Your brain knows more than you think with Dr. Neils Birbaumer

Allan (0:49): Our guest today is the author of Your Brain Knows More Than You Think. He works with some of the most amazing people in the world from the perspective of understanding the brain and how it’s all wired together. Very interesting conversation. He has done a lot to help a lot of people, albeit some of his methods have been a little bit controversial and maybe a little bit extreme. But a very, very interesting conversation. I know you’re going to enjoy learning a lot about how your brain works today. With no further ado, here’s Niels Birbaumer.

Allan (1:20): Dr. Birbaumer, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness. How are you?

Dr. Birbaumer (1:27): Perfect.

Allan (1:29): Your book, Your Brain Knows More Than You Think, was not the book I thought I was going to read when I started reading it. Neuroplasticity is a topic that I’m very fascinated by, because as we get older we kind of feel like maybe we should decline a little bit, maybe we should let our brains go a little bit. But we also know if we work our brains, it’s like a muscle and it should get stronger.

Dr. Birbaumer (2:01): True. But even if it gets weaker with age, it gets strong in other areas.

Allan (2:07): Yes, and that’s what I really took from your book, that our brain is actually a very, very interesting organ in what it can do to change us. What I took from the book was, we’re not fixed. I think we all like to think we’re fixed, but we’re not fixed.

Dr. Birbaumer (2:28): Exactly.

Allan (2:29): We can change.

Dr. Birbaumer (2:30): Right, at any time in any direction.

Allan (2:35): And that’s what was fascinating about the book, was the stories and the things that you put together to say that. I think it came down to this concept of what you call “desired effect”. It’s the first time I’ve really ever heard someone put it that way, to say we all want something. Our brain, our bodies, our minds, our being wants something, and as long as we’re getting that, we will keep doing the things that help us get that. And if we’re not getting that, then we have to change. So, could you get into the concept of what “desired effect” means to our brain and why that drives our behavior so strongly?

Dr. Birbaumer (3:24): There is a circuit in the brain which is extremely sensitive to reward – any type of reward. Could be internal, thought reward, image reward, but mostly it’s external reward. That circuit drives us forward, and it reactivates all the time. It constantly asks, “Is this wish fulfilled? Where should I go? Is there a chance that I get this?” It’s what we call the wanting, the will system. That system usually is extremely active during the whole life, but I described in the book several conditions, like complete paralysis, diverse illnesses, meditation, diet, experiences, where that circuit is stopped or degenerates, or is eliminated, or the muscles are completely paralyzed so the brain learns that it cannot will anything because nothing of its wishes would be fulfilled. And even then, if all your possibilities which you imagined during your life are completely blocked forever, the brain adapts, and at the end of that adaptation process, these people – I’m talking about completely paralyzed people as an example, but there are many others – these people have a high quality of life, meaning that even if the central brain circuit of wishful thinking, which drives us forward, is degenerating or blocked, or the external world does not allow the fulfillment of our desires – even then the brain adapts and you can have a high quality of life in such a situation. That’s one of the topics.

Allan (5:20): The locked-in syndrome was something I had never heard of before, so it was really fascinating to think about a situation where this individual has zero control over anything around them, and now their brain is adapting to try to find a way, any way, to affect change in their lives. And most of us, we have so much capacity for change in our lives; we just choose not to.

Dr. Birbaumer (5:54): Right, because we are driven by the environment, usually.

Allan (5:58): We’re driven by the environment, and again, that’s this whole concept of neuroplasticity and saying, “What are the things we want?” Because when we say “desired effect”, I think everyone would want to eat healthy, to exercise, to do the things we know we should be doing for our health. But our brain has different answers for us than what we might want. So it’s desired effect, but the brain has its own kind of desire.

Dr. Birbaumer (6:30): The desires and most of the plastic changes the brain does are not conscious. That’s why you say, “It’s the brain that does different things than I want.” But the brain is you; you are your brain. So the brain is you, but the brain has the body which is hanging on to this brain, and most of these processes of wishful thinking and fulfillment and everything you do in your life – 90% of these processes are not conscious. That’s why you think it’s not you, because the brain then decides… Assuming you get paralyzed for some reason or another. You’re paralyzed, and then the brain doesn’t need your conscious. You think, “This is a catastrophe in my life. It’s terrible. It’s the end of my life.” But meanwhile, the brain adapts to the loss of this full circuit and develops a new strategy to quiet down different areas of the brain. And at the end you will experience the end result of that plastic process. But don’t think that you are different from your brain. You are your brain, but your brain often does things which you don’t know of, and it does it very often on a long-term basis, and you will not know of that adaptation process until the end, when it becomes conscious. That could last a few days, and few seconds, but it could also last several years. My patients at the beginning say, “Oh well, I will kill myself. I cannot live in such a condition.” And after a year of this adaptation process, they say, “Now I’m really happy. I’m completely paralyzed, I’m on artificial respiration and feeding. I can do nothing, but I feel very good.” And that is an end result of such an adaptation process.

Allan (8:34): I think it’s really hard for us to accept that we can change that much.

Dr. Birbaumer (8:38): Yes, it is difficult. But on the other hand, it’s the only thing that should give us hope to get out of misery.

Allan (8:47): Yes. Now, you took that conversation in the book and you went into changing personality. This was an area where I thought you were going to lose me, because like everybody else, and as you mentioned in the book, I think my personality was pretty much set. I was not raised by my father, so when I met my father I was actually very, very surprised by how much I was like him. You get into the book about twins that had been separated at birth, and I’m looking at it from a different father / son and some of the aspects of my personality that are very similar to his. Can you talk about how our brains create personality and what that actually means with regards to neuroplasticity?

Dr. Birbaumer (9:41): First of all, all the circuits in the brain that create what we call “personality” are circuits which in principle are plastic; of course they’re created by the genetic upbringing. So when you are similar to your father, that’s not surprising. There was an excellent study in the U.S. in the ‘60s or ‘70s, where monozygotic and dizygotic twins who were raised apart for more than 20 years were brought together in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and they all stuck together. It was the last time that this happened in history, because now this type of twins cannot be separated anymore. In that study the main result was of course if the environment in which people live, and these separated twins, like you from your father – if the environment was roughly similar, they developed similar. If the environment was completely different, they developed differently. The main genetic factor, which was similar in both, even if they were separated, was a thing which is a personality factor, but we usually don’t ascribe to personality. It was political opinion. So, the genetic root of what we call “political opinion” is much, much higher than all the other similarities you have. That means the similarities with your father are mainly similarities of course in appearance, but what you call your personality, you are probably completely different from your father, except that your political opinion probably is the same.

But you know that political opinions and political ideas can be easily learned and re-learned, and the brain under different environmental circumstances can completely change these opinions. So, here we have the most plastic attitude which we think in life, which is political opinion, has the strongest genetic basis. At the same time it’s a personality characteristic, which can be very easily changed. And from that knowledge, I argue that the brain circuits that run these genetically determined personality traits can be easily changed by certainly strongly environmental change. If your father lived in the U.S. and you were raised in the U.S., even separated from your father, the chance that you become different is very low.

Allan (12:21): That’s the whole point – actually my brothers and sisters on the other side were raised different but still in the same country, so still with some of the same aspects, so very much politically aligned with the way we think. Like I said, it was very interesting to understand how my personality can be shaped by my environment, but that’s actually a good thing, because that means that I can by changing my environment, change my personality.

Dr. Birbaumer (12:55): Of course, completely.

Allan (12:57): So if I happen to be an overeater or someone who’s dealing with a problem, make some changes to my environment. You’ve done some interesting experiments, I’ll just put that out there. You’ve been out there on an edge with the studies that you’ve been doing, so you’ve made some friends and you’ve made some enemies, I think, is what I’ve come to understand from the book. You’ve used this thing called “shock compliance experiments”, and they don’t sound pleasant, but they get really good results. Could you talk about the change of environment or the change of desired effect to effectively almost change personality?

Dr. Birbaumer (13:40): I have some examples from my clinical work here in the book, which show how plastic the brain is. But the methods to change these circuits in the brain, if they are fixed over a long learning process, are extreme, and some of them are not allowed anymore. I’ll give the example which I also gave in the book, I think, but I don’t remember. You have a person who is washing themselves all day long because they’re afraid of getting an infectious disease. So these people clean themselves all the time, so they have an attitude and fear of getting contaminated by bacteria or viruses, and they had this fear all their life. What are we doing with these people? For example, we put them in Hyde Park – at that time I lived in London – we put them in Hyde Park, we picked up the sh*t of dogs, they had to put the sh*t of the dogs in their face and on their body, and they were not allowed to wash themselves for a week. And in order to avoid that they wash themselves in between, we changed them to the therapist, so even at night, they could not leave the therapist. We just blocked them from washing themselves. After a week of that treatment, they never, ever had a tendency to wash themselves immediately, and they never, ever developed a fear of contamination of bacteria.

This type of treatment, which was at that time called the “Trojan treatment” is so extreme that it changed the personality of these people for a lifetime, which is now not allowed anymore. If I would do that these days in the U.S. or in Europe, I will end up in prison as an academic for quite some time. But this is the only way to treat these things. Now what are they doing? They implant electrodes in the brain and they can train a brain area which is responsible for this type of personality. Because there are multiple brain areas, you would have to insert many, many, many electrodes in many brain areas to stimulate those brain areas and to treat the disease, which is life threatening. Of course I’m in favor of changing the brain by these types of stimulation, but this is much more dangerous than putting sh*t on the face of these people for a week and end up with the same result. You see the absurdity of the argument.

Allan (16:26): I do. But again, it was interesting to understand what you were doing was effectively putting them into the worst of their fears. You were putting them in the worst of their place and saying, “If things were the worst, what’s the outcome?” And the brain actually adapts and realizes and says, “I survived, so it’s not as bad as I thought.”

Dr. Birbaumer (16:55): It is important that this is not torture. Torture is if somebody has such an experience under forced circumstances, but in these situations there are no forced circumstances. In this case, the brain knows, “There’s no force here. I agreed to do this, I do it. But if I’m in there, then I’m forced and they’ll continue forever to treat me.” And they may not get well, because if I would’ve let these people wash themselves in between, they would have a tremendous relapse and would be a terrible result. Yes, they got the point.

Allan (17:42): Now, the cool part of this though is, from that we now move on to these therapies that are actually some of the things we’re dealing with today. My grandmother had a stroke, and it slightly bothered I think it was the left side of her body, which made it difficult for her to do certain things. Now, she wasn’t as bad off as other people, because some people will go through stroke and lose complete access to half of their body. Now, you’ve used some of your learnings, predominantly through the electric capacity of our brain, to re-teach us how to move our body when otherwise there is no way for us to make that connection. Can you talk about BMI as a strategy for dealing with stroke?

Dr. Birbaumer (18:36): I’m not claiming that I have a miracle cure for chronic stroke. I just follow the data, and the data of our studies and the replicated show that the best way in people who have a very severe chronic… Go back to your grandmother – if your grandmother’s hand is completely paralyzed on the left side, so far there was no way to get this hand functional, in the sense that she could grab a glass, that she could drink, she could walk on a stair without getting a lot of help, and so forth. Now, with BMI this can be done. That doesn’t mean that these people at the end are completely healthy. They still have some problems, but they’re much less. So, the only thing we do here which is different from all the previous treatments, is that we ask the brain to get immediate feedback off the success of the paralyzed finger, arm or whatever is paralyzed. So, the patient normally, in real life, wants to move the hand. So the brain says, “Move the hand.” And the hand is not moving, because the connection between the command, which is in the brain, and the hand is interrupted by the bleeding of the stroke. So the only thing we do, we just reconnect the brain with the hand.

So we build a prosthetic device. We put a prosthetic device on the hand and we put an electrode on the brain or in the brain – it doesn’t matter where you put it – where the command is created. So the patient thinks, “I want to move my hand”, and in that moment the patient thinks, there’s electric activity in the brain. That electric activity will then transfer to the prosthetic device or directly to the hand, and the hand is moving. So the interruption is between the command in the brain and the hand. We then have transferred the command across the lesion, across the interruption, and that gives the brain the experience, “A-ha!” The brain learns that way, “If I have a command, it’s followed by a consequence.” And by that the circuit between the command in the brain and the periphery which executes the command, is reactivated and restores itself. We have to do this thousands and thousands and thousands of times with the electrodes on your head or in your head, and after a while, other brain areas take over. They take the command from the top of the head and they bring the command back to the periphery. So it’s a very simple trick, which in that case of course technology does that. You have to have the electric brain signal of the command and the technology then, which is wireless, brings the electric activity of the brain back to the hand. That’s the whole trick.

Allan (21:52): I think that’s just fascinating, and it really speaks to the capacity of our brains to deal with problems. If we give them the opportunity, you see the solution.

Dr. Birbaumer (22:06): For some of these things you need technology. This was clear to many doctors for many years that it has to be that way, but they didn’t have the technology to grab the command in the brain and then transfer the command to an external device. The new brain amplifiers and brain technology, we can easily do this fairly cheap with wireless devices. So, it’s a technological advancements. The principles are known since people lived; it’s nothing new.

Allan (22:37): Yeah. Now, stroke is a big one because it is a killer and it is something that really puts a lot of people down. But more and more we’re facing Alzheimer’s. We’re living a little longer, which is one reason that people are saying we’re dealing with Alzheimer’s more, but I think there’s also some dietary issues and some other things that are going on that are causing it. If not an epidemic, it’s still much more prevalent today than it ever was. You’ve actually used similar technology to help Alzheimer’s patients deal with some of the memory loss and some of the issues they’re dealing with.

Dr. Birbaumer (23:14): I’m not saying that we can treat Alzheimer’s. There is no treatment available for the causes of the disease. The only thing we claim, and we showed it in some experiments, that even in the advanced cases, when patients don’t know their own name, they don’t know the name of their family members, and they seem to be completely distant from everything – even then, if we get the activity of the emotional areas deep down in the brain, we see that they recognize in an unconscious manner, but emotionally – they recognize, for example, the difference between a positive emotion to a family member and a foreigner. Then we take out this information, we put an electrode in those brain areas or we calculate mathematically the activity of the brain areas, and then we know when the patient recognizes something and remembers emotionally something. You cannot remember it consciously because the conscious memory is destroyed by the disease. But he knows that this is something familiar, and then we can discriminate between a positive emotion and a negative emotion. And for the personnel who treats those patients this is very important, because right now they don’t know when the patient is in a positive mood, what does he want, what is necessary, does he have a negative emotion? What should I do in that situation? Is he aggressive? And by detecting the activity in these emotional areas, we can tell the family members and the caretakes what to do in that situation. So that helps. It’s not changing the treatment, but helps in having everybody – patient, and the family, and the environment, and the caretaker – a better quality of life. It’s not helping the disease, but it’s helping the situation.

Allan (25:18): I think that’s really the positive message of this whole thing. You’re touching on some very important aspects of when you get down to those emotional centers, those are going to drive more of who you are than you ever wrapped your mind around before, because when you get to emotion, that supports your desired effect, that supports what you need to go forward.

Dr. Birbaumer (25:45): And what you want.

Allan (25:47): So, the more emotional you can make the things that you want in your life, the more they matter to you, the more likely you are to accomplish those things.

Dr. Birbaumer (25:58): Yes. The circuits that we’re talking about, these circuits of will, the circuits that drive us forward – all these circuits anatomically are identical with the emotional circuits, and they’re not connected very strongly with the cognitive conscious circuits. Of course they are connected with them, because all these wishes and desires at least come to that circuit. That’s not new; we know this since mankind exists. If you go down in antiquity and you go back for thousands of years, this was always known. The only difference between those times and now is that now we have the chance to make these processes, which are of course deep down in the brain, to make them visible, and we can modify them directly, and we can change them directly. And we see in the development of mankind these very old circuits, which everybody saw unchangeable, like the one you were talking – personality circuits – now we know that these circuits are extremely plastic also, like the rest of the brain. That’s the surprise I want to transfer to the reader of that book.

Allan (27:18): Yes. So the book is called Your Brain Knows More Than You Think: The New Frontiers of Neuroplasticity.

Dr. Birbaumer (27:23): Exactly. That’s what it meant.

Allan (27:27): It’s a wonderful, interesting read. Some of the experiments you have done are very, very interesting. So, it was a very good book, a very interesting read, and it taught me that I have capacity within my brain that I never actually understood. But it comes back to the reality of what I’ve always kind of known – that if I really, really need something, my brain is going to help me get there. So, very, very positive.

Dr. Birbaumer (27:54): Yes, you don’t need it now. If you don’t need it now, it’s okay.

Allan (28:00): But when I need it, it’s going to be there. Thank you.

Dr. Birbaumer (28:07): I appreciate it.

Allan (28:08): If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, where would you like for me to send them?

Dr. Birbaumer (28:12): You could put my email in the book, or whatever, in your…

Allan (28:20): I can send them to Amazon to buy the book, I can send them to your website, I can send them to an email. Just let me know.

Dr. Birbaumer (28:27): Sure. You can.

Allan (28:30): Doctor, thank you so much for being a part of the 40+ Fitness podcast.

Dr. Birbaumer (28:34): Thank you very much.

Allan (28:36): I really appreciate having this conversation.

Dr. Birbaumer (28:37): Take care, Allan.

Allan (28:38): You too.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Very fascinating man, very fascinating career, and I learned a lot from him. I hope you did too. And if you did, if you enjoyed this episode, would you please leave us a rating and review? It means the world to me. You can do that through the app that you’re listening on right now, or you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Review, and that’ll take you directly to iTunes, where you can leave a rating and review for the podcast there. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d subscribe as well, so you don’t miss any episodes. I am looking to launch a couple extra bonus episodes in October, so be on the lookout for those. I don’t want you to miss any of those, so please do subscribe. You can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Review to leave a rating review for the podcast, or just through the app that you’re listening on right now. There’s probably a review button pretty close to the top, somewhere around there. Just click that button, leave us a rating and review. It helps other people find the podcast and helps us get this information out to more people. So, I really do appreciate you and I really would appreciate a rating and review.

I spent last week in Belize with my wife. We are actually trying to look for a place where we might do our active retirement. I’ll continue to do the podcast, I’ll continue to do the training and whatnot, but we are looking to downscale our lives, reduce our stress and effectively go into an active retirement, and we’re looking at Latin America as a location for that. So, took a trip down there, really enjoyed it. Got eaten up by mosquitoes, so hoping I’m not going to get malaria or Zika or something like that. But it was a fun trip otherwise, and really enjoyed the time down there and liked the place. So, hopefully we’ll have settled on something soon, but right now we’re just in that looking and searching mode. But that was kind of fun.

And then the book is currently off with the editor. I’m working through some of the marketing side of things with the book and I’ll be working with the layout team fairly soon here. That’s where I am right now, but I would really love to have you as a part of my launch team. With the launch team, there are some bonuses, some things you’ll get as we get closer to the launch. You also get a weekly update from me that will have a lot more information about the book, about what’s going on than what you might be getting on the podcast here, and a lot more timely. So, if you want to be a part of the launch team, and I really would appreciate having you there, go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com. Again, that’s WellnessRoadmapBook.com. On that page you’ll find a sign-up form to join the launch team. You’re not going to get inundated with stuff; this is just a way for me to keep you in touch with what’s going on, have you a part of the launch team so as we start looking at booking events and doing different things related to the book, you’ll be a big part of it. I really do want to have you on the team, so please go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com and be a part of The Wellness Roadmap launch team. Thank you.

 

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How’s it hanging with Dr Neil Baum

On episode 335 of the 40+ Fitness podcast, we meet Dr. Neil Baum and discuss his book, How’s It Hanging?: Expert Answers to the Questions Men Don’t Always Ask.

Allan (0:49): Our guest today is a professor of Clinical Urology at Tulane Medical School. He has written several books and many long-running columns for American Medical News and Urology Times, and more than 250 peer-reviewed articles on various urologic topics. He is Dr. Neil Baum. Dr. Baum, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Dr. Baum (1:11): Good morning, Allan. Thank you for the invitation. I look forward to our discussion.

Allan (1:17): Absolutely. Now the book that you have here – I have a copy of it; I really enjoyed it – is called How’s It Hanging?, which is an apropos title. We’re going to talk a lot about men’s health, but I want to be clear because I do this when I talk about women in menopause and I’ve had a few experts on that. We’re talking about men’s health, but for anyone who has a man in their life, this is an episode worth listening to, because you’re going to learn a little bit and it’ll help you have the right conversations with him so he knows what’s going on. I just want to put that out there first because I think a lot of people will hear this is a men’s topic and think they can tune out. And the reality is, our health and the health of the people around us is really, really important, and this book can be a great resource for the men in your lives, if you don’t happen to be a man. Before we get into it, as I got into the book, one of the things that was really good about it was how you very carefully went through. Some of this is really complex medical information, but you’ve taken it down to, “Let’s just have a conversation, guys. Here are what the basics are.” Pretty scientific, pretty difficult, and really kind of dumb it down for the rest of us, for a lack of a better word.

Dr. Baum (2:25): That was very much intended, that I didn’t want to talk in medical language and be high-brow about it, but I wanted to make it something that everyone could understand, and then take that information, digest it and become more knowledgeable when they go and speak to their physician, so the patient, or the man, and the doctor are on the same page. That was what was intended.

Allan (2:55): I think that’s so important because it used to be a situation where the doctor said, “This is what you should do.” I think the medical practice is that people now are being given decisions, opportunities to choose different paths of how we deal with different medical things. Having a basis of understanding where you can go in and have that conversation with your doctor is really, really important because the doctor won’t necessarily tell you, “This is the treatment you’re going to do.” In many cases, they’re going to give you these different treatments with all the pros and cons, and then you personally have to make the decision that’s right for you.

Dr. Baum (3:38): This has been the shift in thinking in the last four decades of health care. In the past, the doctor had all the knowledge and the patient was at the mercy of the doctor to tell him or her what advice or what they needed to do. In 2018 any patient has as much information as the doctor has. Consequently, the patient can be in the driver’s seat and it can be shared decision making. I think that’s a much better way to have a doctor-patient relationship, when they’re a team working together to help the man or the woman achieve optimal health.

Allan (4:27): That’s why this book is so valuable, because this is going to give you the information so that you can be a valuable team member in your own decisions, so you’re not just going at this saying, “Okay, the doctor says this.” This book will actually give you an understanding of why the doctor’s saying what they’re saying, and as things continue to advance, this is a good primer for you to basically be in the driver’s seat as you’re going through making those decisions. I wanted to shift the conversation, because as you go through the book, you talk about various things that men may or can deal with, particularly as we’re getting older. One of those that I think strikes home for a lot of people is the prostate cancer. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on with prostate cancer, why it could be a big problem for us, and what we can do to know whether we have a problem or not?

Dr. Baum (5:14): Can I begin by telling the audience what is the prostate gland? Is that okay to start?

Allan (5:19): Sure, absolutely.

Dr. Baum (5:21): The prostate gland is unique to men; we’re the only ones that have it. It’s a small, walnut-size organ. It’s located at the base of the bladder and it surrounds the tube called the urethra that goes through the man’s penis. It is that gland that secretes fluid that nourishes sperm when a man is in his reproductive years. So, when a man is younger, it’s a gland of enjoyment and pleasure. However, as men age, for reasons not entirely known, the prostate gland grows. And when it grows, it compresses that tube, the urethra, making urination difficult. Most of the time when that prostate gland grows and compresses that tube, it’s benign and it can be treated usually with medication. However, for reasons not entirely known, sometimes the gland grows and develops a malignancy in the prostate gland that can spread locally to other organs in the pelvis, and it can spread to distant sites like bones and liver. These are examples of what we call “spreading” or “metastasis”. 250,000 men every year develop prostate cancer. That’s new cases every year. It usually begins around age 50 to 55, and then it gets more common as men age. By the time a man is 80, most men will have prostate cancer. However, in an older man it is usually not a major problem, and most men die with prostate cancer, not from it. However, if it develops in a younger man, 50-55, in his middle age, then it can be very problematic, and then it requires aggressive treatment. We’re not going to talk about treatment today, but I want to point out that about 35,000 men every year die from prostate cancer. Most of those deaths don’t need to occur, because if a man gets a diagnosis early, when the disease is confined to the prostate gland and it’s slow-growing, it can be cured. Have I explained everything so far?

Allan (8:25): Yeah. One of the interesting things that I got out of the book was, this is not something where you’re going to have really any outward symptoms that you have a cancer. Some cancers, you can kind of sense that there’s a problem early on, but this is one that it can get all the way to the point where it’s spreading and you may not even know that you have a problem.

Dr. Baum (8:47): If there’s one thing I want to leave this program with, it’s that comment – that early prostate cancer has NO symptoms. It does not affect the urethra, it does not affect urination. It may have no symptoms, and that’s why men over the age of 50 need to talk to their doctor about getting screened for prostate cancer. That requires an annual blood test called PSA – Prostate-Specific Antigen. That’s a very simple blood test; the result is available in 24-48 hours. And they have to have a digital rectal exam, and that’s where the doctor inserts his finger into the rectum and feels the prostate gland because it sits right on top of the rectum. Now, what’s the doctor looking for? If I can ask you, Allan, and the audience – if you make a fist and you feel the soft part at the base of your thumb, that’s what the prostate gland normally feels like – kind of rubbery, movable, and soft. Move your finger to the top of the knuckle. Have you done that, Allan? I’m kind of watching you.

Allan (10:20): Yes. I’m here, I’m doing it.

Dr. Baum (10:23): Alright. If it feels like the top of the knuckle – that’s a nodule, and that’s suspicious and it needs to be evaluated. Now, there are certain men who are at a higher risk of prostate cancer. Those are African-American men, and any man who has a brother, uncle, cousin, father – a blood relative who has prostate cancer. Those men are at risk for prostate cancer, and they need to start being tested with that blood test and the digital rectal examination around age 40 to 45. If it is a man with no family history, not African-American, he can begin testing at age 50. And then I recommend at age 70 they stop getting tested. If you have prostate cancer at age 70-75, it’s a very slow-growing cancer, it’s not going to cause a significant problem, and it does not require treatment. But every man should have a discussion, have this communication with his doctor and decide should he agree to a screening or testing program, because if you wait until there are symptoms, like you said a few minutes ago – those cases where it produces symptoms, it’s going to be too late. Then it has spread to other organs in the pelvis, to the bladder, blocked the kidney and spread to bones and to the liver. Don’t wait for prostate cancer to develop symptoms before starting to proceed on a screening or treatment program.

Allan (12:34): I think “cancer” is one of those words for a lot of people, I know for myself, it’s just a scary word, because it seems like your body is going haywire and there are things that you can or can’t do about it, but there’s not a good cancer out there. But sometimes we go out and get these screens, and I understand we can get a positive PSA. That doesn’t mean we have cancer. It’s a marker that we then need to do additional diagnosis on, so I don’t want a person to go out and get their PSA tested, have an elevated PSA and freak out, because two things: One, you said it’s very slow-growing, and there are treatment options.

Dr. Baum (13:09): And also the majority of mild elevation of PSA in men is usually, most frequently not due to prostate cancer. It’s due to inflammation of the prostate, infection called “prostatitis” – easily treated with antibiotics, or it is due to that growth of the prostate gland that most men have after the age of 50. So it is really the trend of the PSA. The normal range is 0 to 4. If you have a PSA that is 3, that’s not alarming. The next year the prostate gland grows a little bit; it’s a little larger and the PSA is 3.5 – really not that alarming. Then if all of a sudden, four or five years later, the PSA is 6 or 7 – that becomes an issue. It’s the trend in the PSA. That’s why it’s good to get a baseline PSA. There are men I see who have a PSA less than 1.0. I don’t want to bog us down in numbers in this program, but they have a normal examination of a PSA less than 1. They can come back every two to three years for a test, if the PSA is that low. But if the PSA is in the 3 to 4 range, they probably ought to come back annually.

Allan (14:43): Okay. Now, another cancer that I think scares a lot of men, because now we’re getting close to home, is testicular cancer. Can you go through the same exercise we just did with prostate cancer, talk about what this is, how we would potentially know that we have it?

Dr. Baum (15:00): The testicle is the organ that is located in the scrotum; there’s one on each side. Most men have two testicles, and the testicles have two functions. One – production of sperm, which is necessary to fertilize an egg and start the reproductive cycle. And the second is, the testicle is responsible for the male hormone, the testosterone, that is responsible for muscle mass, it’s responsible for libido or sex drive, it is helpful for erections, bone mass, wellbeing, controlling the red blood cell production from bones. It is a very important hormone that begins when a boy is in adolescence. Around the age of 12 to 14 a young boy develops pubic hair, hair underneath his arms, and by 16 he starts to grow a beard. That’s all due to testosterone; that’s the male hormone. The counterpart in a woman is called estrogen, and in a man it is testosterone. The testosterone unfortunately peaks around age 22 to 25. Around age 25, the testosterone slightly decreases about one percent a year. So a 25-year-old man, very sexually active and functional, and has good muscle mass – he’s not going to notice that one percent change at age 26. He won’t notice it at age 30. But by the time he reaches age 50 to 55 and his testosterone has gone down 10 to 15 percent, he may become symptomatic.

The symptoms of low testosterone are decrease in libido, a lethargy or a lack of energy, the erections are not as good or as strong as they were when the testosterone was normal. They may notice a decrease in muscle mass and strength. One of the common symptoms that’s often overlooked as a cause of low testosterone is falling asleep after meals. A man usually will report that he just runs out of gas at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. He has his dinner meal, and then he’s sitting in a chair watching TV and falls asleep. Often times that symptom is due to low testosterone. Also, I want to point out that testosterone increases the risk of obesity, it increases the risk of diabetes, and it also increases the risk of depression. This is a condition that is very common after the age of 50 to 55 in almost all men, because the normal aging process results in a decrease in testosterone one percent a year. It becomes symptomatic at age 50 to 55. That’s a beginning introduction, and let me turn it back to you and see what questions you have, and then I’ll go on and talk about the treatment, Allan.

Allan (18:50): Okay. Obviously we need our testis to make sure that we’re keeping the tee that our body can produce. And then here we are faced with the potential that we could get cancer. How are we going to recognize that we have a cancer, that we may have a problem there, so that we can know that we need to have a conversation? I’ll go to my doctor and they’ll ask me basic health questions about how I feel, but they’ve never specifically tested me to say, “You might have this problem.” So, I want to take it upon myself to understand what I need to do to, not self-diagnose, but to recognize there’s a problem.

Dr. Baum (19:28): I want to answer that question, and I want to backtrack, because I do want to talk about testicular cancer, but those are two entirely different conditions, because one part of the testicle makes sperm; another part of the testicle – different cells – make testosterone. So let’s talk about the two different conditions. What you have to do regarding testosterone – you say, “I’m in my early 50s and just not feeling quite as peppy as I used to. I’m having difficulty holding my erection. My interest in sexual intimacy has diminished.” You say to your doctor, “Would you please order a testosterone level on me?” I would request it for a middle age man who has symptoms. Now, if you don’t have any symptoms, you don’t screen for testosterone deficiency. If a man is sexually active, strong, energetic, no problem with the muscle mass or energy, not irritable or depressed – you don’t need to get a testosterone. It’s fine; that’s not a problem. But if you’re starting to feel the symptoms of decreased energy and decreased sex drive, falling asleep after meals – you need to ask the doctor for a testosterone level.

Shift gears now for a second. Let’s talk about testicle cancer. Testicle cancer is the most common cancer in men between the ages of 20 and 40. Again, like prostate cancer, early testicle cancer has no symptoms. Now, here’s the suggestion that I hope men get from this webinar. I want to mention again, there are no symptoms for early prostate cancer. There are no symptoms for early testicle cancer. Women are instructed every month, after their period, to do a breast self-examination. The health care profession is deficient in not instructing men between the ages of 20 and 40 to do a testicle self-exam every month. When they’re in the shower and the scrotum is relaxed, they need to feel their testicle and examine it. It feels very smooth and there are no lumps and bumps in the testicle. If they feel that nodule, like I showed you when you make a fist on the top of your knuckle – if you feel that in the testicle, you need to make an appointment with your doctor to get this examined. Often you will get a blood test and a testicle ultrasound examination, and that will make the diagnosis of testicle cancer.

When I began my career as a urologist in the 1970s, testicle cancer took the lives of a lot of young men. Today, the treatment is so effective that very few men will succumb or die to testicle cancer. But they must make the diagnosis, and it is the responsibility of the health care profession to explain to young men. Men in high school and young boys should get health classes and learn how to do a testicle self-exam. There is nothing wrong with men doing it. It is good. Women do it for breast self-exams; there’s a lot of publicity around this. It’s kind of amazing to me, Allan, that every October, the National Football League goes pink. You know what I’m talking about? The breast cancer awareness month. Are you aware of that?

Allan (23:55): Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Baum (23:57): What happened to the National Football League telling men to check for prostate and testicle cancer? It just boggles my mind that the women, who are much more aggressive about the marketing and promoting of breast cancer awareness, got a boys’ game to put the pink on and get the word out. I think the month of September or November ought to be men’s health awareness month and talk about prostate and testicle cancer.

Allan (24:35): Before we get off that, there actually is a movement to do something exactly like that. It’s called Movember, and it’s an organization I participated in last year that basically you try to grow a mustache for the month of November. You donate money and you’re trying to raise money, so all of us are doing fundraising. We did it at our company; there was a big group of us that got together and we all grew a mustache. The basic thing is, someone is going to comment if you start growing a mustache out of nowhere. If you’ve never had one and you start to grow one, you actually start getting comments on it, and that’s the opportunity to have that initial conversation about men’s health issues that include these two cancers. So, it is happening.

Dr. Baum (25:19): That was a genius idea. I believe it started in Australia. I’m not sure. Does that sound familiar?

Allan (25:25): I’m not sure of the exact origins of it. I just know it was interesting around the office, because people were talking about men’s health issues like they never had before. It was a very interesting opportunity and I’m glad I went through it. I think it’s a growing movement and I hope it does continue to grow, because this is one of those big things. It kind of goes down to that whole point – women seem to be the caregivers in the home, and men want to be these macho tough guys. It’s how we were brought up – we’re here to take care of other people. The women tend to look on the health side. You wanted me to ask you the question why do men live shorter lives, why do women live longer than men? And I do think that’s a big part of it, that there’s much more awareness by women of their health issues.

Dr. Baum (26:08): Women start into the health care arena right after they graduate from high school and college, when they are in their reproductive years. They frequently see their obstetrician and gynecologist, and they are programmed into annual health by getting a pap smear and a mammogram at a very early age. Men, on the other hand, have a void. After they graduate high school, they will seldom see a physician until they’re in their mid-50s, and consequently they’re not programmed to take care of themselves. In the South we have a saying here, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but men apply that not only to their cars and their fishing boats, but they apply it to their bodies. Unless they’re having a symptom, they don’t have to go in to see the doctor, so consequently they can go years with hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, because early on they don’t have any symptoms. So if it ain’t broke, they don’t fix it, and by the time they go in, when it becomes symptomatic and they have full-blown diabetes and they’re overweight and hypertensive and they have high cholesterol, they end up being on four to six medicines a day. The average man, after the age of 50 – middle age – is taking four to six pills a day. He wouldn’t have to do that if he went to see his physician early on, got his blood pressure checked, got his weight down, got an annual examination, and practiced good health habits. Men take on risky lifestyles – they smoke more than women, they consume more alcohol than women, most of the drug abusers are men more than women; and as a result, it’s impacting their longevity, and they die five to seven years earlier than women. I think the playing field is equal when we’re born. We all have two kidneys, one heart, one brain. And what happens, I think, women take much better care of themselves than men do. Men often take better care of their cars and their fishing boats and spend more time planning a vacation than they do taking care of their health. So programs like Movember are absolutely phenomenal in increasing awareness towards men’s health.

Allan (28:59): I agree. I don’t take that same mindset of, “Wait until it’s broke to fix it”, because I’ve seen how bad broke we can get before we actually recognize we have a problem. We hear a screech in our car and it’s in the shop the next day. We get a little sore here or there and we think, “I’ll just work this out and I’ll figure it out”, and then it becomes a bigger and bigger problem as it gets worse. You’re right, Movember is a very good movement, but I really believe that men and women should make a point of what I call “wellness visits”. The doctor is so used to seeing people that are already sick or already in bad shape and need a lot of help. If you make a practice of wellness visits – which I do anywhere between three to four a year, where I’ll go get a blood test and talk to my doctor about it, just to see if there’s anything out there that alarms him or that should alarm me – then we can have those conversations as a part of a wellness visit, not as a part of a care visit.

Dr. Baum (29:56): I would like to see the time come when the doctor would be paid to keep you well, and if you got sick, he didn’t get paid. I think we need to shift gears.

Allan (30:09): I don’t think you’re going to get a single doctor to sign on for that.

Dr. Baum (30:12): I know that’s unlikely to happen. That’s the pie in the sky.

Allan (30:18): That’s where the man, we have to step up and realize our importance in this health team. We have to be the instigator; we have to be the one that manages the situation and drives the car, so to speak, to say, “I am going to have these wellness visits because I want to know that I’m in good health. If my health habits are working, I should see my numbers trending better. And if it’s not working, then I need to maybe readjust and do something because I don’t want to be the guy on four to six medications per day. I’d rather not go through the expense of a surgery or having a foot cut off or whatnot because I have diabetes.” So, I make a point of the wellness visit and I think that’s what we should all do, as men and women, is step forward and say, “How do we become more empowered?” And that’s just by doing, by saying, “I’m going to get the blood tests, and then I’m going to make an appointment with my doctor and we’re going to talk about this.”

Dr. Baum (31:10): You made a good point when we started, right from the get go, when you said women should be listening to this program. And the reason is, even in my own household – I’m a physician – my wife takes responsibility upon herself for my health care. On my birthday every year, an appointment is made for me to go in and get screened and treated on a regular basic. In the Western world, but particularly in America, culturally, women are in charge of men’s health. Consequently it behooves women to be as responsible and as forthright, and maybe even read the book How’s It Hanging?, so they can be on the same language and the same page as the men, and get the men to the health care provider at a much earlier age. I think that’s really important. Our society seems to work that way, and I think women should take part of the responsibility. Ultimately it’s the man; we are in charge of ourselves. We have no excuse. But I think in our society, women control the health care of the children, and it is often that they become responsible for the health care of their spouses or their significant other.

Allan (32:41): And to make your job easier, let’s go in for those wellness visits and we’ll find these things like prostate cancer, testicular cancer early. And he’ll have the discussion with his doctor about fatigue levels, his energy levels, his libido. All those conversations that he would be having with his doctor are going to help him get the treatment so he stays well and he stays energetic and he stays the guy that you may have married 20 some odd years ago, because he’s taking care of his health and he’s keeping his body from aging faster than it needs to.

Dr. Baum (33:15): These men who take testosterone replacement therapy – their lives are like a light switch has been turned on. They just have been living in the dark, and are suffering in silence and not having the quality of life that they should have when it can be treated. I also want to point out about the abuse of testosterone. Let’s talk a little bit about that. Can we do that, Allan?

Allan (33:41): Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Baum (33:43): For men who have everything, they’re firing on all cylinders – they don’t need a testosterone level, that’s not necessary for screening, and they should not take extra testosterone to make them extra strong or build more muscle mass. This is a dangerous thing to do, and to increase the testosterone beyond physiologic normal can have repercussions. The repercussions are that it tells the testicles you’ve got extra testosterone on board; the testicles will stop producing testosterone for people who are taking testosterone when they don’t need it, and the testicles shrink and they don’t come back. Consequently they’re stuck being on testosterone forever. That is something that should be avoided in normal men. The way to build up muscle mass is get into the gym, work out, lift weights, and not take creatinine and supplements and testosterone when you don’t need it.

Allan (34:58): Actually testosterone is one of those interesting hormones that if you’re in the gym lifting heavy weights, your body is naturally going to want to produce more. So there are things you can do in a natural sense. If you’re eating well and you’re exercising, and particularly lifting heavy things, you’re signaling to your body that you need more muscle mass, and your body will often respond by producing more testosterone.

Dr. Baum (35:20): Exactly. You can’t short circuit it or speed it up. It does happen when you do that, but at a risk. And the risk is that your testicles will stop making testosterone and you’ll be deficient forever. The second thing I want to point out is, testosterone is what fuels prostate cancer. So, if a man has a prostate cancer and he takes testosterone, he is going to fuel the prostate cancer and it’s absolutely contraindicated in men who are getting treatment for prostate cancer. So, before a man who is symptomatic, he has all the symptoms we’ve just discussed, he should have a testosterone level to show it’s low and a PSA to show it’s normal – then he can proceed with testosterone replacement therapy. No man should receive testosterone if they haven’t had a PSA and a digital rectal exam to make sure he doesn’t have prostate cancer. The extra testosterone or replacement therapy can accelerate the growth of prostate cancer.

Allan (36:39): I think the core of this, and the cool thing about this book is that you talk about a lot more than just what we went over today. You really go from one side to the other of men’s general health issues that we’re going to deal with, particularly as we age, and that awareness of what you should be looking for, what it means. And of course you get a little bit into what are some of the current things we can actually do about it. The book is How’s It Hanging? Dr. Baum, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about the book, where would you like for me to send them?

Dr. Baum (37:08): They can go to my website, www.neilbaum.com. They can write to me at doctorwhiz@gmail.com. And they can get a copy of the book How’s It Hanging? on Amazon.com.

Allan (37:39): This is a book that I think every man should read, and most women should probably read as well, particularly if you are the head of health at your house. You should know about some of these issues, and this is a really good book to have available so you can help understand them and be a driver in your own health and fitness. Dr. Baum, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness podcast. I really appreciate you.

Dr. Baum (38:02): Thank you, Allan. I enjoyed chatting with you, and hope we’ve brought some light onto the topic of men’s health.

Allan (38:11): Absolutely.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Dr. Baum. Men, we do need to be more proactive in looking out for our own health. I know a lot of us like to let the women in our lives be the ones that nag at us to do those things, but really, we need to be doing that for ourselves. So I hope you got something valuable from today’s session, and if you did, would you please go out and give us a rating and review? You can do that through the app that you’re listening to this podcast on, or you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Review and leave a review today. I read each and every one of those and I really do appreciate hearing what you’re getting from the podcast, what you’re learning and how it’s changing and working for you. So please, go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Review, or leave a rating and review on your app of choice.

As you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to it the first couple of days it’s come out, I’m either in Belize or I’m on my way back. You’ve probably wondered, I’ve talked about taking a couple of trips here and there. I guess I’ll go ahead and somewhat spill the beans. My wife and I are looking to further downsize, further down-stress our lives. It’s no secret that stress has been something top of mind for me for over the past year as I’ve looked at what it’s doing to my health and wellness and seeing it as my next big rock, the next big thing that I need to take care of to get my health and wellness exactly where I need it to be, because my stress level tends to be the one thing that really foils and stumbles up everything else. When I’ve got my stress under control, everything else seems to just fall in place, and that’s what I’m working on doing. So my wife and I may actually move outside the country to find a lower stress, lower cost, lower maintenance level; minimalize some things and get ourselves into a better place. And so, we are checking these places out. If you are living abroad, if you are an expat and you’ve tried different places, I’d love to hear from you, really. You can contact me – allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com, and I’d love to hear your stories, love to hear what kind of guidance you can give me on that, because we are looking to do this type of thing in the near future. I’ll still do the podcast, I’ll still work with clients. That is a big part of what makes me happy and where I find joy, so I’m not letting that leave my life just for the sake of living in a smaller, quieter, less stressful location. But I do want to do something like this and I will keep doing this podcast and I will keep doing the training, and God willing, I will get this book out.

As I talk about the book, I wanted to remind you, you can go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com to learn more about The Wellness Roadmap book. It’s due to come out at the end of November, but there are still a lot of things that need to happen between now and then to include getting a launch team together. And I’d really appreciate if you would join me on the launch team. You can go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com, and there on the bottom of that page you’ll find an opportunity where you can go ahead and give me your email address and your name. I am not going to use this email address for anything else other than to give you updates on the book and to ask for your help as a part of The Wellness Roadmap book launch team. So I hope you will go out there today – WellnessRoadmapBook.com. Thank you.

 

Another episode you may enjoy

Your longevity blueprint with Dr. Stephanie Gray

Intermittent fasting made easy with Brian Gryn

Allan (0:48): Our guest today has been a personal trainer and health coach for over 10 years. In effort to maintain his own body fat percentage, he fell into intermittent fasting and he realized they didn’t have a journal or anything on the market to help someone with this process. So he wrote one. I introduce you to Brian Gryn. Brian, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Brian (1:10): Thanks so much, Allan.

Allan (1:12): I’ve got your Simple Intermittent Fasting Journal here. It’s a 21-day program that you run through folks with the journal opportunity to help them move from not really knowing what intermittent fasting is, to actually implementing it in their lives. I’m a big fan of simple things, and this really fits it because it just gives them the basic information that someone needs without overwhelming them, and then gives them the basic guidance. I really like how each day you left a little tip in there to help people along to learn more about this as they go.

Brian (1:47): Thank you. That was the whole idea behind coming out with that. I was looking to doing fasting myself, and there are books and information you can find online, but I really didn’t find a guide, something that could sort of take you step by step to get into it. So, that was my main reason for creating a journal was to, like you said, keep it simple. I think fasting can be intimidating. People need a guide for a lot of things, but fasting I thought would be a perfect way to help people. I picked 21 days. It can be different for everybody, but I thought three weeks was sort of a good time table to get you into it and see how you like the experience.

Allan (2:32): I had a job and it had me traveling to Malaysia, and Malaysia is a Muslim state. So when Ramadan comes along, they fast basically from sunrise to sunset. So they do intermittent fasting as a function of their religion. When I first realized they were doing it and watching them, realizing it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for them, particularly for the first couple of days. And then they sort of got more and more comfortable with it. In my story I basically started eating Paleo, and you sit down with a plate of real food – so I’ve got either a steak or a fish or whatnot there, and I’ve got some vegetables. If I’m going to leave something on my plate, it always tended to be the vegetables. I was going to eat that steak and I was going to eat that fish, because that was where I saw the value of the meal at that point in my life. And so I ended up falling into ketosis, because I was eating a lot more meats and fish and eggs, and I wasn’t eating a lot of vegetables. I ended up in ketosis; I didn’t know exactly what it was when it first started happening, I started doing research and understanding it. But another kind of side effect of getting into ketosis was that I was seldom hungry.

So I ended up getting into intermittent fasting just on the function of saying, “If I’m not really hungry, then my body must be doing okay with my body fat.” And I had plenty of body fat to feed my energy for a long, long time – Energizer Bunny kind of power. So I ended up doing intermittent fasting and I still do it today. It was interesting when I started talking to you because you’re like, “You do it like two days and then you don’t do it for another month or so, right?” No, no. Every day I wake up, I don’t think about breakfast. I cook breakfast for my wife, but I don’t feel like I need to eat then. So I go and I just don’t eat, and I’ll wait. And usually about sometime between 2:00 and 4:00, I’ll start to feel like maybe I could eat something. And that’s when I open up my window and start eating. And because I’m “early to bed, early to rise” kind of person, I won’t eat after 7:30. So my eating window is really, really restricted to basically 2:00 to 8:00, for the most part. And sometimes just 4:00 to 8:00. I do it because it just feels natural and I like it. I feel good when I’m fasting. But why would someone fast? What are some of the reasons why people choose to use fasting as a protocol?

Brian (5:16): There are a lot of reasons, but I think I would say the number one reason people come to me and I get them into fasting or they’re looking to get into fasting is pretty much to lose weight, lose body fat. But another reason that comes along with that is increased energy. And I don’t know, Allan, how you feel, but for me, yesterday I fasted almost pretty much the whole day, probably about 22 hours. And I always feel my most energy towards the end of the day, just because obviously we all know when we have a big lunch, after that we tend to crash a little bit, especially if it’s something unhealthy like refined carbs or some pizza, or whatever it is. We have those blood sugar swings and those insulin swings and we tend to get tired afterwards. But when you’re in a fasting state, the blood doesn’t have to rush to your digestive organs, it can go other places and you just feel that adrenaline minute and that energy throughout the day. I would say the big things would be the increase in energy, they want to lose body fat. And then there are other reasons – the rested digestive organs, the clear thinking. And there’ve been studies regarding growth hormone increase as well.

Allan (6:35): For me a big part of it has become the freedom aspect. I have a property near here. I’m now trying to sell it because I can’t deal with it anymore, but that’s a whole another story. It’s about seven acres, and it gets kind of soupy back there when it’s wet. And I was back there doing some work. I drove my little tractor up on my trailer and was pulling it out and my truck got stuck. So I had planned to go down there and do some work for about three or four hours in the morning before it got hot. And I did that work, fasted and then I was getting ready to leave and come home; it was around noon time. And I got stuck. So I’m calling AAA, asking them to pull me out of my own yard. The truck shows up an hour later. He hooks himself up and then his truck breaks down. So he has to call for a part, they deliver the part, he puts the part on his own truck, and then he’s got his truck working and he pulls me out.

So I’m driving home and it’s about 6:00 in the evening, and I’m realizing at this point I’ve gone probably 23 hours without eating. And I wasn’t famished, I wasn’t freaking out. There were no blood sugar issues. My body had acclimated to using fat as a fuel, so I was fine to be out there. Now I did spend the afternoon just lazy fishing, because that’s why I bought the property – to go do some fishing there. But I had done that hard work in the morning and there was never a lack of energy, a lack of clarity or a freak-out that I had to have food because I was starving. I think that’s a big part of it. You have a lot of tips in here as far as what you should eat during your window, and I want to talk about that, but I think what I have found is that when you’re looking to do this, you really do have to start focusing on the quality of your food, because you’ve still got to get that nutrition in there and you don’t want it to necessarily be refined carbs, because as soon as you finish your eating window and your body has burned through that rocket fuel of refined carbs and sugar, your body’s going to want you to refeed. So it’s going to be really, really hard if you’re doing the refined foods. So I’m sitting down now; I’ve gone through my fast and I’m coming off my fast. What are the types of foods that I need to get into my body during my feeding window to sustain intermittent fasting?

Brian (9:02): Yeah, you hit on a good point. Obviously, I think the whole fasting process becomes easier when you eat better during your eating window. I would say to someone that’s looking to get into fasting is maybe clean up your eating habits first, and then once you clean up your eating habits, then you can use guides per se, like my journal or any other guide or a coach to help guide you into fasting. I know in my guide, we talk about pushing back breakfast an hour every day, whatever it is. As far as basic guidelines for eating, I would just say eat real whole foods, foods that expire actually. So that’d be avoiding most packaged goods, and then avoiding things like refined carbs, sugars, grains, starches. Obviously you talk about the keto worlds – eating natural fats helps keep you full longer, so that will help make the fast easier, and it doesn’t raise insulin as well. So natural fats, avocado. I probably have an avocado every day in my salad that I make. Olive oil, coconut oil, butter, natural butter. And then obviously avoid artificial fats, like things that come from fried foods and things like that. I would say that would be a good place to start. You don’t have to eat perfect, but it will help.

Allan (10:27): I’m actually working on a book and I was writing a section for the book this last week. I was sitting there and I just had to stop myself because hearing I’m talking about high quality whole food, I’m thinking to myself, “Why do I even have to write the word ‘whole food’?” There are the things that come in boxes and bags that are not food, and there are things that basically you get from your butcher or from the produce section that are basically your food. It was just kind of sad to me that we do have to explain that a whole food is something that expires, it’s something that you recognize as an animal or a plant at some level, and it’s not processed, it doesn’t come from a factory. I’ll even go as far as to say when you start talking about where it’s coming from, that matters as well. If it’s not grown in a good, conducive soil, it’s not getting the minerals that you need. If it’s not a well-cared-for animal, if it’s a sick animal… Out in the wild, if there’s a sick animal, the other animals won’t eat it; they let it lay there. We don’t seem to have that instinct, and it’s kind of bad.

So, focus on the quality of your food. Like you said, you don’t have to put it all in there overnight, but this is a great opportunity for you to really take some time to think about your food, because that’s another cool thing about the eating window and the freedom that you get is, you’re not spending all day preparing or sitting down for meals. I get that extra half an hour or so in the morning that I would be eating my breakfast to do something else, to learn something else, to read something, to write something, to do the things that are adding value in my life. I love eating, don’t get me wrong. I take full advantage of my eating window with some really good foods. And I think that’s the whole point – if you’re getting the nutrition your body needs, intermittent fasting can be easier. It is easier and it’s not really so much the way of eating. Keto works well for me, but you may have reasons that you want to be a vegan, and you can easily do intermittent fasting with vegan. You just have to make sure, again, that you’re getting the nutrition that you need, you’re getting the volume of calories, because when we’re talking intermittent fasting we’re not talking eating less. I think a lot of people think that’s what it’s all about. It’s not actually that.

Brian (12:55): I agree with you. I will say this – you will find – at least this is what I find with a lot of my clients, is that when you start doing it and you have a smaller window to eat, you realize your body doesn’t really need as much as maybe you thought it needed when you were just eating normal and throughout the day and grazing six, seven meals a day. I know we might talk about tips, but if you’re starting to do this, do this on days where you’re busy – maybe at work, or you have something that is just going to take up time and your mind’s going to be busy. Yesterday I was busy, ended up just happening. I just fasted all day and at the end of the day I was like, “I’m just going to have dinner”, but I got full quick. I wasn’t going to overstuff, which is another tip. When you do feed in that feeding window, don’t overdo it. You might think, “I need to stuff three meals into this eating window.” Well, you’ll be surprised your body will not want that.

Allan (13:58): It’s a little bit of both, because I think if you’re getting adequate nutrition, your body’s going to do the things it’s supposed to do. Your leptin and ghrelin are going to play their roles to tell you, “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s stop this.” And you’re going to eat just the right amount of food. I think if people are not getting the nutrition, that’s where they’re going to start to run into trouble. And obviously, again, a lot of people are doing this for weight loss, for fat loss specifically. So you have to realize that a portion of the calories that your body is burning is coming from that fat. I’ve read somewhere – I can’t validate this – but your body can basically use about 700 calories of body fat in any given day for energy. So, if you’re getting at least 1,200 in that meal, you’re probably getting enough calories at that point to sustain whatever you’re doing. Unless you’re a heavy duty athlete or your work is very intense, a good 1,900 calories on a given day is probably enough to keep you where you need to be. So, let’s take a moment and go through some of those tips, because these were really good.

Brian (15:06): So like I said, obviously staying busy really helps. So if you know you have a busy day at work or a busy morning and you’re like, “This is a good morning where I’m just going to skip breakfast” – maybe just have some black coffee, obviously no sweeteners or anything in that coffee, or have some tea. So just staying busy, keeping your mind active, and then drinking plenty of water too. I always have water on me throughout the day, whether I’m fasting or in my eating stage. And another one too that I think doesn’t get talked about a lot is, when you’re starting to do this, don’t tell someone that might not be supportive of it, because I think there are people who initially think you’re starving yourself and they might even be worried about you, because we’re so programmed by mainstream media, and I say this all the time – no one makes money when you fast, right?

Allan (15:58): But the other side of it is, they are actually coming from a very real paradigm. If you’re eating crap food, if you’re eating carbs, if you’re eating sugars, if you’re drinking regular sodas, or even diet sodas for that matter – if that’s your food, if that’s what you are eating today, you can’t go more than four hours without eating, or your blood sugar is going to plummet and your body’s going to scream, “Feed me!” So really narrowing that down and saying other people won’t necessarily understand what you’re doing. You’re following a protocol – get into it, understand it, and then it’ll be a little easier to talk about when they realize that you’ve dropped more than five pounds during these 21 days. At least that’s what I would expect for most people that get into it, they’re going to lose something like that, or can expect to lose something like that if they have it to lose. I think you’re right there. They’re not coming from a bad place. They’re not trying to sabotage you for bad reasons. They know they can’t go more than four hours without eating because that bagel they had for breakfast has them screaming for more food. That’s why they’ve come up with the term “second breakfast”, and most fast food places serve breakfast all day long because they want to keep feeding you those carbs and keeping you coming back for more.

Brian (17:22): Right. Once you get into the fasting protocol and it’s feeling more natural, because like anything else, it gets easier and easier the more you do it – then maybe you can tell some people or tell people who maybe would have been against it at first and they’ll be like, “Wow, you’re getting great results. You’re feeling great. I’ll support you.” And things like that. People know now that I do intermittent fasting, but when I first started doing it, I don’t think many people knew. I just sort of did it. Those are the main tips. I would say one more tip would be, drink a warm liquid. It could be a tea or black coffee. And I talk about this a little bit. People go, “What if I get hunger pains?” And you will get that. You might even get headaches. I always say for headaches that can be avoided or can be helped, to have some water and put some salt in it. I know it doesn’t sound the most appetizing, but…

Allan (18:24): But we’re not talking lots of salt. A pinch or two.

Brian (18:29): Pinch of salt, exactly. Some Pink Himalayan salt.

Allan (18:33): It’s not like drinking sea water.

Brian (18:38): No. A little bit of salt, you can taste it, but it’s doable. So, drinking the coffee or the tea. And I’ll just say this – I recently got an email from a client saying, “I like to put cream in my coffee or I won’t drink it.” I will say, if you can do the fasting protocol and if you have to have a little bit of cream in your coffee, then go ahead.

Allan (19:05): The one thing I will say on this, and I don’t mean anything against Dave Asprey at all – I appreciate that he has developed a protocol and a product he calls Bulletproof Coffee. He sells coffee and he sells the MCT oil, and he doesn’t sell the butter. But if he could, he probably would. He just found Kerrygold works for him, so he didn’t have to make his own butter. But when you do that coffee, the way they protocol it, the way they put it forward, that can be upwards of 700 calories. To me that’s not fasting anymore. You’re feeding your body and you’re choosing to feed it fat, which is great, but your body’s going to use that fat for energy. It’s not going to use the body fat that we’re trying to get our body to be more accustomed to using. So in my mind it’s like, if you can avoid the creams, if you can avoid the butters and take your coffee to black… And this is the same thing as I think what you have in the book, which is great for a protocol, is you walk yourself into it. So maybe it was two ounces of cream and you can cut that down to one and three quarters, and then one and a half. And over the course of these three weeks going through your program, maybe they can get to a point where they’re not having to put cream in their coffee at all.

Brian (20:21): Yeah. It’s sort of that “one step at a time” approach. That’s what I did when I started fasting – just pushing back breakfast an hour a day. Some people might be like, “Oh, screw that. I’m just going to go right to lunch.” That might be your protocol, but my protocol was I took it one step at a time. Same thing with little things like that with cream in your coffee – if you want to slowly start taking that out, that would be obviously the best, perhaps the easiest way to do it.

Allan (20:52): Yeah. As we look at this, the cool thing about your Simple Intermittent Fasting Journal here is that you have a space for each of the 21 days for them to walk through the process. And you’re giving them guidance each time, you’re giving them a tip each day. I think for the folks that want a tool that’s going to walk them through this and get them to a point where they understand intermittent fasting, they understand their body’s response to it, and the 21 days gives them plenty of time to understand how it’s going to affect them. Some people will take this and they’ll just keep going. Other people will say, “This will be my period of detox”, for lack of a better word, “Where I just use this protocol from time to time.” Are you using it all the time or is this something you implement just from time to time?

Brian (21:46): For my own good or for a client?

Allan (21:48): For you in general.

Brian (21:50): For me I don’t use it anymore. I did test it on myself when I was first creating the journal, and so I did use it early on, but now I’m to the point where it’s just become… And that’s what I say on the cover – it’s become a lifestyle for me. I don’t use the journal anymore.

Allan (22:12): I didn’t mean so much the journal. It’s just that you do intermittent fasting and it’s just a lifestyle. With me I have gotten to the point where I don’t eat what would be a standard breakfast in the morning and I’m typically not eating until somewhere between 2:00 to 4:00. And a lot of times that’s still breakfast for me, and sometimes it’s still breakfast foods. It just depends on my mood and what I want to eat. I have found that once you kind of get into that process of not being dependent on eating a meal every three hours, it almost becomes a natural, “Let your day decide when you’re going to eat, when you’re hungry”, and it’s not so much, “I have a fixed time that I have to eat each meal.” You can have a lot more flexibility with this.

Brian (22:58): Yeah, I would agree. I would think that’s the biggest benefit. For me at least one of the biggest benefits is you’re in control of your food. A lot of times with people, food controls them, and a lot of that is almost just in your mind because we’re programmed to eat at certain times. But once you get into this protocol, you realize, like you said – if something happens, like you got stuck in your own yard – you were fine. You weren’t like, “Oh my God, I need to run to Starbucks or get something.” It gives you that flexibility, and I think you’re just in control. I think that’s the biggest thing – you have more time to do things that maybe you want to do, like you said, in the morning. So, it really gives you that flexibility.

Allan (23:41): And I also want to emphasize that there is an energy aspect to this. When your body starts learning how to use your own body fat for energy, you have an abundance of energy. And a question I get a lot from clients is, “I’m going to start this intermittent fasting, I’m going to start this protocol. So I should stop exercising for a few days, right?” And my short answer is, “Why?” It’ll be hard the first few days of this protocol, the first few days of keto. For me, when I tried pescatarian, the first three days were hard. Once you kind of get through that dip, things get easier. But to me, unless you’re really having some blood sugar issues or whatnot, you can continue to train.

And that’s the only other thing I would leave off with this conversation – before you start any kind of protocol like this, particularly if you’re diabetic or pregnant or on any medication at all – have the conversation with your doctor because this is not a protocol for everybody. It does have a special use, and you include a lot of that information in the book here. So Brian, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to us about intermittent fasting and your guide Simple Intermittent Fasting Journal. If someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about what you’re doing and learn more about the book, where would you like for me to send them?

Brian (24:58): They can go to my website, which is my name, so BrianGryn.com. They can reach out to me, order the journals on there and ask any questions.

Allan (25:12): This is going to be episode 334, so you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/334, and I’ll be sure to have a link to Brian’s website there. Brian, thank you so much for being a part of the 40+ Fitness podcast.

Brian (25:26): Thanks, Allan. Really enjoyed it.

Allan (25:32): I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation with Brian. If you’re interested in managing your body fat percentage, intermittent fasting can be a great strategy for you, and I encourage you to check out his journal if you want to try that out.

 

I am very happy to announce that I have gotten my manuscript over to the publisher, so at this point we’re about to lock it down, as they say, which I feel really good about. But I still need your help. I need you on my launch team. If you can go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com, you’ll learn more about the book and you can also then there sign up to join the launch team. Launch teams are very, very important to help books get off the ground, and I need you on my team. So please go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com and be a part of the launch team. Thank you.

 

Another episode you may enjoy:

Fasting for weight loss with Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore

 

 

Keto energy! Now what?

Here is the video of the re-recorded KetoFest presentation

Another episode you may enjoy

Keto Cure with Dr. Adam Nally

Your longevity blueprint with Dr. Stephanie Gray

 

Dr. Stephanie Gray is the author of Your Longevity Blueprint. On this episode, we talk about nutritional supplementation, hormones optimization, and how to find a doctor to help you stay healthy.

Allan (1:06): Dr. Gray, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Dr. Gray (1:10): I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Allan (1:12): Your book is Your Longevity Blueprint, and I really enjoyed the read. A lot of great information and put in a way that I think is very understandable for quite a few people. But the book in my opinion is not actually about so much longevity as, how do we maximize our health and wellness so that we actually enjoy living longer?

Dr. Gray (1:37): Well said. Yeah, I would agree. I was really trying to create some nine actionable steps for readers to optimize their health, because unfortunately many individuals don’t even know functional medicine exists. They don’t know that testing options exist to help them optimize their nutritional status or help them detoxify their body or increase their hormone levels. So I was hoping this book would really introduce the audience to functional medicine.

Allan (2:03): Yes. And I think most of us go to a doctor when we’re sick, we’re not feeling well, and the doctor asks what are you symptoms and you tell them fatigue, brain fog, several other things that are kind of going on in your life, not sleeping well, maybe some migraines. And the doctor says, “Well, here’s some Prozac”, or whatever. It’s a symptom-diagnosis. It’s like there’s a chart in the back of their office, or maybe they’ve memorized it. If they’re thinking you have this – this is how you fix it, with some form of medicine. But the reality is, medicine isn’t really designed to fix us. It’s designed to fix a symptom.

Dr. Gray (2:50): I totally agree. We need conventional medicine, especially unfortunately if you get in an accident. We have great emergency care here in the United States. In my book I reference Dr. Patrick Flynn’s analogy that conventional medicine is more of the fire department approach. So if you have a fire, conventional medicine can help you put out that fire, but really only using two tools – drugs and surgery. Unfortunately, when you have a symptom like fatigue that isn’t really an emergency, conventional medicine doesn’t necessarily help you get to the root cause of the problem. Like you mentioned, a lot of times they’ll just recommend taking an antidepressant or a stimulant medication, when that’s really not getting to the root cause. It’s not really explaining the “Why” to the fatigue. That’s what makes functional medicine different – we do explore the “Why”. We try to explore if the patient has low thyroid or low sex hormone status or maybe their nutrition is terrible, but we want to get to the root cause of the problem and not just give the patient that Band-aid approach to their health care.

Allan (3:50): It’s very interesting to me. Hippocrates said it a long, long time ago – “Let food be thy medicine.” And now it’s changing. It feels like it’s changing – more and more understanding that the food which we put in our mouths in volumes can do a lot more for our health than the one little pill or 12 little pills that we’re taking over the course of a day. I think a lot of that is because when we’re fueling our body and we’re building our body with better stuff, we end up being better. But a lot of folks don’t actually recognize that they have nutritional deficiencies. A lot of my clients will come to me and say, “Allan, should I be supplementing with something? Should I be taking an iron supplement, or should I be taking vitamin B or C?”, or whatever the cool thing is today. And my short answer is, “I have no clue, because I don’t have your blood test to see if there are any deficiencies. I don’t really know the quality of your food to know if you’re getting most of the vitamins you need. I don’t know if you’re getting outside to get enough sun exposure to have the vitamin D that you need.” Can you talk a bit about the nutritional deficiencies and some of the symptoms we might be seeing some of the things we can do, what to look for with supplements? Because you said it in a book, one a day actually isn’t one a day. You would need to take four of them just to get what your basic bodily needs are. But even then I’m not sure we actually get all of that from that one a day, just based on total quality and everything else. I know that’s a lot to throw out there, but could you tell us a bit about nutritional deficiencies and how we can recognize them and what we can do?

Dr. Gray (5:35): Sure. If you don’t mind, I might go off on a little tangent here. I think first we should clarify why we are so nutritionally deficient, because a lot of my patients say, “Why did my grandma never have to supplement, but I do?” Sadly, our world has really changed. The nutritional value that used to be in an apple grown in your grandma’s backyard unfortunately was better, much higher in nutritional content as compared to an apple today. Our apples might be three times the size, but they’re not packing that nutritional punch that apples used to. Unfortunately, our food sources are just not as nutritionally dense. We have very deficient soil, and even the USDA agriculture figures will show the decline in over 40 crops that they’ve been tracking for years. We know that the food that’s growing in this deficient soil is now deficient. Soil should be rich in antioxidants and vitamins and minerals, producing in foods the same, and that’s unfortunately not always the case. I even have patients who are growing their own food in their backyard and it’s organic, and the foods still, again, don’t pack that nutritional punch. That’s not our fault, but unfortunately that’s working against us.

The processing of foods also depletes nutrients. Half the time the food we’re eating has been harvested or picked days, weeks, even months before we’re eating it. And so, as you can imagine over time the nutrient content in those foods is declining. And then sometimes we even cook with really high heat, high temperature, and that’s blasting our foods, destroying some of the nutritional value. So, we’re unfortunately set up to be nutritionally deficient. And then when we add things like some lifestyle choices – if we choose to consume alcohol or caffeine, or smoke – those are all going to use up or deplete our body of nutrients. And if we take medications, many of my patients are shocked to know that the medications they’re taking are depleting them of nutrients. Many individuals are aware that drugs like statin medications for cholesterol can deplete CoQ10. And CoQ10 is a very important antioxidant in the body. It can help us with energy, and many patients who are taking a statin medication end up with myalgias or muscle pains, because their body has been robbed of that CoQ10. And that’s just one example. All sort of medications, even things like birth control, one patient might feel is just a basic medication, actually does deplete B vitamins and even magnesium.

So, very quickly, I just wanted to go over some of the reasons why we unfortunately are so low on nutrients. Then you add maybe exercise, or if you have a very stressful life, and again, what’s happening – your body is using up those nutrients. So, unfortunately we now, in our world today, need to supplement more than ever before, more than our grandma decades ago. That’s part of why we need the nutrients. But in my book, Your Longevity Blueprint, I try to describe nutrients as working in our body like putting a key in a keyhole. The nutrients are going to unlock certain processes in the body. I tell patients to think of nutrients as what you need, literally, to produce energy in that Krebs cycle, if you remember that from high school science class. You need nutrients to make hormones, hormones that make you feel good. So you just don’t want to be set up to be nutritionally deficient. The list of symptoms, I could go on and on, but fatigue is obviously one symptom. We could go nutrient by nutrient and discuss the symptoms that can exist.

Allan (9:25): For the core ones – vitamin D, C, B, the core ones. Maybe some of the minerals. I think this would be quite valuable, because I do believe that people will know if they don’t have enough iron, they may feel a little anemic and their energy will be low. Sometimes the doctor will pick that up in a blood test and say you’re low in your iron. That’s a fairly common test that a standard doctor would do, but it’s not often that a doctor will do a full blood panel to look at how deficient you might be in these various vitamins. So I think us having some basic recognition of when we might be deficient in a vitamin, so we know we at least need to start doing the diagnostic work.

Dr. Gray (10:03): Sure. So, B vitamin deficiencies are very common. B vitamins are what help our adrenals, they help us adapt to stress, they help us produce energy. One of the first supplements I’ll have a patient, especially an athlete start if they’re really tired is just a B Complex to see if that’s helping. Some patients can even have symptoms in the nervous system, so if they’re getting tingling, burning symptoms, whatnot, a lot of times they will need the B vitamins as well.

Vitamin D deficiency can also lead to fatigue. Actually I live in Iowa, so many of my patients are very low in vitamin D, just because we don’t have the sun year round. Patients who are low in vitamin D are going to be more likely to get sick, get the flu through that flu season, so that’s one of the first nutrients we try to optimize in our patients come fall time, so they can get their level high to protect them through the winter. I’ve had even patients young, in their 20s and 30s have fractures, and it’s not normal to have fractures when you’re young. One of the first things we’re then looking at in those patients if they end up with osteopenia or osteoporosis, is their vitamin D status. Sometimes, shockingly, even young patients are very low in vitamin D. Vitamin D helps greatly with bone density, so not just in the young populations, but also in the older populations we want to make sure we’re increasing vitamin D. Vitamin D greatly helps with mood, so if we think of seasonal affective disorder through the winter, that makes sense. Patients get more depressed when there’s no sunlight, they’re not getting their vitamin D through the winter. Those are some of the symptoms of low vitamin D.

And then you mentioned vitamin C. Vitamin C is great for immune support also, so that’s typically also a nutrient that I’m going to recommend through the winter, just to help support the patient for not getting sick. Many patients will bruise very easily, so one of the first nutrients we’ll recommend for them is also vitamin C. Vitamin C helps strengthen the capillaries so that they don’t bruise as easily. And then, do you want me to keep going?

Allan (12:08): A couple of the minerals I think would be valuable too, because there are some of them that are quite important and if we’re not monitoring those, there’s going to be some risk there.

Dr. Gray (12:19): So magnesium is probably the most important mineral in my opinion. It’s important for I think, over 300 different enzymatic pathways in the body. I recently wrote a blog on magnesium and all the different types, picking the best type of magnesium and whatnot. But I use magnesium in my patients because it’s a very calming, relaxing hormone. So if they’re having any symptoms of overstimulation, meaning anxiety, if they can’t sleep, if their legs feel kind of creepy crawly, if they’re having restless leg symptoms or cramping in the legs, we’ll give them magnesium to calm down the cramps or calm down the mind or calm down the heart. So magnesium can be extremely beneficial, even to calm the gut. If patients have constipation, magnesium can help relax the bowels to facilitate daily bowel movements in the morning. Magnesium also helps produce your hormones. So you don’t want to be low in magnesium if you have low hormones, which we all do. Hormones decline as we age, so supplementing with magnesium can help prevent some of that loss.

Allan (13:4): I was really happy in the book that when you got into the discussion of hormones, you didn’t go just one way or the other. I’ve seen so many books where they say, “Let’s focus on the sex hormones because that’s what people care about.” And then other people say, “I’m dealing with people that have thyroid issues, so they’re looking for a book on thyroid issues.” It’s not very common that someone will say, “Let’s just look at this whole thing together.” To me, they’re the one to punch vitality and feeling and being the best you you can be. If your sex hormones are not optimized, you don’t feel as good as you could, and obviously if you don’t have the thyroid hormones working, you’re not going to have the energy level that you need to have to do the things you want to do. So, to me they’re both just as important. I understand when someone has an issue on one side or the other, they’re going to be more focused on that, but if we’re coming at this looking at it from a “How to stay as healthy as we can” versus “How do I cure illness”, I want to look at both. And I’m glad that you did. Could you take a little bit of time to talk about hormones? How do we actually go about optimizing our hormones so that we can be the best we can be?

Dr. Gray (14:38): Sure. I think the first step is to really know your body and know, “What symptoms am I experiencing? Have I had hair loss? Have I had brain fog? Am I more cold? Have I had weight gain or more fatigue?” Those are all low thyroid symptoms. If you’re thinking you may have some low hormone symptoms, find a provider who can help you order a comprehensive hormone panel to get your levels checked to see where you’re at. And I would love it if my patients would have had levels checked in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, so we could track subtle changes, any subtle decline that’s happening each decade or half decade, whatnot. Sometimes patients’ levels are really low end, and I don’t know if that’s their baseline, I don’t know if that’s where they’ve been for years, or if their levels are barely in the reference range, is this a dramatic decline? Years ago, were they very high end of normal and now they’re low end of normal? So, it’d be really nice to be able to track those levels over the years so patients could detect if their levels are declining.

But having comprehensive thyroid hormone levels done is extremely important. I describe this in Chapter 6 of my book. TSH is thyroid-stimulating hormone, which should be checked. But I said my book it stands for “too slow to help”, because by the time TSH is high, many times T4 and T3 are very low. So you only have T3 receptors in your body. T4’s whole role in life is to convert to T3, and many doctors never check T3. They only check T4, and if T4 looks good they assume the patient’s good to go. And that’s not the case. So, a big take home is to make sure you have a free T3 checked – that’s the gas pedal on your metabolism and your energy. You want your gas on hard. You don’t want your reverse T3, which is the brake pedal on hard. You want those flipped. It’s also important to have the reverse T3 checked, and then thyroid antibodies. If thyroid antibodies are high, that indicates your body could be attacking itself. Those are some autoimmune markers. The more that your body attacks the thyroid, the more thyroid function is going to decline. Even if your thyroid function is holding steady but your antibody levels are high, that’s great information to have to know, “I need to stay ahead of this to prevent my thyroid hormone levels from further declining.” I can speak to sex hormones as well, but just from a thyroid standpoint, those are great tests to have your provider run, to give you a gauge on where you’re sitting today, to know if low thyroid is a problem for you currently.

Allan (17:18): Okay. And then on the sex hormones, how would we go about optimizing those?

Dr. Gray (17:25): Again, the first step is to get your levels tested. I think a lot of women think they don’t need testosterone, but actually they do. I have women very young who already have zero testosterone due to big stressors in their life or whatnot. Sometimes it’s difficult to maybe admit that we lose hormones as we age, but men aged 30 to 70 are going to lose 1% to 5% of their testosterone every year, and women aged 20 to 40 lose 50% of their total testosterone production. So it’s important to have testosterone levels checked in both men and women, and also estrogen levels checked in both men and women. A lot of guys think they don’t have estrogen, but many men convert their testosterone over to estrogen, and that’s what men don’t want. We need to have lower estrogen, higher testosterone in men. So, checking those hormones is important. And then in women also checking progesterone. Progesterone’s the most soothing, calming hormone, great for sleep. Many women in their 30s and 40s get put on antidepressants or anxiety medications, and really the root cause of the problem was low progesterone, but no one ever assessed it. So, asking your provider to check estrogen, progesterone, testosterone is a great start.

Allan (18:40): Cool. And then from there you can decide how you want to address some deficiencies or some low numbers through the help of your healthcare provider.

Dr. Gray (18:51): Yes. And there are natural ways to boost hormones. We could talk about optimizing, again, nutritional status. Also, many times herbs can be very effective for patients who haven’t had hysterectomies, who still have all their organs. Using herbs can help to produce hormones. But in my clinic we do specialize in natural hormone replacement therapy for both men and women, and there are lots of options for those patients.

Allan (19:16): One of the things I really do want to recap here is that your standard doctor, bless their heart – they are going to go in and try to take care of you when you go and say you’re not feeling well. You may go in for regular checkups, so they’ll do the normal stuff, but the normal blood panel is going to be looking at your cholesterol and maybe they’re looking at some organ function, particularly if they know there’s some lifestyle things going on. They may check some bits and pieces of the data that you might want to have. But when you’re really looking at this, I think it’s worth at least once a year, maybe once every two years, if you need to push it off, is to go out get a full-on panel. What are my potential nutritional deficiencies, what are my potential hormone issues?

And I say this even if you don’t feel like you have symptoms, because one of the funny things is, you might think you’re normal – you might think, “This is my normal day. I wake up, I have trouble sleeping, I feel a little groggy in the morning. I do my coffee and I’m good to go for the day, as long as I drink coffee until 3:00 in the afternoon.” And that’s the normal day. And you say that’s normal, but you get yourself tested and you realize that your testosterone is a little low, perhaps your vitamin D is a little low, and your vitamin B, particularly B12 is low. If we actually supplement for these things, now you start to realize what actual normal should feel like, because you get back up to stability and you get up to where you’re now optimized.

Sorry to interject there, but I think so many people just go in and say, “Well, my doctor…” And the generation before us I think was so much more, “My doctor said it so it’s the absolute truth.” I think we have to be engaged as a part of our health care. The normal doctor isn’t necessarily inclined to want to go that route initially because he has seven minutes with you. He has to figure out what’s wrong with you, he has to prescribe medication, and then he has to move on to the next patient. But a holistic functional doctor is really going to have more opportunity and a more holistic view of health. I need to go find that person because my current doctor in my own town might not be that person. How do I find a contractor? In your book you say “contractor”, like doing the house stuff, but how do I find the right person to treat me for optimal health?

Dr. Gray (21:54): Good question. That’s the topic of the last chapter in my book. My book is about building a healthier body using functional medicine. So just to clarify to the audience here, I’m comparing how we maintain our home – we’re mowing the lawn, we keep hair out of the drain, we make sure we’re changing our furnace filters. We do all these things for maintenance for our home, but yet we don’t always do, or we don’t always know even what maintenance is available for our body. So, the last chapter of the book I discuss finding a contractor, who I describe as being a functional medicine provider, to help them rebuild and repair their body. We need conventional docs. If you have strep throat, if you have an emergency, we need them to be available, but unfortunately they don’t have a lot of training in nutrition. So again, they may tell you all your labs are normal – your blood count, your kidney, liver function, your cholesterol, as you were referring to, but they have never looked really deep. They haven’t really explored what a functional medicine provider could explore.

In your area usually, hopefully, you could find either an anti-aging, a regenerative or a functional medicine provider. You can search by your zip code on either the A4M, which is the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine’s website, or the IFM – Institute for Functional Medicine website, and hopefully find someone. Even if they’re not real local, a lot of these providers will see patients virtually, over the phone, or you can make a day trip to go see one. In a lot of the larger states, functional medicine is growing very rapidly. So, Florida, California, Texas, are states that are going to be easier to find providers than in the Midwest, where I’m from. There are probably only five or six in my state. But they are available; you just have to be able to find them. And they have the training. I have masters in Metabolic and Nutritional Medicine. Many of my colleagues have this training where they’re more understanding, they interpret the labs differently, and they have access to functional medicine labs. My primary care provider unfortunately can’t order a nutritional analysis; it’s just not available through our local hospital systems. But I have a contract with the functional medicine lab so I can run a fancy nutritional analysis on my patients. It’s 20 pages of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants. We can literally test glutathione levels, which is amazing, and even looking at their omega-3 fatty acid levels in the blood. So, the unique thing about these functional medicine providers is that they do have some specialized testing that can really optimize your health. You just have to find the provider to work with.

Allan (24:33): Yes. I think that’s so critical because we can’t depend on the current medical system to make us well. If we’re injured, if we’re sick – yes, they’ve been doing that, they know how to do that. But if you really want to optimize health, you really want to feel well all the time and you really want to have longevity, like you say in Your Longevity Blueprint – but the reality is if you want to have a wonderful life and really enjoy it – these are some valuable tests for you to check out. Even if you’re not really having major symptoms – I do want to stress – get out there every once in a while and find out what your numbers are. I’m not going to advertise any of them here, but you can go look online. There are some sites that you can actually do full panels yourself. You just go to a local lab and they’ll draw. So a local phlebotomist will draw it and they’ll send it off to these labs, and they’ll do a full workup for you and send it to you. And it’s written in plain English to help you interpret what you see. At that point you can either have a conversation with your primary physician, or you can seek out a professional that’s going to understand what you’re going through and what you want to try to accomplish. Dr. Gray, thank you so much for being a part of the 40+ Fitness podcast. If someone wanted to reach out and get to know more about you, where would you like for me to send them?

Dr. Gray (25:55): They can check out YourLongevityBlueprint.com/40. That is a link to a page on my website where we’re offering a 10% off storewide purchases code. The code is thanks40. You can certainly check me out there. I do have a free PDF to download on three top tips to boost your hormones naturally. I talk about reducing stress, reducing your toxin exposure and fixing nutritional deficiencies. And you can certainly see my book in our book trailer video right on that website – YourLongevityBlueprint.com/40.

Allan (26:31): And as you said, there’s a lot more in the book than we could ever, ever hope to cover in a podcast. So, do check out the book. There’s a lot of valuable information in there for you to kind of understand what’s going on in your body, and some great actionable items for you to use in building your health and fitness. As I said before, Dr. Gray, thank you for being on the podcast.

Dr. Gray (26:52): Thank you. And to all the listeners – know there’s hope. If you don’t feel right, there’s an answer. Find a provider who can help you get those answers.

 

 

Allan (27:05): I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Dr. Gray. I certainly did. Really, a lot of good information there. The book is well worth the purchase, so I would encourage you to go out and get Your Longevity Blueprint. It’s a really, really good book. It’ll teach you a lot about yourself and help you be a big partner and big lead – the driver in your wellness journey.

So the last week I went to Panama – actually, it was an island set called Bocas del Toro. Spend some time with my wife, just kind of unwind, enjoy ourselves, learn a little bit about the place and the culture. It really does interest me, and maybe might end up being a place that we spend a lot more time than we had originally thought. We’re looking into that; more on that later.

I wanted to also let you know before we go that this is going to be the last week that I’m going to leave open the waiting list for The Wellness GPS. If you want to be a part of the launch team, the team that goes through and does their Wellness GPSs with me walking you through step by step, you need to go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS. If you’re not on that list, you’re probably not going to hear about this because the list is filling up and there’s almost enough people on there now that it will fill the 20 slots. I can only work with 20 people because this is hands-on. I’m working with you daily for the seven-day challenge as we go about putting together our Wellness GPS. If you’re interested, you need to go there today and sign up – 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS. I’ll announce it there when I open it, it’s going to be open until the 20 slots are filled, so it’s probably just going to be people that are on this waiting list that are going to get the opportunity to be a part of this challenge. It’s not an open challenge. It’s going to be open only to the individuals that are on this list until I fill the 20 slots, and then we’re done. So again, 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS.

And then finally, I know I’ve been talking about it for the past few weeks, but we’re working on getting the final bit of manuscript together for The Wellness Roadmap book that I’ve been working on. And I’ve also put out a base site for the book. You can go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com to learn more about the topic matter of the book, learn a little bit about me. I am setting up a mailing list that’s going to be specific for the book. You won’t be getting other mailings from me; this is going to be my launch team. When you write a book, it’s really not an individual thing. Yes, I do spend a lot of time alone, writing and editing and typing and redlining. I’m not the most efficient writer out there, so it does take me a little while. So there’s a lot of alone time – don’t get me wrong – but launching a book is really a team sport, and I need you on my team. I need you to help me make this book a success, and the way we do that is we coordinate our work, we coordinate what we do. And the best way for me to do that with you would be through this mailing list. I will only mail you on that mailing list information about the book, the progress on the book, things like that. But I won’t be mailing you other stuff. So this is a very private, single-source, single-use email list. If you want to be a part of the launch team, please go sign up today. You can go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com, and at the bottom of that page you’ll see where you can give me your name and email and I can make you a part of the launch team. A launch like this can be a lot of fun, working together, getting things done. You’ll get some special discounts on the book, you might get some additional freebies and bonuses that I can throw in there. I’ll be looking at what I can do and what I can’t do, but this is the group that’s going to help me launch the book and make it a success, and I want to do as much for you as I possibly can. So go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com and go ahead and join the launch team today. Thank you.

 

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Menopause advice for women and men with Dr. Tara Allmen

 

Food sanity with Dr David Friedman

The science behind food is both confusing because much of it is financed by the companies with the most to gain by the outcomes. Dr David Friedman helps us understand how to get to the real answer in his book Food Sanity.

 

Allan (1:28):Dr. Friedman, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Dr. Friedman (1:31): Great to be here.

Allan (1:32): Your book, Food Sanity, is probably one of the most researched books I've ever seen. I've been doing this for a while. I've interviewed over 175 authors, all of which have their own ways of looking at things. You did some deep, deep digging, and I'm using that as a pun, but we'll get into that. Now, you had a reason to want to do this because you were seeing all these different guests come on your show, like I do. And many of them were saying, “You should eat like this”, and others were saying, “No, you should eat like that.” On the surface they're very different, almost contradictory in many aspects. And then you were like, “I've got this really, really smart cardiologist telling me I need to stop eating meat, and then I have this other very smart cardiologist telling me it's fine to eat meat.” So you get confused, and it is very easy to get confused in all this. But you've put together a very good model and you've gone through a lot of this yourself. So do you mind sharing a little bit of your story?

Dr. Friedman (2:36): Yeah. Basically I wrote Food Sanity after the 18 years of frustration that I went through as a syndicated TV and radio health expert. And like you, I've interviewed hundreds of scientists, doctors, bestselling authors, hoping to share information that would help my audience reach their optimal health. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Instead, every guest would contradict the previous expert, leaving everybody, including me, more confused. You've got the proponents of the vegan, the Paleo, Mediterranean, the gluten-free and low carb diet. And let's face it, the opinions are as different as night and day. I remember oatmeal used to help balance blood sugar and research proved it. Now we’re told to avoid grains, because they spike our blood sugar. Coffee used to be considered unhealthy. Today we're told it helps prevent disease. Actually three weeks ago it caused cancer and they just announced a new study, about I think a week ago, that's saying it actually prolongs our life, that it’s good for you now. Eggs used to cause high cholesterol; now research shows eggs contain lecithin, which helps lower cholesterol. So I was very frustrated with all the conflicting opinions. I wrote Food Sanity; it really breaks through all the facts, fads and fiction, and finally answers the big question: What are we supposed to eat?

Allan (3:49): Part of your approach, which I really appreciate, because quite frankly it's common sense – is the DIG model. Can you go through that DIG model because I really think this is probably the best tool overall I've ever seen for a way to think about food and food choices?

Dr. Friedman (4:09): Yeah, and not just that. A lot of people are calling it the “lie detector test” to pass the DIG method to find out if it's true or false, even beyond food. I've been getting a lot of emails saying that works in other areas as well. It’s really neat that you can kind of dive in and, as we say, dig in. Basically in Food Sanity I used the “common science meets common sense” approach for figuring out the culinary conundrum. Unfortunately, we can't solely rely on the scientific studies, because as we just talked about, that changes sometimes weekly, like the coffee – that changed in a week. Plus many of them are biased, meaning studies are bought and paid for. So I show the reader how to avoid these paid for unreliable scientific studies, tap into their instincts and trust their gut instead of relying on what they hear in the media. Then we explore the biology of the body and if we’re designed to eat it. When you combine these three things, these are the DIG. D is “discovery” – that’s the science. I is “instinct”. And G is “God”. That's not necessarily biblical, but how our Creator created our body – our biology, our teeth, our enzymes. If you combine the science, instinct and biology, you have a foolproof blueprint that shows you what you should and shouldn't eat. It's kind of like a tricycle – without three wheels it can’t function. And my three little processes are really what other diet books are missing. In Food Sanity I don't use this “my way or the highway” approach. Instead I help the reader make up their own mind on the best way to eat and lose weight and prevent disease.

Allan (5:41): I was reading one study, and I think it was a Harvard scientist. He basically said that they were testing cholesterol numbers against mortality rate, and they basically weren't finding that when they lowered cholesterol with the statin that it was really giving them the results they wanted. So his complete conclusion was, we need to give them more statins. I can't wrap my mind around what this guy is saying. It's like we gave them statins and it didn't stop the heart attacks in the way that we intended. So therefore we think we just need to give them more statins. I had to question the guy’s motives or where he was coming from. It really just confused me. So I've made a practice now – if I’m going to rely on a study, I have to actually go read the study, because the headlines are going to skew it one way. The study may have been skewed one way in the way it was set up, or just the way they frame their conclusion is completely unsupported by the way they did the study in the first place. So the science is really where I get stuck the most, because you're right, there are people who are bought. So basically Monsanto pays for someone to do a study on Monsanto, and lo and behold, it's awesome. You should eat this for breakfast. And many of us do. But then there are those ones where I think while they might not have a complete buy-in, they have a paradigm that swings them to set the study up or run it a certain way. So that throws me off sometimes, but you don't necessarily know that unless you actually get in and see how they set up the study, which is a shame.

Dr. Friedman (7:31): So true. The saying is, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” So if your boss is paying you millions of dollars to find a specific finding of a study, you're not going to let your boss down, you don't want to lose that money. So the American Dairy Association funds a study and let's say they pay a big organization, Johns Hopkins, and say, “We want you to show that milk builds strong bones. Here’s $40 million.” If that study comes back where it doesn't show that it builds strong bones, they're not going to publish it. It behooves everybody to keep the boss happy, and that's what I’ve noticed. But if you find a study that’s not paid for by somebody that has vested interest, then you can dig a little bit deeper and say, “This is a sound study. Now let's research and see the findings.” If it's biased, I don't even look at it. It’s not fair.

Allan (8:18): And I think the same thing sometimes of animal studies as well. I don't necessarily place a whole lot of credence on them. There are data points, but maybe not as reliable as we'd want to think. You even said in the book, cats are carnivorous, and we don't necessarily have to be. Or rabbits are vegan, and we don't necessarily have to be. So a study they did on cats or rabbits or mice isn't necessarily going to give us the best information. What I'm getting at is, a lot of the experts that get really passionate about one side of this or the other without having the objectivity, I think they find the study that fits their cognitive bias and they run with that. The expert finds these sets of studies and says, “I have 12,000 studies and you have 12,000 studies.” And they write their books, and there you go.

Dr. Friedman (9:10): That’s why you have to jump into your instincts, and also the biology. So you're right, we can’t really rely on science, and a lot of these authors just spit out the science. And you can battle science against science all day long. I’ve interviewed the plant-based and they’ve great science. I’ve interviewed the Paleo and they’ve got great science. But it’s not all about science. You've got to really go in and do the full DIG.

Allan (9:31): That's why I like your model so well. It puts a little bit of common sense behind the way we approach these things. You do a little bit of digging into the science, you learn more about it, and then you can just apply your model from what makes sense and what your biology is all about. Then the other side of it, I've always found is after you start eating a certain way. You saw this with meat – once you stopped eating red meat, your health improved dramatically.

Dr. Friedman (9:59): Correct, yeah. And that’s really what made the foundation of, “Let me explore what foods are good for me, what are bad for me.” The first one that was my own self-study is, “I feel better when I get off red meat. Why is that?” Then I researched, are there other foods that maybe I shouldn't be eating? And that's what led into Food Sanity, where I explore every single food group, if we’re supposed to eat it, what the science shows, does that make sense? And is our biology set up for us to eat it?

Allan (10:27): As we start having this conversation about biology, invariably the conversation comes up to, what did our ancestors eat? And then that takes us over to the Paleo movement and the people with the big flags with the bacon on it saying, “This is what we ate. This is what we ate.” And you've done a little bit of digging into the Paleo Diet, which I thought was fascinating. So I'm going to let you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on what our ancestors actually ate. Like I said, I did a little bit of a dig myself, and we can kind of have a compare and contrast there.

Dr. Friedman (11:04): There are few subjects out there that raise more controversy and heated opinions than food and politics. And when you look at plant-based versus Paleo Diet, it’s kind of like Republicans versus Democrats. Hopefully when they’re done with Food Sanity, they find we can all eat and dine together, because I’m getting some praise from the Paleo and also from the vegan, even though I’m from neither one of those. I’m kind of a mix between. But really, vegans and vegetarians believe a diet void of meat is the secret to optimal health and longevity. And of course proponents of the Paleo Diet say we need to eat meat like our caveman ancestors did. In Food Sanity I show how this belief is based on a serious distortion of human history. Caveman are portrayed as these big, strong, savage hunters, able to stab and kill mammoth-sized animals, carry their dead carcass over their shoulders. That may be how the cartoons and the movies portray them, but it's far from the truth. Cavemen were actually short and fat people. In fact, they were not much taller than 5 feet, they weighed 171 pounds, the size of their body was an evolutionary adaptation for cold weather, since that extra fat consolidated heat. According to the National Institute of Health, this is considered clinically obese. A short obese man certainly could not have the speed or the endurance that it would take to run fast enough to hunt and kill a mammoth, lion, tiger, bear. Cavemen were not the predator hunters that we've been led to believe they are. In my book I actually show how they were the hunted, not the hunters. They carried weapons for defense.

Using forensic analysis scientists showed our cavemen ancestors ate primarily plant-based diet, but forget the science, forget the forensics. Let’s get to talking about instincts. What do our instincts show us? If they were able to catch a lion, tiger and bear, which I show in the book is very difficult… It’s difficult now, if I gave you a sword and I told you to go out and catch one – it's not easy. But if they did, that meat was good for about five hours before it would rot and make them sick. So it was good for one meal. So, are they going to spend all day hunting the one meal, or since they had hands, which are designed for picking, wouldn't it be logical, common sense instincts to say they probably picked fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains, because that would last longer than five hours? And if that ran out, there's nothing left but meat, would they eat meat? Absolutely. They weren't vegetarians, but if you really want to talk about our ancestors and we should be eating like a caveman like we're told, but in fact there's only a 1.6% difference in another ancestor, the chimpanzee. So there is a 1.6% difference between a chimpanzee’s DNA and ours. We both have fingers, thumbs, fingernails, similar reproductive system, gestation is nine months, 32 teeth. We're the only species able to use tools. Chimpanzees’ diet is 90% to 95% plant-based, with the remaining percentage being insects, eggs and baby animals. They will eat meat, but only if they’re left with no other choice. Having said that, why aren’t there diet books out there telling us we should eat like a chimp instead of a caveman?

Allan (14:17): I agree with you there, but one of the thoughts that hit me as I was going through this section and thinking about this was, it’s pretty obvious that we’re food opportunists. If there's a drive through available, we're going to drive through it. If we leave bad food in our pantry, we're going to eat it. Some of the advice is, avoid the drive throughs, don't have bad food in your pantry because then you're more inclined to eat it. So I see humans as very opportunistic eaters, particularly when food was not necessarily always abundant. My ancestors would have been in Northeastern Europe, so there were winters and times of pretty bad famine where there wasn't much food around at all. So I do agree, they would be digging up roots and they would be doing other things. That said, they were very smart. They had tools and they were able to move and do things. They didn't want to get hurt any more than the others. If all these leafy greens and root vegetables were there, and everything they needed from a vegetable perspective – that vegetable is not going to strike back. I might get a thorn when I'm picking a berry, but that's going to be the worst of it.

But then the other side of it is when we start talking about – and we’ll get into this in a bit – fish and poultry, at least birds. They're not very dangerous to hunt, unless it's a piranha or a barracuda or something like that. But for the most part, fishing and killing birds is not a dangerous pastime, and not a bad thing. It's more difficult than picking off of a bush, but like I said, it's there. So I do believe that they probably would go out and do some hunting for small game. If they find a nest with eggs – they’re opportunistic, they would do that. They’d kill the bird, then they've got the bird. They’d go fishing if they have an opportunity to do that, if they're in an area where water is abundant and there's some fish. So, I think they're going to be opportunistic. Now, if a mammoth or some other bear or something is in the area, I do agree that they might pack-animal hunt that bear, if they felt like they could get it without hurting themselves and they felt like it would provide them with a really good meal and everybody would eat off of it. And then you're right, the rest of it would probably get wasted.

Dr. Friedman (16:40): But that bear probably was a lot quicker than the cavemen, so if you wanted to outrun them and eat them, you’d go a lot quicker, or they’re going to be gone.

Allan (16:49): But I think we would go as pack animals. I think we would surround them, we would use our intellect and we would have methodologies. I don't know if it's true, but there was a story of how Indians would effectively try to herd a buffalo off of a cliff, as a way of killing it, so that they didn't have to get hurt. Or when they had access to guns, one of the ways that they would want to hunt a buffalo would be to surround the buffalo and get it moving away from them. And if it didn't take care of itself, it's going to fall off the cliff, and then they've got what they were after. So I just see us as opportunistic eaters. If it's there, we're going to eat it and we're going to eat, I would say, the easiest sum game of effort versus benefit.

Dr. Friedman (17:35): The pathway of least resistance.

Allan (17:37): Yes, exactly. So I would see us like that, which would tell me when meat is there and it's easy to get, we'll get it. I don't know about you, but I do enjoy fish, I do enjoy chicken.

Dr. Friedman (17:51): So you and me eat the real cavemen diet, because that’s it.

Allan (17:56): And occasionally if our tribe had an opportunity to kill an animal that was going to provide red meat, like a bear or whatnot, I think we might rally the forces and say, “Hey, that last bear we ate tasted pretty good. Why don't we go get another one?” If it's opportunistic. I think that's really where this all comes about is, it's really difficult to say they would have only eaten vegetables, because they had to eat something else. When the vegetables were gone, what did my ancestors eat? Did they just go five, six months without eating at all, waiting for the vegetables to come back?

Dr. Friedman (18:33): The Paleo advocates and their philosophy is they tend to go against the grain, pun intended. And advocates of their diet tell us to eat a lot of red meat and stay clear of grains and legumes, which cavemen supposedly didn’t eat because of their lack of agricultural techniques. But using advancements in modern technology, fossilized remnants of beans and barley have been discovered between the teeth of cavemen. In fact, the University of Utah says 40% of the cavemen’s diet, we’re talking 3.5 million years ago, was our gluten, grains containing gluten. So that whole thing that 10,000 years ago is when we started eating grains, has been debunked. That’s another thing when we look at our ancestors. It really raises the question, what did we eat and do we really care? And my point is this: I don't care what the caveman ate. I just had this find out, because everyone's always saying to eat like a caveman. I care what our great grandparents ate, because that’s our direct line. If you look at our great grandparents, they were thinner, they were healthier, they didn’t have the cancer, they didn’t have the diseases we do. And I challenge people that are overweight and blame their genes; I say you can’t blame your genes on why you can’t fit into your jeans. Because in the early 1900s, 3% to 5% were overweight; today it’s 70%. But if you can show me a picture of your great grandma or grandfather and they were overweight, then go ahead and blame your DNA. So I tend to say, let’s eat like our great grandparents did. They didn't eat the hormones, the chemicals, the coloring, they didn’t eat the processed food. That's more my view, rather than Neanderthals, who didn't have stores back then. We do. Let’s eat like our grandparents did.

Allan (20:14): When I walk into a grocery store, I just cringe. I look at millions and millions of empty calories sitting on the shelves. About three quarters of my cart ends up being vegetables, and then I'm walking around the outside of the store getting the rest of my foods. You also went in and did the DIG method for the vegan diet as well. Can you spend a little bit of time on that?

Dr. Friedman (20:41): Yeah. It’s interesting, how we talked before about the one thing that people agree on is fruits, vegetables and plant-based have benefits. Not everybody agrees that the beef and the red meat does. So if you look at studies out there, the fruits, vegetables and grains… And we can talk about the gluten – that’s an interesting topic. Basically there’s still good and bad, because it is processed, you still have to deal with pesticides, you still have to deal with the soil. There are certain goods and bads with all food, including fruits and vegetables. So in the book I kind of show the good, the bad and the ugly of everything. But when you look at nature, when you look at natural-derived that’s not processed, that's not touched by Monsanto – fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains are great for us. There's no if, ands or buts. But man has kind of tainted a lot of that, and that's why you really have to start looking for organic, non-GMO.

One quick little tip to know if it’s organic – if you see the fruit, the vegetable, and you're not sure, look at the PLU code – it’s the Price Lookup Code. If you see a 9, it’s organic. If you see it starting with an 8, it's GMO. The saying I use is, “Nine is fine, eight isn’t great.” So if you see a 9 in front of it, it’s organic. That’s a little quick tip. And you want to go organic as much as you can. Some people ask if they should do everything organic. No. Here's the quick little rule of thumb, rather than memorizing the Dirty Dozen that people talk about by EWG, I say if you can get your fingernail and you can puncture the skin, probably you're going to get pesticides in there just as easy as you puncture the skin. So if it's easy to puncture, get organic. If it's not, don't worry about it. Avocados – don't worry about it. Bananas, pineapple, kiwi – not so much, because you can’t penetrate that. So that's just an easy little Friedman way of knowing, take the nails test. Don’t do it though in the store, you’re going to get in trouble. Just know if you've got grapes, you can puncture it – that's organic. Apple, puncture – that’s organic. Pear, easy to puncture – organic. Strawberries, that’s super easy to puncture – organic. Just a little easy way to know what fruits and vegetables you should and shouldn't have that are organic.

Allan (23:01): I like how you said it in the book as well. And my mantra is to buy local. You’ve got farmers that are growing seasonal vegetables right there in soil, and you can actually ask them, “How do you grow this? Do you use any pesticides? Do you use any fertilizers?” And talk to them about it. Find that farmer at the farmer's market or the co-op that's doing the things the way you want them done. It’s being transported less, which means it's going to retain more of its nutrition. In many cases when I’m talking to them, they picked the tomatoes they're selling me that day, that morning, right before they came. They got up at 6:00 in the morning to make the 8:00 farmer's market. They picked all those tomatoes themselves that morning. So I know that's going to be an awesome tomato, and it's organic, as it should be. It's going to give me much more nutrition than if I stopped at the local grocery store and picked one up there. Even if that one said “organic”, it's been transported for a lot longer distance and isn't quite as good for me.

Dr. Friedman (24:11): A lot longer, sometimes thousands of miles. There is no such thing as fresh food in Atlanta if you're buying it from California. It’s not fresh. It shipped all the way from there. When we talk about fruit, it's amazing what a bad rap it’s getting. I talk to all these experts that are saying to get off of all fruit because it contains sugar known as fructose. There's so many health advocates that recommend totally eliminating it, and what they believe is that fruit creates a sugar overload that can lead to obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes. In my opinion that’s taking things way too far. Fruit is an important part of the diet. It does have sugar, but so do vegetables. One cup of sweet potatoes contain 6 grams of sugar. It is the perfect food for diabetics. One stock of broccoli contains 2.6 grams of sugar. The reason eating sweet potatoes and broccoli won’t spike your blood sugar is because they contain a lot of fiber, which buffers out the sugar content. So when deciding which fruit to eat, it's important to look at the glycemic index. This measures how the fruit you eat will affect your blood sugar levels, and the best way to keep your blood sugar in balance is to eat fruits that have higher fiber and contain low GI. So instead of reaching for grapes and banana, opt for fruits high in fiber that have a low GI, like apples and blueberries. Even though these fruits are high in sugar – blueberries have a whopping 15 grams of sugar per cup – because of the fiber content, the natural fruit sugar is released slowly into the body, won't cause an unhealthy sugar spike. In spite of the high sugar, blueberries can actually reduce the risk of diabetes by 23%. Another option is an apple that’s full of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals. It contains lots of fibers and it buffers out the fructose, keeping you from having an insulin spike. But don't peel the apple because that defeats the whole purpose. There's so much research out there showing that people who eat five or more apples per day are least likely to develop diabetes, and same with blueberries, which are loaded with sugar. So the whole concept, “Stay away from all fruits” is just ludicrous to me.

Allan (26:16): I have to admit, I’m a little bit more on the other side, and the reason is this. Like I said, I think people are opportunists when they eat and I think that we have a major sugar addiction problem in our country. And I think that when you start trying to get people off of sugar, one bit of advice that’s fairly common is to get off all of sugar for just a short amount of time. And then you can add the berries back in, you can add fruits like apples and pears and things like that in. And then to a lesser extent, some of those tropical plants, which have a higher glycemic index. I would typically say what I would do is just not eat fruit for a short period of time, till I got my sugar under control. And then they say, “What about the artificial sweeteners?” I say drop that too, because that's still teaching your body to want the sweetness from the foods. And if you get your palate set back down a little bit by not having the sweetness from the artificial sweetener and to some extent from the fruit, you get to a point where the fruit tastes better when you come back to it.

I remember when I was a kid, we used to add white sugar, just pour it on strawberries. We needed to do that. We’d do that with watermelon. We’d put sugar on our watermelon. And now if I eat a strawberry, it's one of the sweetest things I can taste. If it's a good, organic, fresh strawberry, it's awesome. Same thing with watermelon. I’m down in a part of the country where they grow a lot of watermelons, so it's available during the season. It's so sweet, so delicious, but it's because I've reset my palate to just not want those sweet things. So I think sometimes taking a break from it – not permanently, but a break from it to let your palate reset – isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Dr. Friedman (28:22): Then you don’t have to add the sugar to the strawberries because they already taste sweet.

Allan (28:26): Exactly. That’s where I was going with that, was to say, if you have a sugar addiction, I think that there's an opportunity for you to consider how fruit is contributing to that in the short run. If a short hiatus from it is going to make you appreciate it that much more, I think that's not a bad idea.

Dr. Friedman (28:43): Right. But they should never go back on those artificial sweeteners, because those are lousy. What’s so funny is there's no research showing that they help you lose weight or curb your appetite. When I researched it, it’s the opposite – they make you hungry, they make you eat more. University of Texas did a study showing there's a 41% increased risk of obesity for every one diet soft drink you consume that has these artificial sweeteners. And the average person doesn't drink one; they drink five. So you can imagine. And people that drink these artificial sodas think they're losing weight. Most of them are overweight, and years and years later, how's that working for you? It didn’t help.

Allan (29:19): It didn’t. That’s the calorie model. And I think they’re sugar-addicted, and that artificial sweetener is just causing them to eat more sugar across the board.

Dr. Friedman (29:29): Exactly. It makes you crave something. You're teasing your brain. It’s like, “That’s not real. Give me more.” So it makes you crave more carbs and sweets.

Allan (29:38): The research you did for this book just blew my mind. I was looking at the citations – there were over 700 citations in this book. You could have written eight books with that many citations, but you got this down into one good, concise thing. I think your simplified DIG model is a brilliant model. It's not simple, but it's easy to think through. It's a model that I think will work for anyone. You've done that, and now obviously with everything you've done with all the interviews, going through this process, what do you eat today?

Dr. Friedman (30:13): I live by a Flexitarian Diet, which is a marriage between the word “flexible” and “vegetarian”. Basically I'm eating like our real ancestors did, dealing with more plant-based and about 20% animal. I did look at all the different animal food and there's one that you really need to stay off of, and we can talk about deep into that. There's just so much science – like you saw, I looked at both sides – and that’s the beef. One thing that’s interesting, four years ago, the National Academy of Sciences shared a major discovery. They found a unique sugar called Neu5Gc, which is found in abundance in cows, but it's not found in humans. And when we eat this sugar, this molecule, it triggers an immune response that our body attacks. This leads to chronic inflammation, which has been linked to colon cancer, and among all victims of cancer, colon cancer is the second leading cause of death. So the more red meat you eat, the more likely you are to get colon cancer. The most authoritative report on colon cancer risk today was published by the World Cancer Research Fund International. They concluded almost half of colon cancer could be prevented if people just ate less red meat. And interestingly, Neu5Gc – inflammatory sugar – is just one atom different than a molecule that lines our blood vessels called Neu5Ac. We share this molecule with chickens and fish, so eat those foods with no inflammatory reaction. When we eat red meat our immune system can't tell the difference so our body ends up attacking our own blood vessels. This explains why red meat has been shown to increase heart disease. So more and more research out there. And it's so funny that you’ve got Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Harvard all saying red meat is not good. The good I found was endorsed by the American Cattle Association. So that's the one thing I’d stay away from. I do organic chicken – I think that's great. Fish – I’d love to chat more about that. That was my favorite food, and I debunk that mercury myth by far in my book. My big “a-ha” moment was discovering that. I think that's something that's never been discovered, and I had to dig because fish is not a moneymaker. They really make that the redheaded stepchild when it comes to food.

Allan (32:23): So basically primarily plant-based, and occasionally eating pastured organic chickens, pastured organic eggs, and then fish which is wild-caught and delicious.

Dr. Friedman (32:40): Yeah.

Allan (32:48): I think you either like fish or you don't like fish, but almost in no cases do I find a lot of people where fish is a staple for them. It's an occasional treat that they'll have. I don't think enough people eat enough fish.

Dr. Friedman (33:05): And I share this in the book. It's the least advertised, it’s the least promoted, it’s the least endorsed. In fact, the FDA says to stay away from it. It causes mercury, it’s polluted waters. And every expert that I’ve heard says to cut back on fish, mercury, mercury. I love fish. And I used to preach the same thing. It’s like I’m preaching what they told me to preach. I was like, “Let me dig in. Is it true?” So I actually went in and looked at this mercury thing, and the truth is that the oceans are not the mercury-laden cesspools that we’re lead to believe. In Food Sanity I debunk this myth. There are cultures around the world that eat fish daily, sometimes three times a day, and their blood tests, Allan, show no mercury toxicity. They're the epitome of good health. And then I looked at pregnant females that are scared, that avoid certain types of fish because they supposedly contain mercury that can harm the unborn fetus. There's simply no credible resource to support this. In fact, evidence shows quite the opposite. Cultures where pregnant females eat a diet primarily of fish, mostly tuna, have healthier children with higher IQ scores than mothers avoiding fish. Mercury is a naturally occurring element found in soil, air, water and food, and we hear so much about the dangers of mercury in fish, but cattle products contain mercury, and mushrooms, and high-fructose corn syrup contains it. That's our fruit juices and cereals. Here’s why the mercury in fish is not a concern. Mercury cannot cause harm unless it occurs in extremely high enough levels to inhibit selenium-dependent enzymes, which naturally protect the cells of the brain. So in other words, if fish contains more selenium than mercury, it cancels out the mercury that is absorbed by the body. In Food Sanity I have a chart of 18 of the most commonly eaten fish. All of them, except the mako shark, have more selenium than mercury. Folks, play it safe. If you’re at a restaurant and you see mako shark on the menu, don’t order it. The other wild-caught fish are good for you. Enjoy them, you’re not going to have mercury poisoning. It’s just not a factor.

Allan (34:57): I was actually happy to hear that, because I had moved away from swordfish. I do eat some tuna, but a lot less. I’m more on the sardines. In this part of the country, in Florida, if you don't eat grouper and red snapper and cobia – shame on you, because they're delicious, and they're local. So, Dr. Friedman, thank you so much for this book. I know I say this to a lot of my guests, but you did your research, you've put together an awesome model for us to think about food. You've blended ideas of the two sides of an argument that seldom see the same as the other. And the basis is, let's eat whole foods. Let's get the nutrition our body needs by finding the most nutritious, healthy food we can find, and let's just eat that. I really think that's the core message of the book. So, thank you for sharing Food Sanity with us. If someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about the book, where would you like for me to send them?

Dr. Friedman (36:04): For the book they can go to FoodSanity.com. And as you see, the book was so thick. I actually had 92 pages of recipes that I couldn't include. So I actually created an e-book and that book is for free. You can download that at FoodSanity.com. It’s a nice compilation book that goes with Food Sanity. So that’s available, and you can have over 30 recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to see how easy it is to eat healthy. You don't have to compromise taste. And then to stay in touch with me and learn more, you can go to DrDavidFriedman.com, and you can see some of my blog posts, articles, and you can get all my social media contacts as well from DrDavidFriedman.com.

Allan (36:43): Cool. This is going to be episode 331, so you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/331 and I’ll be sure to have links to everything Dr. Friedman mentioned there. Again, Dr. Friedman, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

Dr. Friedman (36:59): Thank you, Allan. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

Allan (37:06): I do hope that you enjoyed that conversation with Dr. Friedman. His DIG method and the book are excellent, and something I think you should read, see how he's applying the DIG method to various types of foods. It really is a great conversation that he's having with you in the book to explain exactly why a food may or may not be good for you. Going through the science, going through instinct things, and then of course getting into how this really fits ourselves using this DIG method. It is really a wonderful tool and a wonderful book, so I do encourage you to go out and get that book.

It has been a really, really busy couple of weeks here, as I was working on my book, working and preparing my presentations for Ketofest. I did go to Ketofest and had a great time. Did four training classes. The classes were relatively small in size, which made it even nicer because I had a chance to really work directly with folks and help them through the exercises. I had all the way from advanced to beginner. There was something in there for everybody, and I got a lot of good feedback from that. My talk went really well. We did have some technical issues. I was the first speaker of the day, so you kind of have to expect that’s going to happen. I had to start a little bit late and the streaming didn't work and I don't think the recording worked. So, a lot of the technical stuff. But I had a great audience and I feel like I had a really good talk. And I got a lot of good feedback after the talk. It’s one of those things where I just enjoy sharing and having those opportunities to help people. And it's really nice to have that face time with them. And so I met some new people. I was able to see Richard and Carl from 2 Keto Dudes again, and some people I knew from last year. I actually even got to have dinner with a client, which was really, really cool. So, Ketofest is over.

I'm about a week out, I think, from getting my final draft to the editor. So I think the heavy lifting on my book is done and I'm kind of excited about that because I have this thing in mind called The Wellness GPS Challenge, and I'm going to launch that in a few weeks' time. Normally my challenges will have upwards of 100, 200, almost 300 people in some of them, but this one I'm going to have to limit to 20. So what I'm going to do this time that's a little different is I'm creating a waiting list, and if you're interested in joining the waiting list, you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS. From there you can get on the waiting list. You'll be the first to find out about it. And if the 20 slots fill up from just me sending the email to the GPS waiting list, then I'm done. I won't announce it on a podcast, I won't announce it in the Facebook group, and I won't email anyone else. I'm only going to email this waiting list and give them some time to sign up.

This challenge is going to be a 7-day challenge to help you set your Wellness GPS, which is in my mind the single most important thing you have to do if you want to be successful in your health and fitness. A lot of people will start something and then they fizzle out, and the reason they fizzle out is because they never really set their GPS. I see people start things and hurt themselves, and the reason they hurt themselves is because they never set their Wellness GPS. The Wellness GPS is a tool I've developed to help people get a really, really good start, and each and every time they're starting to struggle in their journey, they'll always have that GPS with them to keep them on track and on their way. So it's a really cool tool. It works with my clients today, I use it, and I'm looking forward to teaching 20 new people exactly how to do the Wellness GPS. Like I said, I'm working with you hand in hand, so this is not a phone in an email kind of thing. I'm literally with you, so I can only handle 20. They come from the waiting list, so do join the waiting list by going to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS. I look forward to seeing your name there and I look forward to connecting with you and getting on with this challenge. It'll start in a few weeks, but I just want to get the waiting list going, so I know who is interested and I can talk directly to you. Thank you.

 

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Setting your pace toward wellness

Hello and thank you for being a part of the 40+ Fitness podcast. I’m really excited to have you here today and I’m really excited to share today’s show with you. It’s going to be a solo episode. I got a lot of great feedback from the last one, so I did promise you and I am going to continue to give you some of these solo shows. And the topic we’re talking about today called “Modes of Transportation” is really, really important. It’s something that you really need to make sure you understand before you get into your wellness journey, until you get into your path. It’s a part of what I call the “Wellness GPS”.

What I find is so many people struggle to know what to do when, where to go, how to get there, and when they run into a problem, they really don’t have the tools to break away and get through what’s going on. So they’re in a plateau, they don’t know how to get around that. They get into a roadblock or they hit a stumble or a pot hole. They don’t know how to get around that. If you’ve set your GPS right, it will help you do those things, and if you’ve set your Wellness GPS well, you’ll know how to react and do the right things for your wellness.

I want to help you do that, so to do that, I’m going to launch a challenge. It’s going to be called the Wellness GPS Challenge. This is going to be a short-term challenge – I’m thinking probably something in the realm of about seven days. We’re going to walk through each and every step of the Wellness GPS path, get you completely set up to almost guarantee success.

My clients that have used this strategy, used this approach – they get results, and I want you to get results too.

Now, because I’m going to be working directly with you, I can’t bring on a whole lot of people to do this. It’s going to be a very small group, like 20 people. I’m only going to allow 20 people in, and if you want to be a part of it, you need to be on the waiting list, because I’m going to contact the waiting list first, allow 24 hours for them to join, and then I’ll start looking to announce it on the podcast and otherwise. But the first 20 slots are going to go to people that are on the waiting list if they want it. So you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS. And when you sign up on that mailing list, you’ll be getting some emails from me to let you know what the timing is and what we’re going to be doing, and then we’re going to go ahead and launch it. If I get to 20 just from this mailing list, then I’m done. So if you don’t want to miss out on this offer of being a part of the Wellness GPS challenge, I encourage you to go join that mailing list today. Again, that’s at 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS.

Let’s get into our topic – modes of transportation. So I want to set the scene for you. I was probably about five years into my wellness journey, as it would be, and basically it was a yo-yo experience, to say the least. At this particular time though I was in generally good shape. I felt really good, I’d been working out, things were going pretty well, but my work schedule was just getting insane. I was traveling about 90%, and this was one of those rare weekends that I was at home and I just decided I didn’t want to do anything. I was jet lagged, I was tired, so I’m sitting on the couch just pretty much working my thumb. It’s a Sunday morning and I’m flipping between Face the Nation and various infomercials. So as I’m flipping the channels and watching stuff, all of a sudden this commercial comes on for a program called Insanity. You might’ve heard of it – it’s from the same people who did P90X and all the Beachbody people. And this was Shaun T, and this dude looked great. The folks behind him were moving, they were exercising. It all looked really good. And what was really cool about it was that they didn’t need any equipment to do the work they were doing. I was like, “Wow, I travel a lot, it’s really hard for me to find a gym at points in time with all the travel I’m doing. This might actually be the answer.” So of course I get my credit card out, I dial the 1-800 number and I order the stuff.

I come back from my next business trip, and there it is in my mailbox. I was really, really excited about it, so I just decided to rip the covers off, see what’s in it. I knew that I couldn’t carry all these DVDs with me. There were about 12 of them or so. I couldn’t carry all of them with me, so I was saying, “What do I need to do? First thing I’ll do, I’ll rip all these to my computer. I’m getting on another trip soon, and instead of having the DVDs with me, it’d be easier if it’s on my computer. I’ll be more likely to do it on the road.” So I did that first, knowing myself, knowing I needed to have it handy if I was going to use it. Then as soon as I got done with that, I put the first DVD in and it was a fitness test. So I do this fitness test and I really push myself because I want to know how well this does, so I’m going to really push myself to do this fitness test. And it was hard. Not just hard; it was really, really hard. The next day I was basically incapacitated. I felt like I’d been strapped to my bed and beat with a baseball bat. I woke up and I felt so bad, and I really didn’t want to get up. I knew I had to get ready for work and I was laying there and I finally decided, “I’m so much pain, I won’t be able to concentrate. This won’t be a good day for me.” So I called in sick. It’s kind of embarrassing now to look back at it. It’s a little funny, but at the time I was really embarrassed that I pushed myself so hard in a workout that I literally can’t go.

I only tell you that story because I think a lot of us actually approach our health and fitness thinking, “I’ve got to get this done now.” The body weight, the things that we’re trying to get rid of, the things we’re trying to do. We didn’t get into the shape we were in just a couple of weeks, in a couple of days, in a couple months. But I think a lot of us have this general mindset that we want it now. And one of the things that’s going to be a limiting factor, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the show, is just physically what we’re capable of doing. I think in a sense we all know that if we push ourselves too hard, we’re going to break.

But there’s another point to pace that I really want you to take to heart. And it’s the one that’s really the hardest for us to deal with, because we’re gung-ho and we all want to get there – and that is, what vehicle are we going to have to choose to go? The vehicle we choose is going to determine the pace with which we get there. So, in a normal example, if I wanted to drive from here in my home in Pensacola Beach to Hattiesburg, it’s about a 3-hour drive. I’ve done that drive so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. It’s a relatively straight flat road. If I got into a sports car, I could probably get there in two and a half hours easy. I’ll break a couple of speed limits here and there. I know where to not break the speed limits by now, but I’d go really quick. It’s a really easy road, I know the way. Boom, I’m there. It’s just me and the car, and I’m in Hattiesburg. So if I want to be in Hattiesburg for a football game, I’m there. No problem.

So, if you’re single, got nothing else going on in your life, no other troubles, no other problems, no other passengers or baggage – sure, hop in the sports car and get there. As much as your body will allow you to do so, that should be your pace. That can be your pace. But unfortunately many of us do have baggage and passengers. So if I wanted to go to a football game, but I also wanted to set up the tailgate for everybody – I can’t take the sports car now because I can’t carry the tent, the chairs, the grill, the food, the cooler – all the different things that I would want for the tailgate. Now I have to bring my pickup truck. The pickup truck doesn’t handle as quickly as the sports car. It can’t go quite as fast and it’s not going to get there in the same amount of time. So now with the truck, it might take me three hours to get there, which is actually substantially more than two and a half when you sit down and do the math. But because I need to carry the baggage of the stuff in my life, it’s going to take me longer. So, if I have a job that has me working 18-hour days, I won’t be able to work out as often as I may have wanted to work out. If I have some other issues going on with people that are going to want to have food and I want a social life and I want to go tailgate, then I have baggage that’s going to keep me from moving as fast as I might have moved if I didn’t have that baggage. So I have to take the pickup truck – it’s going to take me longer to get there. If I can’t do the things I need to do all the time, without regard to any other timing, any other thing, I might have some difficulty getting there as quickly. And I have to accept that. That acceptance is a very, very important thing.

Before we really get into the acceptance though, I want to talk about the final one, and that is, what if I have passengers? So what if I have six people that want to travel with me to the game? I can’t take the truck because I can’t sit six people in my truck. Now I’m going to have to buy a bus or rent a bus, and the bus is going to be a little harder for me to handle. I might not be as familiar with the transmission, I’m going to have to slow down. And then invariably one of the six or seven of us that are going might have to go to the bathroom while we’re on there. So we’re probably going to be taking a few more pitstops, particularly if those passengers happen to be your children. So, recognizing that you have people in your life that are going to slow you down, you have stuff in your life, events, work, the gym closes, all these different things that can happen that are going to potentially slow you down – you have to set your mind to understand that there is going to be a pace of movement that is going to be most appropriate for you and the lifestyle you want and need and have.

I define wellness as being the happiest, healthiest, most fit person you can be, and I put happiness in there for a reason. Not having baggage can be great, not having passengers can be great. But I’m thinking to be the happiest person you want to be, you’re going to have the baggage, you’re going to have the passengers, you’re going to have those special events. You’re going to have the people – your children, your spouse. You’re going to have those people in your life, so you have to make sure that your fitness journey, the way you set all of this up basically is strategized to deal with that. You may have passengers, or baggage, or you may have both. So you have to choose the appropriate mode of transportation which is going to then reflect into the pace with which you see movement, with which you see the journey happen. Once you satisfy yourself with understanding that that’s how all of this works, it becomes a lot easier for you to accept that you don’t have to feel the acceleration of a sports car to know that you’re moving forward, as long as you stay the path and you keep moving forward. So, getting your mindset on the front end of what is possible and how you’re going to get there, with which vehicle and what that pace is going to be like, is going to go a long way towards helping you reach your goals.

I want to close with one other thing, and I know this is going to be a really short episode. This is a really, really important topic that you need to think about and wrap your mind around, because if you really do want to meet your goals, if you have certain fitness goals that you want to meet – it’s not if you’re going to meet those goals. You must meet those goals. Your health and fitness, your wellness should be the most important thing to you right now, and if it is, then you’re going to want to pick the right vehicle, and then just understand that it’s not if, it’s when you reach certain goals. If right now I wanted to train for a 10K, I have my wife, I have a couple of trips that are coming up. I have to consider the baggage and the passengers to decide, can I do a 10K? Am I capable of doing a 10K in six weeks, or maybe I need to sign up for the next one? I still have it. It’s still there, I still set it up. It’s just a different 10K at a slightly offset time, and I’m doing that because I’m being responsible to understanding what my baggage and my passengers are. And if you’ll do that, that’s going to lend into the whole happiness thing because you’re getting what you want out of your life and you’re meeting your goals. So it’s not if, it’s when. And now you’re on the path and you know you’re going at the pace that’s appropriate for you.

Closing, I do want to leave with one other thing. There are the passengers, there is the baggage, but you are the driver on your wellness journey, period. You have to make some hard decisions, and that might mean at points in time, asking your spouse to eat a little differently or to help you deal a little differently. It might mean telling your children they really can’t have Oreos in the cupboard all the time because you’re trying to accomplish a certain thing. It might mean that you skip a time out with your friends to go do a run because your actual race is coming up really quick. Those are the tradeoffs you’re going to make, but to get the full balance of what we’re trying to get out of wellness, which is happiness, health and fitness, you’re going to have to really tie into understanding the pace that’s the most appropriate to you. That’s not just what your body is capable of doing; it’s what your life is capable of supporting.

So, take some time to think about the pace with which you should be working towards your wellness goals, and then make that your reality. Make those goals happen when they’re supposed to happen for you. You’ll be so much happier, healthier and more fit, and therefore, well.

Another episode you may enjoy

Wellness Roadmap Part 2