Allan (00:56):
Marcus. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Marcus (00:59):
Thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited to be here.

Allan (01:03):
You know, most of the time when I have a guest on, it's a book and that book, you know, will take me anywhere from six to 12 hours to read depending on how long the book is. You took all the information. I think I would have gotten from a book and you put it into a documentary that was less than two hours long. Congratulations for that. That was pretty insane.

Marcus (01:24):
Well, we live in a fast paced world and most people don't have that endless time to go through, but let's face it that way. Once you are intrigued, there is a workbook that comes with the movie and that is 460 pages. You can go much deeper.

Allan (01:48):
Okay. Yes. Okay. I did not read the workbook. I promise I didn't do that homework. But I did watch the documentary and had Dr. Gerson on to talk about her method. And I've had someone on this speak about that before. So I'm basically familiar with a lot of this and you know, we're over 40, I'm over 50. The C word, is one of those words that just kind of, every time he goes to see your doctor, every time you have a lab test you kinda expect it. It's going to come up at some point.

Marcus (02:20):
Hi. Yeah, I know that feeling. I'm over 60.

Allan (02:25):
And so, right now we're like, okay, what's going on in my body is there's this, there's just these things happening. I obviously have no, yeah, I don't feel like I have control over. But we're going to talk about that a little bit later because I actually do, but can we talk about what is cancer when someone gets a diagnosis of cancer from their doctor, what exactly is the doctor telling them?

Marcus (02:46):
Oh, well there's many different, well, it most of all shows that there is an imbalance in your system that your body can't control anymore. Or some would call it the final breakdown of the immune system. It's definitely immune system related disease and I would just simply call it an overwhelm. There's too many things your immune system should be doing and fixing and repairing and getting rid of. And it's overworked, it's tired, and it's like an army that slowly disintegrates and doesn't do what it's supposed to do because some of the soldiers are stopped then others are living in very unfavorable conditions. And I like to make those, you know, images, because when we think about you have a complete army of soldiers that defend you and repair and fix your white blood cells and they have just too much to do. And that's usually the reason why we move with age into a cancer state. But until you get the lump bump state, as they call it, it takes six to seven years. So it's not something that happens overnight. It's something that slowly grows. And there is many components that we know that support growth and many that stop growth. So it's something that we can control quite easily.

Allan (04:13):
Okay. So I'm gonna take your war battle and I'm going to carry that out. Now we're going to keep going with that one. Okay. So I see cancer and you, talked about this a little bit in the documentary, or a lot of people talked about this documentary and this was really one of the cooler parts of it was okay, so cancer's going to get in, for lack of a better word, a battle front formation. It's going to clump together. And so it's all going to, you know, the cancer cells are all gonna accumulate and they're gonna all be in one locate location. And then, you know, they'll tell you, you know, in the old, particularly in old times, supply chain supply line, if you're not getting the things that you need for your forces and your cutoff, that forces, it's just going to lay there and die. But cancer can actually develop its own supply line from our own blood system. Can you kind of explain how that process works? Because like I said, it was, for me, it was fascinating to say, okay, here's something that my body should just be beating out and saying, get out of here. You don't belong here. But it's clumped up, set a formation and now it's, getting its supply line set up.

Marcus (05:20):
Well it cancer has many attributes to defend itself and it's more or less a cell in complete survival mode. They don't need the environment anymore. And this is where the biggest discovery has been. A cancer cell has stopped dying so it tries to survive in unfavorable conditions. There was a study in Switzerland done which was quite significant. They took when they did surgery and removed a tumor, whether that prostate or the breast or any tumor that they removed, they always cut out a little bit more tumor tissue around so that they get it all, you know, like the, the typical sentence so that we get it all. And then there was a toxicological report done on tumor tissue and unhealthy tissue and the level of heavy metals, the level of bacteria, mold, candida, fungal overgrowth was tested in tumor tissue compared to the healthy tissue.

Marcus (06:28):
And the results were really significant. Tumor tissue usually had up to 40,000 times higher concentration of heavy metals of bacteria overgrowth. It's been, it's like the body collects toxins and puts them all together into a package, you know, to prevent it if you can't detoxify, and a lot of us have impaired detox pathways so the body doesn't know what to do with those toxins. So it stores it in a place and packages. And that's why usually cancer grows in fat tissue. That's well, what do you store those toxins? So when you look at brain tumors, for example, cholesterol, it's pure fat tissue. So there is many places that your body just starts to hog up toxins. And then within that environment, bacteria and heavy metals in combination get very close together. It's like a root canal filled teeth with a metal pin that is breeding bacteria.

Marcus (07:37):
And these bacteria transform, for example, mercury into dimethylmercury mercury, which is deadly in a very short time. In the same way you have heavy metal accumulation of arsenic or mercury or cadmium or whatever in tissue with that high load of bacteria, which then transform the metal into arsenic, for example. And that is where they end. Those breeding places of mutated cells happen. Cancer cell is just simply mutated and the mutation, the change that it stops dying and that's the apoptosis effect is more or less a survival mechanism of that cell, which is either in high inflamed areas or in areas of low oxygen or is an area that are totally poisoned and polluted and these cells then survive and become mutated cells, which is a cancer cell. So all of us, you, me at the age of five years old, up to the age of 80 years old, you know, we all have every single day many cancer cells that produced in our body based on the, that we are surrounded with based on the toxins in the air and the fish, you know, like mercury heavy metals, we know coal mining, all of those things.

Marcus (09:04):
They throw out a lot of pollutants and we all develop cancer cells. Now our normal immune system, our army would then clean up, and they would clean up in many different areas. So they eat mutated cells, they eat cells that are or destroy cells that are just intermediate. We always say there is like a progression state from a healthy cell to a cancer cell. There's many steps in between. And so those immune cells clean up and tidy up if they are working properly. But now imagine you have leaky gut for example. It's one of those prime examples. Leaky gut means when you eat, there is little perforations, little holes in your colon and in your small intestine where food particles and bacteria and undigested proteins are squeezed out into the bloodstream. So it's like a garden hose that is too old and gets little holes and sprinkles in all directions like a water fountain.

Marcus (10:12):
And that's the same that happens in our body. We have a few added components why leaky gut happens. For example, any kind of Roundup use that we have in all our normal sprayed vegetables, they cause leaky gut. Heavy metals cause leaky gut stress causes leaky gut. So there's many things. So when somebody has leaky gut, every meal, they eat huge amounts of bacteria and undigested proteins are squeezed into the bloodstream. That's an imminent threat to your body, an imminent threat to your whole health. So your body will use all the soldiers, all the army to clean up that leaky gut, the mess that is created and will ignore cancer cells, ignore infections, ignores bacteria, and Hheavy metals because that's not relevant right now. And that's how we occupy our soldiers instead of letting them do the right work. And there's so many, I would call leaky gut phenomenons, you know, food sensitivities, allergies, creams that we put on externally that are absorbed into the bloodstream that then go to the liver. There's so many components, how we suppress our immune system every single day. That it's just overworked. And that's when the cancer cells start to center, start to build clusters and start to grow. And once they are connected to the blood supply and good glucose sugar, then they are perfect in fermenting that sugar. And that's creating a belt around them so that the cancer cells are protected. So it's a very sophisticated survival mechanism that kills us.

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Allan (13:21):
Now, most of the time we go into the doctor and they're going to give us a diagnosis. They're going to say, okay, you have prostate cancer or you know you have breast cancer and they have a protocol and their protocol is, is typically nuclear war. We're going to do chemo, radiation, removable or all of the above. Can you talk about those standard treatments because, you know, I've had a few people on, we've talked about prostate cancer, we've talked about some other cancers and there's always a downside to almost every treatment protocol that's currently out there in Western medicine.

Marcus (14:00):
Yeah, it's, this is often the philosophical question, because what we believe in what helps. See if people believe in conventional medicine can do incredible things. I, I always, I'm very cautious to say doesn't work or it's not the right way to do because for some people it does. I think there is a strong belief pattern. If I know chemotherapy will poison me or that radiation is like and terminal and stops everything healthy from growing, then that will happen. So we have a lot of discrepancy here based on belief. But in general using poison to kill in a body that is already overburdened usually with poison or with toxins or with heavy metals or with bacteria, you know, bacteria, poop and pee. As I always say, they create neurotoxins as a waste product. So there is a lot that is already overburdened and if I didn't use more chemicals, it's sometimes a miracle how patients survive.

Marcus (15:13):
Even with that extra on-slaughter instead of cleaning up. See the biggest problem that we have and what you just mentioned, you have prostate cancer, you have breast cancer. We look at the disease and we focus on the disease. When I made the documentary and traveled around the world there was like always which treatments do we do? Which treatments are most effective? That was my main concern and I was focusing on that. And until I came to Dr. Rao in Switzerland, he said, Marcus, you're asking really stupid questions. Who cares about treatments. I was like 10 years of research. I thought I had it. I was freaking shocked when he just put me on the spot and said, you're really off the plot. And then he explained, he pulled three charts out and said, look at those three breast cancer patients. They all have breast cancer they are all around the 42-48 mark. The first client has cancer because of self-loathing, a series of trauma from childhood being abused.

Marcus (16:21):
She doesn't care for herself. Very high, acidic, very low oxygen, slightly obese, but no care for herself. That would constitute into already enough reason for her to have cancer. The other patient has a viral infection, Epstein Barr virus infection combined with mold toxicity and she lives in a very high EMF environment in a high rise where pretty much everybody has an EMF router plus the telephone pole is not far away. So she was really exposed and we know that mold in combination with EMF is very toxic. And then having EBV on top, plenty sufficient reason to develop breast cancer while the third client had actually really dental problems. She had three different metals in her mouth, which causes a galvanic reaction and released huge amounts of mercury into her system. Plus she had detox pathways in there that, you know, she couldn't get rid of toxins no matter what.

Marcus (17:27):
They all just reoccurred in her body but couldn't, couldn't be eliminated. So seeing that three identical cancers had three completely different reasons, was already like a big awakening. And then we looked at the treatment protocols and all three had a completely different approach to getting rid of those causes. And once we did, all three patients recovered. And that's, I think it was about 10 years ago when that happened. I never forget, I sit in that office and it was first time clear to me that we are not treating disease. We need to treat the patient who has the disease and remove all those things that surprised the immune system overburdened system that was clear. And I followed through with, we had, oh God over 50,000 people who watched the documentary and studied with us and I reported back and that's when it became clear that we need to completely go away from looking at the cancer. Just, you know, some people get cancer, those get fibromyalgia and another one gets depression. It just depends on where those toxins settle and where the problem establishes.

Allan (18:48):
Okay. Now in the documentary you talked about some alternatives. So if we realize, okay, if we're, we're not talking about just trying to remove a tumor or reduce a tumor or those types of things. We're actually talking about taking care of our health as a functional, you know, it's kind of a more of a functional medicine approach. You talked about a few different things in that documented like ozone treatment. Hyperthermia and PEMF. Could you kind of talk about those?

Marcus (19:21):
Yeah, there is many treatments that support the immune system. There's many treatments that remove some of the main causes. For example, when you look at ozone, ozone is antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal. It removes all of the biome and balances it out if you have an overgrowth of Helicobacter pylori or Klebsiella. All of those bacteria that we, we need, but we need a very small quantity in our body. And when they overgrow because the menu is wrong, then ozone will correct that. And it's been, you know, 30 years in Europe as a standard treatment for every kind of infection. And it's proven. In fact there's hundreds of studies, but it's not allowed in most of the world. So in Australia, doctors lose their license if they offer ozone, even in Germany, they are clamping down on it. So it's a treatment that is not welcome yet it is super effective.

Marcus (20:31):
And because it is so easy to do, we teach patients and clients how to use it at home. So it's a standard treatment that you can do at home. And you more or less help your body to get rid of infections, local infections, skin infections, bacterial infections. It helps healing with leaky gut. It's an amazing treatment and because you couldn't do it daily at home effects are really, really fast. So we have now since probably about two years, a lot of medical professionals, clinics and doctors that work with patients, sell them bundles or sell them equipment so that they can continue the treatment at home. If you go to a $30,000, $50,000 clinic in Germany and you go through a three week treatment, they give you a device home afterwards because they know that your chances of success are massively increased just by doing those treatments at home.

Marcus (21:33):
And that's the same with hypothermia. You know hypothermia is the natural healing response of your body. If you have a cold, a viral infection, a bacterial infection, what is the first response of your body?

Allan (21:49):
Fever?

Marcus (21:50):
A fever. Exactly. And the body stops the reproduction of the virus at 39 Celsius. I think that's 1.2 or 1.8 or something like that. So it stops the reproduction. The virus is just a string of RNA and that goes into a cell, and then that RNA or DNA will then tell your cell to replicate out of amino acids, a virus. So all of a sudden that one string goes into a cell and then replicates thousands of clones. Now that process is stopped immediately at 39 Celsius fever, which means your body says, Oh, we have a virus that shouldn't be in my body. It starts affecting cells.

Marcus (22:45):
Let's upregulate the temperature, and then we stop reproduction. That's the first step. Then you go into the next step, which is think about, you know Darth Vader and the soldiers. We all know them, the ones in white uniform, they're sitting on a long production line in your bone marrow and all of a sudden as soon as the temperature goes up, that's a signal that those new soldiers that are built in your bone marrow are released into the bloodstream. So as soon as you go into a fever, your body releases out of the bone marrow, thousands of white blood cells, killer cells, that are then cleaning up with that virus. And the infected cells. And that is usually a process that takes two days. And that's why when children get a cold or when you have your spring cold, it's coming for two or three days, then you have a short period of time and then it disappears again after you had your fever.

Marcus (23:51):
And that is the normal response of your body. And we recreate that with the hypothermia dome. So it's the same thing. We heat the body up in about 30 to 45 minutes to fever temperature. We stop all reproduction of virus and bacteria and then we heat the body further up so that it releases all those white blood cells. And there is another super effect that has been documented a thousand times and that's why it's used in conventional clinics now as well. It flags pathogens and floating cancer STEM cells with heat shock proteins. And I always say it's like when a cancer cell floats in our blood, it's invisible because it's a cell from our body. But if I heat the body up, then all of a sudden the cells that can't handle heat very well, which are cancer cells, they create heat shock proteins, they grow green hair and all of a sudden your immune system, all those new soldiers that are available look around and see all the guys with green hair need to be eliminated and they start attacking.

Marcus (25:01):
So it's triple effect that you get with hypothermia. And that's why it's the fourth pillar of conventional treatments in Germany and it's now used in so many university clinics to bring back a patient. Let's say you have chemotherapy and your white blood cell count goes down, well then they do hypothermia to bring your white blood cell count back up and then they continue chemotherapy. It also reduces the side effects. You need less chemotherapy to have the same effect because your cells are better supplied its an incredible system. So they use that and because it's illegal in America and Australia and New Zealand and England, well we teach people how to do it at home.

Allan (25:51):
And the cool thing documentary was that you can do this. There's localized and then there's a whole body. And so the treatment home I assume is more localized versus the whole body.

Marcus (26:04):
The other way around, the whole body is very easy to do at home, whereas the local hypothermia device is about $500,000. And they are not something people choose to do.

Allan (26:19):
Yeah, that's a little outside my budget. Okay, and then last one we talked about was PEMF.

Marcus (26:29):
I always say it's like a toothbrush. When you use it too long, it gets tired and then it stops, you know, those electric toothbrush. And then you put them into a dock, into a little stand and they recharge and there is no cable connected. It's just induced energy through magnetic waves. And that's pretty much the same thing. We live in a world that has a magnetic field around. And by moving through that magnetic field and moving through different forms of magnetic field, we are alive. Ourselves, have energy. It's an energy field that keeps us strong and alive. Now we can replicate this energy field and this recharge station with a pulsing magnetic field and those pulsing magnetic fields, they act in very similar ways. Like a recharge. All of your cells slowly lose, you know, that membrane potential.

Marcus (27:36):
They get tired, like we all do. Lack of nutrients, toxicity, exhaustion, all of those things contribute. Now, if I sit myself on a PMF device while watching, you know, a movie on a lazy boy, it doesn't really matter. It's like recharging every single cell. And if you keep doing the treatment for two, three, four days, you will find that your inflammation goes down, your gut starts healing, your energy levels goes up, your healing expedites, if you have open wounds, they start healing faster. It's a massive energy boost that we can give ourselves. And that's why most clinics in Europe and in America use PMF as a reach out full patients. When you think about having a cold, how exhausting that is. And we all know when you, when you have just a simple problem, how much it drains the body. Now think about you have tumors or you have infections or you have large inflamed areas. That is draining you of energy and the less energy you have, the less you can heal because the body needs tremendous amounts to detoxify, of energy, to detoxify, to heal, to repair.

Marcus (29:00):
And that's what we give it with that PMF machine. So it makes, I've sold one, I have to tell you, that was my biggest transformation. I sold one to a retirement village and after a few weeks the nurses called and said, Marcus, we do have a problem with the device. Would you mind coming by and I went there and she said, we exchanged the problem. Before we had moaning and grumpy and pain and tired. And you know, now we have parties in the corridor. We have people sneaking out at nights and going out for adventures. The whole dynamic change, dancing in the corridor, we would like to order four more machines. That was a very sweet, you know, testimony of how, especially elderly people really reach out with that device. And if you look at the demographic of people in hospitals and clinics that are run down, it's the same for them. It just gives them a massive boost.

Allan (30:04):
Now, one of the things that kind of resonated with me as we start talking about these other protocols is that, they are, I want to say life building versus destroying. So it's not the nuclear bomb, it's the how do we provide more resources for our troops, if you will. But there's a way for us to avoid the war in the first place, or at least while we're fighting the war for us to make sure we have a really good battle plan and a really good battle field position. And that's our lifestyle. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Marcus (30:40):
Yes. Let me very shortly say when you get diagnosed, and I think everybody stumbles upon that learning curve in a very similar way. We don't know before it's too late. There is a small demographic of people you know who care for mom and dad or who look after a relative who has been diagnosed with cancer. So they are what I call early status. They witnessed and do the learning curve at an early stage and they are also the ones that usually learn how to prevent. The normal general demographic needs to hit their nose on the world before they start waking up.

Allan (31:21):
Well, in all fairness, Marcus, that they're listening to this podcast, they're woke, they're ready, they're ready to have this conversation. They're there, they're looking after our health. So we're ready. So what are those things we can do?

Marcus (31:34):
The most important is in regards to you are set up, there is five main components. Number one is stress. Constant stress suppresses your immune system and that is really important. The second one is toxicity that we absorb and consume. And it starts from, you know, sprayed vegetables to Monsanto grown grain and corn and all of those things which just, you know, they are designed to keep bugs away. Then they also do that in your gut. So the, the affects of sprayed food and toxic food and preservatives and colors and flavors, they really make a massive impact. Then it's also what medication you take and the side effects of those medications. There is so many components. And for me that was actually always the most irritating part of the whole lot. You know, healthy lifestyle, doing exercise, eating right food and having the right nutrients and having enough oxygen.

Marcus (32:43):
It all is one big part. And what we've done is we created a mind map and that mind map takes you through all of those individual steps. You know, how are you teeth connected? How are they related to certain organs? How is your mind connected to the whole thing? What are different exercises that you can do during the day? How is oxygen connected to cancer? Oxygen is one of the key proponents for spreading angiogenesis for the building of cause. Cancer cells don't need oxygen, they ferment the food, whereas your healthy cells need oxygen. So how can we implement more oxygen into our life, feed all cells with more oxygen? And that mind map is actually very, very detailed. There's so many different components and you will have a very different set of combination of things that you miss out on as someone else. And that's why we made that mind map. And God, we had over 50,000 people go through that training and it really shows that everyone has a different set of reasons to be sick and out of their environment, out of their habits, how they grew up, and to look through that mind map and look through all the different departments. That's where it really becomes obvious, Oh, that's one of my blind spots or this is one of the reasons that triggered my disease.

Allan (34:11):
Marcus, I define wellness as being the healthiest fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Marcus (34:21):
Three out of my many oxygen would be number one. Trusting the body that it knows what it's doing and not interfering with medication. I think that's one of the key factors, especially in present times where a lot of people don't trust their body and suppress fever with any kind of fever suppressing medication that is always very, very challenging. That's what we know, increases cytokine storms and causes a lot of havoc. So trusting in the body and allowing the body to really do the work it's designed to do and supporting it in ways that are very natural like exercise, outdoor sweating, sweat lodges. We've seen tremendous change by doing that and becoming aware of what surrounds you, becoming aware of how toxic your intake, your food intake, your surrounding your environment is. And that starts with EMF all the way to the food that you eat.

Allan (35:33):
Cool. So Marcus, if someone wanted to more about you, more about the documentary, Cancer is Curable Now or your truly healthy stuff. You're doin tons of stuff. Your site is really big, you know, spend a lot of time out there. If someone wanted to learn more about all that, where would you like for me to send them?

Marcus (35:57):
Trulyheal.com so it's trulyheal.com/40plusfitness. And I've put a page together where you have access to training that we provide internally to our students. So it's a six-part video training that takes you through every single thing that is important to look at. And you have access to the documentary, you have access to the research. It's all on those pages. It's quite a massive load of information. I always say it's the shortcut that I've been looking for. When my friend was diagnosed and we started to look, you know, you run into a thousand different information streams and you don't know which one is the right one. And what we've done in that training is actually give clarity to all the different things that we know and that we can combine into a very, very effective healing program.

Healthy To Be

Allan (37:02):
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary, so I know this is a really good site. So if you want to learn more about this, if you can't write this down right now, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/436. This is episode 436 or just go to the main podcast website and you can find the link there. Okay, Marcus, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

Marcus (37:25):
Thank you so much for inviting me.

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Allan (02:48):
Joyce, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Joyce (02:50):
Thanks Allan. I'm thrilled to be here with you.

Allan (02:53):
Now. I am a huge fan of walking. I think it is one of the most underutilized ways of serving our body. And I say that that way because we're going to get into depth of walking is not just a fitness thing. And I really liked your approach to that. The name of your book is Walk Your Way to Better. And you know, as I was reading through the title I was like, Oh better. You know? And so you know, the words are in your head, health and all and wellness and fitness. And so I think there's a reason you stopped right there after the word better and didn't put the rest of it there.

Joyce (03:32):
Absolutely. So I agree with you. Walking is so simple and so incredibly powerful and I just don't think that we recognize or give it the emphasis that we should. So walking has been shown to improve your mind, your mood, and your body in really, really profound ways. So as you say, it's not just your physical, it's your mental and your emotional.

Allan (04:00):
You know, as you look at things like the blue zones that they're doing studies on and you kind of think about ancestral health and the way people were before we had access to cars and bikes and planes and motorcycles and everything else. We used to have to walk to do most of the things. We walk to go get our water, we would walk to go forage, we'd walk to hunt and we may even migrate. And so there were days of walking to get to a better area for hunting and gathering and doing things. We don't do as much walking now as we did that.

Joyce (04:35):
Absolutely. And I believe, and there are a whole lot of people that agree with me, we were just not meant to sit as long and as much as we're sitting, we're built to move.

Allan (04:47):
Yeah. And you were an attorney at one point. I was an accountant.

Joyce (04:51):
We sat a lot. Right?

Allan (04:54):
Sorry you didn't like accounting. But you know, it's just as we think about that, it's like, yeah, we take these jobs because they're going to give us what we need to take care of our families. But then at the same time, we're not necessarily taking care of ourselves, therefore we're not in a position to always take care of our families. That's kind of a bad, bad paradox to be in.

Joyce (05:16):
Exactly right.

Allan (05:18):
So why is walking so valuable?

Joyce (05:21):
So there's boatloads of research on walking on all of the benefits of walking. So I'll just hit sort of some of the top lines when you talk about walking. And I'm gonna leave the body and physical to last because, while it's super important, it's not even where I want to start. So walking has been proven to have a really great impact on your mood. It's been shown to be a valuable tool in combating depression and warding off depression. It's been shown to have an immediate impact on boosting and improving your mood and mindset. So great for your mind. Great for your mood and then for your mind walking has been shown to improve your decision-making ability, help give you energy. And there's a really interesting study that shows that a regular walking practice literally makes your brain bigger. And then just a couple of years ago, fascinating research out of Stanford University shows that a walk can improve your creativity, your ability to create new ideas and have fresh thoughts by up to 60%. It's incredibly powerful.

Allan (06:35):
Yeah. I know you said in the book you were talking about jobs and some of the other people we would think were these great minds and thinkers. They used walking as their creativity space.

Joyce (06:45):
Absolutely. Uh, Aristotle, Socrates, Benjamin Franklin was a big Walker. Darwin was a big Walker. Uh, so people who are under the kind of pressure to constantly be creating new ideas, processing new ideas, innovating. It's the most effective way you can do that.

Allan (07:08):
And then there are the physical aspects.

Joyce (07:11):
Yup. So a regular walking practice has been shown to reduce your risk of dementia, diabetes, osteoporosis, several types of cancers. There's one study that shows that a regular walking practice can add up to seven years to your life.

Allan (07:28):
That's huge. That's huge.

Joyce (07:30):
It's incredible.

Allan (07:31):
You know, I've seen a study before that said, if you just, you walk just five to 10 minutes after a meal, it helps you regulate your blood sugar.

Joyce (07:40):
We're meant to move. We are not meant to finish a big meal and sit in front of the television or in front of social media. We're just not.

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Allan (07:49):
And then beyond that, you had a, I mean, I've seen this other stat out there, well at least another aspect that you've talked about, how walking should kind of get rid of those emotional toxins. It also helps us get rid of physical toxins. Our lymphatic system is, it doesn't have its own pump system. It relies on our muscles or skeletal muscles to actually cause that lymph to move around. And that's flushing toxins out of our body. So if we're sitting still, we're letting ourselves get toxic.

Joyce (08:17):
And you know what's so interesting to me when you look at the last many years, remember the days when people would go in for surgery and then they would be told by their doctors to rest, right? Lie around. And all of that has changed. Practically, regardless of what the nature of the surgery is, as soon as they can get people up and walking, even little bits, they're getting them moving.

Allan (08:44):
Yeah. I had a friend recently, uh, he had a hip replacement and within a day they want him up walking on that hip, you know, just the thought of having them sawing through the bone, applying this metal apparatus, you know, this metal apparatus to your body. And then the next day they're not like, just lay there for six weeks and heal. They're like, nope, you have to be moving.

Joyce (09:05):
Right. And, and 20, 30 years ago they would've had that guy in bed for days.

Allan (09:17):
Yeah, or the wheelchair rest of his life. Yeah. So, you know, walking is something that we must do. It's not should, I mean, we've got to get past the should, the walking is a must. But when you start this conversation of, okay, we've got to walk, and then someone sits there and says, well you know, this is a very busy week for me. I've got to pull an extra shift, I had to you know, I took on extra training time. I've got extra the interviews and things to do this week. I've got, you know, of course my, my other regular stuff that's going on, you know, and I've got to read these three books. And so you kind of pile those and then you say, well where am I going to fit the time to do this walking? Why, why do we have difficulty with that, whereas if you said, okay, you need to take your kid to little league practice, that's a non negotiable. We just, we just do it, but we don't take the time for self care. Why? Why is that?

Joyce (10:10):
You know, there are so many reasons that keep us from taking good care of ourselves. And the first is something that you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, which is around this paradox of us feeling like we have to do for other people and not take care of ourselves. The paradox of that is if we don't take care of ourselves, we are not capable of taking the best care of the people we love. So that's kind of counterintuitive you want to do for other people and you think that that's the way to do the best you can. The second is we're all just too busy. We have filled our plates to overflowing and we need to take some responsibility and some ownership around that and it's something that I'm working on personally to really try to grab hold of my calendar on a day to day basis and be sure that I am not filling it with things that are just making me busy. Busy is like a badge of honor now. Right. When you say to, when you see somebody you haven't seen for a while and you say to them, how are you the knee jerk? Everybody says, Oh, I'm so busy. And I think the last piece of it, especially for women is we're still being sent the message that taking care of ourselves is selfish and I just think we have to continue to work to try to change that message and change that paradigm.

Allan (11:33):
Yeah, I'm reading the Daily Stoic now. I went, I went through all of that last year. I was really proud of myself for doing that because it was, I've had this book for over three years and each year I get to a certain point and then I stop and I lose it. Last year was the first year I made it through the entire year and I'm reading through it again this year. It's called the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, And the funny thing is yesterday's lesson was to not be busy. To be aware of where you're spending your time and what is a a true obligation and what are those things that we just put on ourselves out of guilt and other means. And that's what I really liked about the structure of your book as you break it into 99 walks in each walk is not just a let's get out and walk today and that's your goal.

Allan (12:17):
And then tell me how it went. You're really diving into mindset and one of the things that you got into there that I'd like to kind of get into after you tell me about the structure, the 99 walks and why you put it that way was the making of time, you know, you actually have one of the walks where it's dedicated specifically to making time for this self care. So can you talk through the walks of how you put this together and how this is helpful. And then, you know, some of these that are lessons that you think are pretty valuable for us to go as we're, as we're looking at having a walking practice.

Joyce (12:50):
Absolutely. So the book, as you say, is broken into 99 short sections. Thought starters, research stories, all designed to give people something to contemplate, to think about, to percolate on. One of the things that I see in my own life and in the lives of my friends and the people I talk to all the time is there is a lot of really interesting information and content out there. And I think we're getting better at identifying it and reading it, but I don't think we're giving our selves the chance to really absorb and process it. And because I know how powerful walking is for the way your mind works and the way your mood improves. And of course all the physical, I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if I can share 99 things that I think are important for people to think about and encourage them to then take a couple of minutes to give themselves the chance to percolate and really absorb those messages. So that's, that's my goal. That's my hope.

Allan (13:52):
Well, I think you've accomplished that. That's why I was saying, you know, that's why I brought up the book, the Daily Stoic is because that's kind of my daily sit down, have something to ponder and then I'll meditate on it. I haven't turned that into a walking practice. But you got me, you got me really thinking about that. That's maybe that's how I go about this. But this is a similar structure of here's your daily lesson, give it some thought. And I really like a lot of the things that you get into. Like I said, finding time and then I actually, I quoted a quote out of you. Let me, let me look it up real quick. I've got it. I put it on my Facebook page because, my Facebook group, because I, it was kinda one of those things as I was reading it, I'm like, somebody needs to hear this today. I know someone needs to hear this today. And it was, you deserve your dreams. You deserve your dreams. And so that was one of the lessons as you're kind of going through is have big dreams and then realize you deserve them and should still be working toward them.

Joyce (14:51):
You just can never give up. You can't abandon your dreams, you can't abandon your sense of self. But I do want to talk for a minute. Let's circle back and talk a little bit about, making time.

Allan (15:04):
Yes.

Joyce (15:04):
Can we dig into that a little bit?

Allan (15:06):
Absolutely. Please.

Joyce (15:07):
So I do talk about that a fair bit in the book in a couple of different contexts, even because we are all so busy that we think we don't have time and a lot of people refer to it as finding time. How am I going to find time for the things that are important? And the first thing I always say to people is, it's not about finding time, it's about making time. It's about saying, this is important for me, therefore it's important for my family. If you need that to encourage you to actually take those steps forward and then you have to make the time.

Joyce (15:44):
So one of the stories I tell, and I won't, I don't want to belabor it, but my daughter was doing gymnastics and I would go and she really wanted me to watch her entire class. And I thought, this is being a good mom. I'm going to sit and I'm going to watch it. I'm going to support her. And then at some point I realized she was sort of performing for me. And that's not what that experience was about for her. That's not what I wanted that experience to be for her. So I started taking 30 minutes and going for a walk. So I would drop her off, get her settled, leave and go take my walk, come back and watch the last 15 minutes and all of a sudden I found 30 minutes in my day, twice a week.

Allan (16:23):
Yes, I've heard, I've heard of moms doing that, you know, taking their child to soccer practice and then just walking around the field.

Joyce (16:28):
You don't have to watch them.

Allan (16:33):
They're awesome. But yeah. And I think one of the keys of what you put forward there, is about the prioritization. You know, what are those things that we are doing that really aren't serving us. You know, sitting there watching really wasn't serving you or your daughter, whereas you going for the walk, you're going to come back at the end of her practice with so much more energy. She's going to be energized because of what she did. You're going to be energized for what she did and then the drive home is a much, I think probably it was a much more joyful experience.

Joyce (17:08):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because to your point earlier, you are better able to show up for the people you love when you are in a better space, when you are taking care of yourself.

Allan (17:19):
And that's one of the things I really like about the 99 Walks in each one is you're going through a, you're sharing a lot of personal stories yourself and your stories included and it's really just kind of one of those times for you to wrap your mind around something, kind of let go, be mindful of what you're doing. Go out there with some intention and solve some problems and as you said in the book, there might only be a couple dozen of these that really resonate. There might be some that just completely don't apply. You know, as a guy reading the book, I was like, well, you know, a lot of these lessons, if I just read them out, right, wouldn't necessarily apply to me. But if I think about what the underlying purpose of that discussion is about, it applies to all of us at some point.

Joyce (18:03):
For sure. We're all suffering from decision fatigue, even if we don't know it. We all need to be mindful of the people we're surrounding ourselves with. We all have to be intentional about how we're spending our time so much.

Allan (18:20):
Now you've, you've put together this organization, it's called 99 Walks and it's, I went to the website. It's actually really cool. You're doing monthly challenges. You're building community. In a lot of sense. It's, it's more than getting people to walk more. I mean that's, it's awesome, but it's about connection. It's about eliminating some of that isolation and loneliness. We have, you know, you might have a thousand friends on Facebook or Instagram, but you still can feel very lonely. Can you talk about what your organization 99 Walks is doing and how it, how it's, how it's put together and how it's benefited you.

Joyce (18:55):
Yeah, you're so right about the loneliness piece. We have some proprietary research that 73% of American women experience loneliness and that dovetails with some national research around both women and men who put that number right about 70% so there really is a loneliness crisis going on, a very quiet crisis going on in this country because people don't want to talk about that. People don't want to raise their hand and say I am lonely because it makes you feel bad. It's something people are super self conscious about. But the reality is most people are wrestling with that. So I thought if we can create community and encourage people to get out and move in what is this incredibly simple but effective and powerful way. Just by lacing up your sneakers and walking out the door, we could really start to effectuate change. So 99 Walks is a movement to get, we are very focused on women in 99 Walks. So our mission is to get a million women walking. And we do that with a wonderful walk tracker and these monthly challenges. And we reward our members with what we call wearable inspiration, which is a tangible reminder of the goals that you have accomplished at the end of the month. Uh, and building this very powerful, supportive and wonderful community. And along the way we're trying to educate people as well.

Allan (20:26):
Yeah. And I think that's one of the key things here is this is about being, you know, kind of a healthier, better, happier person. Not because you're out there, you know, speed walking for three hours. But you're just getting out and you're in a community, rather you're walking particularly with people around you in your local area or you know, virtually by having friends online that you know, are going through similar things. It's just getting out for that, you know, that 5, 10, 15 maybe 30 minutes each day as a part of, or at least several times during the month as you set your goals to just trying to do that for yourself. That self care that we struggle with.

Joyce (21:04):
It's always, and you know this from the fitness world, it always starts with the mindset and the mood because when people start moving, you don't see physical changes or physical benefits for some period of time if that's your goal. But if you are really tapped in and paying attention to how you feel and how your brain is working, you'll realize that you feel better from day one of getting yourself moving. I assume you've seen this with clients and with other people, right?

Allan (21:34):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I have some clients here that prior to working with me had like zero exercise at all. You know they might walk around a little bit here over around town, but really not a lot. Um, and you get them into a program and the first day they're just, you know, they're just dad on their feet. They're struggling to do any of the exercises and then you're, you're sitting with them, you know, a month later, yeah, they're pumping out reps, you know, they're not getting winded. They're, they're smiling while they're doing some of the work. They're joking while we're going through some of the exercises and um, you know, so there is this kind of boost and it's not just a physical thing. It's really this emotional, they leave feeling better, not just about themselves, but just feeling better in general. There's a, just a wellness that comes out of movement. It's just really hard to explain until you've experienced it.

Joyce (22:28):
Exactly. That's exactly it. And then with 99 Walks, my hope is that we can encourage people who, who haven't had that feeling, who don't know how much better they can feel simply by moving their body and connecting with other people.

Allan (22:44):
And so start with the first walk. Just get that first one done? But by the time you get the 99 Walks in, I do believe that they're going to see some exceptional change in their lives from a mental perspective and a physical perspective. I define wellness as being the healthiest fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Joyce (23:06):
Oh just three.

Allan (23:08):
We have to start somewhere and then we can add on later. But yeah, just three please.

Joyce (23:12):
Yeah, the first, and forgive me cause I'm repeating or I'm repeating myself and I'm repeating what we've been talking about, but it's being willing to invest in yourself and that means investing the time and making your wellness in that broad definition a priority. And the second I think is being willing to do the work. One of the things that I've come to really accept in my life over the last many years of hard work is that everything takes work. Whether it's happiness, people think that happiness is a destination and you can get there and you can just hang out. But the truth is happiness takes ongoing, consistent work to do the things that lead to happiness. Fitness, wellness, those things take work. It's a lot easier to pick up the fast food than it is to go home and wash the kale. It just takes work. And the third is, and this is really important, is surrounding yourself with people who are like minded in that way. I have a section in the book called people are like bananas, which is one of my favorite expressions, but it goes to the fact that you will inevitably take on some of the characteristics of the people with whom you surround yourself. So if you are surrounding yourself with people who don't take care of themselves with people who are not happy with people who don't prioritize wellness, you're going to take on some of those characteristics to your own detriment. Well, thank you Joyce.

Allan (24:50):
If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book and what you're doing over at 99 Walks, where would you like me to send them?

Joyce (24:58):
Well, the book is available on Amazon so you can just head over to Amazon and search, Walk Your Way to Better. I am available on social media and all the channels that Joyce R Shullman, and to learn more about 99 Walks and our movement, you can find us online 99walks.fit and the 99 Walks app is available both Amazon and Android.

Allan (25:20):
So they can get the book, they can contact a local friend and say, Hey friend, I bought you a copy too. We're going to do this. And when they get their book they can, they can start their 99 Walks. So Joyce, thank you so much for being a part of 40 plus fitness. Uh, if you guys want to get the links, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/429. So Joyce again, sorry. Thank you so much for being a part of 40 plus fitness.

Joyce (25:43):
Absolutely. My pleasure. Allan, thanks so much.

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