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Endurance Exercise Will Destroy Your Health
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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
Christian's Personal Transformation
00:00:01
chrisyzen
Hey it's Christian Jourdanoff, thanks for tuning in to the How to Actually Live Longer podcast where we dispel some of the myths and propaganda around longevity and we actually tell it like it truly is and hopefully you're gonna learn some stuff that will prevent you from damaging your health I've made a lot of mistakes over the years and over the tens of thousands of hours I've spent researching biohacking health optimization natural medicine all that good stuff ah you know I've learned a thing or two and interestingly enough I learned
00:00:45
chrisyzen
when When I was 30 years old, and so i hit the I was about to hit 30 some years ago. And I decided that year that I'm going to go back to training Thai boxing.
00:00:59
chrisyzen
and I'm gonna do a fight. I used to train in my 20s, never like did a ah fight or anything, but it was always on my bucket list. So I said, ah, screw it. I'm gonna, I just, I went from like drinking almost every single day, if not every single day, smoking cigarettes and all that jazz, right? ah Eating garbage food. I said, I'm gonna go listen to how stupid this was. I said, I'm gonna go plant based.
00:01:28
chrisyzen
And I'm going to do a fight this year. That was 2016. And I remember but the the first day I walked into the Thai boxing gym, it was the 10th of January. And I remember I went in and still hung over.
00:01:45
chrisyzen
from the day before and I told the dude, the the coach, I didn't know it was the coach he yet. I started talking to him and then he told me he's the coach and I told him, okay, I wanna do a fight this year.
Impact of Training on Health
00:01:58
chrisyzen
ah He just looked me like a really in a grumpy, cranky mood and he we started a training session, two hour training session and some of the fighters were prepping for a fight. So when you're prepping for a fight, those last,
00:02:13
chrisyzen
Three weeks or so you do a lot of heavy sparring the two weeks the the two the the last week it's lighter but the two three weeks before the fight you do really heavy sparring and so we did a circuit train circuit session and the first thing i had to do is hold pads for one of the fighters who's like walk around the weight was 80 kilograms which is like double that plus some on top of that is his uh uh weight in pounds so he just he was doing like just like
00:02:44
chrisyzen
kicks and i was like purple and red the next day but uh what i did was i went from zero to training i started training three times a week then four times a week that i started doing runs in the morning and just uh increased it to like six eight times a week and these were like two ah two-hour sessions right you would start with a run and then pads and you know all that stuff sparring uh circuits and then i'll do some some weight training running around all of this with a full-time job i was uh i think i was going to college i can't remember was it the year after i was i was doing some course i was doing like a neuromuscular therapy and massage sports and event massage course and i just putting my body through the wringer and i went plant-based i lost a bunch of weight and
00:03:35
chrisyzen
over the year i got I got so ground down all the over training and the plant-based bollocks and I was drinking soy protein shakes you know I told you I made a lot of mistakes over the years that so you don't have to and I just had so many injuries going into the fight that I did manage to last all three rounds but it was it was pretty bad like my endurance was really poor and I just got tanked within 30 seconds and the rest of the I was on the back for the rest fight but the point is that all that exertion it just
00:04:13
chrisyzen
Because because like I did it, I went from zero to like a hundred in in that year. I felt it's like I dislocated almost like a hip. I couldn't sleep for months until my wife managed to get me ah to go to Conor McGregor's physical therapist.
Endurance Exercise Concerns
00:04:30
chrisyzen
This was in Ireland.
00:04:31
chrisyzen
So I managed to actually go to him like maybe 10-15 times and he fixed me. Thank God for Dr. Payne. But I just did so much damage in that one year to my body that I I could feed it for for for months and months after that, right? And a couple of years later then I realized that because at the time what one kind of big um big type boxing star, I think from the hol from the Netherlands, I think he died at that time.
00:05:06
chrisyzen
he was just on his morning run he just fell over from a heart attack and he was like in his 40s or something like that 45 or maybe at most like late 40s and that's when i started to realize that
00:05:21
chrisyzen
the endurance exercise i always hated it i always hated running i never liked to do it and i think there's a reason we hate we we inherently hate to do it right we were given a lot of the stuff around Oh, we we evolved like that and we were persistent hunters and I don't know if we were. I mean, I don't know if all of us were. Some of us in the tribe were maybe the younger ones, but I really think the reason we can endure this endurance exercise when we are younger
00:05:54
chrisyzen
is because we have a lot of adaptive reserve. And we when we have a lot of stress hormones running rampant through our body, we have a lot of protective hormones that arise in tandem to offset those deleterious effects. The problem is as the years go by into kind of your 30s plus 35, 40s, you continue producing the same amounts of cortisol, adrenaline, and stress hormones in general.
00:06:20
chrisyzen
but the protective hormones we start to produce less of them like the DHEA, progenolone, progesterone, testosterone and I think this is why over time negative things start happening to the body the problem is that these things happen inside the body and it's very difficult to see the body continues adapting to the stress because it has to if you're if you're torturing your body with super long runs and on whatever other crazy exercise.
00:06:52
chrisyzen
It will adapt.
Scientific Evidence on Exercise
00:06:54
chrisyzen
It's super adaptable. The problem is what is the cost of that adaptation? And hot degree, that was a seven minute intro to into the topic ah ah ah of today, which is I'm going to give you some snippets from a paper published in 2018 called the extreme exercise hypothesis.
00:07:19
chrisyzen
recent findings and cardiovascular health implications and basically this paper summarizes some of the evidence that shows that endurance exercise at least on the more extreme end of the spectrum is absolutely not good for you so ah you know folks that you know there's this David Goggins guy I hear his name once in a while he apparently he does some crazy runs and there's there's quite a few other guys out there and um you know ultra running is pretty big now and even ah I remember around that time ah when I was doing the Thai boxing training for the fight ah there was one book I read by Scott Jurek
00:08:10
chrisyzen
he's another outro runner who's plant based and ah you know it it's was it's pretty trendy now doing this outro running but i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you without sugar coating it i think yeah not just outro running but any long distance running um especially running but also anything that's really like an hour plus of an event you know so a very long bike endurance anything endurance right Ironman triathlons
00:08:47
chrisyzen
All of the stuff I really think it's X and ah I'm i'm um so I said, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it i This is genuinely what I believe and and it's based on kind of Plenty of evidence and in the next book of the how to actually live longer series I'm gonna have a whole chapter on this because I have a lot of the research. I just need to obviously You know have a creative narrative and read it all and research it takes time and it you don't have time when you have a small child than and clients to work with. But it will happen next year sometime. But anyway, here is what I i genuinely believe is endurance
00:09:28
chrisyzen
exercise is extremely extremely harmful not just it's not great it's extremely harmful there's I believe this zero and I mean zero reason for anybody to be engaging in this it's not doing them any good especially for women, a million times over, right? Especially if a person has a health problem or multiple health problems, especially if a person is close to 40 or over. This has zero place ever in their daily routine, right? Zero, absolutely zero.
00:10:09
chrisyzen
Okay. Now, if you're a pro athlete, you're getting paid for it, you want to set some kind of record, that's a different story. But if you are, you need to do a lot of smart things in terms of ameliorating that damage because this is straight up harming your body. It's aging.
00:10:27
chrisyzen
your cardiovascular system if you decide to engage in this kind of stuff right and I've i've told many many clients well if you have a health problem you're coming to me with like we want to restore health and then optimize it I tell them please just stop stop the the crazy workouts for a few months Do other stuff at least for a few months and the thing is though you have to also be careful with If you start having more energy remember one client last year with a couple of months, you know, we're doing good stuff good work and then I see her like for the third session or whatever and she's like
00:11:10
chrisyzen
yeah so uh yesterday i was in the gym two hours today i was like running for an hour like what are you why all of this energy is being wasted instead of going towards healing regeneration and repair it's going just to to keep you freaking putting one foot in front of the other why the hell are you doing that it's like taking one step forward three steps back you know and she she struggled with that because she was a she was a bikini bikini what you call it physique what yeah you know you know the the women's physique bikini sort of
00:11:55
chrisyzen
competition figure figure competitor I think yeah figure competitor yeah sorry it's 10 it's 9 p.m. in the evening here very long day so yeah so she she this was in her her blood right but eventually she listened to me not just about the the exercise but about removing certain things from her diet and yeah think things definitely worked out in the end but um I just wish people would if you're coming to me you're paying me money for my advice you would listen to me from the get go but you know so I've been able to kind of definitely become more convincing in terms of these things but here's what we're gonna do I'm just gonna ah have some snippets I took out of this paper which I'm gonna link to in the episode description
Debating Exercise Guidelines
00:12:43
chrisyzen
and again the paper is called the extreme exercise hypothesis recent findings and cardiovascular health implications and then let me just read some snippets emerging evidence from epidemiological studies and observations in cohorts of endurance athletes suggests that potentially adverse cardiovascular manifestations may occur following high volume and or high intensity long-term exercise training, which may attenuate the health benefits of a physically active lifestyle, set in this accelerated coronary artery calcification,
00:13:21
chrisyzen
exercise induced cardiac biomarker release, myocardial fibrosis, atrial fibrillation and even higher risk of sudden cardiac death have been reported in athletes. And here's the thing, i this is one thing I oh oh always want to stress, athletes
00:13:47
chrisyzen
have adapted to enduring a lot of stress right so when someone tells me yeah but I don't exercise you know eight eight ten twelve fifteen twenty hours a week I'm not an athlete I don't exercise like an athlete that that doesn't matter we're talking about relative exertion relative stress if you're fairly untrained detrained or not like an amateur athlete it may take six or or eight hours or or even four hours of of training in a week to reach ah the same sort of level of stress that ah an athlete that's adapted to a lot more stress
00:14:28
chrisyzen
would could endure so it's a relative thing right so don't allow yourself into thinking that oh I only do a couple of times a week of this for a couple of hours and then once or twice a week I do this that that for many people is way putting them Into too much category and you'll see in a minute what I mean. So continuing on ah There is by the way, this language that they use may attenuate may occur um Potentially adverse right these these guys that wrote the paper ah They have to Be very moderate in what their ah
00:15:17
chrisyzen
in what they're saying because you cannot go against the grain. If you go there bashing fiber or omega threes or yeah exercise how good exercise is, how good vegetables are, yeah you might not get your paper published. So you have to, when you're trying to you know weave in something that goes against the grain, you have to be very apologetic about it. right This is very a very important strategy.
00:15:46
chrisyzen
to get your paper published okay so if I'm pretty sure if these guys were candid it'd be like no just endurance exercise bad idea for health for long-term health that's I'm pretty sure that's what these guys I'm pretty sure these guys are not going to be engaging in a lot of endurance exercise so continuing on There is primarily circum again apologetic language just to kind of make sure you understand that there's primarily circumstantial evidence that supports the extreme exercise hypothesis. Subclinical and atherosclerotic coronary art artery disease, as well as structural cardiovascular abnormalities and arrhythmias are present in some of the most active veteran endurance athletes and need appropriate clinical follow-up.
00:16:40
chrisyzen
to reduce the risk for adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Future studies are warranted to establish the long-term cardiovascular health effects of these findings in veteran endurance athletes. Now, the and this snippet, just you're going to love it. too The World Health Organization recommends that adults aged 18 and 64 engage in at least 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity aerobic activities or 75 minutes a week of vigorous intensity aerobic activities or an equivalent combination thereof. Furthermore, complementary muscle strengthening activities should be performed involving major muscle groups on two or more days of the week.
00:17:26
chrisyzen
regular aerobic exercise and resistance training are associated with a reduced risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Here's the thing, we have this this thing called, remember they're doing epidemiological studies in these things, right?
00:17:44
chrisyzen
for the for these recommendations. So a person that does exercise are likely is likely to maybe drink less, not smoke, maybe yeah eat better food, not eat as much fast food. So there's this healthy user bias. For example, fish oil is another example. Someone taking fish oil could be taking other supplements, eating cleaner food, eating less garbage, eating, ah you know, ah drinking less alcohol. So this is the problem with this research. A lot of it is really skewed and you can You can massage the data any which way you like. So. So the the the issue I personally have, maybe you would disagree, is that whatever the world harm organization who recommends, I am like, I don't give a damn what you're recommending. You know, if cast your mind back a couple of years in the past and
00:18:43
chrisyzen
you may remember they were recommending various other things. So ah if they're recommending something like that, I'm like, hmm, it's either it too much or it's too little or so something is, something is not right. Whatever these big outlets government, whatever organizations, whatever they're recommending is never been really good for us. You know, the the food pyramid now the the the circle thing they have and the seed oil the heart healthy ah reducing saturated fat and reducing sugar even now is is so is suspect you know because they're recommending it but that's a topic for another day so the thing is
00:19:29
chrisyzen
that here's what the researchers are saying so the dose response relationship between aerobic exercise volumes which largely reflect the duration and intensity of physical activity and the associated health benefits is most often described as curvilinear with the greatest exercise induced health improvements at the beginning of the curve but nevertheless the WHO recommends that more exercise is better so that there you go something is not good there And it is estimated that maximum cardiovascular health benefits are obtained at an exercise volume that approximates up to three to four times the current exercise recommendations.
Diet vs Exercise for Health
00:20:11
chrisyzen
So 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, four times that is 300 minutes, that is five hours. but Imagine five if five hours five days a week doing
00:20:28
chrisyzen
an hour of vigorous intensity aerobic activities. I don't think most people are metabolically healthy enough to to be able to endure that. I don't think that that would be good for them. you know ah Then they continue to say the health effects of exercise volumes beyond the optimal dose are currently under debate. Some epidemiological studies reported an increased risk of disease and or mortality at the highest exercise volumes, suggesting that health benefits of an active lifestyle may plateau or even decline in extreme exercises. Cross-sectional studies have reported that most active veteran endurance runners have an increased risk for myocardial fibrosis, coronary artery calcification, and atrial fibrillation.
00:21:24
chrisyzen
heart related stuff. These observations imply that high volumes of chronic endurance exercise training may be detrimental for the heart. Listen, just, Oh my God. These observations imply that high volumes of chronic endurance exercise training may be detrimental for the heart. It's, it's straight up detrimental for the heart. Okay.
00:21:54
chrisyzen
don't they don't imply it it's freaking bad for your heart it's exercise ages uh endurance a lot of endurance exercise ages the cardiovascular system right this is again why especially if you if your health is not top notch or you if you're over like 35 i believe you have absolutely no reason unless it's your job but even then you're taking a massive sort of ah ah you better be getting paid really well like a soccer player or something to to to be shorter each straight up shortening your life so don't do it please for the love of Christ stop because the that damage can be
00:22:36
chrisyzen
Reversed repaired in many ways right we we know there's certain vitamins and and strategies that can um actually decalcify tissues we can reverse fi fibrosis can be reversed ah with certain certain supplementation strategies and stuff like that so Don't do it
00:23:00
chrisyzen
Next, cor confirmation or rejection of the extreme exercise hypothesis is a hot topic in the field of sports cardiology. There are valid concerns that the message that high volume, high intensity exercise can potentially harm the heart may discourage a physically active lifestyle Among the general population and contribute to the increasing prevalence of physical inactivity so there so they're afraid to basically spill the beans on this because They're afraid that The the people are gonna do even less exercise and they're already sort of you know overweight and not doing exercise, but here's the thing Here's the thing
00:23:41
chrisyzen
you if you really ate well you don't need exercise to to keep your weight down you know it's to me it's like it's like um Trying to think of an analogy, you know you have a You you make a hole in your boat and there's all this water gushing in and then you just have a ah bucket and you just are throwing the ah The water out of the boat by scooping it into the bucket um that That's kind of the way I see if you're gonna try to out exercise the crappy diet right with the just by just
00:24:20
chrisyzen
eating the way I recommend to my clients, people lose weight, because it not just because of the the metabolic improvements, but the lowered inflammation and just getting the polyunsaturated fats out of your body, even though it takes years and it takes time, just getting those out of the body and the diet is super beneficial because that speeds up the metabolism. you know ah This is why farmers use corn and soy high in polyunsaturated fats to fatten up their their livestock because they're thyroid inhibitors, they mess with the metabolism, they slow the metabolism, these polyunsaturated fats. So ah if you get them out of your body, you actually raise your metabolism and that in and of itself will reduce this unneeded weight until until some kind of you know homeostatic set point, right? Which doesn't have to, I don't think 10% body fat is really necessary.
00:25:17
chrisyzen
Unless you're you know, unless you're a fighter or a specific specific sort of job requirement requires I think You know twelve twelve to fifteen percent body fat for for a guy's more than enough now Okay, if you're trying if you're still young can endure the stress and you're still trying to you know find a mate okay be leaner but if you're if you're already married have kids you know I don't think it's the stress of getting to under 12% body fat is necessarily worth the squeeze unless you know it depends in in certain instances it depends but you really have to do it right you know you can just
Fitness vs Health
00:26:01
chrisyzen
diet try and and exercise and and Expect that to to to do the trick. There's much smarter strategies that we can employ to do that without the stress but anyway, that's kind of a little bit besides the point so the The the point there is that you know Peter or Tia talks about how he thinks exercise is the best goddamn thing to to make a person insulin sensitive and blah blah blah blah blah well, I I think That is if you if you don't have a little bit of discipline, because if if you have a little bit of discipline and just choose to eat real food and you know not eat these inflammatory garbage foods that are everywhere and they're so cheap, if you can do that, that that is enough to get metabolically healthy.
00:26:47
chrisyzen
you know the exercise can supplement it as long as it's not stressful but it shouldn't be the freaking thing that makes or breaks a person's metabolic health in insulin sensitivity and whatnot um Next up, recreational physical activity at about 112 minutes per week yielded the largest risk reductions for the combined endpoint of mortality and major cardiovascular disease, but these significant health benefits were lost at physical activity volumes above 255 minutes per week.
00:27:26
chrisyzen
These observations challenge the notion that more exercise is invariably better. It's like fish oil. or yeah I used to be like that. If two grams a day is good, I was taking like, oh my God, how many? ah you know I wasn't taking the fish oil so much as I was eating the cod livers and the from the can with the oil and the hey crow and you know i'm I'm that kind of guy you know more is more so unfortunately a lot of folks especially as you get fitter as you as your body becomes more used to the stress you can push yourself more and you think more is better and the problem is the endorphins and the stress hormones in the adrenaline
00:28:09
chrisyzen
gives you a buzz and you people can become addicted to that you know and the key i believe is to just you can still absolutely do be active but there's other ways to ah scratch that itch that are not damaging your cardiovascular system you know that's i think this is what i tried to relate to my clients because um it's it ain't good if if you look at this even just i can give it 20 30 studies just really ah especially for women the effects are just horrific you know anyway um ah okay another snippet atherosclerotic coronary art disease ah coronary artery disease is the largest cause of
00:28:56
chrisyzen
cardiovascular disease and is highly dependent on both genetic and lifestyle factors. Regular physical activity and exercise training are associated with a reduction of selected cardiovascular disease risk factors, ah including lipid levels, blood pressure, and inflammation. Okay, here's the thing.
00:29:13
chrisyzen
I just the reason I read that I had that there is because again I just want to state if you're using exercise to lower blood pressure and and augment lipid levels and inflammation that's way freaking ah downstream from where these problems are coming inflammation comes from the gut from inflammation comes from from food from toxins blood pressure comes from stress ah you know ah the lipid levels I don't even want like these guys are probably thinking you know if your cholesterol and your LDL is like above 100 and your cholesterol is like 200 and you your your lipids are not right or something but you know that's even this it's too ridiculous to even freaking pay it any attention but here's the thing
00:30:04
chrisyzen
Again, it's diet and just being metabolically healthy. is This you can alleviate with like some basic supplementation and just eating better and you know, all this kind of good stuff without having to endure. ah Then you can just do the exercise for for the fun of it. You know, if you like to play tennis or if you want to play basketball with friends, whatever, you know, whatever. You want to go swimming.
00:30:30
chrisyzen
you do it for the fun of it, not I need to do this in order to be healthy. you don't This is what really annoys me. Being fit doesn't inherently make you healthy. This is what people have to understand. A lot of fit people, a lot of lean people, and a lot of very strong people are extremely um unhealthy in fact today i was just watching some just mindless youtube crap that i was driving to get the car inspected and i was just like like random crap on youtube you know to to pass the time waiting for the car to get inspected and another bodybuilder died at like
00:31:05
chrisyzen
In his 30s and then another one died in his 45. So a lot of these okay, yeah they're using ah perform performance performance enhancing drugs and stuff but um so many Good-looking people were healthy or fit-looking people ah Are actually not really healthy metabolically speaking so you can you can actually be pretty unfit but be quite metabolically healthy and and you can be metabolically healthy and not need to do exercise to get any healthier. You can do the exercise to just to have fun just because it is a different types so type of health that it contributes to, not necessarily
00:31:50
chrisyzen
ah physical health but more like emotional health you know if you're out with friends playing if you're out in nature in the park ah there is a that kind of stimulation that is a an aspect of health that's not necessarily correlated to the biomarkers in the body right I guess that's my point there um In fact, you can if the exercise is nice and stimulating and you're with friends, you can take the hit. It might actually be a little bit deleterious to your body. you know You might hurt the next day, be a bit more inflamed, but it was probably worth it connecting with those folks. and um it's like It's like social drinking. You might have a glass of wine or two ah to to to go out with friends or whatever.
00:32:30
chrisyzen
Uh, that alcohol might, the the damaging effect of the alcohol might be offset by the positive interactions and feelings of, of, of you going out, you know, not, not that I'm recommending doing it. If you, if you don't feel like you want to drink, don't drink great. But I'm just saying that exercise So fitness fitness and health, there's a reason this the podcasting category is health and fitness, you know understand?
Research on Endurance Sports
00:33:04
chrisyzen
it's Health is a thing, fitness is another thing. And people think, I sometimes talk to people,
00:33:12
chrisyzen
that are like ah I used to be so healthy because I used to run I used to go to the gym like that that's not exactly you used to be fit you we have to understand there's a difference so sorry I didn't mean to kind of go down the rabbit hole here So coronary artery atherosclerosis can be assessed using different imaging techniques of which computed tomography CT is the least costly faster than most widely used. The coronary artery calcification CAC score can be derived from CT images and is an excellent predictor of future cardiac events. Interestingly XYZ group found a higher prevalence of cor coronary
00:34:00
chrisyzen
artery calcification scores among 108 marathon runners compared to an age and risk ah factor matched control group from the general population. so
00:34:14
chrisyzen
Marathon runners had higher prevalence of coronary artery calcification. Recent studies have provided important novel insights regarding this widely cited observation. um One group examined the association between lifelong volumes of physical activity and the prevalence and characteristics of coronary atherosclerosis in 284 male amateur athletes.
00:34:40
chrisyzen
the most active athletes routinely exercised at volumes equal to four times current recommendations, where whereas the least active athletes exercised at the current recommended volume and the most active athletes had a higher CAC, coronary artery calcification score, or sorry, had a higher CAC prevalence than the least active athletes, okay?
00:35:09
chrisyzen
ah however the most active athletes also had a lower prevalence of mixed plaques and more often had only calcified plaques compared with the least active athletes this observation has important clinical relevance as mixed plaques are associated with a higher probability of future cardiovascular events compared with calcified plaques but here's the thing that may be the case but we should not be having plaques man like we shouldn't we shouldn't be getting calcification ah in our freaking art maybe when we're like way older like in maybe in our 80s um but we we shouldn't be allowing this to happen and this this process is like i talk about in my book how to actually live longer volume one the process of calcification
00:36:01
chrisyzen
fibrosis, these these kind of more end-stage deleterious processes, these are driven by what I call the three primary drivers of aging and dysfunction, the stress, inflammation, and oxidative stress. And we have ways to assess a person, do some basic, not not basic, but um fundamental lab testing,
00:36:23
chrisyzen
and really figure out what is contributing to this person's stress, oxidative stress, inflammation that will, over time, cause car calcification of tissues, arteries, etc., cause fibrosis in, you know, the heart, the the wherever else in the body, but whatever,
00:36:41
chrisyzen
ah Wherever with whichever organ or tissue is most compromised at that time, you know, so we should not even allow these things to happen and I'll tell you one way to to prevent this kind of stuff from happening like calcified plaques and Coronary artery disease and CICs called Was it freaking coronary artery calcification is to not put our cardiovascular system through so much stress on a regular basis. Yeah?
00:37:17
chrisyzen
simple really simple ah um another god ah it just gets deeper deeper so Another group changes in plaque characteristics among 8 participants of the race across the USA, which is 140 race days, covering 3080 miles.
00:37:41
chrisyzen
Four runners had no evidence of coronary artery disease on CT and geography before or after the race, but luminous stenosis and plaque volume increased in four runners with coronary ah atherosclerosis present before the race.
00:37:56
chrisyzen
The change in plaque volume was mainly attributed to an increase in non-calcified plaque, however concomitant increases in high sensitivity C-reactive protein were noted, suggesting that exercise-induced inflammation may contribute to accelerated plaque progression.
00:38:16
chrisyzen
right So if you have plaques and this calcification process has started, the atherosclerotic process has started, more exercise is going to make it worse. that There's a high likelihood of that.
00:38:32
chrisyzen
um Whether initial increases in non calcified black volume may change to calcified volume during race recovery is unknown. Previous studies demonstrated that exercise increased parathyroid hormone, decreased vitamin D3, and decreased magnesium levels, all biomarkers of calcium phosphate metabolism, which could affect vascular calcification. And um this is the thing. Remember, any type of exercise The reason you become stronger, faster, fitter, more endurance, whatever that the case may be, is because you're putting the body through stress and
00:39:15
chrisyzen
And that's a damaging process, right? so You know, when you lift weights, you're damaging the muscle. The muscle builds back better. Yeah? it The muscle grows back stronger.
Managing Exercise Stress
00:39:27
chrisyzen
So you have to remember exercise is damaging, right?
00:39:35
chrisyzen
And over time, we become less and less able to repair that damage. That's why older people cannot endure the same stuff that they could 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 20 years ago. I can't do the same things I could do when I was 23, 15 years ago or so. And so as we get older, our goal shouldn't be to keep pushing to to ah break new records or or do what we could do 10 years ago.
00:40:02
chrisyzen
and Unless there's like some ego thing involved or unless again, it's your job. I think what we should do is Figure out how to reduce stress how to reduce inflammation because remember exercise causes inflammation oxidative stress damage And that has to be repaired. So if you're not doing the stuff to support that those repair processes, like most people aren't, because I know but people what most people do. And it's nowhere near what I do, for example, in terms of diet and supplementation. And I just know what it takes to truly, truly protect yourself from you know all the damage in in the modern world. Most people are not actually nowhere near doing as much as their they need to.
00:40:46
chrisyzen
Yet a lot of people are pushing them themselves really hard in the gym or pounding the pavement, whatever else. you know um You have to remember again exercise means damage and if you are not in a great state of health Exercise is not making you healthier. It's not making you healthier It's probably worsening you over time. The only issue is it needs a slow process It's that this this is a slow degeneration. So it's very difficult to sure ah Kind of pinpoint it to something that ten years ago five years ago was was doing you great seemingly ah Next increased myocardial fibrosis so exercise induced increases in cardiac but biomarkers and
00:41:31
chrisyzen
biomarkers such as troponin, a marker of cardiomyocyte damage, and B-type naturetic peptide, a marker of myocardial stress are common in athletes after after endurance exercise. Because they've been breaking down the damn body, they've been breaking down their their body in inflammation, their stress has been running rampant.
00:41:53
chrisyzen
um Recent studies explored the impact of endurance exercise on novel cardiac biomarkers such as Galactin 3, a marker of myocardial fibrosis, and ST2, soluble suppression of tumor genicity 2, a marker of extracellular matrix remodeling and fibrosis, and basically those resting levels of those of the Galactin 3 were higher in athletes.
00:42:20
chrisyzen
ah
00:42:23
chrisyzen
and significantly increases were observed following a 30 kilometer run. Similarly for the SST2 concentrations increased following a marathon um with 86% of the athletes demonstrating a concentration above the upper reference limit. This is one paper. Yeah, I've got like couple of at least maybe even not two but three dozen studies showing negative deleterious effects of endurance exercise and just in general over exercising how bad it is especially for men again then we have exercise in atrial fibrillation
00:43:08
chrisyzen
The association between habitual physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness expressed as ah metabolic equivalents and incident atrial fibrillation is complex ah it's complex. Two recent studies reported that higher CRF was associated associated with a greater reduction ah in atrial fibrillation risk. This is in contrast to a prospective observational study in older adults and a large cohort study of long distance cross-country skiers that found that individuals participating at the highest intensities and or volumes of exercise were at greater risk of developing atrial fibrillation
00:43:51
chrisyzen
And another systematic review and meta analysis of case control studies found that the overall risk of atrial fibrillation was significantly higher in athletes and controls. And um others have reported that practicing endurance sports increases the probability of experiencing atrial fibrillation by two to 10 fold, even after adjusting for potential confounding variables and associated risk factors.
00:44:19
chrisyzen
and that the lifetime accumulated hours of vigorous endurance training was the most powerful predictor of exercise induced atrial fibrillation. And then I won't even talk about sudden cardiac death because high intensity exercise can acutely albeit transiently increase the risk for sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death. ah Yeah, I mean, that's it's getting dark. It's getting dark. Let's let's stop there. the The thing is you have to understand is the way I explain health restoration and optimization to clients is first we need to, it's it's like you're, you know, you're imagine you have a headache and then someone tells you well no wonder you have a headache you're you're sitting here in your in your house and you're banging your head against the wall all day a doctor might give you you know ibuprofen, Advil for the headache but a smart practitioner will examine your environment what you're doing on a daily basis and tell you well you know we could do some
00:45:36
chrisyzen
anti-inflammatory painkiller to for that headache or maybe stop banging your head against the wall all day long maybe bang your head against the wall for like half the day to begin with see if you feel better maybe if you feel better maybe I'm not totally full of shit maybe you trust me when I tell you maybe you completely stop banging your head against the wall or maybe let's bang our head against the wall every other day maybe maybe twice a week maybe once a week take nice long breaks after banging. I had the guest of all right.
Final Thoughts and Promotion
00:46:09
chrisyzen
So the the point is you first have to remove the impediments to health. So if you're doing something extremely stressful or something that's extremely inflammatory, like so certain foods, for example, people are taking or yeah whatever the case may be, ah the first thing we have to do is remove the damaging things. Yeah. And then we have to give the body what it needs.
00:46:32
chrisyzen
in terms of nutrition, environment, all that, you know, environmental stuff. It can be sleep, hormonal balance, gut health, detox. Everybody's different, really. But it's it's said simply, we have to remove the impediments to health, stressors.
00:46:49
chrisyzen
the damaging aspect and then support the body and then it will do the rest to the fullest potential that it can right now given your genetics your age your health history how much damage has been accumulated but the thing is even there's been if there's been substantial damage um the body again given the right tools and new nutrients and and compounds it can reverse a lot of damaging processes you know um
00:47:20
chrisyzen
the the but again again the point of this episode is first we have to turn off the tap first we have to stop banging our head against the wall and I'm sorry to tell you I know I know plenty of folks out there that love their intense exercise it's you get a great buzz but there's other ways you can continue getting a great buzz you know it's not about becoming a lazy slob that just sits on the couch and watches TV all day. It's about channeling that energy into healing and channeling that energy to something else. you know so Some people, they can express that in in other ways. you know There's so many different yeah lower intensity sports and and and activities and stuff like that, as opposed to just pounding the pavement and aging
00:48:16
chrisyzen
your cardiovascular system or doing like crazy shit like CrossFit, especially if you're over 35. Anyway, hope you found this useful.
00:48:27
chrisyzen
um and you know ah I'm just saying it like it is. I wish it was good. It was good. ah I don't want to be a party pooper. i I don't want to take away something that you love from you, like if you're a client or something like that.
00:48:43
chrisyzen
But the the evidence is just very clear that endurance exercise is in no way good for you. right you You do get some benefits, but you can replicate a lot of those benefits with much lower intensity, less stressful activities. but And we can we can discuss some of those in inside my Live Longer program if you decide to join me there.
00:49:14
chrisyzen
And if you are interested in understanding how I can help you with your health challenges and help you achieve and exceed your health goals. look in the description down below, go and book your free metabolic function assessment session with me where we can, you know, do a little bit of a deep dive into your current metabolic function and get to meet each other, see if we're a good fit to work together. And if we are, we're going to make some beautiful things happen together. Zero doubt about that. So thank you again for tuning into this episode of the how to actually live longer podcast. I'm Christian, you're enough. If you haven't gotten yourself a copy of the how to actually live longer volume one book,
00:49:52
chrisyzen
get yourself the hardcover. I highly recommend it. It's worth the extra five bucks that we're giving to Jeff Bezos. I don't actually I make less money off the hardcover, but it's just a much more impressive book and it will last longer and it just it's really nice. I'm really proud of how it came out so ah yeah or if you become a client i'll send you a couple of copies to to give to some friends so don't even bother buying it yet book your metabolic function ah assessment session and then you know let's let's talk further so again thanks for tuning in talk to you later