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Reverse Aging Through Exercise with Dr. Bob Arnot - E51
22 Plays13 days ago
Can someone really reverse aging? What if you could reverse your biological clock and be more physically fit than ever before, even in your senior years?
As you get older, you might think that your best days are behind you. Instead of thriving, it’s easy to accept the aches, poor sleep, and waning motivation. But what if you could radically reshape what’s possible for your body and mind at any age?
This episode takes a deep dive into the habits and science-backed protocols that can help you reverse aging. We'll hear from a prominent medical doctor who reveals how he achieved the physiological markers of someone nearly 50 years younger through health optimization.
Dr. Bob Arnot is a doctor of internal medicine, journalist, author and former host of the Dr. Danger reality TV series, with numerous appearances on talk shows including Larry King, NBC and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He is well known for his humanitarian work, and has sat on the board for Save the Children, the UN High Commission for Refugees and Global Outreach Doctors, among others. He is also the co-founder of the American Working Group on Greater Syria, and is the founder and chairman of Lifeline Iraq. His focus is now on food technology and longevity, and he is the Chief Innovation Officer at Health Tech Without Borders.
“People get so trapped by their ideology that they can't eat something or they can't do an exercise or they don't want to do something because they're ideologically stuck.” - Dr. Bob Arnot
In this episode you will learn:
- Why Dr. Arnot believes it’s possible to physiologically get younger with elite-level fitness, and how he personally maintains a biological age decades younger than his chronological age.
- The concept of a “portfolio lifestyle,” and how diversifying activities across athletics, music, technology, and humanitarian work contributes to sustained motivation and fulfillment.
- How advanced tracking devices and metrics like heart rate variability (HRV), VO2 max, and continuous glucose monitoring guide Dr. Arnot’s training, recovery, and dietary decisions.
- The importance of structured sleep and nutrition routines, such as early dinners, whole foods, and sleep hygiene, to optimize recovery, cognitive function, and HRV.
- Why psychological mindset, meditation, and proactive agency are as crucial as physical protocols in extending healthspan and maintaining vitality.
- Key takeaways on purpose-driven living: investing time in meaningful activities, continually reinventing oneself, and why giving full effort, no matter the task, optimizes both health and happiness.
Resources
- Connect with Dr. Arnot on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbobarnot/
- Learn more about his innovative work with Health Tech Without Borders: https://www.htwb.org/
- Read his book, ‘Turning Back the Clock’: https://www.amazon.com/Arnots-Guide-Turning-Back-Clock/dp/0316051748
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
https://www.zapods.com
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
https://alively.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Athletic Longevity
00:00:00
Speaker
It's absolutely true. Until 85 or so, you will continue to improve if you're in a world-class athletic program. So recovering enough, you can really push yourself and push yourself to the right sport. When I say that I'm physiologically 25, I'm not kidding mi because I've been able to train my HRV up.
00:00:23
Speaker
This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Dr. Bob's Diverse Career Journey
00:00:37
Speaker
Dr. Bob, it is a pleasure to have you here today on the Home of Healthspan. And before we jump in to your very illustrious background, everything you've done and are doing today, how would you define yourself?
00:00:49
Speaker
You know, I'm the ultimate sort of early adapter from grade school on, always looking for what is sort of the newest and most interesting thing. So as an example, after medical school, founded the first overall sports science laboratory.
00:01:04
Speaker
mechanics, MIT and all this pulmonary physiology from MIT and Harvard and of g h and harard for ah Olympic athletes. I run 137 hospital emergency medicine group and at the dawn of television medicine, I was picked up actually by Diane Sawyer for CBS this morning and then spent years on the Today Show and Dateline and whatnot. And Still continue today doing ah television, which which is fun. I mean i love it But I also love and doing stuff.
The Portfolio Lifestyle Philosophy
00:01:35
Speaker
And so now I am the co-CEO of Health Tech Without Borders. I'm the chief innovation officer. and We've done the coolest stuff. And we have Halo Vision. So from Mass General and Harvard, we can help with an operation in Ukraine.
00:01:49
Speaker
We built an AI bot to be able to help anybody on the front line in Ukraine or Africa in terms of trauma. I have a small team of both at Dartmouth and Harvard College that were building these new Gen AX apps, both for humanitarian causes in terms of ah tracking people's biological age. So ah I guess I'm best defined as one of those annoying overachievers from high school just never gave up with the belief that, hey, it takes 10,000 hours to master something. So you're finished one 10,000 hours. What's next?
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and Rather than annoying, I think it's one of those that it's what drives society forward, too, right? If everybody just kind of plugged into what was already existing and showed up each day doing the same thing, we'd still be chiseling our sharp rocks to be able to cut things, right? Like we wouldn't have advanced. Andrew, that's the most interesting point there. I actually wrote a book about this and participated in a New Yorker article.
00:02:49
Speaker
And the idea was that what drives humans forward is reward. the brain's biochemical reward system. So if you look at somebody that is a bus driver in London, there's no reward.
00:03:03
Speaker
I mean, life is terrible. You step up the conductor and, hey, how are you, mate? They're running around and solving problems and stuff. They're a little higher up. And so I'm a huge believer that you have a variety of activities.
Athletic Ventures and Achievements
00:03:15
Speaker
Each of one is rewarding. I speak a different language. I'm recording a whole album with the Vienna Choir Boys in April. I'm recording my sixth symphony, actually, in Vienna in September.
00:03:26
Speaker
So I have a variety of different areas. I try to do three world championships in athletics every year, try to symphony every year, always trying to create new Gen X properties and whatnot, or really, really cool sort of innovation. So it's it's really, it's it's a little bit, I guess, like...
00:03:44
Speaker
investing. That is, if you have six things going on, you can have a really terrible day in one thing and a great day in something else. Portfolio approach, right? support was I was at Yokel few years ago a wonderful friend of mine stopped me and he said, what are you doing? And of course, anytime someone goes, what are you doing? It's like, oh God. Where do I start? Where do I stop? you start You start saying all this stuff and he kind of defined me because, wow.
00:04:10
Speaker
Bob, you're living the portfolio lifestyle. And I said, thank you. This guy is chairman and CEO of Bristol Myers. I said, thank you. I finally have a way of explaining myself. yeah I lead a portfolio lifestyle.
00:04:26
Speaker
And the reality is, and and I want to get into some of the details, but I would say the reality is for every listener, they do as well. It's just, one, how varied is a portfolio? And are you proud of the investments you're making?
00:04:38
Speaker
So if your portfolio is two hours of Netflix a day versus helping humanity or writing a symphony or doing this like Do you feel good about the portfolio you created?
00:04:49
Speaker
And so we all, you get the same 24 hours a day as anyone listening to this, as I do. So same as Bezos, same as Elon, you know, same as Zuckerberg. It's what are you doing with that? What does your portfolio look like those 24 hours, those seven days a week?
00:05:04
Speaker
And, know, If you put it towards the right and meaningful things that drive you forward, you drive society forward. Are you investing your time or are you spending your time?
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a great way to put it. Investing versus spending.
Ski Mountaineering Experience
00:05:20
Speaker
A 12-year-old TV set behind here, my studio here, he comes down and does video games after school and I say, Alistair, are we investing your time or we spending our time?
00:05:30
Speaker
doesn't get me right far, but i i make him do a half hour of writing every night. So, Writing? Writing. Like journaling or creative writing or what? would Creative writing. He he wrote, he won math Olympiad for his school. So he's a math voice, but he needs to improve his writing. So.
00:05:48
Speaker
and i said Well, okay, so you mentioned you try to do three world championships a year in athletics. So I would love, that's how I initially got connected to you through Mike. He's like, oh you need to talk to Dr. Bob. He's this endurance athlete, triathlete, all this.
00:06:02
Speaker
Do you mind saying how old you are? Well, my biological age tracks out at 25.5.
00:06:08
Speaker
wow but But if you stole my birth certificate, it would say 77. Yeah. yeah that I mean, but Brian Johnson has nothing on you. 25 or 77. needs to come take some notes.
00:06:18
Speaker
Okay. So 77, but obviously three world championships a year, right? There are a lot of people like, oh, you know, once I'm this age, I kind of check out. You're still driving for it. You're still at world championships competing.
00:06:31
Speaker
what What does that look like? Like what does a day-to-day, week-to-week, what does your movement like? routine and investment and part of your portfolio look like? So for instance, I race a ski mountaineering racing. I went to the world championships in January. is that schema? Is that what schema is? Yeah. Okay.
00:06:52
Speaker
I've even got my, I should be wearing it. I've got my, my US, ah US team. You're complete with the ah little American flag here to go through European airports now. Oh yeah, yeah, because they'll they'll love that. Yeah, so i do I do two or three hours every single day.
00:07:10
Speaker
Before we jump off that, I don't know if everybody knows what Schemo is, because it it's crazy endurance cardiovascular Like explain what ski mo is but with the skins and going up the mountains and then, yeah. So a lot of people have seen sort of, you know, you're skinning up a mountain. And it started for me, i was going up these big clunky skis and I was getting passed by everybody. was so frustrated.
00:07:30
Speaker
Then I get a lighter setup. And then one morning we all go up at like 4 a.m. It's like 5.30 getting to the top. And this guy runs by me like I'm standing still, wolfy.
00:07:43
Speaker
And I go, hey, guys are like, give me the name of your ski shop. So I call these guys out. And it turned out I hadn't known that until they had these ski mode skis. So they're tiny, tiny little skis, about 62 millimeters wide. You have a little skin on the bottom of it.
00:07:59
Speaker
And you run up the mountain. So it's like cross-country ski racing. And you can get a very long stride all the way up. Or you can even skate up. Then you rip off the skins.
00:08:10
Speaker
And you go down. And the really good guys and girls, they're doing 65. five miles an hour downhill on a ski that's about this far. I ascend like a mountain lion and I descend like a small whimpering child.
00:08:24
Speaker
is but I did one world championships in Austria a few years ago, another one, and I couldn't believe it. I mean, this snow it had snowed months. it was
00:08:36
Speaker
It was unbelievably fast. But the competition, I love the competition. I do i did really well at the uphill part. They also have vertical races. So my philosophy of sports has always been, Andrew,
00:08:49
Speaker
Find a new sport, get in early, win, and leave as soon as the good guys do. I mean, I did the early, early triathlons, the early, early Ironman, the early 500-mile bike races, the early skate skiing. one the ah Our team won the Canadian ski marathon twice, which is this 100-mile.
00:09:07
Speaker
cross-country ski race in Canada. So I actually was a U.S. ski team physician, Olympic physician, and used to travel the cross-country team, had their lab, did their testing and whatnot.
00:09:17
Speaker
It always impressed me that even the silver medalist, Billy Coke, who I used to travel with, none of them ever talked about beating anybody. None them ever talked about winning. We always looked at your physiology. What's your physiology? What's the best that you can do and they were just very kind of happy and satisfied with whatever they
Coaching and Competitions
00:09:36
Speaker
did.
00:09:36
Speaker
And it's interesting because my 12-year-old, when he won the math Olympiad, he was in tears. I go, what's wrong? He goes, Dad, I wanted Lyra doing it with me. He wanted to share it with me.
00:09:48
Speaker
So believe it, kid. So um yeah i I see all these sort of grizzled people out pumping at the gym and so serious, you know, they they're always posing and whatnot. And I just love this stuff. And, you know, when the straw, whatever it is, crash, it's just it's fun. I mean, it's ah I call competition the modern cocktail party.
00:10:09
Speaker
yeah During COVID out here, when everybody else was locked up, we were allowed to go skin. And we just had a big, fun crowd. We go up and down every day and skin and dog. And anytime someone wants to have a meeting about something, about a patient or science or church or whatever it is, I go, even with your skins. Yeah, you get a a lot of kind of stuff.
00:10:31
Speaker
Climb up. And I've always done cross-country ski racing. I coached six years here for the yeah ah grade school. And now my son is a very good cross-country skier. That's right. He loves his sport.
00:10:43
Speaker
And then I do ah stand-up surfing. So I was out in Nantucket a few years ago, and I'm on my stand-up paddle board. And there was a coach out there, and he goes, Your technique is terrible.
00:10:55
Speaker
I go, what? I didn't even know there was technique. He goes, yeah, they race these things. I go, they do. When's the next race? He goes, it's next weekend in California. I go, I'm going. so I go out to Data Point, California, line up. And I think I fell off my boy like 25 times before I even get over the start line because it's so tippy.
00:11:15
Speaker
And I worked at it and I went to the World Championships in Molokai. a 32 mile race with waves that can get 27 foot, you know, cresting.
00:11:28
Speaker
winds they go to like thirty five knots i mean just You two or three different swells and you ricocheted. What I mean the most miserable, miserable race in the world. It takes me like seven hours or so to get across this 30 mile channel. And then when I get to the other end, every stroke I'm going, I'm never going to do this again. And I get to the other end, I finish I go,
00:11:52
Speaker
wonder what board I'm going to use next year. so you You made a comment about early triathlons, early cross country, going into these things before they've gotten super competitive. and i I'm kind of similar. I was on the US national team for swimming, open water swimming, back before it was an Olympic sport. and so it was i could be top in the country, top in the world doing that then, but then it became an Olympic sport.
00:12:18
Speaker
And it was people I trained with. right It was a person I stayed with on my recruiting trip to USC, was the first U.S. Olympian in 2008. And then 2012, it was a guy from my school and it was my college coach. It was the U.S. team coach for it.
00:12:29
Speaker
But if you look at the times they're going and they're holding, it's very different than when I was doing it before as an Olympic sport. So you kind of find it's easier to excel. There was an example...
00:12:42
Speaker
You talked about the 10,000-hour rule and the research it came from, the guy talked about like how many numbers people could memorize. And he was like, the 10,000-hour rule is not really a thing because if you go into a new sport or a new area that nobody's ever done before, and may only take 200 hours because you could be the master and the best in the world because nobody's ever done it before.
00:13:04
Speaker
And so they used to think no one could memorize numbers at more than a certain length. And they were at Carnegie Mellon doing some study. And so they just trained people to do it. And so like the first study participant set the world record until the second one learned from that and then set it. And by the end, like the eighth participant had set the world record that was five times longer than the first person.
00:13:23
Speaker
And so it it it just the competition increases as you go forward, ah which is a... interesting way to navigate life. So with the schema, with the cross country, it's a lot of cardio, right? Like very good cardiovascular health. Do you do any strength training?
00:13:41
Speaker
I do. Actually, one of my very first books was called Turning Back the Clock. And what I said there was starting at age 40 for men and women, you're losing, I think, you know like at it pounds a muscle for men and four to five for women every decade. And so, you know key part of staying young is doing be strength training. So i go to gym as much as I can, but more in the off season, just because chemo is so much strength training, you're kind of pulling yourself up a mountain. And interesting, when i when I go to the gym, I find I'm just as strong as I was as i had been when I was lifting regularly, just because there's so much to it. So I'm a big believer in the in the yeah strength training as well.
Fitness and Recovery Insights
00:14:21
Speaker
But I think the big thing, Andrew, is that most people I know that are really successful, even they're in the billionaire class, right? Everything in their life is like Gulfstream class, right? mean, best private jets, except for their fitness.
00:14:36
Speaker
And they're basically in a middle seat in the back of Spirit Airways. I mean, it is unbelievable, unbelievable How poorly they do it, how little they do it, and how they skew all the metrics. I mean, I've got everything. I've got Whoop. I've got Garmin. I've got a continuous glucose monitor. I mean, I basically hack myself to death, right?
00:14:58
Speaker
And so I'm a believer that it's only with elite class athletics that you're really getting younger. And the proof of it is, I'm sure you know use these Whoop devices.
00:15:10
Speaker
you know My kids always... kid me that i get up in the morning and won't talk to anybody until I sort of know what my score today is. And ah you know, where you as you know, get your recovery score every day. So mine's not very good. 41%. Okay. Yeah, I think I was 46% this morning. So we're we're in good company there. course, the irony with Whoop is, so this guy, Will Aquin, is a friend of mine, I think, had found a Whoop. He was recovering.
00:15:35
Speaker
So I had just come back from doing a world championship for cross-country skiing in... ah Baita Stolen, Norway. And it was so boring there that i actually learned Norwegian.
00:15:49
Speaker
I came back and was just fried. Everything hurt. and I just, you know, was sick and coughing, miserable. So I called this coach up, John Spinney. I said, what I do? he goes, buy a whoop.
00:16:00
Speaker
So I bought the wool. Now, for it really worked. I mean, I take my really hard days. I back off. i was working perfectly. And then i had the great misfortune of finding that there was you could be on teams. So you start competing with people.
00:16:18
Speaker
And so there's there's teams. Right. So I'm on this team. And. If I'm not number one every day at 10 o'clock at night, I'll go back and run up a couple of hills just so I'm number one.
00:16:30
Speaker
So I have to be number one every single day. Right. And so I'm getting recovery. all I completely fry myself. and Well, I guess that brings in the question of number one, at what? Because the interesting thing when Will was starting it was he went and talked to a bunch of these pro athletes, trainers, right? And what is most useful for you?
00:16:52
Speaker
And a lot of it wasn't the exertion as much as we need to know how prepared they are the next day on exertion. what How do we figure out where we can push them when we need to rest? Because we need LeBron to be able to show up each night to play.
00:17:08
Speaker
We need you Michael Phelps when he stands on the blocks at the Olympics. And two of their first paying 100 customers were Michael Phelps and LeBron James. we need to know how recovered they are. So it's this flip side to fitness. i actually was writing a blog post on this yesterday of there's no such thing really as overtraining, right? Like an average guy or girl is not going to train nearly as much as LeBron, right? So you're not overtrained, but you may be under-recovered for the amount of training you're doing. So it sounds like there was a time that you were factoring it in, but today you don't prioritize it as much. What is your sleep and recovery?
00:17:49
Speaker
in truth, Andrew, i mean I firmly believe that there's a wonderful cardiologist in Massachusetts who has his sports science practice. Actually, he's left there to work for the International Movement Committee. And he said, he said, Bob, you only have two good days a week. That's it. And you have to make those unbelievably good days.
00:18:05
Speaker
And so i still, in truth, do that. I still try to find two days where I completely crush myself. The trouble, though, is I love snow so much and ski-o so much. It's just like i i can't ever do without a day. i'm supposed to take a dead rest day, so I'll go out easy, but I kind of can't do without it.
00:18:22
Speaker
So, I mean, I do use it. at I had a very interesting conversation. I talked to this coach, Hunter Allen, very good bike coach, coached a bunch of Tour de France athletes, my bike coach. And I said, okay, Hunter, know, I just hit 65. Just give it to me straight. I want to know, how am I going to start to fall apart? He goes, Bob, in a professional training program, you will improve every single year and until you're 85. And he's right. Every year from 65 to 77, I was a little bit better, a little faster in the world championships for SUP as an example, you know, little bit better scores. So it's absolutely true. Until 85 or so, you will continue to improve you're
00:19:02
Speaker
You're in a world-class athletic program. So recovering enough, you can really push yourself and push yourself to the right sport. I now am coaching a bunch of people. We have them on a ah plant-based diet.
00:19:15
Speaker
And I have them hacked. I bought them Garmins. I got them a continuous glucose monitor. I get their food logs every day. And what's interesting is I got of them is professional boxer.
00:19:26
Speaker
And I've got him doing some walking and hiking. Why? Because he can't get his HRV up. Nobody can get their HRV up unless they're doing the aerobic exercise. And so what I find is that heart rate variability, which I'm sure you've covered a ton, is the best metric, actually, for how old you are physiologically.
00:19:45
Speaker
So when I started training with Wolf, I was probably like 20, which is probably my age. And now I can be 80 to 100 or
Diet and Nutrition Strategies
00:19:53
Speaker
more. so when I say that I'm physiologically 25, I'm not kidding because I've been able to train my HRV up.
00:20:01
Speaker
Of all the things you can do in all the world, it's really max CO2 and HRV that I think is the very best metrics for how old you are physiologically. And I think that's what counts. All the rest of it's nonsense.
00:20:14
Speaker
How old are you physiologically? And so I'm training this group and they're very excited. And the biggest thing that I found with a continuous glucose monitor is they ruin their evenings. They're wrecked, right?
00:20:24
Speaker
And now I have last meal at five o'clock. whole foods, grains, beans, some kind of combination, eat nothing all night long, and you look at their sleep scores and they pop.
00:20:35
Speaker
They go from 51 minutes of deep to two and a half hours. They go from 47 minutes of REM to maybe three hours of REM. And the recovery, their HRV just goes up, you know, like five points a week. It's just unbelievable.
00:20:49
Speaker
And that's the Brian Johnson, right? Like he has the last meal at 11 a.m. m and he says because of the sleep. And I mean, for me, when I go do a five-day fast, It's the first day or two. I mean, my HRV will double on where it was before.
00:21:01
Speaker
Normally, I'm kind of in the 40s to 50, but I'll get up low 80s on the first and second nights of a fast. really and And I don't stop training. right I might do a little less cardio, but I lift just as much, just as heavy those days.
00:21:21
Speaker
can i Can I ask on back to the portfolio approach? so you you do the strength training, you do the cardiovascular, do you think about the allocation? And you brought up VO2 max. and so Do you deliberately train that? do you do the Norwegian 4x4 or whatever it is to to build out that VO2 max? like How do you think about your portfolio on the fitness side?
00:21:42
Speaker
So I aim it all at VO2 max or HRV. That's my main goal. The strength is simply supported. So in the off-season, you probably know the singer Noah Kahn who has the song Stick Season about Vermont, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have Stick Season and Mud Season. So that's where I really go – crazy in terms of doing lots and lots of strength training.
00:22:03
Speaker
Otherwise, I'm just doing so much cardio that I ah really sort of unweight the portfolio. Sort of like everybody going into bonds now. I just throw my whole portfolio into the aerobic because I get so much strength out of the aerobic.
00:22:16
Speaker
I think what's the most interesting about Schemo, Andrew, is that there's nothing like it on this earth in terms of strain. You know, on the whoop that the top score is like 21, right?
00:22:26
Speaker
Right. I'm 20 something every single day, every single day go out. It's unbelievable because it doesn't really hurt that much. And you distribute your load over every, every single muscle group for two, three, four hours, however long you go out.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that's astounding. That's incredible. How about sleep? i mean there's i think people will hear everything you do and continue to do and think, well, yeah, this guy must not sleep. But what do you think about sleep? How how is your approach to sleep on the recovery side?
00:23:05
Speaker
So until I met Will Ahmed and went down to World Headquarters and started using it, I didn't pay any attention to I stayed at 2 or 3 o'clock the morning and get up. i mean, I just fried myself.
00:23:17
Speaker
And then I started looking at my sleep scores, which were terrible, and really started working on it. So I got the continuous glucose monitor. And I saw that you know my glucose was up all night long, and I slept really, really badly. So the first thing I did is I started eating really early, like 5 or 6.
00:23:32
Speaker
I'm the cook in our house, so I I cook for my fiance and our 12 year old. And then i try to quit like 630 or 7 o'clock at night. And I do everything. This group, I'm coaching this group right now on sleep. Right. and They don't think you could change it.
00:23:47
Speaker
Now, we were changing all. kinds of metrics we were looking at weight and the circumference of their waist and how much the exercise and what they take. And you know what? I said, what are you most interested in? Every single one said sleep was their number one metric.
00:24:04
Speaker
So I found nutrition plays a big part there. I've always done the whole sleep hygiene thing. Room 68 degrees, it's black, it's quiet, I got an eye mask, I have earphones.
00:24:16
Speaker
And it was a war correspondent. I mean, I'd be yeah know, the invasion of Iraq is an example. I'd be with special force in Afghanistan, I'd be with warlords or pirates in Somalia. And I always had my Tempur-Pedic pillow and my Bose earphones and a mask. So no matter where I was, I always had, you know, great fast sleep hygiene. So the sleep hygiene, I'm a big believer in and all the prep. I do yoga before I go to bed. So the sleep has made a huge difference in my HIV. And the interesting thing is,
00:24:46
Speaker
If you're competitive, ordinarily you wouldn't compete on sleep. Now I'm competing on sleep. And I have this group that I'm coaching here. Oh, desperately, everybody wants to get to two hours of deep and two hours of REM.
00:24:58
Speaker
Now I've got some up to three, so they they love it. And the interesting metric for me is I get up but about 6.30, I take my 12-year-old to school, and I come back. And I sit down, I play the emperor on the piano, which is Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, which is very difficult.
00:25:13
Speaker
Now, if I've had two and a half hours of REM, it's flawless. If I've had 51 minutes of REM, there are a lot of bad notes there. No one's going to want to listen to it. And this is the same thing. I am the biggest believer in deep work.
00:25:28
Speaker
You get up, you have four hours. And I read this wonderful book i about all the best composers, authors, poets, most successful people over the last thousand years. They all do the same thing. They get up, they look up, they get some toast, and they work for four straight hours.
00:25:43
Speaker
And that's all you have. That's all anybody really has in terms of deep, deep work. So I sit down and I compose for three or four hours or code for three or four hours. No cell phone, no email, nothing. I sort of sip on my smoothie, which is kale and collard greens and spinach and berries and all kinds of stuff in it.
00:26:05
Speaker
And i think that's the most satisfying thing. You actually have a reward metric. You've had great sleep. Your HIV is up. You feel great. You feel right. You feel unbelievable. there's so There's no greater reward in life than being able to sit down and be truly creative, to create a wonderful new symphony or be able to create some fantastic new Gen AI app that's going to benefit you know people all over the developinging world. world on the front lines of war. So that's that's the great war is it all aims towards something and it all really pays off.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, I do think that's a really relevant point to highlight is the why behind the health. It's not for some random number that says you're 25.5.
00:26:49
Speaker
it's for the The reward is what it feels like every day to wake up. So if you're an alcoholic and every day you wake up hungover, you think that's normal. That just feels normal.
00:26:59
Speaker
And i I sincerely believe 80, 90% people They're waking up basically kind of hungover, like with the sugar, whatever it is in their body. And they think it's normal. Oh, I am achy. I creak. i Like it's hard to get out of bed.
00:27:12
Speaker
That's just normal. And it doesn't have to be. There's a different way of living where you wake up and the reward isn't I get to lay in bed for another two hours because I'm so I slept so poorly and I feel so terrible. It's I get to go create and do this amazing thing because I'm bursting with good energy.
00:27:31
Speaker
yeah drives to is ah I was looking the name of Jamie Dyer. He said, well, you know, I get 5.30 and, you know, read all the papers. It's like, that's great school activity. Why don't you get up and you program a new algorithm or think of some new thing there.
00:27:47
Speaker
These people who get up and, like the head of Apple does emails. I mean, why waste your time? Why not? You said that time, yeah. Really amazingly creative. So you you feel really afraid about yourself. And, uh,
00:27:59
Speaker
In fact, it's very interesting because this group of people I'm coaching right now, we actually have some nutritional coaches on board, but I'll go to the nutritional coaches and I'll say, here's the CGM. I think they're evening, they're wrecked.
00:28:09
Speaker
Here are all these spikes I see here. I think it's possible. What is it? We'll really take them. We'll come over them. We'll fix them. But the interesting thing, Andrew, is that you know most people when they see my exercise program, like, that's insane.
00:28:23
Speaker
I look at them I go, no, you're insane. Why? Because you're basically sick. I mean, I have these people who are there. Yeah, they were pretty fit, right? They're pretty fit, recently good diet, but they have HRVs in the in the twenty s And I go, I just think that, you know, 95% of Americans are walking around basically sick.
00:28:43
Speaker
And the statistics show that, you know, that there's a Tufts University study showing that 90 83% of people in the United States are metabolically unfit or diseased, to whatever you to call it. Diagnosable metabolic dysfunction.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah. You fix
Psychological Aspects of Health
00:28:58
Speaker
all that. And then the fact is that you can feel unbelievably, amazingly terrific all the time. I'm always so energetic and I always want to talk about everything. And they go, you know, stop.
00:29:09
Speaker
They don't want to hear about it. So I have to have, I have my own, i have probably a 20 various composers and music theory specialists, you know just really super bright that I, you know, spend my day with out beyond them. I had these for very bright Harvard College students who are doing a cool program with Health Tech Without Borders for disasters to figure out how food and water and stuff that they need. So it's just so rewarding because a lot of people figure out, you when you're at a college, you're behind and you're going to catch up again.
00:29:47
Speaker
But it's great to think that At this stage in life, you can still keep up or at least keep track intellectually, which is fun. As I said, this Mokshabar wrote this wonderful paper on reward, you know, that basically you have all this stuff going on every day. There's some intellectual reward. You learn something new. You compose something new. You've written new line of code that really rewards you.
00:30:11
Speaker
You touched on the the nutrition side.
00:30:17
Speaker
with With the smoothie you have in the morning, and then you you were saying, I believe plant-based for these people you're training, ah how do you think about nutrition? Whether it's fasting, intermittent fasting, carnivore versus vegetarian versus whole food plant-based, how do you kind of craft your portfolio of getting your macros, your micros? It's so interesting because I'm doing this current program with two very good whole food plant-based doctors, right?
00:30:45
Speaker
And I come up with all those tools and all these metrics that they kind of ah skew basically. Right. i'm Look at this person. Look at their their blood sugars all over the place. And that's the people that are doing this, they're doing that. And you know, gradually you kind of win them over. But I'm just a big believer that, you know, the metrics show it. I mean, my LDL cholesterol is probably 50, which is I think where it should be. My regular cholesterol is probably 85. My blood pressure is probably, you know, one over six over 65. So.
00:31:13
Speaker
I'm always very competitively looking at those those health metrics as well as the performance metrics. And so, yeah, I'm basically a believer in whole food. I'm also a believer really good fish that gives you the omega, you know, three fatty acids like the the line caught, you know, fresh Alaskan salmon is an example. So and 12 year old.
00:31:35
Speaker
it's pretty hard to do a plant-based. You've got to have some meat in there. So I try hard to stay pretty plant-based, but I i simply look at the metrics. I mean, I have almost... I mean, I'll make them a hamburger once a month or something like that. But, you know, i look at my sleep and I look at my HRV and I find and with this group that I'm training right now, I find that the food really does kind of define your physiology. So I'm I'm not. ah We had this very interesting discussion is that I was calling these people that it was a ah nutritional ideology.
00:32:08
Speaker
And I think that's a trap that people go, well, ideologically I logically kind of believe in this. And I sort of do. In other words, if you look at someone like Ethan Brown, who's the CEO of of Beyond Meat, it's a great philosophy. I mean, the whole thing is, is it, you know, with meat, you have all the methane and you have, you know, there's destruction of all those forests and whatnot, destruction of the planet and whatnot. So I think it's a very good overall integrated process. do You want to think of, you kind of saving the world at the same time you're, uh,
00:32:37
Speaker
You're saving yourself. But I do, you know, sort of want to just stick to the science. i mean, I work with this very good group, Health Tech Without Borders. I'm under the umbrella of Harvard Health Initiatives. and My co-CEO is the vice chair of acute care at Massachusetts General Hospital. So, you know, all day long, I'm trading references. I always look at the very best references. You know, are they...
00:33:02
Speaker
randomized controlled trials, who did them, what kind of a journal was it, who were the scientists whatnot. So I'm always looking at the very, very highest, best quality data. And I think feel people get so trapped by their ideology that they can't eat something or they can't do an exercise or They don't to do something because they're ideologically stuck.
00:33:22
Speaker
um And the same thing is true for me I mean, having been in the you news forever, I always believe that there can be a great story anywhere in the ideological spectrum. And if you're writing for one of the English newspapers, you can pick left, right, center, any place.
00:33:37
Speaker
Whereas, unfortunately, in the US, you're someplace in the spectrum. And you kind of report everything from that ideology, yeah which means you you don't get the the fun and joy of seeing what's interesting about that or, you know, where they really kind of gone off the rails. So I just am very, very sort of, you know, scientifically driven in terms of what works with nutrition. So I read it all the time. I try to stay pretty plant based. But as I say, I don't mind some chicken or fish.
00:34:05
Speaker
yeah yeah Yeah. And on that, do you supplement at all? like With creatine, with omega-3s? I know we connected through the Good Health team and the the work you're doing there.
00:34:16
Speaker
But overall, are there things you load on top of your your whole foods that you're doing? Well, there's a wonderful exercise physiology scientist at the North Carolina Research Campus, biggest and best in the world.
00:34:29
Speaker
A few years ago, he calls me and he goes, bah, bah, bah. I go, what? You've got to read this paper. You've got to read it. So I open it up. And the number one metric really is all-cause death. If you can decrease all cause death, you've won.
00:34:43
Speaker
Because whether you're talking about, you know, decreasing the amount of chronic disease whatever it is, you know, die, you live long, right? And so he showed that in Europe, those individuals who had the highest polyphenol intake,
00:34:56
Speaker
were the people who lived the longest and best and had the least disease. Obviously in blue zones and whatnot. But they measured all in what they called urinary phenolics. And those are the byproducts of fo polyphenols.
00:35:08
Speaker
So we actually did is we took this product made by Good Health that has the highest amount of polyphenols, many things we know. So it has isoquercetin, bilberry, and the epi-caddencycabin green tea.
00:35:24
Speaker
And we just had a paper accepted for publication and has already been presented at the American College of Sports Medicine, showing that with this very high intake, we're able to decrease endothelial cell function.
00:35:36
Speaker
So this is the the metric for people I'm really in love with. Why? Because the test basically takes an artery, squeezes it down, and then unblocks and see what it does.
00:35:48
Speaker
So if it's big and bouncy, there's much more blood going through it, then... you're healthier. If it closes down, then you're at risk of a heart attack or a stroke. So with this, we had, I think, a 28% improvement in flow-mediated dilation.
00:36:03
Speaker
Very kind of technical term, but it basically means yeah bigger, bouncier arteries. And it's ah Something you can measure from four or five years of age. We actually do this in disadvantaged populations, Hispanic populations.
00:36:17
Speaker
And amazed to see that we'd actually improve this. So here's another example of how you can actually improve somebody's overall physiological age with supplement. So I do those polyphenols and then have an East African coffee every morning because they have super high polyphenols in it.
00:36:35
Speaker
Studies show that with four to five cups of coffee a day, you have a 15% decrease in all-cause death for women or 10% for men with the polyphenols from fruits and vegetables that I get in my morning shake.
00:36:46
Speaker
where can get in good health, it's a 35% decrease in all-cost death. It's huge. But that's all I do. I don't do anything else. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, because i mean one of the ones that's been kind of taken everywhere by storm these days is creatine. They're saying, oh, yeah there's no downside. It's basically free. It's so cheap.
00:37:03
Speaker
And here are all the benefits. And they just keep finding new benefits on cognitive performance, especially for plant-based people, because you're not getting creatine from the meat sources. So I was curious if...
00:37:15
Speaker
You supplemented with that. I just started upping my... I did. Back back in the 90s, I did some pre-editing. I look at this stuff. but you know I call a lot of it, it's it's sort of ah marketing alchemy, like all the NAD plus stuff. It's like, wow.
00:37:30
Speaker
All this stuff is biologically plausible. It kills me because people come out they think they're so smart and publish papers and they're fixing their mitochondria and all of it is theory, as opposed to having something that's actually been through ah randomized controlled trial.
00:37:44
Speaker
And you are actually physiologically better. There are organs in your body that work better. You know, whether it's looking at HRV or it's looking at flow mediated dilation, physiologically, you are younger and you are actually better.
00:37:57
Speaker
And it as I said, I had this wonderful series of ah talks with Thorough Grappel, who's the chief scientist at ALTA, so longevity, company in Cambridge, England.
00:38:07
Speaker
And, you know, eventually they're going to have these longevity drugs. But, you know, if you've you've had a crippling stroke or you've had your third you know a heart attack or something, it's not doing a lot for you. It's not going to per reverse all that. So I'm a believer that right now you can take and really turn back the clock in terms of your physiologically measured age. And then as or if this stuff comes along, you're going to be able to access it and will have much greater benefit out of it.
00:38:35
Speaker
And you'll be physiologically much younger. Now, we talked about the physiological side. I mean, you're probably familiar with Ellen Langer's work on the mindset side of this. So, you know, the the early study she did where she took people in their 60s or 70s, I can't remember, to these camps and had two separate. And one was just like the normal camp. And then the other, they had everything set up to what it would have been like when they were 12 13.
00:38:58
Speaker
And so it's the music playing, the stuff on the walls, everything. And on every marker, right? Self-reported pain, the activity level, everything. They just started acting like kids again. And it lasted for years afterwards.
00:39:10
Speaker
And so we, as a society, created this story of age and aging that there is a physiological component, but it can't be divorced from the psychological component, I don't
Mindfulness and Mental Health Practices
00:39:24
Speaker
think. Because the story you tell yourself, you make it true or not.
00:39:28
Speaker
And so for someone who gets up and like, hey, I'm going to go compose a symphony. I'm going to go write some Gen AI ah new app. Do you have a mindset, a stress management practice, breathwork, meditation, anything that you're doing, manifestation, anything to to keep cultivating that? Or is it just through the act of doing? You're like, hey, just by doing all this stuff, I have this amazing energetic mindset.
00:39:53
Speaker
Oh, so I have two hacks. So one is, you know Dean Hornish, who wrote all these wonderful books on the plant-based diet, took me decide once said bob Look, you've got a great diet, you've got great exercise program. But if you don't do the meditation piece, it's all a waste. All my studies show you're not going to reverse coronary heart disease. You're not going to prevent prostate cancer. None of this stuff's going to happen.
00:40:11
Speaker
So then I went out and spent a month at the Yoga College of India with Vikram Chodhury. and i learned You know, every posture. And even during the invasion of Iraq, I was the first Marine Division and I would get out every night. We take three M-1A1 tanks. We put a surround ourselves and I do a whole yoga thing. I do yoga every night before I go to bed. So, one, you know, huge believer in that.
00:40:34
Speaker
And then I'm also a ah big believer in Andrew Seligman, the whole idea of. learned helplessness that so many people have learned how to become helpless. And I tell my kids, I tell everybody I can, I go, you are responsible how you feel.
00:40:49
Speaker
It's not who you're with. It's not your company. Basically, you could have a good day in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. You can have a good day any place. So, you know, you man search for meaning and tell me you can't. The spookiest scene from that book is he's in a train going through Vienna.
00:41:07
Speaker
a Nazi train going to the dead point of Auschwitz. And he's looking out through the bars and hes he can see his home in his old neighborhood. I mean, it's just so, you know, spook it just I mean, the things that happen were just so unbelievably terrible.
00:41:21
Speaker
And then the other thing, you of course, having a 12-year-old helps a lot. because You have to be going, yeah. Last night, I was helping them write. And they have all this code language I've never heard before. You know, I'd have no exposure to that at all. So yeah it's it's crazy, basically, you know, living in a neighborhood with a lot of young kids here. So you basically, yeah you know, living with and competing with much, much younger people, I think, makes a big difference as opposed ah you sit around and play playing bouquet and drinking whiskey.
Agency and Growth Mindset
00:41:51
Speaker
the The Learn Helplessness is an interesting one. so I don't know if people are familiar with the original studies, but they had dogs, and they would shock them. and They would have ones that could jump over the wall, or they'd get shocked, or ones that they couldn't. like it was ah They stopped. and Then they stopped the shocking or they stopped where they could actually get over the wall. And the ones that had been unable to do it just sat there getting shocked. They didn't even try anymore. They had learned that, hey, me trying affects nothing.
00:42:23
Speaker
the You couldn't really do that. kind of study today because the animal cruel cruelty, but Seligman, they updated those studies and what they realized and found, it's not learned helplessness.
00:42:34
Speaker
It's learned agency. the The directionality is different. And so your default will be, Hey, I can't do anything about it. It's by doing something about it. You teach yourself, you have the agency.
00:42:47
Speaker
And so this is where i think someone like you like gets up, does the work. You're, reinforcing these pathways of, I can, I do do this. You're building evidence for your brain so you're actually learning agency.
00:43:02
Speaker
and so it's It takes more practiceive proactive work than just avoiding learned helplessness. You need to learn the agency and actually do the work, is my understanding of the most recent letter, Sherada.
00:43:15
Speaker
I've been listening all these things whenever I do scroll. When I do yoga, i do doom scroll. It'll be Bezos moque or something like that Altman. I think the big thing is you want to do really hard stuff. People always kind of do intermediate level stuff. So I try to take the hardest stuff I can. So, for instance, one of these Gen IA projects we're doing with these harvesters, it's like, hey, find every field there is any which way, because we can basically, with our you know with the generative AI, take and put everything into the mix. And we have all these kind of guardrails in terms of guarding against stuff.
00:43:47
Speaker
hallucinations. They actually have a leaderboard now for hallucinations to see which JNI AI does the worst. But this ah this so student I have, now that I'm working with a therapist, actually is part of a project that made a psychotherapist, kind of an AI bot psychotherapist. That's about to be licensed by the FDA and it's probably as good as many therapists.
00:44:09
Speaker
But no, I agree with you terms of the learned health lessons because Anytime I send somebody to a psychiatrist, I go, what did you do? They go, we talked. I said, no, I didn't call them.
00:44:20
Speaker
They've got to spend some time with you, teaching you to have that agency, teaching you that you've got to be proactive. You have to believe in this. And the other thing, Andrew, is I teach my kids this all the time. I say, listen.
00:44:33
Speaker
Whatever you're doing, you have to go full out. If you're completely unemployed, if you're getting no money from it at all, or if you're getting millions of dollars from it, you have to put in exactly the same effort. It has to be the reward of having a great job and just finishing this, regardless of whatever kind of monetary or positional rewards they there would be. And then that way, you feel good about it. Because otherwise, you're already your symphony going, oh, I'm fine.
00:45:03
Speaker
living and starting podcast or inventing new supplement or something you really have to enjoy every activity you're doing and do the very best you can at it with the reward being that you've done a great job and you you know got towards that 10 000 hour mark yeah that to me that's a beautiful place to close whatever you're doing do a great job with it right it's Some people kind of push back on this. Well, that's such a position of privilege.
00:45:34
Speaker
And maybe it is, but also what is the counter argument to it of do you not want to tell yourself that? What like what is the benefit of saying the opposite to yourself in that situation?
00:45:46
Speaker
So hopefully anyone listening to this, just play both sides of, okay, well, that's a position of privilege. I couldn't tell myself that. And like, okay, we'll say the opposite. Is that serving you or not?
00:45:58
Speaker
And if it's not, this is your one life. So why wouldn't you go with the message of agency, the message of hope, the message of creation? Oh, exactly. I totally agree. So I have a wonderful friend named Ricky Brogan. He was Harvard's top horseman probably in history.
00:46:14
Speaker
we He picked me up one day in Wellesley where I go, we're going to go for a run. Drove me to Hopkinton. I'd have run a step in six months. We ran the Boston Marathon cold. It just crazy.
00:46:25
Speaker
So I took my kids to london and i had dinner with the goring hotel i said, Ricky, what's your best advice to my kids? And he said, whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter what it is.
00:46:37
Speaker
Go all in. Give it everything you've got, and good things will happen.
Conclusion and Final Reflections
00:46:43
Speaker
And I found when I was in high school, I worked at Howard Johnson's, which is a restaurant chain.
00:46:49
Speaker
And I started out as the dishwasher. And I made sure every spot was off every one of those dishes before the dishwasher. And then I went to the counter I always make sure my counter was super clean. I get the orders right.
00:47:00
Speaker
And I went to shorter cook and cook and finally full dinner cook. Right. Without ever intentionally going to the industry. But it's just like whatever you're doing, do as well as you can. I was.
00:47:11
Speaker
when I was running my sports science lab up in Lake Placid for the for the Olympics, I never paid. So I had a little airplane, I go out and do emergency room shifts for this company. And I worked really hard at it. Six months later, they made me president of the company.
00:47:27
Speaker
So it's just, you know, work really hard because great things that are going to come. And then like I had been, I started the sports science laboratory and, They have this new broadcaster come by from ABC's Wild World of Sports. He kept blowing his lines. And they said, well, can you tell us what we're doing? I had no respect for television. Yeah, we're doing this, this, this, this.
00:47:47
Speaker
So Rune Arlich, who was head of ABC Sports the time, looks at the tape and he goes, You, you belong in television, which is the beginning of my career. So you just have to have a bright, optimistic attitude, try really hard. in it you've always, you have to be continually renewing yourself. I'm like doing a series of courses on Udemy now on how you build APIs for these various large language models and which one and how you do it and whatnot. And I just think that, you know, you if you're continually reinventing yourself, at least you're continually amusing yourself and maybe it will lead somewhere.
00:48:22
Speaker
Yeah. ah Whatever you're doing, if you take one message from all this, whatever you're doing, do it to the absolute best of your ability and good things will happen. Be so good, they can't ignore you. It's so true.
00:48:35
Speaker
This is amazing. You are amazing. I can't thank you enough for the time today and sharing all of this with our listeners. that Thanks for all your inspiration and energy and interest. Well, thank you so much.
00:48:46
Speaker
keep Keep doing this and we're going to see you anchoring the ABC Nightly News.
00:48:52
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other healthspan role models on Alively.com.
00:49:05
Speaker
Enjoy a lively day.