Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Optimising Health Using Your Pulse and Heart-Rate Variability w/ Dr Torkil Færø
168 Plays1 year ago
Do you need help with your health? Would you like to increase your longevity while addressing existing health issues?
Request your FREE Metabolic Function Assessment session with me here: https://www.livelongerformula.com/
During this 45-minute consultation we’ll take a deep dive into critical areas of your metabolism and understand what is out of balance.
From gut health and hormone function to adrenal health and blood sugar regulation, even a small imbalance in any of these (or other) areas can lead to poor health in the future and diminished longevity…but the sad fact is that a large majority of people over 40 have multiple imbalances in multiple areas of their metabolism…
The key is to identify and address these swiftly, so that you can thrive for decades to come without worrying that “something’s brewing under the surface.”
Request your Metabolic Function Assessment session here and let's get you thriving for decades to come: https://www.livelongerformula.com/
---
On this episode of the Connecting Minds podcast we welcome Dr Torkil Færø to discuss his book The Pulse Cure. We discuss how you can use your pulse and heart-rate variability data to spot early signs of stress that can lead to poor health outcomes, and what to do about it.
Dr Torkil Færø is a general practitioner and emergency physician, documentary filmmaker, author and photographer. In 1996 he was one of the first Norwegian medics to work for Doctors Without Borders when he worked in war-torn Angola. Over a 25-year career as a freelance doctor, he has worked all over Norway, had tens of thousands of consultations and gained a unique picture of the diseases that plague us. He has learned that the cause is most often found in the stresses our lifestyles place on our bodies.
Færø is also an award-winning photographer, author of Kamerakuren (The Camera Cure), and has made documentaries about his pilgrimages to Nidaros and Santiago de Compostela. An inveterate traveller, he has made his way by bicycle, motorbike, kayak, sailboat and car through over 80 countries, and speaks eight languages. He lives in Oslo with his wife and two children.
Connect with Dr Torkil:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_torkil.md/ (Norwegian: https://www.instagram.com/dr.torkil/)
The Pulse Cure: https://amzn.to/3Qmmf3p
Website: https://thepulsecure.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Host's New Book
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Connecting Minds podcast. My name is Christian Jordonov. A quick reminder, if you haven't gotten my latest book, how to actually live longer, volume one, check that out, add some high quality decades to your life or your money back guaranteed.
Guest Introduction and Career Overview
00:00:18
Speaker
So today's guest is Dr. Torquio Farrow. He's from, did I pronounce that sort of? Yes, that sounds great. Yeah.
00:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, welcome, Tokyo. Just for the listeners, Tokyo is a general practitioner, lives in Norway, emergency physician, documentary filmmaker, author and photographer. He was one of the first Norwegian medics to work for Doctors Without Borders. That was in 1996. He worked in war-torn Angola.
00:00:56
Speaker
And over a 25 career as a freelance doctor, he has worked all over Norway, has had tens of thousands of consultations and gained a unique picture of the diseases that plague us.
Impact of Stress on Health
00:01:07
Speaker
And he has learned that the cause is most often found in the stresses our lifestyles place on our body. And it's so fitting because in my book, my sort of diagram that I give the reader for the primary
00:01:22
Speaker
drivers of aging and dysfunction, stress is at the top of that list, right? So I have the three primary drivers of aging and dysfunction, stress, inflammation, and oxidative stress, and how they sort of feed into each other.
Exploration of 'The Pulse Code'
00:01:36
Speaker
So you get it, you get it. And today we're going to be discussing Torquil's book, The Pulse Code, and he will tell us all about it. So first of all, welcome to the show, Torquil. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. It's very nice to be here.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, so you're, I mean, that was a very succinct bio. Can you maybe, I know your father's early death had an influence on your health journey. Can you give us a little bit more of your background and your story? Yeah. So my father died at 73, you know, which is, you know,
00:02:15
Speaker
10 years maybe before the average in Norway. And when he died, I took a look at myself and I understood that I was 20 kilos overweight. I did not exercise. I did not sleep well. I did not care about what I was eating. And I understood that there's so much more to help than we learned in the medical school.
Scientific Discoveries and Lifestyle Changes
00:02:40
Speaker
So medical school, we learned to identify and categorize diseases, find out which treatment and so on. And we didn't really learn how to get healthy, how to live longer. And I discovered that since I studied last, after medical school, me and a lot of doctors think that, okay, I've read enough. I'll put the books aside.
00:03:09
Speaker
I am educated, I don't have to read anything more. And then I started reading the updated science on how to live longer and healthier and I discovered that was like tons of new science to read and digest and I found out that I had done everything wrong basically.
Role of Technology in Health Management
00:03:30
Speaker
I also have been like drinking two glasses of wine every day, which is what we thought was healthy just 15 years ago, you know, now it's just to laugh of, you know, and all the other things, you know, sun, water, being out in nature, all the things that I'm sure you, of course, probably know and even write about in your book. And I started implementing this and
00:03:59
Speaker
And the last five years I've been using variables to track these lifestyle changes because what is so nice is that what we know is good for you with nutrition, sleep and exercise and everything is we'll show in the heart rate. So our pulse, that is why I call the book the pulse cure.
00:04:21
Speaker
So your state of your body, your physiology, both mentally and physically will be revealed in the heart rate, and especially in heart rate variability. It will also show in the pulse rate in your heart rate, but the heart rate variability is a more accurate measure of the state
00:04:44
Speaker
of both your autonomic nervous system, but also of the stress on your body, on your total physiology. Right. And that provides like a wealth of information that we as doctors will not have access to, except through this tool, that are the modern variables like the aura ring, Garmin watches, and so on. And the big advantage is that
00:05:12
Speaker
we have this accessible on our wrist, in our hands, literally. So that makes, so then the power of our health is not in the hands of the doctors or the healthcare system, but in your hands. And then it's of course, a lot easier to maneuver and to make the right choices and also more motivating to do the right choices. So even like cold exposures, which I used to hate,
00:05:39
Speaker
when you see it on the watches, the effect of it, then you get motivated even to take a cold shower. That's actually an interesting segue. What happens, so you've probably tracked it, what happens to your heart rate variability if you start doing cold exposure?
00:05:59
Speaker
Then after the cold shower, once you're in the cold shower, you know there's an adrenaline intake, your pulse rate goes up. But then afterwards, for maybe two or three hours, your heart rate variability will be better.
00:06:17
Speaker
And to track these, in real time, you actually need the Garmin watches. So when I'm referring to that you can detect something, you know, a couple of hours after a shower, for example, then it's the Garmin watches you need to track that. You would not see that in the Aura Rings or other devices, maybe.
00:06:37
Speaker
I still have it somewhere. I bought a Garmin running watch many years ago, maybe around 2017 or 2016. So I'm sure they've gotten better. How much would be like an entry-level watch that one can buy to start tracking their pulse and heart rate
Success of Dr. Torquil's Book
00:06:55
Speaker
variability? Even the cheapest ones, the Vivo Smart 5, that would cost probably $100 would be enough as an entry point.
00:07:07
Speaker
But to get the heart rate variability over time, you need to maybe buy like a 4Runner165. That may cost you $300. And that should be more than enough. So they're also quite accessible and cheap. So that's also an advantage. And of course, you can probably buy it secondhand and so on.
00:07:32
Speaker
So then the other option is I also used to use the aura ring from like 2018 to maybe 2021. I just stopped wearing it because over time I understood a lot of things about what messes with my HRV and what stressors destroy me. And the reason I stopped wearing the aura ring is because we had a baby
00:07:56
Speaker
And then i'm like okay well this thing is gonna tell me now for the next six months that or you said that you need to rest day and i'm not gonna have that option so i think there's no point in adding adding no sebo on top of lack of sleep but definitely your ring so it was your patience what's your strategy for for getting them to start tracking themselves.
00:08:18
Speaker
And the patients in my work as an emergency doctor, I've been working, you know, this week I'm working 60 hours a week. Then I'm not in my work, I'm probably more taking in impressions. And I see that it's hard to convince people to change their lifestyle. I have 10 minutes, you know, they come in and it's hard. This is, and that is the reason why I've written the book.
00:08:47
Speaker
so that you can read the book and see the advice that gives you a better life. And this book has been on the bestselling link list in Norway now for 65 weeks and is being released in the US markets in mid-May.
Lifestyle Choices and Emergency Medicine
00:09:05
Speaker
So I've actually reached in the last year through this book, I've reached more people than on 25 years working as a doctor.
00:09:13
Speaker
So that is my way of getting it to the people. Yeah, sorry. I forgot that you focus on emergency medicine, which is obviously that it's a whole different kettle of fish. You are dealing with emergencies, like problem solving. It's hard to crowbar in. Oh, by the way, maybe you could have prevented this with someone. Yeah, that's right. But I see that most of the people that come
00:09:43
Speaker
even in the emergency if they had had a better lifestyle they wouldn't have been there you know that they're overweight you can see that they're not exercising they're not eating well they're eating ultra processed food they're drinking too much
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah. And it will also lead to the problems that leads you to the emergency room also, like heart disease, like any kind of infection and so on. And you said about your baby then that they took out the Ora ring. But what is important is that, okay, the ring would have told you that you are stressed. The Garmin watch will
00:10:26
Speaker
be able to tell you throughout the day, okay, do you have any stressors that you can take out? Of course, you probably live an optimal lifestyle, but other people would have seen that, okay, I will skip that glass of alcohol in the evening.
00:10:43
Speaker
the glass that I took when I had small kids, because it was very tiring days. And I thought, okay, one glass or two of red wine in the evening is good to wind down and relax. If I had watched this back then, I would have seen that, okay, this is a very, very bad strategy. Just for the listeners, what happens
00:11:08
Speaker
to your pulse, heart rate, HRV, all that stuff when you have a couple of glasses of wine. I'm sure you've gotten quite a bit of data on that, right? Yeah. That is the most, and according to WOOP, I also have the WOOP band on my right arm. According to WOOP, alcohol is the second largest stressor.
00:11:29
Speaker
Really? No, it's the biggest stressor. The second largest is altitude and the third largest is disease. So the biggest stressor on our systems is actually alcohol. And that we can also see in general practice because the sickest patients are the ones that have problems with alcohol.
00:11:48
Speaker
And what is interesting when you track it 24-7 with a Garmin watch is that you can see that after we have taken the two glasses of wine, you do relax. Your stress level goes down because it triggers the GABA receptors in the brain that is calming down and dampens the anxiety and so on. But the problem comes during the night when the alcohol is
00:12:16
Speaker
it's converted into acetaldehyde. And that is very poisonous. So during the night when you're asleep, and think that you are recovering, it's a lot of stress on the system. And when you wake up and feel a little bit bad, it's not just a feeling when you can look at the watch, you see that you have been full of stress the whole night through. And, and this, of course, is, you know, I
00:12:45
Speaker
I have a social website called thepeltskir.com with 4,000 members on the Norwegian side of it. And this will differ. So a husband and wife may experience totally different reactions to the same two glasses of alcohol. One may tolerate it well, the other one not. So this is also the important thing about these variables that they will show how you react to things, not how
00:13:13
Speaker
how an average of the population reacts to things because this does not matter to you, you know, personally. So this is personalized medicine, personalized preventative medicine.
00:13:24
Speaker
And that is kind of the future of medicine, I think, you know, probably you would agree to. Oh, for sure, for sure. 100%. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that alcohol activates the GABA receptors and that's what gives us that calming effect. And I discuss in my book,
00:13:47
Speaker
some strategies to reduce stress with supplementation. And when you just you can, excuse me, you can go online and buy gaba as a supplement gamma amino butyric acid for about $15, you can get basically a six month supply of it for the cost of one bottle of wine, right. And it's, it's
00:14:11
Speaker
It's a compound that the body recognizes, so it's safe. I take GABA in the evening now. I don't even crave alcohol. I used to drink a lot, especially in my 20s. I was a barman for a while, so I was drinking a lot.
00:14:29
Speaker
Now, as it turns out, a lot of the strategies that I've been implementing to help me with sleep and relaxation, a lot of those supplements are either GABA receptors activators,
00:14:45
Speaker
or they have compounds in them that have been identified to activate the GABA receptor or interact with the GABA system in some way. So this is so important as well to teach people because I think a lot of people, like what you said earlier, it's difficult for people to change lifestyle. It's because we feel like we cling on to our quote unquote vices.
00:15:11
Speaker
which are simply strategies to cope with the stress of life. So beer or wine, that is to help you with the stress side of things. A lot of caffeine and nicotine, it will be to help you get going so you can deal with your work stress in terms of being able to perform when you're fatigued. So I think teaching our clients, or in your case, your patients,
00:15:34
Speaker
strategies on how to replace suboptimal habits with better habits is also a part of this personalized health care of the future. Yes, I agree. And then you can become addicted to being refreshed and having energy, you know, instead of to the compound that you take to like dampen the stress and reduce the stress.
00:16:00
Speaker
And also all these artificial dopamine that you get addicted to, because alcohol also releases the triggers dopamine. And so does ultra-processed foods, snacks, sugars, and all this.
00:16:17
Speaker
that we become dependent on but that hurt us and also a lot of people are surprised when they see on their watches the effect of ultra-processed food and late meals and how it affects their sleep and that was a total surprise to me that the food in this way can be a stressor on the system because
00:16:39
Speaker
It's hard to notice in real life because you are busy living your life.
Personalized Preventative Medicine
00:16:45
Speaker
You have your attention at everything that happens in your life and the attention towards the stress on your body. We are not really equipped to detect, but it will be revealed in the heart rate and heart rate variability. So if you eat something that you're not supposed to eat, something you tolerate badly,
00:17:05
Speaker
then it will show in the heart rate. And so that was a total surprise to me, that food can give you stress. And we see like gluten, a lot of people will get stressed by gluten and milk and so on. So
00:17:26
Speaker
So as part of my book, I talk about adding a very small carbohydrate snack close to bedtime in terms of maybe two or three tablespoons of honey just to top up the liver glycogen so that you can run on
00:17:49
Speaker
liver or you can run on liver glycogen from a bigger portion of the night so the cortisol stress response triggers a lot later in the night. So that's kind of my strategy but definitely big meals can be stressful. Have you stratified the data in any way in terms of
00:18:09
Speaker
if it's like a heavy protein meal, heavy fat meal, if it's only carbs, is there a different, have you been able to gather some data like that from your community? No, not really gathered data and it will also be, I can see from the community that it will depend. So for some people it's better to eat something in the evening and for some other people it totally demolishes the sleep.
00:18:38
Speaker
I see that this is very individualized, what people react to and do not react to. I don't think there's one standard that everybody should do. They can use this device at least to track how it affects the stress system.
00:18:58
Speaker
you know, makes it less stress can maybe also make the sleep worse, you know, so there is a balance between stress and sleep and well-being and many things.
00:19:12
Speaker
But definitely to have this control of your stress level and the knowledge about it, this is helping so many people. And this is why the book has been such a success in Norway because this is really something that came out of the blue.
Lifestyle 'Expedition' Concept
00:19:27
Speaker
Nobody had ever heard about that you can use your pulse in this way before this book came along. And so the reason why it has been such a bestseller is because
00:19:38
Speaker
you will notice the effect you will see that you get better and then you get relieved of symptoms like brain fog and inflammation you know joint pain and many other things that is so common today.
00:19:56
Speaker
If someone came to you and said, all right, tell me what I need to do to implement your strategies, what would you advise them? So you will start probably with getting one of these devices. And then what would be next steps?
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, you start with the devices and you may start with not doing anything, you know, just living your life just as you have done all the time, maybe a month or two gathering data because also the watches use like three weeks to calibrate to your system.
00:20:31
Speaker
And then maybe even after that, you know, maybe for like two months you shouldn't do anything. Unless you really need to because you have a big problem, you know, of course, then you should, but you should just see your baseline.
00:20:45
Speaker
And then you should start doing in the book, in the pulse cure, I'm calling it an expedition, that you go through the best things to do about sleep, the best things to do about exercise, the best thing to do about stress regulation, you know, about nutrition, alcohol, hydration, you know, also like menstruation for women, of course, is also affecting their systems quite a lot. And it becomes invisible with the variables.
00:21:16
Speaker
So it's kind of an expedition where you do different stages and try to improve a little bit on many fronts. So you do a little bit better on sleep, a little bit better on nutrition, and all together, well, it gives you a better lifestyle. And this lifestyle is the one that is a bit more similar to what we are evolutionary made for, with regarding food, real food,
00:21:45
Speaker
nature, slow breathing, enough sleep, controlling light, you know, you get lighter early in the morning, less light, you know, in the evening for the circadian rhythm.
00:21:57
Speaker
So it's basically trying to use the modern technology and actually to live a bit more lucky in the past.
Simple Health Fundamentals
00:22:08
Speaker
It's kind of a contradiction. Yeah, it's an interesting paradox. But that's exactly what we're doing for example.
00:22:19
Speaker
In terms of modern technology, we use red LED light bulbs in the evening, in the main rooms. And then we use blue blocking glasses at the computer and then the red lens blue blockers at night before bed, you know, an hour or two before bed. So we are, and I actually, even as we speak, I'm, I'm, I'm earth to, to the houses sort of earthing system. And I have one of these next to my bed.
00:22:45
Speaker
So yeah, it's kind of crazy that we're, the very tools that are destroying our health, we are using to maintain some semblance of health in the modern world. Yeah. Yeah. Now we can use the same tools, you know, to still live the life. You know, we can have the good things about modern life and combine it with the good things about the ancestral life and earthing, you know, also.
00:23:12
Speaker
I don't know why medicine did not discover these things.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's so obvious that we need to be connected to the earth. We have been walking around the earth, of course with the electric charge between the positive ionosphere and the earth with the negative ones. I understood that there's like a 300 volt difference from your head down to the ground.
00:23:42
Speaker
Very small ampere, so it's a high voltage, but I don't know what it's called, but the ampere is not so high. Water is so important. Sun is important. It's very, very simple things. The water that I'm talking about,
00:24:09
Speaker
The structure of water and over the islands, when it's pumped around in the body, it's important. So water has many more properties that are important for our health than just being water in itself, you know, in a glass. And the sunshine, the way that the sun and the infrared light, the red light, as you know, will affect our mitochondria.
00:24:38
Speaker
And also the pulse, the heart rate, the very basic things about our function, the heart, the pulse, can tell us so much about our function and that we as medical society have overlooked that. I think maybe it's because it seemed too simple.
00:24:59
Speaker
What gives you prestige as a doctor is finding out something very, very complicated about something very, very rare or very fancy. Some new enzyme or mechanism or gene interaction. Yeah, that is so hard to understand that only a few people understand it. But this is available to everyone.
00:25:24
Speaker
you know to know about how to cure diseases okay then you need six years of education and a lot of practice.
00:25:34
Speaker
but to understand what keeps you healthy, it takes a weekend to find out what can keep you healthy and how to do it.
Breathing Techniques and Stress Reduction
00:25:45
Speaker
It's not complicated and it's not even expensive. So all the strategies in the pulse cure, they're free or even cheaper than the alternative. Fasting, keeping it cold instead of warm,
00:26:04
Speaker
Breathing is free, sleeping is free, and you know, nature is free. So I'm curious, what is your, cause I haven't read that part, what is your recommendations around the breathing? It's generally slow breathing. Okay. So the most important thing is to slow your breath down and maybe try to do it often throughout the day.
00:26:33
Speaker
It's good to do it for 10 minutes, but not everybody has 10 minutes to spare. It can be easier before you take a phone call, before you take the next meeting. Just stop, close your eyes and breathe slowly for like a minute.
00:26:51
Speaker
Even that will have a good effect. When I say slow, it's like breathing four seconds in and six seconds out. For example, that is supposed to be the best. But I don't think you really need to count. You just need to slow down your breath.
00:27:12
Speaker
So in terms of the pulse in the morning, my understanding is what you want to happen is you want it to be, let's say it's 80 beats per minute in the morning, when you have a meal,
00:27:29
Speaker
It should speed up slightly because it would be normal with some inflammation after a meal. That is just normal.
00:27:43
Speaker
Your whole 70% of the immune system is organized around your gastrointestinal tract because that is where the war is, you know, between all the elements that will go into the bloodstream and all the immune cells that are there to inspect and to identify problems. And if there are problems, do something about it. So it will be a certain amount of inflammation after any meal.
00:28:09
Speaker
So for example, if I usually have a resting heart rate of 60 and after a meal, it may go up to 70.
00:28:18
Speaker
If I eat something that I'm not supposed to or that I tolerate poorly, it could go up to 75 or even 80, or even more than that. If I eat the meal of chili, for example, with chili in it, that is not really good for me. It can ruin the night's sleep, even small amounts of chili. For me, I can see that other people can react a lot less. They usually react, but not as much as me.
00:28:45
Speaker
then it can go up to like 85 or something and really stress me out. And that is also an important thing to try to identify the stressors that just taps you of energy and not gives you, it's not kind of an investment.
00:29:01
Speaker
If you go and do an exercise, or if you go and do a sauna and so on, then it's kind of an investment. You do something hard, you know, a hormetic exercise, and you get the payback in that you get more resilient afterwards. But I think that a lot of the stressors, you know, like nicotine, like alcohol, will just take your energy and not give you anything back, you know. Yeah.
Energy Management for Long-Term Health
00:29:29
Speaker
So to try to identify the stressors that are like energy thieves for you. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So many things we do on a daily basis are just energy sappers. So the more of these you can identify. Actually, I love this.
00:29:48
Speaker
You're going to make me get these Garmin watches for myself and my wife. The problem is my wife will not wear a Garmin watch because she'll say it's ugliest. They have this very, you know, Garmin knows that actually
00:30:07
Speaker
I think 85% of my followers, they are on Instagram and so on. That's women, because women are much more health conscious. And of course, Garmin knows that. So they have a whole series of watches that looks very, very nice, of course, and feminine watches. So they know that they have like a
00:30:30
Speaker
a boys market for the sports watches that are like mine here, like quite big. And they also have the more feminine touch and they do have that. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. So you wear an Ora ring as well? Yeah, I have an Ora ring and a Wup band as well. Sometimes I also wear a continuous glucose monitor also.
00:30:58
Speaker
So that is also very useful. I hope that the continuous glucose monitors become cheap because that is where people will really start to see. I remember when I was still doing low carbon keto.
00:31:16
Speaker
I would wake up, I was, I would manually take my blood glucose throughout the day with the, the finger prick stick thing. And my, uh, my, um, fasting blood glucose sometimes would be like 105. So I was like, wait, well, how is this possible? Something is stressing me. So later in a month, month or two later, I ran a, I did a stool test cause I was also having sleep problems.
00:31:44
Speaker
And I had parasites, I had blastocystis hominis, Giardia, overgrowth of gram-negative bacteria, Candida, which is very difficult to detect on a stool test. I love what you're doing because you're helping people quantify some aspect of their body.
00:32:05
Speaker
And that's a window to so many things. And it's like the old manage business idea. What gets measured gets improved, right? If you manage and report back on whatever you're measuring, there's a high likelihood that you will start doing something about it.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah, I compare it to if you go into the store and you do the shopping for the week. And then, of course, if you don't know the prices, if you don't know how much money did you make, how much money is in the bank for you to use? How much does this cost or this cost? Then you're totally blind. And with the body budget that I call it in the book,
00:32:51
Speaker
this is a way to get to know the body budget. What do you have available of energy for this day? And how do you compose the day because people are using more energy than they have all the time. And over time, it is not sustainable. And so you kind of the good thing I think is like,
00:33:17
Speaker
He probably heard about the study of Anders Ericsson, about the violinist in Berlin. And his advice, if you want to perform your best, is that you should be able to recover
00:33:35
Speaker
until the next day. The forces you have spent on this day you should be able to recover from till the next day. And that is not what I have done in my life. I've been borrowing the energy from the next day.
00:33:51
Speaker
you know, like a physiological credit card, you're always shortening out the sleep and you're, yeah, you think too much using alcohol, nicotine and so on. And this devices makes it manageable, you can see your budget, you can see how much forces you have. So yeah, you know, I think it's a really, really important tool for so many people.
00:34:19
Speaker
I think a lot of people probably will not want to do this just because they're afraid of the truth.
00:34:28
Speaker
Like you say, even when I was writing my book, some days I was waking up at 3 a.m. because I have a two-year-old, I also have to do stuff around the house, help out. So I would wake up at 3 a.m. to write until she wakes up at 9 a.m. Then I can do stuff while my wife goes to work with her and then she would take a nap.
00:34:53
Speaker
And then I would work during her nap and I mean, it allowed me to produce a book in four and a half months, which I know it's not very easy for most people to do, but I knew this whole time I knew I was borrowing from the future. Whereas.
00:35:09
Speaker
You know, after I published the book, I'm doing some strategies. Some days I sleep 10 hours now for the last couple of months. 10 hours is difficult to do when you're close to 40. But I knew what I was getting into. So I was taking care of diet and all the other stuff.
00:35:25
Speaker
you know, supplementation, light and all that stuff. But I think a lot of people, they're so addicted to whatever projects they're working on that they don't want to be slowed down. So I've heard of guys that they skip breakfast because if they eat,
00:35:46
Speaker
Let's say when they have lunch, they're like, after lunch, I'm useless. And they just prefer running on stress hormones to get that project done and help their business or their company move to the next level. But at the end of the day, you're paying the price with your life and health in the future, which is kind of a lot of people probably want to prefer to bury their head in the sand about that.
00:36:15
Speaker
Yeah, so these devices are for the people who want the reality, who want to see the results. So if you want to try to do the ostrich strategy of burning your head in the sand, then this is not for you.
00:36:32
Speaker
So you need to, and this is, a lot of people ask me, will this not just be stressful, you know, to keep track over the pulse and so on. And for most people, it will not be stressful. It may be more like you're in the car and you check the speedometer once in a while, you know.
00:36:53
Speaker
And if the police comes, then you slow down and you make sure that you're within the speed limit. But other than that, you just check that you are more or less in a good speed range. But some people that use these devices will see that they have a lot of stress. They have stress day and night.
00:37:13
Speaker
and then they get stressed. But this is reality. So there will be a price if you continue without regulating your stress. So my advice, even if you see that it's stressful, you should do something about it. And many people find out that there is something when they then take tests for food intolerance,
00:37:39
Speaker
they can see that there was something there. And that was the reason or they find out they have a B12 deficiency or vitamin D deficiency or iron deficiency for a lot of women. And the nice thing for me as a doctor is that these things are visible with a heart rate. And that is just amazing to me. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I'll tell you though,
00:38:11
Speaker
Even so, I was doing the, or I started using the ora ring in 2018 and I'll tell you, and I wrote, or actually wrote about it a little bit in my book, but when I had this bout of dysbiosis, I was looking at my ora data in the morning and it would, almost every day for, for a couple of months, it would tell me, take it easy today. Take it easy today. I'm like.
00:38:37
Speaker
What the hell is wrong with this? This algorithm is not good. I'm doing so many things right. And then later on, I found out I had the parasites and stuff, but also I was doing the low carbohydrate diet. I was kind of going in and out of ketosis periodically and eating low carb and intermittent fasting.
Heart Rate Variability as Health Indicator
00:38:56
Speaker
And in hindsight, I realized, well, during the times I wasn't eating,
00:39:02
Speaker
during the times where my carbs were very low, but not low enough to be in ketosis, that glucose deficit was being made up by elevations in stress hormones, gluconeogenesis and all that. So I was like, why couldn't I sleep because my stress hormones were high at night, my adrenaline, my cortisol and so on. Why was the app telling me, why was the algorithm telling me take it easy? It's because I was not anywhere near optimal.
00:39:33
Speaker
Because you had this stress on your system and this is where you have to, because a lot of people and one of the questions I get asked is, should we just listen to the watches? But this is a perfect example that
00:39:53
Speaker
The watch uses artificial intelligence from your pulse to make an estimate of what is going on. It does of course not know about your dysbiosis, it just detects that your body is under stress for some reason.
00:40:09
Speaker
Whether it's alcohol, whether it's food intolerance, whether it's dysbiosis in your gut, it, of course, does not know. So you have to do the detective work and find out, okay, my body is stressed. I'm doing everything I can. There must be something more here. And then you find out. And other people, one person will find out that the B12 is low.
00:40:32
Speaker
or that their metabolism with thyroid gland has a trouble. And most diseases, and that is what's interesting that most diseases, if you Google a disease that you are wondering about and then adds heart rate variability, you will find tons of research so that it seems that
00:40:57
Speaker
most diseases have a connection to heart rate variability. And certainly nine out of the 10 most deadliest diseases in the US is connected to heart rate variability. And it seems it's both on the cause and the consequence side of it.
00:41:13
Speaker
So a low HRV, which means that your body is under a lot of stress, will improve the chances of getting a disease. And once you get the disease, the HRV will be even lower, and then you have a vicious circle.
00:41:30
Speaker
I kind of wish we defined HRV for the listeners that don't know what HRV is. Yes, yes, yes. Maybe we should have started with that. The heart rate variability is the variation between heartbeats. What we used to think as doctors was that the best thing about the heart is that it beats very, very steadily, but that is actually
00:41:55
Speaker
a stressed heart that will beat in that way. A relaxed heart, a relaxed body system will have a variation between the heartbeats according to the breath. So if you breathe in in a relaxed state, then the heart rate will go up a little bit, measured in milliseconds. And when you breathe out and there's less oxygen in the lungs, it will relax a little bit, measured in milliseconds.
00:42:22
Speaker
And this is detectable by the devices, this variation. You can feel it yourself also. If you are very relaxed, you can feel it when you check the pulse that it will go up a little bit and then down a little bit. So that's a measure of being in the parasympathetic state, the relaxation state. And then if you are stressed for any reason, like your dysbiosis or any other reason, then the heart will beat very steadily. And then you are in the sympathetic mode, the stress mode.
00:42:52
Speaker
And we are supposed to be in stress mode, but we are supposed to be most of the time in the relaxed mode.
00:43:00
Speaker
So you can kind of picture a hunter-gatherer society where they're out gathering or hunting or fighting. Then after that, they're relaxing. And of course, the whole true history, after dark, we have been calm and we have been sleeping enough, you know, and relaxing. So a hunter-gatherer would not go out to exercise after having hunted or gathered, you know, they would relax. So in these days,
00:43:29
Speaker
we seem to be most of the time in a sympathetic stress mode and our organisms is not made to tolerate that. Our immune system needs time in the parasympathetic state to do its job. So when we are too stressed, when we are sleeping too little, eating the wrong food, exercising too little or too much, then we
00:43:53
Speaker
We are not giving the immune system the conditions for it to work properly. And we will get sick, we will get diseases based on inflammation, low grade inflammation. And I'm sure you know all about this. Well, not all about it. Or a lot about it. Always willing to learn more for sure. Yeah, that's actually something I was about to ask is, let's talk about a little bit more about
00:44:18
Speaker
autonomic nervous system states and illness and disease. So if we are in the sympathetic or the fight or flight nervous system state too much, what are some of the biochemical changes in the body that predispose us to disease just for the listeners?
00:44:45
Speaker
The biochemical, when we are in the stress state, that is the signal to the body, to the immune system that don't work now. We have to survive this critical situation, because historically, when you were in the stress state, it was either because you were fighting or hunting.
00:45:10
Speaker
And that was not the time for the very energy demanding immune system to do its work. It's like, okay, we're trying to get this organism to survive. Don't spend time on the maintenance now. You can do that when you are relaxing. So that I think is the main thing about it, that it kind of switches off the maintenance. And if you are in this state the whole time, most of the time,
00:45:41
Speaker
you don't get, your system will not get maintained. I think that is the most important. And then of course you have the cortisol so that if you have disturbances in the stress system with the cortisol that is supposed to regulate the immune system and many other functions in the body, this will be dysregulated. So I think that is kind of the main message. Yeah, that's a really, I always like to see different points of view because
00:46:11
Speaker
it kind of makes sense, right? You're stressed, cortisol goes up and cortisol dampens the, it dampens inflammation by suppressing aspects of the immune system's response. So it's kind of the way you said it. Yeah, well, it makes a lot of sense. You want to, and also you shunt the blood away from the
00:46:37
Speaker
the gastrointestinal tract. So because you're going to be using your limbs, you're going to be fighting, jumping. And I joke in the book, you're either going to fight, jump, flee, or be at the computer reconciling your end of your spreadsheets for end of your account, right? That's another big. So we can put ourselves in that stress state just by just by thinking about stuff.
00:47:02
Speaker
Right. Just by imagining something that you fear or that you worry about. Our immune system is not a passive system. Our immune system is not passively waiting for something to happen and then starting to work. That is too slow. Again, the immune system does not know that we are in 2024. The immune system is largely
00:47:32
Speaker
the same as in the last 150 million years actually. So it does not know that it's a deadline or that is some other things worrying because it thinks that, okay, you are worried, you are stressed, there must be a critical situation, there will be a danger that you will be hurt, that there will be infections from wounds and so on. So they are stepping up and mobilizing, getting ready for action.
00:48:01
Speaker
but they are also made to step down. Once you are relaxing, they stand down and relax as well.
00:48:11
Speaker
When you are worried, when you are scared and afraid and depressed or anxious, it will stay mobilized and will be dysregulated, the immune system.
Economic and Gamification Aspects of Healthcare
00:48:26
Speaker
And this is what creates inflammation in your body that will affect all the organs. And what we do wrong as doctors is that
00:48:37
Speaker
in this inflamed state, your mind will be inflamed, your kidneys will be inflamed, your liver, your heart, you know, all the organs will get trouble. And what we do then, when we identify that, okay, you got the disease in this organ, we give some medication to try to relieve the symptoms and try to fix this organ, instead of
00:49:01
Speaker
going to the root cause, which is the inflammation that will fix the situation in all the different organs. That is what probably needs to be communicated to the doctors a lot more than it has been done. We certainly did not learn this in medical school 25 years ago, and I'm not sure that I learned much about it even now.
00:49:29
Speaker
It's such a refreshing thing to hear doctors saying these kinds of things. And to see that it's possible to break out of the paradigms, because the thing about it is when you're young in your 20s, you're very impressionable. And if you're in a school for six years getting bombarded with the same ideas,
00:49:57
Speaker
You internalize them. Most people internalize them. So to break out of that and look for better ways to do things, which don't involve symptom masking chemicals that make companies billions and billions of dollars while the disease statistics continue to increase for most diseases. It's really nice. And these are the type of people that we really have to give a big platform to folks like yourself.
00:50:26
Speaker
I think so because the problem is that there's too much money to make on sick people. There's a nice little drive to wait until people get sick and then treat them with expensive medicine and lots of resources. There's just too many people making too much money from many sick people.
00:50:50
Speaker
You know, that is the problem. And what is good about these wearables and devices is that there's now money into keeping people healthy. So these devices that gives you power over your own health, that there's money in this, in preventative medicine, that is also an important thing.
00:51:09
Speaker
So I see now, for example, we were talking about the Ora Ring, but now Samsung is releasing their Galaxy Ring. So I think there's so, now there's a lot of money in keeping you healthy. And that's a very good thing. Yeah, absolutely. I hadn't thought about it that way. It's a game of incentives, economics. If there's enough incentive,
00:51:39
Speaker
to to make products it's like you know supplements in organic food grass-fed beef once enough people are buying those products even Aldi and Lido and all the the big chains and you know Costco whatever they will start
00:51:56
Speaker
investing more, like I notice here living in Portugal, over the years, more and more organic stores are carrying organic, are popping up, and more of the big stores are offering organic products. So we just have to make it
00:52:14
Speaker
we have to incentivize people to focus on health. And the more people think about their health, they will become more conscious consumers. So they will seek out, they will demand from companies to be, for example, if you're going like on a holiday, right, or a retreat somewhere, you're going to demand
00:52:37
Speaker
that the food there be of high quality, not cooked in seed oils, not be grains, you know, food of glyphosate, residues and so on. So I think it's, you know, we're making good steps. We're making good steps. Yeah, I think so. More and more people get health conscious, it seems. And it's funny, I also mentioned the game, you know, the word game. And, you know, this with the rings and gadgets is like a gamification of yourself.
00:53:06
Speaker
So suddenly you become the main person in the game and it's your life and health that is at stake and not just from some avatar in the game. It's actually you and you get to see the results from doing the good steps and you kind of get extra life, you know. Absolutely.
00:53:26
Speaker
in real life. So yeah, I think I think it's good. And what is actually crazy is that this actually is the world's first book, the first guidebook on how to use wearables to, to improve your health. And that I'm the one that is written it, you know, as just
00:53:47
Speaker
In principle, a normal doctor, I have no PhD or not a specialist, I'm just a very normal doctor. It's also very weird that it's not a professor or some important figure that has written it.
00:54:02
Speaker
So that is a bit strange to me. Well, I think it's like what you said earlier that you can learn the principles of health in a weekend, all the little nitty gritty details. And then it's a matter of applying them and I think the bigger battle here, it's not going to be the highly intellectual types that are going to
00:54:28
Speaker
to do this. The bigger battle is what we already discussed. It's influencing people in a way where they enjoy the process. They gamify it. It's like if someone is very business oriented, let's say, if they're kind of a professional
Investment in Health Maintenance
00:54:46
Speaker
or entrepreneur, I'm going to try to frame it to them. So you're investing all this time and money in your business. You're doing all these courses to up level. You might be paying for like an awesome mentor.
00:54:59
Speaker
what about investing in your vehicle like you're investing in your car keeping it really you know working super well what about investing in your health your vehicle
00:55:10
Speaker
you're fighting against entropy. Even if you do things optimally perfectly, it's still slowly degenerating. So you just figure out how to sort of influence that person where they figure out, oh my God, this is the number one priority. If it's not now, eventually health will become the number one priority, but then it will be because you're probably dealing with disease.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's like Warren Buffett, he uses the vehicle. He says, imagine that you only get one car.
00:55:48
Speaker
in your life. How well wouldn't you take care of that if you knew that it's only one car? And then of course, it's better to spend energy on maintaining it as you go washing it, you know, and making sure it's always that oil and so on. Because if you don't do that, you'll have much more work fixing the car afterwards, which will be much more difficult than maybe you will not even manage to do it. So so you have to just imagine, we only have this one body and
00:56:18
Speaker
And if you don't take care of it, it will betray us and make us sick. So it will require some effort to do the right things for your body, but it's a lot more effort if you don't.
00:56:34
Speaker
You will just get the price after you're 45 to 60. And I see this every day. The people I've been treating the last couple of days at work, when I see them, I see that you wouldn't need to be here. If you had done the measures, the steps that I show in the post-cure, I wouldn't see you. You would have been out and living 10, 15 years longer.
00:57:00
Speaker
you would just be dealing with broken legs and kind of actual emergencies. Yeah, because of the snow, it's actually snowing in Norway right now. So this morning, I was the first patient that six o'clock this morning had been falling in the snow. And that's another thing, as you get older, I think these things become more and more risk factors.
00:57:29
Speaker
You know, if you're in the stress hormone, if you're in the stress mode for a lot of the day, well, the cortisol elevation, it's going to over time, you know, stimulate
00:57:48
Speaker
the breakdown of bone, the rebuilding of bone.
Benefits of Lifestyle Changes at Any Age
00:57:53
Speaker
This is another way to frame it to people. As you're getting older, the risks for you change, so slipping, falling, tripping down the stairs.
00:58:03
Speaker
breaking a hip, breaking a bone, these things can actually kill you within a year of it happening. So this sort of getting your autonomic nervous system state under control earlier means you're going to be less susceptible to osteoporosis, sarcopenia, all these things, because again, the stress state
00:58:27
Speaker
The body is liquefying itself, including the joints and some of the organs and the skin. It's liquefying itself to produce energy, to make up the energy deficit, so that you can fight off or run away from the perceived threat, which could just be due to the modern lifestyle that we lead.
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And also, you talked about muscle. Also, muscle is so important to build muscles. And earlier, we used to think, as doctors said, okay, if you're 70 years old, okay, nothing matters anymore. Just do as you please. Just relax, sit in the sofa, have a beer and wine, and eat whatever you want. Have dessert every day.
00:59:10
Speaker
But now we know that it's exactly opposite that is if you do actually there's a big American research with 700,000 American veterans from the military that shows that if you do
00:59:26
Speaker
eight, the eight most important lifestyle changes, which is more or less exactly the same as in the pulse cure, then if you do this from your 40 years old, you will live 24 years longer. But also if you do it from when you are 60 years old, you will live 18 years longer. So it's even more effective, you know, like percentage wise, the later you do it. So it's never too late. And
00:59:53
Speaker
And actually even more, the older you are, the more important it is to do these changes. The more years you can, as a six year old, you can actually kind of
01:00:06
Speaker
double the remaining years of your life if you are going from having made the poor choices to making the good choices. Yeah. Awesome. Absolutely. I completely agree. So listeners, get both of our books and see you when you're 95 at least, right?
01:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, we should wish that we are actually made if we are doing everything kind of right. We are made produced to be 92 or 93 years old. Easily.
01:00:42
Speaker
So yeah, and I see that a lot of my patients when I see them, that's one of the good things about being a doctor that you can see many patients. When I see people that are healthy, living at home in their 90s, they have done exactly the same thing. They have been active, they have been
01:01:03
Speaker
in a good mood, they have been social, they have been eating the right thing, getting enough sleep, and they have been doing all these things. They have not done anything out of the ordinary. They have not been exercising a lot. They have not been athletes or anything. They're just living a normal well-balanced life. And then we will be maybe 92, 93.
01:01:29
Speaker
And then in a couple of two, three years, then it will quickly deteriorate. But what is more common now is that you start getting, and they have been healthy almost all the way till they're 90 years old. But what is more common now is that you start getting sick at 50.
01:01:45
Speaker
And then one after another, another inflammatory based disease will add up. And in the end, the last 10, 15 years, you're just being a sick person. Yeah. And spending a lot of energy and frustration on being sick.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
01:02:01
Speaker
horrible way to go. A waste of life quality. Absolutely. Yeah, completely agree, Tokyo. Really great pleasure to have you on. Really, I've looked through the book. It's very, very, it's very comprehensive. If you only had one book, I think this covers everything, you know?
01:02:23
Speaker
That is what I try to do. To compress, it takes five hours to read it. I think the audiobook is like six hours.
01:02:32
Speaker
And in that, I've tried to use as few words and as easy to understand as possible the most important things you need to do and how to track it. So that was the aim of the book. So yeah, tell the listeners where they can connect with you, Instagram, you know, all the stuff where they can get the book and yeah, anything else you want to plug. Yeah. I have a social website called thepolescure.com.
01:03:02
Speaker
It's on the Norwegian side of it. It's 4,000 members. And now, as the book is coming out in the US, we are now starting the English speaking version of it. It will probably quickly fill with people that are there to help each other. It's kind of a Facebook-ish site where people help each other. And also on Instagram, I'm Dr. Underscore Torquell, pointMD.
01:03:30
Speaker
So I'll use it and show how to do smart things there. So that is where they can reach me. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Turkey. Yeah, thank you for having me. Very interesting. And nice to speak to people so you are knowledgeable about these things.
01:03:52
Speaker
Yeah. It's more of a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. I think we could easily fill a last night. I did a three hour was interviewed on a podcast. I did a, we did a three hour recording and the guy, the guy had to go to pick up his kids and I had to go to the bathroom. So we could probably talk for hours and hours on all of these topics. So always a pleasure to throw ideas around. Thank you so much. Thank you.