The RedLeaf Fitness Podcast
The RedLeaf Fitness Podcast
Reading with Ari: Unlocking Longevity Secrets: A Review of Dr. Peter Attia's Science and Art of Living Longer
What if you could unlock the secrets to living a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life? Join us as we sit down with Ari to discuss Dr. Peter Attia's book, "The Science and Art of Longevity." Despite its complexity, we both rate the book an impressive 8-8.5 out of 10 and share our insights on what could have been improved, particularly in the nutrition chapter.
Throughout the episode, we explore the Canadian healthcare system, Peter's three-part approach to longevity, and the four horsemen of disease: metabolic dysfunction, heart disease, cancer, and cognitive dysfunction. We discuss the impact of modern diets on our ancient genes and the importance of prevention and early screening for these diseases. Moreover, we highlight the benefits of zone two training and the significance of maintaining a well-rounded fitness routine for overall health and wellness.
Ari's passion and enthusiasm for health and fitness truly shine through in this engaging conversation. We also express our appreciation for feedback and book recommendations from our listeners. Don't miss this opportunity to learn more about living a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life - tune in now!
🧠 This episode and more are available now on all streaming platforms. Check it out on Spotify, iTunes or http://podcast.redleaf.fit/
'𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐟 𝐅𝐢𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐲, 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞.
#Strength #Adventure #Community
Welcome back to another edition of the Red Leaf Fitness podcast, a show dedicated to bringing you stories, interviews and conversations about living a healthy, resilient and productive life. I'm your host, sean Blinch, and I want to thank you for making time to listen to this episode today And, if you like what we're putting down, we would love it if you would follow, rate and share this podcast. All right, now let's get down to business. Welcome back to the Red Leaf Fitness podcast. On Monday, june 5th, i'm sitting here with Ari.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:What's up, Ari?
Speaker 2:Dying of allergies, but hopefully I can make it through this.
Speaker 1:We're back in the mix.
Speaker 2:Finally, it's been too long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, reading with Ari has returned.
Speaker 2:After several months.
Speaker 1:Has returned. if you can hear that, I think they might can pick that up. There's 30 pages of Ari notes on this book.
Speaker 2:I really wanted. It's funny because I started making notes and I'm like oh, these are super long. I started a new document and I called it condensed notes.
Speaker 1:This is condensed.
Speaker 2:And then I'm like these became worse than the first set, so I'm like I should change the title. Definitely not condensed.
Speaker 1:Uncondensed, uncondensed Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow I love that.
Speaker 2:I love the 400 page book. It's basically a textbook.
Speaker 1:It is a textbook And that's going to feed into my rating of the book. When it comes to how this book landed and all that stuff. Can we talk a little bit first before we get into all the highlights, yeah, about what was your overall feel about this book and what would you give it out of 10?
Speaker 2:I thought it was really good, but it is very dense. And then some chapters like nutrition. When he talks about nutrition I thought he could have done a better job. It was like very surface level information. So maybe I really did love it, though, Like I even said it to a friend, I'm like I feel like I learned more in this book than I did in like four years of school. So maybe an eight, eight and a half out of 10.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I thought you were going to give it higher than that. Okay, any other comments about it?
Speaker 2:What would you give? Or do you want to save it to the end?
Speaker 1:No, I'll go after you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, i would say around that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so my original thoughts on this book were not great.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But after a few days of thinking about it and then I told you I was like yeah, i gave it about a seven And just seeing how enthusiastic you were and how you engaged with it, it actually did bump my score up Because, remember, we joked. I was like, okay, fine, you made it an eight. So I think my initial rating was this was a seven, but after a while I bumped a two and eight. So we're kind of meeting on that. I thought you were going to give it a higher rating.
Speaker 2:I think it's also because, like, i've listened to him in different podcasts and I feel like he gives so much information sometimes in podcasts that I didn't see in the book. Yeah, and you could have included this stuff and cut out some other stuff that didn't need to be in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's a brilliant man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, He's a brilliant and he does address. The fact that he says like this is such an enormous thing, I don't know if I did a good job. You're going to be the people that tell us, And you know. So I go back and I think about like okay, who's this book for? Yeah, And I think about what a hard job it is for him to try and write to so many people because we're all. We each have this unique entry point into health and fitness Exactly Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know someone would look at you like in the general population and they would call you like a health nut.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They would like. Ari is like, like if you weren't in the room and they were describing you. It's like Ari has dedicated her life to health and fitness. Did you describe yourself that way?
Speaker 2:I think lately.
Speaker 1:Okay, good Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like the past couple of years, i feel like I really got into it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I mean, it might not be the first thing. Hi, I'm Ari and I'm a health nut.
Speaker 2:Right, no Right.
Speaker 1:It's the things that people say about us that are the things that are pretty true about us. Yeah, that's true, you know so, and I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I feel like this book was written for somebody sort of at a earlier entry point than ourselves. Yeah, and so, however, my criticism is the information that he back, that he that he presented, was, it seemed too robust to it's like, hey, i want the general population to learn something, but here's all this really complicated stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a lot of complicated things.
Speaker 1:And so for that I was like I feel like this could have gone through another round of editing or something, i don't know.
Speaker 2:Which is wild He's been. I was listening to him in a podcast. I think he's been writing this for like eight years like an insane amount of time. This wasn't just like Oh, i'm just going to write a book.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, he's been thinking about this thing for a really, really long time.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and it almost didn't happen like a whole bunch of times. And then yeah, And then there's also something to be said for just fucking put it out.
Speaker 2:Exactly Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know it's a hard thing to do to give a rating, but I do want to say that I love this book and I would recommend it.
Speaker 2:It's a must read.
Speaker 1:I think there are some parts that are really hard. If I have to hear MTOR one more time, I'm probably going to I don't know, Blue ghost like a gym. Yeah, yeah, so all that stuff. So it's a dense book, but it sounds like both of us really got a lot out of it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I loved it. I got so much out of it.
Speaker 1:So okay, so page one of your notes of 372. Do first, i don't like I just had my bad. Actually. We let me introduce this. So if you're listening to this podcast, you likely know already that this book is outlived. the science and art of longevity by Dr Petya Peter Atya. I was going to try and combine his first and last Petya That was weird, petya Peter Atya with co-author Bill Giffords. So this is a really it's a really novel and new approach to a really really old concept, which is our health, and so he talks a lot about it And he does go back to, you know, the, the, the Hippocratic O's and, like you know, we've been practicing medicine and stuff for thousands of years, and so he's he's approaching it in a new way And I think it's it's a really compelling book.
Speaker 1:It is So. that's the title of our book. Uh, ari, do you want to jump in and and um talk about the overview and the summary of the of um, the beginning and.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this book is basically about living a longer, healthier and more fulfilling life. So he basically splits that up into health span and lifespan. So lifespan is just how long you live Well. Health span is about living that amount of time, but just better. So not just living longer and lingering on with disease, but also living longer, healthier.
Speaker 2:And he splits the book into three parts. So the first part of the book is sort of just introducing background information and main ideas, while the second part he goes into the four main horsemen uh of disease, which is what he thinks causes the most amount of deaths, which would be metabolic dysfunction, so mainly diabetes, heart disease, cancer and cognitive dysfunction, mainly Alzheimer's disease. And then in the third part of the book he goes into ways uh to increase our lifespan and our health span. Uh, mainly five tactics. So that would be exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health and exogenous molecules like drugs, hormones and supplements. He doesn't really talk about that last one because he says there's way too much information and that's just not his area of expertise. So we'll just go into the first four, which are way more important than the last one. Anyways, sean, you're taking some pictures of me with my swollen left eye from allergies, so I get to see that.
Speaker 1:Not at all. Look at this, that's right.
Speaker 2:Look like I'm studying.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. That's a good one. I'm gonna throw that on our story and be like Hey, listen to this podcast. Yeah, so the four horsemen, that's uh, you know what I think is. uh, is that where you want to go? Do you want to?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like that's where we can go, like he even introduces how life expectancy in the nineties used to be around the late fifties and most people used to die of fast causes, of things like accidents, injuries, infectious diseases. However, around the um, like lately, life expectancies around the seventies and eighties, but most people are now dying of slow causes, which is what Peter refers to as the four horsemen that I just introduced, and these tend to increase with age. As you grow older, the chances of you getting Alzheimer's disease, cancer, type two diabetes, all of that increases, so it becomes really important to address those.
Speaker 2:Sean's currently posting to he's actually posting live everybody. Um, so the way that like kind of like what Sean was introducing before, how there's a shift now. So Peter uh talks about this shift by introducing medicine 1.0, medicine 2.0 and medicine 3.0. So medicine 1.0 was basically a transition period in the late 17th century and into the 19th century. So this was basically when people believed that diseases were were caused by the God. So if anything happened to you, it was like Oh well, the God wanted that to happen, so that's why it is what it is.
Speaker 2:And then we got into medicine 2.0, which, uh, what caused that transition was basic, was mainly the germ theory.
Speaker 2:So that was when they discovered that people could get sick through germs, because doctors were causing a lot of deaths by going from one patient to another without washing their hands, which sounds crazy now, but that used to happen a lot.
Speaker 2:And it was also because of the introduction of the scientific method, which basically is just this you make a guess and then you design a hypothesis, then you test that hypothesis, which is again just a guess, and based on those results you update or disregard your hypotheses. And because of this new concept a lot of diseases were eradicated, like polio, small pox, hepatitis C, um also the discovery of penicillin. So this is what brought this life expectancy from the fifties all the way to the seventies eighties, like it is today. However, when you take away those things, people are still dying at about the same rate, um in regards to cancer and all the four horsemen that I brought about. So medicine 2.0 hasn't been really good at solving those issues, because medicine 2.0 is very reactive. Well, we want to be more proactive, and that's what medicine 3.0 is all about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, So if, if, if I was to summarize medicine 3.0 in one word, it would be prevention. Yeah, You know what's interesting is that, like when I'm reading this book, uh, do you like? the word prevention is almost, uh, it's, it's almost cliche.
Speaker 2:It is cliche Yeah.
Speaker 1:Prevention, prevention, like we say it all the time. But I feel that what Peter's really doing and he uh, by writing this book, he's banging the drum as hard as he possibly can on something, once again an old idea that needs to be new again in this idea of prevention. And I feel sometimes good ideas are the right thing at the wrong time And 3.0 is the right thing at the right time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's what we desperately need I?
Speaker 1:I, i currently um, don't subscribe to the whole uh, you know very cynical. Oh, there is just about making certain people money. Um, i feel like there's kernels of truce that people blow up into these massive uh constructs that just don't serve. You start spending all this time like uh, becoming a conspiracy theorist and no time actually caring about people anymore, so you become just as bad as the thing that you're trying to tear down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's, that's my view on it. whatever, But medicine 2.0 tried, is trying, is currently trying, has saved lives. Uh, we have so much uh data we've, so there are. everybody knows a loved one right now I'm sure, um, that has been touched and saved by medicine 2.0.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:Uh. So it's way too easy, way too convenient to start tearing down medicine 2.0, but it doesn't mean we can't be critical of it. Uh and w? w. So so those two things can exist at the exact same time. You know, because this you know. Here I am going on a tangent, i realize, and I will end this Um, people often not all the time, but can love narratives over truth. Truth is so nuanced and in depth and so multi-layered and just requires incredible amounts of just awareness and hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just allow people to wrap their mind around something that's a bit more friendly. Um, and that's all I'm going to say on that tangent. So medicine 3.0, i think is really, uh, a revolution. And what I think so cool about that is, uh, it plays into my last couple of years how so excited I am to be a coach.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And because what's happening is um coaches are now playing or have a new role. The Canadian healthcare system is stressed out beyond its capacity and it has been for decades. It's not getting any better, and prevention and trainers, coaches and life coaches are part of the next hundred years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're at the forefront of the change now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i really believe that And it's so. you know when I think about you know what I do. um, i don't solve people's toes to bars problems. I don't teach people double unders. I don't teach them hip extension in a snatch.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That is the touch point at which I communicate with somebody, But really what I'm doing is I'm I'm uh, creating a facilitating momentum, um, facilitating a love with fitness and a lifelong commitment to excellence here, meaning excellence outside of here, And I feel like that's what Peter's trying to talk about. Yeah, it goes beyond like it goes beyond. Yeah, yeah, should I shut up now?
Speaker 2:No, you should never. So basically, peter poses the question what do you want to be doing your letter later decades, what is the plan for the rest of your life? And that's what the whole book basically is about again, to live longer and to live better, to outlive, uh, life expectancy and to exceed society's expectation that our later decade is supposed to be one filled with disease and frailty and all of that that bad stuff just looks like. So Peter says that the approach that we should take to longevity is basically a three-part approach. So that begins with objective, which is basically live longer and live longer for better, and then a strategy, which is delaying all of the four horsemen, and then tactics, which is what I introduced before and we'll go into. So now we can go into the four horsemen, the four different diseases that he talks about. Yeah, so the first one that he introduces is the four horsemen.
Speaker 2:That he introduces is metabolic health, and I like that he starts the chapter with this question Can our ancient genes cope with our modern diet? Oh snap Right Because, if you think about it, our ancestors didn't have access to the amount of food that we do today. Today we have food everywhere and anywhere, anytime we need it.
Speaker 1:Everywhere.
Speaker 2:And although that seems like a great thing, it's not that great because a lot of this is food that's not good for us And sometimes we tend to take it in in access, which is not what you want to do, so I like that. Also, he talks about this patient that he saw who had very fatty liver, which was very similar to somebody who had been drinking for so long, but the guy didn't drink a thing, and then they went to realize that it was actually because of his diet. Even though he didn't look obese, which is what people tend to associate with type two diabetes and metabolic dysfunction in general, he actually had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and this goes right into why our diets are so important and affecting us in levels that we don't even know.
Speaker 1:Naffle D is what he called it in the book.
Speaker 2:And I thought it was so interesting how he said that in the 1970s the average male weighed 173 pounds And now the average male weighs 200 pounds. And because that's the new average, that's the new normal, which is like, just because it's the average, it doesn't mean that's what you should be aiming for, right? So if we're going to talk about metabolic health, we should talk about metabolism and what that is. So metabolism is just the process by which we take in nutrients and break them down to be used in the body. If somebody is metabolically healthy, they can take those nutrients and send it to their proper destination. When somebody is not metabolically healthy, some of those calories end up in places that you don't want it to end up, or they end up piling up in your body. So just a quick explanation on how metabolism works. Let's say you eat a donut. Your body's going to take that donut and decide what to do with those calories.
Speaker 2:The carbs from the donut which break down into glucose has two possible fates. First it can be converted into glycogen, which is just the storage form of carbs Which is suitable for short term use. So this ends up in muscles and the liver, and then the liver's job is to convert that glycogen back to glucose so it can be used in your body. Glucose is also taken up by the muscles and the brain, So the liver has to keep a steady release of glucose so those organs can use it. And then the second destination is storing it as fat, which we have way a bigger capacity for. And the decision to where this goes is determined by a hormone called insulin, which is secreted by the pancreas. When the body senses the presence of glucose in our blood, insulin basically helps to shuttle the glucose to where it's needed. So if you're out riding a bike, like I was on the weekend for a very, very, very long time- Heyo.
Speaker 2:Those calories basically end up being consumed almost immediately. But if you're a sedentary person, those calories the glucose ends up in fat cells And first they're going to end up in a layer under your skin called subcutaneous fat. But if you start to take in too many, that is going to reach a capacity And then it ends up as visceral fat which is just around your organs, which is not what you want. That's going to be very problematic because that ends up leading to cancer and cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes all the things you don't want.
Speaker 1:I'm like Sean is like shuffling through my notes I don't know if he wants to say anything And I'm like not allowing him to speak, ari, i always want to say something, and so what I'm doing, i'm actually trying to practice not being a blow horn, which is quite difficult. Yeah, once I get going, it's hard to get me to shut me up.
Speaker 2:So everybody has a different fat storage capacity. So just because somebody looks healthy, like what we call healthy and non-obese, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're metabolically healthy, because in a normal person, when you take in the glucose, your body releases insulin and then insulin tells the body where to store that glucose. But in insulin resistance, because we're taking in so much glucose, the body becomes less and less reactive to insulin and eventually the pancreas stops releasing insulin and that's how we develop diabetes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the pankey. The pankey just gets up and says You know what?
Speaker 2:I can't do this anymore. I'm tired.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm out.
Speaker 2:I'm checking out.
Speaker 1:I'm done being a pancreas.
Speaker 2:Stop eating, i'm not going to do my job. And he even says that nearly half of the population is either on the road to type 2 diabetes or already has type 2 diabetes. I feel like everybody knows somebody or has somebody in their family that has type 2 diabetes.
Speaker 1:It's so hard out there right now to find a good pancreas right, Isn't that so? It is All these millennial pancreas is none of them want to work.
Speaker 2:Lazy.
Speaker 1:There's just yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what? Type 2 diabetes. Don't want to work anymore.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're pancreas and you're feelings, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2:Whatever, but it is like it's scary how common it is now. Like my grandpa died of type 2 diabetes, my grandma is pre-diabetic, my dad is diabetic, and I feel like it's just so common now And I think it's partly because of the way the health system works, where you're only like they only say that you have type 2 diabetes or even pre-diabetic if you pass a certain threshold. But even if you're just a point below that threshold, it's like no, you're fine, just keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, which is like no, that's, and that's what medicine 3.0 is all about. Like that's, we should be intervening way before that. Yeah, not when you're already at pre-diabetic stage, which is basically like sorry, but it sucks, but you're already there. Like that's not where you want to get to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know it's so systemic too. So to put it in like another frame is like let's say, somebody has a blood alcohol level of, for easy math, 5. And let's say, also for easy math, 6 means you're drunk and intoxicated and unable to drive a car. Yeah, so the blood rolls in at a 5, but a 6 isn't legally considered. Or if 6 is legally considered drunk, are we comfortable with person being at a 0.5? Yeah, absolutely not. So if you're talking about diabetes and you're pre-diabetic and your blood glucose levels and your ability to clear blood glucose is so impaired, yeah, you're at like, you're at the 99%, and then, if you have that 1%, you're turning over into your full-blown type 2 diabetic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the alarm bells needed to be going off a year ago, two years ago, like and so that, and to your point, that's what medicine 2.0 is not doing. well, and I would also add to that you know, if you look at a doctor's schedule and the way it's, the system has, you know, the system has been created. I think they get 4 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is crazy.
Speaker 1:It's insane And it's so systemic. It's not the doctor saying, hey, you know what would be awesome, let's do 4 minutes. They're doing the best they can within the 4 minutes, right? So it's so, you know. and Atiya is a doctor himself and you know, in his podcast and stuff he does address just how impossible it is to be a doctor, and in Canada it's quite thankless. Like do you know any doctors, do you know any like physicians and stuff.
Speaker 2:No, not in Canada.
Speaker 1:No, it's hard to make a living. Yeah, you know and I don't want to hear any business about small violence for doctors in Canada trying to know it's fucking hard And they work constantly and they are under insane amounts of pressure. They are under pressure of being sued and stuff you know, and all they're trying to do is do the best that they possibly can. It's like they're getting punched in the face with their hands tied by their back.
Speaker 2:There's only so much that they can do right, and that's where, like coaches and everybody else, enters the picture Exactly.
Speaker 1:You're the best.
Speaker 2:And he mentions this, which I thought was pretty crazy because and it goes back to the issue with medicine 2.0. Like we tend to think of these horsemen diseases in silo, like we think let's treat cancer or let's treat Alzheimer's disease as if they're not all interconnected. And like he says how insulin resistance increases your risk to cancer by 12-fold, Alzheimer's disease by five-fold and death by cardiovascular disease almost six-fold. So just fixing your metabolic health is going to have a cascading effect on every other single disease, which is like why would you not right?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. So, ari, how did somebody fix their metabolic health?
Speaker 2:Oh, i'm glad you asked, which we're going to get into a little later though.
Speaker 1:Do you want to put a pin in it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's put a pin in it. We will talk about the other four horsemen and then we'll go into things that are going to affect all of them, which is incredible.
Speaker 1:So you better stay tuned.
Speaker 2:Oh please, ari's going to talk about it, don't switch podcasts or go listen to music or do something else.
Speaker 1:Make sure to smash that like button. Why did they all say that eh?
Speaker 2:Smash the like button subscribe. Give us a review of what is it like all of them.
Speaker 1:Smash the like button. Don't click it. I want you to smash it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't just click it. If your phone is not smashed, then you didn't do it hard enough. So next up, he talks about heart disease, and heart disease and stroke actually represent the leading cause of death, killing an estimated 2,300 people every day in the US, which is just insane. And we tend to think of our like cardiovascular system as a network of veins, arteries and capillaries that, if you didn't know, if, stretched out and laid end to end, would wrap around the earth more than twice, which is just it's just crazy.
Speaker 2:So our vasculature's main function is to transport oxygen and nutrients to our tissues while carrying away waste, and in addition to that, it's also responsible for carrying out for carrying cholesterol molecules between cells. So cholesterol always tends to get a better rep, especially when you talk about in terms of LDL, which we know as bad cholesterol, and HDL, which we think of as good cholesterol. But there's actually no such thing as bad cholesterol, because cholesterol is essential. It's required to build important structures in the body, including cell membranes, several hormones as well as bile acid, which we need for digestion. And it's actually interesting Our body actually synthesizes our own cholesterol.
Speaker 2:I know people tend to think that we ingest a lot of cholesterol, but actually we don't, and that's based on studies that were done on rabbits, which can take in cholesterol. But because of that, we just thought that that was the same with humans, but it's actually not the same. Most of it is all synthesized by our liver. So, like I said, we tend to think of bad cholesterol LDL and good cholesterol HDL, but it doesn't work that way. Both cholesterol are basically the exact same. What changes is what carries cholesterol in the blood? because it's non soluble. So LDL, which is just low density lipoprotein is like there's a protein carrying that cholesterol. So if it's being carried by LDL, that's the one that we think of as bad, and only because it has this protein on it called APOB, which is what has been linked with cardiovascular disease, among many other things. And then we have HDL, which is high density lipoprotein and that also carries cholesterol, but that doesn't have that APOB protein that the other one does, and that's mainly why we think of HDL as good cholesterol.
Speaker 1:Best Excellent.
Speaker 2:So, although we don't take in cholesterol, if we do eat a lot of saturated fats, that's when bad cholesterol can go up, because that causes our liver to synthesize more of LDL, which is what's going to carry some of the cholesterol, and that's why we consider that cholesterol bad And that's also why we should avoid saturated fats, which we will go into as well. So it's all very complex And I probably have like three pages worth of explanation on this. But basically, ldl the bad kind of cholesterol that we tend to think if we consume a lot of it it tends to get stuck inside of our veins And that's what ends up causing a plaque which can cause a clot, which can lead to heart attack and stroke. I could go into the details, but I don't think we have enough time to go into all of that. But that essentially summarizes why the LDL is considered bad, because it ends up leading to clots and plaques in our in our vasculature And it's mainly due for because of APOB.
Speaker 2:So Peter makes sure to say that, like when you get your cholesterol levels measured, it's not so much the total cholesterol that matters, because again, there's HDL and LDL. You mainly want to be looking at your APOB, which is not only present in LDL but in also in other proteins in the body, and that's what tends to cause heart disease, atherals, chlorotic disease and all of that. So we want to be decreasing our APOB levels and not just thinking about decreasing our cholesterol levels in general. I think Sean is looking for a quote, maybe.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because I'm looking at his book and I'm seeing his highlights and I actually went through. When I spoke to him, i think a few weeks back, i told him that I went through. I was on my second highlighter but actually update I went through a second highlighter and I made my way through a third.
Speaker 1:You hit this with three highlighters.
Speaker 2:Three highlighters. And look, it's not even that. I highlighted a lot. Maybe I just got crappy highlighters, which they weren't even crappy. They look like they're pretty decent, But I don't know, like I just ran out of them. So that says a lot about the book.
Speaker 1:Were you like. If it was the same, would you go over that highlight like seven?
Speaker 2:times. Yeah, i'm like you know what. You know, I'm going to highlight it three times because it was that good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like when you're watching a TV show with somebody and they're like, hey, watch this part, watch this, watch this.
Speaker 2:That was me. That was me with a highlighter.
Speaker 1:Like what are you going to do? You're like, okay, I'm really watching it now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, three highlighters. So I understand why Sean has a bunch of highlights in his book too. So many goodies. I can go into the next one, cancer, if you're good, sean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing that I did want to jump in there and just because you're, you know you're at the perfect point talking about cancer, there's, there's, there's so many interesting things to to come at this thing And just like, uh, just harkening back to the, the medicine 3.0, you know, he says in the books, we in the book, we need to try to detect cancer as early as possible so that our treatments can be deployed more effectively.
Speaker 1:I advocate for early, aggressive and broad screening for my patients, such as colonoscopy or other colorectal cancer screening at age 40, as opposed to the standard recommendation of 45 or 50. And, uh, i, i'm sort of talking about that one because, um, i'm 37 years of age and I would be three years ahead of his recommended time for screening, and for me, my alarm bells are ringing. I, i, i have kids, i have, i, you know, i have a commitment to this gym, i have a commitment to my family, i have, uh, my siblings and stuff that need me, and so it's, i'm, i'm even earlier than that, and so I'm, uh, you know, annually, i, i do some checkups and every single year, from here on out, i'm going to be doing more, i'm not planning on going anywhere.
Speaker 2:I hope not.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to do everything I can.
Speaker 2:To stick around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, And in August I'm going to be 38.
Speaker 2:Oh man, i'm going to be 30 in less than a month, so we won't go into age. Whoa Wow. I'm going through a crisis.
Speaker 1:Are you going through a crisis?
Speaker 2:I'm not, i'm not Going, but it is crazy though, like that's a big, that's a big one. A whole new age bracket for you, oh my God, i'm going to have to pick like when you, you know, when you like fill out a form, and there's like drop downs. now I'm going to have to go into like 30 to 40.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I'm not ready.
Speaker 1:I think. I think when I turn the corner into 30 is when my life felt like it really started to get really good.
Speaker 2:I heard your 30s are your best year. So I'm excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and if we have anything to do with it, like we're actually not really that far apart in in age. I'm much you know, as far as my maturity levels, i'm more on the 10, like nine year old, 10 year old range. Oh, you're such a liar. But we, if we have anything to do with it, we're going to get to redefine that. And right, and isn't that like you get to make your 30s your best And then what you get to do is you get to make your 40s your best and your 50s?
Speaker 2:your best. Yeah, i agree 100%.
Speaker 1:So, yeah. And that's kind of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So the next horseman or disease he goes into is cancer. So cancer, just like heart disease, is a disease of aging. It becomes even more prevalent with each decade of life, and the problem we face is that once cancer has been established, we lack highly effective treatments for it, and our ability to detect it at an early age actually remains pretty weak. So the first and foremost approach is to just avoid it all together. And there's no cure, no single cure for cancer. The best hope is to attack it in all three forms. So prevention, more targeted and effective treatments and comprehensive and accurate early detection.
Speaker 2:So what is cancer? So people tend to think that cancer is just that the cells are growing faster. But it's not that they're growing faster, it's that they don't stop growing. So when they're supposed to, just like other cells in the body because of genetic mutations And it's also what defines cancer cells is their ability to travel from one part of the body to another part of the body where they should not be, which is called metastasis, and that's when cancer becomes very serious, is when it spreads to other parts of the body. So there doesn't seem to be any individual genes that cause cancer. It seems to be random mutations in combination that end up causing genes.
Speaker 2:So two different women with breast cancer at the same stage. Their tumor genomes are likely to be completely different from each other. So there's no way to devise a treatment that would work for both, and medicine 3.0 is very big on that, where treatment should be based on the individual, just not just based on what the average result was from a study that said that this was good because everybody's different. So metastatic cancer, which is what I talked about, which is when cancer spreads to different parts of the body, that's what's responsible for most of cancer deaths. Single organ tumors typically only kill you if it has spread to another part of the body, which is why prevention and early screening is so important.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, let me just jump in here If you're someone who has unfortunately been touched by cancer by yourself or your family members and you know we're reading something here that comes off and maybe it's inaccurate or it's not as accurate as you want, understand that Ari and I are.
Speaker 1:We're not trying to be experts, we're actually just students in learning and we're just trying to relay information that we got out of this book, and there may be some mistakes here and there, which I'm always open to hearing feedback on, but we are very lucky at Redleaf. We actually have two cancer doctors here, both of which I have approached about joining me on a podcast.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, yeah, and both are like yep, let's go. So if there's anything in here that is peaking your interest and you want to learn more about this, you'll be able to hear from both Dr Andrew Pfeiffer and Dr Jeff in the next few weeks, because they're both going to come on and we're going to talk about this in full depth.
Speaker 2:Can't wait to hear. That's awesome, yeah. And then he talks about how. Another problem is that chemotherapy, although really good, of course, it doesn't just kill normal cancer cells. It also kills normal cells, and the cancer cells that end up surviving chemotherapy sometimes end up acquiring new mutations, which makes them even stronger. So, although there are a ton of treatments, we're still really early on in terms of battling cancer. So again, what he says is the best approach is, again, prevention as well as early screening, the far better that we can screen. That means we can start doing things to hopefully, whether it is to cure it or to give somebody a better life with that disease. He even says he's like if the first rule of cancer is don't get cancer, then the second rule is catch it as soon as possible, which is a good way to summarize it. And then the next horseman that he goes into and the last one, neurodegenerative disease.
Speaker 2:And he starts the book, the chapter, with this quote the greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge, which I thought was just great. Also great, the main genotype associated with Alzheimer's disease is the apogee genotype. So somebody that has the E4 allele has a greater risk of Alzheimer's disease, while somebody who has the E2 version actually is protected against Alzheimer's disease. So it is very much a genetic disease And, again, like we mentioned earlier, having type two diabetes actually doubles or triples your risk of Alzheimer's disease, which is about the same as actually having one copy of that E4 allele that I just mentioned. So, although it is genetic, the way in which you take care of your health actually does have a big impact as well.
Speaker 2:And, unlike cancer and type two diabetes, we actually have limited knowledge about how Alzheimer's disease begins and how to even treat it. And conventional wisdom doesn't believe in testing somebody for the E4 allele, because why burden somebody with that knowledge? right? But if we do, if we can find out if somebody does carry that E4 allele, then we can slow down or delay the onset of the disease. So essentially, peter believes and I know that's not what everybody believes that it is better to test early on, just so you can slow down and you can potentially, yeah, slow down the progression of the disease and have the onset be a lot later on.
Speaker 1:You know, when it comes to Alzheimer's, I don't know, I don't know how everybody feels about this, but for me it's probably one of the most terrifying 100,.
Speaker 2:I think so too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i can't Like the idea of being alone in my mind, as I you know, and then losing touch and having people forget, or having me forget who people are, and the idea of Like putting your family through that too. Yeah, like it's so sad. Imagine losing 70 years of beautiful memories.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can't, i can't with that one.
Speaker 2:I know That's so too. I'm like I cannot imagine, like that has to be just the most horrible thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's devastating, you know, and so I hope I'm not getting too ahead of myself, but I'm just pulling from the book Like one. If you're exercising right now, that is one of the most effective things that you can be doing, and what's neat is that the impacts that positively affect Alzheimer's with exercise happen at any age. So it doesn't matter if you're fucking 67, you start exercising, you will benefit. So it says in the book. A two year randomized controlled trial in Finland, published in 2015, found that interventions around nutrition, physical activity and cognitive training help maintain cognitive function and prevent cognitive decline among a group of more than 1200 at risk older adults. Two other large European trials have found that multi-domain lifestyle based interventions have improved cognitive performance among at risk adults, so there are signs of hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so interesting, now that you're talking about exercise, is that even grip strength is associated with lower risks of dementia. Because basically so he says that if you're in the lowest quartile of grip strength, so the weakest, you have a 72% higher incidence of dementia compared to those in the top quartile. So this just shows how important strength training and just having you know, just being strong and working on that is. So I think we should now switch focus to the tactics, so the juicy stuff.
Speaker 1:Sounds good. Could we just quickly summarize what the four horsemen are, real fast.
Speaker 2:So that would be metabolic dysfunction, mainly being type two diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and cognitive disease, mainly being Alzheimer's, parkinson's. So those are the four that have been affecting us the most throughout the years And that's where we really want to try to prevent those from happening early on as possible so we can live longer.
Speaker 1:And good segue to talk about the tactics. And can I just make one other comment? Do we notice that something about these horsemen all share one thing They are a man.
Speaker 2:Coincidence, i think not.
Speaker 1:I think not.
Speaker 2:It's not horse women.
Speaker 1:It is not, because if it was, we wouldn't be in this problem. It wouldn't be a problem to begin with.
Speaker 2:There wouldn't be a problem There would probably be good things, not bad things. That's correct, agree. So when Peter introduces the tactics and he treats a lot of patients too and whenever he goes to a cessation, he basically asks three questions Are they overnourished or undernourished, meaning, are they taking in too many or too few calories? Are they undermuscled or adequately muscled? And are they metabolically healthy or not? And then we'll go into the tactics, mainly being exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health and, lastly, exogenous molecules, which we won't talk about. But we'll talk about the other four which are very, very important. So Peter calls exercise the most powerful longevity drug, which it just makes you happy, doesn't it? Reading that? just, you know not that we don't love exercising enough.
Speaker 1:It's also like the best thing you could possibly do.
Speaker 2:Ever. So he says that exercise has the greatest power to determine how well you will live out the rest of your life. There's a ton of data supporting the notion that even a fairly minimal amount of exercise can lengthen your life by several years. Even going from zero weekly exercise to just 90 minutes per week can reduce your risk of dying from all causes by 14%, and it's impossible to find a drug that can do that. So that just shows you how important it is.
Speaker 1:Can I just have a quick anecdote there? Notice I say quick and then like completely disregard the word quick 30 minutes later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, for example, so on Saturday I went out on a ride and, like every other person on this earth, I'm vexed by problems that continue to elude me, and they have a weight and they stress me out, and what happens is the more of these, the more of these problems that we all start to have is it starts to erode at your life force and your light and who you are and all this stuff, and it's compounding, because you're like I want me to come through, but I'm thinking about all this stuff, and so on Saturday I go out on this ride and it's really really long, which you know, yeah, this was your like century ride.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is, oh man, that blew my. I told my two friends, sarah and Christy, about it. So I was like, oh my God, you guys, i'm not gonna leave a shunt in. I was like look, open up Strava. And I'm like look at this.
Speaker 1:It was a really really long ride, But what I want you to know is that it was 170, everybody kilometers.
Speaker 2:Take that in.
Speaker 1:It was a beast, but it was incredibly healing. Now you don't need 170 kilometers to be healed by this. You need very little, to be honest. You need about 40 minutes, and so whatever that means for you in distance, that's great. But so what's happening for me is I'm out on this ride and it's just me and the birds and the roosters, for real. The roosters are loud out in Stoville, ontario, and I just hear me in the buzz of the wheel, and what happens is I'm so present but I'm gone And I start without effort, having these solutions come to these problems, of which some of those solutions I'm acting on this week One I did this morning and one tomorrow, and so and that's not even the best part So I go and have this wonderful ride. I had two great people support me on the second leg, because it's really hard to be alone for five and a half hours. I was alone for three and a half of it And that's enough, that's enough alone time.
Speaker 1:And so I come back so grateful for these rides, no matter what. There's no such thing as a bad ride, even if it rains. And I get home And I like to hijack the two wolves within us, like which wolf inside you grows? the one that you feed. I like to think of it in heroes and villains, and so you have a hero version of yourself and you have a villain version of yourself And, depending on what's going on, which one grows? the one you encourage. And so, when I get home, all semblance of anxiety and depression and second guessing myself and feeling pessimistic and feeling conspiracy, someone's there to get me, who doesn't want me to succeed, like gone.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Like and I'm, and it's not just. It doesn't just last for an hour. I spent the whole day loving the world and loving people and loving my, and then the next day I wake up loving the world And my point is show me a drug that can do that. And it's not. and I'm not anti-drug, I'm very pro-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has its place.
Speaker 1:Multi-pronged, I think, drugs. It had proven over and over again to have really good world, real world effects. But I think, I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna shut up really soon, do not? But it's just going out and riding a bike, I'm just. I get to do that And the healing effects are just incredible.
Speaker 2:No, they are Like yesterday. I definitely felt fantastic the whole day and I still do 75K people checks drama.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what I'm gonna. I'm actually gonna have to correct Sean on that now, because my both of my two tires, oh yes, popped five kilometers before it ending And you know what It's like. I had a few people messaging being being like sending sad faces and this, and that I'm like guys, don't send sad faces. This was the best, like popped or not, like I was on that little golf cart with the biggest smile on my face. I was like I had the time of my life right now.
Speaker 2:Like whether my tires popped or they didn't. amazing What would do it all over again Like well, 70 kilometers is a huge bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was amazing.
Speaker 2:And this was the third time riding my bike, so it's like you know what I feel accomplished.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, you did on your first three rides more than I did in my first year of riding. I did not do seventies and stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was amazing, incredible feeling.
Speaker 1:Could be so good on you Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was so good. Which leads us into back into exercise, which can be talked about into different parts. So cardio, respiratory or aerobic fitness and strength. So aerobic fitness is just how efficiently your body can deliver oxygen to your muscles and how effectively your muscles can extract that oxygen, enabling you to run, walk or cycle or swim long distances, for example, and we'll go into how. One of the ways to measure this is VO2 max, and that's one of the single most powerful markers for longevity, which, again, we'll talk a little bit about soon. And then strength, and it's just not muscle, it's not just muscle matter, muscle mass that matters, it's also the strength of those muscles and their ability to generate force. And a study showed with subjects 50 and older that those with low muscle mass are at 40 to 50% greater risk of mortality than the control subjects, which just shows you how important it is. I'm just gonna skip forward a little.
Speaker 2:So Peter talks about the centenarian declethon De Decatlon, decatlon Wow, that took a little while. So what he says is this is just a framework that he uses to organize his patients' physical aspirations for the later decades of their lives. So he basically tells somebody to make a list of the 10 most important physical tasks you wanna be able to be doing for the rest of your life. So this may be simple things like being able to pick up your grandchild from the floor, or being able to hike one and a half miles on a hilly trail, or being able to carry two, five pound bags of grocery for five blocks. So he makes them make this list so he can sort of work backwards. So if you wanna be able to, let's say, walk up four flights of stairs when you're old right now, you should be able to sprint up those same four flights. So it's like you wanna work backwards, depending on what your goals are when you're older. So, in regards to exercise, he gives us sort of two ways to optimize this, One being zone two, which I think Sean is basically an expert in, and he can tell us all about zone two training, and I sort of knew a little bit about it.
Speaker 2:I had heard about it before, but this book completely changed my view on it, as my friends can probably tell you because I keep talking about it nonstop. So zone two is basically long, steady endurance work. So it's more or less this zone where you can talk while you're in it, but you don't wanna be talking. So zone one is just a casual stroll in the park, while zone five is like an all out sprint, basically. And then zone two is just any training, where again you can talk, but you don't really wanna talk. So your heart rate is a little bit elevated, yeah, but I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm building it. You're looking at me like I just feel like you're such an expert in this, that I'm like.
Speaker 2:I just want you to rave about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure. So I'll jump in. I'll talk about some of the coolest things about zone two. So, first of all, when we talk about zones, we're looking at five primary zones that we break up the heart rate in. So there are popular ways to figure out what your heart rate zones are for you, because they're all so different for everybody.
Speaker 1:One of the most popular ways is to take your age and minus it from 220, and that's how you find your max heart rate And from that you can take percentages and start figuring out zone ones and zone twos and stuff. And so so this zone work came, i believe, in the 90s, where strength coaches and doctors and people who are studying this stuff wanted some way to associate bands of heart rates with outcomes in performance and health. And so with this, it's not perfect by any means and there are definitely people who try to debunk everything, but there are characteristics from each zone that just seem to be showing some truths and showing some predictabilities. And so, zone one, zone two why it's so great is what it does best, in my opinion, is it increases your mitochondrial density.
Speaker 2:In your type one, muscle fibers slow twitch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and why we care about that is that you know, we know from biology class that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. So if we think about it, if the more is better in this case, with the more powerhouses we have, the more access to power, to light the grid, to power the city. And if I'm doing a lot of this zone two work, what happens is I start having all this extra energy that I can then go deploy into my workout, which then converts into intensity. And I think nature is so cool, because a deconditioned person or a beginner doesn't start exercising in zone five, do they? They start, the fuck, in zone one and two, and so nature knows this, and so nature, it carries you along, it shepherds you along, and I just think it's so wonderfully elegant. Yeah, and to me a vote. You know the idea that there's definitely someone bigger than ourselves who designed our shits.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because that's really friggin' cool.
Speaker 2:I also think it's like I was telling my friends this, like when you've been, i don't know, exercising for a while, or just like I feel like CrossFit is very big on this. We sort of do very intense exercise where it takes us all the way to zone five And I feel like we don't do enough. Zone two, and I think one, because of course our classes are short, they're just an hour so you can't be, possibly you can't do everything. So I feel like we do lack that zone two where we like kind of get so into fitness and we just want to do like crazy workouts that are going to burn so many calories. So we're always like pushing that extreme and not appreciating something like zone two, because it can feel boring, because it's not like you're not sprinting or you're not going crazy, it's just like it's more of like rucking or like things that are a little bit slower, so it's not as exciting as strength training or those other things. Right?
Speaker 2:And another thing about zone two and, using type one, slow twitch muscle fibers is that that is actually where fatty acids get metabolized, again metabolized in the mitochondria. No-transcript Glucose can be metabolized in several ways, but fatty acids can only be metabolized in the mitochondria. So when you're in zone two, that's when you're that's the most effective place to be burning fat, and I feel like a lot of people don't know that We tend to think I need to do something crazy to be burning fat, when really just zone two training is actually the best way to be burning fat.
Speaker 1:That's correct, and I also want to just mention I'm so glad that you talked about crossfitters in particular, not doing enough zone two, because crossfitters are very guilty of being too cool for it And it's such a shame, and that's if, if you're listening to this and you come to our gym, you hit our classes. This is the number one reason why we we have re.
Speaker 2:We've introduced an endurance club, yeah, which is awesome. It's like perfect for this.
Speaker 1:It's, it sits within the perfect split. It sits on a Wednesday and a Sunday And what? what it allows you to do is come in and reload the body. It allows you to improve your body's ability to burn fat, because it's not just your burning fat in, because it's not, it's not completely true that you're only burning fat within the zone two. You're in, you're improving your body's ability to do that and utilize that and upcycle fatty acids into the combustion you know. So I implore you to come to the endurance class And when you arrive, don't just come and hit it like a crossfitter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Because. I think that's what we want to do. Cause you feel like it's not enough, or like, if I'm not dying, if I'm, if I don't end the workout on the floor, then it's like, oh, that I didn't do enough.
Speaker 1:And in pitting one against the other or which one's better, well, that's the wrong question. That's like saying should I eat meat or vegetables? Well, no, fucking eat them both. You know like no, you have to do them both. It's not a question of one or the other, it's a which one are you? which one are you improving the most? and good on you, by the way, if you're somebody who comes in here and just like no, it's easier for me to go zone five. That's really impressive in its own.
Speaker 2:Like cross.
Speaker 1:That's what I love about crossfitters that we choose the hard way. Right, we're, we're, we're built a little, we're grizzled, yeah, so you're the best. I'm so glad that you brought that point out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he says that, even like, improving our zone two will eventually improve our VO two max, which is basically the crazy all out sprint. So there is a benefit to you being in that zone two, because when you are in that zone five you're going to be way better in that zone find five than you were before. That's correct. So Peter suggests, if you're new to it, two 30 minute sessions per week is a great starting point, but ideally you want to reach the point where you're doing three one hour sessions or four 45 minute sessions, but again, anything you do helps. And then VO two max. So the other side.
Speaker 2:So this is a type of training that you want to introduce five to six months after your studies. On two, if you haven't been exercising much and you know you're kind of just getting into this. So this is just the maximum rate of oxygen consumption, so it measures how much oxygen you breathe in while you're exercising as hard as you can. The more oxygen you inhale, the more energy your body can use. So and studies suggest that VO two max will decline about 10% per decade and up to 15% per decade after the age 50. So if you want to have a high VO two max when you're older. You need to have a much higher VO two max now because it's only going to decline.
Speaker 2:The way that Peter says you should train for this is you can use a four by four approach where for four minutes you will go really intense not intense that you can't keep doing it for four minutes, but just enough that you can keep going for four And then you rest for four minutes enough to bring you back to a steady condition And then you go back to the sprint. So you do this four times. So just like a four by four way of going about it, which I think CrossFit is really good.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:In that sense.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's you and you're okay. Anything you want to say about VO two.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, okay. So I'm going to give us a really hard job, So to keep us on track, because I know you've, you know, in respect to your time, so I've got, i got three things that I want to hit. So number one, hardest thing in the, in the, you know, because there's, we have so much more to talk about. So what are the final things that you can say about, about, like, the exercise piece, and then after that can you talk a little bit about nutrition.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing is I want to hear about how this has affected Ari. So, after you read this book, how does your life look different and how will it look different in the next few years?
Speaker 2:I think like in terms of exercise is you don't want to be an athlete who just does one thing. You don't want to just cycle or just strength train. You got to do a little bit of it all. So you're literally using your type one muscles and your type two muscles and you're becoming in all around good athlete, not just focusing on one. And I think Sean said this to me too. He's like I noticed that you started running Like, are you doing this because of the book? Because before I was literally just doing CrossFit. And it definitely is because of the book, because I feel like I need to be doing not just strength training, i need to be working on other parts of my fitness.
Speaker 2:And I think another important point that Peter brings up is the importance of not getting hurt, because and stability in general, and doing stability, work or mobility and all of that how important that is, because usually when you get hurt, it's not because of something you did, it's because of several little things you've been doing wrong for months and months before that, and then you get hurt and then you have to sit out for a week or two and that can lead to a loss of muscle mass and all these things. So you do want to prioritize doing things well, because, again, going back to CrossFit, i feel like sometimes we just want to go heavy or go crazy and do this and that every single day, which is not sustainable. Eventually you're going to get hurt. And then what? then you're going to have to take a week off. So, like, is it really worth going crazy and doing things incorrectly? Probably not, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now, as far as the nutrition stuff goes like absolutely enormous topic, is there anything that you want to hit with a broad stroke there?
Speaker 2:I think, like our what they call the standard American diet which, for short, is sad Sad, Which is like, of course it would be sad Is mainly filled with junk food, which is not what you want, because that doesn't feel your body correctly. Essentially, you want to be making sure that you're getting, primarily, enough protein, because that is crucial. Any diet that tells you to decrease the amount of protein you're getting in is not a diet you want to be in, because then you're compromising muscle mass, and muscle mass is linked to longevity how long you live So you definitely want to be prioritizing that in terms of fat. Fat not all fat is bad, like we talked about. We do need fat for several reasons. It is not only a fuel, but it is a building block in our body. So we do want to be getting enough And, in terms of that, we want to be prioritizing monos, monounsaturated fats, like olive oil, avocado, macadamia, nuts and staying away from saturated fats like corn oil and all the other bad.
Speaker 2:Margarine, butter. All of that, and in terms of carbs, carbs are not bad. Carbs are good for you, we need them for energy, but of course, you don't want to be taking in excess carbs, because, again, that's going to lead to type two diabetes. And everybody's different, so one thing that works for one person might not work for another. So just because you see somebody eating certain things on Instagram or following a certain diet, doesn't necessarily mean that that's what you should be doing, because I can backfire and not suit you, because all our bodies are different, so we're all going to react to certain levels of certain macronutrients differently, right?
Speaker 1:Really really good point. You know, one of the things in our industry is abdominal. So if you have abs, that's currency And that goes a really long way. And so you know, abdominal fat, having it around your waist, says very, very little about the overall overall picture. So be very careful with taking advice or believing in somebody who has abs on TikTok And if you're seeking abs over other things, that you know.
Speaker 1:Going back to the beginning and what Ari was saying just about, like, getting off this idea of I'm trying to live for a certain length of time, but also without the context of like how happy are those years, how strong are those years, is not really living at all. And so I always view like chasing. You know, I want to. I want to have, for men, like 9% body fat and have shredded core, like, but do you know what that's going to do to your quality of life And are you prepared for that? And is that exact like? is that there? people can genetically just get there And if they have this shredded torso and yeah, it looks great doesn't really change anything else but they could be so metabolically deranged underneath the hood.
Speaker 1:So I think I'll just leave it there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, i think a good way to think about it is. He says if your great great grandmother would not recognize it, you're probably better off not eating it. Because that probably means, yeah, it's processed food, and if you bought it on the perimeter of the grocery store, it's probably better than if you bought it in the middle of the grocery store. So those are just too little little ways to make sure you're eating eating the right stuff.
Speaker 1:So can we talk a little bit about what your life looks like and you know some of the main takeaways that you got from this book.
Speaker 2:I think mainly like the big things for me were definitely zone two, training And like can I start rocking today? Yeah, which I messaged you. I'm like okay, sean, so tell me about rocking. What do I need to get? Like, how do I get started now? Because it's just, it's basically what rocking is. It's just weighted walking. I guess you could say you're just walking with a weighted vest or a weighted bag or something like that which will take you to zone two.
Speaker 2:So it's just an easy way to do it, which is my goal just to walk with my dog that way. So Sean just picked up another book here called the comfort crisis. I'm assuming this is our next book.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure, michael Easter, it can be, but I think for somebody who is just like you're so right about zone two. But I really think, like this, this adds a lot of scientific background and a lot of romantic background to why carrying has been something that is so human and so central to who you are as a human and me and everyone. It's really rooted in human evolution and it's such a simple, simple concept and it just has wild health benefits And we should totally do a comfort crisis in a book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've heard of it in several podcasts now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Peter references this book. Yeah, i'm like I've heard of it In his book, their friends Mike Leaser is like yeah, there's like this, like you know, this group of them and they're all like this like, exactly Like even you wanted to be trauma.
Speaker 2:with Paul Conti, yeah, and he mentioned some of them like man. all these people are friends with each other, which is incredible. Can we join that friend group?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they went to school together. Right Like it's, it's cool.
Speaker 2:That is just so amazing, that's another book that we'll definitely do.
Speaker 1:Yes, we have to. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the other two things that he talks about in the book is sleep and how eight hours is important. Don't think that, oh, you can get away with six or five every single night. No, that's going to add up because again, that also leads to Alzheimer's disease and metabolic dysfunction and all these things. So do make sure you're getting your eight hours. And he also goes into emotional health and how none of this is important if you're not happy, like why do you want to live to a hundred or 90 or whatever it may be, 110, if your life sucks right, if your wife hates you, your husband hates you, your kids hate you, you're miserable every day. There's there's no point. So you do have to take care of your emotional health and seek help if you do need it. Like there's a lot of stigma around that, but therapy is incredible and highly recommended to anybody.
Speaker 1:So yeah, both of us have benefited and do it, so it's yeah, i'm so glad you. I actually forgot about the emotional health. He does a really really good job.
Speaker 2:He talks a lot about his own story, right Yeah. Which explains things really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So he just ends the book with a quote that I thought was awesome, by his friend, rick, which says if you want to find someone's true age, listen to them. If they talk about the past and they talk about all the things that happen, the things that they did they've gotten old. If they talk about their dreams, their aspirations, what they're still looking forward to, they're young. And he says here's to staying young even as we grow older, which I thought was such a great way to end the book.
Speaker 1:I read that over and over and over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i'm like highlight, highlight, highlight. That's probably where my highlighter went, for sure. Just double bold highlighter on top of highlighter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You know why it landed for me. I think, like you know, you start to get into these phases of from. You get in these phases of life And for me they happen in years, they happen in five year cycles. So 30 to 35 was a block, 35 to 40 is a block, And I'm right in the middle of it And like 40 to 45 will be a block.
Speaker 1:Maybe for other people it's three years or 10 years or whatever, but five years I've become a new person. Every five years I'm a new person And I'm usually a little embarrassed who I was. You know, you know, we all have that. And from 20 to 25, you think you're fucking no shit you know nothing.
Speaker 2:And then you know, as you get older and every single time it's like I knew nothing at 30, i knew nothing at 40. Right.
Speaker 1:It's, you know it's amazing. And then people, like society, just sort of looks at you in lovingly and just be like, ah yeah, you think that's a thing. No, yeah, but it's, you'll see. But why the hell am I talking about? Oh, yeah, so you know why it stuck out to me is that like because sometimes I think about you know, sean, why are you trying to become an Iron Man at 37? What? are you doing.
Speaker 2:It's going to be so cool that you're doing that.
Speaker 1:Oh my, God, you know, like, if people can have these, what are you doing? Just, and it made me think no, i, i, i'm in. so in line with that quote about how the second you stop thinking and reaching for the future, you're dying.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm here to live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like he talks about resume virtues versus Yule G virtues, which is like resume virtues are just like the things you accomplish.
Speaker 1:Yule G.
Speaker 2:Virtues are things that people are going to say about you when you're dead. It's like do you, does it really matter that you got? okay, of course, it's like helpful that you went to school and all. But it's like, do you want people to be saying, oh, he got a bachelor's degree of science, he did this. No, you wanted them to be saying, oh, sean was an incredible human. Like he was so funny, he was so nice, he helped everybody. Like those are the things that matter, right.
Speaker 1:And how many you know it's it's. It's a dark moment, but how many celebrations of life or funerals have you been at where you're just like? I can't believe how amazing this person was.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. So that's speaking to your Yule G. It's such a good point that he makes It is.
Speaker 2:And then just one last quote that I thought was so good. So it's by Paulo Coelho, this Brazilian author which you know, made it a little cooler. But anyway he says maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming something. Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that really isn't you, so that you can be who you were meant to be in the first place. That's good.
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 2:So good. It's like you know, shaving off all the things that are not really you, which we learn with time. That's why we want to live long and live long better, so awesome. Highly recommend the book everybody. Please, please read, even though it's so long.
Speaker 1:I have comments on that quote, but because of time I'm going to save us and the world from uh, i want to throw it out there. If you're enjoying these reading with Ari podcast, please do let us know and give us any feedback that you think would be helpful, And also if you have a book that you want us to read and by that I mean Ari will make really, really great notes, and then I will you know, um highlight the book, like me Yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, but we're having a lot of fun doing these And if you're enjoying them, please do let us know, And if you have book recommendations, that as well. And with that I just want to thank you, Ari, for making time to join us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, this was awesome, as always. Love chatting with you.
Speaker 1:Always the best.