Everything you see in this table has a
strong scientific evidence that it will
help with sleep.
>> So, we're going to dig into all of those
in great detail.
>> So, the first one is a really good one.
Kiwis.
>> Kiwis.
>> Yeah. So, there's been good studies on
them. So, if you have two to three kiwis
before bed, you'll see people sleeping
better. Next on our list is sleep
divorce. People generally don't sleep as
well when you're in the same bed as
others. Next, we want this.
>> This is more evidence than the rest of
these things combined, and it is
effective. Another one to think about is
sound. And
>> it really matters sound when you sleep.
>> Yeah. as much if not more of any other
factor. There's also screen usage,
light, your pillow and wearables. But
the other thing is we're spending more
on sleep and sleep is getting worse. And
for this last 20 years, I've been doing
science coaching and education that
enhances human performance. And I've
been fortunate to work with the world's
most elite athletes, entrepreneurs,
leaders, and even 50% of athletes have a
clinical sleep disorder. It gets worse.
70 to 80% of people who have clinical
sleep apnea will go undiagnosed. And for
women, it's somewhere in the
neighborhood of 90 to 95% and it is
delletterious to your health because
it's highly associated with long-term
death risk, cognitive function, mood
regulation, performance, recovery,
metabolic health, and it happens for a
bunch of different reasons and we can go
through them, but we look at the 8
billion person population. We need more
people to pay attention to their health.
And so I just want to get the best
possible out of people. So this could be
energy, could be metabolic, it could be
cognitive function, could be muscle
growth or fat loss. And so I want to
give every person listening to this the
opportunity to reach their goals and
dreams.
>> I'd love to go through all of those. And
you have a 5 4321 method. What is that?
>> Yeah, it's just a little thing I came up
with that says, "All right, can we help
people with fat loss?" So the first
thing to think about is
this is super interesting to me. My team
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help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get
on with the show.
Dr. Andy Gin, before we started
recording, you said you want to do
scientific research, coaching for your
clients, and you said education.
You also kind of alluded to the fact
that you were less interested in money
and these kinds of things. So the
question is why why do you do what you
do and what is it you're doing and who
are you doing it for?
>> The most concise way I can say it is I
want to give every person listening to
this the opportunity to reach their
goals and dreams. You want to look this
way or not look this way and you want to
perform this way. How can we get you
there? I want to remove those barriers.
And if you get there or don't get there,
it was because of you. It was not
because something was holding you back
that was in your way.
>> Mhm.
>> And so that's why I get equally excited
to work with the best linebacker in the
NFL and some person who just wants to
wake up and not be in back pain
tomorrow.
>> So tell me who you've worked with then.
Who has been a client of yours?
>> Yeah, I've been fortunate to work with
the world's most elite athletes for 20
years at this point. So this is your
number one draft picks in every major
sport. Hall of Famers, Sai young
winners, MVPs, Olympic gold medalists in
many sports, world champion fighters.
We've worked with hemoplegics and
paraplegic individuals. We've worked
with, you know, the cliche executives,
the mom and pops, the person dealing and
struggling with parmenopause. Like,
we've really done most of it.
>> And what kinds of symptoms or goals do
they come to you with?
>> So, I'll go broad categories and
specifics below that. broad categories
we tend to say is either rebuild or
upgrade.
>> Mhm.
>> Rebuild is there's something wrong,
hurt, broken, damaged. I'm overweight. I
can't fix it. I'm dying from sleep
restriction. I have a clinical sleep
disorder. I have some injury. I have
some huge clear limitation that needs to
be resolved. The second half is what we
call upgrade. I don't have any of that.
Feel pretty good, feel okay. Now, I just
want to get the best possible out of my
life. So, this could be energy. It could
be metabolic. It could be cognitive
function. Why I can accomplish that and
our our folks I work with can is because
I'm after the physiology.
>> What's what does you mean by that
physiology?
>> It's your biomolelecular signature. Do
you have a muscle imbalance that's
creating neck pain that's making it hard
to sleep and that's giving you a hard
time regulating your emotions. It could
be classic things like inflammation.
everything that is inside of your body
and both the way that it is running and
expressing itself.
>> And what are your credentials?
>> So my PhD is in what's called human
bioenergetics. I started my lab in 2011.
>> Your lab?
>> Mhm. So I'm an active scientist. I'm a
professor. That's my real job for the
most part. And so we conduct and
disseminate research there that enhances
human performance. And then I've started
a number of companies and privately
coach people. That's what I've been
doing for over 20 years. We talked about
the different personas and the types of
problems they come to you with. If you
had to, and this might be quite
difficult, order them in terms of the
frequency in which people come to you
with these issues. What would that sort
of top five be?
>> I'll break them from our professional
athletes and I'll probably spend more
time on non-professional athletes.
Assuming u most of your audience is
probably not a professional.
>> I won't take that.
>> Pretty close.
>> I won't take that, guys.
>> 50/50. We'll assume 5050. Yeah. Yeah.
Great. The athletes typically come to us
under two circumstances. Um, frequent
injuries I'm getting or tanked energy,
bad sleep. They they deal with the same
human problems we deal with, right? The
other one is what we'll just say is the
upgrade, the optimizer. Feel great, feel
young. I just want to get ahead of
things and I want to catch things before
they start. The general public is a
similar breakdown because you have a lot
of people who are like, I do feel pretty
good. I'm great, but I don't want to
play the game backwards. I don't want
problems to come up and then I got to go
scrambling and figure it out. So, let's
collect baseline data now. Let's get
ahead of things. Let's predict problems
before they arise, but I've only got a
few minutes a day,
>> right? I'm not trying to like take over
my whole life with all this stuff. Like,
probably the most common ones are things
like sleep and energy, performance
goals, can't seem to get stronger, can't
seem to lose that little bit of weight,
maybe touch of brain fog, I don't feel
as sharp. Well, I'd love to go through
all of those. Sleep, energy,
performance, strength, struggles,
weight, but also I've got my blood test
results here, which um Andy has taken a
look at for me. It's not all good. Okay,
so that's a pre-warning. It's not all
good, but he's going to run me through
my blood test results in this episode,
tell me how I improve things. And there
was a couple of deficiencies that I had
that I had no idea that I had cuz I
thought I was doing everything right,
which have completely changed my
supplement, um but also my behavior
generally. And also you've got this here
which is a gentleman I believe whose
blood test results you did similar age
to me and you took him from not so good
to great and we'll talk about that as
well. So hold on for a second while we
we touch first on the subject of um
sleep and energy which is one of the
first thing you talked about. A lot of
people listening struggle with sleep and
they also in their waking life feel
variances in their energy. Um, if we
start then with sleep, what are the like
most people problems of sleep?
>> This is a great question. We'll start
off and in fact I think this is a nice
framing of everything we're going to
talk about. We want to be weary of what
we call health anxiety.
>> Mhm.
>> This is overfixation, over concern,
worrying too much about little things
with your blood work, with your sleep,
everything. You're in a really great
spot. So, we can look for some upgrade,
but we want to be careful of pushing
that line. Why that also matters is if
we look at the 8 billion or so person
population, we probably need more people
to pay attention to their health than to
not pay attention to their health,
right? We're not in an abundance of
people caring too much. But if you're
listening to this show, you are probably
not representative of the general
population. And so I want to be really
careful of everything I'm about to say
for the next couple of hours.
I don't want to create health anxiety. I
don't want you to be so terrified to
touch a receipt that it sends you in a
three-day tail spin.
Anytime we're talking about a health or
performance, we want to run the spectrum
of disease to optimization. We should
not be playing around with optimization
performance if we're in the presence of
a medical disease. And why I say that is
sleep is probably the biggest place of
clinical disease that exists that no one
knows about.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to
80% of people who have clinical sleep
apnea will go undiagnosed.
>> Wow. If that existed for a broken bone,
>> right? If that existed for diabetes,
you'd be like insane. It gets worse. 50%
depending on which study you look at of
athletes have a clinical sleep disorder.
For women, it's somewhere in the
neighborhood of 90 to 95% of women that
have clinical sleep apnea will go
undiagnosed.
>> Why?
>> If you were to look at me and you would
say, if I said, "Stephen, you think I
have apnea?" He said, "No." Right? If I
were to bring in a whole table of 10
people and I said, "Pick the person in
here least likely to have sleep apnnea."
You'd find the smallest girl.
>> True.
>> You don't think about apnea as something
that can happen unless you're big and
fat.
Women also are less likely than men to
complain.
They're less likely to think about it as
an anatomical issue. They're going to
charge it to hormones. to their
menstrual cycle, to their cognitive
load, to what it's the demands that it
is to be mom. All these are true. By the
way, it is also in the same point true.
You could have apnea that has nothing to
do with body composition.
>> And let's define apnea for a second.
>> You stop breathing at night
>> and that wakes you up.
>> Sometimes it doesn't. No,
>> that's the that's the problem is it
won't necessarily wake you up, but it is
delterious to your health. It's highly
associated with consequences from
long-term death risk to short-term
cognitive function, emotion, mood
regulation, performance, recovery,
metabolic health. It's really really
nasty. In fact, one of the larger things
uh that can go wrong in your health is
is not breathing at night.
>> This might be a silly question, but does
sleep apnnea disrupt your sleep?
>> It it can.
>> So, it doesn't always.
>> Doesn't always. Okay.
>> And this is why do you think it's so
poorly diagnosed? So the classic
giveaways, if you were that person who
wakes up four counties because you snore
so loud, snoring doesn't necessarily
mean you have sleep apnnea, but it's a
really strong indicator. That's one form
of it. So apnea happens for a bunch of
different reasons. More evidence
recently has suggested like neck size
was this kind of original thing that we
say like a big neck is just a problem.
Doesn't look like that's as true, but
certainly it is true. As you increase
obesity rates, you'll see an increase in
apnea as well. So, what's happening here
is now you're talking about I'll call it
anatomical or physical like something
physically is landing on your neck and
your tongue and your throat, your larynx
and esophagus and it's stopping your
breathing. And why this matters is when
you're standing here or sitting here in
this chair, you're in this vertical
position and as you go and lay down,
anatomy shifts. You also have a lot of
research showing that the larger the
human being, the more fluid they have,
which is pretty normal, right? So, a
person who's twice your size will have
twice the amount of water in their body
that you do. Imagine if you had I mean,
we'll take this beverage right here. Why
do you have red wine? Well, anyways,
we'll come back in case you get thirsty.
>> So, you see the water is sitting
vertically, right?
>> If I were to shift this cup
horizontally, the water would shift and
it would it would balance horizontally
to where the gap in the air would be on
the top, right? That happens in your
body. So imagine this top piece start up
here. That's your neck. Now when you lay
down, your neck is over here. And I
would tip this over, but it would spill
everywhere. That fluid then shifts up
into your neck. So it's not even
necessarily a physical size thing, but
it's the fluid associated with being a
larger human being that the fluid shift
can happen.
>> Mhm.
>> What we're now finding is a whole series
of other types of apnea. Now there are
neural causes to it. There are
environmental causes. um there are
positional causes. And so as a classic
example to round the story out,
traditionally if you're told you have
apnea, you're going to be given one of
about three choices. Medication,
what's called a CPAP device,
>> right? So that's the big like Vader
breathing machine
or potentially what's called an oral
appliance. It's a mouthpiece that kind
of repositions your jaw and neck. I'm
for all of those treatments. Why they
all have such low success rates is
because they're given out generically.
You come in, you have apnea, you get the
same stuff. Now, what the field is
moving towards is precision and saying
you have this specific type of apnea. An
oral appliance won't help here. You
actually need this
surgical intervention.
>> I was looking at some of the data here
and it says that sleep apnea is very
common globally, much more common than I
expected. It says men who are
middle-aged
have a 24 to 34%
prevalence of apnea.
Women 9 to 17%.
Uh seniors
>> 30 to 60%.
>> That's right.
>> Post-menopausal women 25%. So yeah,
rough numbers. That means that listening
now, if you're a middle-aged man
listening, if there's three of you
listening right now, one of you
statistically might have apnea. Now,
that's clinical sleep apnnea. That
doesn't even count subclinical.
>> And if you're a senior listening now,
which is 65 years older, there's a 30 to
60% chance. Wow.
>> Depending on some numbers you see,
Stephen, you'll see a billion people
across the globe.
>> Yeah, that's what it says. It says a
billion people. Yeah.
>> Now, that's only apnea. That's not
insomnia. That's not all the other sleep
disorders. That's simply the one variant
of it.
>> Why is this happening? Because again
from an evolutionary perspective, sleep
apnnea couldn't have been a great for
survival.
>> Yeah. Three primary reasons why this is
happening. The first is the fact that
our our environment is physically
changing.
Our ancestors never had to deal with
this.
Two, our current solutions for testing
are either insanely outdated or
incredibly difficult to get to.
The third major one
is our solutions that we provide people
in public communication are wildly
generic. Thus not helpful. In fact, if
you were to pull everyone listening
right now, sleep comes up and you go,
"Oh, great." They're going to tell me to
sleep in a quiet room that's cold and
dark and they're like, "I've heard it
all." And you have. Where we need to get
to next is how do we help people find
these precision solutions based on their
type of sleep issues. But that's that's
the three-part reason uh why this stuff
is happening. I'd like to go into all
three of them. I also would like to just
pause on the diagnosis part because
there'll be people listening here that
might have a suspicion that they need
help. But again, they're going off their
feelings.
>> Yeah.
>> How can they know for sure what help
they need and what their problem is?
>> Yeah. I always start with subjective.
How do you feel? If you feel good, let's
now like immediately take a breath.
>> You have good energy. You wake up. You
feel good. Like everyone's going to be a
little bit tired.
We also don't we've actually had a I've
been working with for several years a
very close friend of you and I. We
constantly have to battle because he'll
just get like really honestly terrified
because he gets sleepy at the end of the
day. And I'm like bro that's the point.
People that are hard chargers, high
performers are actually afraid of being
tired. We have to recognize and realize
that is natural and needed. You need to
feel a little bit sleepy in the early
afternoon and you should feel tired,
unmotivated, lack of focus at the end of
the day.
>> What if I didn't used to? Because that's
what people they compare it to old
version of themselves.
>> Sure. Again, we can say natural. When
you are sub 25,
like you're you're just a powerhouse,
right? When you're past 25, we shouldn't
just accept frailty. We shouldn't accept
a permanent decline. But we do have to
start to realize we're not going to have
the energy of a 20-year-old. Like it's
just it's just not typically super
realistic. And if you do, you're
probably getting there exogenously,
right? Stimulants and other things which
have a place, but we just want to be a
little bit careful of those things.
>> We'll talk about stimulants, melatonin,
and all these things. But going back to
this point of diagnosis, yeah.
>> So Jenny who doesn't have much money.
>> Y
>> how does she get
>> Okay, great. So one thing we can do and
we can put these in your show notes for
you for free. There are a ton of
completely free short questionnaires
that are scientifically validated.
>> Okay?
>> You can do these for RLS, you can do
them for insomnia, you can do them for
apnea, you can do them for circadian
disruptions and disorders, you can do
them for chronoype. Are you a a morning
person or tons and I'll put as many of
these for free. So my answer there would
be start with one of those.
>> Okay.
>> If you flag that and you want to move up
to the next step, then you kind of have
a couple of different ways. And your two
options are what we'll call wearables at
home tech. These are typically we'll
call the $100 to $600 range.
>> Mhm.
>> And then past that, you have a true
medical option, which is a sleep
hospital. This is when you would go
into, you know, the hospital, you go
into that weird room, and you sit there,
you get all the wires, someone looks at
you through a window, you sleep in for
one night. You can see from the look on
your face sort of, you're just like,
"All right, who wants to do that?"
>> Mhm. If you have a true disease at this
point, for the most part, the sleep
hospital, depending on the disease, it
is where you need to get to. Now, what
our group is working on and others is
can we bring the sleep possible into the
home. It's not super affordable at this
point. We're working to get it there,
but that is the clear future. If you
have insurance, take that validated
questionnaire I just said. Go to your
doctor and say, "Here's what I scored
this thing. Will you order me that sleep
study?" Mhm.
>> is a giant pain. I know it, but it is it
is probably worth it. If you want to use
the wearable, you can do that. The
problem with the wearables is numerous.
They are awesome at things like
awareness, at accountability, right?
They're pretty good for things like
total sleep time. They're really, really
bad. And a major pitfall for wearables
is predicting things like deep sleep and
REM sleep. Do you know what I you know I
was I was thinking about I was thinking
about certain times where um I've done
certain things behaviorally and then I
got in bed woke up feeling terrible and
my wearable said to me
>> you had a bad really bad night's sleep
and I could kind of put two and two
together and kind of establish cause and
effect and I could almost I guess test
that then going forward and say okay
don't do that or maybe get in bed
earlier or the heat was was way too high
whatever it might be and I could sort of
AB test my way to a better outcome.
Yeah. So they can give you things like
total sleep time. As I said, what you
want to be careful of are the
aggregate sleep effectiveness score,
sleep quality score. That's the stuff
that directionally won't be there. But
you actually said something interesting
a second ago, which is you felt worse.
>> Mhm.
>> That's the only directional thing we
need to have to pay attention to. If you
go, "Wow, I felt worse today."
>> And then you can go backwards and go,
"Yeah, that's because I did A, B, and C
yesterday or I felt better today."
That's not the only metric. And to be
really clear, I'm not advocating to
ditch all the wearables. We use them
extensively.
It's just really being careful about
what data from those we pay attention
to.
>> Mhm.
>> And what we don't. So stuff that we do
now is find big themes
that they're often times missing. Here's
a good example. We had 1,200 days of
data from I think it was an aura ring.
And we are actually able to find that in
in one of our clients for every one drop
in resting heart rate. So his resting
heart rate say went from 65 beats per
minute to 64.
He got six more minutes of sleep.
And so we were like, "Okay, great. You
want to add an hour to your sleep. Let's
continue to work on your cardiovascular
fitness." Every time he got more fit,
his resting heart rate dropped. He slept
more. Additionally, every time you put
and you invest in down regulation,
you'll lower your resting heart rate
going into bed. You will sleep longer.
So, he was a classic case of like, I try
to go to bed, I do all the things, but I
just can't stay in bed. So, the key
there to get him the more sleep is to
put his physiology in a position that
would allow him to have more sleep. And
for him, like that was the canary in the
coal mine. So, that's the type of stuff
where wearables can be like you can't
replace that. Not only from a data, but
from a coaching perspective. It was so
easy for me to communicate to him,
here's your data.
This is our target. And he's an
extraordinarily busy person. He's like,
great, I got one thing to pay attention
to. Do whatever it takes to keep that
heart rate low going into bed. Copy
that.
>> What in his case was making his heart
rate high.
>> When it comes to something like sleep,
anything that is in your physical
environment, that's in your lifestyle,
that's in your physiology can impact it.
I mentioned earlier one of the reasons
why sleep is getting worse is because
these physical changes in our
environment. annual spend on sleep is
like 600 billion right now, but yet we
have seen a 60inute drop in total sleep
time over the last 60 years. So you're
seeing an inverse. We're spending more
on sleep and sleep is getting worse. I
think your team printed out some cards
here and we can go through them. The
first one is a really good one. The
world is physically brighter. In fact,
there's data from NASA satellite data
that can look and say the world is
physically brighter now. you're expected
to be communicating with Singapore and
Australia and the US, which means you're
going to be up later. Your business is
going to be on. Your lights are going to
be on. There's also a phenomenon called
skylow, where the light from Earth is
going up, hitting the clouds, and being
shot back down. And so, it's keeping our
world brighter. So, when you hear people
talk about things like you got to have
these blackout curtains and masks, and
you're thinking like, I never did that
when I was a kid. Like, what's the big
deal? It's because of this. I mean
there's some graphs that I found here.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Which kind of demonstrate this which
I'll put up on the screen.
>> Yeah. More people are moving into urban
environments. And if you look at some of
the studies, not to be dramatic, but
some of the studies have found things as
high as like anxiety and depression are
up 20 plus% when you move into the city.
And that's largely attributed to things
like light and sound. It's extremely
bright and extremely loud in cities. It
doesn't mean they're bad or you can't
live in them. It just simply means
that's why you have to take extra steps.
I think a lot of people listening to
this will think, "Well, Andy, my my
bedroom's very dark."
>> Great.
>> But that's actually not what you're
saying, is it? Because the way I was
thinking about it is we are here in New
York City now, and if I walked to the
shop last night at 10:00 p.m.
>> Yeah.
>> and walked back, I was exposed to so so
much light outside at a critical time
when my body should be not exposed to
light that it's going to impact me even
when I get into that dark room.
>> It goes even better than that. There's
evidence now that the light exposure you
have both in the morning and throughout
the day dramatically counteracts what
you just mentioned. So yes, you went for
that walk, you went for that thing when
light was still out and you had a
brighter light exposure in we'll just
call it the 3 or 4 hours before bed than
you would have had ever in the past.
>> Mhm.
>> But you can mitigate that damage by
seeing light appropriately during the
day and in the morning.
>> Oh, okay.
>> And and this is actually something my
friend
Andrew Huberman has talked about for
years now and I'm like I've always joked
and laughed at him but then I'm like
damn he nailed this. Like he was way
ahead in this one. Light exposure in the
morning will impact your sleep at night
the next day. He always explains it as
setting your circadian rhythm but it's
more than that actually. It's like
that's the part where I was like yeah
whatever. Like I'm in the same time
zone. Why do I care? But now I'm like,
"Oh." Because then if you were exposed
to high amounts of light later in the
day, that exposure to light earlier will
help reduce that damage.
>> There's this whole cascade of things
that influence when it is time to be
awake and when it is time to go to
sleep. And this is both hormonal based
as well as neurally based. So your brain
will shut down or activate in response
to light, in response to exercise, in
response to arousal, in response to
food, in response to stimulants and a
whole host of other things. That light
earlier in the day sets that rhythm.
>> Okay? So it's like starting the
>> it starts the clock. It starts the sleep
pressure. This is uh oh this is the
graph of rural versus urban plot. And so
yeah, I mean you can see that pretty
clearly. The red line here is the noise
in in a rural environment. And this is
the noise here. The typical number you
want to see um for sound at night is
like 35 dB, right? So if you see the
rural environment, you're cruising at
about that. And you see the urban
environment, you're looking in the 60 to
7 as a baseline.
>> And it really matters sound when you
sleep.
>> Tons.
>> Really?
>> Yeah. As much if not more of any other
factor that the big thing with sound is
inconsistency. A lot of people will do
things like uh put a sound machine in
the room.
>> Most people put them too loud because of
that thing. So you put them pretty
common default is like 40 to 50 dB for a
sound machine. More the data suggests
sub 40 especially for kids if you're
using a sound machine for your children.
Most people put them too close and too
loud.
>> What's a sound machine?
>> Uh just a little device that makes a
white noise. And what that does is it
cancels out a bunch of low-level
inconsistent sounds. Oh,
>> okay.
>> So the dog getting up, the window
creaking, the you know the car driving
by and so it can kind of cancel that
noise level out. How come I can have
like a great night's sleep listening to
a podcast falling asleep whereas my
partner can't? She needs silence and I I
I almost feel like I need to listen to
something to fall asleep.
>> Most likely you would do better if you
didn't do that.
>> Really?
>> Yeah.
>> You turn them off before you go to
sleep, right?
>> No.
>> Yeah. Okay.
>> That will never lead to your best sleep.
>> Okay.
>> What happens is you get to bed and
something is happening cognitively
>> and you're like, I need something to
switch me off
>> to distract me. Yeah.
>> Great. If we took that away from you,
you might sleep worse because you're
going to sit there and struggle through
that moment.
>> If you wanted to go from upgrade, we
would say, "Okay, let's figure out what
is actually a way for you to
downregulate cognitively,
give you that same thing that won't then
disrupt your sleep throughout the
night."
>> Have you dealt with people in that
situation before?
>> Super common. Podcasts are an incredibly
common one with that. Uh TV, books. My
philosophy is let's step back and solve
causes. Let's solve constraints rather
than mask them. Uh you've got a host of
different supplements over here.
Everything you see in this table has
moderate to strong scientific evidence
that it will help with sleep.
>> What are those things?
>> So lovely, delicious looking tart cherry
juice and I'll go through why that is.
There you've got some chamomile tea. You
would see this in a supplement form of
apogenine. It's a really common way of
that as kind of like distilled
chamomile. Um look at these lovely
kiwis. What's funny here is this is
actually what happens in in research.
They will give people two to three
kiwis. They will eat them right before
bed and you will very routinely see
people sleeping better after ingestion
of kiwis.
Um other things that are high on the
evidence-based list are of course
magnesium and various forms. More of the
research now on magnesium for sleep is
turning to a particular form called
magnesium bislycinate
um rather than 38. That's up there as
well. Uh, you will also see things like
omega-3. This is your common fish oil.
Oh, this is actually interesting because
this popped up on your labs as something
we have to work on.
>> Oh, my test.
>> Yeah, we'll come back to that in a
second.
>> Okay.
>> And then of course you've got melatonin,
right? The issue with all these is the
same that you have with your podcast.
These are doing the exact same thing.
So, one thing we could do is say ditch
the podcast and let's go with one or
multiple of these options because
they're doing the same thing. They're
cognitive turnoff. Apen or chamomile
specifically will play that role. It is
a reasonable switch that says frontal
cortex turn off. And so, you're getting
there through the podcast where you
could get through theirs through food or
supplements if you'd like as well.
>> Kiwis, Kiwis have scientific evidence
that they improve sleep for some people.
It's really common. If there's like
levels to this, you'd probably like
level one, two, and three. Level one
being things like actually surprising
enough magnesium, chamomile, melatonin,
of course, lots of randomized control
trials.
>> Level one being the best,
>> the best of the best,
>> the best, highest quality.
>> And you'd say what? Magnesium, kiwis.
>> Yeah, kiwis would probably be like a
level two or level three.
>> Okay.
>> So, there's been good studies on them
enough to put them on this table. Enough
to say there's data there. So, you're
getting some product below it. In this
case, epigenine, in this case, other
phyitochemicals
that either reduce a little bit of
cognitive function, they reduce arousal,
they put you in some sort of checkout
state.
>> And then there's this one over here,
melatonin. Yeah.
>> That a lot of people are aware of.
>> Yeah.
>> Strong. What level is melatonin?
>> So melatonin probably has more evidence
than the rest of these things combined
because it's a medicine. It's a drug.
There's a ton of research on it from
children to aging to bone health and
tons of other stuff, right? It's a
hormone. You're going to be able to to
move some units with this one. Um,
nobody is going to be super concerned
about risk factor profiles with eating
two kiwis,
>> but you start getting to the level of
something like a melatonin and now you
have to have real conversations about
risk versus benefits. We typically don't
use melatonin
at the dosage that's normal. So a common
dosage for melatonin is like 5
milligrams, sometimes even up to 10.
>> Wow.
>> We will typically use like.3
maybe 0.5. So about a tenth that dose. A
lot of times we're trying to find like
one milligrams, cut them in half, kind
of things like that. The only real
reason we use melatonin outside of some
fringe cases is when we actually
legitimately need to reset circadian
rhythm, travel, jet lag,
things like that. Uh and it is effective
and it is useful there. It is safe in
small doses. Where people mistake
melatonin is I use it every night to go
to sleep and or I wake up in the middle
of the night, can't go back to sleep, I
go grab a melatonin.
>> Why is that bad?
>> It doesn't work.
>> It doesn't work.
>> No, because the thing that melatonin is
supposed to do is realign circadian
rhythm. If you're in the middle of the
night, you're already in that rhythm.
It's not going to do anything. You would
in fact, not to not want people to do
this, but you would actually be better
reaching for something like a chamomile
perhaps because if you're having a hard
time getting back to sleep cognitively,
this is not going to do it. The other
issue is we've done a lot of morning
urine testing. There's enough studies
that look at the dosage that's actually
in the pill versus on the label and they
can be up to 100x higher.
>> 100x.
>> And we see this in morning urine. We
have seen people who are consistently
tired.
Their sleep doesn't look horrible.
They're doing all the right things. It's
cold. It's dark. They're meditating.
They're doing all this stuff. They're
popping in even a moderate dose of
melatonin. And the amount of melatonin
the next day in their urine is 100x the
upper end of the reference range, which
means they're spending the rest of their
next day in a hyperdosed melatonin
state. So they have to live then on
stimulants to get better.
>> How would they feel and horrible?
>> They would feel sluggish and
>> you wake up the next day and you're
like, man, it's what we call sleep
inertia.
>> You're wildly groggy. You can't get out
of bed or you're just getting throughout
the day. This is a like don't talk to me
until I've had my coffee kind of
response, right? This is not a normal
waking physiology that you should be
going through.
>> Presumably, that's just melatonin from
sort of cheap sources that haven't been
tested. That's going to knock off a huge
part of your problem, right? Only this
is why we'll always say you don't, no
one needs supplements. Like no essential
person needs to have any supplement to
live a great happy healthy life. If you
choose to use supplements though,
just buy them from third-party tested
transparent
companies that place their testing on
their websites that give you open access
to it for for these exact reasons.
Vitamin D's has a similar profile of
inaccuracy. The other issue with that
then simply let's say you're buying it
from a high quality source. You're
dosing it too much and you're taking it
too late. So take it earlier than you
think before bed so that your body has a
chance to break it down before the next
morning.
>> What kind of time and how quickly acting
is it?
>> It's person to person dependent, but a
lot of times you'll see things like an
hour before. Uh some people will feel a
response in 10 to 15 minutes. Some
people will feel it closer to an hour.
But that's a pretty good window.
>> Hang on. If it's 2 a.m. in the morning
and you're and you're getting in bed,
don't take it. Don't take it at all.
>> Okay,
>> we're going to use this in very specific
situations and then we're coming off of
it. This is this should not be a part of
your nightly routine most of the time.
>> What exactly is going on in my brain
when I take melatonin? Cuz a lot of
people take it and we know that it makes
us feel tired but but understanding the
mechanism I think will help us under
understand the application.
>> So it actually doesn't really make you
feel tired. That's part of the issue.
>> Oh
>> the mechanism is a circadian shift. So
it's telling your indogenous system that
this is nighttime. So it doesn't hit you
with like a oh my eyes are there. This
hits you with a shift in cortisol. This
hits you with a shift in a whole cascade
of epinephrine, norepinephrine,
serotonin that are moving around and
saying this is the millu that you need
to be in that is consistent with a sleep
pattern.
>> Okay. So, I take it and then it
regulates my other hormones which would
be getting in the way of me feeling
tired theoretically.
>> That's probably more appropriate to what
it does.
>> Okay. Because yeah, I've taken it a
couple of times again always for jet lag
issues and within about 30 45 minutes I
feel a bit drowsy and then I find my
eyes going shutting and I'm off.
>> Great. And then you get out of those
that 2 or 3 day window,
>> put it back away and you're off and
going. That's a good use case for it.
The mistake is when this is like I can't
go to bed without
>> I'm generally scared of all these things
because um
>> honestly anything that's effective I'm
more scared of
>> and so sure
>> it's really effective which makes me
hesitant to use it frequently.
>> Yeah,
>> it's a good default position to be in by
the way.
>> It's a good strategy.
>> Yeah, cuz I one of the things you learn
from doing a podcast like this is you
just learn that everything has a
trade-off
>> always.
>> And I and again this might not be
logically sound but I assume that the
bigger the upside the bigger the tra
like the trade I'm making on the other
side as a general rule. So, do you know
the only thing that I've still not been
able to, I guess, understand the full
trade-off of is coffee
>> because the upside is so significant. No
one can articulate to me the downside
other than they say if you have it after
midday, it's going to
>> impact your sleep. But I'm like, come
on, there's got to be.
>> The phrase that I'll say in my class all
the time is there's no free passes in
physiology.
>> Mhm.
>> With coffee specifically, there actually
we have a meta analysis led by my
colleague Dr. Ben House puts this
together. But if you look at the
research on caffeine and sleep, it's
very interesting because if you go
through sleep deprivation, your physical
and cognitive performance goes down. No
surprise there. Coffee can offset that.
Caffeine specifically is is the thing.
But what it doesn't do, at least the
data and the meta analysis suggests, is
it doesn't actually put you back into
the augmented spot. Meaning if you did
you sleep great last night?
>> I think so. Yeah.
>> Full night. Okay. Let's just say you're
there. If we took you out and we had you
throw that medicine ball and we did a
grip strength tester and we did what
some sprints up and down or whatever you
wanted to do, you would perform well.
And then if we gave you caffeine, you'd
perform better. It's why we call it
erggoenicate. It's a performance
enhancer. Caffeine is really effective
primarily at endurance based events, but
it is a stimulatory thing that people
will use. So let's just say you have
normal baseline performance, then
caffeine augments that performance. If
you go into sleep debt, the sleep itself
will reduce your performance. And the
coffee can bring you back to normal, but
it won't bring you back to that
augmented state that you had when you
were rested and caffeinated. This is
important because a lot of people will
be like, "Ah, I'll throw away the sleep
or I won't worry about it as much
because I'll just take more stimulants
tomorrow and I feel great." You will
feel as good, but you will not perform
as well. So, what you need to perform at
your best if you're a caffeine user is
to be both well-rested and then
caffeinated. Another thing you want to
pay attention to in your sleep
environment, um, labeled ergonomics here
is your pillow, your bed, your mattress.
This is mostly
based on feel.
>> Is there any no- go in this regard?
>> Not really.
>> Not really.
>> No. Unless, let's say you have a
sleeping partner and you're sleeping in
a bed that is too small and that results
in you hitting each other or touching
each other and you don't like that. So
other than those uh the framework
themselves there there's really no
nothing to be concerned with.
>> What about these like eight beds?
>> Asleep is fantastic. So asleep is not a
bed it's a cover
>> which regulates temperature. If you are
in a bedding situation where you're
getting hot then that's a problem. So if
then an eight will help you regulate
that temperature it's a great solution.
If you're not in that situation then
you're going to be just fine. So
temperature regulation is a really big
deal
>> and you'll quite often see people that
do that. Whether that's getting a
product like that or it's getting a
sheet that's cooler or a mattress that
is better with ventilation, then you'll
often times see them sleep a little bit
better. Next on our list is screen
usage. Everyone has been told and you
know perhaps nothing's more destructive
when you're sleeping screen. What's more
interesting here is the stuff that
people generally don't talk about. It's
not the fact that necessarily screen
usage is shooting your face with a bunch
of blue light. What's more dangerous
about your screen is the arousal
associated with the search for novelty.
>> The search for novelty. What does that
mean?
>> You're engaging in a podcast,
social media, a game is puzzle driven.
It is solution. It is interest. It is
engagement. It is search for the next.
That's the stuff that more likely than
not cause sleep disturbance
disturbances.
In the studies that have looked at
things like TV time versus tablet versus
phone versus reading, those all can be
equally dangerous to sleep. Here is the
example. I am a TV before bed guy. A
giant TV with a blast of blue light. I
sleep great with that. My wife is really
struggles with light before bed. she
will read and yet she chooses to read
things that I don't think she should be
reading for a night and then she'll wake
up because of the topics that she's
reading where I'm watching things on TV
that are you know documentaries on
Ulysius Grant or something and you're
just like that is the least engaging
thing ever. So it's not the fact that
the light is there. Um I use that stuff
much like you use your podcasts which is
my entire day is so driven by somebody
wanting my attention and time. I have to
have something that gives me a cognitive
switch that says you get to turn off.
>> I wanted to add something to this which
I've been thinking about this week. So
in Meta, Meta own Instagram and Facebook
and WhatsApp etc. In Meta's earnings
call this week, Mark Zuckerberg talked
about how they had changed the
recommendation algorithm on social media
apps using AI. And this was something
that we've always forecasted would
happen and we've been thinking about the
creator economy and how it would impact
it. But specifically for people
listening, what essentially he said is
every time you post something on
Instagram, whether it's a real or or a
normal post, they now feed it to a large
language model, an AI, and the AI
effectively, and again, I'm summarizing
here, watches it, and it can now
understand the full context of what it's
watching. So, if it's watching a clip of
you and me right now, it'll understand
that that is Andy Galpin. He's holding a
card, he's wearing a black t-shirt, he's
it'll look at the transcript, it'll know
what you said. And this is all pertinent
because it then can without in the past
needing to look at the caption and the
hashtags, it can then decide with way
more context than ever before who
exactly would want to see that. And the
net impact of that for for the user of
Instagram or these other social media
apps or Tik Tok or whatever it is, is
you're going to be more retained now
than ever before. And as you were
talking about that, I thought, I wonder
if they think about timing of day. Like,
I wonder if they think at 11 p.m.
there's a certain thing that's going to
keep Andy scrolling versus something at
9:00 a.m. when you're off to work. And
of course they do because that and you
know they were talking about on the
earnings call Mark was saying how it's
increased retention by I think 15 basis
points. And there's this quote where he
said there are already two large sets of
content to draw from. first from your
friends and people you follow and second
from creators that you don't follow. But
now there's going to be a whole new and
nearly infinite universe of personalized
content which from that I infer what
they're saying is with their new large
language model called Muse is we're
actually going to make new content to
show Andy Galpin
>> that no one made no humans made. We're
going to make stuff that we know Andy
will like. And so I say all this to say
that in this sleep conversation, we've
been talking about as creators. We've
been saying basically it's going to get
really difficult if you're a creator
because now if you have a million
followers, it doesn't matter. No, if
Jenny has zero followers, but she makes
something that is contextually more
interesting than the million follower
guy, Jenny's thing is going to see be
seen to everyone. But actually now
you're going to be competing with an AI
that's going to be churning out super
personalized Andy Galpin content.
>> Like that just Andy would just love at
11 p.m.
>> I said to my team this week, I was like,
just take care of yourself. Do you know
what I mean? Just be aware, you know,
when you open your phone that the AI is
doing everything it can to retain you.
>> Yeah. I mean, just don't be on your
phone. We've been making this argument
for years, but gez, um, you got every
disadvantage possible coming in your
way. And and look, we're all human. I I
think I remember
last time I was here, you were talking
about how like you wake up and your
phone's right there, but your your
fiance like doesn't touch your phone for
the first hour of the day or something.
and it's just like on the charger until
noon or something. You're just like,
"What? I'm more like you." Right? I'm
like, "My phone is in my room. It's not
three rooms. Like, I'm just not doing
any of that stuff." Right? And we
started this entire piece by saying the
environment you're in is just different
than it's ever been before. And it's not
getting any better. And at some point,
you have to make that decision of
do you care about your own health? Do
you care about the thing the next day
that you didn't do well? And you care
more about that than you cared about
that next reel.
>> What is it that's causing us to
understand everything you just said, but
to ignore it and to pick up our phone
anyway?
>> You are hard driven through the entire
biology of our species to search for
novelty.
In fact, I I look at this from the lens
of sports. Why do you care about high
achievement? Why do I care about
performance? There has direct
translation. When someone breaks a
barrier,
we all benefit from that. And I could
give you direct examples of this. But we
have every story. You want to go to
Joseph Campbell heroes journey, right?
You want to go back to Hercules, the
story of the marathon. Like you pull any
story from history out and what are you
actually looking at? You're looking at
somebody did something that no one has
ever done before. You care more about
records
than you do regular wins and losses.
Why? because they're novel.
Why are you more interested in watching
Messi break that record
than you are the other team winning in
the exact same shot?
It's because you saw something. You got
to be there when someone did something
for the first time in human history.
>> I get more of a dopamine hit from the
novelty, from the new thing.
>> It's more than the dopamine hit, though.
It's a sense of purpose. Your life
mattered
because you got to be involved in
something no one else has ever seen. And
even as that bystander on TV 30,000
kilometers away, you got to be a part of
that. And that all comes down to we are
so wired
to reward novelty.
So then now that comes back to your life
and you have to be thinking how do you
walk away from that core drive? thinking
about a study I read about in psychology
class in school with pigeons getting
variable rewards.
>> I'm going to butcher this, but bear with
me. They took a pigeon and they got a
little lever for it to press and every
time it would press the lever and
sometimes it would get a reward. And
they found from the study that if they
made the rewards variable, i.e. it
couldn't predict when it was coming, the
pigeon was more likely to keep pressing
the lever, i.e. it was more addicted to
the behavior if it didn't know when the
dopamine hit was coming or the the treat
in that case. Scrolling on social media
is kind of like the slot machine of
variable rewards. I just don't know what
I'm going to get. But every fourth, you
know, scroll, I get something that
>> or every 40th.
>> Yeah. Orth better, right? Because the
more unpredictable it is,
>> the more likely you are to be like, "One
more, one more, one more, one more."
Right? Like, if it actually comes too
quickly, you care less.
>> So, you're going to scroll through all
the boring stuff, boring stuff, boring
stuff, boring stuff, boring stuff for
the one out of every 40 that gets you.
That's what you're actually there for. I
mean, if I gave most people and I said
like you can have $10,000
or you can have $10,000 in equity in a
startup.
I look at your face. Like I know what
you're doing, right?
You want to like people are it depends
on where you're at, right? But it's just
like okay. And if I said right now the
most likely scenario is that $10,000 is
go zero.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is what happens, right? You're
like kind of hedge. Can I go five and
five? like you're you're going to go you
don't you unless you need the 10 grand
which a lot of people do but you get the
point because you're like man walking
away from belief walking away from hope
walking away from what if is in insanely
hard to do.
>> I deleted one of these social media apps
just completely from my phone and
honestly you always think that you're
going to have like FOMO. You're not
going to know what's going on or there's
going to be some huge loss to your life
if you don't have an app on your phone.
And it's just remarkable when you delete
these some of these social media apps
how positive of a net impact it has on
your life.
>> I have a a friend of mine named Shaun
Ali, a famous UFC fighter. He was
sitting at his pool and he had his
daughter was like one or two years old
and he was like scrolling Twitter and
was like, "What am I doing?" Like my
daughter's over here in front of me.
He's 2 years old and like I'm on
scrolling like not doing work or not
making a post. Not like I'm just
scrolling.
dumped it was just like team you guys
handle it not on any social media more
>> so that screens
>> that's screens my friend another one to
think about which we've sort of touched
on is called the presence of other
beings this is our classic sleep divorce
I assume you uh as I do share your
sleeping environment with your partner
>> yes
>> tough to make the argument of like get a
sick divorce right
>> yeah I'm not telling her
>> you can tell that
>> it's funny if it was up to my if we
would have a sleep divorce.
>> You're joking.
>> No,
>> she's like, "Get away from me. Don't
touch me." She wants to like if we could
have separate beds in separate rooms,
she I don't snore earning, but she just
like
>> My fiance is the opposite.
>> It's not super realistic, but it is
true. There are data behind it. People
generally don't sleep as well when
you're in the same bed as others. The
realistic solution, try to get sheets or
a sleeping situation in which when one
partner moves, it doesn't roll the other
person.
>> Oh, like separate sheets. separate
sheets or simply the type of sheets.
>> Um my wife loves to be really
constricted so she likes the sheets
tucked in tight. She likes to bed and I
hate it. Like
>> I feel like I'm in Shaw Shank. I'm like
break me out like rip it all out of
there. So there's little things like
that that don't require you to buy
anything where you just change kind of
the the setup and the scenario to where
their movement doesn't impact you as
much. Um noise would be the same one. if
you are sleeping with somebody who makes
a lot of noise, tosses and turns a
bunch, um you could put a pillow in
between, so when they roll over and
move, they don't hit you, earplugs,
things like that. So, that one's a
pretty straightforward one, but that
said, it's pretty impactful. It can
really make a big difference. And if
you're really struggling,
maybe do a partial sleep divorce.
>> Okay.
>> Next, sleeping in new environment. Uh
this would oftentimes be called first
night effect. So your first night,
whether it's back home, whether it's in
a hotel or somewhere else, you don't
feel as comfortable and as safe. And
your circadian rhythms, the things that
set your timing, aren't there. This is
sound. This is light. This is feel. This
is temperature. This is smell. What you
can do if you travel a lot, our athletes
travel every 3 to 5 days, right? This is
what they do. You can try to mimic your
sleep environment at home on the road.
Some people will take their pillows.
Other things that are on the similar
list are smells like lavender.
Lavender is moderately associated with
helping people fall asleep. None of
those is going to like knock you out.
>> Mhm.
>> What you're looking to do is stack
winds.
Next is temperature. You want to be
cool. Generally, you're looking at 64 to
68 degrees. This is personally
dependent. Um, some people actually like
to be a little bit colder so that they
can have a heavier blanket because they
like that feeling. When this idea got
popular a bunch a few years ago, people
just started raking the ACs, right?
You're just like, get the room as cold
as you possibly can. That can become a
problem because we're seeing this
somewhat consistency where when people's
air conditioners kick on, it actually
wakes them up. And as we talked about
earlier with noise, it's not necessarily
always about the volume, but it's the
change,
>> okay,
>> in sound. And so you have something
kicking on, kicking off, kicking on,
kicking off. The other thing we see is
because of air quality situations, uh,
we've seen quite often when we have
environmental sensors and stuff that if
your air conditioner is not clean and
the fan is out in there, you can
actually kick a bunch of dander and
particulates and other things into the
air and then you start breathing those
things in it overnight and your nose
starts to get a little bit stuffed up.
You can't breathe through your nose and
then boom, you have this hypopnic or
apnneic event. The last component that
comes up, you know, pretty often at
absolute rest is fans. This can make
your mouth dry. So, if you're waking up
with that and you're like, "Ah, I got to
get a drink of water or something." Um,
then maybe consider not having the fan
blow directly out your face.
>> An interesting thing I was thinking
about there, which is there was the uh
viral experiment done in 2009 by Mind
Lab sleep study where they conducted um
the sleep experiment at the University
of Sussex. Researchers hooked men and
women up to an ECG machine to measure
their brain waves and played a variety
of ambient sounds while they slept to
see which noises triggered an immediate
wake response. And the top wake
responses from men and women was
completely different. Men's top trigger
was a car alarm. Women's top trigger was
a baby crying. Men's top trigger was
wind howling outside. Uh women's second
top trigger, I should say, is a dripping
tap. Yeah.
>> Men's third top is buzzing or flying of
a mosquito. Uh women's was um shouting
outside. And both of their fourth top
trigger was snoring. But it was
interesting that the thing that woke
most men, their top trigger in that
study was an alarm outside, but women's
was a baby's crying. Yeah. Every mother
out there is gone. Yep. It's in in fact
one of the largest causes of sleep
disorders in women is having children.
what happens after child birth and and
it's a whole interesting field to hear
of uh postpartum care is really poor in
women like we just sort of like start
paying attention to baby stop paying
attention to mom as soon as baby comes
out well I'm saying that because it is
obvious and clear that the last
trimester can present a lot of sleep
challenges for women and then especially
as soon as a baby's there like you're
just going to have some known period of
sleep deprivation whether it's delivery
or having a newborn all that stuff and
that can actually cause patterns this
can cause insomnia. This can cause
irregular sleep schedules, circadian
disorders, natural things. Totally fine.
In some percentage of women, those
patterns will persist. And so, you'll
see women who have sleep disorders, even
with adult children that started because
of the child birth. We were advocating
at all times like, yeah, get through it.
I got two kids, you know, I've been
there. But then just make sure you're
you're providing care and going back to
try to fix those things. And why that is
difficult is because the study you just
mentioned
>> it's worth saying there is an
evolutionary theory behind this that
says you know men and women are attuned
to different things. But there's also a
counterargument that says the difference
in who actually wakes up and who gets
out of bed is often heavily driven by
social roles. Parenting expectations and
individual sleep depth rather than a
biological inability for men to hear the
baby. So how how do we close off on the
subject of sleep? Is there anything that
we haven't touched on that we should
have touched on as it pertains to how to
have incredible sleep? One thing that I
think will help everyone whether you're
at any of those stages free a little bit
of money or you got to go the full end
of the spectrum and use a hospital or a
service like ours
is everyone has the ability to run
self-experiments. We we have a a free
guide that anyone can go use and it's
just a a quick tutorial about how to run
your own self-experiment for sleep
specifically.
>> Oh, there you go. Yeah. Um so this is up
and available for free on our website.
Anyone can check it out. There's a lot
of stuff in here we've covered. You can
get more into it. But the short answer
of it is we don't want to make people
think sleep has to be the center of
their life. I often times when sleep
comes up, people start thinking, I'd
love to sleep more, but I'm too busy.
Hey, I'm the same boat. Like, I can't
afford to have a 12-h hour sleep
routine. What we should be paying
attention to is sleep resilience. Steve,
I want you to be as resilient to bad
sleep as possible.
I don't want you optimizing your sleep
because optimization turns into that
giant routine before bed. I got to take
12 different supplements and four
different cocktails and I got if I have
to do that along the way, great. The
endgame though should be resilient.
Meaning, you had a bad night of sleep,
cool, and you still performed.
We had this challenge. Flight got
delayed. Great. We still executed. I
want you to know how to get a good night
of sleep so you can feel as refreshed as
possible, execute the next day, and then
get right back onto it.
>> The way you get there is, and that's the
way our company works, like we're just
going to run a series of experiments.
And everyone can do that. Start by
changing one thing. Your trackers,
your data are going to tell you how
you're sleeping, but they're not telling
you why you're sleeping that way. So,
that's your quest. Go figure out why
you're sleeping that way. Is it your
bedroom temperature? Is it your partner?
Is it the fact that you're sensitive to
light? Is it the fact you're exercising
too late? Are you eating too late? Like,
all these things are possible.
One at a time. Just like Jon Jones,
where marginal improvements in your
cognitive performance can have a massive
impact. Sometimes I podcast for 10 hours
a day. Over the last couple of weeks,
I've been in filming for a TV show and I
have like one or two days off to get all
of my work done, which means there's
lots of cognitive load. And so I turned
to ketones because I find myself more
articulate, able to think more clearly,
able to work out better when I'm fueled
by ketones. And so the reason I became a
coowner of this company and the reason
why they now are a sponsor of this
podcast is because I remember one of my
team members called Cristiana, she tried
it once and came up to my desk and she
goes, "This is the best product ever
made." And I think in part that's
because she really cares about those
cognitive benefits as I do, as Jon Jones
does, and as I think most of my
listeners probably will. So if you
haven't tried these yet, all you have to
do is go to ketone.com/stephven,
and you'll also get 30% off your first
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benefits that might just change your
life. If you're thinking about starting
a business, one of the first decisions
you'll have to make is actually one of
the most important, which is where do
you build that business? Our product
team who manages everything we do from
our conversation cards to our diaries
has always used our sponsor Shopify.
There are a few reasons for this, but
one of the big ones is that when you're
running a business, you really need your
own store and your own customer data.
And Shopify gives you exactly that. You
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your free trial at shopify.com/bartlet.
I guess one could argue that the
antithesis of sleep is being awake. And
when we're awake, the thing we care
about is energy. Now, I had a really
great conversation on this podcast with
um several people that talk about
mitochondria and energy and those kinds
of things. And some some of those
conversations have really really changed
me. If you hadn't haven't listened to
the more recent conversation we had on
um mitochondria on the channel, please
do go listen to it.
>> Martin Peard.
>> Martin Peard. It was a really honestly
it's one of my favorite conversations
I've had this year just because I've I
knew about the mitochondria like I I
conceptually knew what it was but I
hadn't thought about it as being so
central to everything in my life because
energy is essential to everything in my
life like my relationships, my ability
to do this, my my joy, my everything. If
someone is trying to improve their
energy levels and that's what they come
to you with in terms of a symptom that
they self-describe, where do you aim?
Okay, we talked about sleep, but where
else do you aim?
>> Energy is
probably the number one thing on our
list of reasons people come to us.
>> What do they say?
>> I'm tired all day, can't figure it out,
or I don't have the energy I used to
have, or I can't sustain output like I
used to. Whether this is physical, uh,
my recovery is longer than it used to
be, or I just can't hang working as many
hours as I used to do, I get fatigued at
the end of the day cognitively, I'm not
of the camp that this is entirely
mitochondria. But I certainly will agree
that energy would be the number one. In
fact, probably the most common question
I've ever got in my career is what
separates these world performers from
the rest of us? And people want me to
say things like they work harder. They
they don't. They are categorically
though better at energy management.
That is the one thing that seems to be
most consistent again with the world's
highest performers, athletes,
entrepreneurs, leaders, executives, you
name it, however you're defining
success. When you get better at managing
energy,
you're more effective. This is
everything from cellular energy to
understanding things like your own
interpersonal communication.
What type of relationships give you
energy? What type of relationships take
energy from you? What type of activities
give you energy? What types give you
back? When can you be more efficient?
When are you running for the sake of
running and not actually running in a
direction? And I mean this figuratively,
not literally.
This is all energy management. And what
you'll see is these people are
world-class performers. get incredibly
good at going 80% of my energy suck
comes out of here for 20% ROI. I'm going
to switch that out. They're better at
choosing what matters and what doesn't
matter.
>> Okay?
>> And this is everything from what
supplement is working to what type of
person that they work with. Where people
struggle is in the like what if I could
also be doing this? What if I could also
be doing this? What if I add this on
top? What if I add this on top?
>> Okay. So, I thought you were talking
about um I guess if I try and put this
into some sort of analogy or metaphor,
>> the high performers wake up with 100
energy chips, let's say, and they're
really really good at allocating them
against the most important thing.
>> Yes.
>> Whereas maybe Jenny and Dave listening
kind of let it seep out. They put 20 on
Instagram, 20 over here on this
>> and they spin their wheels.
>> They spin their wheels.
>> They go, "Okay, great. I'm going to I
listen to this podcast and I got super
excited about zone 2. I'm going to go
hop into a bunch of zone too. And then I
listen to this other podcast and I get
super excited about journaling. Let me
go add journaling to my mix.
>> And then what ends up happening is you
see their daily routine and you're like,
"Okay, your daily routine is 20 hours."
And then at some point like you didn't
actually do anything that mattered. What
is the one thing that can get you to
that goal in the most effective way
possible? And then everything else has
to actively be stripped away. So the
traditional thing we like to do is we
give one to two what we call active
movements per week which is this is
something Stephen you have to actively
remember to do. You don't actively
remember to brush your teeth. You don't
have to actively remember to shower blah
blah blah. You might at this point not
have to actively think about your
gratitude practice or your meditation
time. Like you probably have these
things you've been doing for years,
right? I don't actually call those
additive because you you do those.
You're going to get those in. But I
might ask you to do one thing different.
I don't know what that would be, but I I
would look at this and say, "Here's your
constraint. I'm not going to ask you to
do five things new. It's too difficult.
Maybe this is a change in what time you
eat."
>> Okay?
>> Your training style. Find what's
constraining you from your energy.
>> What things could it be?
>> It could be sleep. It could be
mismanagement of relationships. It could
be you're working too much. It could be
you're under fueling. You're not eating
enough. It could be that you're
overusing stimulants. sleeping poor and
you're in that cycle, right? It could be
you're not seeing sunlight. So, what you
need to do is run a a quick analysis and
think what is the single biggest thing
in your way. Is it the fact that you're
in pain?
Great. Maybe the only one thing I want
you to go after then is
let's go figure out why that knee hurts.
>> Okay. So, for me, you've seen my blood
results.
>> Yeah.
>> So, what things might improve my energy
from the blood results that you saw?
>> What are you mid-30s? Early 30s. and 33.
>> 33. All right. You're lean, you're
active. The first thing that jumps out
on your report.
>> Yeah. Can we skip that?
>> I think uh skip the page. You're going
to see quickly the difference between
medicine and performance.
>> Okay. Um this is medical. So, we're
looking at cholesterol and cholesterol
related markers. You've got I don't know
a dozen of them or so there. Not one's
good.
>> This is incredibly actionable.
>> Can I ask a question about this? what
what does it mean? And then I was going
to ask a secondary question which is I
was going to try and self diagnose why I
think this is the case but
>> I would love that second question
that'll actually tell us where to go. So
when you look at things like blood work
these are secondary measures of
physiology. They're trying to predict
what I what we'll call an outcome.
Meaning in this case we are looking at
your heart health.
>> Okay.
>> There is an association and I choose
that word carefully between cholesterol
and cardiovascular disease.
>> Okay. High cholesterol, low cholesterol,
good cholesterol. All the above. Very
traditionally, excessively high
cholesterol is going to be associated
with earlier heart disease, heart
attack, could even manifest itself into
strokes and things like that, right? So,
if we were to just like zoom all the way
out and we say, "All right, your
cholesterol is extremely high. I'm
concerned about your heart health."
>> There's way more to the story, but at
the top of it, that's where we're at.
So, the second question I was going to
ask is at the time that I did these
blood test results, I was frequently in
a ketogenic diet.
>> I know there's a lot to unpack here and
a lot of people are going to get mad
online. Cholesterol has lifestyle,
dietary, and familial causes. Often
times, you might have high cholesterol
and all these various markers simply
because that's a familial genetic
inheritance and there's not a lot of
action behind it. When you see these
things independent of obesity, now we
have a different connotation. If I were
to look at all this stuff and go, "Oh,
yeah, sure. You're 35% body fat. I know
you drink alcohol." Then I'm like,
"Okay, this is true, but let's tackle
those things first because those have so
many robust implications on your
health." That's the starting place. You
don't drink alcohol excessively. I don't
even know if you drink alcohol at all
and haven't in years, I assume, right?
You don't smoke. You don't like I know.
So, all those things are checked off the
list. This means this is actionable.
>> I should give you some context here. My
uncle died of a heart attack and my dad
had a heart operation last week.
>> Ooh.
>> So,
>> do you remember what kind of heart
operation?
>> He had a pacemaker put in. Um,
>> but he's been on statins, I think, for
>> to lower his cholesterol.
>> A long time. I think he's been on
statins for about 15 years if I was to
guess. About 15 20 years.
>> Yeah. So, when I look at this
independent of your obesity with your
familial history, do you remember what
advice you got when you got these
results of what to do? Do
>> you know I did two two um tests. I did
this one with Function Health, who I
believe are a sponsor, so I should say
that. Um, and I did the second one with
Nico Health,
>> where I'm a big investor in the company.
They both said to me like, "Steve, stop
eating steak all the time. Um, bacon,
stop eating bacon all the time." The way
that I heard it was, damn, this
ketogenic diet you've been on, Steve,
you need to just take it easy.
>> And have you done blood work since then?
>> No.
>> All right. First thing that would pop up
and this is the order I would do this
in. When you get something like blood
work,
the value is not in the data. The value
is in the interpretation. What they're
talking about why you heard that as
steak, butter, bacon is because those
are food items high in saturated fat.
Saturated fat is not evil. There are no
evil foods. It's only evil context.
Right? So in your particular case, if we
saw those and we don't have this, but if
we had your baseline
before that test and then we had this
and we went, okay, when you change your
diet and increased your saturated fat
intake and then we saw these numbers
increase,
most ethical people in this space would
look at that and say that's not a
positive thing. That does not mean
ketogenic diets are bad or unsafe. Not
at all. It only means if we had those
theoretical data for you, it's probably
not healthy. You stack that on top of
the fact that you have your uncle and
your dad in there. Then I would triple
down and go talk to your doctor. I'm not
your medical doctor, but I'd be really
concerned about that. Then what I would
do would be go to the next step. Let's
run the experiment and see. This is an
indirect marker. And remember, what is
it trying to predict? Your heart health.
Have you had your heart scanned?
>> Yes, I have. And
>> they said that I had like I had a thick
wall.
>> Okay. Exercise induced cardiac
remodeling
if especially if it's left ventricular.
>> It's a good thing. Right. So your heart
has four chambers. Two on top, two on
bottom. The two on the top are called
atria.
>> Uhhuh.
>> Ventricles on the bottom. Oh, you got a
great image there as well. Yeah. So you
can look at this as a maze. Okay. So
we'll use double modeling here. Can you
see how the left ventricle
is much larger than the right ventricle?
>> Mhm.
>> There's a reason. The right ventricle
only has to kick blood to your lungs.
>> Yeah.
>> Which are, you know, physically
>> quite close
>> a few inches away. The left ventricle
has to kick it up out through your
entire body down to the tip of your toes
all the way back up against gravity and
then back up into your heart. Mhm.
>> And so what you're seeing here is
strength training. This is resistance
exercise. Your left ventricle is lifting
weights. It has to be bigger. It has to
be stronger so that it can contract
really hard and shoot all that blood up
and down and up and out. If you said you
had a thicker wall either naturally or
exercise induced, just like when you
lift with your biceps more, it's larger.
The same thing is happening your left
ventricle. Incredibly common and healthy
adaptation. Okay.
>> What we would be concerned about is if
there was any type of blockage
or any type of plaque buildup.
>> One of the things that I remember them
saying is they, again, I'm going to
butcher this, but they told me there's
kind of like two types of plaque build
up in my veins or my arteries, whatever.
And they said, "The bad type you haven't
got."
>> And they said, "But the other type you
have got." And they I think they were
referring to like the bad type as being
like more sticky.
>> Yeah. and it like doesn't go,
>> it'll dislodge.
>> Oh, okay. And that can cause a risk.
>> Yeah.
>> They said I didn't have the bad type,
but I had this other type that can is
like temporary, but could turn into the
bad type or something.
>> Yeah. One thing you want to be really
careful of, and this happened to a dear
friend of mine, Joel Jameson, young,
super fit, all the things. No stress,
doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, much like
you, all this stuff. Family history.
>> Mhm.
>> Didn't think about it. Blood work came
back totally fine. still asked to get a
CT angiogram scan of his heart. His
cardiologist said, "No, you don't need
it. You're young. You're all the thing."
Got it anyways. And he had a I think he
had a 50% blockage of his what's called
a widowmaker.
You're flipping the dice whether you're
going to die here, right? So, this is a
classic case to me where he's doing all
the right things, but imaging saved his
life. Let's not live in fear. Let's go
look. He went had a looked. I'll just
trust your physicians. Great. then I'm
less worried about this because this
could be a direct response to your
ketogenic diet, which it almost
certainly was. And if it's presenting no
risk to the place we actually care
about, then I'm less concerned about
your cholesterol.
>> But is if it carries on like this, could
it create a risk?
>> Absolutely could.
>> Okay. Cuz they all did tell me to fix
this.
>> Yeah. Just keep getting it scanned every
few years and if you see any aggress any
any buildup at all, then I would manage
it.
>> Okay.
>> Now, in what you're seeing over here is
that client of ours. And so as an
example, I'll give you a specific
number. His total cholesterol was 347.
We got him down to 223.
>> What did you do?
>> Fiber.
>> Why fiber?
>> Stress reduction. Fiber, depending on
the type of cholesterol, will actually
bind to the cholesterol and clear it
from the system.
>> You will physically reduce it.
>> That's why they one of the supplements I
was told to take is a fiber supplement.
>> It's not always going to solve
something. And I want to be really
clear.
If you have numbers like you had, you
need to work with a doctor. and you need
to get screened. Don't just be like, I
took Fiber. I'm fine. This guy said on a
podcast. That's not what I'm saying. But
it is, it can be effective. The other
thing we did was massive stress
reduction. Guy was a a very hard
charging CEO for a large company.
>> How is stress reduction going to impact
my cholesterol?
>> Things like cholesterol can be what are
called acute phase reactants, some parts
of them, not all of them. Meaning it
responds to acute stress and stimuli.
When you look at things like blood work,
they aren't static. They are responding
to the entire system. And so if you were
to be stressed, and we not to blame
anything on cortisol, but cortisol is
elevated. You are in a uh heightened
alert state. This causes short-term
inflammation. In fact, if you look at I
think your inflammation was a little bit
um nuts over there. Oh, this guy as
well. Probably like your most classic
inflammation marker is called CRP. His
was at two, which is really high. We got
him from two to 2. So 10x reduction that
then allowed cholesterol to normalize.
Um the the easiest most technical way to
get to say it is it's an acute phase
reactant. Meaning it will change in
response acutely to inflammation. Some
markers will go up and some will go down
in response to that like like D like
vitamin D goes down
>> if what if you
>> in a a stressed environment. Some go up,
some go down. Blood glucose goes up.
>> So you got stressed down, you got his
fiber up.
>> And that took him from 347 to 223, which
is still high. Went from 223 to 163. Now
that took a statin.
>> Oh. Obviously you did give him a statin.
>> We didn't but his medical team did.
>> Okay.
>> And so this I why I want to draw this
point out is we were able to go a long
ways with lifestyle.
But he wanted to go more. He wanted to
be green green green.
So that's when medicine came in. And I
to me this represents a a great marriage
of the two. Some people are very anti-
medicine. Some people are that's not my
decision. That's up to you and your
medical provider. But I think it's it's
it's unfair to tell people things like
all of it can be done with lifestyle and
there's no need for medicines ever or
the opposite of just like oh just take
the drug don't worry about it. He needed
all of it. He needed stress reduction.
He needed some changes in his diet and
that made a huge change in his
biological health. So if you were to be
like look this is so complicated this
guy like how can I make actional advice
of all this stuff this guy's saying I
don't have a private doctor and cool
just run the experiment. Try more fiber.
try to regulate your stress. If you want
to go the opposite route and jump right
into the the medical side, that's fine,
too. Um, but it doesn't need to be super
scary or super daunting because these
are not like especially if your heart
has been scanned. I'm not concerned
about an acute emergency.
>> The two things on here that I thought
were were shocking to me are my my
vitamin D levels and my omega levels,
which I was told were deficient.
>> Yep.
>> I thought I was smashing it with those
two cuz I think I was living in LA at
the time and
>> Yeah. So your vitamin D was borderline
low. Fairly traditionally people of
African heritage are going to be lower
in that marker.
>> Okay.
>> You're at 37.
Kind of lower end of that number is 40.
That might actually be fine.
>> I think I heard you say something about
vitamin D. Again, I don't want to
butcher your words if this wasn't what
you said, but you kind of make the
assumption that most people are
deficient.
>> Yeah, it is true.
>> Why does it matter?
>> So vitamin D is a nice microcosm of
overall health. So what I mean by that
is you will tend to see people low in
vitamin D who are also tending to make
poor health choices. So it's a little
bit like grip strength and all that
where it's kind of a one snap shot at
saying are you generally healthy or not?
Why is it needed specifically? It is
involved in every reaction from your
brain to your gut to your hormones, your
immune system, metabolism and everything
in between. It's critical to maintaining
bone health. that's critical to being
able to grow skeletal muscle. It's also
clinically low in a high percentage of
the population and even subcl clinically
low in a vast majority of the
population.
>> So, should we be supplementing if we are
low?
>> The real world will always win. Whole
foods, sunlight, positive social
environments. That's always the place to
start. So, do you want to supplement
with it? That's up to you. I would much
rather you get sunlight if possible.
Now, enter everyone in the chat going,
"I live in the UK. There's no sun. sort
of up here. Fine. If you want to choose
a supplement um because you live in
those situations, then that's absolutely
fine.
>> Or I work in an office for 12 hours a
day. It's it's interesting because there
is a bit of a paradox here in we're all
in search of very natural solutions in a
very unnatural way of living. I had this
conversation with my fiance a couple of
couple of weeks back about a few things
where in one area of our life we're
trying to be really really natural.
>> Y
>> um
>> but I'm like babe like look at the rest
of our lives. so unnatural. We get on
planes and have these smartphones and
and so almost forcing this one part to
be natural is
>> arguably going to cause a bit of a
problem.
>> I mean, it happens to me, right? Like
I'll
put in the entire hours of the day and
not even realize I didn't step outside.
>> Yeah,
>> it absolutely happens.
>> So, what I think you have to do is
number one, give yourself grace, right?
Like you're not going to be perfect. I'm
especially thinking about like single
parents. It's just like you're not going
to go out and spend 30 minutes in the
sun.
>> Night shift workers.
>> Totally. Boy, that's a really hard
thing. Um, we've dealt with a lot of
nurses and surgeons and things like that
where you're on call, you're out. And
that's when we can lean towards modern
medicine, modern supplementation. It
that's why those things are not trash.
They're not garbage. They're not fake.
Our strategy typically is that's can we
find one actionable thing, one thing
that you're doing as a focus that is
something you got to go out of your way
and do. And that might be you have to go
outside today. You have that might be
your one thing to pay attention to. When
you start asking for more than one to
two active things per week, you start
end up failing.
>> Okay, fine.
>> So, with your omegas, so your omega
score at five is low.
>> Mhm.
>> You want that to be eight. But you
probably didn't notice your mercury was
right on the line of high as well. Those
things will typically track. The more
omega-3s you consume, the more mercury
goes up.
>> Oh, really?
>> Because most omega-3 sources
are going to be filled with mercury. But
I was low omega and high mercury.
>> So what that tells us is if you were to
jack your omega-3s up, your mercury is
going to get into the line that we don't
want it to be in. So solution,
you need to alter the source of your
omega-3s. Get it from a higher quality
place. So I'm not sure where you were
getting them from there.
>> All over the place.
>> Yeah. But you would want to to either
choose your supplement more carefully or
choose better quality foods. What
actually moves the needle on this
subject of energy, which is what we're
talking about here. Is there anything
that is more consequential as it relates
to these people that are trying to get
more energy in their life? They feel
lethargic. We talked about sleep as
being a real foundation here.
>> If you're looking for more energy, I
would divide everything into two
buckets. Hidden stressors and visible
stressors. Visible stressors are things
like you're not exercising. We know from
excellent databases, physical exercise
enhances energy. Why? And how?
>> Mitochondrial health is one of the many
aspects of it.
>> You'll have more mitochondria if you
exercise more.
>> Generally, not only will you have more,
they'll be larger and they'll be
healthier.
>> And mitochondria basically process your
energy. So, you get more efficient
energy production.
>> They're one of the ways you can make it.
You can make energy a lot of different
ways. It is the end path of all aerobic
exercise. So, in other words, anytime
you're using oxygen as a byproduct to
make fuel, mitochondria have to be
there. So, it is central and core to
that. Um, but it is more than
mitochondria. You'll have more total
blood
>> if you exercise.
>> Yes.
>> It's one of the primary adaptations to
endurance is you'll physically have more
blood in your body
>> and that will mean
>> you carry more oxygen.
>> Oh, okay.
>> You have more red blood cells.
>> So, you're able to carry more oxygen to
fuel those mitochondria.
>> Is that a certain type of exercise that
gives you more?
>> Generally, anything that demands blood
flow will increase blood supply.
>> Cardiovascular exercise
>> can be can be anything.
>> Okay. Stress equals adaptation. Meaning,
if you put a demand on your heart to
pump more blood, it'll get better at
pumping more blood. If you put a demand
on bone to resist tension, it'll get
better at resisting tension. You run the
whole cascade of connective tissue to
cellular health. It is simply what's
called the said principle. S A I D,
specific adaptation to imposed demand.
And also is it fair to say then if we
take the word exercise out of the
traditional definition which is like in
a gym doing a thing and we broaden it to
work or just you know cognitive
performance. Remember exercise is a
novel madeup term. This is a new thing
to us. Historically humans have carried,
have sprinted, have jumped, have
climbed, have grappled, have done all
those things. putting that into a
structured non-aily activity is a last
75 year phenomenon, right? It wasn't
actually until we started to realize
that stress reduction to the end of the
limit is a bad thing and then we had to
recreate stress into our lives. One form
of that was we call that exercise. So
yes, if you think about exercise as
either running, cycling, swimming or
lifting weights, you have left a bunch
on the table. I don't care how you're
challenging yourself. Even if that
structured exercise in your example is
more vocationally based,
>> it's the stress being provided to the
system. And so when you start to look at
things like what's the best exercise
protocol for AB and C, one of the things
you start to realize is all of them can
have equal responses given a few
constraints and if they hit that
constraint, they work. So if you have a
movement practice, you skateboard, you
play pickle, you walk, you garden, fine.
All those can have equal clinical
outcomes.
mortality, joint pain, body composition
because they're getting to the same
spot.
>> Does this make sense then? So, if I'm
say I'm a podcaster and I want to have
more energy to podcast,
>> Yeah.
>> I should podcast more.
>> Yeah. You'll be more resilient, right?
>> Okay. So, you could apply that to sort
of any vocation or activity. If I want
to have more energy to
uh lift my kids up and run with them in
the garden, then I should lift things
and run with them.
>> Stress inoculation. And then in the
future my body will adapt and it will
give me more energy for that particular
activity.
>> Yep.
>> So sometimes when people say they don't
have energy for a thing, it's because
they haven't challenged themselves in
that particular activity enough to
expand and adapt.
>> It's it's really difficult, right? So if
if walking up the stairs is a V2 max
test for you, how likely are you to walk
upstairs? Oh,
>> okay. So it's like a downward spiral.
It's
>> too difficult, right? So then what
happens?
>> You don't do it
>> and you get
>> Yeah. less good at it.
>> Able to do it, right? Yeah.
>> So when we start thinking about energy
and I started talking about like hidden
visible stressors, right? I'm looking
for constraints. Do you have an
undiagnosed pathogen in your body? We
have a major league baseball player.
Felt horrific. I'm talking like can't
make it through a baseball game. Legs
are shot. No energy whatsoever. In his
particular case, we were able to confirm
in his blood, in his physical bedroom,
and with a bunch of other tests for
actually you test his eyes and you test
a bunch of other stuff. He had a very
gnarly exposure to mold.
>> Oh yeah.
>> All we had to do in large part was get
that cleared and his energy came back.
That's an example of a hidden stressor.
But one of the things we're always
looking for is are you an energy
toxicity? Meaning, are you eating too
many calories, which is not the same as
being obese, or are you in low energy
availability? You're sleeping fine, but
you're of low energy.
Are you eating enough calories? Oh,
you're not. Like, we have to go no
further on this train. You are
underfueled for what you're asking. So,
there's things that are hidden stressors
like that. There are visible stressors,
which we just talked about. Like, you're
not actually doing the thing. Another
easy way to explain this is cognitively.
If you want to write a book and you
don't currently write and you sit down
to write, it's going to be exhausting.
>> Mhm.
>> And then you talk to a writer and
there's like, oh yeah, like I I need 45
minutes so I can crank out a thousand
words.
>> Mhm.
>> It's like not exhausting at all. Right.
Stress inoculation. This is exactly what
you said before. You can build up
endurance in those things by them.
>> This is one of the things I've learned
from this podcast and meeting all these
exceptional people is um this like use
it or lose it principle.
>> Oh yeah. you know, because I'm getting
older and you start to feel the odd
pain,
>> you know, and so you start to like not
use that part, you know, your back for
example.
>> Yeah.
>> Or bending down and so you find ways to
not bend down properly so you can avoid
the pain.
>> And what's happening there is because
something is difficult, you do it less,
which then means it becomes more
difficult. So you do it less and there's
this downward feedback loop to decline.
>> Atrophy leads to atrophy.
>> Yeah. And like, you know, I think the
critical idea that got in my head a
couple of years ago from someone I was
interviewing on the podcast was that
aging isn't always the excuse. And I
think we assume it's just aging so we
accept it and we don't fight back.
>> When I sat here with one of the
exceptional PhDs that I interviewed, she
showed me I think it was a DEXA scan of
a 70-year-old.
>> It was like a pentathlete and then a
DEXA scan of someone that was like 30
years old. And this 70-year-old was just
phenomenal. Yeah. Their their sort of
bone, their muscle, etc. And she
basically proved to me. I'll put up the
scan on the screen. It really is a
mind-blowing scan. I've actually sent it
to my best friends because it really did
I couldn't I couldn't get this idea out
of my head that actually don't accept
everything as an aging problem because
the minute you do, you go on this
downward cycle. And it blew my mind. And
that was such an important idea to get
in my head at my age at 30 years old. So
when I feel like a pain in my back, my
my solution isn't, oh, okay, Stephen,
you're getting older. stop bending down
and protect the pain. It is go to the
gym and start squatting and bending etc.
There are some things that will go down
with age. Sleep is actually one of them.
We typically just see you will sleep a
little bit less as you age. Fine. There
are some aspects of that but I think you
can resist and fight as much of that as
possible. This is actually you're seeing
a turning of a tide right now that just
starting to emerge with longevity.
longevity is currently being positioned
as this anti-aging
phenomenon and people are already bored.
Like, is your goal to just not age or is
your goal to dunk a basketball at 70? Do
you want to have the 4x4 truck that has
the best off-road package ever and it
stays in your garage? Probably not,
right? like you want to be able to be
like no you you want to live
because you want to experience life and
so then you want to be able to take
advantage of those capacities and
functionality.
>> Yeah. Someone said to me you want to
extend your health span not necessarily
your lifespan.
>> It's not health span though.
>> Oh really?
>> No that's what I'm that's what I'm
pushing back on. Hell span cool. I mean
lifespan fine great. We're all past
that. Health span though is still like I
don't want to be in pain. I don't want
to be I'm saying performance span. I'm
saying I want you to be focused on
having the most skill. I want you to
just be crushing cognitively. I want you
to be able to do anything you want
physically for as long as we possibly
can. And not just being like, well,
that's going to go away. Let's just stay
alive and be out of pain. I want you to
be thinking about, no, like, I'm going
to be doing awesome stuff in whatever
venue you like to do it in for as long
as you possibly can.
>> I think people want both.
>> Yeah, of course.
>> Yeah. But let's not for let's just not
leave that end of the table off and
assume the performance has to go away.
>> So on this point of energy then I think
we've we've covered a lot of it and
given me some sort of like really
actionable principles there for how to
have more energy. I do notice I have to
say cuz I travel quite a lot and so on
on occasion my gym routine will be
impacted
>> and there's quite a clear correlation
for me between the amount of times I've
gone to the gym in previous weeks
>> Yeah. and how I feel in terms of energy
today. I was thinking about this this
morning. We're in New York here and over
the last couple of weeks, I've probably
been going to the gym like three or four
like three times a week if I'm being
honest. Whereas usually I'd go almost
every day and I have felt a difference
in my energy. And I wasn't sure if that
was just like psychological or if that
was supported by science.
>> Both. If you go and do a a moderate to
to light lower intensity exercise
session, those are generally going to
provide energy. Mhm.
>> If you're like, "No, I did a like to the
death training. I I pegged it. I went
all the way." Whatever that is, whether
you're lifting weights, intensity,
whether you're getting your heart rate
all the way up, then you might walk out
of those and be like, "Woo, I'm
exhausted." But on aggregate, those will
provide more daily energy. If you're
traveling, sick, super busy, do the
former. Like, just get in some motion.
You'll feel better. You'll get a sweat
in. You there. If you're healthy and
looking for long-term adaptation, then
that's when you can start to push the
pace on the training.
>> I want to speak to the business owners
listening and watching right now. I know
what it's like to be personally
responsible for every decision. I
founded my first company at 21 years
old, and honestly, the pressure can be
immense. It's the kind of mental load
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recently did some tests through our
sponsor, Function, which got me thinking
about that invisible impact. I found
that I had low levels of omega-3s. I had
deficient levels of vitamin D, probably
because I sit inside this dark room all
day. And that has totally changed how I
construct my day going forward. I get up
in the morning and the first thing I now
do is I go for a walk outside in the
sunshine. In part to help my vitamin D
levels increase, but also because it
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>> Speaking of training, you know what this
is, don't you?
>> Sure.
>> This is a a grip strength machine.
>> Yeah.
>> A lot of people told me that um grip
strength is the single biggest predictor
of I think they said like longevity and
stuff like that.
>> I wouldn't call it the number one
predictor of mortality. It is a really
nice scientific test. late 1980s,
Stephen Blair and his team started
looking at giant databases and started
to realize that cardiovascular fitness,
V2 max, V2 peak, things like this were
predicting how long people were going to
live.
And in fact, they started to realize it
was out predicting what we call
traditional clinical markers, blood
pressure, your cholesterol levels,
things like that. And this launched an
entire 45 year field that we're in now,
which is like, wait a minute, these
performance-based markers are actually
predicting health more than these
indirect markers.
The unfortunate problem is that got like
too taken too far. And so when you hear
things like people and my colleagues who
have been on your show and said things
like, "Oh, grip strength is an important
predictor of mortality." It's good. It's
great. It's an important message. But we
have to be careful in being lost in what
that means. Getting a grip strength
device like that, which is probably
under $40 is amazing. And what you will
see consistently is those people that
are really, really, really weak,
are in worse health on average. Where we
come become false is saying, okay,
therefore, you need to alter your
lifestyle to maximize grip strength.
>> I did do my grip strength results
actually.
>> Do you remember how they were?
>> It was they was it was good. It was uh
it was high. You know what that tells me
about your health? Well,
>> nothing.
>> Okay.
>> Why wouldn't it be high? You're young.
You're fit. I have all those other
markers. It's not going to tell us
anything. You know, these things are
really powerful. Somebody who doesn't
have blood work or doesn't have a body
composition test or doesn't have
anything else. It can give us a crude
strength or a crude metric. Let's say
this person's probably at a health risk.
So, I've always been quite confused by
this because is grip strength a proxy
for my overall strength of my entire
body and therefore it's just indicating
that my overall strength is low or is it
actually like my arm?
>> It's both.
>> Oh, okay.
>> It's both. Here's why. You know what
you're really testing right there?
>> What's that?
>> Ner nervous system.
>> Oh, really?
>> You're testing your brain.
>> So, you're not testing your strength as
much.
>> You are,
>> but it's both.
>> There's an overlap. Mhm.
>> That's why your grip strength does it
indicate general poor health? Yes.
>> That's the value. Does it tell you
anything directly about your It can. And
so this is when you see two camps here.
So camp one is like great, I'm going to
open up a gym down the street and it's
going to test your grip strength and
then we're going to focus all of your
training on grip strength training. That
is we've exaggerated the point. The
other camp is it doesn't matter. It's
all indirect. That's not true either. is
an actionable, useful thing where you
don't need to worry about us optimizing
maxing it. Like I if you're in the 80th
percentile, going to the 90th percentile
probably doesn't make you live a day
longer. Over the last probably 3 years,
I would imagine there's over 20 to 25
studies that have been published on a
very specific type of grip strength, and
that's grip strength asymmetry.
Do you know why that matters?
>> I don't, but I know that I'm I'm
stronger on my left side than my right.
>> It's not uncommon. Um, typically your
force dependent limb is not your neural
control limb. So you write right-handed
because you have to have fine motor
control.
>> Okay.
>> Gross strength can be in the opposite
side.
>> Go like this. You know, keep it in here.
Don't touch your arm to the table at
all. Keep it 90° like that. Yep. And
then you're just going to squeeze, you
know, one good effort as hard as you
can.
>> All right. Don't blow out now.
>> All right. Let's see.
>> Oh gosh, my head nearly exploded.
130. So you're you're above average. So
>> can I try this side as well?
>> Yeah.
>> This is my So this is my weaker.
>> All right. Here we go.
>> My weaker hand.
>> All right. You got to beat it though.
Now
>> gosh, it's a bit slippery.
>> I think you did.
>> Did I beat it?
>> Oh my god. Wow. 160.
>> No, you're joking.
>> 160. Not the
lot crunching there.
>> 130.
>> Okay. Okay. On that side
>> and your left side.
>> Let's see.
>> 110.
>> Crossing, man. That's really good.
>> But it what it taught me is that it's
not it doesn't correlate to overall
strength because Jeff is definitely
stronger than me.
>> For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's a
very specific type of strength, right?
So, the asymmetry actually matters
because most of the work in that area is
in groups with neurological disease. So,
you're trying to look at early
predictions of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,
and things like that. which ties into my
earlier point is it is not simply an
overall proxy of your health. It can
tell us direct things like nerve
denervation
and overall neurological health. So it
to me is a it's a great tool but what we
don't want to do then is optimize
for that.
>> What is a better marker of my overall
health?
>> There's not a single marker that will
tell you everything.
>> What about muscle power?
>> Muscle power is great as well.
>> What is that?
>> Power is defined as force multiplied by
velocity. So if I
>> Yeah.
>> If I throw this
>> Yeah.
>> Do you want to throw it?
>> Go ahead.
>> Okay. Put your hand on there.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Great.
>> Is that Is that muscle power?
>> That wasn't much power because you did
it slow.
>> Okay.
>> So, think about it this way. This is uh
12 kilos, right? 12 kilos. I don't know.
Pounds. Kilos. That is mass. Kilos.
Pounds is a unit of mass. Force. That's
what you think when you think of
strength. That's force.
Force is defined as F= ma. It's mass
times acceleration is force. Okay? So
it's the mass multiplied by how you can
how well you can accelerate it. Power
is your force multiplied by your
velocity. So here's the difference. If I
were to take this 12 pounds of mass or
12 kilos and hand it to you slowly.
>> Mhm.
>> Okay. That is an expression of 12 pounds
of force is how we'll think about it.
Now if you hand it back to me the exact
same speed that is the same amount of
newtons of force. How I create power is
now I do that same thing with speed.
Ready?
>> So there are two ways you can get more
powerful. More force, more velocity.
>> You would use an implement like that
because you're trying to say give me a
little bit of mass but you can obviously
lift more than 12 kilos. But now I'm
going to emphasize the velocity into the
spectrum. Where people make the mistake
in training for power is if you go slow,
the mass is too light to do anything. So
you don't get stronger and you don't get
faster. Why this matters in the current
conversation is you see power and what
some people will call call things like
powerpenia.
So the the term that we've been using
for a long time is sarcopenia and this
is the the accelerated loss of muscle
and probably muscle strength with aging.
You're going to drop some but sarcopenia
is are you dropping faster than you
should? And now there's a turn of
scientific attention to powerpenia,
which is are you losing the power faster
than you should be losing power. That
matters because it is everything from
prevention of fall,
>> catching yourself when you slip to be
able to move and accelerate quickly. And
so you see that thing that stuff highly
associated with breaking of bones uh
fractures, dislocations
which are incredibly impactful to health
especially post age 60 or 65.
>> I think a lot of people listening and me
too. So I guess one of the questions we
have as it relates to the gym and
working out is we often think that in
order to get better results in the gym
and you can define that however you want
to. fat loss, muscle gain, whatever,
strength,
>> we need to go more often.
And I was curious, someone who spends so
long with athletes,
is that a bit of a myth? Because even my
even me, I'm thinking, well, if I want
better results in the gym, I probably
just need to I'm currently going three
or four days a week. I need to go back
to going six or seven days a week to get
better results.
>> You could go either way. It is generally
true that if you train more, you give
yourself more opportunity to create
stress, which is more opportunity to
create adaptation.
But that said, depending on the marker,
the answer here could range from yes to
no. Let's use muscle growth as an
example. As long as you hit the same
volume throughout the week, the amount
of times you go to the gym doesn't
matter that much in theory.
>> Volume. How much load did you lift? How
many times
>> does time period matter? I.e. if I
lifted four weights in 1 hour versus
lifting four weights in 20 minutes.
>> No, because now all you've changed is
really the rest in between.
>> Yeah. Does that matter? It does in the
sense that if you take a short rest
interval and that leads to excessive
fatigue accumulation and then that
compromises how heavy you can lift or
how many reps you can do or how many
sets you can do. That will have
compromised your volume.
>> Wait, so cuz everyone talks about taking
shorter rests in the gym to build more
muscles.
>> Not consistent with the evidence.
>> Really?
>> Yep. But this is this is the game you're
playing at all times, right?
Who has the time to wait two and a half
minutes between every set? You're going
to be in the gym for an hour and a half.
>> A lot of people are on their phones.
>> Totally. And then because of that,
they're like, I got to get out of here.
So they do half the amount of stuff,
they leave cuz they're out of time. So
the battle is in an isolated world,
if you were to probably spend 60 to 90
seconds or maybe up to two minutes
resting in between each set, generally
you recover enough to have a higher
quality set the next one. So, is that
the most important thing to be
optimizing for is the high making sure
the next rep you do is high quality?
>> In my world, quality is always number
one.
>> So, you're saying take a bigger break as
long as you can recover and are more
strong for the next rep.
>> As long as it doesn't put you in a
position where you're in the gym so long
that you won't do all the stuff you
needed to do.
>> But in a world where you had unlimited
time
>> really
>> generally
>> depends on what adaptation we're working
for. If we're working on endurance, then
we don't necessarily have to do that.
>> Okay?
>> But if we're working on speed or skill
or flexibility or balance or muscle
growth or fat loss, now we have options.
So depending on the outcome you're
looking for, you have tools. I I think
the biggest point we want to make here
is
where the field struggles right now is
making a little bit of information get
in the way of motivation.
If you're going to the gym three days a
week, I'm clapping.
done. Like, we're winning. I don't want
you to hear messages and go, "Oh, I'm
doing it all wrong. I'm not going to get
any results. I'm tanking my metabolism.
I'm breaking my hormones." That's the
that drives us nuts. You're
motivated. It's hard enough to get to
the gym and when you get there to try
really hard. We've gotten over the hill.
Now, if you're past that point, we could
start tinkering with some things. But I
hate it when people leave conversations
like this and go, "Oh, did you know that
if you don't rest more than 60 seconds
that you're not getting anything?"
That's not true. So, we can get like
upgrades, but in general, I think most
people quality should be the biggest
thing you pay attention to because this
is going to reduce your likelihood of
injury. And there's even evidence that
whether you're trying to get stronger or
grow muscle,
the quality of the repetition as defined
by your technique, as defined by your
range of motion, as defined by your
intent, as defined by what we call your
mind muscle connection. So like are if
you're trying to contract your shoulder,
are you really contracting your should
like all these things start to matter.
And so what you'll see happen is you can
get more results
with less work and shorter time because
each individual repetition is of a
higher quality and a more focused
intent.
>> I mean this might be a good time to just
quickly take a I mean everyone's talking
about creatine at the bloody moment. Do
you have your athletes taking it?
>> Yeah, of course
>> you do.
>> Yeah, everybody.
>> Do you take it?
>> Yeah.
>> What do you take? What's in your
supplement stack? my personal supplement
stack.
Same with all of our clients and
athletes. There's two things. Correct
physiology, performance enhancement.
Totally separate categories. Correct
physiological
deficiencies are, in your case, your
vitamin D. What is low, what is high,
what is off track based on blood work,
right? We try to solve this through
food. But what this often time looks
like is a high quality multivitamin,
oftentimes fish oil. Now you have
performance accelerators on the other
side of that equation. This is when
creatine can come in. If I'm traveling,
I'm going to take things like fiber,
right? Because it's harder to get
vegetables when you travel. You probably
know this, but airplanes, airports,
restaurants, like vegetables are nowhere
to be found. And so I know those are
going to be a struggle. I'm going to
take fiber there. I'm generally not
taking it as much when I'm home because
I can control my diet. Performance
enhancers are things like creatine, are
things like beta alanine, sodium
bicarbonate. So depending on what
fitness training goal I have at the
moment, I'm going to alter those based
on if I'm looking for muscle growth or
endurance or
>> What are you taking right now?
>> Zero.
>> Zero vitamin D like this week.
>> No. No. Summertime.
>> Okay.
>> I live in I live in the forest.
>> Omega-3.
>> Nope.
>> Why?
>> I got full control of my diet and we got
a lot of fish right now. So we are good
there. I also have I'm fortunate I get
to harvest my own meat and one of the
things you'll see pretty consistently is
even in red meat sources they're higher
in a lot of nutrients wild caught versus
unw wild. So we're in a pretty good plus
I have my blood work I know where my
omega-3 numbers are. So I'm going to get
there if I don't have to take those
things I don't.
>> A lot of people I imagine come to you
for with weight loss goals whether
they're trying to cut weight for a a
fight or if it's just mom and pop
looking to lose a few pounds. What are
the big misconceptions about weight
loss?
>> Yeah, it's the magic of it, right? It's
the there's one specific element you
can't eat or one way you have to train
or can't train. That is the the biggest
misconception around fat loss. The
specificity. It is
categorically quite simple to lose fat.
It's practically hard. It's difficult
human endeavor, but categorically it's
incredibly simple. We only have a few
things we have to do and now you have a
billion choices of how to get there. So
if you are the type of person who
struggles with moderation,
then I'm not going to give you
moderation.
>> Moderation of calories
>> could be or exercise or environment. Do
you know the difference between baking
and cooking?
>> Uh yeah, I guess so. Conceptually,
>> baking is chemistry.
>> Okay.
>> You mix something together and put in
the oven. You can't just fake the
amounts
>> because it won't rise, it won't set, it
won't do the things, right? If you're
cooking on a stove and you could just be
like, "Okay, what's in the
>> fridge? Put it in there."
>> You can't do that in baking, right?
Depending on what you're baking. We will
address this fat loss problem with
trying to identify, are you a cook or
are you a baker personality type? Here's
what I mean. If you came to me and we
were going to help you lose some fat,
you're already pretty lean, but let's
say you wanted to just get super lean.
All right, great. I would I first
question I would ask you is how do you
want this to operate? You get one of two
ways.
One way is I tell you exactly what to
eat. You weigh and measure every single
thing. You do not deviate. You check
your weight every single day and you
follow exactly
what I tell you. The other option is I
give you concepts. We have one to three
rules. You're going to check weight
maybe daily, maybe once a week. And I
want you to stay airtight to those
concepts.
>> I prefer the concepts.
>> Concepts. Great. Concepts or cooking.
>> Okay.
>> Baking,
weigh and measure everything. Right.
Here's why this matters. You're a
concept kind of guy. Why? You do not
want to be thinking about all that
little stuff cuz you got other stuff
you'd rather be thinking about, right?
>> It's great because it's freeing.
You know, the downside is
if you don't know exactly what's in your
food and you don't have a really good
eye in calibration, someone like you
might have a hard time losing fat
because you're already at the end. We
need to be weighing that olive oil. We
need to be measuring that rice cup. We
can't just be like, a little bit of rice
over there, right? If you're trying to
lose a 100 pounds,
we can probably eyeball a lot of things
and get really, really far.
>> Yeah.
>> But personality type is what I'm really
getting at here. Okay.
If I gave that concept to some people
listening, some people would be going
like like how many meals am I eating? Um
like what's what's the fiber? Like they
want the detail, right?
>> What's the what's the concept?
>> The concept could be something like
>> give me an example of a
>> I want you eating fresh vegetables at
every meal and I want you to have a
dedicated protein source every time you
eat.
>> Okay,
>> that might be the only rule I give you.
Well,
>> could it be an eating window? Could be.
Sure. I could say, "Eat whatever you
want, but you're only going to eat
between these hours."
>> Okay?
>> I could do whatever kind of one to three
rules I want. I could say none of those
things and I'll just say, "All right,
just cut out all your junk food."
>> Okay?
>> I'm not going to tell you what to eat.
I'm just going to give you a list of
things not to eat. I could only give you
I prefer to do the opposite. Defer to
give you things rather than take things
away because you're going to take those
things away, right? So, I could play
with your meal timing. I could play with
your meal frequency. I could play with
your meal composition. So, what types of
food you're eating, the combinations of
them, I could do anything there. And why
all those work because those are simply
different strategies to likely reduce
food intake.
That's all that's all we're really
doing. But some people hate that because
it's not enough detail.
>> There's no specificity. There's no
precision. They get anxiety from
guessing. I've had plenty of athletes
before just be like, "Okay, but like 6
ounces of chicken or seven?" And I'm
like, "6.3." Like, "Okay." Like who
cares? Like it doesn't matter. But
they're just like they want they don't
want to make any decisions.
>> Mhm.
>> You have to make decisions about what
you're going to eat because you got only
have concepts. The nice part about the
way you measure is you have no choices.
>> I think the the average people listening
would rather have the concepts. Like
it's much easier for me to they they
busy lives. They don't want to be
weighing 6.3 g of so
>> so you'd be stunned.
Most people want that.
>> Most people want the
>> they want the detail because they don't
have to think. They don't have to guess.
They don't have to worry. They don't
have to go, "God, like maybe I ate too
much today. Maybe I didn't or whatever."
>> But that's like hard to measure.
>> Super hard. So, here's the
recommendation.
Do the baking approach first for two
weeks.
>> And by that, you mean measure
everything. Understand what's in it.
>> 100%. Then you can back off and start to
go, "Okay, I have a better sense of what
a tablespoon of peanut butter looks
like. I have a better sense of what a
cup of rice is.
>> I'm getting a better sense of what
>> 3 ounces of this is, whatever. now I can
start toning things back.
>> I think this is really great advice
because I think the big shifts that I've
seen in my own diet have have um been in
that exact order where for one
particular week I did it might be
calorie counting or it might have been
some of these apps where you can scan
the food by using the barcode
>> and it tells you what's inside there.
And through that it only took me a week
or two to discover that the things I ate
frequently weren't what I thought.
>> Yeah.
>> Both in quantity but also in like
nutritional profile. I think it's just
super important for as many people as
possible to spend at least a week doing
that.
>> And then I could make informed decisions
about what I wanted to keep and what I
actually didn't really like that much.
Anyway,
>> you know, I used to run this experiment
in class every year. These are graduate
students getting master's degrees in
this particular field and we would have
them do a seven-day diet recall. Just
measure weigh everything you eat for
seven days. Consistent themes that
popped up.
Almost everyone ate way more fat than
they think.
>> Is that a bad thing?
>> If you're eating more calories than you
need.
>> Oh, fat. So, it's the calories is the
problem versus the
>> That's not bad for you. And there's no
evil foods.
People ate way more carbohydrates than
they realized. Same answer. People ate
way less protein than I think.
>> What about sugar?
>> Everyone knows they're eating sugar.
where they're always stunned is they're
like, "Whoa, I thought I was eating a
small percentage, you know, 20% of my
calories from fat." They didn't realize
they're at 40%.
>> This is why the keto diet actually did
help me because it forced me to check
everything for a while.
>> So, this is great.
>> It was really learning. It was learning
what was in all these things that I
loved. And keto forced me. You know, the
the principle of a concept that I had
when I was on keto was that I could have
about 50 grams of carbs a day roughly
>> and stay in ketogenic keto ketosis
rather. Yeah. So I would think about it
like a budget. I'd be like, "Oh, hm, I'd
spend 23 carb, you know, grams of carbs
on this particular thing." But but to do
that, I had to look at everything,
research everything.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and now I have an intuitive idea.
>> Exactly. The point is simply your
awareness and consciousness of what is
actually
>> in the elements that you want. And then
if you want to change and tweak, you can
do that cuz you know, but if you don't
have the knowledge, you can't even play
the game.
>> What are the big misconceptions about
exercise's role in weight loss?
>> It is valuable. forever we've been
telling people burn more calories than
you ingest, right? And then then it's
still true. And then we had a bunch of
research pop out that was sort of like,
hey, exercise is not playing the role we
think it is in fat loss. And those data
still hold true in the sense that you
don't burn as many calories in your
workouts as you think. Most of the time,
if you hop on a piece of exercise
equipment and it tells you you burned x
amount of calories, you burned most
likely significantly less than that.
It's also true that there's there is
places where you can get to with
adaptive thermogenesis. Meaning if you
burn say 500 calories with exercise,
if you are lean enough or non-lean
enough or fit enough or not fit enough,
your body will change how many calories
it burns throughout the day in response
to that 500 calories from exercise.
Meaning, you could be in a situation
theoretically where you burned 500
calories in your workout, but then your
body downregulated your energy
expenditure by three or four or even up
to 500 calories
>> to make up for it. So, it was
>> you're neutral.
>> Okay.
>> When you're lean like that, that can
happen quite often, right? And so then
what do you do? You pull more calories.
You train harder. You get a more of a
response. This is a like oh okay calorie
counting doesn't matter like it
absolutely matters may not be the
strategy you want but it matters there.
So then there was a big push of like
exercise is playing no role in fat loss
which was fundamentally also not true
because now we have meta analyses in the
recent years as well as more studies
showing probably the fairest way to say
it is exercise is a fantastic way to
burn some calories. It is not the only
thing that you can do though to lose
weight. You can handle weight loss
entirely through nutrition if you want.
That said, people who exercise during
their weight loss journey consistently
are better at keeping that fat off over
the weeks to years at the end of the
diet.
>> You have a 54321 method. Oh,
>> sure. 54321 was is just a little thing I
came up with that says, "All right, can
we help people with fat loss rules? Five
days a week be active.
Now this can be exercise. It can be
walking. It can be your vocation. I
don't really care. But what was cons has
to happen with fat loss is you have to
be able to produce caloric expenditure
and you got to do a lot of it. This is
my way of saying be active. And also I'm
saying it's cool to take a rest day too.
Like it's totally fine to just veg. You
can do that. But be as active as you
possibly can. Then from there, I want
four days a week of structured exercise.
One of these days can be a super hard
day. It can be light. One of those days
could be a yoga day. Like not all four
days have to be head to the gym, volume
11, like train as hard as you can. But
four days a week where I want you doing
structured exercise, at least three days
a week, I want you training hard enough
to sweat. If you're doing all that,
you're active five days a week, you're
doing structured exercise four days a
week, three of those sessions, you're
doing it hard enough where you're
getting a really good solid sweat,
you're probably doing enough to burn
enough calories to give yourself a
chance from the exercise perspective
um to losing weight. If you've done
those first three, we could even we
could even just call it the 543. Like,
you're in a pretty good spot. If you
mean more granular, I would love a
couple of days a week of strength
training and I would love at least one
day where your heart rate's getting
really, really, really high.
>> So, a lot of people, including myself,
often think, you know, I'm going to the
gym 3 4 days a week, but nothing's
changing. I feel like I've stagnated.
>> Yeah.
>> What is going on there? Typically,
>> typical solutions for this are lack of
focus. And I don't mean in your
training. I mean in your programming.
So, if you are looking at your program
saying, I'm going to the gym 3 or 4 days
a week. First question would be, okay,
what type of training program are you
on?
>> I'm kind of just winging it.
>> That's why.
>> Okay.
>> If I said the same thing to you and gave
you any business analogy here, you would
look at me in the face and smile. I'd be
like, you have a plan. Why would you
expect without a plan to get to any
particular direction?
>> It's a good point.
>> 80% of the time, that's the answer. Now,
here's the thing, and we have literature
on this. There's good evidence. The plan
itself isn't the biggest factor. It's
actually just having a plan.
>> Interesting.
>> Because you have the ability to
progressively overload.
>> What does that mean?
>> Meaning you were able to increase your
number of repetitions than you did last
week. You can do a few more sets than
you did. You can increase the load. You
can increase the range of motion.
There's all kinds of ways that we can
overload the system progressively. You
can't do all that.
>> This is, you know, I think this is
really the heart of it, which is most of
us go to the gym and we do the same
thing.
>> Totally.
>> We do the same thing we did last week.
We put the the stair master machine on
level eight and we do 10 minutes. And we
did that for the last 7 months.
>> Yeah.
>> Whereas we should really just put it up
one. But in order to do that, we kind of
need a plan as you say
>> because you can't just go up one every
time.
>> Yeah.
>> Like how many how many weeks in a row
can you add 5 lbs?
>> Three, four. Like it's not going to be
very long. This is the entire reason
exercise is a scientific field, right?
We have that. So my strong
recommendation would be if you're a
absolute beginner and you're not going
to the gym at all, you're not doing
anything, you can probably use AI tools
and give you some basic starting
program. In fact, I people send these
things all the time to me be like, "Hey,
I prompted my thing with like all of
your content and I have a complete
personalized training program from Andy
Galpin." I'm like, "Great." And I look
at them, I'm like, "Pretty good." Like,
"All right, that's pretty reasonable."
And it's they're good enough to get you
started. They're going to get you the
basics. They're going to get you going
and then you have something to follow
for six, eight, 10 weeks, whatever.
>> Let me ask AI for Andy Galpins.
>> Put in your constraints. Tell it how
many days a week.
>> Okay, let's do it like so everyone can
hear.
Hi. Um, I want to go to the gym 4 days a
week and I want Andy Galpin's formula
for me to gain muscle, but what are the
principles that I need to apply based on
Andy Galpin's work over the next 4
months in order to gain this muscle?
>> To gain muscle in strength over the next
4 months, you'll want to focus on a few
key principles from Dr. Galpin's work.
First, prioritize progressive overload
by gradually increasing the weight,
reps, or sets over time. Second, use a
variety of repetition ranges,
incorporating both heavy low rep work
for strength and moderate to high rep
work for muscle growth. Finally, ensure
you're taking adequate rest between
sets, usually two to 5 minutes for heavy
compound movements to allow for full
recovery and maintain high quality
effort.
Pretty good. That's not There's a little
bit of hallucination in there, which is
AI, but that's pretty close.
>> A lot of people aren't doing this now,
aren't they? using AI is like the
>> we saw a huge pendulum in the last 5
years. 2020 almost ended health and
fitness.
Gyms went out of business. Everyone went
home. Everyone bought their exercise
equipment. And as soon as AI came
online, online coaching tanked and
online companies got crippled cuz
everyone was like, "Why am I going to
pay you a hundred bucks a month, 200
bucks a month, 300 bucks a month for
that?"
>> And they were right. It's going the
exact opposite now. It's already swung
back. In-person training is way more in
demand.
>> I'm not surprised
>> because
>> everyone's tired of that.
>> It's also personal trainers don't just
tell you what to do. No,
>> they make sure you do it, you know? So,
>> how do I do it? It's the emotion. It's
the connection.
>> It's the emotion. It's the connection.
It's the like holding me accountable.
>> So, what you're seeing is people going,
"It was never about the information."
>> Yeah. We always had the information.
>> We always had it. Nothing in that
>> I made up.
>> Yeah. That stuff's been around for like
it's funny. Every time I talk about like
exercise prescription, somebody will hit
the comments and be like, "Why don't you
give credit to blah blah blah? They're
the one that invented that." And I'm
like, "None of us invented this stuff."
>> Mhm.
>> Dumbbells, barbells, like rep rang. This
is
It's not the information. It's never
been it.
>> So, what is it then? Like, why why do
people keep listening to these
conversations when they kind of a lot of
them kind of know the stuff? I don't
know what's happening on your platform,
but a lot of people are not listening to
podcasts anymore because you're going to
see this probably in the comments
section. Hey, Grock, tell me the 10
actionable things from this three-hour
conversation.
>> Cuz they just try and extract the data,
right?
>> Mhm.
>> And then they don't do anything. You
know who's going to take action from
this? The people who listened.
>> True. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's not it's
the it's not the information.
>> Yeah. In part in part it is the story.
And I say the story in particular
because one of the most compelling
things that we see on these podcasts is
when you tell me real case studies of
real people. You talk about what Jenny
did and you were training Jenny and she
had this thing and she was permenopause
and she did this thing with this thing
and da
>> and people go ah okay those stay with
me.
>> You know what I'm willing to pay for you
know what the world is willing to pay
for. Have you done it before?
>> Oh yeah. Yeah. True. Human experience
like lived experience. So when you see a
story, you're able to go, "Okay, I
believe that person's done it
>> and now I trust that opinion because I
could just go grab the program, right?"
The other thing is it's saving me time.
Like you could sit there and go, "Okay,
here's all the prompts and whatever,
throw it in there and get your own
training program." Or you could be like,
"Yo, I'm just going to go pay Andy. I
know he's done it before. I trust him
and now I'm going to go spend my time on
this other thing that I care about
learning about and spending my time on."
Are there any commonalities in the
catalyst moment that causes behavior
change in people who are otherwise
stubborn? So I think everyone that I I
sit with and just even myself there's a
there was a moment in my life where I
heard something or something happened
where I go Yeah.
>> And that was the day it was like a
before and after moment I call them that
was the day that I decided to take this
seriously.
>> Yeah.
>> And do you see any commonalities in what
that is for different people?
>> It's such a fabulous question and I
don't have a good answer for you
>> because it's always so different.
>> It's so hard. I would love to say
it was the rock bottom moment. I mean,
it can be true. It's not always true.
>> Can I suggest another
>> please?
>> Maybe like big life changes like kids,
>> death, friend, family, life becomes
real.
>> I've heard that a few times on this show
actually.
>> You'll see that. Um,
>> my dad had a heart attack and that's
crazy. The threat of death doesn't
motivate anybody,
>> right?
>> If it would have, we wouldn't have a 40%
obesity rate.
>> Yeah. Who doesn't know obesity tanks?
Everybody knows. It's not a information
issue. You know the risks associated
with alcohol, smoking, social media.
That does not change behavior. You get
closer though when it it's at home,
right? Somebody died in the car
accident.
I'll I'm going to stop looking at
my phone while I drive cuz my neighbor
just died. My ex Like that's the thing
that makes you go
>> too close to home.
>> That's so true. I was saying to my
fiance when I was um driving the other
day in the car cuz I'm notorious for
asking everybody to put their seat belts
on. If we get in a car, I'm the guy in a
black cab or I'm like, "Everyone, could
you put your seat belts on, please?" My
team know this as well. Like if we going
anywhere, I look around at every single
person to make sure they have their seat
belts on. Yeah.
>> When did this begin? When I was 10 years
old.
>> Yeah.
>> And they came to my school. I remember
being sat in the front row. I almost
remember my seat number. It was that
vivid for me. Two things I remember from
10 years old.
>> They brought a mother who had lost her
child in a car accident. And then they
brought out a police person and he
described going to the scene of the
accident, looking down at the person who
had just been in a car accident's phone,
realizing that they were deceased, and
then looking down and seeing their phone
ringing and it said, "Mom."
>> And I just I've never forgotten it. It
was somewhat traumatic, but it's meant
that for the rest of my life, I've
policed seat belts.
>> Yeah.
>> And that's what I mean by these catalyst
moments where an idea gets in your head
and it just completely changes.
>> Yeah. And so I'm wondering what those
ideas are for people as it relates to
like weight loss and health. And so we
we ticked off some of them. Someone gets
a line in your family. Maybe a diagnosis
in the performance perspective. This is
when we would argue for data
because we've had this happen earlier in
my career with a professional athlete
who was not fast enough and was
convinced he was fast. And then we put
him on a force plate and we started
collecting objective data. And at the
same time, I had some of my students
around and I had them do it kind of like
what you did with your grip strength
with Jeff and was like, "You see how
they're as fast as you are?" And he was
like, "Oh,
everything changed." Like he was totally
bought in, made every training change
that we asked. He had to see it in front
of his face. Like he had to see his
data. So my other answer to that to you
would be now that we've democratized
health in this sense, the ability to see
your own data, I would be willing to bet
had I pulled up a blood panel that had
the cholesterol levels that you saw and
I said, "Oh, this is a client of mine."
You would be like, "Oh, okay, great.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh." But then when I pull up
yours and say, "This is," you're like,
"Sit
over." Like, "We're done with that."
Right? Like there's no question. I was
looking for some research and there's
some um evidence here backed by some
research that goes to answer the
question and I think we actually
answered we hit most of them which is an
acute health shock or diagnosis which is
the primary catalyst
>> um various health events which become
wakeup calls which you talked about as
well which is
>> someone else a peer or friend or
sibling. Number three you touched on as
well which is this quantitive biometric
feedback so data.
>> Yep.
>> Um yep
>> it says major life this one we didn't
touch on major life transitions i.e.
>> Yeah. um such as becoming a parent,
turning a landmark age like 30, 40, or
50.
>> Yeah.
>> Or reaching retirement. You see that a
lot?
>> Yeah. You know what? Actually, that made
me think. Here's one we've seen the
most. Sold my company.
>> Oh,
>> that one changes everyone's life. It's
similar to post gold depression.
>> Oh, you've lost purpose.
What do I do?
>> I need to do something.
>> Now I got Now I got money. Now I have
time.
>> Interesting.
>> I'm investing in my health now. like I
didn't I sacrificed my health the last
20 years. Ding ding ding ding ding. Now
I got to turn around and I'm like okay.
>> But is it also just like I need a new
purpose and my body then becomes the the
project.
>> That's exactly what it is where in the
past I had the excuse of sacrificing for
the company
>> and I I couldn't focus on myself. It was
selfish. It wasn't fiduciarily
responsible to do that. And now I have
no more excuse. Well, looking at this
list then, listen, we can't we're going
to pray no one in your family or no one
you know gets sick. So, let's stay away
from that one.
>> Um the the two of them there that can be
quite motivating and again, we don't
want to motivate you if you're
completely fine. But this actually
answers the question is to go and get
your health checked.
>> Yeah,
>> that's like a simple solution because
maybe you're fine and that's great.
maybe you're doing everything right, but
also um just saying, "Oh, I want to lose
a bit of weight or I want to do this
isn't as solid enough as going and
finding out how you're doing."
>> One thing also I think is important cuz
I will default to performance and
optimization and getting the best and
excellence. Like that's just the
language and stuff I do, but that's not
the opposite of what you just said. To
be really clear on that point,
not everyone gravitates the idea of
being the best possible ever.
>> Yeah. Totally fine. But that still
doesn't mean it's okay to just check out
on your health. You can have it both
ways. You can be like, "Look, I'm not an
optimizer. I'm not a maximizer. I'm not
that doesn't
li live with my ethos." And cool. We can
still though say you still want to live
that life for as long as possible,
right? All right. Let's just make sure
we're paying enough attention to where
nothing catches up and we're not waking
up one day and being like, "Oh my gosh,
now I've got to go invest all these time
and resource energy and all those things
and go backwards in that." So pay
attention enough.
>> How important is it to get clear on your
why?
>> You're not going to love the answer
because
traditionally when people approach me,
they already have that figured out.
They're getting to me. they figured out
why they're here or they're if they
haven't figured it out, they at least
have had the motivation to seek outside
counsel like that.
>> Mhm.
>> So now they're getting to the what and
how part.
>> What about bad goals? I I look back at
my life and I had some bad goals that
set me up for
>> that's more realistic to what we will
do.
>> Okay.
>> And this is a you're aiming at the wrong
target.
>> I was aiming at my goal when I was 20 I
think it was 27 was to go to the gym
every day and I failed.
>> Oh yeah. Yeah.
>> I failed six months later but then once
I failed it was catastrophic for me. How
are you not going to fail?
>> Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. And
>> like were you going to go every day the
rest of your life?
>> It was a terrible goal because the day
that I missed one day cuz some flight my
it was like my entire motivation was
over.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
>> And I was like, "How do I get back on
the horse now?"
>> Yeah. Here's an example. You want to
lose fat.
>> Your goal is fat loss. Cool. Why aren't
you leaner right now? And you
automatically think, "I have to exercise
more and diet." And I'm like, "Great.
That's the tactic.
I want to know why you're not there
right now.
>> Like what is the thing that's actually
getting in the way? Because like
calorie, fine. Like yeah. Yeah. Like you
know that though, but it's not working.
What is really in the way? Do we
actually have some hidden stressor? Um a
lot of times people will say things like
I I got to lose fat so I can get
healthy.
>> And we will generally say you need to
get healthy first
>> and then the fat loss will be a whole
lot easier. That's the bad goal. And and
so we'll ask this question like, "What
would success look like? What would
failure look like?" And when we hear
things like, "Oh, success is I'll lose
these 25 pounds." All right, great. Let
me ask you this.
If we lost 12 pounds and then your
shoulder pain went away, you have normal
bowel movements now for the first time
in 10 years. Your energy is way up.
Is that all a failure? No. That's
success. So then we didn't just find
success properly.
>> So it is a huge focus of of how we help
people actually make progress in those
areas that they've struggled with. Dr.
Andy Galpin, we have a closing tradition
where the last guest leaves a question
for the next, not knowing who they're
leaving it for. And the question left
for you is, if you were sure to fail,
what would still be worth doing?
What a great question.
>> Yeah,
>> fantastic question. I am
ultra competitive,
but I really don't mind losing. So, my
answer to that question was, it sounds
like a copout, but it's all of it cuz I
actually don't care about failing that
much. It just doesn't bother me. Like, I
just like the competing thing. I like
the doing thing. So, my initial reaction
to that was like, God, being around my
kids, right? There's you fail anything
you want there. And I'm like, winning,
right? And then I went to business
things and I'm like I don't even really
care about losing those like
>> cuz you get to do it. You get to be
active and whatever. So kind of a cop
out but my answer would be all of them
man. Like
>> the process is dope.
>> The podium is the process.
>> Yeah man.
>> Or the process over the podium.
>> Dr. Andy Galbin, thank you so much.
Thank you. You're held in such high
regard by everybody. I think there's two
reasons. I think it's so you're so
deeply obsessed with this subject matter
for reasons that we talked a lot about
last time, but also I think the essence
of your motivations is so unbelievably
pure. You before we started recording
you were saying to me how like you
you're really not that concerned with
the business side of things because what
you'd love to do is just be focusing on
the research, the education, and the
coaching. And I think that says a lot
about you and it comes through. People
understand that you're just deeply
obsessed about this stuff in a way which
allows us to benefit tremendously from
all the work that you have done. and
you're a wonderful synthesizer of very
very complex things. So please carry on
doing what you're doing. If people want
to go and listen to your show or if they
want to go consume more of your stuff,
if they want to continue this journey
with you, where do they go? Where's the
best place to send them?
>> Well, first of all, thank you for those
kind words and to be invited back. It's
it's a huge opportunity. I will never be
ungrateful for it. Uh my podcast is
called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.
Available everywhere. and then
andygalpin.com and social media,
Instagram and all that stuff is probably
the easiest way to follow along.
>> I highly recommend you go and subscribe
to Andy's channel and we're going to
link it down below now. But it's um it's
what you're incredibly rigorous with all
the work that you do. Having spoken to
Andrew Andrew Huberman, who's a good
friend of both of ours. He he's also
told me just how utterly obsessed you
are with truth and also your mission of
helping people become who they could be.
Um and that shines through in all of
your work. So, please go and subscribe
to Andy's podcast as well, perform, and
um I shall link all of his other
resources below, including some of them
that we've mentioned today, including
the tests and questionnaires that we
talked about. Andy, thank you. YouTube
have this new crazy algorithm where they
know exactly what video you would like
to watch next based on AI and all of
your viewing behavior. And the algorithm
says that this video is the perfect
video for you. It's different for
everybody looking right now. Check this
video out and I bet you you might love
it.