The Richard & Dr. Ed Show
The Richard & Dr. Ed Show
#26 - Health and Fitness or Health VS Fitness
We discuss How the health and fitness industries work for and against each other.
What's up guys? I'm here with Dr. Ed
Richard Aceves:one more time. How are don't miss read? Very good. Actually, I think medical world is why it's going well, you so you had a chat yesterday, you had a did you have to like defend a portion of your paper? Or what was the deal yesterday?
Dr Ed:Oh, no. That was Tuesday,
Richard Aceves:it was days go by too fast.
Dr Ed:It was basically my, my proposal for the project that I'm doing. Now, okay.
Richard Aceves:Nice.
Dr Ed:Good feedback. I always like feedback from the not the super senior people, like the people who are maybe not even scientists. And if they say that made sense, then I'm happy that I didn't make it too complicated to understand. Because one thing I've noticed about scientists and academia and doctors as well, is they use the language that means nobody can understand it. Right? The assumption is that they know what they're talking about.
Richard Aceves:But if you don't know the language you're too afraid to ask.
Dr Ed:Exactly. And I think it's a key part of being a use, or doctor or scientist for society, is, can people understand what you're talking about? And I think that's, I mean, I saw that humans on Time Magazine, now we've made it, right. Because he's changed the way that some people interface with science in the US, which is,
Richard Aceves:for sure, but I think now more so you know, we'll always kind of bring up AI but like, I use the new, the new, I forgot the name of it, I have to put it up. As SCI pilot, I think it's called like science pilot. But it's a Google Chrome extension. And so now I can go into anything that I want to study, like any paper that you send over or that I can't understand quite fully. I can you basically just highlight things you're like, can you explain in simple terms, and it's awesome. It's like explaining it to a kindergartener, because my mind is sometimes like kindergarteners.
Dr Ed:Yeah, I think that's, that's gonna be a great tool. Yeah. So another one that's gonna be able to like, look at all of the papers and see which ones are basically false or made up or cool in interesting that don't fit in with the rest of the data, which also has its own issues, because then you're never going to find anything that's kind of out there in you as well.
Richard Aceves:Right? Yeah, there was a who was it that the booty doctor the booty? Booty PT. Brett Contreras, Brett Contreras. Yeah. See, he's made a good brand for himself. He was he just had a, I think you put up a tweet saying that there's finally concise data on glute bridges versus deadlifts and barbell back squats, and that he has to apologize because he was wrong about certain things. But the stuff I'm reading now, which I'm going to go into with the with the call with the number, the mentoring program I've been, I've been taking my notes.
Unknown:Essentially, I mean, it goes back to me always saying exercise is the byproduct and tension over position. Because the Golgi tendon organ has so much, there's so much communication happening outside of just the exercise involved within the Goldhagen tenant organ. So the capacity not only to contract the muscles, but now I'm reading about different afferent muscle fibers. And also other may get told me if I got this wrong or right the Meccano receptors, meta or Macondo or something along those lines, there's these receptors that are coming in from the skin, the bones, the eyes, the hearing, basically all of your senses that are observing information, and that sends direct signals to the Golgi tendon organ tissue, it's okay if it's an overload of a stimulus or not enough stimulus, and allows the actual muscle fibers to contract. So in essence, it starts to explain emotional mapping.
Dr Ed:And how your environment can have a huge impact on how you move.
Richard Aceves:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So going to the same gym starts to not become the same gym, essentially, it can actually become toxic. Or, you know, like I had a, somebody wrote to me a message on the q&a. And they're like, I'm trying to figure out why my shoulders hurting and some days it hurts. And some days it doesn't. I'm like, well look at your environment. And then one of the other things I told her is like, don't contract so forcefully. And she was like, that's the most oxymoron contradictory thing I've ever heard in my life, like, don't contract your muscle harder. Be kinder with the contraction. But it makes sense because if there's an overwhelming stimulus that you're going to get injured, from a behavioral standpoint or protective standpoint Uh, basically, this organ will send the tension somewhere else. And so sometimes you have to start very lightly with the contractions and build up from there. But anywho back to the AI is amazing for making things into into simpler terms. And so what are the are you allowed to give out any information on what you're doing with the lactate?
Dr Ed:Yeah, I mean, it'll be published soon. But we're developing a way to, to measure it in the brain, how it's changing. So obviously, from sports medicine, they've always measured it in the system. So it gives you a good indication of how healthy your mitochondria are in muscle in the whole body. But it doesn't tell you specifically where they might be healthier or where they might be less healthy, where you need to optimize or help them, which again, will come into the emotional mapping side as well, probably. But yeah, being able to pinpoint in the brain, the concentration of lactate and how it changes over time in response to stress. It sounds easy when you say it, but the technology required to actually measure lactate is not primitive, but it's just a challenge. Just the way
Richard Aceves:this is like a prick in the finger with blood, or what do you How are you measuring? No,
Dr Ed:no. So in an MRI scanner, so in an MRI scanner, you have different responses of different cells, tissues, water molecules, metabolites to the radio frequency fields, look up. So they do these radiofrequency pulses that influence the molecules in different ways. So because you know, how it influences each different molecule, you can map them out. So you can see the metabolites without needing to be invasive in real time. So you can measure oxalate and creatine and all of the things, the issue is that lactate is a really like small peak. So it's really hard to measure it accurately. So that's basically what my project is going to try and do and then correlate that with mental health.
Richard Aceves:Nice man. And then how we can essentially use movement towards mental health.
Dr Ed:It opens the door to the field that right, maybe movement is important. Maybe the body is important.
Richard Aceves:But I mean, when you look at successful therapies, you know, like the psychosomatic therapies, and you know, a lot of there's a lot more therapies that do involve movement, right, it's just the type of movement that it's involved, or the the amount of stress in the movement.
Dr Ed:It's the, I mean, for me, it's what's appropriate or accessible in a centralized system. So there's no therapy in the NHS, that is talking therapy, because they, they're all apart from EMDR, which is very hard to get ahold of, because of the resources. So even it's kind of CBT, it's, it's 12 weeks, and you deliver it as 12 weeks, one hour a week or two hours a week for 12 weeks, because it's something that you can
Richard Aceves:like almost prescribe a framework
Dr Ed:like this can be delivered, and it doesn't matter who delivers it, which is again, an issue because you need therapeutic alliance, you need to build the relationships. So everything that is applied in the NHS is always based on we did a study, and it seemed to show that there were some benefits, and it was cost effective over this period of time.
Richard Aceves:Gotcha. So we will see. Yeah, I mean, it seems very cost effective to go to a 20 minute walk at sunrise, maybe barefoot doesn't, it seems like the most cost effective actually.
Dr Ed:Somebody just reshard this paper, which basically shows even three minutes of red light frequencies about when you're older than age 37 basically brings your vision and the contrast the color contrast back to when you were young. So if you're above 37, and you aren't seeing either like natural light or have a red light device in the morning, you're leaving something on the table that will prevent you having blindness essentially as you get older. That's crazy. I just three minutes. Nice.
Richard Aceves:I was just watching. I was scrolling death scrolling, unfortunately. But I was just very burnt out and I was like I see a desk well I did put a timer on it. But I was that scrolling and I came across this. These Peruvian people becoming like foodie influencers like how to live out in the Peruvian Jungle, it's awesome. But the coolest part is like, it says old dude that it was like 78 years old. And you know, they've lived off of the land for ever. And I've never seen nicer teeth in my life. Like homeslice had like beautiful white teeth. And he was strong as pulling out the, you're showing how they pull out the Yuka route to make breakfast, which was, you know, kind of a cool, tie things up and then pull the pull the route out. But it was amazing to see how healthy this guy was at 78 Still doing, you know, basically manual labor every morning. Eyesight looked good. He was handy. And more importantly, you could just see like the health in the teeth, which I think is something that you see. Not very often in many cultures nowadays.
Dr Ed:Yes, and learning factors coming together. Yeah.
Richard Aceves:So I wanted to get into fitness versus health, because there's a lot of buzz in those words, I guess, where I guess the fitness industry is promoting health. But it's not necessarily healthy all the time? And how can we start to draw a proper line between doing some fitness or physical fitness feat? versus actually staying healthy in the long term? Yeah. So tell me your thoughts on that. Mr. Ed?
Dr Ed:Yeah, there's lots of avenues. I mean, there's mitochondria are an interesting topic. And we kind of touched on this in my talk on the mentoring call that we did is that they're almost at the intersection between health and fitness. And I think, again, I came from the fitness industry with a view of health. And it's very easy to go down blind alleys in your thinking. And that has happened when you kind of look at bodybuilders talking about health versus people who are in health research talking about health, but there has to be some kind of middle ground. And I think having clear definitions is important. So I always give my definitions which I stole from Dr. Ted. And I'd like to say that he has an IQ of 210, before I give any definitions by him, because maybe he knows what he's talking about. So his definition of health is the absence of disease. The balance of anabolic and catabolic processes according to the lifecycle of the individual, so a plus b plus c, the balance of anabolic and catabolic processes are processes that build things up and those that break things down in the body. So with that definition, and then you can kind of put and get the concept, there's old studies that show that exercise is good for you. But too much exercise over time is not going to be good for you because you're not recovering. And that's again is focusing too much on one side of the equation I building and breaking down. If you do too much exercise all the time, all you're doing is breaking down and you're never allowing yourself to rebuild, right. And then in fitness, fitness, you can almost replace with the word readiness. Think so its readiness for a specific context or a task. So in your case, you were fit and healthy enough to deal with a boulder. Right? It may have hidden aside, it wasn't probably necessarily like there was a good hormetic stressor because you survived and came out the other side and learned a lot from it. But you wouldn't go around recommending to people to be hit by a boulder
Richard Aceves:as a fitness, new sport. I mean, they have now like the slapping competitions, it basically looks like they're getting hit by boulders.
Dr Ed:But I saw those guys, they just like pass out with a slap what's wrong
Unknown:with people? Why would you even go into that, but anywho I hear you on that one, that would not be a good test. I mean, it would be a good test, but not the best test of fitness.
Dr Ed:And it goes back to, again, a definition of fitness that is maybe more holistic and more sustainable being the absence of injury, and the balance of neuronal and hormonal systems and the capacity to complete the tasks that you are doing, ideally the ones that you enjoy. Right, sometimes we have to do things that we don't enjoy. And I think again, that's as well and nothing. Another missing piece of the puzzle is.
Richard Aceves:Yeah, and I think but I think doing the things that you don't enjoy is part of fitness and health. Yes, you know, because it's like I don't enjoy cardio, but I still need to do it to stay healthy. Like there still needs to be movement done. People don't enjoy heavy things. Like you know, we've worked with some Yogi's that do not appreciate intensity, but it's still needed. Um, I just watched a documentary on the Shaolin monks and they were talking about, you know, the amount of intensity and pain that you're going to go through, is not to punish you, but to show the body that it's capable of, and therefore strengthening all of the systems, which was very interesting, because they, you know, it's a very philosophical approach, but it's true. You know, when we look at the Westerns view of fitness, it's ideally just the capacity to survive or fit enough to survive the task, which has become any sort of Western sport is can you survive the task? Or can you
Dr Ed:build a following on social media with your body that to
Unknown:that too, you know, but it's the key is, can you do it in a healthy manner, because, you know, we're starting to see it more and more. And again, it's, it's heartbreaking when you see these amazing athletes that have had these amazing feats, but they've led to a physical discomfort, pain, recurring injury, so they're now they're no longer absent of injury. And they have hormonal imbalances that lead to mental health. You know, we've seen a few that are talking about, you know, the depression or high anxiety, and they're still, for me, what's captivating is, they're still doing exactly the same thing to stay in these belief systems, that it's healthy what they're doing, but it's not healthy. It's making them
Richard Aceves:perform for a certain task, but it's not actually creating health in any way.
Dr Ed:Yeah, and we've seen this in, even in non fitness, it still relates to this concept of fitness and readiness in a client that you had in the music industry. And the the, the infrastructure around them is just designed to allow them to perform their music, so then they can get money basically, from the top right. Their interests aren't in the sustainable performance. They just putting the performance to happen for the next performance. As long as we can get to the next one and the next one, then we're good. Yeah, until we're not. And then then you get another call.
Richard Aceves:Yeah. And I mean, it's a you know, it's a vicious cycle that you see. I mean, it's, it's basically a what, it's not a Son of a biscuit. I'm blanking here, it's, it's an abusive relationship, right? That you're allowing yourself to be in. So whether it's with exercise, whether it's with managers, and others, you know, controlling your time,
Unknown:it all goes back to the same thing, you're, you're doing it to survive the task and to perform without any long term value of what's going to happen. Like I just saw, I went to see them. I think, last year, they said it was their last one, but I hope this one is, you know, 72 years old kits and they're still performing you're like, How in the hell are you doing this thing and there's like, explosions going on. And they got fucking Gene Simmons still spitting fire.
Richard:And I don't know what other dude is, but he's like, flying across the crowd. Like, it's it like the end he they look jacked and healthy, and, you know, still doing it. You know, and I don't know the ins and outs of, you know, their management or anything, but I'm pretty sure that Gene Simmons kind of does most of it.
Unknown:You know, it's a, it's a big physical toll for these artists to put on performances. But when you're starting to get injured, and you're starting to see these physical symptoms, show themselves, I understand there's a point of performing and there's a point of recovery, but that should be managed much better, as to how much you should be performing versus where's the recovery and the reconstruction coming from specially if all of this is leading towards mental health, right. So you know, that all the symptoms will have, for me, all the most of the symptoms, will start as self chatter, and then will turn into some sort of phobia, or some sort of ritualistic behavior, and then they will show themselves in physical symptoms. Because for me, I feel like that's the biggest amount of intensity to make the body stop. You know, and so eventually, you know, a tweak back is going to only create more fear and more stress and make you want to perform less because you're like, I'm not it, the amount of discomfort that happened and intensity that went to my body. I don't feel like dealing with this anymore. And so that's for me, that's why, you know, most of my clients even though we start off with, you know, chronic back pain or acute back pain or shoulder pain, it's been years in the building. Have you just not listening or paying attention to it?
Dr Ed:Yes, I wanted to talk a bit about my So the yo and the semi pro footballer that came to see me. Yeah. Last week, I think. And during the assessment, he said, Why don't professional football teams have somebody that has your knowledge? Yeah. I said, I don't know. But I do know, it's because the they're so focused on the performance, fitness, angle view, right? And tradition that they, they There's nobody like, out there looking at the bigger picture for what is fitness? What is health? And how do we foster those principles amongst our players? For the long term? Right. I mean, I think the moment that football, they always seem to be slightly behind the strength and conditioning, all of these things, and then one team will do one thing, and then the others will start to.
Unknown:Yeah. And again, it's
Richard Aceves:I think that's part of it. The other part of it is politics. Yeah.
Unknown:You know, and you're looking at, there was a, you know, American football, there used to always be like, you're gonna take steroids, right, or some sort of peds throughout your career, if you have to take them during high school, which is where people are, you know, trying to go from high school to college to professional, like, if you take him during high school, you may make it to college, but you will make it passive and you take them in college, you may do well in college, but you won't go pro. And then if you make a pro, then it's just a matter of sustainability. But it was it was, for me, it was the what's fascinating about that is, we only focus on performance, because you have, you know, on the on the performance side, most of the guys that are coming up with these programs are already so naturally gifted, that they just, you know, you don't need to do much for them. So then essentially, what you need to do as a, as a coach, or a strength and conditioning coach or a rehabilitator, you know, physiotherapist in these programs, is make sure that when they get off the field, you can make them feel good enough, so that they can feel like they're normal, and then they'll get hurt on the field, and then it's game over right, then you did it on the field, because it's sports specific. So, you know, there was, there's something about that, you know, trying to understand the amount of stress that it takes on the body to be, you know, a football player or any, you know, kind of professional, semi professional sports, you know, person, athlete, and the next one is just being able to understand the necessity of balance. But it doesn't go along with the mantra of what's been done for decades, for getting that we're just dealing with extremely gifted athletes that work that are willing to work massively. And so when you start to have pains and aches, you're one out of you know, a million people that want to be in that position. So they're, they'd rather break 1000 of them to find that one superstar, than to actually care about the 1000 people that they're broken. That just, it's the name of the game, right? It's entertainment. So it's just Whoever sells tickets at this point.
Dr Ed:I mean, maybe eventually, it will be great to watch loads of broken people trying to play.
Richard Aceves:Listen, I feel that, you know, with any sort of professional sport, they should be allowed to take whatever the hell they want to take. And we could just watch these superhuman freaks kind of go at it. There's a viral video going around, it says, The guy goes, if you have the right amount of autism, like if you're like, right on that spectrum, and we give you steroids, you could be the best athlete, you could be the best, you know, military, like that's really what you're looking for is like if you have the right amount of autism, and you're just like, so hyper focused, and learning these patterns like you're unstoppable. And then you give them steroids just become like, just insanely strong.
Richard:Now, he kind of fun to watch. But yeah, I think I mean, the sad fact is, is that everybody's still stuck on very old methodologies and points of views on the body.
Unknown:And I think progress is starting to change, especially cut from the community aspect, because, you know, like you, you start to have people like Steffi Cohen and, you know, Mark bell that are starting to push a lot more of these conversations forward.
Richard Aceves:But at the end of the day, the vast majority are still stuck with
Unknown:you know, having the right program is going to gear the proper results. And that's, that's where I think you lose it and if you rate if you play the politics correctly for any sort of If you want to be a strength and conditioning coach for, you know, any sort of professional team, it just having the politics in place, and making sure that you're following methodologies that are up to par. And then you're basically set.
Dr Ed:Yeah, well, I know that a, an extremely famous athlete approached Dr. Ted asking for him to work with him. And he said, No, because your team's too big. And there will be too much disagreement with my way and my ways the way so
Richard Aceves:yeah, no. No, go
Dr Ed:where was I gonna go on to next? I don't really great. So
Richard Aceves:I was No, I goofed up my rants dammit, Richard. I had a have a new client that just low back pain three kids. All of the shibez should Shazam. We didn't do much. I just did morning routines with her and discomforts already down, swelling is down. It's awesome. It's just so simple. Some of the stuff. Yeah,
Dr Ed:I mean, the days after our session, I think beyond feelin had a bit of back discomfort, but then he did a football session. He said it was really confusing. He didn't really know how he felt. And I was like, Maybe you didn't have the pain that you normally get and wrote just fell a bit weaker, because he using different muscles? And he's like, yeah, that probably makes sense. And then he did like a another big sled session yesterday and really enjoyed it. And I was like, what next? And I was like, Well, does the backup. Is that No, that backs fine. Like we're just keep it.
Unknown:Let's build consistency, first of what we're doing.
Richard Aceves:Otherwise, here comes the pain. Yeah, that's all good. I dig it. But yeah, bro, I think we're doing good. I think the I think the fitness industry will start to change slowly, I will keep doing my part.
Dr Ed:Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is that because we have principles? You mentioned the word method earlier, because we look at the body and we look at health. And we look at Fitness Through principles. And we're always trying to refine those principles, which is what you teach from moved Academy will teach you move Academy as well as, when you understand the principles, you can choose whatever method you want, after knowing the principles. The problem is if you just pick a method, and you work with people, and one day, your method isn't going to work, because it's not based on the principles that you can adapt and flexibly apply to anybody. Right, and I found myself, and this is probably why we're being referred more complex cases is because other people will know that their method doesn't work for that thing, where we think our principles still apply to every human being and therefore, row, let's check.
Unknown:Well, and I think the, to really reiterate that, it's not that people don't know if their method will work or not work on that person. It's when it doesn't work, then they don't have another solution. And they outsource the client to somebody else, because they have no clue. Because they never understood the true context behind the methodology. They just learned it somewhere. And they just recite it. So,
Dr Ed:which is fine as long as they refer the client? Right? But
Richard:yeah, for sure. But the key would be is if you actually took the time to understand the context behind the principles that you're teaching or the methods, the principles behind the methods that you're teaching, then you would have a solution. Like, that's what I work on with all my coaches, and even with my clients is like, if I can educate my clients enough, then eventually you don't need me because they understand how their bodies actually working. But if you just tell somebody go walk 20 minutes outside, cool, and then it doesn't work. Like that happened with one of my clients. It wasn't working. And I was like, that's interesting. So let's start to look at what's going wrong here. And so it turns out that they were walking outside, but as they were walking outside, they would always be on the phone with somebody, or they would be looking at their phone and text messaging. Not only that they had old shoes that had thick axles, so they weren't ever actually grounding. So there's no grounding going on. And they were wearing sunglasses. So morning, walk out the train. Right, but So otherwise, if you don't actually start to go, Okay, well, I needed the actual grounding to happen. I need the red light to come in. I need you to be present. Like if, you know, I need the heart rate to be slightly elevated. You know, like, I need the nasal breathing. There's reasons why I need all of this and I can talk to you about them. But if I just say, well, you're just if it's not working, then stop. That doesn't make sense, it's like, let's understand why it's not working. And so that's the key is any method you want to use is great. But if you don't understand the context and the principles behind it, you're gonna get to a dead end soon enough, right? I have a new client that hasn't been able to feel his pecs for in 17 years, get he still wants to go up on his benchpress is still snatching is still, you know, back squatting. And, you know, they, they put in a new program that strength and conditioning rather than more CrossFit, you know, CrossFit based, and his numbers are going up, but I'm like, bro, they're gonna go up until you absolutely break. Because right now that chest isn't working, you're having shoulder pain, but look at your squat, you've put on 20 kilos on your squat, you put on 10 more kilos, that shoulder is not going to be able to maintain, you're going to hike up, you're
Unknown:going to put on pressure on your on your lumbar erectors. And now all of a sudden, you're gonna have a fucking hip problem as well. He's like, Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, dude. So it's not the method of you know, just going more strength base is going to get you stronger, it will until it doesn't because now you've had 17 years, going back to the little golden nuggets of the Golden 10 In Oregon, of showing your body that every time he goes into the gym to go do any sort of extensive or intense workouts, these muscles completely shut off. And they go towards the a fair insight for you for them to complete the task. And so again, it goes back to the methods may work or not. But as professionals in the industry, we should be looking at truly understanding the concepts that we're teaching, and being able to explain them in simple terms, going back to the beginning of the podcast, you with extra explaining the lactate to to your peers. Like it needs to be simple enough that when my son comes and asked me what the hell the Golgi tendon is, I can explain it to him. Otherwise, I shouldn't be teaching it because I'm just regurgitating information that's going to lead towards trouble down the road.
Dr Ed:Yeah, and I think there's some Einstein quote, I'm sure that it's about being able to explain something. And if you can't, then you need to understand it better.
Richard Aceves:Yeah, we can't explain it simply enough that you don't understand it enough.
Richard:Well, Einstein always made things so simple.
Richard Aceves:Brother, I have to get going. This is a great episode. I dig it. We're gonna
Dr Ed:do RAM to hope. But sometimes people need to hear his rant.
Richard Aceves:I mean, that's the beauty of having a podcast, isn't it?
Unknown:Essentially, how to fight it and send it to you with these dudes in a podcast. And he's like, if you're 24 years old, and you're not making a million dollars a year, then you get yourself a new career. in it. This DJ starts another white boy with a podcast another white boy with a podcast, you know, at least a Mexican. Yeah, that's why I haven't made a million dollars in a year yet yet. Anywho. Thank you very much, guys for listening. Be sure to find us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, read Barracuda at Dr. Ed caddy Richards services.com. Again, if you guys want to work with us, if you guys need help with anything, please feel free to reach out through any of these channels or email us at info at Richard A service.com Or is it at a doctor@caddy.com?
Dr Ed:That's correct. And if you have any feedback on the quality of my voice from this new microphone, please leave that in the comments as well. And then I can either ignore it or change it.
Richard Aceves:Beautiful. Thank you guys. Take care.
Richard:We'll see you guys on the next episode.
