and seven breaths a minute
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: from one paper that I read. But just talk a
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: little bit more about that kind of coherence and the
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: importance of that.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Well, the most important is that it activates the vagus
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: nerve in the best possible way. This is our liver
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: into the sympathetic system too. To make sure that our
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: vagal tone is better, that our vagus nerve that rigged
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: down regulates you know, the different organs in the body
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: is working optimally, and that is is so important, you know.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: So it's fascinating also that we're able to control the
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: most important nerve in our body that goes from our
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: brainstem into all the organs of the body. So so
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: that is that is my thoughts on it. Anyway, I'm
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: not sure if it was the answer. Yeah, no, no, no.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: I think look for for me, this understanding that we
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: can intentionally modulate our vegus nerve, I think is just
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: a huge leaked forward in people being able to manage
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: their own health, and it's really underscoring for people. I
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: think any type of slow control breathing is really effective
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: at doing this, but that as you breathe in, your
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: sympathetic nervous system slightly upregulates, and people can actually can
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: actually do this. If you've got a heart rate monitor
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: on sometimes with a watch, you can see it. If
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: you do a long breath in, you'll see your heartbeat
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: go up one or two beats, and then you do
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: a really long breath out and you'll see your heartbeat
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: drop four or five beats sometimes, and that's just looking
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: at that little slight activation of the sympathetic nervous system
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: on the breath in and then the parasympathetic That's why
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I've always found I've always been curious why people talk
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: about resident frequency breathing and just breathe five and five.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, why wouldn't you do in for four and
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: out for six. It just to me makes so much
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: more sense, right, yeah.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever you do, because some people will have difficulties,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: you know, counting or I think the most important, you know,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: is just to do it and to slow down your
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: breath because it's an ancient single to your nervous system
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: that it's calm outside. You know, we can relax, the
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: immune system can can kind of stand back and and
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: and start the recovery. So close your eyes, you know,
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: breathe slowly, preferably close to six breaths a minute, and
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: you will have done a huge impact for your stress level.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Do it like in microdoses throughout the day, or in
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: evening before you go to sleep. If you wake up
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the night, you know, and often
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: you you will be stressed. Often, you will have had
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: Actually I've been using a continuous blood glucose meter monitor
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: and then I can see that I often wake up
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: after a very low blood sugar and then you have
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: a cortisol. You have a lot of stress, you know,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: and and and then you can use this technique to
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: calm yourself down also in the night.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, much more effective than counting sheep, I think. And
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: let's let's talk about other ways that we can modulate
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: our vegus nerve activity. So I've read some interesting research
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: around high intensity interval training. You do it regularly can
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: impact positively on your heart rate variability. And the analogy
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: that I used to people, if you think about when
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: you're doing high intensity and of training, when you're on
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: the work fees, you're pressing the accelerator, and then when
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: you're in the recovery fee is you're pressing the brick.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: So you're actually training the system to work really well.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: What's your thoughts on on a exercise and be any
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: other there are ways that you recommend for people to
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: positively impact their their vagus nerve and part sympathetic nervous system.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so exercise is probably one of the most important
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: things you can do to get a lower heart rate
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: variability and a better a lower heart rate and a
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: better heart rate variability. Yeah so, and the high intensity
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: interval training is probably good. Any training is good, you know,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: compared to nothing. So, and it's also important to take
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: into consideration your VO two max because the garment watches
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: will give you a VO two max. And if that
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: is kind of thirty or below, then any exercise will
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: result in inflammation in your body that can take days
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: to recover from because there's too much lack acid, you know.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: So then I can see that unfit people when they
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: are very eager to get training, you know, go all
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: in and train too hard. You know, they will be
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: demotivated because they will train hard, get a lot of
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: elactic acid. It will take four days for them for
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: the inflammation to go over. But if you have a
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: good BIO two max maybe forty forty five, then you
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: can do the same exercise and you will be recovered
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: by the next day. So gardment has this excellent. It
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: will give you after the training session. It will give
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: you a recovery time that I try to keep below
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: one day that I will be recovered until the next day.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: And that is also you know andrews ericson the big
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: study on the Berlin Philharmonics, you know, they you would
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: say that the key to getting good performance is to
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: be able to recover to the next day from your strain.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: The first day, whether it's playing the violin or working
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: or whatever, you should recover until the next day.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: So it's it's about modulating your training intensity to your
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: your fitness levels, right, yeah, because you know, as the
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: athletes know, if they have a really brutal session, their
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: heartbeat variability is very low the next day. And lots
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: of professional athletes or their their their training systems, well,
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: when the heartbeat variability is too low, they'll have a
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: recovery day.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: And the best athletes, you know, they train eighty percent
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: of their exercises in zone two and only twenty percent
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: is in zone four or five.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: So a lot of amateurs, you know that they think that, Okay,
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: if I don't train so often, you know, at least
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: I have to train hard once I do it, you know.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: But that's wrong, and they will they will just be
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: a tire and the training after HRV and your recovery
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: seems to you seem to be able to train less
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: and get better results. You know, you probably have more
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: research on that now, would guess yeah.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: I it's very interesting what you said there, and it's
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: something I read that quite recently as well, that even
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: the world's best endurance athletes eighty percent of their time.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Is spent in zone two.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: So for our listeners, zone two is sixty to seventy
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: percent of your heart rate max. And some different people
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: quanti fact slightly differently, but most people would say sixty
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: to seventy, and then zone four is eighty to ninety.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: Zone five is ninety two one hundred. Traditionally, I've been
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: go harder, go home, and only realized recently that's not
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: actually the best way to train. So I've been guilty
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: of that. You know, when you exercise, you got to
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: go hard, And it's only when very recently reading that
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: about even the world's best endurance athletes most of their
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: time is spent at zone two. I historically have not
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: put enough emphasis on zone two because it's really useful
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: for your overall health of your mitochondria, right, and when
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: you're just going too hard too often, you're just straining
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: the system.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I used to be an athlete
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: on the national team in kayaking, you know, in my youth,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: and we were going all in every day. You know,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: that was either full speed or it was only full speed.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: It was never nothing, so it was full speed all
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: the time. So that was probably not a very good
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: idea to exercise. So this is a great tool to
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: be able to regulate our exercise for top performance, because
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: because training very hard is not good for our health.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: It's not good for our hearts. It makes for stiffer hearts,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: small cardiac damage and stiffer arteries and so on. If
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: they measure after a marathon, they will see that almost
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: half of the runners will have cardiac damage. They will
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: have troping in the levels in their blood as a
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: sign of small micro tears in their heart. And if
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: they don't allow enough time to recover and they start
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: training hard, you know, within the next two or three days,
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: then this will not recover properly. So this is why
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: athletes is not they are not living longer than other people.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: The ones who are living longer, they are just doing
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: natural They're walking there in natural movement, you know, like
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: in the blue zones around the world.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: So you don't.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: Sorry, I was just going to say, you know, particularly
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: a lot of endurance athletes, I think they just do
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: too much. I mean, to your point, when you look
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: at the optimal doses for exercise and from a longevity perspective,
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: it's kind of ten hours a week, and then you
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: really start to lose some of the benefits. And to
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: your point, are very the ones who are doing the
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: most actually, and they more than lose the benefits, they
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: start to create damage and often no longer than people
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: who only do little bits of exercise.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a U shaped curve, you know, so that
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: the ones who exercise more than not it may only
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: be like twelve forteen hours a week, they have the
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: same level of health as the one who are not exercising. Yeah,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: it's somewhere around those numbers. It's amazing effect.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: It's hard, yeah, and we're not made for that, you know.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: So our immune system, our ancient immune system would would think,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't think, of course, it kind of
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: more reacts. But historically the only situations where people were
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: running that much would be in in the situations of war,
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: you know, of terrible desperate situations. They would never run
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: or strain themselves so much so our immune system is
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: not made for those kind of exercise and strain on
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: our bodies. When they put wearables on hunter gatherers, they
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: see that they are in moderate activity two or three
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: hours a day, some bursts in between, and then they relax.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: So this is what we are physiologically made for, constructed
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: for throughout the millions of years that we've been humans
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: or human like primates.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: It's interesting, actually there's looking at so the.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Volume of training.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I think it comes back to your point about how
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: you actually train, because when you look at the data,
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: having a high view to max is pretty strongly predictive
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: of longevity and having a low VIO two max is
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: very very bad for your health. But it's the optimal
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: training for getting your VO two max. Is different than
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: a lot of people think, and that I used to
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: traditionally think. It's a lot of it's in zone two
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: training and then a little bit of giving it. You're
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: in Norway, let's talk about their Norwegian four four by
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: four protocol, which is a great protocol where you go
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: at four minutes at eighty five to ninety five percent
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: of your max heart rate and you recover for three minutes.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: You do that four times, right, But.
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: That one session plus the zone two stuff, lots of
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: more of the zone two stuff, will significantly improve your
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: VIO two max. And it doesn't necessarily mean that if
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: you're doing that every single day and doing heaps of
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: zone four, zone five is better.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Yeah, probably one of those exercises a win.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: And then maybe too of a Zone two maybe up
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: to one hour, you know, it could be it could
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: be a great And it's also important that veeoto max
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: is a very slow number to increase or decrease. You know,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: it takes a long time, you know, to get it
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: from like thirty to thirty five good thing a couple
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: of years, you know, So it's a slow you have
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: to be very patient, you know, to to increase your
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: your fitness level. It takes some time. So I think
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: people may maybe overly optimistic about how fast they will
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: get in good shape, at least compared to the vieoto
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: max level. H it's very stable.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: Let's not Let's let's move on from exercise and and
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: talk about other things that will impact your heart variability.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: And and really I like to talk to people about
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: preparation and and rather than being reactive if they know
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: they have a stress period coming up, like hard to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: prepare yourself for that, because I think that plays into
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: the it's the same thing, right.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: Mm yeah, and that can The example that I would
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: use for that is the PMS for women, the pre
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: menstrual syndrome face, you know, the one week before menstruation.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: When I see the dips in HRV for that week,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: it's as deep as a covid infection. Oh wow, So
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: it's like having a covid infection every month, you know.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: For the ones with with PMS symptoms, For the ones
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: with pm d D like the dysphoric, the disease or
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: whatever you call it, the more serious ones that can
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: really put you out for that week, that's even worse numbers.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: And when the women that I used to post cure
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: and use the strategies, when they can measure it, they
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: are more prepared, you know. And then when they stress less,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: sleep more, you know, take a yoga session instead of
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: a training session, they're able to flatten out that curve
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: so that the distressful period you can almost vanish, you know.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: And so when you know that there's a stressful period
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: coming up, either because of your short period actually or whatever,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: or you have to work or or work or yeah, whatever,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: when you then can mitigate it by making sure that
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: you rest more, breathe more. Maybe you do cold water therapy.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: You know, you avoid alcohol. You make sure that you
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: eat food that you can tolerate. You know, you don't
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: go for that bag of crisps or chocolate or whatever
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: that will stress you. Then you're able to flatten that
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: curve and you can go through that hard time so
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: much easier. So you're not waste wasting resources, you know,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: on poor stress. You know, so you have good stress,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: which is stress that is youful for you that once
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: you're stressed, you will bounce back stronger. But you also
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: have stress that is just a waste of energy, you know,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: like alcohol, like ultra processed food, you know, that will
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: only drain you of your resources and not give you
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: anything back.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the ultra process foot.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: I mean sorry, I was going to just reemphasize that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: is a great point about preparing for stress. Just like
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: an athlete who's going into competition really prepares and gets themselves. Well,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: why wouldn't we do all of those good things when
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: we're going into a stressful period. I'm a massive fan
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: of that rather than being reactive, because if you're well prepared,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: as you said, you can flatten out the curve, then
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: you're less reactive as well, and you're going to be
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: able to get through that period and.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Much much better. But let's just talk about ultra process foods.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: So there is almost every week I'm reading a research
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: paper about the negative health effects of ultra processed foods,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: and let's talk about their impact on HRV. Is that
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: do you think because of all of the negative things
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: that are in it that are disrupting our got microbiome
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: and impacting the vegus nerve that way? Or do you
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: think there's a different independent mechanism by which ultra processed
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: foods are really not good for us? Or is it
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: just a global This stuff is putting stress and strain
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: on your body and it's reflected in the HRV.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think is both of that. I think
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: that the ultra processed food will give you a worse
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: microbiome and will give you kind of a chronically lowered
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: heart rate variability, But you can also see that once
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: you eat that, you will get immediate reaction stress reaction.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Your heart rate will go up because you will probably
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: have a degree obliquey got and there will yeah, and
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: there will be some particles then coming in to your
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: bloodstream that your immune system has to react to and
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: gives this inflammation.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really important.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: I think that's important for people to understand, and particularly
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: having a poor diet for a long period of time.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: What we know is that people on those types of diet,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: and particularly when they're having low fiber, the the microbes
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: in our gut that depend on fiber to feed them,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: they turn into cannibals and they eat the mucous membry
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: and the lining of the god that is basically the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: barrier between the outside world and the inside world. Because
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: when we think about it, our guesstro intestinal system is
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: a tube that is essentially outside the body, right, and it's.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like an open wound, you know, more
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: or less, you know, for from other people. It's almost
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: like an open wound that we keep hurting, you know,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: with every meal.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: And I don't think enough people realize the impact of
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: diet on their health through that gut immune brillant axis.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: And as you said, when you get that leaky gut syndrome,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: most people don't realize the eighty percent of your immune
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: system resides in your gut, and so you're going to
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: have an immune reaction that is going to then create
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: a stress response and you'll see that reflected in your
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: heart rate variability. But I think the other thing is
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: that over the long periods of time, can actually drive
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: all too immune conditions just because of a shit diet, right.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, a diet poor diet, I think is
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: the number one cause of this inflammation, this chronic low
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: grade information that makes us sick. So once you get
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: the diet in order, and of course that is you know,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: to eat real food food, lind, you're a great grandmother
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: wh would recognize a food and drink water, you know,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: instead of juices and and.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: Flooding soft soft drinks and drinks and especially unsweetened soft
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: drinks are just as bad but maybe even worse for
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: our microballein.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, probably so. And also this restricted feeding windows,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: so we see, and that is so interesting that fasting
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: shows up for at least so many people as a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: good thing for your heart rate variability. Uh, And that
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: was a big surprise to me because I started fasting
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: more or less accidentally, and I thought that when I
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: was hungry that I would see stress, but it was
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: the opposite happened.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: It was very relieving for and calming for my system
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: not to eat. And we also see that if you
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: do the casting mimicking diet for like four or five days,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: that can have a huge impact on your on your
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: heart rate ability, you know, because you're you're doing autophogie.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: You're you're you're literally eating away of your worst selves
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: and your worst mitochondria is by the autophogy, and you
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: will get healthier from fasting, you know, which, of course
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: is in all religions, you know, in all cultures, there
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: has been some they knew that fasting was good for us,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: you know, instead of like like the like the food
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: industry wants you to think that if you lack energy,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: you know, have a chocolate, have a potein bar or whatever,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: eat something. But the solution maybe not to eat.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting with the fasting.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: Often people some people will say to me, oh, I've
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: heard that that fasting for four or five days is
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: really bad for you, And then I show them a
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: research paper of the world record fast, which is in
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine or nineteen seventy maybe seventy one. It
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: was a Scottish guy who went to his doctor and
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: he said, Doc, I'm a bit fat and I think
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: I need to stop eating for a while. Can you
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: supervise me? And he fasted for three hundred and eighty
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: two days, one hundred and twenty kilos and they kept
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: it off. So you can do four or five days
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: right on this. I think we got to add people
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: have type one diabetes or some other health condition that
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: they should talk to their doctor.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: But for the rest of us, you can just crack on.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, we are made for that. We are made
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: for that. We are not made for eating, you know,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: from we get up in the morning until we go
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: to bed at night, which many people do and which
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: many people have been instructed by their doctors to do,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: you know, to eat very regularly, and of course that
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: will only make the blood sugar go up and down
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: like a roller coaster throughout the day and where we
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: are so so the break from eating is very important.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: So one of the strategies in the polls CUR is
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: to have an eating window of maybe eight hours I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: new six hours, but I think that eight ours is okay.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: So that if you eat from eleven o'clock until seven o'clock,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: for example, it will so many people notice that their
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: pain goes away, like their muscle pains, their their stomach
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: problems goes away. There there maybe you have like e cema,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: or psoriasis or something that that goes away. So obviously
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: what you eat and when you eat it's very very important.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think also avoiding eatingly at at night
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: is absolutely as well.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: And of course when you when you see that if
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: you have had a habit of eating before you go
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: to bed, and then when you see the results on
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: your your garment watch, you wouldn't necessarily see it on
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: the other devices or understand so immediately because you can
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: see that it was three hours after the meal, that
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: that was where the problem was. And when you see that,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: of course it's so much motivating to resist that last
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: meal and eat a little bit earlier.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: In the U.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, I think we did talk about alcohol
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: earlier and has a pretty negative effect on HRV. Is
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: that just because alcohol is essentially a poison or do
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: you think it's because it's impacting on our sleep and
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: we're waking up and spending less time in deep sleep.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Or is it a combination thereof or is it some
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: other things?
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: Because I actually noticed my resting heart rate not even
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: hr so hrv will drop, but my resting heart rate
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: overnight will be about ten beats higher if I've had
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: significant amounts of alcohol.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So it's both, as you say,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: it's so the alcohol in itself, or the problem is
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: not the alcohol. The alcohol will calm you down, you know,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: which is of course why me and many other people
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: I've used it to calm down in the evening. You know,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: they think it's relieving their stress.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: The problem is that the alcohol will be converted into acetaldehyde,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: and acetaldehyde is very, very poisonous, so that has to
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: be the first priority over everything else. That the liver
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: has to eliminate it. And that is what gives the stress.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: And if you then have this stress while you're supposed
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: to be sleeping, you also lose sleep quality in addition
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: to the stress in itself. You get the double effect
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: of that, and this will vary. I was on a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: podcast earlier this week and I saw the numbers of
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: one guy a very healthy guy, good VIEO two max,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: who had been having a bottle of wine. I could
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: see hardly any difference, you know. So it's a very individual.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: And I get messages, you know, from people on Instagram
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: that will tell me that their wife cannot tolerate you know,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: two glasses of wine, but they can, you know, So
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: this will be a very individual basis how much you
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: can take. In general, I can see that people with
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: a good fitness level, a good Vio two max, they
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: can tolerate more stressors of any kind of food or
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: alcohol or whatever than other people. So for me, it's very,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: very devastating. I actually the first time I understood how
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: terrible alcohol was was that I was working twenty four
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: hours a day for one week. I usually sleep, you know,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: some business night. I could be walking up you know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: at night. But I was working quite hard, as hard
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: as I can work for one week, and then had
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: one day off, and then one more week of that.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: And on the day off, I used to go for
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: a walk and I used to have a bottle of wine,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: you know. And I understood that I'm more tired after
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: one day off and a bottle of wine than after
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: seven days at work. Then I understood, and that was
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: totally surprise to me because I had always been having
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: to glasses of wine every day, so I've never been
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: on this kind of a job before. And then I
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: understood that, okay, there must be something terrible here. And
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: then I tried with two glasses of wine, and even
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: with two glasses of wine, I woke up more tired
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: than after seven days at work. So that is when
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: I just skipped alcohol totally. And that I think if
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: you have any problem with stress or disease, or feel
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: tired or burned out, you know, the first thing to
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: do is just cut alcohol. And if you can do
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: it for two months, then you will see how you function.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: You it's not enough only after two weeks or so.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: You need to evaluate after kind of two months without alcohol.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: But most people when they're stressed, they go for alcohol.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: Right. There are lots of people doing which exacerbly is
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: the situation. Let's talk about I am aware of that
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: we've taken up a lot of your time, but I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: do want to.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: Talk Oh no, that's no problem, no, no problem, no problem.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: Okay, because it's fascinating. I want to talk about the
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: old exposure. I am a massive fan of cold water exposure,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: as I know they are in Norway, so talk to
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: us about why cold water exposure is good for your
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: heart rate variability and just before you do that. Actually, interestingly,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: last week I was in the sauna and then got
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: into the cold polars swimming punts about five degrees centigrade
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: or was last week, and then got out of it
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: and I checked my HRV and my HRV went through
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: the roof, right, that really big increase, So what's going
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: on there?
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So when you're when you're exposed to cold, then
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: it will be a stress as you're exposed to it.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: You know, when you go out into the temperature that
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: you're talking about there, five degrees centigrades, that's really cold.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: It's very uncomfortable. But after that, when you get out
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: your your pulse heart hit has gone very very much down.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: For me, it can go down to thirty five, you
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: know in my heart rate while it's normally maybe it
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: would be fifty or fifty five. And that can last
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: for hours afterwards. And this will all depend on the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: degrees and how long time.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: You're in the time, yeah, time and temperature right yeah. Yeah.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: So and you can also do a cold shower. So
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: I usually do cold showers every morning, and that will
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: give me it will give me a better HRV for
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: for some hours afterwards.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Wo.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: And I know that so many athletes use it, you know,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: you know Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player, Yeah, he uses it.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: I listen to a podcast where because he uses the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: hoop band, he calls it like having a doctor on
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: your wrist. I would say it's maybe even better than
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: having a doctor on your risk, but a preventative doctor.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: But he uses the cold water immersion two hundred of
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: the days of the year that he logs in his
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: woop bang. So it's such an important way to recover.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: And it's a it's a kind of a trick your
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: You're tricking your autonomic nervous system. And the reason I've heard,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: you know, physiologists say that the reason they think this
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: is happening is that you know, in ancestral times, you know,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: when it was nighttime, it was cold. So the cold,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: just like the slow breathing, is a signal to your
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: body that is calm outside. You know, we can repair.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: The cold is also kind of the same signal that
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: will that will keep your heart beat down. For quite
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: a long time. The other side of it is, of
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: course that when you're exposed to the cold, the body
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: tries to minimize the heat loss, and it minimizes the
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: heat loss by keeping the pulse down and constricting your
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: your your your your peripheral arteries and capillaries. So that
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: is some of the mechanisms, and it will also you
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: get the cold shock proteins, and you also have the
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: heat shot proteins and these are these are proteins that
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: helps your immune system. So so what we in general,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: what we have to do is to live a bit
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: more like in ancestral types. You know, we have to
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: expose ourselves for uncomfortable exercise and comfortable temperatures and fasting.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: You know, this is where our bodies are constructed. And
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: when we live more in tune with our biology, then
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: we gain from that. You know, so often you can
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: ask yourself did people you do this fifty thousand years ago?
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: And if they, if you can say yes, okay, then
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: you can do that is probably healthier for you.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, the.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: Stress response proteins that you talked about, the cold and
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: heat shock proteins, I am a massive fan of those,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: and I actually wrote about them in my book that
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: these are evolutionarily conserved mechanisms, right that fruitflies, worms, rodents, cats, dogs,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: primates including humans, all respond to the stress of heat,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: the stress of cold, and the stress of exercise by
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: upregulating these stress response proteins cold and heat shock proteins
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: which activate cellular pathways that actually improve our cellular health.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: And we get that massive boost from intermittent, moderate exposure
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: to stress.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: And it's kind of counterintuitive for people, isn't it.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: But it's just our body these ways of adapting and
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: becoming more robust because of environmental cues.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we get better cells, you know. And the
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: key to everything is to get better cells and better mitochondria.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: So and that will make sure that all your body's organs,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: including the brain, works better. The brain is the one
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: that is most dependent on mitochondria. Is the densest place
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: you know for mitochondria is the brain, you know. So
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: when and the problem with medicine, modern medicine, is that
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: we are waiting until a disease appears in one of
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: the organs and then we try to kind of kill off,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: you know, the problem in this organ that often has
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: side effects on all the other organs, you know, in
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: the body, instead of making sure that the root cause
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: is the poor cells, the poor mitochondrias, and when we
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: make sure that they are better through these lifestyle changes,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: then it will improve the effect in all of the organs.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: So that is how modern medicine has been. I don't
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: know how this happened. I think it's in general. I
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: think it's because we are educated to identify disease, categorize disease,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: find out what's the treatment. Then we have just not
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: been looking at what keeps us healthy. This is not
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: what we learned in medical school, you know, the same
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: as in psychology. You know. The problem was that they
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: have only been looking at sick people, you know, and
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: and depressed people, and they have not been looking at, Okay,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: what keeps you from getting depressed, you know in the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: first place.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: So that the explanation, I think we're in violent agreement
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: on that one. We don't have a healthcare system. We
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: have a sick cur system for both physical and psychological ailments.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: I think I think that that's really key. But interesting
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: the focus on the mitochon.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: Isn't it interesting how many diseases, both physical and psychological,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: have a large component of damage mitochondria whenever you look
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: into it.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the rude cause. And that's a great
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: book you know, from from Christopher Palmer called Grain Energy.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: That Yeah, that tells you how how the poor mitochondrias
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: are the root cause of all the difference different medical diagnosis,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: you know, and trouble. So so we're seeing that whatever
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: you can do for our mitochondria is well, it will
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: help help our whole body, you know. And of course,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: of course again it's visible in the heart rate variability.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: If you if you google mitochondrial dysfunction and heart rate variability,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: you will find there's a connection there also. So it's
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: not only so it's not only that like the vagus
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: nerve and the parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves. It is that
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: is the totality of our physiology that will have a
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: reaction in heart rate variability. So it's like it's like
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: a very complex system, you know.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: That's what I was actually about to ask you if
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: there's any research on mitochondrial health and HRV, But you
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: just answered that question. The other question, I don't know
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: if you have the answer to it, and if you don't,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: maybe a little speculation about link between hate cold shot proteins,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: the overall stress response proteins and HRV. Have you seen anything,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: Is there anything that you're aware of about up regulation
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: of heat and cold shot proteins that would impact HRV?
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm thinking NRF two and AR pathways are
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: activated by them, But do they play into heart rate
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: variability directly?
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: Have you seen anything on that at all?
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: And if not, a bit bloody and experiment, wouldn't it
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: be a really interesting experiment.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure there is research on it, you know
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: then so that it will improve the heart rate variability
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: the cold you know, temperature exposure, but I have it
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: doesn't come to mind that once, but I'm sure once
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: I google it, you know, there will be somebody. I've
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: been researching it because because HRV is such an easy
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: metric to get, you know, once you're doing a big
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: research study and you're prepared for one year, you know,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: why not get the heart rate veriability? You know, you
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: get it kind of for free.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: So it's so it's uh, it's combined in so many
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: studies and I'm sure they have it also on a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: temperature challenge, you know, So it's like you're saying, you know,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: death by comfort, you know, it's we have made ourselves
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: so comfortable and we haven't been looking at at the
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: price for that comfort. So yeah, we need to challenge ourselves.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: We need to stress, We need to be stress. We
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: need to have control of it so that we control
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: when we stress and distress, you know. And there's not
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: something called bad stress. You know, even unwelcome stress that
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: you would never want to have in your life can
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: help you become stronger as long as you make sure
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: that you relax and recover from it.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: I often say that Frederick Nietzsche that which does not
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: kill us makes us stronger. He just forgot the brackets.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: As long as we recover effectively, right, yeah, yeah, yeah?
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: Are you given us some great tools before I let
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: you go? Is there anything that I haven't asked you
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: about that I should have asked you about?
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. I've been also into this
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: with the with women that the female. I think if
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: there's one doctor specialty that needs to really know hard
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: rate variability is a genecologist obsteticians, because so infertility is
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: coupled the heart rate variability. Their group has found out
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: that like six seven weeks before a woman gives birth,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: there's a switch in the HIV. It will go from
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: worsening until improving, and that will predict when the baby
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: is born, you know, of course, very important when it
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: comes to premature the birds. Politicistic ovary syndrome is coupled
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: with a heart rate variability, endometriosis coupled the heart rate
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: variability as I said, PMS symptoms and so on, And
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: of course the period that you really do not want
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: to be stressed is while you're pregnant. So while you're pregnant,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: that's a very important time to have control of your
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: stress levels more and more ease. Showing that the damage
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: for the child and the mother from too much stress
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: during the pregnancies is a huge impact. And also around
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: eighty percent of the autommune diseases they will start the
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: year after a pregnancy, after a birth, so possibly because
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: of the strain and the stress, you know, for the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: lack of sleep and everything you know, for the week
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: after that. Also the you know, the deposed partum depression
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: you know, of course also coupled to heart rate variability.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: So and I think that has been the problem. Why
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: haven't we discovered heart rate veriability until now you know,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: it's just such a puzzle, you know, something so important.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: How could we avoid seeing that the importance of it?
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: And I think that the problem is it doesn't really
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: belong to one department, one specialty. The neurology is that
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: maybe you should have had control of this. They have
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: overlooked it, you know, more or less, they're more more
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: oriented towards the brain and towards the modern neurance. So
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: maybe it just didn't belong to any one specialty. It
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: belongs to every specialty. You know, there's there's not no
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: specialty that in medicine that would not have use of
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: knowing about heart rate variability. Yeah, But as I said,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: the most important thing is that it moves the power
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: of the diagnostics and your health from the healthcare system
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: into your own hands. That's that's the key point I think.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: I think it is the big take on point, and
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: it's kind of summed up by what gets measured gets managed.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: And I certainly know that looking at my own heart
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: rate variability has a bigger impact on my behaviors than
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: just subjectively around how I'm feeling. So I think that
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: that is the big take home isn't it is that
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: measure it and then you're much more like you get
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: some insights to your point about what does stress you,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: and then you're more likely to manage it.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And the good thing is that there is
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: money in preventative healthcare because there's too much money in
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: sick people, you know, So most of us who work
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: in the healthcare system, we are director indirectly profiting from
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: that they're sick.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is what my money that I've paid for
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: all my adventures, you know, traveling around the world and
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: so on, it comes from treating sick people.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: If I would want a job right prevent people from
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: getting sick, where would I apply? You know, it's not
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: we all live from that. And Big pharm of course,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: lives from finding medicines that don't completely treat people and
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: makes them necessary to use some medication for twenty thirty years.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: But these devices, it makes that there is a lot
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: of money to be made from from helping people avoid
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: getting sick. So I think is a very important aspect
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: So last question for you to kill, given that you've
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: been using several devices for our significant periods of time,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: what would your recommendation be between the garment, the wood band,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: the or ring, apple watch, whatever, what what have you
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: found to be the most useful slash reliable.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's easily the garment. Yeah, by far. You will
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: see that. Things happening all the time. You know, Samsung
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: is coming with a new Galaxy ring. They're coming with
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: the new watches this summer, I know. But so far
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: Garment is the way ahead of the other ones most
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: because of the comb that they bought the first bit algorithm.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: So that's that's really the key to it really. Yeah,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: and the advantage is also that that they have watches
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: from from down two hundred and fifty US dollars and
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: up to you know, ten times that. But you can
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: the entrance point can be really really accessible for anyone
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: where you would get access to the to the body
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: battery system and stress levels, so and that you can
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: just push the button and you will see the stress
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: level in the moment. And now I would advise people
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: to guess what it is first. That is what I did.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: Anyway that I would I would guess what will I
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: see when I push the button and see my stress levels?
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: And then you start you know, paying more attention to
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: your to your body.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: So very cool, Tokil Farroh, this has been awesome. I
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: knew a reasonable amount about the heartbread variability that I
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: have learned a shipload, and I'm sure our listeners have
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: learned a shipload. But I love the the the real
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: practical advice that that that you give us. And so
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: if you're listening and jump on and buy the book.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: So to that point, where can people go to buy
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: the Pulse Cure and find out more about you and
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: any other things that you offer.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they should be able to get it anywhere. It's
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: a standard book by Hashett, a big publisher, and it
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: should be available on Amazon, is on an audiobook and
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: the book as well. You would get it on your iPhone,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: you know, from your from your book app on the iPhone?
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: Do you you did the narration on the on the
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: do you know?
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: For mine, I had to actually audition to do my
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: own audio book, which is really interest right.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: And I didn't know I did an original one I did, right,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: That was very interesting. It was very hard. It was
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: very hard actually, but know they have a proper English
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: speaker for that. Yeah, and also if they on Instagram,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: I'm doctor Turtle, Dr Point. And we also have a
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: website called the postcare dot com where you can see
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: a video lecture. You can see me explaining how I
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: use it, use the graphs from the garment watchers and
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: so on.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: Oh brilliant.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: Okay, awesome. I will stick all those links in the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: show notes. But yeah, look, thank you very much for
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: your time and enjoy your morning.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: Would that be correct?
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, it's still morning. Yeah, yeah, thank you
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: so much. And it's so nice to speak with someone
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: as knowledgeable as yourself. So many podcasts where I have
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: to explain everything, and it's so much more fun to
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: be able to discuss it with you, because I think
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: a few people have your your knowledge, so it's a
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: very good to be able to speak to one of them.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thank you. I love the conversation. That was
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: a great bounds off. So thanks for your time and
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: keep doing what you're doing because the world needs it.