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Author Archives: allan

March 12, 2024

Do you believe in yourself?

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On episode 633 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss limiting beliefs. Do you believe in yourself?

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text


Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch– Ken McQuade– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston– John Dachauer– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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Recovering for setbacks and overcoming obstacles with Lyn Lindbergh

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On episode 631 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we bring back Lyn Lindbergh to discuss setbacks and obstacles. 

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text


Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch– Ken McQuade– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston– John Dachauer– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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February 20, 2024

How to break your sugar addiction with Dr. Nicole Avena

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Sugarless

On episode 630 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Dr. Nicole Avena and discuss her book, Sugarless: A 7-Step Plan to Uncover Hidden Sugars, Curb Your Cravings, and Conquer Your Addiction.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text – https://amzn.to/3TclR9a


Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch– Ken McQuade– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston– John Dachauer– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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February 13, 2024

How to rewire your brain and body for more resilience with Dr. Aditi Nerukar

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On episode 629 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Dr. Aditi Nerukar and discuss her book, The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resiliance.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:25.960] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:01:27.340] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:28.990] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Back in January, I started talking about having some big dreams and big audacious goals. I've been talking about this on the Facebook group. If you haven't been a part of this, you should join our Facebook group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. But I set a goal for myself this year, an objective. Again, big dreams don't have to necessarily be actionable things, but it's something I want to accomplish this year. That was to help people lose A grand sum total of 10,000 pounds. We're starting to make that happen. People are getting involved, and we're starting to see it happen. I want you to be a part. I'm part of it. I realized coming into the new year that I was a little heavier than I needed to be. Someone takes a picture and you're looking at it, it's like, Oh, okay. Because sometimes you just don't see it when you're looking at yourself. But I was like, Okay, I could use to lean up a bit. And so I started doing some things to lean myself up. So I'm a part of that 10,000, and I want you to be a part of the 10,000.

[00:02:38.810] – Allan

So it's like, Yeah, get out here, join our group, message me directly if you just don't want to be a part of Facebook. So you can email me. Go to the website. You'll find my email address there. But message me and let me know you're interested in this. It's not that you have to be a client. I'm opening it up to anybody that's basically taking what we do here at 40 plus fitness and using it as a lifestyle driver. And with that lifestyle, if you're losing weight, I'd like to add you in and have you as a part of the 10,000. So that's what I've been up to.

[00:03:10.940] – Rachel

That sounds like a lot, Allan. That's wonderful.

[00:03:15.110] – Allan

So how are you doing?

[00:03:16.750] – Rachel

Good. My New Year's resolutions this year were to spend more time in the gym, and I'm working on my plan and lifting more than I'm running, which is a really big mindset shift for me I really love running. It's what I do. It's what I love. And so changing up my attitude and working in the gym a little bit more, it's been a little tricky, but I'm really enjoying what I'm doing now.

[00:03:42.170] – Allan

Yeah. Well, what I think the key is To look at the reasons why you really enjoyed running. I know for you, it was very much a social thing. It was a personal push. So you're looking for PRs and you're doing some different things, different distances. You turned some of it into travel destination stuff.

[00:04:01.260] – Rachel

Always fun.

[00:04:02.730] – Allan

So I think the more you can incorporate what you liked about running into these other activities, like lifting or whatnot, I think there's an opportunity there for you to find your way.

[00:04:13.890] – Rachel

Yeah. You know what's really fun is I've got a really nice home gym. My husband lifts as well. So we have a lot of really fun equipment. And so I'm making a point to use all the equipment that I have in the gym. I have different bars, different kettlebells, smash balls, medicine balls. I can't do everything all in one day, so I make it a point to pick a piece of equipment and use it. To me, it's like playing with it. It's playing with the kettlebell. It's something different. That's what's keeping it interesting. The more I dive online to different lifts and different ways to move weight, there's so much out there, and it is fun to learn something new. I'm pretty excited by that.

[00:04:53.600] – Allan

Well, good. That's what will keep you motivated is making it fresh, making it exciting, and seeing progress.

[00:05:00.840] – Rachel

Yes. We did one rep maxes at the beginning of the year. And so from that, I'm building different lifts, different ways to enhance that. So by the end of the year, we'll see how much stronger I could hit.

[00:05:15.620] – Allan

There you go.

[00:05:16.660] – Rachel

Sat down on my calendar. It's my goal.

[00:05:18.720] – Allan

Excellent. So are you ready to talk to Dr. Nerurkar?

[00:05:22.740] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:05:56.320] – Allan

Dr. Nerurkar, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:00.490] – Dr. Nerurkar

Thanks so much for having me, Allan. Such a pleasure to be here.

[00:06:04.210] – Allan

Now, your book is called The Five Resets: Rewire your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience. And this time, we're actually recording this early. This is going to come out in February. But we've just gone through the holiday season. There's all kinds of things going on in the world that just really fire us up all the time if we let it. I know I've personally gone through a significant amount of stress in my life, and that's part of the reason why I live where I live now is to try to have less stress. But even then, sometimes I just find it a little difficult. And so I like what you've done in the book here, giving us really 15 different ways that we can go about working on improving our resilience and/or letting some of that stress go.

[00:06:47.200] – Dr. Nerurkar

Yeah, the Five Resets offers five small but mighty mindset shifts that are science-backed, along with 15 strategies. And really, the key of each of those strategies for me was that they are cost-free so that they have zero dollars associated with them. Because as a clinical physician for over 20 years, it was really important to me. I saw lots of patients from all walks of life with all varied amount of resources. So having something free and accessible was really important. Secondly, low time cost. So not something that's going to take an hour of every day to do, because again, that feels very unattainable and it's not accessible to everyone. And of course, practical and actionable to build into your messy, overscheduled life. When you are feeling stressed, the last thing you need is to add something to your life that is going to cause more stress.

[00:07:42.400] – Allan

Yeah, that was the thing is you tell someone, Okay, well, you could do this breathing practice, or you go take this yoga class, or you go do this thing, and they're like, That's just more stuff. At that point in your life, you feel like you just need less. You talked in the book about resilience, and then another word that you used was toxic resilience. And I think the reason that resonated with me was as I went through my career, and I went through a lot of really stressful times in my career and in my life, with a lot of change, divorces, the whole bear, all that stuff. I just feel like as I've gotten a little older, that my resilience has weakened. And as I got to reading in the book, I was like, Okay, we need to define terms because what I think of as resilience was actually toxic resilience. Could you talk a little bit about those two terms and how they apply?

[00:08:34.280] – Dr. Nerurkar

I would argue, Allan, that because of your life experience, your resilience, your innate and true resilience isn't weakened at all. And likely, it's been strengthened by the many things that you've gone through and come through and come out of, but simply that you have increased your awareness for what toxic resilience is. And so toxic resilience is essentially what our modern society is built on. It's hustle culture. It's really propagated by hustle culture. Many years ago, 5, 10 years ago, you would hear the word resilience, and it had a positive connotation. The true definition of resilience, the scientific definition, it is our innate biological ability to recover, adapt, and grow in the face of life's challenges. For resilience to itself, you need a little bit of stress. Not too much stress, just right stress. However, in recent years, particularly with the global pandemic, let's say, that word has been overused. Now that we're in this post-pandemic era, it continues to be overused, and it's almost morphed into this dark connotation of what true resilience biologically is. Now, we're seeing much more a manifestation of toxic resilience. Toxic resilience is when it's a mind over matter mindset, when you push past human limitations, when you don't give yourself clear boundaries, and when you have a sense of needing to have productivity at all costs.

[00:10:11.170] – Dr. Nerurkar

You've heard this term many times. You're maybe a demanding boss has said to you, Oh, you can take on a project, an additional project. You're resilient. Or someone has said to you, You need to meet this deadline. Oh, come on, you could do it. You're resilient. Even in parenting, for those of us who are parents, you might say, Oh, there's lots of messaging. Someone might say to you, Of course, you can handle all of the work demands and parenting. Come on, you're resilient. So you've heard these toxic messages over and over and over again. So it's not your fault if you think that's true resilience. That is not. That is toxic resilience. Really differentiating the two is important because resilience, true resilience, is your innate biological ability. It is defined not by those things I mentioned that mind over matter, mind mindset and productivity at all costs and not understanding our human limitations. It is true resilience is defined by understanding our human limitations, creating strong boundaries, celebrating when to say no, and most importantly, leaning forward through the lens of self-compassion, giving yourself grace through difficult times, understanding that your brain and your body is particularly during times of high stress need space, rest, and recovery to function optimally.

[00:11:36.660] – Dr. Nerurkar

Only then can your true resilience shine through. And the Five Resets was developed, the book, the approach, simply because I would see these patterns over and over again. So your story really resonates with me because so many of my patients would say, I just don't feel resilient, Doc. I don't know what's going on. And in fact, they were plenty resilient, true resilience. They were just in that hustle culture mentality of toxic resilience. And the first step is to dismantle that and debunk that idea of toxic resilience. It's like the energizer bunny. We all know what that analogy is like. It's like the person who just keeps going and going and going. But the energizer bunny is a fictional character. It is not a human being with need for rest and recovery. And these are biological needs. No one is bionic. We are just mere mortals. And really honoring that part of us and really creating boundaries and limitations through a lens of self-compassion is what true resilience is all about.

[00:12:40.600] – Allan

Yeah, that was what was so hard, is learning that sometimes you just have to say no, and you don't want to say no because you're driven to perform. And so it really was difficult for me. And it still is. I still find these from time to time. Even what feels like smaller stresses will pop up, and I'll be like, Why am I so freaked out about this little thing? But I do. That's why I like this. Can we briefly go through the five resets, what they are and how they work together?

[00:13:07.820] – Dr. Nerurkar

Sure. So the five resets are five small but mighty mindset shifts, and they've been developed by me over decades of clinical work. Initially, when you're a doctor, pattern recognition is how we diagnose conditions. So if someone comes to see me and they're having abdominal pain or they're having chest pain or headaches, these are vague non specific symptoms. But when you dig deeper and ask many questions, you figure out that there's a pattern. So not all headaches are created equal, not all chest pain is created equal, not all abdominal pain is created equal. And when you ask the right questions, you get to the bottom of what that issue and that diagnosis is. Pattern recognition. So you might ask about lots of different clinical things. When patients go to see their doctor, there's lots of questions that doctors are asking because we're trying to create a sense of pattern. We're trying to see, okay, Does this person exhibit the pattern of this? And therefore, it would be that diagnosis. The five resets were developed because I had a clinical practice in Boston at a Harvard hospital. I was the medical director, and I taught people, patients, stress management techniques.

[00:14:17.940] – Dr. Nerurkar

Patients would come to see me, specifically asking for help with their stress. What I started to see over and over and over is that there was a pattern to stress. Stress wasn't just this vague, mythical, magical thing out there. It was quantifiable and it was concrete to me because I had seen hundreds and hundreds and thousands of patients, and I was able to have that sense of pattern recognition. The five resets are five simple small mindset shifts that anyone can make when they are feeling a sense of stress. The first reset is get clear on what matters most, M-O-S-T. It's an acronym for one of the strategies in the book in that reset. And that is essentially laying the groundwork and helping you figure out where you are and where you'd like to go. Because once we have that destination, we can close that gap. You know, many of us, with every single one of my patients, they all knew what they wanted to achieve, whether it was decrease stress, they want to stop smoking, lose weight, get healthier, gain mobility, sleep better, eat better, The list goes on and on. But from where they were to where they wanted to go, it seemed like there was a big gap.

[00:15:36.720] – Dr. Nerurkar

Because there is really… People know what they need to do, right? So there's no lack of information or knowledge. The gap is between having that information and knowledge and taking action. And the five resets helps to close that gap. So the information and knowledge you have, taking that action to get there, that is what the first reset is all about, creating a roadmap. And that is what helps you get there. The second reset is to find quiet in a noisy world. This reset has several science-back strategies. The purpose of this reset is what we talked about earlier, creating a sense of spaciousness in your brain so that you have the ability for your brain and body to create a little space and reset and recharge. From the minute we're awake till the time we go to bed, and sometimes all night, we have lots of things competing for our time and mental bandwidth. And this second reset is really about how to manage your mental bandwidth. And there's several strategies there, focused on many things, including sleep and the digital space and social media and scrolling, and we can talk about that.

[00:16:48.170] – Dr. Nerurkar

The third reset is to sync your brain to your body. The foundation of this reset is the mind-body connection. And that might sound like a very woo- woo term to those who haven't heard that term before. But in fact, it is scientifically sound, and there is plenty of research to support, robust research, in fact, to support this idea that your mind communicates with your body, and your body communicates with your mind, and vice versa. We've used the mind-body connection our whole lives, like butterflies at falling in love, or before a meeting, your heart starts racing, or an embarrassing moment and your face gets flushed. All of these are the mind-body connection and action. The good news about this is that you can learn to sink your brain to your body and tap into that mind-body connection to help you overcome your stress and increase your resilience.

[00:17:41.520] – Dr. Nerurkar

The fourth reset is come up for air. In it, there are several science-back strategies to help you learn some relaxation techniques, breathing techniques and other techniques to help you tap into that mind-body connection so you can apply it to your everyday life. It has, particularly with the breath, we talked about this, Allen, earlier. You know your breath is the only thing, the only physiological process in the body that is governed voluntarily and involuntarily.

[00:18:15.190] – Dr. Nerurkar

Our hearts don't do that. Our digestion doesn't do that. Even our brain waves don't do that. The only thing in your body that has voluntary and involuntary control is your breath. So we can sit here and just talk and breathe. We're not We're focusing on our breath and our bodies are still breathing because of our brain and body connection. And then we can influence our breath. So that is also really part of that reset.

[00:18:39.240] – Dr. Nerurkar

And then the fifth reset, the final one, is to bring your best self forward. What that means is it's a culmination of all of the resets. It's how do you bring all of this science into your everyday life? What can you expect with the timeline of less stress and more resilience? I typically say it takes eight weeks to build a habit. So as you move through these resets, this whole book is designed to be a roadmap. And so starting with the first reset, building upon that to the second, third, and fourth, and then the fifth is really the culmination. And most importantly, to celebrate your wins. That's a huge part of the fifth reset. Similar to what we were talking about, about toxic resilience, true resilience is understanding your boundaries and limitations, the very real human limitations we have, and celebrating every single win, both big and small.

[00:19:30.540] – Dr. Nerurkar

Because human beings, typically, as I've noticed with many of my patients, we are bad historians when it comes to ourselves and our own victories. We are great cheerleaders for others, but we don't give ourselves the same sense of self-compassion. Those are the five resets in a nutshell.

[00:19:47.060] – Allan

Now, I want to dive into the first one because I think you talked about setting as a foundation, and I think that's important. But it was Uncover your Most goal, M-O-S-T, and it's an acronym. Can you go through that acronym and and what that means?

[00:20:02.390] – Dr. Nerurkar

Yes. The reason that is the very first strategy of the very first reset is because of what we talked about. There is this wide gap between knowing and having information and taking action. It is not your fault if you feel like the gap is wide. It's a schism for many people. My job as a clinician and as a doctor with all of my patients has always been to help close that gap. Having a most goal can get you there. In the five resets, in this particular strategy, I offer lots of examples of how do you figure out what your most goal is. Patients have said, I want to learn how to throw a baseball with my grandson this summer. Someone else said, I want to go to my reunion and feel really good and confident. I want to… One of my patients, one of my most favorite most goals was a patient who was going through cancer therapy. And when I asked her what her most goal was, she said, I want to write children's books. I've always wanted to do that, and that's something that's really important to me. So having that most goal, it's your North Star and your why.

[00:21:08.730] – Dr. Nerurkar

When you create your most goal, it's a very step-by-step process written out very concretely in the five resets. And the reason it's concrete is because when you are under stress, your brain is governed by the amygdala, which is a small, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain. That amygdala is focused on survival and self-preservation. It can't think ahead. That part of your brain that's thinking ahead, strategic planning, organization, memory, all of these things that are needed for you to get out of your stress struggle, it's governed by the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of your brain right here behind your forehead. The most goal in all of the strategy in the first reset, get you out of that amygdala mode and into that prefrontal cortex mode. You can't do it on your own because when you're under stress, your brain is just governed by the amygdala. But with this reset, you can slowly get get out. You'll just feel yourself getting out of that mode simply by doing the exercises. So the key question when you're developing your most goal and figuring out, what is my most goal? It's not so much, what's the matter with me?

[00:22:14.900] – Dr. Nerurkar

It's what matters to me most. And so M stands for motivating. What is something that you would like to do? I've given you several examples: writing children's books, playing baseball with your grandson, or going to a reunion. I've had many patients say that they want to go on a hiking trip or a biking trip or go on a cruise or something to look forward to that is motivating. O is objective. Can you concretely measure progress towards that goal? There are many strategies on how to do that, but is it objective or is it something out there vague? It has to be objective and concrete. S is small. Is it something that is manageable for you? We talked about this gap between knowledge and information to action. If it feels too big and unwieldy and aspirational and out there, it's not going to feel within reach for you to accomplish it, which then doesn't make it very motivating. So is it small? Is it something concrete and small that you can do? And finally, the T is for timely. Can you achieve your most goal within three months? I mentioned this before, it takes about eight weeks to build a habit.

[00:23:30.390] – Dr. Nerurkar

So give yourself three months because you want to include some of the other strategies to get to that most goal. We're going to talk, hopefully, about the rule of two and other ways that our brains respond to change. But as you build in these 15 strategies, you don't have to build in all 15, certainly. But as you build in one, two, or three strategies, it takes eight weeks to build a habit. So you want to give yourself enough time to be able to build in and incorporate into your life one, or two, or three strategies so that they stick. So is it timely? Can you achieve this within three months? Typically, with my clinical experience, three months is about that sweet spot of what I've seen for my patients who are able to decrease their stress and resilience. So this most goal is a way for you If you are feeling that sense of overwhelmed, anxiousness, lethargy, hypervigilance, or many other ways that stress manifestsends for yourself. If you are feeling that right now, just know that you're not alone and it's not your fault. It's just your brain responding heading to current events and the way of…

[00:24:32.360] – Dr. Nerurkar

And we can talk a little bit about why we're all feeling this way right now, including you and me, Allen. No one is immune to this sense of stress and burnout right now. But the Most Goal can help you get clear. It can help you figure out where you need to go. It's like a Waze Map or Google Maps. You need to see that destination, and then you can map out the plan. And then the rest of the strategies within that first reset help you make that map. So creating that roadmap to get to your most goal, because from where you are now to where you'd like to be is actually a much smaller distance than you think.

[00:25:09.030] – Allan

Yeah. I'm such a fan of action. It's feeling like you're moving towards something versus away from something. And that's why I really like that concept of setting a goal for the different strategies that you're going to implement and what that's going to mean for you. It wasn't in a way that I would have thought about stress before I read your book. I The other thing that I was really glad you had in the book, because I think it's overlooked a lot, is using gratitude. Can you talk a little bit about gratitude and how that's going to help us deal with stress?

[00:25:42.400] – Dr. Nerurkar

Gratitude, often when people hear the word gratitude. If people are data-driven, I speak to audiences all around the world, and when I talk to audiences who are data-driven in their scientific or they're action-oriented, they hear the word gratitude and they think, Oh, no, this is like a teenage girl's journal. I'm a grown adult. I'm a grown woman or a grown man. I'm not going to sit and write in a journal everything that I'm thankful for. Like, not for me, thanks. Gratitude, in fact, scientifically, it's cognitive reframing. Essentially, what happens when you focus on gratitude, and I'm going to talk about the difference with the five resets and gratitude versus out there in the world when you hear, Oh, just be thankful. Just be thankful. What does that even really mean? So gratitude in scientific terms, is cognitive reframing. Essentially, what you focus on grows. The same amount of negative and positive things are likely happening to you throughout a day, any given day, an average day. But when you are under that stress mode governed by your amygdala, your focus is on survival and self-preservation. So negative experiences are heightened and you are just more…

[00:26:57.440] – Dr. Nerurkar

There's a sense of red alert and hypervigilance for negative experiences. Positive experiences are happening, too, but they're just flying by the radar, not really getting tracked. The reason gratitude is so vital for brain processing and creating neural connections, so connections in the brain, is because it makes you, quite concretely, focus on these good events as well. Rick Hansen is a psychologist, and he calls it moving from Velcro to Teflon. So negative experiences become less sticky in the brain, away from Velcro, and they become like Teflon. But the alternate thing is that positive experiences go the other way. Because when you're under periods of stress, you're not really focused on the positive experiences. It's not you, it's your biology, it's not your fault. It's just how the brain works. And so when you actively start focusing on the positive and with the gratitude practice that I teach patients, it's to write down five things every day that you're grateful for. And why? It's a 60 second exercise. This is not a deep thoughts journal entry. Keep a pad of paper and a pencil or pen next to your bed. Do it first thing in the morning or at night.

[00:28:09.110] – Dr. Nerurkar

And it's only five things. Some days you'll be able to think of three things. You have to write five. Some days they'll be 15 things. You can only focus on five. And when you write quickly, put the date, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, write down those five things, call it a day, 60 seconds. Over time, this gratitude practice, this written gratitude practice, has found demonstrated benefit in mood, energy, stress, and resilience. This is just a few of the ways that it has been found to be beneficial because of what I talked about, cognitive reframing. So why do you have to write this down? That's often a question I get. We live in the digital world. Why can't I just use my iPhone and type it in? Because our brains use a different neural circuitry to type versus writing. So think about a grocery store list. You write it on a Post-it, you go to When you're in the grocery store, you lose the Post-it. But you still remember everything you've written down on that list. Contrary to typing up something, and let's say you're supposed to present or you type up your grocery list, and then you leave your phone at home.

[00:29:13.680] – Dr. Nerurkar

You're more likely to forget what It's on that list. Writing that gratitude practice down every single day does something different to your neural processes and to your circuits in your brain to help you remember the good. When you start focusing on the good through this very simple exercise, this is not like this aspirational, just be thankful, just be grateful. Because often when you're feeling a sense of stress, you don't feel very grateful. It doesn't feel authentic. It feels disingenuous to feel grateful because you're undergoing a period of stress. And often that leads to more stress if someone says to you, just be thankful, just be grateful. You should feel so lucky. Look at people who are not eating in certain parts of the world or who don't have a roof over your head. That doesn't feel very good when you're feeling stressed because it defeats the purpose. Instead, a concrete gratitude journal where you have to write it down every day. And some days, I've had patients who said, Well, I couldn't think of anything to write today, so I wrote, I have two arms and two legs. I can breathe. I sleep in a bed because I think there are people who might not sleep in a bed.

[00:30:25.850] – Dr. Nerurkar

You know, like very concrete things. I was able to have access to clean water today, and I got a little bit of food today. And that's all I'm grateful for, and that's enough. It's not huge aspirational things that you have to be grateful for. It's simple everyday things. The more simple, the more concrete, the more mundane, the better. And over time, at 30, 60, and 90 days, you'll notice that your stress gets decreased because it's simply a brain process that's happening.

[00:30:57.470] – Allan

And they can't occupy the same space at the same time. You can't be grateful and stressed at the same time. You forget the stress for even just those few moments. And if that just shifts that off for a little bit of time, I think that's just tremendous. So I was glad you put that in there because I think that is a really important step in understanding how well off we actually are in the grand scheme of things and how our brain, the way it's wired, is making something seem worse than it actually is. And so I think that's just a good practice.

[00:31:28.880] – Allan

Doctor, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:31:37.740] – Dr. Nerurkar

What a great question, Allan. One of the first things I would say is to get enough rest. So prioritize your sleep like the vital resource it is. It actually has a clear correlation to fitness over 40 or at any age, but particularly as we age. Sleep is one one of the hallmarks and foundations of everything because it's truly a therapeutic intervention. It helps every cell, tissue, and muscle in the body, including the brain. It helps your brain process difficult emotions. Our immune system is the most active when you're sleeping. And so there are many strategies in the five resets to help you get the sleep you deserve. So sleep is something that is a non-negotiable. And often the first sign of something, awry, when you're feeling a sense of stress or mental health issues, sleep is often the first thing to go. And so getting yourself back on track, lots of strategies in the book to help you do that. I think the second really important piece in your equation is some form of daily movement every day. So it doesn't have to be something big. Even five minutes of stretching or walking can make all of the difference.

[00:32:53.980] – Dr. Nerurkar

But a little bit every single day can go a long way. And lots of data in the five resets, but also you can do your own research to learn that it's not about one hour gym sessions at all in terms of mental health and fitness. It's not about weight loss. Our culture is obsessed with weight loss, but in fact, taught bellies and muscles never inspire people to lose weight. That's all cosmetic. That's like a cosmetic promise. What actually inspires people to get fit is doing something that can give you more energy to get to that most goal, for example, all of those things that you want to do. So it's never about weight loss or I want a six-pack or I want this or that. It's never motivated, even one of my patients. What has motivated patients to get out and start walking 5, 10 minutes a day is like, Oh, I'm going to sleep better. I'm going to be less stressed. I'm going to feel a little bit more energetic. I'm going to be productive. I'm going to be able to have good relationships because I'll be more present. Okay, I'll do it for for those reasons.

[00:34:01.340] – Dr. Nerurkar

Then finally, I think the third really important thing is to feel a sense of community. We know that there is a loneliness epidemic. The surgeon general has talked about this, a US surgeon general. He happens to be one of my childhood friends, but he's really focused on the public health crisis that is loneliness. Loneliness isn't just a nice to have. It can actually have impacts, not just on our mental health, but physical health. Being lonely increases your risk of stroke and heart disease by 30%, and it can shorten your lifespan. It's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day for non-smokers. It has that same impact in health risk and risk of death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So creating that sense of community, even if you are an introvert. This is not about being a social butterfly. This is simply about feeling that sense of connection and tribe with a few people. So I like to say anywhere from two to five people, feeling that sense of connection that you're 4:00 AM friend. So if something were to happen to you at 4:00 AM, are there a few people in your life that you could turn to to help you?

[00:35:06.570] – Dr. Nerurkar

And vice versa. So feeling that connectedness, social connectedness, has huge benefits on mental and physical health and fitness. Those are my top three. And then if you were to give me a fourth, if you would be so kind to give me a fourth, it would be to decrease our reliance on… It would be to decrease your reliance on this little device, your phone and screens and social media, because that is doing lots of things to your brain to worsen stress and health and a lot of the Five Resets, an entire half of a chapter focuses on the importance of creating a digital boundary. We have boundaries in every other relationship in our life with our spouses, with our children, friends, coworkers, but we do not have a boundary when it comes to the relationship we have with our phones. It's a porous boundary. And so this is not about renouncing your phone and becoming a digital monk. Of course not. There's actually no health benefit to that. What has been shown to be beneficial for health and well-being is to decrease your reliance on these devices simply because it has an impact on your brain and body and stress and resilience in the long run.

[00:36:27.700] – Dr. Nerurkar

Thank you. Dr. Nerurkar, someone wanted wanted to learn more about you or your book, The Five Resets, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:36:35.410] – Dr. Nerurkar

You can go to 5resets.com, that's number 5resets.com, to order the book, learn more. There's videos, there's lots of tools there for people to really dive into the meat of what The Five Resets is. And you can follow me on social media at draditinerurkar. That's at D-R-A-D-I-T-I-N-E-R-U-R-K-A-R.

[00:36:59.480] – Allan

All right. Thank you very much. And thank you for being a part of 40 plus fitness.

[00:37:04.670] – Dr. Nerurkar

Thank you so much. I love what you're doing and really think it's so important.

[00:37:10.070] – Allan

Thank you.


Post Show/Recap

[00:37:12.150] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:37:13.690] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Again, another fun interview about mindset. It's like my favorite topic of discussion. Her five resets are really basic, but actually really easily implemented in your daily life. I really like those tips.

[00:37:30.160] – Allan

Yeah, I think one of the course for this for me was that when I was younger, you just grin and bear it. My upbringing was just, Suck it up, buttercup, and keep moving on. I don't care that you're upset. I don't care that you're stressed out. Just keep going. Yeah, that's good. And then because that was my behavior pattern, pretty much I would be stressed out. I would do other stressful things.

[00:37:58.590] – Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:37:59.970] – Allan

You know, like going in the gym and having a really hard workout that just wore me out was a way for me to deal with stress. And going through this book, it has me rethinking, was that just a distraction? And and not actually a cure? Because sometimes you put yourself out there and you're doing something, so you're not thinking about something else. Some people will turn to alcohol for stress, and some people will turn to drugs for stress or sex or whatever. And it's really just a function of covering up for a short period of time the stress they're feeling. Now, like some of those things, a heavy hard exercise is stressful, and you're adding stress, even though it could be a hormetic effect stress, a good stress, where they define it. What I basically was doing was just creating too much stress and not having that willingness to step back and say, whoa, that might have been too much. And I think that's the other thing of it. I was trying to do, we're going into the holidays. There's the shutdown in this country. So really struggling to try to keep our business afloat and thinking, okay, great.

[00:39:12.620] – Allan

I don't want to go through having to close down another business, especially when this big… Like I did the gym almost exactly a year earlier. I was like, Is this going to happen again? And so I was going through a lot of stress, and I was trying to do the crush the holidays challenge, which was daily videos. And I was like, if I'm not feeling well, I don't like recording, I don't like getting on camera. I don't like doing a lot of things because it really takes a lot of energy. So I kept waiting, when am I going to find a time when I feel good? And they weren't. So that just added more stress to it, which is why I wasn't good at it. It's why I wasn't doing my job on that challenge. And the other side of it is with that, I was filming videos, but I wasn't seeing the faces or the people. So it wasn't like that. When I do an interview for a podcast or like this part, we see each other. We're on Zoom, but we see each other. So there's a social interaction there. When I'm coaching a client, I see the client.

[00:40:17.250] – Allan

We're talking or messaging, that thing. With this challenge, I wasn't getting any of that. This was just me putting out without any feedback, hardly any feedback of interaction. And so it just felt hard. And that's why I kept putting it off. And I put it off and get late and be like, Okay, now is not a time either. My energy is low. And a couple of times I did. I got on the video, my energy was really low, and I was like, Okay, I hate that. So that's why I quit it. That's why I dropped it and did the refunds, because if I can't do it right, I'm not going to do it at all. That's how I feel about it. So it's a shame, but it was just one of those realizations that when I feel stressed, I need to recognize it. And then beyond that, then I need to, instead of just trying to cover it up with another activity or alcohol or anything else, is just to step back and say, breathe, work through some of these five resets, show gratitude, and move on. And that's one of the things. I didn't do it exactly like this, but a lot of the things that were in this book were things that I was considering as I went through that process.

[00:41:29.870] – Rachel

Oh, for sure. Well, and breathing is one of the things that she was saying. Come up for air and take that minute to reset your system, and maybe you can think more clearly. It's a similar concept in the running world, too, Allan, is that a lot of people run to escape their problems. We're technically running away from our problems. But I guess I think of it more like if you in the gym or me on a run, burn off that level of energy and then come back to the problem and you've got a better mindset, a better attitude towards tackling whatever is ahead of you. But I mean, sometimes you just have to say no. Sometimes you just got to take some things off your plate, especially if your cortisol is very high. Like at the end of the year, I say this every year, December is the most stressful month of the year. There's just too many obligations, too much going on. You're not taking the time for yourself, and something's going to give, and it might be your attitude. I think we need to go back, circle back to ourselves with some of these mindset tips and just calm, take a minute.

[00:42:35.100] – Rachel

At this age, Allan, like you were saying, when we were younger, we would just grind through, push. You've got a job, you've got young kids. What is your option? You have no other option. You've got to be successful at the job. You got to be successful and take good care of your kids. But now that we're a little bit older, I think in the 50 above bracket for me, we've got a little bit of breathing space to better organize our lives and the time that we need. One of her other mindset tips was to find quiet in a noisy world. When you're overwhelmed and stressed, sometimes you just need to get away from it. Take a break, go somewhere where it's nice and quiet and just take a minute to breathe. And to think.

[00:43:17.030] – Allan

Absolutely. All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week then.

[00:43:21.460] – Rachel

Great, Allan. Take care. 

[00:43:22.960] – Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:43:23.930] – Rachel

Bye-bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

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February 6, 2024

Understanding the science and politics of diabetes treatment with Gary Taubes

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On episode 628 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we bring back Gary Taubes to discuss his new book, Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:25.040] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:01:27.310] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:28.930] – Allan

I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Things are busy at Lula's. We're getting into February here, and we're doing well now. But there's this couple of months where we weren't. It has its toll. You're running a business, and you're like, okay, what we would have had for a year would have been an awesome year. It turned out to not be such an awesome year. But that's fine. It's fine. It is what it is. We're running a business. We're going to keep running it the best we can. And my hopes are now we've got a good January, a good February going. So 2024, It looks like it's going to be a much better year.

[00:02:02.340] – Rachel

Awesome. That sounds great.

[00:02:04.490] – Allan

How are things for you?

[00:02:05.910] – Rachel

Good. Still cold up here in Michigan. Yeah. But we're doing well. I mentioned earlier, my daughter is engaged to be married, and we're making some good plans. We've got a date. It'll be in June. She's got her dress, and we're just ticking off all the boxes, getting stuff done. So that's pretty exciting.

[00:02:22.430] – Allan

Well, good. Good. Now, so you're going to hit this transition in life where you're not only an empty nester, but your daughter doesn't have the same last name anymore.

[00:02:29.880] – Rachel

That's right. I got to learn how to spell the boy's last name. It shouldn't be too hard, but it's different.

[00:02:35.150] – Allan

I'll tell this story. My daughter was getting married, and I had met her, her boyfriend, her fiance at the time. And so I go into the place. She wants all the guys in the wedding had to wear the same suit. This was the place that sold the suit. I'm going in to get the suit sized because it just happened to timing. So I think she was going to get married in. I think she got married in November, and this was August. And so I walk in and I go in and I say, okay, I'm here to buy a suit. And they're like, Okay, who's the wedding? I said, It's Becker. And she's, What's the groom's last name?

[00:03:04.180] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh. Did it take a minute?

[00:03:06.950] – Allan

Yeah, I was like, Oh, my God. I don't even know the guy's last… I knew his first name, but I didn't even know his last name. So I'm sitting there going back and forth. I'm like, It's Jay and Becker, Jay and Becker. And they were flipping through their papers, and they found it. Unfortunately, it was one of the largest orders because he had, I don't know, 13 groomsmen or something like that. That's a big order. And because of that, then because of that, Then she had to at least try to even it up so it didn't look like this weird flock of geese flying north.

[00:03:36.160] – Rachel

Oh, boy. That's awesome.

[00:03:38.340] – Allan

Anyway, so, yeah, I had to learn his name. And even today, I was sending something to her, and I had to write her name. I was like, Okay, this is the first time I've actually written that last name. The new last name. They've been married now for over a year. Oh, boy, oh, boy. But it's the first time I've had to physically write it down, which was interesting.

[00:03:54.460] – Rachel

Oh, my goodness. That is funny. Yeah, got to get used to that. Changes.

[00:03:57.900] – Allan

There's some new things coming on, but All right. So you're ready to talk to Dr. Ta… I mean, Mr. Taubes. I always want to call him a doctor because he is so smart. He does so much research that I just think of him as a doctor because- For sure. Of all the things he does. For sure. But no, it's Gary Taubes. You ready to have that conversation?

[00:04:18.450] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:04:48.730] – Allan

Gary, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:51.040] – Gary

Thank you for having me, Allan.

[00:04:52.750] – Allan

So your next book has to be on Stress Management now, right? We had so much trouble getting on this call. But today, the book we want to talk about is Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments. When you started laying this out and saying this was a history book, I was a little like, okay, I just want Gary to tell me how to eat because I know he does his research. But I'm really glad that you did take the time to lay that out because there were so many layers to this that I went through a lot. I went through moments where I was just, okay, if I had I met that guy in person, I'd choke him out. And then there were moments where I want to shake someone's hand, and then it would flip. And then the person I wanted to shake their hand, now I want to choke them out. This whole convoluted story of science and medicine, food, diabetes, and treatment, it's a can of worms.

[00:05:51.310] – Gary

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Let's talk about why I wrote a history of medicine book, basically on diabetes therapy. And how diabetes researchers… I'm going to refer to anyone who studies diabetes or medical practice specializes in diabetes as diabetologist, since that'll simplify everything. But one of The issue is with being a journalist and writing books challenge conventional thinking in medicine and nutrition is you have to establish on what basis you think you have a right to do that, that you think you know better. So my expertise throughout my career has always been the one subject I've studied, I've written multiple books on, and I think I know better than probably anyone else alive is good science and bad science. I mean, good scientists know that implicitly, but I have studied it explicitly. And when you look into the history of these fields, you could see why people came to believe certain assumptions were true. You could see whether or not they tested their assumptions to see if they were true, whether they adjusted their thinking when their assumptions failed the test, and whether assumptions were grandfathered into how we think about this disease and therapy without ever being tested.

[00:07:13.630] – Gary

And so when you do that, when you go back in time to look at the evidence base for what we believe about ideal therapies for diabetes, you end up telling a history. You say, look, this is what we believe that this point in time. This is why we changed our beliefs. This was the actual evidence on which the beliefs were changed. This was what happened when we tested them. So I end up in writing, rethinking diabetes with not just the history of the relevant diet, drug, disease relationship. But coming to conclusions about what perhaps these people should have concluded had they known then what we know now. We have the benefit of hindsight. And the benefit of doing this in the 2020s is that because of all these Internet repositories, you can basically get all this research, either downloaded or delivered to your doorstep, say, 90% of what should have been known about the science back when people were making decisions on 5 or 10 or 15%. The doctors would make decisions about diabetes therapy based on what they read in the journals that they got subscriptions to, in the languages that they could read, maybe what their local libraries had.

[00:08:38.630] – Gary

And now we can see almost all of it. And it's as though we have a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, and physicians and diabetologists were making decisions based on 50 to 100 pieces that they could access. And we can now see 950 pieces. We can and have a very solid idea about what image is on this puzzle when they were in effect guessing and then locking in their guesses over time.

[00:09:10.680] – Allan

Yeah. And then that's where personality gets involved and science can go out the door.

[00:09:17.010] – Gary

Yeah. One of the fundamental issues here is doctors are not trained to be scientists. They're trained to be doctors. They often look down on people with PhDs as FUDs. That's how they were called by my doctor friends when I was young. Being a scientist requires this very delicate balance between believing a hypothesis to be true or likely to be true and then being rigorously, extravagantly skeptical of your own thinking so that you can abandon that hypothesis if it's not true, even if you've built your career on it. And then doctors just say, you're confronted with Patients. Doctors are confronted with patients. They have to make decisions in the moment about what they think the best evidence shows. And the problem is, based on their decisions, they also come to conclusions about what they think the disease is, what it's telling them. Then, like I said, once you've made a decision, you've decided this is likely to be true, you lock yourself in after that, especially if you've acted on it, into believing it was true because you don't want to believe that you actually did people harm or that you made mistakes mistakes along the way.

[00:10:31.100] – Gary

And it becomes a can of worms, would be the phrase you use, the kind way to put it. So, yeah, the book is as much about the conflict between medicine and science and how doctors think versus how they should think to establish reliable knowledge and what happens when these assumptions are established as truth, as dogma, without really being rigorously tested. Not just being rigorously tested, surviving the tests.

[00:11:01.470] – Allan

Yeah. Well, and some of them were. I think that's one of the good takeaways here, where there were some really good doctors in this history. Diabetes started really hitting the scene around 100 years ago. And they were seeing a lot of type 1 diabetes, then type 2 was starting to come around. And so there was this, okay, what's going on here? This is different. And they didn't have exogenous insulin to shoot the folks up. They didn't really know insulin existed. And so they were, like you said, they were, I would say, practicing because they do call it a medical practice. But they would practice on a few patients and see what was happening and then adjust and adapt and come up with another way. They were sharing information with other doctors, which I was actually glad to see because I think that's how you learn how many cases you're going to see, how many they're going to see. And over time, you can build a body of experience that one doctor could never, never have experienced himself. So can we talk a little bit about treatments and things people were doing before exogenous insulin existed.

[00:12:06.250] – Gary

Okay. So apparently the first example, the first case in which a physician seemed to put a case of diabetes into remission was 1797. It was a British doctor named John Rallo. He's got a patient. He's in the military. He's got a patient in the military, Colonel Meredith. Meredith has recently lost a lot of weight. He's showing all the symptoms of diabetes, which are this extravagant hunger, thirsty all the time. He's peeing constantly. He goes to Rauh, Rauh. Back then, this is 1797, it was common for a physician to taste the urine, to make diagnosis. He tastes the urine, the urine's sweet, so he can diagnose his diabetes. And he decides that since the urine's sweet, it's got too much carbohydrates in it, too much that it shouldn't be there that's making it sweet. So carbohydrates from plants. And so he decides he's going to basically feed him a diet without a lot of plant matter. And he prescribes this diet, which is fatty, rancid meat, blood, sausages, and some green vegetables. And he's also giving him drugs. He's giving him… Morphine was a common treatment back then. And Meredith does better. His thirst goes away, his hunger goes away.

[00:13:26.810] – Gary

He gained some more weight back. And Raleigh writes a pamphlet about this. He also treats a general with the same diet, and the general seems to do better, but the general goes home, falls off the diet, and dies. So Rala decides if you stay in the diet, it'll probably cure diabetes. He writes a pamphlet, distributes it throughout the England, the United Kingdom, to physicians to suggest they try it on their diabetic patients, and it seems to work. And through the 19th century, the standard of care is what's called the animal diet. They drop the rancid meat, French doctor, Baudenaire, gets involved, and the Pollinaire, I forget his name at the moment, then brings a little French cuisine into it. By the end of the 19th century, they're realizing that they want to give their patients who tend to be losing a lot of weight, or if they have what we today would call type 1 diabetes, they're emaciated. And young, you want to build up their bodies. You want to give them as much calories as possible. So by the early 20th century, the idea of 1900, 1905. It's like, feed them as much fat as you can.

[00:14:34.470] – Gary

And Elliot Jocelyn, who starts the first diabetes clinic in the United States. He's a Harvard trained doctor. He specializes in diabetes in Boston. His clinic eventually becomes a Jocelyn Diabetes Center at Harvard, says, look, the secret to keeping these people alive is getting them to eat as much fat as they can. He actually learns that from the German diabetologist who have the most clinical experience in the world at that point. That's the diet. It's today we would call it keto. Back then, it was the high fat animal diet. Jocelyn is actually one of the reasons he's so interested. His mother has diabetes. And again, probably a type 2 diabetic whose pancreas eventually fails her, so she loses a lot of weight and is diagnosed. And she stays alive longer than any of her other family by rigid adherence to this high fat animal product-rich diet. And there's a brief interlude from 1914 to 1921, where another Harvard doctor, Fred Allen, decides the best way to treat patients is to semi-starve them. And you have this starvation therapy that takes patients who are… One of the diagnostic criteria of diabetes is ravenous hunger at the time, and then you starve them further.

[00:15:57.490] – Gary

And again, with patients with type 1, these young kids, you could keep them alive longer by doing so. And then 1921, insulin is discovered. And insulin is the hormone that the pancreas should be producing. And University of Toronto researchers Discover it, purify it, use it as therapy, and find that they could basically bring these kids at the brink of death, emaciated 15-year-olds who weigh 50 pounds and could restore them to life. They would talk about it as almost literally a resurrection, like a biblical experience. And as soon as you start giving patients insulin, you create the disease of low blood sugar, hypoglycemia. And that can be deadly. That can be fatal, very quickly fatal. So you have to get the patients to eat carbohydrates so that they don't die of low blood sugar. So your cure creates a new disease. And simultaneously, you go from diets that basically had the patient abstaining entirely from carbohydrates to telling them to eat carbs, and telling them to eat carbs at regular intervals, and they should have them at breakfast, and they should have them at snacks, and they should have them at lunches. And that way, when the insulin covers them, you won't kill them with low blood sugar.

[00:17:25.830] – Gary

And as this is happening, physicians are making decisions visions about what this says about the diet. And the one thing they don't know is what the long term consequences of any of this are. So you imagine they created a drug like an anti-cancer drug that could cure some horrible cancer. And in the short run, it works tremendously. It keeps people alive, but you have no idea what the long term benefits of this diet is. And by the time those… Excuse me, not just the long term benefits, the long term risks. And by the time those risks and benefits start to wash over these patients, this wave of diabetic complications that we're so familiar with today, which are heart failure, atherosclerosis, nerve damage, amputations, and gangrene, and retinopathies, damage to the eyes, and blindness, kidney failure. You're so far along in treatment, 10, 15 years, that you don't know what's causing it. And that's what we've been living with ever since. These decisions made in the 1920s and '30s about how to treat the disease with no real understanding of how they affect these long term complications.

[00:18:44.690] – Allan

I've talked on here a lot about homeostasis and how our body likes to stay in balance. And it has all these, in some places, very complex relationships between things to help make that happen. And I think insulin Insulin and glucagon is maybe one of the easier ones to understand, but it is extremely complex when you get down to the true science of how it happens in the body. Could you just give us a little bit of a primer on insulin and glucagon and how the two of them, both coming from the pancreas, work together to keep us in a good place or should keep us in a good place?

[00:19:22.850] – Gary

Okay. There's, again, a lot to unpack and what you just said. So homeostasis is one of the most important Certain concepts ever discovered in medicine. Dates to, again, 1865, a French physiologist, very famous, named Claude Bernard. The idea is basically that everything our bodies do is to try to keep relatively constant. The conditions, he called it the milieu interior, the interior milieu, but the conditions right outside the cell walls because your cells are basically living in that environment. They have to stay alive. And all they're seeing are the the nutrients in that environment, the vitamins and minerals right outside the cell walls and the cellular fluids and the fluid circulating through the bloodstream. And they're seeing hormones and signaling molecules and inflammatory molecules. Our body is working through this system of hormones and the nervous system to keep that constant. One more message, and then I'm done. The hormone that's in diabetes in 1889, a German physician, a researcher named Minkowski realizes that the pancreus is a problem in diabetes, because when you remove the pancreas from dogs, if you keep them alive, they become diabetic. 1921, as we said, these University of Toronto researchers led by Banting and Best, realized that the hormone that's missing is insulin.

[00:20:51.760] – Gary

So the idea is that insulin controls blood sugar, and without it, you have high blood sugar and all the symptoms of diabetes. You give insulin, you lower blood sugar, as we discussed. And forever after, effectively diabetes is seen as a disorder, or at least for the next 40 years of insulin deficiency. While researchers are studying insulin and focusing on its effect on blood sugar. Other researchers have established that the pancreas actually seems to secrete two hormones that work together. And one of the messages was how our endocrine system, our system of hormones, controls homeostasis, keeps us in homeostasis equilibrium, is it does it by not just secreting hormones that have certain effects, but having those hormones in turn react with counter regulatory hormones that have the opposite effects. Anything that's working to do one thing, there's guaranteed to be another hormone that's working to do the opposite. And these hormones are going to be linked. And the idea was that as these researchers began to realize that blood sugar is controlled not just by insulin telling cells to take up blood sugar and use it for fuel. So insulin lowers blood sugar, and you get to utilize, but also this hormone glucagon, which is secreted by neighboring cells in the pancreas, that actually tells the liver to create and effect glucose, blood sugar, and secrete that glucose into the bloodstream to keep blood sugar up.

[00:22:30.710] – Gary

So we have this dual hormone system, insulin being secreted by cells called beta cells, glucagon being secreted by cells called alpha cells, which are right next to the beta cells. The mechanisms in the cells are very similar. Glucose stimulates insulin secretion and inhibits glucagon secretion. So glucose is blood sugar in effect. Insulin itself inhibits glucagon secretion, and glucagon inhibits insulin secretion. And these have to work perfectly. But diabetes researchers and physicians are so focused on insulin that they pay virtually no attention to glucagon. And glucagon, while secreted from the pancreas, is doing the bulk of its work in the liver, which is the organ that's secreting glucose into the circulation and working to rise blood sugar. So in an ideal world, glucagon and insulin are working together, and they're working to keep blood sugar stable, which is what is relatively stable in those of us who don't have diabetes. And if you don't have enough insulin, you're going to have too much glucagon. If you have too much glucagon, you're not going to have enough insulin. And if you have too much insulin, you're not going to have enough. It's hopelessly connected. And vitally important to this is that the insulin and the glucagon are both secreted by the pancreas.

[00:24:00.070] – Gary

So the highest doses in any cell's fee are in the pancreas, and the next highest doses are in the liver, down the portal vein. If you just inject insulin, as we do with insulin therapy, exogenous insulin, as you call it, you're putting insulin eventually into the circulation. So it has to, by the time it gets to the pancreas, it's seeing an entirely different dose. The pancreatic alpha cells are seeing a very different dose than they would if insulin was secreted from the pancreas. And these are all revelations that are made by really good researchers, physiologists studying these systems through the 20th century. And the implications are profound for how we treat the disease. And yet when you look back at this history, you see that the way we treat this disease never really changes in response to a changing understanding of the disease itself.

[00:24:52.150] – Allan

And even when it does, it's three decades later.

[00:24:55.490] – Gary

It's three decades later. But even today, we have these wonderful new drugs, GLP-1 agonists, Receptor agonists, that are used to treat both diabetes and are considered wonder drugs for obesity. And the way the researchers think about those drugs working is purely through the insulin system because they think, Oh, these drugs reduce, they bring blood sugar under control. Therefore, they must be stimulating insulin secretion. And in cell cultures, they will indeed stimulate insulin secretion. But when you actually… They are called glucagon-like peptides for a reason, because they are very much like a glucagon, and they're the proteins in their shape and configuration, and they have an effect on glucagon as well. And what you could be seeing is a glucagon-related effect, not an insulin-related effect. But that's not how people think about it. One of the messages with the research I've done is that when you talk about all the mistakes that were made in medicine along the way, they don't tend to become trivial. They tend to become compounded with time. They pollute the science ever after because people just embrace these things as the correct way to think about it.

[00:26:19.680] – Allan

I want to jump ahead a little bit here. Now, obviously, okay, so a wonder drug, if you will, or basically a hormone, is starting to help people live a lot longer than they would lived otherwise. And so as a result, now they're actually starting to see some of the downstream effect of folks with diabetes that live a little bit longer and or maybe even the effect of insulin itself when it's injected this way. And that's heart disease, atherosclerosis, and some of the other diseases that are out there. Can you describe why there's such a huge correlation between diabetes and heart disease and the other metabolic diseases?

[00:26:57.500] – Gary

Well, again, it gets As soon as we get into it, it gets complicated. So it happened, like I said, once insulin is discovered and insulin therapy is initiated almost exactly 100 years ago, you can suddenly keep patients with diabetes a lot longer. And this alive a lot longer than otherwise. So this includes not just young kids who are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes or at the brink of death, and now you can keep them alive indefinitely. But the folks with the chronic form of the disease that associates with obesity and aging, a type 2 diabetes who wouldn't show up into the doctor until they had lost a lot of weight and were clearly suffering insulin deficiency. So now you're giving them insulin, you're keeping them alive. And then by the late 19 '20s, early 1930s, you start seeing this wave of complications comes in the medical community. So all these… And kids who might have been diagnosed at age 12 and kept alive for 20 years by insulin, which is the miracle aspect of it, are now dying in their early, late '20s, early '30s of heart disease, kidney failure, blindness. They're getting all these awful complications.

[00:28:13.110] – Gary

It's still tragic. They're still dying way too young. It's as though they're aging too quickly because they're getting these diseases that strike the rest of us in our '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s. They're getting them in their '20s and '30s. And the physicians are confronted with this now. And I should say, as this has been happening, the physicians have been liberalizing the diet evermore because they think of insulin as a miracle drug. And they think rather than tell people to restrict the carbohydrates they eat, and minimize your doses of insulin, they're saying, Why don't we let people, particularly kids, eat whatever they want and cover it with insulin? So the insulin doses get higher and higher. The drugs do a very poor job of controlling insulin, but the physicians can't. Excuse me, controlling blood sugar, but the physicians can't really measure. They can't measure blood sugar in any meaningful way, so they don't know that. And when these diabetic wave of complications washes over their patients, they don't really know what to do about it. They assume it's because their blood sugar is poorly controlled. They never think that it might be related to the insulin they're giving them as well.

[00:29:30.070] – Gary

It's hard for physicians to think that the drugs they're giving them are also creating complications. And by the time the medical community starts using randomized control trials to test drugs and diets to see what works and the long term risks and benefits. That's 1950s, 1960s. This belief system that we should let patients eat carbohydrate liberal diet. We should let them eat whatever everyone else eats. They have to count it. They have to count their carbs at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so they know how much they're eating, so they know how much insulin to take. They have to take specific doses of carbs at snacks, so they cover that insulin. And the insulin covers the carbs, but we're not going to tell them they can't eat pasta, bread, potatoes, because they're not going to listen to us anyway. So these are all assumptions that are embraced. And this diet never gets tested. And through the 1970s and onward, as a diabetes community starts doing ever larger and more rigorous tests to test their assumptions about keeping blood sugar under control by drugs. The assumptions almost invariably fail to be confirmed by the study. So they find it's just harder.

[00:30:48.990] – Gary

And no matter what they do, the complications from the disease seem to be inevitable. And they never test the idea that one of the problems is the diet, that as long as you let patients eat whatever carbohydrates they want, they are going to get complications and these long term chronic effects. And that the other problem might be the insulin and the drugs they're giving as well. And that's never really embraced. When it's tested, the tests seem to demonstrate that that's what's happening, but that's not how these physicians are thinking. So you've got a situation. In fact, there's two ways to think about treating this disease. And there were two ways to think about it back in the 1920s. One is the symptoms only appear when people eat carbohydrate-rich foods. So I'm not talking green leafy vegetables, but starches, potatoes, grains. And if they minimize consumption of those or abstain from those foods, they either won't manifest symptoms of the disease or the symptoms can be controlled with very low doses of drugs. Patients with type 1 diabetes will always need a little some insulin, but they'll need a lot less if they don't eat carbs.

[00:32:07.860] – Gary

Patients with type 2 diabetes might not need any drugs at all if they abstain from eating these foods. And then the other way to think about it is the way we did, which is you let them eat whatever they want. Although maybe you say you got to, again, rigorously count the calories, the carb calories in every meal so you know how much drugs you should be taking, and then you cover it with drugs. And we never actually… The point I'm making in this book is that when you look at these clinical trials and you look what was tested over the past 40 years, when we really started doing these tests, This is a degenerative chronic disease that requires more and more drug therapy as time goes on if you're eating a carbohydrate-rich diet. And it very likely is not, if you're not if you're abstaining from those carbs.

[00:33:02.310] – Allan

As you went through it in the book, it was one of those moments where I was like, there were doctors that got it with that minimum effective dose. Let's not give them more than they need. Let's put it together with eating That's a concept I haven't seen in medicine a lot at all. And particularly, start talking about heart disease, you start talking about other things. There really isn't enough conversation, at least in my opinion, about how food is medicine, even though that concept has been around for quite some time, it doesn't seem to be practiced as much. I saw a lot more of that in this book than I expected to see in the history. So let's say you happen to go to the doctor and they told you, Hey, Gary, your numbers are up. Your A1c is starting to hit that point. We're going to call this prediabetes. What are you going to eat from that point forward? You probably already eat that way.

[00:33:58.640] – Gary

I do already eat that way because one of the messages from all my books, and again, which is based on arguably doing more research in the literature than anyone alive up to a certain point in time.

[00:34:12.610] – Allan

I think you got the meta study down.

[00:34:16.000] – Gary

Yeah, it's a cluster of chronic diseases that associate together. And by that, I mean, they associate together in populations. They appear in populations together. They become epidemic together. And And they appear in patients. If you have one, you're much more likely to have the others. And this is obesity and diabetes and gout and heart disease, and cancer is one of them, and dementia is one of them. Basically, all the chronic diseases that are likely to shorten our lives and kill us and make our old age, our oldest age, very uncomfortable are diseases that are associated with Western diets and lifestyles. And when you look into the history of this idea and the research, And the conventional thinking is it's caused by eating too much and maybe being sedentary and maybe the fat in the diet causes heart disease and the salt in the diet causes hypertension. And so strokes, cerebrovascular disease, and maybe the red meat and the alcohol cause gout, and every disease has a different trigger. And the other hypothesis that was always out there is these are caused basically by the refining of sugar and grains. Highly processed grains and sugars. And once you live in a population where that's a staple of your diet, these diseases are going to manifest themselves, they're going to be passed on from mother to child in the womb, so they're going to get worse with each generation.

[00:35:46.740] – Gary

And it seems to be what we're suffering from today. And the dietary therapy that that hypothesis implied, and that had been in many ways, conventional thinking for 200 years, is that if you avoid these carbohydrate-rich foods, you will be relatively healthy. This isn't really food as medicine, so much as some foods are simply toxic to some ever larger proportion of the population. And if we want to be healthy, we can't eat them. The Atkins diet, beginning in the 1960s, was a carbohydrate-restricted high fat diet. The animal diet for diabetes that was used from 1797 till insulin came in was a carbohydrate-restricted high fat diet. It was considered a very effective treatment for epilepsy beginning around 1920. And there was always significant evidence in the literature that people, some people just couldn't tolerate the carbs in the diet, that for whatever reasons, probably insulin-related and glucagon-related. These foods, when they're refined and they're digested quickly, today, we call them high glycemic index carbs. Again, sugars could be particularly bad for us, that if we don't eat those, we'll be healthy. And again, if you want to keep your calories up, then you have to replace those carbohydrate-rich foods with calories.

[00:37:23.450] – Gary

And inevitably, it's mostly fat. Even sources of protein come with attached unless there's skinless chicken breasts, which I don't think anyone should ever have to eat. So, yeah, all these lines of thinking lead you to believe that we should eat, in effect, if we want to be healthy, a very low carbohydrate diet, replace those calories with healthy fats. And now you're reading something that looks a lot like keto or Atkins or carnival even. And one of the subtexts of everything I write about, it's in the diabetes book as well, is as soon as the medical organizations like the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, and National Institutes of Health, and then the US Department of Agriculture get involved. Once they start taking the conventional wisdom and turning it into dietary guidelines that we should all follow, anything that is divergent from that is treated as a fad diet or a quackery. It's dismissed as dangerous or harmful or something that people won't adhere to because we know people won't stick to a diet. And so the medical community thinks of all ways to convince people not to eat a diet, that this alternative hypothesis, which is based on the literature and the history, says it's probably the healthiest way to eat. It's… And that's how I eat.

[00:38:51.720] – Allan

Okay. The sad story of all this as you go through is they come up with the concept with insulin that you can cover up the carbohydrates, the volume of carbohydrates, and particularly sugar, that the American or the Western diet starts taking on escalates. And so we're no longer covering up 30 pounds of sugar a year, 40, 45 pounds. We're talking over 100 pounds to 150 pounds of sugar that a lot of people are eating in a year. And if you're using insulin to cover that up, we're not talking about five units here, 10 units there. We're talking in terms of a couple of hundred units here and a couple of hundred units there. So I think that sometimes when we think we have a miracle drug that allows us to do things, then everything just flips the other way, which gets me concerned about this glucagon-like peptide stuff that's coming out is that a lot of people are looking at it and saying, oh, well, that's going to help me lose 30 pounds. I'm going to do that instead of eating a diet that's going to help my body naturally get rid of body fat and eat a little bit less, maybe.

[00:40:02.190] – Allan

They're looking to something like that to cover it off, if you will. What are your thoughts about these new wonder drugs? I got chewed a little bit by a doctor that prescribes these because he's like, These are peptides. These are not drugs. These are just natural occurring things, which is probably a little true, but not something you're going to inject. Yeah, not something you're just going to inject. Once you start injecting something, I'm going to call it a drug.

[00:40:27.020] – Gary

Yeah, I think that's it. These are pretty profound variations on the naturally occurring hormones. But I have the same worries. I mean, the good news would be that because one of the effects, whether it's direct or indirect, is to so powerfully inhibit appetite, people are going to be eating a lot less of the foods that I would argue they shouldn't eat anyway. And it may be that these particularly target sweets. So one thing that when they talk about cravings going away, the things we tend to crave are sweets. So I suspect that's a kind way of saying people aren't craving desserts all the time, and maybe they're drinking less sugar, sweetened beverages. So that could balance out. And it's one of the interesting benefits. I do think that the world is full of people who, even if they eat a carnivore diet, would still have considerably more excess fat than they prefer, and that if they want to take care of that, the drugs would be beneficial. But I do worry that insulin to me, reading the insulin story in the literature was horrifying because you see how it could take 10 to 15 years before you really understand the bad things that could happen.

[00:41:46.240] – Gary

And by that time, it's too late. And I keep hoping that maybe I'm just misunderstanding the level, the kinds of clinical studies that have been done today so that somebody could convince me that I shouldn't be anxious that as millions and tens of millions of individuals embrace these drugs, we're not going to see the tidal wave of complications that we couldn't imagine. There are all kinds of other issues, like With pregnancy, for instance, if a young woman goes on the drug like Wegovy and then loses 50 pounds and gets married and then wants to have children, does she stay on the drug while she's pregnant? If she does what happens to the fetus, to the child. And if she gets off the drug before she goes pregnant, she'll be gaining weight back at a very considerable speed while she's pregnant. And we don't know what will happen to the child. And it could take 20, 30, 40, 50 years before we actually know the long term consequences of what happened in the womb. And so there are situations that I don't think we're prepared to deal with. But again, I'm hoping that I'm just naive here, that this is an area I could find the authorities who could convince me that I don't know what I'm talking about.

[00:43:06.080] – Allan

I think just the lesson that I took away from insulin here was it's not a cover. It doesn't mean that you just go full bore and you're free. And you can do what you want to do and you just take more to cover off on it. I look at this the same way and say, what lifestyle changes can you be making to support a lower weight when you get there? And that this is just a helper to get you to a point, like the guy who comes in and he's going into a coma, and that kid's going to be dead in a couple hours if they don't get that shot of insulin. So you give them the shot of insulin, and it revives them, and now you can deal with it. But in this case, again, I hope there's some lifestyle changes that come along with these things.

[00:43:51.030] – Gary

That's a good man. And again, one of the reasons I write these books is history. I'm trying to reach the physicians and the researchers to say, look, I I think if you did what I did, you would come to some of the same conclusions. If you looked at these histories and you saw that when we think about obesity, it's not an over eating problem. It's an effect of carbohydrate and tolerance problem. So if you could use these drugs to lower your weight significantly, but if you have to go off them, you will be… You probably won't gain the weight back if you don't eat these foods that caused you to gain the weight to begin with. And the drug will probably work better. But we don't actually know because these drugs are not tested on those of us who eat low carb, high fat ketogenic diets or testing on people who eat the standard American crap. So we don't even really know if they're healthy for us or as healthy or maybe more healthy. We represent… Our metabolisms run different. We burn fat for fuel. Other people burn carbohydrates for fuel. So there's a whole world of problems that comes with relying on a drug when these chronic disorders might be solvable, might be able to be put into remission with dietary changes that we can be pretty confident, but not absolutely confident, do not have those long term effects because we're eating diets that basically we evolved as a species to eat.

[00:45:22.830] – Gary

Whatever you do once you start talking about long term, 10, 20, 30, 40 years on a drug or a diet, we don't really what's going to happen.

[00:45:31.560] – Allan

We'll get back together and we'll do that podcast episode, okay?

[00:45:34.100] – Gary

With luck. I think the odds are better for you than for me.

[00:45:39.410] – Allan

We'll see. You're going to write the book anyway. Gary, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:45:51.140] – Gary

Now you're asking a journalist to give advice, and that's never a good idea. Eat the diet that makes you feel healthiest in the short run. So by that, I mean, if you suffer from a chronic disorder, which can be obesity or diabetes or heart disease, a little tougher. But let's stick with obesity diabetes, where you can actually experience the symptoms in the short term. If you can find a diet that makes those symptoms go away, which includes excess weight and high blood sugar and high blood pressure, then that's how you should eat. And in that case, you have to do your research so that you understand what the arguments are for eating this way, this eating pattern, and how to follow it. So that would be the first thing. I believe there's some foods we just shouldn't eat because they're bad for us, and that we'll get over missing them as we get healthy. The others become trivial to me after that. I mean, getting enough sleep and physical activity because I don't know if they'll make us live longer, but they tend to make people happier and emotionally balanced in the short run. So that's true.

[00:47:04.950] – Gary

My expertise is purely diet, and even there as a journalist.

[00:47:09.440] – Allan

Well, thank you. And they say that the value of history is to learn so we don't repeat it. So I'm glad you did take the time to write this book the way you did, because I do think that a lot of doctors can look back and say, okay, here's what we know, and here's what we've learned, and here's what we know we should probably should be doing regardless. And so I think it's a valuable book for anybody, including medical professionals that want to just know why we think the way we think when they really haven't seen any literature that proves what we think. So thank you for that. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your book, Rethinking Diabetes, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:47:46.640] – Gary

Well, Amazon to purchase a book. I do think it's a typical author. I think it's very much worth reading.

[00:47:54.640] – Allan

I do, too.

[00:47:55.270] – Gary

I have a website, garytaubes.com. I am I have a sub stack now with the wonderful journalist Nina Tysholtz called Unsettled Science, in which we discuss these issues of nutrition and chronic disease and the various influences in the science that perhaps shouldn't be there. And I tweet @garytaubes, although not as often as I should.

[00:48:23.240] – Allan

Well, thank you. Gary, thank you so much for being a part of 40 plus fitness.

[00:48:27.180] – Gary

Thank you, Allan.


Post Show/Recap

[00:48:29.200] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:48:30.360] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. That was a really fascinating discussion. There's so much to talk about the history of diabetes. It's just one of those things that I've always just known existed. But I didn't realize that insulin was only invented in 1920 or 1921, I think.

[00:48:44.930] – Rachel

That feels so recent.

[00:48:46.860] – Allan

They found it in the early '20s, 1920s. So it's just a little over 100 years old. That's crazy. And then because they understood what was happening, particularly with, at that point in time, type 1 diabetics, because there weren't that many type 2 diabetics. It just didn't happen as often. It was a type 1. And that's why it's called type 1. It was the first one. They like, okay, they don't have insulin. So what happens is they end up in a coma, and they bring them into the hospital in a coma. And in the past, they pretty much said they're just going to die. And so now they're like, okay, we inject them with this insulin. They didn't know how much. They didn't know anything. They was like, just- Try this.inject them. Yeah. So they injected in and some of them were recovering. And so like, oh, so they need this insulin to do the process. So now they didn't fully understand what all was going on with the process, but they could see the relationship between insulin and blood sugar. And so that's what they started working with.

[00:49:45.490] – Rachel

And it's interesting that they had some dietary protocols until they figured out of what insulin was and how it works. But in the beginning, they did have some very interesting dietary protocol.

[00:49:55.730] – Allan

Well, they did because they understood it was the sugar and not having insulin. So it was like, well, some doctors were, well, if they don't eat, then they should be fine if you don't ever eat. Don't eat. So they were. Some of them were on… They were putting… People were going on starvation diets, realized that the medical system was very different back then. So they could do experimentation on their clients with the patients without really worrying about it. They were just doing everything they could think of to solve a problem. Sharing information with other doctors. Like, I tried this with this client and it worked. This client, it didn't. So this is something to think about because it had worked. But dietary was one of the core ones because there weren't a lot. Metformin didn't exist. Other drugs didn't exist. So really, they didn't have anything. So that's all they could really do was change your behavior or change the way you eat, change your movement, change your output. And so they had done this. There was one doctor that speculated that you could just feed people fat to replace the calories. So protein and fat instead of a more balanced meal.

[00:51:02.480] – Allan

And that was working for a lot of type 1 diabetics. They were staying alive longer. They still would, at some point in time, potentially go into a coma and die because you can't change what someone's eating when they're unconscious and can't eat. And so that would happen. What was so weird, in my opinion, was that the instant we had access to this, we call it a drug, but it's basically a hormone, but a drug, since we had this thing, everybody dropped every every other protocol out there and just move on. Now, that was fine for a while, but the thing was people started living longer. And the other diseases of lifestyle that are associated with diabetes, like heart disease and kidney issues, they still came on. But now you saw them because before, the first time you maybe knew they had a problem was when they showed up in a coma, and then they died shortly thereafter. Here, they're living into their 40s and having heart disease, which compared to a normal average person, might be 10 to 20 years earlier. They were thinking, oh, the high fat diets that these folks are eating are the problem.

[00:52:12.290] – Allan

So we need to make sure they're eating a carbohydrate rich diet. They've got insulin to cover off on it. So don't worry about that. So it's this… And they're trying to solve a problem. So it's hard to look at them and say, you didn't know what you were doing. True, because they didn't know what they didn't know. But we're at a point right now where I just, other than the fact that compliance would always be an issue, it just chaps me that we don't go with medicine as a food first, lifestyle first approach.

[00:52:43.710] – Rachel

For sure. Well, towards the end of the interview, he mentioned the term dietary therapy. I feel like that's a great term because if you have a condition, especially diabetes, if there are certain foods that make that condition worse, why would you want to take them? Even though you have the insulin to cover them up, why put that fuel on the fire if you don't need it?

[00:53:04.180] – Allan

I like that term, too, because at this point, yes, it is effectively acknowledging that food is medicine. Someone said that a long, long, long time ago. So we've known that for a long time. We just ignore it most of the time because it's not cool and you can't sell that diet necessarily. Doctors can't sell it. Pharmaco companies can't sell it. What they want is like, Here's your shot. Go have at it. Do what you want to do. Here's a pill. Go have at it. That's why I wanted to talk about, even though he didn't do a lot in his book about GLP-1s, those are coming out now and they're so popular and it's like, Oh, I'm not hungry, and I lose all this weight, 15% of my body weight is gone. As long as I keep taking these shots, which are like a thousand dollars each, I do that once a week. Chepers. Yeah. So think about that's okay. That's a new car every year.

[00:53:57.810] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh.

[00:53:59.320] – Allan

You know? Yeah. And you're just doing that so that you can maintain a lifestyle that's not what it should be. And so that's where I really struggle with it. So I think you calling it a therapy is going to help some people probably turn on their brain. But then also the problem is, well, then after I'm cured, I stop the therapy, and that could fundamentally backfire as well. So yes, it's life-saving, and it's incredible that insulin was found and has saved lots of lives, extended lives a lot longer than they would have. But if you don't change your lifestyle, then all you've really done is just delayed it and changed the way you're going to die, what you may die of. So heart disease, kidney disease, gangrene, Alzheimer's, all of that. And you're not going to have it when most people would have it. So you're not like in your '70s or '80s or '90s dealing with this stuff. You're dealing with it in your '40s, '50s, and '60s. Too early. Yeah, way too early. So the instant you walk in and the doctor says your A1c is a little high, his next words that are going to come out of his mouth is, I'm not really worried about that.

[00:55:12.590] – Rachel

Right.

[00:55:13.380] – Allan

And the reason is, it's Because of all the patients that come in his office, the vast majority are. I read a survey this week, thing that said by 2030, now that date just sounds hugely far away, but it's seven years. I mean, it's not that far away anymore. Yeah, exactly. He'll be alive in 2030. I hope. But by that point in time, half of Americans will be obese.

[00:55:40.230] – Rachel

That's crazy.

[00:55:42.350] – Allan

Half of us.

[00:55:43.460] – Rachel

That's crazy.

[00:55:44.050] – Allan

Will be obese.

[00:55:45.990] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh.

[00:55:46.960] – Allan

At the current rate we're going. So if you're not going to change your lifestyle, if the doctor tells you, don't worry about it, you're close, you're borderline, it's time for you to implement dietary

[00:56:00.700] – Rachel

Well, that's the needle, okay?

[00:56:03.520] – Rachel

That's the needle. If your doctor says that you're looking at prediabetes, then you can either let that needle go forward straight into diabetes, or you can stop it there and go backwards and reclaim your health through all of the interventions that we talk about all the time. Better diet and exercise.

[00:56:21.180] – Allan

The cool thing about this is we're at a point in time with what they know about genetics and what they're learning and getting some of the judgment out of where things like AI will just go out there and say, if this, then that. And they'll do it at such a crazy level of what your gene expression is at any given point in time. Have these treatments that could extend life not just an extra few years, but like decades and decades. Sure. There's a theory that at some point we could basically almost become immortal. Anyone would want that, but basically that the medical establishment will get ahead of the curve. And with every year, they'll be able to add more than a year of life. So you start thinking about the ability of medical science to add to and extend life. The only reason that it's not going up drastically right now is because of the way we're living our lives with lifestyle things. So if we fixed our lifestyle, we would live much, much longer than our parents. Our kids will live a lot, lot longer than us.

[00:57:27.990] – Rachel

Longer is great, but I want to put in high quality. I don't want to just sit on the couch for decades. I want to be active and moving and being capable of living a high quality of life. I think with the metformin, which is often prescribed for prediabetics as well as insulin, when you get to that point of diabetes, if you're looking at type 2 and not born with type 1. But those are just the tools. That's not the answer. That is one thing that can help you live a healthier life. But I think we often We look at that as the answer, the end, the one thing to do to manage this illness. But it's not. We really need to go back, and like we say every week, Allan, get into an exercise program and eat way better foods to manage and be healthy.

[00:58:17.340] – Allan

And that's why there was the doctor, because so many people have high cholesterol, his solution was, just like we did with fluoride for dental cavities, was to put it in the water, put statins in the water.

[00:58:31.450] – Rachel

Oh, oh.

[00:58:34.110] – Allan

Okay. No, no. Because, again, they do not believe that you can do this. And what I can say is, even just the keto diet or people eating a lot more whole food. That is a fraction of the total way that people eat. But that's getting bigger every year. The number of people who try keto and are successful with it gets bigger every year. And so there is success here, but you have to make that choice. You have to make that effort to make that lifestyle change, or it won't happen.

[00:59:06.510] – Rachel

Yeah, that's absolutely it. Bottom line.

[00:59:09.170] – Allan

Yeah. All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:59:11.560] – Rachel

Awesome. Take care, Allan.

[00:59:13.050] – Allan

You, too. Bye.

[00:59:13.940] – Rachel

Thanks. Bye, bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

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January 30, 2024

Building the best you – part 6 of 6

Apple Google Spotify Overcast Youtube

On episode 627 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we have the sixth part a 6 episode series on Building the Best You. This episode is recorded to stand alone, however you’ll get more value if you listen to the previous episodes (622, 623, 624, 625 & 626) first.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text


Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Eliza Lamb– John Dachauer– Super Anonomous
– Ken McQuade– Leigh Tanner– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

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January 23, 2024

Building the best you – part 5 of 6

Apple Google Spotify Overcast Youtube

On episode 626 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we have the fifth part a 6 episode series on Building the Best You. This episode is recorded to stand alone, however you’ll get more value if you listen to the previous episodes (622, 623, 624, & 625) first.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text


Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Eliza Lamb– John Dachauer– Super Anonomous
– Ken McQuade– Leigh Tanner– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

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