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"Fitness" and "Health" Are Different Things
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Are you following health trends that actually harm your health? In my eye-opening masterclass "The 7 Popular But Deadly Health Fads," I reveal how common health practices promoted by influencers and gurus might be ravaging your gut, accelerating disease, and shaving years off your life.
Discover which popular diets, supplements, and health rituals are secretly sabotaging your health and learn what to do instead. I explain why these seemingly healthy habits are damaging your body and provide actionable alternatives for true longevity.
Register for free access to this essential health information at https://www.livelongerformula.com
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Check out the first volume in the How to Actually Live Longer book series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dDXjxc
How to Actually Live Longer is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
Introduction and Common Misconceptions
00:00:01
Christian Yordanov
Hey, Christian Yordanov here. Thanks for joining me again on the podcast. Today's topic will be something I've talked about before, but I think this really needs to be reiterated a lot because a lot of guys I talk to, they very often equate how much time they spend in the gym or, you know, doing physical activity as how healthy they're being. And this is what I've literally heard is like, I used to exercise every day. I was so healthy. You know, this kind of stuff.
00:00:36
Christian Yordanov
And I, at least with my clients, when they kind of joined the program, I i very quickly realized allay any fears that if they don't exert themselves sufficiently on a daily basis or weekly basis, they're not going to be healthy or they they won't restore their health.
Health vs Fitness: Understanding the Difference
00:00:55
Christian Yordanov
Because there is very much a difference between how healthy a person is and how fit a person is. And I think I've given these examples before, but think about think about a marathon runner.
00:01:10
Christian Yordanov
pretty fit, don't exactly look very healthy, at least to me. right A lot of them are not very healthy, and we'll get into that in you know in a few minutes when we actually look at at some research.
00:01:21
Christian Yordanov
But then you look at a bodybuilder. Look at a ballerina. My wife used to be a professional ballerina. And the horrors, the horrors she has told me about during that period.
00:01:37
Christian Yordanov
And some of those girls that she she trained with, just the health problems they had. and Oh, it's it's it's horrific. But I'm going to have a whole separate podcast about kind of how detrimental a lot of exercise can be to women.
00:01:50
Christian Yordanov
Today, we're just going to talk about mostly the endurance exercise side of things. But the point there is that you can have like a very fit, like a physique model on stage and they could be like at their worst in terms of how they feel, their hormones, their thyroid function, just their cortisol levels.
00:02:11
Christian Yordanov
So you can look very, very, you can look very fit and that that can give an outward appearance of health. And especially when a person is younger. But here's the thing.
00:02:22
Christian Yordanov
we know that a person can have a lot of dysfunction, degeneration, and damage to their metabolism occurring on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis for a long time before outward manifestations, outward symptoms start start to appear.
Key Elements of True Health: Beyond Fitness
00:02:42
Christian Yordanov
just And we'll get into it a bit later, but just think about things like cardiovascular disease, right? Think about... ah ah coronary artery calcification, atherosclerosis.
00:02:56
Christian Yordanov
Like these things, you don't really see these things and then pop A guy has a stroke in his 50s or 60s, you know. There was no outward sign. He felt good and all that good stuff.
00:03:09
Christian Yordanov
So we have to really get away from this very one-dimensional view of health. that And this is, of course, I can talk about this stuff until the cows come home about what is what is really
00:03:26
Christian Yordanov
What is being healthy in today's world? but We have to detoxify well. right We have to have managed stress levels in terms of our stress hormones. We need to make sure we keep those stress hormones low and we're not running on stress hormones.
00:03:43
Christian Yordanov
We need to make sure we are supplying not just the fuel for the energy that our body and its processes need, but also the various nutrients, the micronutrients. but So there's a ton of different things that we need to be thinking about when it comes to health.
00:03:59
Christian Yordanov
And exercise, I'm not saying exercise isn't great and movement isn't super important. It is super important. And our sedentary lifestyles, just they are causing us a lot of problems.
00:04:13
Christian Yordanov
right And God, do I know it? Because I wouldn't say I'm super sedentary, but I have to be at this computer in this office a lot because I'm you know working with clients doing stuff I'm i'm just doing research for my next book I'm about to start writing the next book so it's constantly something i need to be up here for and I kind of feel it I feel the it's not great being here sitting in a chair my my lower back doesn't like it My hip flexors get tight. So absolutely, movement is a super critical part of longevity and maintenance maintenance of our functions. That's super important.
00:04:53
Christian Yordanov
And we don't want to lose we don't want to lose basic abilities and and basic levels of fitness. Like if you can't walk for an hour, you can't walk up a few hills or when you're out on a walk.
00:05:04
Christian Yordanov
Like obviously, we don't want to be super unfit.
The Risks of Excessive Exercise
00:05:07
Christian Yordanov
But what you have to understand, especially if you have some kind of health challenge, Or set of health challenges, which would be a fair few of the folks that kind of gravitate towards my my stuff is people that are, we have high performance, sure, but even high performance as they get into their 40s, 60s.
00:05:26
Christian Yordanov
they start to creak a little bit because they're, you know, pushing the gas pedal so so hard for decades. So we start to creak a little. We start to have health challenges.
00:05:37
Christian Yordanov
And the mainstream pretty, I don't want to use the R word here, although I want to, is pretty gosh darn developmentally challenged, let's say, the mainstream views. It's like if you look at the world,
00:05:56
Christian Yordanov
harm organization who you know if you look at those guys what are their recommendations for exercise so their recommendations are 75 minutes minimum to 150 minutes of high intensity exercise. So they recommend that you run at least 75 minutes at a high intensity where you can't talk, you know, you're like huffing and puffing, or 150 minutes of lower intensity.
00:06:26
Christian Yordanov
lower intensity now The lower intensity stuff, fine. you know Walking, I do a hell of a lot more. I do like one to two hours of walking every day. So low intensity, theoretically, you could do that like for five hours without necessarily it being detrimental.
00:06:41
Christian Yordanov
But what they're recommending is ton of exercise, relatively speaking, to what people are doing. And they're saying that is good for you. That will make you healthy. And they're saying the more you do, the better off you'll be, basically. That's what they're saying.
00:06:56
Christian Yordanov
And as we examine some research in um in a couple of minutes, you see that there is actually, that is not true. Exercise very quickly can become a stressor for a person. And here's the most important thing.
00:07:08
Christian Yordanov
If a person has health challenge or or several or a lot of stress on their plate, a lot of stress in their stress bucket, adding exercise to a person like that is often just an additional stress.
00:07:22
Christian Yordanov
So it doesn't bring them closer to health. It actually brings them closer to ill health. And let's look at a couple of a couple of just interesting studies that this is some of the research that will be making it into my next book, How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 2, coming out this year, hopefully. i'm no I'm pretty sure I'll do it. Oh, like...
00:07:43
Christian Yordanov
by hook or by crook, even if it comes out terribly, ah I will publish it. Just kidding, of course. It will be, I'll do it well or I won't do it at all. But anyway, so I will have a chapter, one chapter on a little bit about the the research on on exercise because, again, there's people out there, and I know people, doing exercise ultra marathon training and they think they're just super healthy because they can run for two hours in a day.
00:08:15
Christian Yordanov
No, they're fit at the expense of their health. They're maintaining that fitness and improving that fitness at the expense of their health. right So let's look at it. So the first just the first interesting study is called hormonal responses to daily strenuous walking during four successive days.
00:08:37
Christian Yordanov
So the quick gist of it, 15 healthy adult men, average 27 years old, very young, very fit, you know. So they participated in a four-day march, okay, and they walked about 100 miles over four days, right, 163 kilometers, and they carried a backpack,
00:09:00
Christian Yordanov
of at least 10 kg or 22 pounds okay so they they did about 25 miles per day average walk time was eight hours a day right and it was only at about 60 percent of their maximum heart rate okay so that's moderate intensity aerobic exercise so if you do the math 25 miles divided by eight hours, that's just like three miles-ish per hour, right? So that's five five kilometers per hour. i walk
00:09:34
Christian Yordanov
I probably walk faster than that. I walk pretty fast. I walk faster than that when I'm kind of going on a regular walk, you know? so And I can walk for like an hour, two hours, no problem. And I don't even feel tired or anything like that.
00:09:47
Christian Yordanov
So, but obviously, with with a 22-pound backpack plus, that for sure changes things. Yeah. But here's
Exercise-Induced Stress and Hormonal Impact
00:09:54
Christian Yordanov
the thing. So, they collected blood samples and they looked at certain, you know, hormones and bits and pieces.
00:10:00
Christian Yordanov
So, what happened? So... after the first day of walking their testosterone decreased 15 second day it decreased 18 and then on the third day it reached a plateau so it kind of bottomed out Okay, so far, not not really great.
00:10:20
Christian Yordanov
Not really great thing. If you look at what happened to their cortisol, after the first day of eight hours of marching, walking, their cortisol bumped up 60%.
00:10:32
Christian Yordanov
sixty percent That's just from walking. That's just from walking at a normal pace with a little bit of weight on your back. Not a little bit, you know. It definitely, I'm sure after a while, it feels like a lot.
00:10:44
Christian Yordanov
So just the point here I'm trying to make is, even walking taken to an extreme will be stressful to the body and cause detrimental changes because and they're like the researchers will be like oh yeah so on the third day the testosterone plateaued suggesting there were the body adapted to the exercise stress well uh Yeah, because like you can't nothing can keep plummeting forever, right?
00:11:16
Christian Yordanov
can Your testosterone can't go negative after 10 days of doing this. So it will plateau. But here's the thing. If you're adapted to the stress... is that really good to be adapted to to that the stress?
00:11:30
Christian Yordanov
You know, what is the long-term cost? So that cortisol cortisol goes up, testosterone goes down. weak I talk about that in my first book, that they're a seesaw.
00:11:41
Christian Yordanov
if one you know If cortisol goes up, it will cause testosterone to lower. They've tested it in in healthy men where they inject them with insulin, which will, you know, it will...
00:11:53
Christian Yordanov
clear the the blood glucose out of your bloodstream which will cause a blood sugar drop and that causes the body to bump up uh cortisol to raise your blood sugar and then they measure the subsequent decrease in testosterone that's one way they've tested this and then they've also uh when they just inject you with cortisol hydrocortisone that also lowers testosterone okay so we know if you're stressed your tea is gonna be Thank you period end of story now what is what is it just a quicker aside here
00:12:24
Christian Yordanov
what is the consent the the current sort of mainstream social media consensus that no you just go to like got exercise that will increase your testosterone that's ah but here thing and it's it's an unfortunate part of the current situation in the world and i know this because i i i've seen plenty of like guys on youtube influencers and lot of these guys if they're not on like a cocktail of anabolic drugs like the more serious bodybuilders and stuff a lot of these other guys the hybrid athletes that can you know train in the gym and then run like uh you know 20 kilometers like those guys
00:13:04
Christian Yordanov
at least are taking that testosterone injections. So here's the thing. If you do take testosterone, it will mask all these horrible things, a lot of or at least a lot of them, for some time, right?
00:13:20
Christian Yordanov
If your core is always elevated, that's causing you damage in the body and degeneration, but you have a lot of testosterone circulating, like a lot of these guys do. Those are the ones that, you know, the freak beasts that eventually make it up to the top of the food chain or the hierarchy of social media, the biggest influencers,
00:13:37
Christian Yordanov
pretty much, I won't say all of them, but a lot of them are are taking something to ameliorate these negative effects. So you have testosterone is our own sort of endogenous natural cortisol blocker. So he it can block cortisol's effect to the receptor level, right?
00:13:57
Christian Yordanov
So they're protecting themselves. Problem is the people that they're influencing, a lot of them won't be doing that. So they're going to try that and they're just going to you know, have detrimental effects on their health.
00:14:09
Christian Yordanov
Okay. That's super important to understand. Like look at Joe Rogan. he He can do carnivore. He can do, you know, keto fasting, intermittent fasting, one meal day, whatever he, whatever, like training like a beast.
00:14:25
Christian Yordanov
And he does those things. But if he's taking tea, you know, TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, he is being protected from at least some of these negative effects of cortisol.
00:14:39
Christian Yordanov
Problem is the millions of guys out there that want to like do stuff that he's doing because he's influencing them, they're not going to be having that protective effect, right?
00:14:50
Christian Yordanov
That's super important to understand. So with this study, they saw that the guys, and remember, this is a four-day, four-day of just walking, right?
00:15:01
Christian Yordanov
They saw that their luteinizing hormone and their follicle-stimulating hormones were suppressed, right? Right? So the FSH is important for sperm production, the luteinizing hormone, LH, that signals the testes to produce testosterone.
00:15:21
Christian Yordanov
So the so in in that case, the on the first day, it increased a little bit.
00:15:27
Christian Yordanov
then decreased by 31% during the second and third days compared to the baseline. And then it kind remained steady on the fourth day. And then the FSH showed the most persistent suppression throughout the study.
00:15:41
Christian Yordanov
It remained reduced by 90% even before the final exercise session. And unlike other hormones, FSH did not show signs of adaptation or recovery during the four-day period.
00:15:54
Christian Yordanov
So what does that mean?
Reproductive and Gut Health Concerns
00:15:55
Christian Yordanov
That means that these guys, whilst 27 years old on average, whilst they're able to endure this and the body showed signs of adaptation to the stress, which means that they would have been able to continue doing this stress activity for probably jesus imagine if if you could made them made them to do this every day for like weeks and months they would have continued to be able to do it for a very long time because they're young and healthy still right but the expense at the expense of their reproductive health their tea is gonna tank and
00:16:32
Christian Yordanov
eventually they would probably become infertile, you know? that That's kind of the trajectory that they they're on. So that is not... and But here's the thing. They're going to get fitter during the weeks yeah of doing this. They're going to fitter.
00:16:46
Christian Yordanov
They'll be able to do it faster. They may be able to carry more weight. if you look at a deeper level... their reproductive health is suffering because the body, that's a nice to have when you're in a survival situation, the body lowers that down.
00:17:04
Christian Yordanov
And it's all fine and dandy until you know these dudes want to have a ah child. But here's the thing, it could be 50, similar things will be happening except yeah know in one case, all right, that guy might not have it.
00:17:17
Christian Yordanov
be able to have kids but on the other hand you're just like 50 and you're wondering why you know you can't you know you don't have any like libido and you know your wife is like not happy about that you know so It doesn't matter if you want to have kids or not, or you you already have kids.
00:17:37
Christian Yordanov
Something that is bad for your T, your reproductive health, that is bad for your health overall. Because when you are thriving in a good state, energetically speaking, in a low stress sort of state in the body, it's natural to have you know your your reproductive reproductive functions to be running on you know all cylinders, have more libido, more morning wood and erections.
00:18:00
Christian Yordanov
And, you know, just that is like super important. So this is just and remember, these are 20 on average, 27 year old guys. Imagine doing this when you're 20, 30 years older.
00:18:13
Christian Yordanov
And this is just walking and it it's not even fast walking. OK. So the whole spiel out there that, you know, you adapt to the stress and that's that's the beneficial effect of the exercise is a little bit, I think, it's obfuscating the truth a little bit.
00:18:33
Christian Yordanov
So yes, do that we do are actually very good at, as humans, we're very good at adapting to stress. But the thing is, Let's say your cortisol rises after something and then after a while it doesn't it stops rising or maybe it's lowered, but you continue doing that stressful thing.
00:18:54
Christian Yordanov
Is that a good thing? Well, the thing is, if you look into it, you have a thing thing i think called ah ah cortisol sensitivity, right? So your tissues can become more sensitive to cortisol over time, it's kind of like ah ah another mechanism where the body spares ah the enzymes, the cholesterol, the but you know the the cofactors required to make all that cortisol. So it over time can actually increase the density of its receptors for cortisol, the glucocorticoid receptors.
00:19:30
Christian Yordanov
it can the the The actual receptors themselves can become more efficient or have a higher affinity for cortisol. did The certain enzymes that convert inactive cortisone into active cortisol within the tissues can be upregulated.
00:19:44
Christian Yordanov
So you can actually have a low cortisol level. And I've seen it with clients. Like there if you look at their blood cortisol level or if you look at their, sometimes we do like a Dutch comprehensive hormone panel.
00:19:57
Christian Yordanov
where they pee on the the strips of paper and we can see what they what hormones they're excreting. Like they can have a low cortisol, right? In the blood, in the urine.
00:20:08
Christian Yordanov
They can also have a fairly like lower normal total metabolized cortisol. So that's kind of where you look at all the different values, cortisol, the the metabolites, cortisol, et cetera. And,
00:20:20
Christian Yordanov
You can have like a someone in the middle and yeah you look at look at that profile. Okay, their cortisol is always on the high and too high in the morning, too high in the evening, in the middle of the night.
00:20:32
Christian Yordanov
Their total metabolized cortisol is in the middle of the range. So you're like, oh, you're not stressed. But then when you actually talk to the person and what they're doing... It simply indicates that they've been stressing their body for so long with, let's say, too much exercise, maybe, you know, low carb, keto, or a combination of these, maybe fasting.
00:20:52
Christian Yordanov
And it's just that their body has become more efficient. So it needs less cortisol to get those same effects. So I wouldn't... I wouldn't really take it to heart, let's say you ever, like not not that most doctors do this, but let's say you you go to a a morning cortisol test.
00:21:09
Christian Yordanov
ah ah Just because that's normal, it doesn't mean anything necessarily for a person taking one value from the blood. and Or even like, that's why I don't only do these Dutch tests too often because like there's so much better tests that we can invest in than just seeing what, what you know, the cortisol excretion of a person is or or the, you know, androgens and estrogens and all those things in the urine.
00:21:36
Christian Yordanov
I don't really see all that much clinical utility. We do run them with like some CEO clients, you know, the athletes. But for the most part, I assume people have more stress than optimal until proven otherwise. And not not to say everybody's under a lot of stress, but you know someone coming to me, like i just yeah yesterday I spoke to somebody that he did a 14-day supervised fast at center year.
00:22:08
Christian Yordanov
earlier this year and, you know, doing like one meal a day type stuff, you know, like you talk someone like that, you know that person is under a lot of stress because, you know, they've been they've been kind of misled by, you know, just, you know, by virtue of the fact that they to people that think fasting is, you know, you can starve yourself to better health.
00:22:34
Christian Yordanov
So, but anyway, that's that's kind of just a little aside there that, know, And just because you adapt to a stressor doesn't mean that bad things aren't happening happening under the surface.
00:22:47
Christian Yordanov
It just means that you need a different way of assessing that. And for example, just another thing I just saw recently is a client of mine, we did a Metabolomics Plus test where so you bee you pee in a little container and And we get like 160 different markers on various things, including oxidative stress.
00:23:12
Christian Yordanov
And so he had ton of stuff going on and healthy, healthy guy. you know, he was actually his his job was for a long time coach, like an athletic coach, a sport coach, I should say.
00:23:28
Christian Yordanov
and But he had a lot of oxidative stress. So this is someone that even in kind of older age loves to exercise a lot and like all kinds of stuff. so But a person like that might be very very fit.
00:23:42
Christian Yordanov
But when we actually look under the surface, you see various you know imbalances in terms of gut function, deficiencies. neurotransmitter imbalances, oxidative stress, and I just found a ton of, and deficiencies in vitamins, minerals, I found a ton of stuff on this test that this person, feeling good, would never have thought could be going on.
00:24:05
Christian Yordanov
Their doctor would have completely missed. And all that oxidative stress, all that runaway inflammation, all those deficiencies, they just fester under the surface. And although that person is fit,
00:24:17
Christian Yordanov
and and like wants to exercise and is doing it i would i i just straight up told him uh you're you are probably doing too much you probably historically you were probably overdoing the exertion and these things tend to not like eventually catch up with us right Because think about it this way. i just want to like take an example. I have one neighbor here.
00:24:40
Christian Yordanov
He's a pretty cool dude. I don't speak Portuguese. He doesn't speak English. But he always like waves when we're out. And my dog is always barking at him, so make running circles around him. He's always like super cool about it.
00:24:54
Christian Yordanov
but like So he's always out for a walk. He looks pale. He's like 80, maybe 80-something. And he looks pretty weak. But you know he's out there and like doing gardening and stuff.
Age, Stress Adaptation, and Health
00:25:06
Christian Yordanov
but if you take this guy right and you make him sprint does anybody think that that will make him stronger fitter the next day or the next week or could that you know potentially end him you know I think most most of us would be like yeah I mean like that's he shouldn't be doing like running and sprinting he should just continue doing what he's doing go for walks and you know take it easy so If he was 40 years younger or 60 years younger, would that sprint...
00:25:43
Christian Yordanov
be beneficial for him and i think this is where we sort of there's a there's a real sort of gray area i think if he was 20 people were like yeah yeah he's gonna be fitter if he was 40 like i mean probably he shouldn't do a lot he should probably like maybe do one one two and that's it but there there is ah point in that timeline between 20 years old and 80 years old where his capacity to recover and create adaptations in his body that make him stronger becomes
00:26:23
Christian Yordanov
is no longer there so it could be at the age of 35 it could be at the age of 40 it could be at the age of 25 depending on his level of health the point I'm trying to make is that if that exertion, that stressor could potentially, like, literally end his life at a certain point in time because it's such a high stress, there there is a case we can make that the only reason we respond beneficially to exercise when we are younger is because we can master up that response in terms of you have a stressor, your cortisol increases, and then because you're still so young and healthy and
00:27:03
Christian Yordanov
you know, whatever other reasons you could be eating healthy and stuff. don't have deficiencies. You just create a a response in terms of protective hormones. So testosterone, progesterone in women, DHEA. So you still have this ability to do that.
00:27:20
Christian Yordanov
And here's the thing. We lose that ability as we get older, we lose that ability. Right. So by that logic,
00:27:29
Christian Yordanov
Is the exercise making us healthier or are we just still able to muster up the the response which then makes us stronger, right?
00:27:41
Christian Yordanov
And then over time, we just start losing that ability to respond because we're not taking good care of ourselves because potentially we're overexerting ourselves and we are then... outweighing our capacity to heal, right? We're damaging, doing too much damage, adding too much stress without focusing on the recovery, the detox, the gut health, the sleep, nutrition, micronutrients, fueling, calories, total calories, protein, all these other things.
00:28:08
Christian Yordanov
That's the health side of things that a lot of people are missing, you see. That's the health side of things. So it's very easy to continue exerting oneself while underneath, under the surface, damage is occurring, right?
00:28:24
Christian Yordanov
This is kind of the point I'm trying to make. So, and the the reason I think this is important to understand is that we have to always...
00:28:37
Christian Yordanov
do only as much as we have capacity to heal from in terms of exercise so a simple example two three years ago but i was working with a lady she was like in her mid-60s she was uh in her 50s she did like a bikini you know the bikini model sort of competition and She was super fit and always loved the gym. And she was in real rough shape in her mid-60s. And I think all the exercise was definitely one of those things contributing to her you know deterioration.
00:29:10
Christian Yordanov
So couple of months working with me, she was feeling much better. And then she at one point, we're talking, and she's like, oh, yeah, so yesterday I was in the gym two hours.
00:29:22
Christian Yordanov
Today I was running. She was like her mid-60s running. I'm like, what are you doing you know and uh she just had to learn that the fit doing the fitness activity stuff that's not the thing that makes her healthy she she very she had a couple of feedback loops where she did the running she did the thing and then she felt like crap for a while again it's because she didn't let her body accumulate enough vital reserve for her to be able to take that stress if you know what mean
00:29:57
Christian Yordanov
So this is what what people have to understand, man. Like, Jesus, like so many guys. like i've The last couple of years, I've i've spoken to guys. that just destroyed their health with with too much exercise.
00:30:13
Christian Yordanov
Some young guys as well, you know. And I think some of them did not realize that until we started working together.
00:30:23
Christian Yordanov
I think they thought it's some maybe autoimmune issue or some other kind of thing. And when I started breaking it down a little bit for them, they were like, okay, so I understand that that a stressor.
00:30:38
Christian Yordanov
I was putting too much stress. and At the beginning, i was I was getting fitter and stronger because of the stress. And over time, it was depleting me. And then eventually it caused me to start having these horrific health problems.
00:30:50
Christian Yordanov
And that's kind of like and the unfortunate thing is a lot of people are on that trajectory, especially lot of these like more. don't want to say like macho types, but, you know, there's certain types of guys like I used to I used to train with fighters, Thai boxing fighters, and there was some MMA guys, those kind of guys.
00:31:12
Christian Yordanov
They just keep pushing, pushing, pushing until like they kill over on the side of the road or something like that. Which is another thing that kind of freaking irks me is every time I drive by, like you even this morning I was driving my daughter to preschool and I saw some lady just on the side of the road, like just bouncing around.
00:31:37
Christian Yordanov
running, like, bouncing, like, pretty bad form as well, which, of course, will lead to other injuries, unfortunately, over time. But, i like, every time I see a person like that, I'm like, God, I just want to roll down the window and, like,
00:31:52
Christian Yordanov
stop what are you doing you're running in traffic you're breathing exhaust fumes how you're clearly suffering how is this how did we allow ourselves to be brainwashed that this is a healthy behavior we're doing something good for our health i remember this maybe i told the story before but i remember man A few months ago, i was driving the car and there was two guys, I think it was just just like in the new year, January, and there was two guys running ahead and there was like their friend, maybe it girlfriend or something.
00:32:30
Christian Yordanov
She was like behind and she was like panting, like just trying to like not collapse. And I'm thinking to myself like, what, how is this?
00:32:41
Christian Yordanov
how do we think this is good for us? And then it's all the whole, oh, you have to suffer, have to stress the body and to become stronger. Here's the thing. Again, if you're 20,
00:32:54
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, you will get fitter. But if you're 50, you know, it's in no way shape good for you.
00:33:05
Christian Yordanov
So I was only going to talk about studies today, but here I'm ranting now for God knows how long. So I want to tell you about another study, Effect of Running Intensity on Intestinal Permeability.
00:33:16
Christian Yordanov
This is what you have to understand. When a person gets the runner's diarrhea or the runner's trot, as it were, or, you know,
00:33:29
Christian Yordanov
when a marathon runner shits their pants, that is because high-intensity running, in that study that i'm talking about, basically increased people's leaky gut, right? So they did a test, six healthy, again, healthy, physically active volunteers, right?
00:33:52
Christian Yordanov
Average age 30 years old, okay? So they they had them either sit there and rest, as a control condition, they had them running at low, moderate, or high intensity. So that's 40%, 60%, or 80% of their maximum aerobic capacity or their VO2 max.
00:34:13
Christian Yordanov
And they found that 40% and 60%, and by 60%, and by the way sixty percent You're not even running. You're just like walking three miles an hour, five kilometers an hour. That's moderate.
00:34:24
Christian Yordanov
you know does that That's totally fine. They found that 40% and 60% there wasn't like a change in their intestinal permeability, their leaky gut, but at 80% VO2 max, they found that their gut leakiness, their intestinal permeability increased basically to levels comparable to those seen in patients with intestinal diseases like celiac disease, Crohn's disease, you know inflammatory bowel disease, and cystic fibrosis.
00:35:04
Christian Yordanov
So there you go. Running. Why do runners marathon runners scrap their pants? It's because they're damaging their gut.
00:35:14
Christian Yordanov
All that running is damaging their gut, right? So that anything that damages your gut is not good for you.
00:35:26
Christian Yordanov
Whether that's a food, whether that's exertion, whether that's a toxin, whether that's some kind of organism in there that shouldn't be there or it's overgrown, it doesn't matter what it is.
00:35:39
Christian Yordanov
The end result being a leaky gut is not a good thing. So running... can't do that. If you do high intensity running, it can't do that. And then if you look at it, and and I'm going to use some more extreme examples here, but I want to go back to kind of the thing with my neighbor that had the example.
00:36:00
Christian Yordanov
If he's 80 in a sprint can potentially kill him, if he's 60 and that sprint is bad for him if he's 40 and that sprint isn't really good for him if he's 20 and that sprint makes him fitter and stronger and whatever there's a some kind of range age range where we just are not able to deal with the same stressor as well.
00:36:30
Christian Yordanov
So the point here is, again, if excessive endurance exercise, as an example, is is detrimental to health, and let's say, let just example, let's say 10 hours a week of running is bad for health.
00:36:46
Christian Yordanov
then it's probably safe to say that nine hours per week is bad for health. It's probably safe to say eight hours is bad for health. And then we can keep going until, let's say we get to maybe two hours a week is like, okay, at that point, it's net neutral, right?
00:37:05
Christian Yordanov
So it's its it's not going to shorten your life, but it's not gonna there's no real benefit. And then maybe, and's let's say 50 minutes, for example, it's just an example, let's say 50 minutes per week, at that point, if you compare it to a sedentary person, that may actually, that person might have better health outcomes, lower mortality, lower disease rates, you know, and then if it's 30 minutes, if it's 10, 20 minutes, at that point, is that person may have actually a higher mortality than the person doing the 50 minutes.
00:37:35
Christian Yordanov
So the the the the paper I'm going to just quickly mention some snippets from, it's called Potential, I love how they always like qualify everything, Potential Adverse Cardiovascular, so sorry, Potential Adverse Cardiovascular Effects from Excessive Endurance Exercise.
00:37:55
Christian Yordanov
So this is a pretty comprehensive study. review and basically what did i find so so they found that this was a review so they they discussed quite a lot of uh studies so so recent large-scale studies reveal a yeah u-shaped mortality curve for exercise right so benefits accrue in a dose-dependent fashion, up to about one hour per day of visit vigorous activity, beyond which additional exercise doesn't provide further survival advantage.
00:38:29
Christian Yordanov
So, i you know again, this is just one small aspect of the study I still would I would say that one hour per day of vigorous activity is pretty like for a for a person in their fifty s it may be too much if they're not healthy and I want to say if they're fit it's one thing right fitness health different things remember if they're not healthy and by that I mean if if you know, they're deficient in things, if they have inflammation, oxidative stress, if their stress levels are unmitigated, like their cortisol is always high, if they're not eating enough carbohydrates, if they're not eating enough protein, a ton of different things, if they're not detoxifying well, if their liver function is shot, if their pancreatic function is shot, all these things stack up and then we can say, is a person in good health, poor health, average health or excellent health?
Hidden Health Risks in Athletes
00:39:27
Christian Yordanov
So if that person isn't in excellent health already or very good health. One hour a day of vigorous activity for someone in their 40s, 50s plus, that i I honestly think that's way too much.
00:39:40
Christian Yordanov
And the the the thing is here, they looked at 15-year study of 52,000 runners. So they found that moderate amounts of running, so 1 to 20 miles per week, 2 to 5 days weekly, were associated with lower mortality, while higher mileage, just faster paces,
00:39:57
Christian Yordanov
and more frequent runs showed no additional survival benefit. So the thing is, if you're a marathon runner or if you're like a runner, this is where this type of research is limited because if you run, there's a high chance you're doing other healthy activities. So we can have healthy user bias.
00:40:16
Christian Yordanov
This is where like, know, vegans or vegetarians, you could fudge the data to show that they are healthier or have less mortality or whatever. than meat eaters because you know if you're vegetarian you might be doing other things good for your health if you're running doing other good things for your health so we can't like really say okay so that that means I can do up to 20 miles of running per week and i will be healthy you know it's not necessary again it depends on how much vitality resilience and health you know you have in your body right now you know
00:40:51
Christian Yordanov
Then another thing, sudden cardiac death in athletes. So they found it's not super
00:41:02
Christian Yordanov
common, like sudden cardiac death. So the absolute numbers have increased because you know people doing marathons has increased.
00:41:14
Christian Yordanov
So the absolute numbers of sudden cardiac death have increased 20-fold over 35 years. Right? Right. right And what's notable is that the final mile of marathons represents 5% of the total distance, but accounts for almost 50% of the cardiac deaths during the races. So about half of people that if they were to die during a marathon of sudden cardiac death, would be in the last mile.
00:41:44
Christian Yordanov
So that's clear. It's clear that it's a shitload of stress on the body, right? ah just It's really stressful on the body. Anyone thinking ah ah marathon, i'm I'm sure you don't think this, of course, but there is people out there that think running a marathon is a healthy thing.
00:42:05
Christian Yordanov
To me, it's it'd be more like a ah rite of passage, like, oh, you know, I did an ayahuasca ceremony or three, or, you know, I did a boxing fight. like ah ah Like when I did my my fight when I was 29, 30, Thai boxing fight,
00:42:19
Christian Yordanov
type boxing fight nothing about what I did was healthy terms of my preparation for that. So I think we've deified athletes as healthy and a lot of them are like just the only reason that they look healthy is because, of course, they're very fit, which we equate fitness with health as a society, and they're still very young.
00:42:46
Christian Yordanov
And a lot of them are well taken care of, or at least they take care of themselves. So it really, like these things, the the health issues don't catch up as quickly as their career ends. And then, you know, after that, after they're out of the limelight, who gives a damn? We have new athletes. work We're, you know, glued to the screen to watch.
00:43:06
Christian Yordanov
So... That's the thing. That's the thing. Like, there's nothing healthy about preparing, running a marathon. lot of people like, oh, my God, I do have, you know, friends and folks I've spoken to that have done marathons and just to tell you how, what it's like during and after the recovery, just like there's nothing.
00:43:28
Christian Yordanov
nothing healthy about it, you know. Other stuff. So the cardiovascular complications. So veteran endurance athletes have up to a five-fold increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation, which is like an irregular heart rhythm, compared to sedentary compared to sedentary individuals,
00:43:54
Christian Yordanov
right
00:43:55
Christian Yordanov
So five-fold increased risk than sedentary people, right? So that can't, I don't think that's indicating that all that running was healthy.
00:44:08
Christian Yordanov
So coronary artery changes. Paradoxically, some studies suggest veteran marathon runners may have higher coronary artery calcium scores, indicating atherosclerotic plaques than sedentary controls.
00:44:27
Christian Yordanov
despite their exceptional fitness levels. That's the researchers say. Paradoxically, you see, they're qualifying everything because they don't want to go against the grain because they'll never get published again or they might not get published in the first place. right so But the mechanism and the state in this paper, the mechanisms behind this finding remain unclear but may relate to chronic oxidative stress from extreme exercise repeated elevations in stress hormones inflammatory responses to intense training and if you read my book how to actually live longer what's interesting is in chapter one I talk about the prior the three primary drivers of aging and dysfunction and though they are stress
00:45:16
Christian Yordanov
inflammation, and oxidative stress. And these guys are like, oh, the mechanisms behind why veteran marathon runners have higher coronary artery calcification scores is because potentially chronic oxidative stress, repeated elevation in stress hormones, and inflammatory responses to intense training.
00:45:36
Christian Yordanov
So, In this case, what that means is training super hard. And again, this is very relative to a person. I don't care that a veteran marathon runner can do, you know, 20, 30 miles of running we a week and survive into their 70s.
00:45:56
Christian Yordanov
the What's important is a person we that we take into a account a person's fitness levels when we are designing a program for that
Personalized Exercise Recommendations
00:46:05
Christian Yordanov
person. If you never ran in your life,
00:46:09
Christian Yordanov
right if you're for like me i was more ah ah played played lot of sports as a kid like squash tennis soccer uh dabbled with like cricket in south africa i was always like one of the fastest sprinters in my class so i was more more like this into the these power sports and like stop stop stop start burst so i was never a long distance guy like didn't even know how to like run long distance because it was always like I was always like run, run, run. I was like, oh my God, I'm winning.
00:46:42
Christian Yordanov
And then like halfway through the 800 meter race, everyone would overtake me because I'm there tanking like a jabroni. But but um but um the thing is, if you've never ran in your life and now in your 40s, you're like, okay, new year, new me.
00:46:58
Christian Yordanov
I'm going to get fit this year. I'm going lose all the body fat, get super healthy. And you start running. Well, that that even if you run like just three miles, it's just all stress.
00:47:11
Christian Yordanov
It's all stress. So we have to play the hand that we're kind of dealt as it were. So if you're more of like, you know, if you're a walker, if you're like ah ah lifting weights, or if you like the specific sport, i would actually much rather, if you're going to start or increase an exercise regimen, I'll much rather play to your strengths,
00:47:35
Christian Yordanov
than do some random thing you've never done before, you know. And honest to God, the last thing, the last thing i would recommend to a person to to add to their, you know, exercise regimen would be running.
00:47:55
Christian Yordanov
Seriously. Like running, is probably one of the worst exercises swear to god uh there is worse things of course but like just running don't into a detrained person like if you're already fit like i have clients who will go for a jog if you're already fit and like it's not a huge stressor at this point and you've been doing this for for like since you're a kid it's whole different story i'm just saying if you're if you're looking to do something
00:48:25
Christian Yordanov
some new exercise, wouldn't i wouldn't do running. I would just go for a walk. Because walking is so low stress and it's so easily manipulatable in terms of speed, intensity, hills. like yeah You can do so many things with walking and you you you can push yourself some days when you feel strong, but on a day you're like you're not feeling well, you don't have to push yourself. You just go for a walk, get the blood flowing, all that good stuff.
00:48:51
Christian Yordanov
But what I what i see is... like so Some folks that they're having a shit day, they're waking up, they don't feel well, and and yet they still go out with a run because somehow that's supposed to make them feel better or it's going to be good for their health, but it only makes things worse, right?
00:49:14
Christian Yordanov
another Another finding is large artery stiffening. So long-term extreme endurance exercise may be associated with increased arterial stiffness, which is a marker for cardiovascular disease.
00:49:26
Christian Yordanov
So very I'm just going to summarize in a sentence. Endurance exercise messes up the cardiovascular system.
00:49:40
Christian Yordanov
right That's kind of the takeaway here. So the the authors of this paper outline a theoretical pathway for exercise-induced cardiac problems. problems Acute stress response, okay, so sustained elevations in heart rate, blood pressure, cardiac output for hours.
00:49:58
Christian Yordanov
Okay. Oxidative damage. Intense exercise generates large quantities of free radicals that may overwhelm the body's natural protective mechanisms. Inflammatory response.
00:50:09
Christian Yordanov
Repetitive cardiac stress may trigger immune system activation, leading to inflammation in heart muscle. Fibrotic repair, so chronic inflammation stimulating in the formation of scar tissue or fibrosis.
00:50:24
Christian Yordanov
as the heart attempts to repair those damaged areas during the exercise. And arrhythmia substrate, so patchy scarring, creates electrical abnormalities that can trigger dangerous heart rhythms.
00:50:37
Christian Yordanov
So
Psychology of Extreme Exercise
00:50:38
Christian Yordanov
that's that is why That is why, know, these guys, and i do I do know some people that were doing, like, ultra marathons, like like, serious ones, like the the ones you, the like the elite ones, you know?
00:50:53
Christian Yordanov
And...
00:50:57
Christian Yordanov
so hard you know i had somebody on on one of my my other podcast and very nice guy and like you know all that good stuff and like he has he has a kid i'm thinking to myself like dude like you have a kid like what the hell are you doing man like this is insanity it's insanity i i think a lot of these folks doing these super super crazy like multiple hour 100 mile races these kinds of things like there's definitely some something psychological going on there causing them to to seek out it it is a form of
00:51:42
Christian Yordanov
self-punishment, self-mutilation. and I'm not judging because i for like for so many years I had these self-destructive habits of smoking and alcohol and you know even drugs and horrific diets. so I inflict a lot of damage on myself but I understand now the the sort of the roots of that from childhood, the traumas and all the stuff.
00:52:07
Christian Yordanov
I think i think what a lot of people maybe are misled is that if it it absolutely is better to exercise than to drink alcohol and like you know be self-destructive the way I was and you know obviously right but the thing about exercise is yeah it can be
00:52:31
Christian Yordanov
super destructive for for so for some people. I think a lot of guys out there, especially guys, they are, it is a self-destructive, it's an addiction like any other. And again, we're we're almost, we're hoodwinked to believe that just because it's an addiction to the gym or to some kind of exercise or running,
00:52:52
Christian Yordanov
that it's a lot better. There's still some kind of underlying trauma or stress or something that needs to be resolved that maybe potentially the person isn't. Obviously, that's not my job. but don't I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a therapist.
00:53:07
Christian Yordanov
But I do know... i do know people that I can refer folks so I do i have have some practitioner contacts in my network but some clients where I see there's some kind of psychological issue that is causing them to self-sabotage or to potentially not get the best results I sometimes do refer folks to like like a therapist because like these ultra marathon folks the Ironman guys like these multi-day cycling competitions like that is if you get if you're pro athlete getting paid for that that's a whole different story there's guys and gals out there training for ultra marathons that are like you know
00:53:57
Christian Yordanov
you sit at a desk or you do you have a day job you're you get your vacation you know four weeks out of the year like you got your 401k like you what do you got to prove that's kind of the question is what are you proving to who is it is it to your parents is it to yourself uh but the thing is is it more important to prove that thing or is your health more important and in many cases it's not just your health that's that will suffer if something happens you know that uh you know what we won't speak of but what about your your your partner you know what about your kids you know like what what about your kids that kind of thing that's what i would like say is it more important to prove you can do this thing like i have one one
00:54:48
Christian Yordanov
someone i know at my local tennis club and he he's like in his 50s and he's super fit and they're they're winning they're crushing their sport but the dude like the dude i can see he's destroying wi his health in in his 50s doing this all this crazy exertion you know multiple times a week and he has four kids i'm like damn man this is i don't know how I don't know how to like break it to him. I've i've tried to like say certain things.
00:55:19
Christian Yordanov
a man you know i gave him my book and obviously when I write the the the next book, the chapter on exercise, I'll give him that and say, listen, you better read this chapter because I don't say it, but like you're fucking shortening your life out here man in the black game he told me last last year that he was uh pissing blood quite literally like he went to the doctor he was pissing blood he was like scared he's like playing in the hot portuguese sun for like hours and uh he basically had uh rhabdomyolysis you know like he's literally pissing blood and like
00:55:58
Christian Yordanov
it's almost like a badge of honor, it seems, for some of these guys and gals that they can push themselves so hard. But, you know, you can can push a slave to build a pyramid.
00:56:11
Christian Yordanov
Not that I think slaves build the pyramids or anything. But you can push a slave and get a lot of work out of that slave. But we know that that's not good for for the slave, you know. So think it's this mentality of I... have if i you know I'm a strong person.
00:56:29
Christian Yordanov
i can push myself. And just to prove, like to who what are we trying to prove and to whom? If we can figure that out, maybe that person is not even alive anymore.
00:56:39
Christian Yordanov
you know If it was a parent or some influential person from our childhood. maybe we can transcend that so that we can maintain our health for longer so that we can be there to to help and be of service to our loved ones. I don't want to get too philosophical here and I'm not judging again because we all have you know something some Some stuff to deal with here. we don't know None of us are perfect.
00:57:05
Christian Yordanov
We've got some some stuff going on. I just hope to warn some of my listeners like yourself to not be duped that exercise is the thing that makes you healthy.
00:57:17
Christian Yordanov
it's the diet, it's the supplementation, it's getting the gut working, it's lowering the stress hormones, it's getting your nutritional deficiencies, you know, and the toxicities addressed. These are the things that will make you healthy.
00:57:29
Christian Yordanov
Then movement is a part of remaining healthy and having ah ah the ability to like function and get off the bed and sit on the toilet, get off the toilet, pick up your your things and play with your grandkids one day when you're older.
00:57:44
Christian Yordanov
But it's a small component of the whole thing,
Holistic Health Over Excessive Exercise
00:57:48
Christian Yordanov
right? Spending an hour a day exercising and then very little effort in these other areas, that is not truly looking after your health.
00:58:02
Christian Yordanov
There's another paper called the Extreme Exercise Hypothesis, right? This is pretty recent, 2018. twenty eighteen and they kind of echo the previous papers findings you know so ah ah they they basically they were like trying to find like upper limits of where where do risk that where does risk start to creep into exercise
00:58:33
Christian Yordanov
so One paper they cite was a study of about 130,000 participants across 17 countries, Lair et al. They basically found that recreational exercises at about 112 minutes per week yielded largest risk reductions for combined mortality and major cardiovascular disease.
00:58:57
Christian Yordanov
And significant health benefits were lost at exercise volumes above 255 minutes per week so that's basically four hours of exercise so this challenges the more is invariably better assumption so couple hours a week i think you're good right a couple hours of exercise you know tennis or you know whatever you like i think you're good i just don't want you to
00:59:31
Christian Yordanov
Allow them to mislead you that the more exercise you do, the healthier you will be, especially as you get older. So like if you're 40 and a couple of hours is good, when you're 60, it may still be good.
00:59:48
Christian Yordanov
Maybe you have to lower the intensity. If you want to play the same intensity, maybe you have to, you know, do a little bit less or swap out the exercise. For example, noticed...
01:00:02
Christian Yordanov
ten With tennis, it's pretty easy to manipulate the intensity of the the training effect. So if I want to play, if I want to get maximum you know fitness increasing benefits and burn, calorie burn, as it were, I'll play with and with and with a dude and all we'll do is we'll just...
01:00:28
Christian Yordanov
just hit back and forth for like an hour so if you do that you're constantly running back and forth right if we want to lower the intensity we can play games right because you're you know ah ah set up serve pick up balls it really lowers the intensity Then if you want to further lower the intensity, you can play doubles, right?
01:00:56
Christian Yordanov
thats I see the older folks in my tennis club, they love that. and they They can play there you know multiple times a week because playing doubles, and they're not like like in a rush to surf or anything. It's a bit more fun and social, right? So that's another thing you can do.
01:01:11
Christian Yordanov
And then I noticed some folks, they just also play paddle because there's a glass behind you. there's a glasses There's glass all around. So, you know, it's always played in doubles and there's It's more of a fun social aspect. You don't have to chase balls right left and right. there's You have your half of your court that you're manning or womaning or personing.
01:01:35
Christian Yordanov
And, you know, so there's there's ways to still engage in recreational activity and manipulate the intensity depending not just, again, on age and your fitness level, but also how healthy are you.
01:01:48
Christian Yordanov
And how healthy you are, again, is not how fit you are. it is It is stuff going on under the surface, oxidative stress levels.
01:01:59
Christian Yordanov
but With my my client that was a ah ah coach, a sports coach for his career, he had a lot of oxidative stress. I told him, right now, you should not be should not be doing crazy exercise until this is under control because you're just going to increase the oxidative stress and the inflammation from more exercise because there was detoxification issues, there was clearly some kind of digestive issues. They're not specific on that, the urine test, because we tested the urine, not the gut directly with stool.
01:02:30
Christian Yordanov
But there is still quite a few markers that indicate malabsorption, maldigestion, candida, you know, like bacterial dysbiosis. So there was a lot of stuff out of whack, deficiencies, you know, toxic metals, vitamin deficiencies as well, mineral deficiencies. So that person should not be exerting themselves, right? So we have to really, when we're looking at how healthy am I, of course you have to feel good.
01:02:55
Christian Yordanov
But like I said earlier, lots of guys, they feel good because they're running on stress hormones or they just don't. there's There's certain things going on that you can't necessarily feel, right?
01:03:09
Christian Yordanov
You don't necessarily feel oxidative stress until it's you know way late in the game or inflammation. or deficiencies, and so on and so forth. but Especially like if you're if you go and get a pump in the gym, your your adrenaline is high, or whatever, you go for a run and your adrenaline is high, you're going to feel good because that's why you have the whole adrenaline junkie term, the runner's high, because these some of these stress hormones and cascades and endorphins, they do give you a high.
01:03:40
Christian Yordanov
So you have to differentiate between being high on stress hormones and feeling fine and actually being healthy,
Conclusion: Embracing a Holistic Approach
01:03:50
Christian Yordanov
right?
01:03:51
Christian Yordanov
And this is this is kind of a more much more nuanced discussion. And of course, we help clients with that. So obviously, if you're interested in that kind of thing, you can reach out. We can do a metabolic function assessment for you, see if we can help you out. And if we can, yeah we can discuss further. If we can't,
01:04:08
Christian Yordanov
Of course, you're goingnna get a ton of value from the session anyway. So I hope this was hope this was you know interesting to you. did
01:04:19
Christian Yordanov
Okay, so we're going to end it here. i think that's enough discussion on this topic. I think the most important thing to remember is that focusing on fitness only will not make you healthier.
01:04:37
Christian Yordanov
There's a lot of other stuff, a lot of bits and pieces that we need to dial in in order to to be healthy and to stay healthy.