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On episode 664 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we answer your questions about:
The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
| – Anne Lynch | – Ken McQuade | – Leigh Tanner |
| – Eliza Lamb | – John Dachauer | – Tim Alexander |
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On episode 663 of the 40+ Fitness, we meet Shane Warne and discuss how you can resolve pain without medication or surgery.
[00:01:22.870] – Allan
Hey, Raz. How are you?
[00:01:24.670] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?
[00:01:26.920] – Allan
I feel good. As we're recording I finished that launch of my new program, and it was good. I feel good about the process and what we did, what I was able to do, and where I am right now. I'm coming off of that, though. It's like, now, so now I'm getting back. I got to get back in my routines. I got to get things normal again. And then, yeah, because things happen. They're always going to happen when you don't want them to happen. But I think our water pump went out, so we have no water in our house today. Oh, jeez. So as soon as I off this this morning, I've got to go back over to Lula's and try to get the rest of my day worked over there, which I was not intending to do, so that we can make sure we get that pump replaced, because we've got all six of our rooms. They're checking in tomorrow. It's a group of vets that's here to basically do all these charity clinics for spay and neuter and other things. And all six rooms. They're going to this group of vets, and it's been on our books for a long time.
[00:02:27.610] – Allan
And then, yeah, the water pump goes out the day before, and so we got to get that fixed today. So I'll be headed home here shortly to supervise getting that fixed. But how are things up there?
[00:02:41.520] – Rachel
Oh, beautiful, actually. The fall is just starting to show signs. Some of our plants are starting to… The leaves are starting to turn colors. I would like to say that the weather is cooling off, but it is not. But I know it's coming, so just getting ready to enjoy the fall season.
[00:02:57.720] – Allan
The trees are saying something, but-They're You don't believe them.
[00:03:02.230] – Rachel
They're ready. I'm ready, but we'll see what happens.
[00:03:04.670] – Allan
But you know the work that's coming because you guys start doing that syrup stuff.
[00:03:09.660] – Rachel
That'll be later. But yeah, we're keeping an eye out for that, but that'll be later in the season.
[00:03:15.310] – Allan
We're gearing up for it. It's coming.
[00:03:16.980] – Rachel
Yeah, getting ready. All right.
[00:03:20.600] – Allan
Well, are you ready to talk about pain with Shane?
[00:03:23.070] – Rachel
For sure.
[00:03:40.220] – Allan
Shane, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
[00:03:43.090] – Shane
Thanks, Allan. Good to be here, mate.
[00:03:45.460] – Allan
Yeah. So you and I met through an organization that's called Online Trainer Mentorship, and you're there as a coach. I'm there as a mentor. One of the things that's interesting to me is as you get older like I am, you start realizing realizing there's a lot you don't know. And the older you get, the more you realize, the more you don't know. So I just know when it comes to pain management, I know a few things, but I don't know everything. And I know I don't know everything, which is why I wanted to bring on someone like you that this is what you do all day, every day, is help people in pain get their movement back. And I think your slogan is from pain to freedom, or I saw that somewhere on your social media. And so I'm glad to have you here, because as we get older, there's more pain if we're not doing things right.
[00:04:35.690] – Shane
There most certainly is. Just to follow up on that comment you just made there as well, I actually had one of my followers on Instagram message me yesterday, tell me what he liked about my messaging in some of the comments on posts was how humble I was, because I told someone when they asked me questions, I'm not really 100 % sure. This is what I would do to go and find out. So there is way too much going on with the body for anyone to say that they know everything. I'm quite happy to admit when I don't know anything, because if I can't admit what I don't know, how am I ever going to know what I need to learn? So I think that's a really important aspect of that. But to your point, yeah, this is what I do. I help people get out of long term chronic pain, so that they can get the freedom back in their life. And for me, freedom means a few things, right? Freedom from pain itself. But freedom to do the things that bring us joy, because we only get one shot at life. At the end of this, it's whether there's an afterlife or a reincarnation, or whatever, we're not going to remember it.
[00:05:43.830] – Shane
This is life. So we might as well make the most of it that we can. And that includes doing the things that bring us joy. And for me, that's lifting heavy weights. It's going to jiu-jitsu, and it's treating my body very poorly doing those things and hurting it. But for a lot of other people, It's just playing with the grandkids, getting down on the floor and doing those things. One of my clients, Ashley, it's getting in the hoop and doing aerial arts that was taken away from her for eight years. So that's what freedom is to me. It's a freedom to just to do the things that we want, that bring us joy. But then a little bit further to that, it's the freedom to do whatever you're doing without thinking at the same time, how is this going to make me feel tomorrow? And that's a huge, huge It's a huge thing, because I've been there where everything… I have multiple pains all the time, and I didn't realize how much of a difference it made to me. But at almost 45, life has a childlike quality to it, again, because when I'm doing the thing, I'm immersed in that.
[00:06:52.170] – Shane
That's all I'm thinking about doing. So I'm really getting the most out of it and not thinking, how am I going to feel tomorrow? Is this going to hurt me? Is this going to make something And that, to me, is why having a functioning, healthy, pain-free body… I mean, pain-free doesn't mean we're never going to hurt. Obviously, I still get injured and things like that. But the most important thing is having a pain-free body, a body that does the things we want it to do, allows us to just have a better quality of life, and do the things that we want, and get the most out of it, and do those things with the people we love to.
[00:07:32.020] – Allan
Because that's the thing is person in pain is probably going to not do things that they think will hurt them or it will make them feel worse. And so they miss out. They miss out on a lot of things because they just don't want to further the pain. So yes, if we can improve things and they're effectively pain-free, they can do so much more and have a much more fulfilled life doing those things. Now, I went through for this conversation, and I picked out four key areas where I'm dealing with clients all the time that basically say, Well, I got this. And my role as a trainer, because most of them are trying to also lose weight, is to basically say, Okay, well, let's figure out, from my perspective, how to work around it. What can we get done without hurting this, without exacerbating this? And so from a strategy perspective, it's half That's the answer. And I acknowledge that. You should. We've got to figure out this low back pain. We got to figure this knee pain, because if you don't resolve those, always going to be in that pain, and you're never going to want to do that thing.
[00:08:45.180] – Allan
And as a result, you're not going to live the fuller life. Now, I can help you from a health perspective. You lose the 30 or 40 pounds, and you feel great. We get you moving in ways that you can and feel good about. You get stronger from that. But some of these things can severely limit how far you can go in improving your health and fitness. The first one I want to talk about, and this is probably the most common one, is lower back pain. So if someone has lower back pain that they're suffering with fairly regularly, what are some basic things that you would encourage them to consider as they move forward to resolve that or at least reduce the pain they're feeling?
[00:09:23.350] – Shane
One thing, and this isn't actually something that I do, but obviously you brought it up, and it's one of the things that you help people with. A lot of the times, if someone is quite a bit overweight, their body, all their joints, everything is just dealing with having to carry around this load that it wasn't really designed for. So that may literally be the solution. Get moving, lose So I get the body functioning, strengthen it up a bit. That may actually be the long term solution. And for a lot of people, those simple things actually are. For people that have tried those things, though, and done the conventional I've got a sore lower back, so I've strengthened my core. I've lost some weight, I've strengthened my core, but they're still having issues. They're generally the people that I work with. I've had pain for quite a while. I've tried the conventional things. What I find is, lower back pain comes down to… There's two things that I will assess. So every time I bring on a new client, I'll do a physical assessment, do it via Zoom. There's usually a few things, but two non-negotiables are the The hip mobility, and in particular, how much their leg rotates in their hip.
[00:10:36.050] – Shane
And then the next thing is, how does their spine segment? Can they move their spine at the individual vertebrae? And there's two very specific things. I heard Steffie Cohen, she did a master's degree in low back pain. When she was going to college, she was, I think she was a 25 times world record holder power lifter, was going to college, hurt her back, no one could help her. And this was literally the place where people are learning to help people like that. And I heard her on a podcast with Tim Ferrace once say that about 85 % of lower back pain, there's actually nothing mechanically wrong with their back. One of the things that happens with our back is if we get a perceived problem, or a little problem, or even a perceived problem by our nervous system, Our nervous system will protect us. And it protects us just by seizing the muscles up around that area of the spine where that perceived problem is. What we then do is we get scared, we brace our core, and we stop moving. So we've got a lot of muscles that run up and down our spine, that control our vertebrae, the multifidae, loads of muscles in there.
[00:11:54.180] – Shane
But what happens is if we are actively bracing our core and staying still, or staying braced and staying upright all the time, we don't really use those muscles. All of our tissue have little sensors in them that are effectively a communication module that's talking to our nervous system, so our nervous system knows what it's doing at the time, which is why if I close my eyes and move my arm, I know where my arm's going. I know what it's doing. And that's how our body knows what it's doing, where it is. But like everything else in our body, if we don't use it, we lose it. So if we stop using those tissues that control our vertebrate, those signals stop being sent. Now, this isn't going to happen in a day or a week. It might happen in months or even a few years. But at some stage, there's a whole section of spine of a few vertebrate where that signal has stopped being sent to the nervous system. So the nervous system one day realizes, I don't know what my spine is doing. What the nervous system does is a And the reaction to that is it tenses up all around the spine because it's like, I don't know what my spine is doing.
[00:13:06.190] – Shane
I better protect it just in case, and then it seizes up. So that's actually a super common reason for back pain is just tightness around the spine because the body doesn't know what it's doing. And we can test that by checking whether you can move your individual vertebrae or not and segment that vertebrae. And that will be step one, is actually getting access to that tissue. Then we start using those muscles, the muscles start working again, start sending signals, the nervous system now feels safe, and then the pain goes away. That's a fairly lengthy process, if it's been years and years and years that you haven't used the tissue. The next thing is the hips. So One really big cause of lower back pain is simply immobile hips. So obviously the hip is like a ball and socket joint. Really simply, for the hip to work, there needs to be enough space in the capsule of the joint itself to allow for the hip to move around. Because unlike a normal ball and socket joint, obviously, that a bone is in a symmetrical thing, the femur has a bend on the end. So as you got to lift your leg, that ball in this ball and socket starts moving around in the joint.
[00:14:27.050] – Shane
The problem is, if you have limited space in the joint, That femur is going to hit on the acetabulum, so the ball is going to hit on the socket in this ball and socket joint. That's a really big problem if that happens, because then you've got bone rubbing on bone on the inside in the middle of your joint. The good thing about that is that your body knows that's going to happen. Once again, the tissue in the joint is sending signals up to your nervous system all the time. So you got to move your leg, then your nervous system realizes, wait, if I let it move, that bone is going to rub on the other bone. So it wants to stop us doing that. So it just tightens up everything around the hip to stop that moving. What muscles are each individual going to tighten There'll be quads, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexes, lower back. That all pertains to that hip. So over time, that prolonged tightness on the hip and lower back is going to cause issues. So We can test how much space is in the socket or the capsule of the hip by testing rotation.
[00:15:38.300] – Shane
So how much can you internally and externally rotate your leg in your hip? So that'll be So that's one of the two things I test. How well does your hip rotate, and how well can you segment your spine? Generally speaking, I'll find an issue with both of those things with most people, and then we work on those. And then when We can then increase the rotation in your hip, therefore increase the space in that ball and socket joint. You now have a freedom of movement. Your body has no need to actually protect you from yourself. So it stops creating the tightness. The tightness goes away, so does your pain. And that's step one. We then want to strengthen up that tissue because it's tissue you haven't used in years and years and years. But that's step one.
[00:16:25.570] – Allan
Okay, cool. So now the next one, this is a hard one because Because all pain is nerve-originated. But the sciatica tends to give people a huge problem. It's not a small pain, and it's not a pain that necessarily comes on and goes away. For a lot of people, once their sciatica starts hurting, they hurt all the time. And a lot of them end up going to medication. So what are some things we could do to know what might be causing the sciatica problem? And we could do about it.
[00:17:01.730] – Shane
Yeah, it's an interesting one. So sciatica, technically speaking, sciatica actually starts in your spine. So you've got a nerve being trapped because you've got a bulging disk or something like that in your spine. And then that nerve runs down your leg. For most people that say they have sciatica, what they really have is they just have tight glutes, and that is putting a constant pressure on the sciatic nerve in the glute, and then that runs down their leg. And there is a very distinct difference between the two causes. But in most cases, I have found that… Because I actually had sciatica myself 10 years ago. My right hip. The first time I got it treated, I went to my physio. She's amazing. She dry-needled my glute, and the glute spasmed and released, and instantly the pain was gone. That was it. It was just tightness of my glute. But then in a couple of weeks time, it was back. And that was the process I went through. We all know that merry-go-round of releasing the pressure and the tightness and the pain for it to come back. So what I was doing was effectively dealing with the symptoms.
[00:18:21.880] – Shane
So that's what I find… So this is back to the lower back pain and the tightness in the hip. I actually find in most cases, if we People with that sciatic pain, they've also got exceptionally tight hips. They have very limited rotation in the hip. They have very limited space in that capsule. So the body is literally just protecting us from ourselves and creating a tightness to stop our leg moving in ways that the body knows it's unsafe. And that continual tightness on that nerve is what's actually causing the pain. So if we can, once again, create enough space and get that hip working properly, the body no longer has to protect us from ourselves, will no longer create that tightness, and the tightness goes away, and when the tightness goes away, so does the pain. You do want to get that tested, obviously, because if the pain is coming from your spine, and It's literally your nerve being pressed on in your spine. You want to go and get a test and a scan on that to see what's going on. If that's not an issue, then it's most likely just your hips and your glutes.
[00:19:29.200] – Shane
And either way, even if it is coming from your spine, releasing your hips or getting your hip to work properly so that you don't have all this tightness around your glutes and hamstrings and lower back is massively going to impact how much pain you're going to be having there anyway. Because if you can imagine, if your hip doesn't move properly, flexion… So hip flexion is if I lift my knee towards my chest. Most people cannot get their leg up to about 90 degrees of their hip because they're restricted in movement. But every single time we put on our shoes, we need better movements than that. Every time we use the dustpan and brush, every time we get out of bed, every time we go to the toilet, me sitting down right now. So if my hip doesn't move, well, my spine has to. There's no other option. So by having hips that don't move properly, I am putting pressure on, or I'm asking my spine to move, where it probably won't have or shouldn't have to. So if I do have an issue from sciatic there, the more I can get my hips to move, the less pressure and stress my spine is going to be under on a continually daily basis.
[00:20:53.800] – Allan
Now, the next one that this is extremely, extremely common is knee pain. I don't know how many clients I've had that come to me and say, Okay, I can't squat. A doctor told me not to squat. And I'm like, Well, you actually squat every day when you go to the bathroom. But let's not go there right now. When you do the squats, tell me what you do. And then usually, it's the one-half squat. And I'm thinking to myself, No, you want to go full range of motion because if you don't get down below parallel, you're using quads to break and then restart the movement. And that's probably what's causing your knee pain. If you can let your glutes fire, you're probably going to have less of that. Now, that is the one thing that I know from years of training is losing the weight and getting your body where it can move through the full range of motion in a squat, even if it's just a bodyweight squat, is usually good enough to stop them from feeling that knee pain. But in the cases where you're dealing with knee pain, because this is chronic at this point, what are some things that you see that could cause it and that they could do some things about?
[00:22:06.220] – Shane
Once again, obviously, hip is going to play a role. Hips and ankles. So if anyone comes to me with chronic pain, the first thing I'm going to do is assess every part of their body that is remotely connected to where that pain is, because a lot of the times where the pain is isn't necessarily the actual problem or the cause. It's where the symptom is. So I need to assess how the body moves and to determine where I think the actual problem is. So effectively, the knee only goes where the ankles and hips tell it to go. The knee is not figuring out anything of its own. So if my ankle If my muscle doesn't rotate or move properly, if my hip doesn't rotate properly, then all the different movements I'm doing, if I'm squatting and my knees maybe will be caving in or whatever, then I'm putting just a constant stress on my joint that it wasn't really designed for. Now, once again, in a week or so, it's not going to be a problem. But years down the line, that's going to cause a problem. So the first thing I'm going to do is check all that.
[00:23:11.320] – Shane
Let's assume, though, that there's no issues with hips and ankles, and then we go to the knee. So one thing that people, almost no one I ask or speak to has ever looked at how much their knee rotates and how much their shin rotates in their knee. For a properly functioning knee, your shin has to rotate, plain and simple. So back to the space in the hip, the same thing happens with the space in the knee. The knee capsule itself, as I flex and bend my knee, if I don't have enough space in that capsule, there's not enough space for that movement to happen. I'm going to have not necessarily bone pushing on bone, but we've got tendons and ligaments and everything in there, and it's causing a lot of stress if there's no space. So we want to have enough space in the joint so that as I'm flexing and bending my knee, the two heads of those bones can actually move around without rubbing on things. So we can test that by the rotation of knee. So that's the first thing that I would do. Can your knee rotate or not? It should rotate a little bit internally and then a bit more externally.
[00:24:26.160] – Shane
If it can't, that is literally step one, because if you don't If you don't have enough space in the joint, you are going to have problems no matter what, because it's just not functioning properly. And it's just putting too much pressure on all the tissue in the joint itself. And then outside of that, it's training it through its full range, and full range of motion. So a lot of my training will start with getting the range of motion that we deem that your body needs, so that other parts of your body don't need to compensate. And then the second Second thing is training the connective tissue of that joint. Once we've got those two things done, then I will progress on to muscle strengthen and whatnot. Generally, as a rule of thumb, the way to target connective tissue is I need to target and strengthen and train the tissue while it's at its completely lengthened position. So I don't have to do this with a squat to start with. I can literally sit on the floor So grab my shin, and then passively, so I'm not using my leg to do this, I'll just pull my shin in or my heel as close to my butt as I can.
[00:25:41.760] – Shane
And I'm just going to go as an acute angle as I can get before pain exists. So I never want to be doing this through pain. And I'll get to there and I'll isometrically load that tissue because I want to start using all the tissue, all the connected tissue that runs over the in front of that knee, and I want to train it at its fully lengthened position. So I'm sitting on the floor, so my body feels safe, my nervous system feels safe, and then I'll isometrically load it, which means I'm contracting the muscle, but there's no movement happening. So if you can imagine, I'm sitting on the floor, I've got my hands wrapped around the front of my shin, I've pulled my heel in towards my butt, I will hold my hands on my shin and start putting pressure from my shin into my hands. So I'm effectively trying to straighten my knee, but there's no movement happening because my hands are holding it tight. I'm going to start super, super light. I'm going to do it at a five % intensity. So just starting to use the tissue, because I want the tissue to start being used at its fully length and position, and then we'll progress from there.
[00:26:55.080] – Shane
So we'll progress in intensities in durations of time. Then we'll get to some eccentric work But the safest way to do it is to sit there in as as as as as as as as fully flexed position as I can, and then isometrically load the tissue into there. Because realistically, rule number one there also is I want to get the space. But the reason I want to start using all this tissue is tissue requires nutrients and proteins to repair, plain and simple. We know that we have protein because it's the building blocks of everything. But I need the tissue to be used for the tissue to get the nutrients. When I use that tissue, that's what's causing the nutrients to actually go there. So as I sit in this position while I'm using it, you'll feel maybe a little bit of heat, a little bit of change there. You'll feel the nutrients, you'll feel some blood. And that's all the goodness and building blocks are required to go there, which is the reason why staying away from something that hurts is maybe an absolutely necessary part in a rehabilitation process. But if that's the only thing we do, it's a really big problem, because it means the actual tissue that needs the help isn't getting any nutrients to repair because you're not using it.
[00:28:18.440] – Allan
Okay. Yeah. Now, the other one, and this was one that got me. I didn't get this, but I had a client that got it. It hit him fast. And suddenly, he's in that position. And his doctors couldn't do anything. His physio couldn't do anything. And obviously, it made it impossible for him to really train anything other than machines and legs with machines. And he was trying to lose some weight, and he knew he needed to move, but he was in so much pain with this. It was frozen shoulder. And from the reading I've done on frozen shoulder, this is a pretty common thing for women over 50 to get a frozen shoulder. So this is not just something that happened to one… Yeah, I've had lots of clients, but I don't have one client that's had experience with it, but it's happening to a lot of, particularly women over the age of 50. If someone finds themselves starting to struggle with frozen shoulder, what are some things they can do to try to maybe limit how frozen it gets or improve their mobility or their movement with their shoulder at all? Because he was completely stuck.
[00:29:31.670] – Shane
Yeah, this is a rough one. I've had frozen shoulder myself, but once again, this was many, many years ago in almost a previous life. I broke my collarbone playing footie, like rugby league in Australia, and I had to get it operated on. There was a problem with the wound, so I had to literally keep my arm still for four weeks without moving it. This is before I knew anything. So I did what I was told and then ended with a frozen shoulder. But that came on acutely after four weeks. It took a fair bit of training to get rid of it. I haven't worked with anyone with frozen shoulder before, so there's only so much I can say here. But yeah, I think for women, they don't deal with enough as it is. They get menopause and now they might get a frozen shoulder. Just another thing in the list. But realistically, we're talking about a restriction in the joint capsule. So the rule of thumb is the same as the, if I want to see a joint move properly, I need the joint to rotate, because how much, in this case, my humerus, my arm, rotates internally and externally in the shoulder joint itself, will dictate the amount of space I have in the joint.
[00:30:53.080] – Shane
So what I would be doing without a shadow of a doubt, is I would be working on internal and external rotation of the shoulder. So the same way that I mentioned how I would get set up with my knee flexion, I would get into as much flexion as I can. I'd hold super still and then isometric If I were to physically load that tissue. I would do exactly the same thing with my shoulder. So generally speaking, it'll more than likely be an internal rotation issue more than external. So there's a position called a sleeper position. So you You'll lay on your side with your arm out in front of you. And say I'm sitting on my arm, I'm laying on my right side, I'd get a phone roll or yoga block, a little pillow for my head so I can be comfortable while I'm doing this. And then I would passively internally rotate my arm. So passively just means a stretch. So I take my left hand, put it over my wrist, and then get into as bigger internal rotation stretch as I can on that, say, right shoulder in this case. Once again, I'm doing this pain free, so I'm not stretching through the pain.
[00:32:10.150] – Shane
I'm getting to the point of pain and then backing off a little bit. So I want to be as far as I can go before that pain starts. And then with my other hand, I'm going to hold super still. I'm going to hold myself still, but I'm going to isometrically load it because I want to start using the tissue as soon as I can, but as safely as I can at the same time. So if my left hand is over the top of my right wrist, I would then try to rotate back into my hand. Once again, I'm going to get up to an intensity of probably about 60 or 70 %, or before pain starts, whichever one comes first. If I get to five % and that's where pain is, then I'll drop back down to two %. I just want to have some sensation. And I'll do that for… It depends on the intensity and the time and how it feels. But up to probably 30 seconds. And then once again, I'm going to hold my arm still as I try to rotate back the other way. But both of these contractions are happening isometrically, so there's no movement happen.
[00:33:10.960] – Shane
And then over time, I'll be increasing that. My goal will be to increase the intensity up to that 60 or 70 %, but still holding super, super still. I would definitely be doing this with someone else, if you had a frozen shoulder and you weren't sure, because this can be something that's quite concerning and worrying. And there's a big difference between being uncomfortable and a pain that's actually bad. And learning the difference between the two can play a huge role in pain management, because obviously the nervous system is all constantly trying to protect us. And a lot of the times pain signals, it's just our body telling us that there's something wrong. So understanding the difference is really, really important. One, to make sure we're doing enough work to make change, But also to make sure that we're not doing too much work to make it worse. But that would be where I would start. But also neck, scapular and spine movement are going to play a huge role there as well. And that's where I would start if it happened to me or if I brought a client on board.
[00:34:22.230] – Allan
So Shane, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:34:29.680] – Shane
The first one for me, particularly from obviously pain-free viewpoint, is move every joint through its fullest range of motion at least once every single day. I have what's called a morning routine. It's a functional range conditioning morning routine. Takes five or six minutes, and it goes through my neck, scapula, shoulder, elbow, wrist, spine, hips, knees, ankles, toes. Takes roughly five or six minutes, and I treat it like it's brushing my teeth for my joints. I don't particularly enjoy brushing my teeth, but the few minutes it takes me, it's well worth it. And this is what it is. It's literally just moving our joints through its full range of motion. It's bang for buck from a time perspective. It's getting, once again, all the nutrients and proteins to all the tissue that we can through those joints. So that would absolutely be number one. Get a a daily routine to get your body moving. And in my case, it's individual joints through their fullest range of motion. The second strategy is the same way that we train our muscles, and that we also want to train Our joint space and the connected tissue by joint space means to do your joints rotate properly enough to indicate that you have enough space in the joint itself for the joint to move.
[00:35:57.980] – Shane
Because if all of your joints have that, Your body no longer has the need to create tightness to protect you from unsafe areas, and then train the connected tissue as well. As I mentioned with the knee, it's training it at its length or to its length, as opposed to just doing half movements. And then strategy number three is, there's a lot of roads that you can take to get to the same destination. One person's perfect thing, find the thing that you enjoy doing. The most important thing is is that you're moving, that you're getting some exercise, you're staying fit, you're staying healthy. You're never going to do that if the exercise protocol you've been given is something you don't enjoy doing. So find something that you enjoy that will get you moving on a regular basis, because if you don't do that, the other stuff doesn't matter anyway, because you're just not going to do it.
[00:36:54.700] – Allan
All right. So Shane, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about what you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:37:01.000] – Shane
I run everything through my Instagram profile, my Instagram page. So that's Shane Warne, S-H-A-N-E-W-A-R-N-E_fitness. Everything's in there. So if you give me a follow, on there. You can reach out and say hi, or I'll reach out and say hi before you do, possibly. So I do like to just introduce myself to people as they come on board. But everything's there. I try to portray on there all the different exercises and things that I do, how I like to help people. So it's a really quick, simple way for people to go and have a look and see all the exercise and things I do, and also just allows me to have a chat to people there as well.
[00:37:43.930] – Allan
Awesome. So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/663, and I'll be sure to have a link there. Shane, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:37:55.650] – Shane
It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:37:59.330] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.
[00:38:00.800] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. That was a really fun discussion. I understand I get it, lower back pain and sciatica, or knee pain, and even a frozen shoulder. Very popular areas of injury or concern. But I think there's a lot of this information about pain. We were talking about that pain is a signal. It's telling your body to do something. But the misunderstanding comes in when people feel pain, they want to stop everything. They want to just protect that joint, do no movement. And it sounds like that's exactly the opposite of what we should do.
[00:38:32.800] – Allan
It can be. When I tore my rotator cuff, I kept training. I couldn't do any pushing, but I kept training. And it allowed me to continue to move my arm through the full range of motion so that after surgery, my recovery was a lot faster. And I have a similar story. When I was young and I was playing volleyball, I turned my ankle really bad. So we had an X ray, and it was not broke. This is not broke. Okay, But three weeks go by, and it hasn't healed. So I go back, and I go to this time, go to a sports doctor, and he's like, It's broke. He just looked at it and says, It's broke. And then he did the X-ray, his own X-ray, and said, No, it's not broke, but he said it would have been better if you broke it. Oh, no. And so then I go across to his PT because I hadn't gone to PT before. They were just like, Stay off of it for three weeks. And so I come into the PT and elephant foot, my My ankle's as big as my head, and I go in there and the guy sees me coming in with the crutches.
[00:39:35.610] – Allan
He's like, Why aren't you wearing that brace in your shoe? I'm like, Dude, I can't get my foot in a shoe. What are you talking about? He's like, Well, you will when you leave here. So they got me down, and this little brace thing was actually just set to seating your shoe and compress the joint. But he said, You need to be walking around with this. You need to be walking, and that's going to help heal that ankle. And I really do believe that a lot of the limited mobility I have in that joint right now is because that first doctor told me to stay off of the ankle, and I did for the first three weeks. Then I like, I don't believe that doctor anymore. I'm going to go to an actual sports doctor. And when I did that, he sent me to the right person and the right person to solve my problem. But we need to move. The joint needs to move meant to heal. That's all a part of it.
[00:40:33.340] – Rachel
Well, it's interesting. You were just talking about a joint being inflamed, which takes up a lot of space, which prohibits the joint from getting a full range of motion. But instead of putting it in a sling or another immobile boot, like I've been in a boot for my foot before, moving it helps move all of that stuff around and brings in the nutrients that it needs for healing. It's not very I would have.
[00:41:01.210] – Allan
No, because, again, if we have, like what Shane was saying, we have limited range of motion right now, and moving on the periphy of that, that's where we feel that pain hit. And again, if we're eating and we've got other inflammation going on in our body, so you're eating bad foods, you have leaky gut, too much sugar, those cause inflammation throughout the body, and particularly in these joints now that are already restricted in volume, a size, and movement range. Now you're putting more inflammation in there, too. That's just taking up more of that space. It's creating consistent, constant pain because now you're at the end of the range of motion everywhere. And so movement is important because that's going to allow the nutrients to get in there. That's going to allow the inflammation to go down. And then also watching what you eat and making sure that you're eating a lower inflammatory diet will help reduce the overall inflammation in your body, and that will allow you to heal properly. So it's all interrelated, and it's sad that, I think we've talked about this, this doctor focuses on this and doesn't realize that holistically, it's all related.
[00:42:19.360] – Allan
It's all one system. We're one animal. It's a lot. We're one body. Yeah. And so you can't just say, I'm going to work on shoulders, and I'm going to work on ankles, and I'm going to work on this. You got to work on You got to work on your nutrition. You got to work on your movement. You got to work on your stress management. And if you're doing those things, then your body will get better.
[00:42:39.090] – Rachel
The other thing I just wanted to mention real quick is that I appreciate Shane's, one of his techs Like he mentioned was to move every joint through the full range of motion every day, and I think that's important as well. If you do it at night, that little bit of stretching might help you sleep better. If you do it in the morning, that little bit of motion might help you get active better for the start of your day. I just And it's important to know which muscles are tight so that you can loosen them up a little bit. I think that was a great tactic.
[00:43:06.070] – Allan
Yeah. And the other side of it is, again, if you're moving a joint and the movement itself isn't causing any pain, it's going to help get nutrients there. If there is pain in the joint and you start moving, one of the interesting things that happens is it's the same nerves that are messaging back and forth. And so if you're telling your muscles to move, that's It should be dampening the pain aspect of it a little bit. And you might notice that the pain reduces a little bit as you're going through that movement. And so that's part of that inner relationship of the way all of our body works. And so Yeah. Anything you can do to keep a full range of motion, get your body moving, get nutrients going to those joints that don't get enough, because it's really hard to get blood flow to your legaments and tendons. They don't have. Oh, right. And so they're dependent on you doing this. And then all the fluid that's inside a joint, when you're moving, you're getting that fluid in there, moving around, warmed up. And that's always going to help you have better range of motion and feel better.
[00:44:13.220] – Rachel
For sure. That was a great discussion.
[00:44:15.850] – Allan
All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week.
[00:44:17.940] – Rachel
Take care, Allan.
[00:44:18.940] – Allan
You, too.
The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
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On Episode 662 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Jon Simmons, the founder of Get Pooping and discuss overcoming constipation without medication.
[00:01:23.540] – Allan
Hey, Raz. How are you?
[00:01:25.510] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?
[00:01:27.470] – Allan
I'm doing really, really good. Starting Started taking some weekends off and enjoying myself outside a lot more.
[00:01:35.220] – Rachel
Nice.
[00:01:36.020] – Allan
Again, it's not really like seasons, so it's not like it's getting cold up there. And then it's not cold here ever. So it's not like season. It's like, yeah, it's better season to be outside. It's just I finish the launch of my program. And so at this point, it's just managing, working with the clients I've got, working with Lula's, doing that thing. Then just every chance I get, trying to make sure I can get outside, get some exercise, and feel pretty good about it. How about yourself? That's awesome.
[00:02:07.530] – Rachel
About the same. Actually, over the weekend, I just ran a 5K with my brother and a cousin, and My sister-in-law and my cousin's wife walked it. We had our little group there at the 5K event, and we had a really good time. It was cold for us this time of year. We enjoyed the run and got to walk around and socialize afterwards. It was just a really fun weekend to be out and about.
[00:02:35.540] – Allan
I saw your post. It was like your mission was coffee.
[00:02:39.310] – Rachel
Yes, it was. There's a few of us that are definite coffee drinkers and getting up that early in the morning. Although I did get up early enough to have my coffee, another coffee was much needed afterwards.
[00:02:54.690] – Allan
All right. So are you ready to talk about constipation?
[00:02:58.710] – Rachel
Sure.
Jon, welcome to 40+ fitness.
[00:03:18.640] – Jon Simmons
Hey, Coach. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:20.800] – Allan
So today we're going to talk about your company, Get Pooping, and the course you have, Conquering Constipation, which is an eight-day course to help people who are suffering from this. If you don't mind, I want to tell you a little story of a way that I know you can get rid of constipation in less than eight days.
[00:03:39.910] – Jon Simmons
Okay.
[00:03:42.540] – Allan
Sometimes when you travel, people will get constipated. You're dehydrated, you're stressed up for traveling. And so we were traveling. I took my family to Asia, and my daughter, actually our youngest daughter, she was struggling. She had constipation. We were a few days into this trip. So it had been a few days. This was not just the day we got there. This was a little while. And we were in Macau, and I had it on a plan for us to do the bungee jump, the Macau Tower bungee jump, which is 764 feet. And in going up there, I fully intended to be the first one up. I had done it before, so I said, Look, I'll go first. You guys can watch me. But when we got up there because of the weight differences, and most of the folks in Macau were a little bit lighter, they already had the cord for the girls. So they made the girls go first. And so my older daughter, she goes off there, she screams, everything. Second daughter goes off. Now, they're wearing the GoPros and everything. So we've got perfect, beautiful videos and sound of them doing these bungey jumps and the screams and all the stuff.
[00:04:44.040] – Allan
Well, she gets to that point where they're now, they're lowering her slowly, and then she says to herself, I think I pooped myself. Now, she didn't use the word poop, but as soon as she got to ground, she ran to the bathroom, and she was good to go. But I would not recommend air flight and all this required for you to get to Mikal and then sign up for the Mikal Tower bungey jump just to handle this problem. But it is a fairly significant problem, and it happens to a lot of people a lot of the time, and in some cases, even chronically. Can you tell us a little bit about the physiology and why this might be happening?
[00:05:26.310] – Jon Simmons
Well, it is a common chronic problem. Some people will come around to the course and like, I've never been constipated my whole life. And all of a sudden for the past two months, I have been. And you'll find out that, oh, they had a job change, got a divorce, moved, sometimes all three at the same time. It's like, oh, yeah, wow. Those sorts of traumatic, stressful life changes can certainly have an impact on our bowel movements because to have a proper bowel movement, we need obviously good inputs, diet and water intake and basic exercise like walking, all those things matter. But once that stuff gets into your gut, there's a whole series of neurological and physiological things that have to happen. The signals in your body, that distension in your stomach that like, Hey, there's stuff here. We got to start processing. Then that parastolic action starts happening. If you ever let yourself get hungry enough till your tummy's that's actually a smushing and relaxing of muscles that pushes the food along. That signaling has to happen. Those muscles have to be functioning, and there's a whole lot that can interrupt that. That's really what the course is addressing is trying to get to those root causes underneath all the symptoms because constipation is just one of many symptoms.
[00:06:54.560] – Allan
I'm familiar with having worked with my clients where those people get dehydrated or they change their diet and they're not eating enough fiber. That's a common cause I see. For others, they have change in medication and they notice that the symptoms might crop up. So there's a little bit of deductive reasoning that you might have to do just to see if there's some lifestyle things that you've done. But this goes a lot deeper because you're talking about things like trauma and stress and anxiety, about a lot of different things that aren't necessarily about poop. Can you go into that a little bit deeper?
[00:07:35.630] – Jon Simmons
Yeah, I love to, because I'm really passionate about sharing this because I think this is underlying a lot of people's broader health conditions beyond just constipation. If you look at polyvagal theory, this idea of the autonomic nervous system that we basically have three modes that we can be in. The one that most people are familiar with is We're on a bigger flight. We're stressed, we're either looking to run away or getting ready to fight. And so our body, our physiology changes to get us ready for that. There's the shutdown mode, which is this sense of overwhelm where people just curl up in a corner and try again tomorrow. Also very common in our society. And so those are two ways that people respond to stress. And then the third mode is when your system is balanced, you're relaxed but alert, ready for socializing, ready for digesting. You have to be in that relaxed state for all those digestive processes that we discussed to happen. That's like polyvagal theory in a very brief nutshell. Now, all the factors that intersect with this are like those urges to go to the bathroom. Sometimes we dissociate from our We need to get back in touch with feeling our body and how it's processing things and actually feeling those urges, just like you have thirst and you have hunger and that urge to poop.
[00:09:13.280] – Jon Simmons
If we dissociate from these three things, Our system is going to be dysregulated. Getting back in touch with those. Another fundamental thing is just posture. Our our skeletal structure and our fascia, all that connective tissue that holds everything together and holds our guts in place. If something's out of whack in our posture, whether it's a short term thing because of an injury or if it's a long term condition that we've had maybe our whole life, our musculature is going to be over-conditioned in some ways and weaker in other ways, very common with the pelvic floor. This can inhibit pooping. It can literally… Fasha can literally squeeze off parts of your organs, including your intestines, and make bowel movements difficult for you. There's hormonal functions that have to be operating, and we can't really address those directly, but through diet and exercise and lifestyle, that can bring that into balance. And of course, medication if that's required. Then there's this whole social emotional backdrop that doesn't get discussed. It's the bud of many jokes, but it doesn't really get discussed in a heartfelt way, in an embodied way. That's the fact that many of us were shamed as children for various bodily functions, or if we weren't potty trained in a very compassionate way, that we may have some deeply, even pre-verbal trauma around the function of poop.
[00:10:49.000] – Jon Simmons
We actually resist it. It's like, Oh, my body says I got to go, but I don't want to go. They wrestle with that until they feel relaxed or safe enough to it, which for a lot of people is going to be at home in their bathroom with everything just right. It makes it really difficult in our busy life, working world, school, and all these things to find that time to actually take care of our needs. That's a pretty good overview of some of the things that we address in the course. We have a variety of ways of trying to remedy any of these issues.
[00:11:29.330] – Allan
Yeah. You brought up a product. It was funny because I was looking for podcasts when I was trying to fix myself. And I would go to some of these podcasts that were out there back then, the big ones. And they were all advertising this new product called The squatty potty. Your posture's terrible. The toilet, even though I think the toilet was probably one of the greatest inventions ever, because I wouldn't want to have a bucket underneath that I had to carry out every day. I like my toilet, but the posture that we have on the toilet is not the most conducive to a straight line shot. It's the way they presented it. Is a squatty potty worth it? Is that something that we should really consider if we're struggling with it?
[00:12:14.340] – Jon Simmons
You don't have to go out and buy anything, but definitely some system like the squatty potty, or some people have even turned over a mop bucket or just some stable thing that you can prop your feet up so that your knees come at least level with your or just a little bit higher than your thighs. That actually straightens out the last part of your rectum so that you get more flushing power. Might be a way of saying that. Get more of it out in one shot.
[00:12:44.520] – Allan
We're using gravity. We're using gravity to help us there.
[00:12:48.440] – Jon Simmons
It's a big deal. But certainly, they can buy the squatty potty. I have one of the original plastic ones in one bathroom, and then I have another bathroom that's all wood, and it just didn't look right there. So I made a wooden one to put in there. So lots of options. You can come up with something. All right.
[00:13:04.530] – Allan
Now, on the course, it's an eight-day course that you go through. You spend a great deal of time focused on relaxation and massage. I would never have thought stomach massage and massaging different parts of your body and just the relaxation and breathing techniques would be so beneficial. Can you talk about some of those and why they're helping us poop?
[00:13:29.270] – Jon Simmons
Yeah, I'll start with the why they're helping us. So again, if we're in fight or flight or dorsal vagal shutdown mode, we're not going to poop because your body doesn't want to poop while you're getting ready for an intense event. And so the The idea of the belly massage, just like if you have a stiff shoulder or something and you rub it out, it's like, Okay, I can move that again. Your knots in your gut are constricting the movement and the urges and the musculature from doing its job. Getting in there, massaging really deeply in the belly is foundational. It's one of the first things in the course that I teach is that and another little exercise called the Intestin Pump. Both of these things are to bring your awareness down to your gut and to relax it and bring it into balance so that it can operate the way it's supposed to. Because we think of fight or flight mode being in our brain, anxiety is in our brain, anxiety lives in your body. Anxiety is a physiological response. Your brain sometimes is responding to the anxiety in your body, and it creates this loop.
[00:14:38.340] – Jon Simmons
We're just addressing it through very physical means. All the processes I teach and people I've worked with, I always like, we're not going to sit down and have a therapy session. I don't want to hear your victim's story or your trauma story or why you are, where you are. I quit telling mine because it wasn't doing any good. There's just direct somatic things that we can do through our body and bypass all that mental stuff and just get our body working the way it's supposed to. And surprise, that helps your mind also. It's all connected. That approach. I also throw in the meridian work for folks that aren't familiar with… If you haven't done any Eastern practices, the meridian systems are just different organ systems and ways to wake them up. So like your lungs, your heart, your stomach and intestines, you can do physical exercises that actively strengthen and tone these particular organs. I've got a lot of stuff in there that's focused on the stomach and intestines and lungs. The reason the lungs are in there is because the diaphragm and your pelvic floor actually work together. They're very similar in structure and function.
[00:15:57.870] – Jon Simmons
Just addressing all this physiology directly is a different approach that I didn't see out there when I started looking to package something that would help people. And so really focused on that.
[00:16:11.720] – Allan
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting because we know the act of pooping is a physical act. You talked about the perisalias or whatever.
[00:16:20.800] – Jon Simmons
Peristalsus.
[00:16:22.470] – Allan
Yeah, I'll let you say that. It's all physical. That's all physical. That's muscles, That's signaling in your body. It's all physical. But we also know that our brain and our energy, we're all tied together. And so if we're not there mentally, particularly if we're embarrassed or frustrated or all the different things that can come along with it, then it's not functioning right. So it may not be a medication problem. You probably don't have a deficiency of magnesium. You might, but probably not. But it might not be a medication that you need to make this happen. If you find yourself using the medication over and over and over, you're not addressing the root cause for sure.
[00:17:10.760] – Jon Simmons
Yeah, I was on Miralax daily for over two years because My doctors, I guess I do tell a little bit of my sob story somewhere on my website, but my doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me. I was fit, I was eating right. Don't know why you're not pooping, Jon. Yeah, I was on Miralax for years, and I had to get off of that. I didn't want to be dependent on anything to have basic bodily function. That was part of what drove me to really solve this problem.
[00:17:44.330] – Allan
Jon, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:17:53.760] – Jon Simmons
So many to choose from, but I'm going to zero in on on one area, I would say invest in your mind because your mind is the lens through which you experience everything in the world. And so it impacts so much of our life. And so taking The three tactics would be awareness practices, whether that's meditation in its various forms or doing yoga or just something that brings you very present and very much in in your body, in your body mind, I'll say. And then also learning and being curious because that's that inspiration. That's what keeps us interested in life, keeps us moving forward. Don't let life get dull. And then maybe be creative expression. Definitely, that's another thing of inspiration. A lot of people, I want to be an artist, a painter, a writer. No, You can still be a plumber and write poetry. You don't have to make a living from creative expression, but including creative expression in your daily life has really kept my energy up and colored the rest of my life. Even the mundane things makes it more fun. I would say all of that under the umbrella of investing in your mind, and you'll be happier and healthier.
[00:19:27.380] – Jon Simmons
It informs all your habits and makes you who you are.
[00:19:30.470] – Allan
Thank you for that. So, Jon, you've been very, very generous with your time, and then now you're also going to give us a discount on the course. So if you want to go to 40plusfitnesspodcast. Com/poop, that's going to take you to the page where Jon describes his course. It's an eight-day course. Is there anything you wanted to say about it, the course, Jon?
[00:19:53.340] – Jon Simmons
I would say that it takes a little bit of work, but it's worth it. And Give it a chance. It's a little different from the usual advice that you get online. You've done all the obvious things, and nothing's worked, and nobody can find anything wrong with you. It's time to go a little deeper. Try something different.
[00:20:15.220] – Allan
This is going to give you a better regimen to the way you look at your day and go through your day. That's going to make it easier to figure out what the root causes are and get this done. Like I said, Jon's being super, super generous. He's giving us a discount of $20 if you go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/poop, and then use the coupon code 40plus. That's 4-0-P-L-U-S. Again, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/poop. Use the coupon code 40plus for a $20 discount. Thank you, Jon.
[00:20:48.720] – Jon Simmons
Thanks, Allan.
[00:20:49.900] – Allan
And thank you for being a part of 40+ fitness.
[00:20:52.810] – Jon Simmons
It's an honor. I'm really excited.
Welcome back, Raz.
[00:20:58.740] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. That was a It's been a really interesting conversation. As a runner in the running community, we talk about poop a lot. Runner's trots, what to eat and not eat. In our group, we call it a code brown. If you got to step off the trail and take a little potty break in mid-run. We talk about poop all the time, so I'm glad that you had this podcast because it's important to normalize these types of issues.
[00:21:24.250] – Allan
I've heard and I've known people that would not leave the house until they had their movement for that morning, and then they don't, and they're stuck. And so if you're not regular, this is the word they use for all that, then there's something you need to do. And that's one of the cool things with John's program is this is not just a quick fix, Okay, you go poop this time. This is literally training your body to be better at pooping. Because interestingly enough, it could be a skill to be better at If you've got some anxiety about it, some stress about it, or just really have some form of issue, you don't want to just go down the medication route. This is a really good little course. I went through and took the course. Walk through each of the exercises to see what he was teaching. Again, he's not relying on medication. He's not relying on a bunch of supplementation. He does talk a little bit about magnesium and fiber and things like that. But those are things that you should be getting in your diet anyway. If you're not getting enough of them, then there is an opportunity.
[00:22:36.920] – Allan
He has a little shake that he makes that has the standard things you'd expect to be in something like that, like prunes and this and that. You're getting that fiber that can help. Then just the exercises, massages and different things that he has you doing to get a little bit more comfortable so you can poop.
[00:22:56.570] – Rachel
I really appreciate all these different things. I didn't realize, of course, stress does a lot on the body, but I didn't realize it could play a pretty big role with being constipated or having these types of problems.
[00:23:10.070] – Allan
Well, the way he explained it makes sense. You're looking at your parasympathetic nervous system, and if it's on high alert, it wants to shut off a lot of things. If you're fighting a bear, you don't want to just poop.
[00:23:25.410] – Rachel
That's such a good point. I get it.
[00:23:29.570] – Allan
You don't want to be in that situation. So your body starts shutting down some functions when it's in a high stress environment. And then there's just the anxiety of it. Some people don't want to be in a public place or they feel uncomfortable with it. So just one of those things that you just… Everybody's a little different, and however you handle it, you can handle it. But this is a really good course. So if you go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/poop, you can go there and take his course. It's a really good one. I think the code was 40plus or something like that, 40PLUS, and get a little discount on that with that coupon code. I think it's almost like $20 off. It's not a little thing. It's a decent. It'll help. If you need the course, I would definitely go there, 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/poop. Use the code 40PLUS and get a little discount on it. But if you're struggling with constipation or sometimes struggle with constipation, this is probably a good protocol for you to be doing regularly so that you are a little bit more regular.
[00:24:40.560] – Rachel
That sounds awesome. Really informative. I appreciate that.
[00:24:44.040] – Allan
All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week.
[00:24:46.480] – Rachel
Great. Take care, Allen.
[00:24:47.870] – Allan
You, too.
The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
| – Anne Lynch | – Ken McQuade | – Leigh Tanner |
| – Eliza Lamb | – John Dachauer | – Tim Alexander |
Thank you!
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On episode 661 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Carolyn Akinyemi and discuss her book, Eczema Decoded.
[00:01:20.630] – Allan
Hello, Raz. How are you?
[00:01:22.580] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?
[00:01:24.740] – Allan
I'm doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. Good. Looking at my scheduling, I like to schedule out my quarters and say, Okay, what is this quarter going to look like? From the perspective of personal and business, and made the decision that I'm going to spend a lot more time not working this quarter than I normally would. That's interesting. I've got my clients, I've got my businesses. They're all coming along doing fine. In fact, this week, we've got these vets in. They literally took up, I think, all of our rooms. Oh, wow. They're here for a whole week. It was just a good group they're in. Tammy was able to leave and go do her ta-ta trip with her friends. They're doing the ta-ta trip. Again, if you haven't had yourself checked, go This is just a reminder. We're coming into October, Breast Awareness. A hundred %. Everybody's obviously aware of breast, but you got to be aware of breast cancer. So if you're not getting yourself… Having gotten yourself checked, go ahead and book your appointment because That's what October is supposed to tell you to do. All the little pink ribbons have a purpose. That's right.
[00:02:34.620] – Allan
Okay, so go to your Tata trip, even though I know it's not that most pleasant of things, but they make an annual event of it, and they all go out and hang out in a beautiful town called Bocete. So you don't have to go anywhere if you don't need to, if it's done there. But by all means, make sure you get yourself checked.
[00:02:53.690] – Rachel
Oh, absolutely. That's a perfect reminder.
[00:02:56.530] – Allan
All right. So you're ready to talk about eczema?
[00:02:59.400] – Rachel
Sure.
Carolyn, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
[00:03:32.930] – Carolyn
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
[00:03:35.430] – Allan
So today we're going to talk about your book, Eczema Decoded. And the reason I wanted to look into this is I don't have any experience with it. My wife doesn't have it, and her kids… She said her daughter had it for a while when she was younger, but it doesn't really seem to show any symptoms now or any flare-ups now, but has had it. So I don't have really any real experience with it. But the reason I'm asked you to be is I do have a client who's struggling with this. He's in his 40, 50s. I think he just, yeah, he's just around 50 years old. And so he's still struggling with this. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to dive into it is realizing, yeah, it's not just a kid's disease. It's something that can happen as you get over for it, like it did for you. And so that's part of the reason. But I appreciate the book. It wasn't like… Because here's a lot of times what will happen is there'll be a book on something and they're like, okay, well, you're going to use this and you're going to use this and then you use this.
[00:04:31.270] – Allan
And it's more of just this, here's a list of things to do. But you took the time to explain why our body worked this way, and therefore, why this would be a part of a solution because it's not just one thing. If you do this, then that. It doesn't quite work like that. So I appreciate that you took the time to go through it and that you tied back to a lot of science behind this to help people really understand why we would be doing these things and therefore feel much more comfortable and confident to do this, particularly if they were doing it with their child.
[00:05:10.810] – Carolyn
Yeah. And that's part of empowering people because it's very easy if somebody's just telling you, do this, do that, anytime it comes back or you have a different query, you've got to keep going back to them and you become dependent on that person for your answers. So for me, I was always one of those annoying children that constantly asked, why? Why? Why? Why? So when I had four children in close succession, my eldest was still four when I gave birth to my fourth, and every one of them developed eczema. I had done everything right on paper. I had a natural birth. I had breastfed each of them for a year. We ate healthily. It didn't make sense. So my childhood why instinct just kicked in. I didn't have a medical background, so I had to search everything from the ground up and find out. And it led me on a very deep rabbit hole because I found I was looking at eczema from all different types of medical fields and mapping it, doing a mind map. When you are learning something new, your brain needs something to relate it to. And when it doesn't have something and you create a mind map, you're giving your mind the buckets to put it into so that it can retain it.
[00:06:28.440] – Carolyn
But as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, Oh, that It actually feeds into this one. Oh, and that's causing that. Oh, that's going back around to this. Oh, my gosh, look at all these loop systems that we've got. I managed to map what was going on inside of the extra patients. The second thing is when I raise my children, I've always tried to raise my children to understand why I tell them to do what they do. Because I think if we teach our children to own something, they're more likely to do it. They're more likely to keep to it. So that's the same philosophy I took with this is if I explain the why and people understand the why, they're more likely to own it. They're more likely to say, Okay, yeah, I can see why I need to do that.
[00:07:08.680] – Allan
Yeah. Adults are like that, too.
[00:07:11.460] – Carolyn
We all are. I am the same. Yeah.
[00:07:15.800] – Allan
Okay. Now, one of the things that you said in the book that I think was really interesting, because I've seen the same thing in other ailments where it seems like the solution, they want to go to one body part. They want to say, Okay, this This is a stomach issue, so therefore, we're just going to look at this. And then as we get smarter, they start noticing, Well, there's other things, but we don't want to talk about those because the medications don't necessarily do that. But in the book, You said eczema is not actually a disease, it's a label. Could you explain what you mean by that?
[00:07:52.050] – Carolyn
To me, a diagnosis, and if you looked up in the dictionary, a diagnosis is when you go to someone and they actually tell you what's gone wrong. If you go to a doctor with a rash, as you said, like with any other medical condition as well, they will look at the symptoms and they will see what that description fits. And then they say, It looks like you've got this. You've got a label. Nobody has actually assessed, why did you get that? If a diagnosis is, Why did you get this? If we know why, we can put it right. Then nobody's getting diagnosed with We're just being labeled. Because once you have a label, then we can prescribe medicines that go with that label to treat it. Like you said, we're treating the body as different parts. We've chopped everything up. That's dermatology, that's osteopathic, and this is psychology. Whereas everything is so interlinked. We are one whole person. What happens is if you have multiple symptoms, you're either going to get sent to lots of different specialists who don't talk to each other, or you're going to get given medications which often have side effects, which then send you to another specialist.
[00:09:06.690] – Carolyn
So it becomes a bit of a vortex.
[00:09:11.530] – Allan
Right. Now, one of the interesting things, and again, like I said, I just appreciate that you took the time to go through to do a lot of explaining why this stuff goes the way it goes. But between the exematous skin, this is the skin that is going through a flare up, and healthy skin, there are some significant differences in those two scans. And understanding, I think understanding those differences helps us go a long way to understanding why we have the symptoms, other symptoms that we have, the other problems we have. Could you take a few minutes to go through what the five differences are between those two?
[00:09:48.280] – Carolyn
Yes, certainly. So one of the first ones that I learned about was a deficiency in a protein called Chlodium-1, and that's responsible for making your skin cells locked together. So a bit like when you build a brick wall, you're not going to build all the bricks in rows like this because you're not going to have a stable wall. Those bricks need to be… I don't know what you're looking at. With your skin cells, they also need a way to lock together to make a firm external barrier. It's the Claudine-1 protein that makes the junctions that can cause them to fit together. There's a deficiency in that protein. The actual structural barrier is not so strong as it should be. There's also a deficiency in another amino acid called histidine. Histidine carries the water from your body up through all the layers of the skin. If you have a deficiency in histidine, then you're not carrying enough water in your skin, so your skin just tends to be drier than most people anyway. So you've got a double whammy there. I think clourdine one as well. It also helps to regulate the water loss from the top.
[00:10:57.910] – Carolyn
If you've got both, clourdine one deficiency and histidine deficiency, you're not carrying up enough water, and you're also not regulating how much water is lost from the surface. That's often one of the first things that happens before people break into the rash is having extremely dry skin. It feels like it's cracking before you even get the rash. Then the third one is the natural moisturizing factor. We all have this natural moisturizing factor in our skin. That's your oils, your waterproof cover. There's a lot of antibacterial protection in that as well. There's a deficiency in that. That also means if you have lower friendly microbes on your skin, they're not going to regulate the numbers of pathogenic bacteria that are on your skin. Certain microbes like Staphylococcal, they can cause infections when they're overpopulated on the skin. That's one of the most common infections with eczema skin is staph infections. The fourth one we had was another thing that causes the inefficient outer layer is it's collapsing. The skin cells have to move up. They're round, nice, plump, full of things. They go to the top of the skin. Then there's an action that happens and it collapses.
[00:12:12.590] – Carolyn
It makes these hard, flat skin cells on the surface. There's a problem with eczema skin where it's collapsing too soon. That is also affecting the structural barrier of the skin. Then the other one is deficiencies in other skin proteins as well. You've got things like collagen which is the structural protein, like the scaffolding of your skin that can be low. Keratin, that helps you to make tough skin cells on the outside. Then you've got other things like Arganine and glutamine, which also help you make the natural moisturizing factor. All of those are seen to be low in people with eczema.
[00:12:47.400] – Allan
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the natural moisturizing factor, because I think most of us know there's an ecosystem living on our skin. Okay, and we think of our skin as being a barrier to bad things. So it's a one, two punch that we would have for our immune system if we have the healthy microbes in a good environment and we have skin It's not letting bad stuff in. You basically have the soldiers lined up in front of the wall, and only now we have a wall with gaps and we don't have the soldiers.
[00:13:27.910] – Carolyn
We don't have the soldiers. Yeah, that's right.
[00:13:29.420] – Allan
Can you talk Think about that lack of moisturization factor and maybe a little bit about what someone can do to address that.
[00:13:37.100] – Carolyn
Yeah, so there's natural things that you can use rather than the petroleum-based moisturizers. The problem with them is if you put something on your skin that is, Okay, I'm going to create an artificial barrier on my skin and something oily that's going to replace the natural moisturization factor. But if it's chemical-based and especially petroleum-based, It can block your pores and then stop your sweat from evaporating. That can cause an additional problem because you're still going to sweat, but your sweat can't come out. That then leaches into the surrounding tissue. Then people with eczema, a lot of people have developed allergies to their own sweat, which then causes eczema-type rashes. Then you have another issue going on. Just as you said, with the bacteria that's on our skin, we are so used to seeing bacteria as frightening. It's like, Oh, no, we have to use antibacterial hand washes. And if I've got eczema, I'm going to need to use antibacterial washes. But it's like nuking a terrain, and you're killing the civilians as well as killing those that you perceive as enemies. We don't need to get rid of all the bacteria. We need to have a balance.
[00:14:52.250] – Carolyn
We need to have a correct ecosystem. And so I tell people to use natural things like shea butter, another is mango butter, cocoa butter. These ones are very natural. When they're unrefined and unprocessed, they have a lot of skin-feeding nutrients in them, vitamin A, vitamin E, all these things that are in their essential fats. Then you can use essential oils, which have been shown to reduce things like staph, but not harm the friendly bacteria that's on your skin. So tea tree is very good. You could get sheer butter, put a couple of drops of tea tree in there, but that's not good if you have pets, because dogs, particularly, they can't be around tea tree. That's very dangerous for them. So then if you've got pets, you could use something like Manuka Honey oil. That's a very powerful oil against staff. They even outperform tea tree in some trials. So you can just get a natural moisturizing cream that's very thick, very nice. If it's too thick, if you live in a cold climate, like when I was in the UK, it would be solid. I'd be scraping it trying to get it out the pot.
[00:15:55.060] – Carolyn
I would warm it and mix it with something liquid like olive oil or coconut oil. And then I would have a softer version because when you have soft skin, you don't want to be pulling it while you're trying to rub it. You want to be able to pat it on and smooth it on. But yeah, the natural moisturizer and essential oils works wonderfully.
[00:16:12.620] – Allan
Excellent. So now you talked a little bit about histidine and the other amino acids, but you talked about deficiencies. Now, if someone thinks, well, I'm eating plenty of meat and other proteins, so I should have all of this, how do we end up with those deficiencies?
[00:16:34.610] – Carolyn
Because there's a common misconception that we are what we eat. And I say, no, we're not. We are what we absorb. And if you have any chronic disease, the chances are you have gut issues. Whether you have a leaky gut that's contributing to inflammation in your body, or you have enzyme deficiencies, or you have lower levels of stomach acid. And interestingly enough, having a deficiency in history histidine or it's also linked to having low stomach acid. You need histidine for that as well. Then if you have low stomach acid, that has a whole knock-on effect. You're not going to digest your food properly, you're not going to sterilize your food properly. When you eat your food, it goes into your stomach, the acid should sterilize it before it passes into the small intestine or further down. If it doesn't, you're allowing bacteria to go there that shouldn't be there. Then if you're deficient in the enzymes, you're not going to break your food down and it. We could be eating all the right foods, but if we have different issues going on that could impact our digestion, we're not absorbing it, it's going out the other side.
[00:17:42.590] – Carolyn
Even stress is a big impact on that. Stress is like, if you're going through a highly stressed event or even you're used to running on stress, some people are just used to running on high cortisol, your body will turn off or turn down all of the non-essential financial functions of your body. If you are running from a bear, you don't need to stop and eat berries while you're running. You just need to get away. And so digestion is not a very important function when you're in a high stress situation. So your digestion can be affected. You can end up with nutritional deficiencies just because you're living in a stress environment or stress state.
[00:18:24.000] – Allan
Okay. And now, one that surprised me is that you got into the water that comes in our house that is treated with chlorine or it could be hard water. I know I've lived in environments where the hard water, and you can tell because you get your soap and you almost can't get it to lather properly.
[00:18:42.940] – Carolyn
You can't get it to lather, yeah, that's right.
[00:18:44.930] – Allan
Tell us what's wrong with hard water, with chlorinated water, and what we can do to resolve some of that.
[00:18:52.430] – Carolyn
Okay, well, those are two different issues. The chlorine, I'll touch on that one first because we spoke about the different bacteria that live on your skin. The chlorine is added to the water to disinfect it. It's like an antibiotic. It kills living organisms that would be in the water. But you have living organisms on your skin. When you then If you're then bathing in chlorinated water, that can also affect your friendly microbes on your skin. If you have eczema, you're already out of balance on your skin. You tend to have lower levels of those microbes anyway. That's why I recommend getting a chlorine filter. And they're not expensive. If you can get a whole house filter, great. But we had a chlorine filter, and they're so easy to use. You just take the shower cap off, put the filter on, and put the shower head back on. And then I would fill up the bath from that for the children. I would just take the shower down, fill up the bath from that. And then you have water that doesn't have the chlorine in. Then the second thing you were saying about the water was the hard water.
[00:19:53.550] – Carolyn
The water travels through the ground, and it will pick up different minerals depending on what ground travels through. So places where there's very high levels of magnesium, say limestone areas, the water has very high amounts of these minerals that sap the moisture out of the skin. So places like London, Very hard water. I think the worst place I've ever visited is Prescott in Arizona. I literally felt like my skin was going to crack and break open every time I had baked. That was terrible, yes. When I had the water softener fitted, It made such a profound difference to my children's skin. I knew if it stopped working, if it needed a service, or if I'd forgotten to load the salt, it would show on my children's skin within two days. Their skin would deteriorate quite rapidly. So it made a huge difference.
[00:20:48.050] – Allan
Now, we talked about the microbiome that's on our skin, and you went in a little bit into leaky gut. But why is our gut microbiome important relative to this eczema?
[00:21:02.250] – Carolyn
To eczema? Well, it's almost… You have to ask yourself, what does your microbiome not do? It just seems to do everything. It's responsible for so many things. There's a direct connection between your gut and your brain. So if your microbes are out of sync, then you can have very high levels of anxiety, you can have depression. And as we said before, that could It could be labeled as a psychological issue. It could actually be your gut that's causing that. If you are having stress and anxiety, that's going to impact your digestion and your absorption of food because you're going to have higher levels of cortisol. This is where we get these loop systems coming. Ladies can develop eczema later in life when their hormones drop as they're approaching menopause. The microbes in your gut can take over the production or to support the production of estrogen as the levels decline from the ovaries. If you don't have the microbes there to do that, then you're more at risk of developing dry skin and a lot of other menopausal symptoms like hot flashes or hot flushes and things like that as well. So, yeah, they do that.
[00:22:18.070] – Carolyn
They break down your food. They break down toxins, and help us to eliminate them. And there's a lot of toxins that are known to impact eczema and increase the severity. So that's a whole deep issue of why we need to look after the gut. It's not just eczema. Every chronic disease, you have to assess the gut.
[00:22:40.300] – Allan
Okay. Now, I don't want anyone to stress out because that's one of the seven. But as we get into what is causing the biggest problem with our microbiome, you identified seven pillars. Could you go through them? Because I think as you go through this, this is where it goes, oh, oh, ah. Because this is our life. You're literally just… It's going to feel like it's everything. So you go through the seven. But again, don't stress, don't stress. You can do little things. They're going to go a long way, but can you tell us about the seven?
[00:23:17.650] – Carolyn
Okay, well, the first one and the most obvious one is antibiotics. A lot of people realize that antibiotics decimate the landscape of your gut. What they don't realize is the preservatives in food can be considered antibiotics as well because they are there to destroy the bacteria and the organisms that would cause the food to spoil. But your gut microbes use the same pathways as those organisms as well. So when we're eating things that are laden with preservatives, they act like antibiotics in our gut. So they can affect the microbes in our gut as well. We have C-sections and bottle Fetal feeding, which I alluded to when I said, I did everything right. Why did my kids get eczema? With the natural birth, as the baby comes through the birth canal, it is covered with all the gunk and the mucus as it comes through. But that is laden with friendly microbes. In the last three weeks of a lady's pregnancy, the microbes in the birth canal change to become the ideal environment for that infant to pass through and to pick up their first immune system. So it's up their nose, it's in their mouth, it's all over their skin.
[00:24:34.990] – Carolyn
And that's a wonderful thing to happen. But if there's a C-section, the baby hasn't had that. And we can take the baby and then they tend to be put straight on the scouts. What does the baby weigh? And then they're not picking up the microbes. We should have this friendly microbes all over our skin. When a baby is born, it comes through the birth canal, and then it should have skin-to-skin contact. And then it It takes up more friendly microbes from the mother. But if the baby is born and then just put into the hospital equipment, particularly if they haven't had a vaginal birth, that baby has a far higher risk of developing atopic diseases. They even have a higher risk of having damage from the shots that they would have because they don't have the microbes to help them deal with those issues. Then bottle feeding as well and breastfeeding. There's so many friendly microbes, prebiotics in breast milk that would help that infant's gut to be established. We can set our children up for Having a higher risk of developing all sorts of atopic diseases, and that's including asthma as well, when we don't or can't have C-section and bottle feed instead of breast feed.
[00:25:56.750] – Carolyn
But that can be manipulated. Scientists that actually discovered they could accurately predict which infants would go on to develop atopic diseases by assessing their stall samples and the microbes that were in it. Even more powerful than that, they said they could manipulate it to stop them from getting it. If you've had to have a C-section or you couldn't breastfeed, you can really help your child by giving them infant probiotics to manipulate their gut. Then we had another one was the non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. These are very damaging to the gut as well. They can really affect the health of your gut. And not only the microbes, but injuries, actual sores in the gut, stomach ulcers, bleeding, that thing can happen from having all these painkillers. Pesticides. All the pesticides that are sprayed on the food, when they were assessed, apparently, they assessed these on human cells and said, Oh, they don't have an effect on human cells, so they're safe. But Nobody tested them on the microbes in your gut. The microbes in our guts use the same bacterial pathways as the pests do. They act as an antibiotic when we eat them. If we're eating glyphosate-laden foods, they are going to disrupt your microbiome.
[00:27:18.160] – Carolyn
Then you've got Western diet. We eat so many processed foods. We eat things that are prepackaged, convenient, grab and go. That's not healthy. That's not the way we're supposed to eat. I say, when it comes to food, if man touched it, man usually corrupts it. I like that. If man's touched it, man's corrupted it. But we need to eat as natural as possible. As close to as nature provided it for us. Then it has live enzymes. When we heat a processed food, typically being heat-treated, homogenized, and they're killing all the enzymes. We have wonderful in food, antioxidants, the micro-RNA, all of these things are so powerful for our health. But when we process them, preserve them, it kills it all. And with eating dead food, it doesn't have the nutrients. Then we have stress. We spoke about stress already. That one severely impacts your microbiome. Then lack of exercise. People wonder, Well, why does lack of exercise affect your gut? Well, because when you move, everything else in your body moves. When you exercise every day, you are more likely to be regular with your bowel movements. Everybody needs to take their trash out every day.
[00:28:39.950] – Carolyn
If you don't, you're building up lots of bacteria, lots of pathogenic bacteria in your gut, and that can back up and move back up as well. Those are the seven microbiome, the biggest killers. But there's simple ways that you can help. If you look at countries like South Korea, places like that, where they eat lots of fermented foods. They have far less of these chronic diseases, and the women don't tend to suffer the menopausal symptoms that we have because it's natural for them. They just every day, every meal, they'll just have a few spoons of a fermented food, sauerkraut, kimchi, those things, and you're replenishing your gut with those microbes. You're helping to put the balance back.
[00:29:23.270] – Allan
Now, one of the things I learned in your book, and I love when I learn new things. That's so much fun for me when I go in the book and I did. I didn't know that before, but it makes a ton of sense. I would usually go in, and when I get a comprehensive blood panel, I'm looking for certain deficiencies, usually in vitamin D or vitamin B12. Those are two that are fairly common that people do need to know that they're getting those things because that's also important with eczema. But you said that the blood test could look good. You've got plenty any of it in your bloodstream, but you're not really absorbing it, as you talked about earlier. So you recommended a hair analysis for nutritional deficiencies rather than just rely on a blood test. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:30:15.050] – Carolyn
You know, there's been athletes who have been caught for taking illicit substances because they found it in their hair. So your hair represents what you've absorbed. That's why I prefer it as a way to test for deficiencies. And it's also a very good way to test for toxins that are in your body as well. So you can get a hair test that would do both. It could tell if you've got lead poisoning or aluminum, mercury, they can tell that from the hair, and they can also tell your nutritional status. There's some tests that you can do that even indicate allergies from that as well, from the hair. It's so much better because, like we spoke about before, I said, you are what you absorb. You can have free floating things in your bloodstream, but that doesn't mean you're using Similarly to a diabetic. Diabetic has lots and lots of glucose in their blood, but they're not using it. Yeah.
[00:31:07.900] – Allan
I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:31:16.400] – Carolyn
One, I've already mentioned, I believe in eating as naturally as possible, as close to nature as possible, because then we're eating food that's live. It has all the benefits in there. The second one, I would say, is Also, we can get so caught up with, I need this nutritional, I need this, and I'm looking at the physical fitness, but we need to be emotionally fit. If we're carrying unresolved trauma, we have a lot of emotional stress going on, that seriously impacts our health. You could eat healthily, you could exercise, but there's pains, there's sicknesses that can develop because of trauma that we're still carrying in our body. I really We do recommend people work on their emotional health as well as their physical health. Then, as I said before, just being in community. Exercise, just four. Okay, yeah, we need to exercise. Yes, we need to eat close to nature. Emotional health, very important. But part of that, I guess, is being in community. We are society people. We need connection. We need friends. We need love. And if you're isolated, that can affect your emotional health. So we need to have friendships. We need to have companions.
[00:32:36.160] – Allan
Excellent.
[00:32:36.860] – Carolyn
Yeah, those are the four things I would say.
[00:32:38.340] – Allan
Thank you. But, Carolyn, if someone wanted to learn more about you and more about what you're doing, because I think you have a community and some training that you do. And then the book, Eczema Decoded, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:32:50.450] – Carolyn
They can go to the Eczema Academy, eczemaacademy. Com. There's a quiz there that they can take for free, which can identify some hidden drivers of eczema that they've likely not been told about. And they can also take the first module of the course free, so they can try it. Excellent. And the book is available on Amazon. It's on amazon.com. It's on amazon.co.uk. And so people can get that wherever they are.
[00:33:14.490] – Allan
Thank you. So I'll have the links at 40plusfitnesspodcast. Com/661. Carolyn, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:33:25.340] – Carolyn
Thank you so much. Thank you for the invite. I've enjoyed it.
[00:33:29.740] – Allan
Welcome I'm back, Raz.
[00:33:31.340] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, that was really fascinating. I, like you, don't have any personal experience with eczema, and I don't know that I know of anybody, certainly not in my family or friend group, that have it. I had no idea that it was It's not just a surfacial issue. When you think of a problem with your skin, it's surfacial. You go to the doctor and you get some fancy lotion or medicine to take care of it. But I really had no idea that it was more systemic than surfacial like that.
[00:33:59.920] – Allan
Yeah. Well, the thing is, you may have friends that have this, and they're going to change their overall behavior based on flare-ups and problems. So they wouldn't show you unless you're a really close friend. So a lot of people are suffering with this quietly. Sure. And so I have a client, and he was mentioning that he's really struggling with this, and he's well into his 40s. And so as we got to talking about it, I said, Look, I'll find somebody. So I reached and I found Caroline. Her story with kids, every one of them had it. She ended up getting it. And so it's somewhat genetic, but the core of it is this. And I'll say this, if you have an autoimmune disease, as soon as you know, you get diagnosed, and they say you have an autoimmune disease, you have to address your entire immune system. You can't just attack the skin and take care of the skin because that doesn't… That's a symptom. It's a symptom of a bigger thing. And so that's what Caroline is trying to get to here is you do have to address some of the symptoms just from the sake of sanity, the itching and everything else that comes along with it.
[00:35:13.710] – Allan
But beyond that, you do need to look at the triggers that could be causing this in the first place and address your entire immune system, which means, yes, strengthening your gut microbiome. So that's robotics, prebiotics. It's eating well, it's moving well, it's sleeping well, it's managing your stress, because stress can also be a factor in messing with your immune system. So as you go through this, just realize that we have to address the immune system And then the other side of this, we have to address the things that hurt our immune system. There's so many chemicals and so much out there. The list is astronomical. But if you sit down and spend a little bit of time working your way through this, you can find some answers and reduce it. She believes cure it. The point here is the book will give you some guidelines to go through and assess what's going on in your body and give you some tools and some techniques and things that you can try that should reduce the load on your immune system and help you deal with this a lot better.
[00:36:29.090] – Rachel
Yeah. I'm My gosh, fascinating. I have to mention, too, I loved what she had said about, We aren't what we eat, we are what we absorb. And man, did some light bulbs really go off in my head. My daughter has some issues with leaky gut. You could eat all the protein or the minerals and vitamins that you need, but if your body is not absorbing it, it's wasteful. So you do have to treat all that. And the other big thing that I… I mean, we all know antibiotics bad for our gut biome, but I never gave too much thought to the pesticides on our foods as acting in a similar fashion. Of course, that's not good for you anyway. But still, the pesticides and the super-processed foods with tons of preservatives never would have dawned on me that that would have a similar function in killing off our microbiome as the antibiotics do. It's funny how you just don't put these together often.
[00:37:24.560] – Allan
Yeah. The Environmental Working Group is a not-for-profit organization that that tries to address some of these things. I know at one point, they had an app that you could use that you literally just scan the barcode of the products you use. This is cleaning stuff and, of course, stuff you apply on your body, like shampoos and soaps and things like that. And it'll tell you rate that, allergy-specific and then also just chemicals. And so you can go to them. They are the ones that came up with that I guess, Clean 15 and a bad whatever. They've got cute little names in a list of the things that you would want to look out for if you're trying to avoid some of these things. Because even if you go into the grocery store and you see an apple or you see a pair or some fruit, any fruit, you're like, well, is this safe for me to eat? Or the safest thing or the best thing? In some cases, it's not. So some of the vegetables and fruits are actually more more of a problem with regards to absorbing and having the actual pesticides in the plant versus something to wash off the surface.
[00:38:38.900] – Allan
Goodness. The short of it is if it has a thick skin, you obviously don't eat that thick, thick skin. You toss that. Those tend to be the safer fruits because they have the thickness that's somewhat less permeable than the thinner ones. But at the same time, they've got a list, so I think you can go out to their site and look around. They'll give you some guidelines on how to manage some of that stuff if you're looking at trying to eliminate that as we go, because you remember we did the ape thing a couple of weeks ago. Yes. Okay, so this is the acceptance And then you're trying to identify. So the Environmental Working Group page was probably a good place for you to start looking at the things you typically consume and coming up with a plan for how you can reduce those and come up with safer alternatives.
[00:39:29.390] – Rachel
Yeah, that It would be great to learn that and maybe take these little extra things out of your life and heal your gut and hopefully heal your skin at the same time.
[00:39:38.650] – Allan
Yeah, it should. I mean, that's the theory. Her theory is perfect. I mean, when you have an issue with your immune system, an autoimmune disease, you want to help and support that immune system as best you can and reduce harm. True. And unfortunately, that's not the way sick care is set up in the United States. They want to give you a cream, a shot, a thing, and get you past it, and then it's going to flare up again later. She's unhappy with that outcome, constant treatment versus a cure. But if you can reduce some of the chemicals you're exposed to, you can get your gut working the right way, you're going to look and feel a lot better anyway. But beyond that, it may also be a solution to helping you reduce and/or eliminate the flare-ups that you have with eczema.
[00:40:30.580] – Rachel
Yeah, very fascinating.
[00:40:32.970] – Allan
All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week.
[00:40:35.330] – Rachel
Great. Take care, Allen.
[00:40:36.670] – Allan
You, too.
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On episode 660 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Barbara and Michael Grossman and discuss their book, Ageless Love: The Sexy Science of Falling in Love Forever.
Transcript provided by CastMagic.io.
Coach Allan [00:01:10]:
Hey, Ras. How you doing?
Rachel [00:01:25]:
Good, Allan. How are you today?
Coach Allan [00:01:27]:
I'm doing alright. It's it's been a busy, busy month. Mhmm. Yeah. I did the, I did the workshop, and that that's gone very, very well. I'm really excited about the number of people that came through the workshop and the results, what we're doing. It's it's been really cool. And then, of course, I I opened up and and launched my my new training program, and that's going well.
Coach Allan [00:01:50]:
And so I'm just I'm just excited that, you know, I'm I'm done. But, you know, as a result, right now, I'm not taking any more clients for a while, and I'll Mhmm. Work into the end of the year and just get these folks the best results I possibly can. Sorry if you missed it, but we've been talking about it. Mhmm. But, yeah, it's it's it's good. It's all good. How are things up there?
Rachel [00:02:12]:
Good. Enjoying the last little bits of summer here. Mike and I took our kayaks out over the weekend. So we had a different kind of working out over the weekend. My arms are a little sore from paddling, but it was a fun fun outing.
Coach Allan [00:02:25]:
Use your back, not
Rachel [00:02:26]:
I know. Well and now I know. You know, it's just funny. Like, it's it's like getting your sea legs. We haven't had our kayaks out in so long. I forgot how to propel. I forgot how to turn.
Rachel [00:02:38]:
I forgot all the things that you do when you do something with consistency, and and this was our first outing. So I'm hoping we can get it out a couple more times before it gets too cold.
Coach Allan [00:02:48]:
Or you're just treading across the top of the ice.
Rachel [00:02:51]:
Yes. Exactly.
Coach Allan [00:02:54]:
Alright. Well, are you ready to talk about ageless love?
Rachel [00:02:57]:
Sure.
Coach Allan [00:02:59]:
After 20 years of leading marriage classes for thousands of couples, our guests have created the best technology to navigate the marriage journey. Doctor Barber received her PhD in a pastoral counseling from Claremont School of Theology. She is committed to teaching skills to move couples from emotional distance and power struggle to feeling understood, appreciated, and respected using wisdom from our western cultural tradition. Her passion is to promote personal development, which is the key to success in the marriage journey. Doctor Michael has been a practitioner and a teacher of meditation for over 1,000 people over 40 years. He has led attitudinal healing classes for over 20 years, teaching how to create love, let go of resentments and fears, and how to create an experience of connection to God. He is passionate about using romantic partnership as a vehicle to move us through higher stages of inner development. He works as an anti aging physician teaching health and longevity through balanced nutrition, hormones, exercise, meditation, and healthy relationships.
Coach Allan [00:04:04]:
With no further ado, here's doctor Barbara Grossman and doctor Michael Grossman. Doctors Grossman, welcome to 40 Plus Fitness.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:04:12]:
Nice to be here. Pleasure.
Coach Allan [00:04:15]:
So your book is called Age is Love, the sexy science of falling in love forever. Yes. And I have to say what was what was actually kind of bizarre as I went through the book, and I'm gonna dive into this a little bit later, was it's like, okay. Wait. You guys have been following me around my whole life because you you actually know how I developed as a human being in my relationships. You you laid them out in this book, and I'm like, who are these people and how they've been following me? How do they know these things? Because it was it was eerie. It was it was really eerie how close you guys were to how I reacted to things as I was getting more, I guess, more and more mature is the way I'd say it.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:05:01]:
Yeah. How old are you?
Coach Allan [00:05:04]:
I'm 58 now.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:05:06]:
Coach Allan [00:05:11]:
This this last time, 10 years.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:05:14]:
10 years. Very nice.
Coach Allan [00:05:16]:
And it it did start from a very different, frame of mind, a very different stage. And I and I think that's that's why it has lasting power and the others did not.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:05:28]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Coach Allan [00:05:30]:
We make it
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:05:31]:
when we're in our forties than when we're in our twenties.
Coach Allan [00:05:36]:
Yes. Yes. It it like I said, you laid it out. So we're gonna talk about it because I was like, I just thought it was fascinating. I'm like, okay. They've been they've been following me around because nobody knows this stuff. Alright. So, like I said, I I really enjoyed the book, and and you came at it from a very different perspective than than I was looking for.
Coach Allan [00:05:59]:
Okay. So when I came in, I was like, okay. It's a book about relationships. It's a book about love. And and I I fully expected, yes, we have to talk about communication because that's the cool core tool to make all this happen. But you used a reference to quantum physics and electrons in speaking about waves and particles as the way that we, even as humans, approach things. Could you could you kind of describe that and tell us how that works and what that means? Because as you started to say it, I wasn't sure. But by the time you got done explaining it, I'm like, absolutely.
Coach Allan [00:06:39]:
This is how it works. So
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:06:45]:
so electrons and photons behave in peculiar waves. We didn't realize that they're so different than, quote, particles. So from, looking at science from, Isaac Newton, we thought everything was little particles bouncing into each other. And and then when quantum physics, came around, all this weird stuff was going on where, what seemed to be a particle could behave like a wave depending depending upon whether someone was watching it or not, which is totally crazy. Like, oh my gosh. Is is light a wave or a particle? And and what scientists figured out, and it made no sense to them, was that it could be either depending upon who is watching it or is something watching it. If no one is watching it, it behaves like a wave. As soon as something consciously looks at it or observes it, it turns into a particle.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:07:48]:
It gets localized. Now that is like an extraordinary way of understanding the world we live in, which is not the way normally we think about it. We think about everything as separate from each other, and, like, I can interact with you and bounce into you. But what we're saying with the particle wave understanding is that a a photon or electron can behave like a particle or like a wave. So it could be a wave if it's just everywhere at any time, and then it can get localized if something looks at it and localize it. So what happens in our own personal life, if we feel like everything is good, that no one is judging us and watching us and so on, we feel unlimited. We feel so connected to everything, interrelated to everything. But as soon as We're relaxed.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:08:41]:
Our and we're relaxed. Right? Because we're open. As soon as our husband or wife says something specific that makes us feel like we're being observed and watched and judged and criticized, we push. We get localized, and we start feeling like, well, something is pushing on me, and I can't move anymore, and I'm being restricted. And we feel pressured, and we feel like we're restricted. We can control whether we feel constricted or not by our way of interacting with other people if we let it just go through us. Like, we become a window where everything just goes through us. Nothing gets stuck in here, which means we have to be in a state of forgiveness.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:09:30]:
We have to be in a state of gratitude. And when we're in that, nothing affects us. It just goes right through us, and we change our experience.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:09:40]:
And you're your best self. So the the image of a of a particle is constriction. It's defensiveness. It's reactiveness. It's it's not our best selves. And if you it's you can use the metaphor use it as a metaphor to to consciously be a wave even in the presence of criticism or in a, in a conflict. And, that's the the best, approach to having conversations with people we care about.
Coach Allan [00:10:08]:
Yeah. One of the one of my takeaways and, again, I'm I'm getting a little personal here. But, yeah, I was thinking about that with regards to my relationship with my wife now, and I was thinking, okay. There are times when I get frustrated. I think you had a story of frustration, and I was like, yes. Mine was slightly different because what what happens with me is that my wife will ask me to do something while I'm doing something else. And the way my brain works, I want to finish the one thing I'm doing before I go off and start trying to do something else. And the thing she's asked me to do doesn't have to be done right now.
Coach Allan [00:10:49]:
So I get frustrated. I I turn into a particle, and I realize at that point that I'm I'm angry that that she doesn't understand that I just I wanna get this done first. I wanna do that. I'll do that second because she in her head, just she wants it done, like, now. So she'll start doing it. Never and she'll say never mind. I'll just do it. And I'm like again, frustrated.
Coach Allan [00:11:14]:
So it is a conversation I haven't had with my wife. She's traveling, but I just finished reading your book. So when she gets back, I am going to open that up and say, hey. You know, some things I've been thinking about when you say this, I feel this.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:11:31]:
Yes.
Coach Allan [00:11:31]:
And this is why I feel this. And then maybe as she opens up, she'll communicate, okay. Next time I want you to do something, I'll recognize you're doing something already because I don't sit around watching a lot of Netflix. If if I'm sitting there doing something, I'm doing something. And so just let her know. It's like, if you come in, I'm doing something. You ask me. You want something.
Coach Allan [00:11:56]:
Unless it's like, please put out the house fire. If it can wait, then just recognize that that's what I'm gonna wanna do, is do it after I finish what I'm doing. And let me and let me.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:12:11]:
Good. So you didn't have an upset. You made a request, negotiated it, and it resolved the stuff.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:12:16]:
Well, he- Joshua Brodersen (zero
Coach Allan [00:12:17]:
fifty five:fifty six): Well, it will. I'm laying out my communication plan. Yeah. Okay. You're
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:12:23]:
not going to come from crankiness
Coach Allan [00:12:24]:
or control? Joshua Brodersen (zero fifty five:fifty six): No. I'm going to realize that that was me reacting and not, you know, thinking it, not doing it right, not opening up and accepting it the way it's supposed to be.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:12:38]:
So so we have, 2 thoughts for you. One is what we recommend in our book is always make appointments for these discussions.
Coach Allan [00:12:48]:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:12:48]:
Make an appointment when it's comfortable for each of you and say, hey, we would can can we sit and talk? I have some things to talk to you about. I need 5 or or 10 minutes. That's good time. So that and and she should do the same for you so that you make an appointment for discussion. Very important. Second thing would be, when you're listening to each other, we have a whole process that we teach couples where you listen without interrupting, which is really strange for couples. Okay? Listen without interrupting, and then when you respond, the other person responds without you interrupting. Now that doesn't necessarily lead to complete clear, what do we can do about this? How do we come? No.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:13:33]:
But it starts the sharing process. So you don't wanna get into an argument.
Coach Allan [00:13:38]:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:13:38]:
So this is how you avoid the arguments through this and and and we have a whole process where we teach our couples how to, avoid arguments. That's one of our online courses, as I have said.
Coach Allan [00:13:52]:
But you also you also brought this up in the book. And one of the things you said that I think was was really astute was that I'm having I'm having a series of feelings, and it's better for me to say when this happens, I feel this than it is for me to say you always do that, and it's always wrong.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:14:13]:
Very, very, very good. And the other thing that we have, we have a skill set where we teach the couples to say, ouch. So that's a whole other skill set. So when you have a little ouch, it's a little it's a skill set to say ouch at the beginning when you're not really that upset. And then your partner says, oh, what what is the why is why are you saying ouch? Well and then you have a chance to say, but you do this, and I'm feeling this and feeling that. And then the partner said, well, what can I do to make it better? And then you make a specific thing. If it doesn't be done right away, then please just ask once and and and give me, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, whatever to finish what I'm doing, and then I'll complete that. And and if if it's a simple thing, that's it.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:15:07]:
If it's not simple, then you gotta make an appointment for a whole sharing session. So so it's very important to catch the ouchies early, because if you wait, it builds up. Yeah. And it's bigger, and then they get
Coach Allan [00:15:22]:
And it has. That that that's why it comes to mind is that it's happened several times. And every time, I get frustrated, and it's the same feelings, and it's it's never resolved.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:15:32]:
Right.
Coach Allan [00:15:33]:
You know, it's always, okay. I'll quit doing what I'm doing and go do this because, you know, you I feel, you know, again, I'm a particle. Alright. So now this is where the eerie part comes in is is you you took us through the psychospiritual states. There's 5 stages or states, and you walked kinda through those, you know, the innocence, the orphan, caretaker, warrior, and wise elder. And like I said, as I was reading through that, I'm like, you guys just wrote my biography, of every relationship I've ever had. Can you take us through that and describe what each of those is and and then what's necessary to kinda get to the next stage? Because there are there is a change in us that has to occur or we're not gonna be ready for that next stage. Wendy Van Wagner (zero twenty three:fifty four): Well,
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:16:23]:
in terms of relationships, what's important it's important to start at stage 3, which is where people want to belong. They want to they want to make lifelong love commitments. They want to attach. And, usually, if you if you marry young, you marry usually in that stage. And, but but and so it's all about creating a home, creating a family. It's very comfortable, and it's it's all about really attachment. But very soon, you know, because in our culture, women have babies, men go forward, and they become more dynamic in the world. They become, they become, warriors, and they're out in the world, you know, making a a good life for their family, and they have to be they have to develop their strategies, their tactics, their their, they have to connect with a skill base.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:17:14]:
They have a lot of things they have to do to be effective. And so you have a, you know, a a more individuated, lead in the family, usually the man. And the woman is home having babies. She's still about connection. So they're in a very, very different place than they were when they started, and and their values are somewhat different. How they see the world is different because their responsibilities are fundamentally different. And so they they need to understand that this is part of the evolution of their lives, and they have to appreciate their differences rather than fight over their differences. Eventually, women, you know, most women go back to work, and they become, they they become, you know, more independent as well.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:17:56]:
That's not an easy deal either because they've got 2 very, you know, powerful people who have confidence and self esteem and have a points of view, and they, and they battle it out. And that isn't really that isn't, you know, nice for the bond and the family life and and the emotional connection. So it, it's important to understand these stages so that we don't take them so personally, that we understand we have different points of view and that, and that we soften up a little bit and, appreciate that, you know, both usually in a good argument, both points of view have validity. And, you know, Ben, it's easier when you get to our age. You know, we're we've raised our children. We have grandchildren, and it's a very, very sweet time. But those are very, very tough stages. And if you don't understand them, it's very easy to come to to conclusions that are very harsh for the for the partnership and for the family life.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:18:51]:
And, you know, my purpose in talking about this is that couples understand that it's a you know, that your your relationship pulls you through these, these stages and helps you grow. Without this stimulus, you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't develop your heart. You wouldn't develop your mind. You wouldn't be forced to integrate the the mind and the heart. It's the it's the best program for self development that that, has ever been designed. You can't get better therapy than having a partner because your partner will tell you everything you you probably didn't wanna know, that is your project to work on yourself. And, we want we want people to know this so that they understand the the project, that it's it's about learning together, growing together. And we'd we'd like to see couples, you know, really use their relationship for the good of everyone in the family and not, you know, just and not separate and divorce without, you know, deep reflection.
Coach Allan [00:19:47]:
Yeah. So I that was it. I I got into my career, and I felt like I I kinda developed beyond. And I even though I encouraged her to do things, she was the caretaker. She was the you know, to at home. And, yeah, I we were in totally different stages of life, and we weren't communicating. And that's you know, that was the end. You know? We weren't mature enough.
Coach Allan [00:20:13]:
If we didn't go get help, it was what it was. Time didn't heal that, and it wouldn't have healed it. But So from
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:20:20]:
a relationship point of view, the woman will see her her man as, you know, arrogant and pushy, and the man will experience his wife as as boring and, you know, you know, a resistant. And, it's it's it's an unfair interpretation even though there's truth in it. But, you know, if you understand it's a stage, you understand that, really, it's important to be a caretaker. It's important to be out in the world. This is what you do for the for the family and that you can stretch and grow towards each other. So you understand, you know, how what's you know, what the big gap in between. And, eventually, women get, you know, get interested in their own development and they, progress. And so there's a really nice stage ahead.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:21:04]:
But getting through that stage Doctor.
Coach Allan [00:21:06]:
Andrew Roark If you're still together, yes.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:21:09]:
Doctor. Andrew Roark And so what I can add is that the development of the hot is something that men get later. So women develop their hot, having babies, naturally being a woman, you're into nurturing. But the ability to have the mind controlling the hot comes a little later for women. And that's what they learn in relationship as they grow and mature. For men, it usually goes the other way. They get into their mind really early, their into their career and to having their mind and their heart is just controlled by their mind. But then they have to when they are growing and developing, they have to learn to develop their heart.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:21:56]:
So what does that mean? That means women, it's important for a man to learn to share his feelings. It's important that he's connected to
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:22:02]:
his feelings, and it's important that his woman knows what his feelings are. And it's also important on the other side for a woman to control her anger. It's not nice, and anger isn't a primary feeling anyway. Secondary. What's underneath anger is hurt and fear. And, you know, most people don't know that. And so they you know, every feelings get dramatized, and that's a bad recipe for a relationship.
Coach Allan [00:22:28]:
I agree. Now another area I wanted to go into, and, if you have small children, you might not want them to hear this part, so hit pause and listen to something else if you got the kids around. But I did wanna talk about this because I think this is you know, I think we all we all kinda understand, yeah, the emotional side of all of this, the, you know, the mind and communication and obviously the heart. But we we we have well, that's where most of the relationship piece comes until we start getting older, and then it's sometimes it's the physical stuff. So it's the intimacy. It's, you know, like, maybe guys are struggling with, ED. Women get into menopause, and they start dealing with symptoms like vaginal dryness. And those can both affect the intimacy from a physical perspective that we're having.
Coach Allan [00:23:22]:
So I'd like to talk a little bit about your perspectives on managing those because they're they're very sensitive topics to individuals when they're going through it. But what recommendations would you have for someone?
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:23:34]:
Well, there are 2 different basic issues we have to look at. So as a as a physician who who deals with these things a lot, there are 2 different categories. 1 is the emotional category, and the other is the physiological category. So so the physiological category is very different from men and women. For women, it's pretty quick when they go into menopause, Anywhere from the age of 45 to 50 something, women are gonna go through menopause where they are not menstruating like they used to, get hot flashes, vaginal dryness, mood swings, not sleeping well, feeling tired, losing libido, and it's not psychological. It's physiological. That can have a great effect on the relationship when that when a woman goes through that, and the way to treat that is on the physiological level. So they come to see me, I put them on bio identical hormones, natural hormone replacement.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:24:36]:
So chapter 2 in the book, not chapter 2, but section 2 is all about the body. And we talk about what should we do for women. You take bio identical hormones, you live longer and healthier than if you do nothing. You don't wanna use the synthetic hormones. And there's all kinds of variations of things to do, but it's dramatic. It it allows women to live a a vital, energetic, enthusiastic life, sexually, mentally, emotionally, creatively, their whole life. So Barbara and I, we're 473. We do ballroom dancing.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:25:12]:
We compete around the country. It's real intense, and we love it. But we couldn't do it without these natural, wild, dark hormones. Men, it's a little different. When men go into their fifties, they they lose a lot of their hormones, but it's just slow. Every 10 years, it goes down and down and down. By the time they're 60 or 70, it's like, woah, it's gone. And they feel like an old man.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:25:37]:
And they lose their energy. They lose their enthusiasm. They lose libido. They don't have any muscle stamina or endurance. It's all reversible, and it's dramatic. But the downside is very slow. So you feel less good when you're 40, less good when you're 50, less good when you're 60, but there's nothing dramatic. It's slow.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:26:00]:
But it's dramatic when we replace the male hormone, testosterone with some other things to support them, and it's dramatic. It just changes their life. So that's the physiological thing. Erection functioning for men, 50% of men when they're 50 have that as a problem. 70% of men when they're 70, and it just keeps going up. It's reversible. The physiological problem for men is reversible. There are many different causes for it.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:26:30]:
I do a lot of vibrational acoustic wave therapy, gains wave. I do a lot of injection stem cells and platelets and exosomes, and it's dramatic. It works only 85 to 90% of the time. No side effects, and it's great. Men love it. It changes their ability to have that intimate relationship that beats so much. In in a marriage, you live longer and healthier if you have sex twice a more a week than if you have it twice a month. So it's very important.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:27:02]:
It's not just feel good. It's important to create that all those emotional changes in your hormones that affect your physiology. It really makes you live longer and healthier. So that's for men, and women have issues that can occur as they get older, and and we can do the same kinds of treatment that we do for men on women, and it's dramatically helpful for them. Emotional issues, then you gotta work with doctor Barber to see what's going on emotionally. You have to have the the feeling of of love and intimacy, emotional intimacy with your partner. And and I would say 20 to 30% of the time, it's emotional. 70 to 80% of the time, it's physiological.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:27:48]:
So that's the big picture.
Coach Allan [00:27:50]:
Okay. Now you didn't use these words in the book, but this was just as I was reading through it, this was what, what kinda got into my head. It was about how, I think, spiritually, a lot of times, we we feel like victims. And and I hear it I hear it a lot a lot, reading different things and listening to different things. Is it there's just there just seems to be this new culture of victimhood that's out there. And I think if we feel like we're a victim, it's it's really hard to solve any problems. And so I you know, like I said, the words I wrote down as I was reading was abandoned victimhood. But it was really as I was going through the spiritual section of the book and just how we relate to our situation in the world.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:28:45]:
I I I I love your your analysis and perspective. So in the 3rd section of book on, spirituality, we talk about what is required of every human being to live a fulfilling life is you have to forgive everybody who's ever hurt you. That's a big thing to
Coach Allan [00:29:10]:
do. Including yourself. Well,
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:29:14]:
yeah. Yeah. That's true. And and to go into the forgiveness thing, we have an exercise in our book which can help people to take one example of it to kind of go through it. It's very fulfilling. We also have, a thing where you, a process with where you have your spouse work with you to help you to heal those wounds from the past. And, the big picture that people have to see with forgiveness is that, you have to see that if you think that you're gonna hurt someone else by not forgiving them, and I'll show them, and I'll get them back, and whatever, you have to see the big picture. That always hurts you more than it hurts them.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:30:04]:
Yeah. And and it hurts you psychologically, it hurts you physiologically. Your health and longevity are tied into forgiveness. That's part of living wrong. To to feel emotions of compassion is so critical for your own longevity. You wanna say something? Yeah.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:30:24]:
Can I add that, most of us don't know the wounds that we harbor until we're married and we're, intimate with our partner emotionally, physically, and try to live a family life together? We recreate family life, and we we experience. We we, we experience the wounds of our childhood. And, it often looks like our partner is the bad person, but we're really so there's a there's a way in which the intimacy of our partnership, brings to the surface all of the wounds of our childhood. It's the most remarkable psychotherapy there is because you you get in touch with everything that is just not in that isn't resolved and centered and squared with you. All of your distortions of reality, come up for, review. And you have a chance to, you know, realize, you know, from an adult point of view what was going on and to appreciate, your parents, even and and forgive them for those those times that were very difficult. And so, you know, we believe that partnership is part of the journey of, you know, human life to, you know, full expression and satisfaction, creativity.
Coach Allan [00:31:35]:
Yeah. And I like the idea of you bringing your partner into this because that that shared experience, it it's just gonna deepen the relationship and the intimacy and the openness that you have with them because you'll probably be sharing things that you haven't shared with anybody else.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:31:54]:
Correct. Absolutely right. It's so critical. So for for Barbara and I, my sensitivities as a child was that my mother would criticize everybody, including me. And she was the big boss general, and and she was the only one allowed to have feelings. So when something happens that make me feel criticized, I fall apart. I'm strong at just so many ways, but Barbara has learned that I am very sensitive to criticism. And she may say or do something that hits that, and then I I can say, oh, gee.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:32:31]:
That really hurts. She says, oh, I'm so sorry to to do that. That is something my mother would never do. Right? But Barbara, so apologize for just a little tone of voice or a little something. You know? And then that that creates the love where she heals my past hurts. And Barbara's hurts are her natural father left and never came back when she was 2. Abandonment drives her crazy. If she thinks I might run off or not come home on time or something happens and I'm not there, then she falls on.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:33:05]:
And instead of me feeling like she's criticizing me and and trying to upset me, I recognize, oh, that's her sensitivity. Okay. I'm so sorry I forgot to call you. Oh, and then she then she could feel better about it. So each of us can heal each other, and that is critical. And then you go on and on where you do ultimately have to forgive everybody for everything that ever happened to you. And then God's love comes into your experience, and you feel open to everything around you, and your heart expands. And you move through those layers that you talked about, the growing layers, after the warrior phase, you get into the into the wise elder phase, and there's other phases above there.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:33:50]:
But it all requires you gotta go through all this stuff. It's quite a spiritual process. That relationship pushes you through. Doctor.
Coach Allan [00:33:59]:
Whitfield (zero forty five:fifty four): Well, I'm not going to call myself a wise elder yet, but I'm working on it. Okay? Doctor. Whitfield (zero forty five:fifty
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:34:05]:
four): It's a process, Josh. But what happens is your one of your the injuries of one of your childhoods intertwines with the other one. So if if I feel, you know, abandoned and not important to Michael and I start criticizing him, we've reactivated both of our histories in the same moment.
Coach Allan [00:34:25]:
Yeah. And
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:34:25]:
so it takes, you know, it takes, a lot of reflection and and forgiveness to unwrap that and and lay it out and and resolve it. And if you don't do that because you're not just hurt from this moment, you're hurt from your whole history, It gets so intense for some couples. I think that accounts for, a lot of the divorces we see because, fundamentally, our our partnership is a psychological relationship.
Coach Allan [00:34:52]:
Yes. Okay. So doctor Barbara, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:35:04]:
Well, I think you need to, you need to have a form of exercise. You need to eat healthy. You need to know your body, your your personal physiology, and eat well for your for the kind of body you have. You need to, stay connected. That means, you know, a soulful, deep conversation on a regular basis and regular sex.
Coach Allan [00:35:26]:
Alright. So, now doctor Michael, same for you. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are 3 strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:35:39]:
So what I would add to doctor Barber is that, one, I would, add that the the way to stay emotionally connected to your partner is to work at the skills you need to foster that. And you're gonna find those skills in the courses that we we teach online, in our books. You need to make that an important part of your life that you've gotta say, yes. This is just as important as eating. The most important factor in longevity after the age of 50 is the quality of personal relationships. You need to work on that. You're not born having the skills for personal relationships. You've gotta learn them.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:36:25]:
We've had many mentors, and we love mentoring other people. Online courses that aren't video or, in person, Zoom courses. Second thing is meditation is a critical factor in one of the things you need to do to have good longevity and to be healthy. You have to calm down the stress response, which is so overwhelming in my life. And I teach med meditation classes twice a week online, and and then they can go to doctor michaelmeditation.com. There's no cost. So important. The third thing that is is real critical is to have a doctor who's gonna look at your overall well-being.
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:37:14]:
Unfortunately, most doctors are government doctors, and they wanna get you in and out 5 minutes and give you a pill and leave them alone. Okay? Because they have a lot of other patients to see. You need a doctor like myself who's gonna look at your overall well-being, look at all the different tests on your are you prediabetic? Are you clogging your arteries? Are are are you, having issues with inflammation, arthritis? And and they have to look at the big picture, and and this is gonna be your guide. Everyone needs to have a a doctor guide who's into antiaging medicine to see the big picture. Those would be the things I would suggest.
Coach Allan [00:37:55]:
Thank you. So doctors, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your book, Age of Love, and all the wonderful things that you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?
Dr. Michael Grossman [00:38:05]:
They should go to falling in love forever.com. Fallinginloveforever.com. They can also go to ocwellness.com. So the medical side is the OC Wellness, and the relationship side is the formula forever.
Coach Allan [00:38:25]:
Thank you. So doctor Barber, doctor Michael, thank you so much for being part of 40 Plus Fitness.
Dr. Barbara Grossman [00:38:30]:
It's a pleasure. You've been fun to be with.
Coach Allan [00:38:33]:
Welcome back, Raz.
Rachel [00:38:35]:
Allan, that was a really interesting discussion with the doctors, Grossman. How fun. They're both doctors.
Coach Allan [00:38:41]:
Yeah. I wanted well, one's a PhD, one's an MD. But, I wanted I wanted to get them on because, you know, one of the things we don't think about that that does affect our our health and our fitness and and Mhmm. Our longevity and everything is the relationships in our life. And one of the most important of those would would be, you know, your partner, your spouse. And too often, we let those things get bad Mhmm. And lack the skills to make them good again. And so this was this I think this was a good opportunity for someone to say, okay, I'm a I'm a grown person.
Coach Allan [00:39:18]:
I'm gonna figure this stuff out. And, you know, so I I was glad to be able to kinda go through it. When they started talking about quantum entanglements and all that other stuff at the beginning of the book, I was about to say, okay, this might not be the book for me. But then they got to the practical stuff and and and everything. And at that point, you're like, okay, so now I understand what what they were going after and understanding where we are. And so now you have some tools to kinda look at who you are and where you are and understand each other better. But you and I were talking before we came on. Just one base key of this whole thing is communication.
Rachel [00:39:59]:
100%. I mean, communication is the absolute foundation of everything. And it it's funny as you look back at your lives Mike and I actually have been married for almost 30 years. Next year will be our 30th anniversary. And and as I look back, now that we're empty nesters, I'm a different person than I am today than I was when we got married almost 30 years ago. I mean, 30 years is a lot of years. And I've changed, but he's kind of
Coach Allan [00:40:27]:
like, that's amazing.
Rachel [00:40:28]:
You know? Well, to be honest, he puts up with lots. Me too. But that's a good example and it goes both ways. But there have been times where we have communicated very well and there's times where we've communicated very poorly. But, but, yeah, I mean, so much has changed. You have to go back and forth. You have to share with one another. And if it doesn't just happen naturally, I liked the doctor's idea about setting meetings and having deliberate discussions.
Rachel [00:41:00]:
How are things going in your life? You know, what are you thinking nowadays? And, you know, if you can't do it again naturally, I mean, take a look at what major things are happening in your life today. For example, in my life, we are now empty dusters. We have no kids in our lives, which means I don't have that nurturing, caretaking focus that I had before. And so what am I gonna do? What am I gonna what does Mike think I need to do? You know? It's a good time to sit down and hash what we wanna how we wanna live our lives together now that we don't have kids in the house. It's a big change.
Coach Allan [00:41:38]:
Yeah. Now now based on their the 5 states that they talked about, this would this would somewhat indicate that you're about to go into your warrior stage where you start building you start building your own your own thing. You know? You're doing your own things. And as a result, a lot of times when we get into that phase, particularly guys, we we shut down and focus solely on that. Mhmm. But I would dare argue that you you you still have to be a caretaker at some level.
Rachel [00:42:04]:
Oh, yeah.
Coach Allan [00:42:05]:
Because you're taking care of Mike. You've got your parents and things like that. Our generation, the x generation, is, is kind of interesting because we're living long enough, and our parents are living long enough that we're kinda caught in that middle ground of as soon as we finish raising our kids, we're moving over into taking care of our parents. And and at the same time, maybe there's an overlap for you. Sure. I didn't have that overlap because my kids were all well, our kids were all born earlier, but we're at that stage now where, yeah, we're we're shifting over and having to think about our parents and their care. And, so, yeah, there's there's always gonna be a little bit of maybe each of these in here at some level. Mhmm.
Coach Allan [00:42:44]:
But, yeah, we get to a point, and we if we don't understand where we're going, we can't communicate to our partner where we where we are or where we're gonna be. So that's very odd.
Rachel [00:42:54]:
Yeah. Even that's a good discussion to have. Quite honestly, I'm in that same boat where, you know, I've spent my life with focused on the kids. What do they need? Where do where do they need to go? Where do I need to drive them? Where do we go to eat for dinner based on the kids? And now if you ask me, where do I wanna go for dinner? I will not know because I I don't know what I want anymore. So that's a discussion that Mike and I have had. You know, I don't know where I'm going in my very immediate future or what I want to do, but I'm working on discovering those things. But because we're communicating that, you know, Mike and you know, we can just check-in with each other and and see what we want. So it's it's a change, but it's, again, communication, discussing these things Yeah.
Rachel [00:43:42]:
Is the key.
Coach Allan [00:43:44]:
It is. It is. Alright. Well, that's all I really had prepped for today. So talk to you next week.
Rachel [00:43:51]:
Great. Take care, Allan.
Coach Allan [00:43:52]:
You too. Bye.
Rachel [00:43:53]:
Thank you. Bye bye.
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On episode 659 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Dr. Stewart Lonky and discuss his book, Outsmarting Obesity: A Doctor Reveals Why We Gain Weight, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It.
Allan [00:03:07]:
Hey, Raz. How are you?
Rachel [00:03:09]:
Good, Allan. How are you today?
Allan [00:03:11]:
I'm doing alright. It's been busy weeks, Busy weeks. I just you know, because, I've I've done a few things. We did the, the workshop last week, and so that was that was really, really good. I enjoyed doing that. You know, of course, did a ton of promotion for it to get out there that I was doing this. You know, right now, looks you know, we've got great turnout for it. So it was a, you know, really good event.
Allan [00:03:35]:
I'm I'm glad I was able to do that, and that's probably I don't know if I'll do it live again like that, but, I'll definitely save those recordings, and I may make a product or something out of that to go forward. Cool. Definitely share it with all of my clients because it's it's one of the best things I've done to date. And then, yeah, I've launched, and I'm in the process of a launch for my new program. And, it's kind of interesting because I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking, you know, I've got these ideas for the new program and what I want to incorporate. And I'm like, but I've always come up with these names, you know, like 8 weeks to Wow and to shed the fat and all that stuff. And I'm like, Well, but here's the problem. The way I'm coaching now is so different than the way I was coaching for those, especially for the 8 weeks to Wow.
Allan [00:04:21]:
It's a totally different way of coaching. And it's now almost all custom. So when I'm coaching someone, you know, like, if if I were coaching, your program would be Rachel's program. It wouldn't be some wonky name that I decided I wanted to call it. It's your program. I'm writing it for you almost on the spot. And so I said, well, what do I name something that is unnameable? Mhmm. Until I know the name of the client that I'm coaching, and I that's it.
Allan [00:04:48]:
You know? It's the your name here moniker thing, that, you know, that when you're gonna get a form and, you know, you this is just where you're gonna insert your name, your name here, program. And I'm like, so that's what I'm gonna do is when I'm talking to people about it, their program, it's their program. And that's what it's gonna be named and that's what it's gonna be is their program. And and, you know, generally, I'm I'm still targeting 12 weeks. That's, I think, a solid way to look at it to start. Mhmm. But, you know, just look at it and say, what do you need? What do you want? What do you what are your goals? And then from there, build out their program right there on the, discovery and planning call. That's what I'm launching right now, and, I'm taking applications for it because I can't obviously get on the call with with everybody.
Allan [00:05:33]:
Mhmm. So there is an application. That's 40plusfitness.com/apply. That'll take you to the application to let you know if that my approach is appropriate for you. But that's generally what I'm doing this week is basically that launch. So I've been really, really busy with that. And it cuts off on 15th. So anyone that hasn't applied by 15th, you'll miss this round and there's some pretty significant bonuses in this round that include some bonus weeks, some freezes, which I've never done before.
Allan [00:06:04]:
So this will be interesting. But if they sign up, obviously, we've been going through the holidays and some people do want to take a week off. And so I'm like, well, if you want to use a freeze week, you use a freeze week, and we add that week to the end. I've never done that before, but I know people want to need to take detours from time to time. So they can take a detour, and I'll pay for it.
Rachel [00:06:27]:
That sounds neat.
Allan [00:06:28]:
Yeah. And there's some other things that I'll throw in there as bonuses for folks that come in for this particular launch because, like I said, it's a new way that I'm going to put us all together. So, while I'm doing this launch, which will go into 15th, this is this is your time to apply. So
Rachel [00:06:45]:
That sounds great.
Allan [00:06:46]:
You can apply for it. So how are things up there?
Rachel [00:06:49]:
Good. Warm and toasty even through the end of this summer, bare getting into fall. But I'm I'm just gonna say I'm glad my camper has air conditioning.
Allan [00:06:59]:
Well, you you know, again, you only have a couple weeks, a few weeks, I guess, until, until we get to the actual fall. So it it it'll cool down. It'll cool.
Rachel [00:07:08]:
I can't wait because fall makes for the best running season ever. So, yeah, I can't wait.
Allan [00:07:14]:
Especially, like, you you get a lot of color change up there with yours.
Rachel [00:07:17]:
We do. Yep. That'll be coming. I I don't know when our peak is this year in my area, but I think it's mid to late October is what they're predicting. So
Allan [00:07:24]:
I always thought it had something to do with the temperature and the rain.
Rachel [00:07:28]:
Mhmm. Yep. Yep. 2 BD. Yes. See what happens.
Allan [00:07:32]:
Alright. Alright. So are you ready to have a conversation with doctor Lankey?
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:07:36]:
Sure.
Allan [00:07:38]:
Our guest today is a double board certified physician and expert in medical toxicology. In his new book, Outsmarting Obesity, he challenges the status quo about weight gain and obesity. With no further ado, here's doctor Stuart Lankey. Doctor Lankey, welcome to 40 Plus Fitness.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:07:57]:
Well, thank you. It's great to be here.
Allan [00:07:59]:
So, you know, as I as I go through and I read books to prepare for these conversations, typically, I'll sit down with a piece of paper, and I'll start writing down a note. You know, like, oh, this is an interesting thing. And so it's one thing. And then it's so it ends up being like a list. And I'll end up I might end up with 4, 5, 6, 7 things. And then when I see a study, I, like, I'll follow that study, and I'll go read the study because that was interesting. And I end up over there. And so I'm gonna show this to you, and there's very few people are gonna see this.
Allan [00:08:27]:
But this is more
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:08:30]:
Looks like my looks like my desktop.
Allan [00:08:32]:
Yeah. But it's literally, it's a word cloud. It's like I sat down. I started writing all this stuff down. Like, okay. This and this. And then I'm trying to tie them all together. And so, you know, I'm like, okay.
Allan [00:08:42]:
This goes to this, and that's over here. And I it was like I was trying to solve a big puzzle. And then you put it together and, and literally solve the puzzle for me in literally one sentence. So all those words I wrote down, they came down to one sentence, which I thought was just brilliant. Obesity promotes systemic inflammation, and inflammation promotes obesity.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:09:07]:
That's an excellent conclusion to come to because that is kind of the secret of obesity and why it is medically a challenging situation for physicians, particularly we learned that lesson with the SARS COV 2 pandemic. People wondered why obese individuals didn't do as well. And for me, it was pretty straightforward. They were already in an inflammatory state, so their immune system was being overtaxed on a daily basis. Their ability to cope with a virus that was novel, that was unlike anything they'd seen before, they were not going to do well when the cytokine storm happened.
Allan [00:09:57]:
Yeah. And and there were other things to us. Like I said, I it was it was fascinating. And I I enjoyed I enjoyed that. I enjoyed going through that and really diving into the science of it. One of the things, you know, obviously, of course, we all hear this. It's kind of a common thing. Okay.
Allan [00:10:13]:
You're overweight. You're obese. Just stop eating crap. Eat less. You know, the whole individual agency. You're a grown man. Just just stop.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:10:24]:
I gave some examples with a patient of mine that's a real patient. It is very commonplace for people to look at, morbidly obese individuals and state that, boy, that person should stop eating so much. And that individual agency being responsible for the obesity epidemic doesn't make any sense, first of all. And number 2, it's it's erroneous. What we've learned and what I've learned in 10 years of doing this work and talking to people, reviewing articles, going through the literature is that, unfortunately, the die is cast fairly early. And if we if if we wanna be smart about this, and that's why I named the book, Outsmarting Obesity. I named it that because if you're not smart and you don't know what the root cause is, you'll never understand why when we diet, we can lose weight. I mean, you can restrict your calories and lose weight.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:11:23]:
But the minute you stop that crazy restriction or whatever it is that you're doing, you're gonna gain it right back because you haven't addressed the real issue, which isn't individual agency. It is, unfortunately, as I like to say, it's it's a chemistry set within the body. It's chemical things that are happening and that have been happening now for generations.
Allan [00:11:47]:
You know, a lot of times we'll we'll talk about fat, and there's a kind of a thing in in my industry that they love, love, love to talk about. They're like, well, add muscle because that's more bioactive than fat. And from a from a calorie expenditure perspective, that's that's true statement. But fat's pretty busy.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:12:07]:
Yeah. Fat, I you know, it's interesting. I started medical school. And to me, fat was just you know, it was there. It was insulation in a sense. Got into dissections and realized, very early in my 1st year of medical school, it was not of a mental fat. There was fat throughout the body. And I happened to be in a medical school where one of the leading researchers, a fellow named, doctor Scott Grundy was, a professor.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:12:37]:
And Scott really taught us how fat was really an active endocrine organ, And it was just becoming understood how fat really is very important in communicating with the brain, secreting a number of different, hormones that tell you are hypothalamus, stop eating. You're full. Or eat something. And communicating with other organs like pancreas and dealing with glucose metabolism, insulin secretion, all of these things are the general in charge, sort of the catcher on the baseball team who's the really the captain of the team on the field is fat. So fat's a very active biological tissue. Don't wanna eliminate all fat. It serves a real purpose, but too much of it is obviously what we're talking about.
Allan [00:13:35]:
Yes. And so, yeah, it, you know, it'll tell you your if when it when it's functioning the way it's supposed to, which is a very important part of this whole conversation, when it's doing what it's supposed to, it's telling you that you're full. Go ahead and stop eating. We've got plenty of fat. We're good. It's it's kinda running a lot of other endocrine functions, communicating throughout the body and kinda helping like you said, it's a perfect analogy, the catcher on a on a baseball field, you know, making sure everybody's where they're supposed to be and doing the things they're supposed to do. But every once in a while and the way I've heard it before, it was really in the context of insulin resistance and and dealing with die you know, diabetes, prediabetes is okay. So we're eating, and the body has more blood sugar more than it needs, and it's gotta store this somewhere.
Allan [00:14:25]:
Can't store it in liver. Can't store it in the muscle. So it's gonna try to store it in fat. And then at some level, it begins to try to force the it has to almost force the fat to take this energy. And so it keeps forcing it. And then and then what happens then is this the fat cells, because we really aren't making a whole lot of these things where that we have what we have, They get bigger and bigger. And even though they're fighting back to say, no. No more.
Allan [00:14:48]:
No more. They get overstuffed. And and the way you said it here was, it was sick fat.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:14:54]:
Yes. And I, you know, I think that fat cells becoming larger is a real problem. And I go into it discussing something that, you know, I've never seen anyone discuss before and you understand my subspecialty in internal medicine is pulmonary and critical care medicine. So I think in terms of oxygenation always and oxygen has to diffuse into a fat cell and it can't diffuse. There are elaborate studies showing how far oxygen can diffuse into the fat cell to nourish it Plus the fat cell needs oxygen just like your brain needs oxygen and your heart's muscle needs oxygen. And as the fat cell gets bigger and bigger, that diffusion of oxygen can't happen. And so the fat cells endocrine function becomes disturbed. Add to that something I think we're gonna talk a little bit more about, and that is the fact that many chemicals that are in our bodies are not water soluble.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:16:00]:
So if we talk about heavy metals like lead and mercury and cadmium and so on, they're water soluble. So we get lead in our body. We try to excrete most of it. Some of it will store because we can't get it all out, and tomorrow we get exposed to some more. And that's how lead toxicity or mercury toxicity happens in industry, in people that are exposed to high levels, etcetera. But most of the organitins, all all of the organic molecules that were exposed to it, you know, I need to tell you that there are 85,000 chemicals that are currently used in the United States. Eighty 5,000 different chemicals approved for use by the Federal Trade Commission, not by FDA. And that's what most people don't understand.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:16:49]:
Those chemicals have never gone through any testing at FDA. And if they do, it's maybe a handful of them, but they are not water soluble. So they require the liver to break them down into water soluble pieces. There's only once you're in the body, once a chemical is in the body, the only way out is through the urine or sweat. So that's it. There's no other way out. You're either gonna urinate it out or you're gonna sweat it out. And sweating is very inefficient, but it can help.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:17:23]:
The fact is, is that the liver is sometimes quote, otherwise occupied, close quote. You're taking a pill. It's gonna break that down. You're drinking some alcohol. A lot of the liver says, Hey, you know what? Come back later. Go someplace and hide. Well, it's not water soluble, but it's fat soluble. So the fat cell becomes occupied.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:17:46]:
Not only not only is it getting bigger, not only is it not getting enough oxygen, but now it's got bisphenol a sitting in there. It's got fluorochemicals sitting in there. It's got a whole lot of other organic molecules that don't belong there. And that screws up the fat cell communicating with the hypothalamus, getting signals. That is the definition of a sick fat cell and obese individuals have sick fat cells. That's the problem. Too much time with the accumulation of these different chemicals, too little oxygen, And that's one of the many reasons. If there's something that you learned if you've gone through the book, Allan, is and your readers and your listeners too, as they go through it, they realize what I said at the very beginning.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:18:41]:
It's a highly complex issue. And what I've tried to do in the book is make it simple so that people understand a sick fat cell. It's not normal. It's not communicating. It's not serving its function. That's one point against you. That's a negative. You know, there there's nothing good about a fat a fat cell that's too big and that's toxic.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:19:05]:
But there are other factors too, which we'll talk about.
Allan [00:19:08]:
Yeah. And I think that was what was kind of the the shocking thing. As we we're gonna go through the process that you have here to solve this problem. Obviously, that's the promise of the book. But I wanna talk about the 2 core things that are that are kinda behind why we are where we are and and how why what you're gonna tell us to do is gonna work. But it was the toxic exposures, and, you know, I think we know some of them. You talked about chemicals, and some of it might be viral, and some of it's the artificial life. So there's a lot of different things that are going on that are disrupting our our system, the way everything else works.
Allan [00:19:47]:
And then we start you start talking about again, you got deeper into obesogens, which, again, are the kind of the the things that are making us get fat. I was really surprised, you know, as I went through well, not I guess I wasn't surprised because I'm I'm a eat real food kind of guy. I talk about that all the time. And people will say, well, okay. I, you know, I'm going to cut my calories. I'm going to drink diet Coke. And I'm going to eat the low fat yogurt. We talk about, you know, just even meeting meat, buying it in a grocery store.
Allan [00:20:16]:
Some of these things and then personal care products, household all this. So all this stuff is not it's not like this occasionally or we're just accidentally finding it here and there. It's, like, everywhere.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:20:28]:
Everywhere. Read a label. My wife is is my number one, proponent of everything. If there's a chemical name on it, she hardly ever buys it. You know, even even for my dog, which is another thing I talk about in the book. You know, I talk about the fact that something's going on here besides calories in and calories out. It it can't be that. It's got to be, as you were just mentioning, these chemical obesogens and and how they affect how a gene expresses itself.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:21:02]:
And that's the key. The key message of this book is our genetics are our genetics. They haven't changed. It's not that there's a fat gene. There are probably 200 genes that are involved in obesity, maybe more. It is whether the gene is being expressed or not and whether it's a favorable gene. For example, the developing fetus has a what we call a pluripotential cell. Plurium meaning that cell can become a fat cell or a muscle cell.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:21:40]:
There's a gene that directs it to become a muscle cell, But if it's turned off, it's gonna make a fat cell. And these obesogens create changes on the surface of that gene that are unfavorable. And so we have statistics, which I quote in the book, you know, John Kennedy, when he was inaugurated, we had a 14%, 11 to 14% obesity rate. That was it. And he was aghast. It's now 47%. 47% of our population is clinically obese. 70% is overweight, are overweight or obese.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:22:25]:
That's frightening. Talk about a pandemic, and it's not just here. It's everywhere. And and the thing that that stimulated me years ago was looking at the obesity epidemic and saying, what is it? Why are we getting fat? Guess what? It's not just us. It's our pets. It's marmosets. It's wild mice. It's monkeys.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:22:48]:
Everything that you can think of. Newborns are getting fatter. Children are obese. That that number is frightening. It's over 20% of children are now obese, and people wonder why this is happening. And it's happening because of these quote, unquote, obesogens in our environment. You see, if you go back to John f Kennedy's days, we didn't have Teflon. We didn't have nonstick cookware.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:23:19]:
It was just beginning. When I was a kid, you stay in the couch, it was stained forever. Now we have stain repellents and everything else and all of these are we didn't use hormones to this extent that we use them to feed chickens, cattle, and so on and so forth. And so all of these chemicals get into our body. They create these epigenetic, that's what it's called, epigenetic surface of the gene, changes that unfortunately are transgenerational, which means they're inheritable. That's how that happens. This is why it's an inexorable climb into, I think, medical bankruptcy, treating complications of obesity. But there was just an article in The Lancet.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:24:12]:
I I read it yesterday about the increase in, cancers now in young people that was just in, in Lancet just came out yesterday. There's a tripling of the rate since the 1980s, Tripling. That's pretty scary. So young people are getting cancers earlier. I mean, obviously, at a rate that is much higher, including pancreatic, testicular, colon, and it's linked to obesity. And that's what the conclusion of The Lancet article was. And if you look at the complications of obesity, they are diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. So it's a long winded statement to say how these obesogens, they're everywhere.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:25:04]:
They're in all of us, and we have to come to grips with that. And that's part of what I realized as I was saying, well, how do you solve this? How do you begin to solve it? And that was the question that I asked myself and, a couple of my advisers that were working with me on the book said, you better have an answer. Otherwise, you don't you don't you don't really have
Allan [00:25:28]:
promise. Hey. Hey.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:25:30]:
You gotta be able to say something here. And so it took a while to take a look, and see what what what what are the steps that people would have to take, but we'll maybe getting ahead of ourselves.
Allan [00:25:42]:
Yeah. We'll we'll definitely get there because that's I think that is you yeah. You you can you can do a study and and and not give them an answer, but you can't you can't write a book and not not tell us something. And, yeah, you can't be on this podcast and not not tell us something too. So we'll we'll get there. We'll definitely get there. Okay. The the other side of this was was our behavior.
Allan [00:26:06]:
But the the nature of our behavior is is not one of, as we mentioned earlier, individual agency where we're saying, you know, okay. This is what I'm gonna do, and this is why I'm gonna do it is it's much more complex than that. Can you talk about toxic behaviors and how that's a part of this problem?
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:26:27]:
Yes. And and it took me a while to get there. I got a lot of prodding from my advisers, to look at the behavioral literature. You know, it was interesting, but what really pushed me into it was why how can we change and reverse these epigenetic changes? Are they reversible? Because although what I'd like to do is prevent obesity from happening in the next generation and the generation after that, No. In other words, reverse the trend. I realized people also who are struggling with weight want to find out what I can do to at least stabilize, lose, and stabilize, lose, and stabilize. And I realized that that behavior must play a role. And the thing that stimulated me is very interesting.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:27:21]:
We I just talked about epigenetic changes and that are unfavorable. And I looked at some data on this may seem a little off off balance with the question, but people who undergo gastric bypass surgery reverse their epigenetic changes. And I said, wow, you mean a surgeon's knife and doing a gastrogegenostomy, which is what it is, reverses epigenetics? That's strange. And then I said, well, what else does it? And looking at the animal studies first, it seems that consistent behavior, changing toxic behaviors, let me mention some toxic behaviors. Eating when you're not hungry. You have your fat sends out a signal. There's a normal signal that goes out to tell you you are hungry. And that doesn't mean that if somebody puts a plate of pasta in front of you and you're a pasta fanatic, you know, you're not hungry, but you're gonna taste it.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:28:30]:
Tasting it is one thing. Eating the whole plate is another thing. Ben, as I say in the book, we we are good finishers. We are really good finishers.
Allan [00:28:38]:
Yeah. Starving kids in India. Yeah. Right. Right.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:28:41]:
Our mothers told us that. Right? But the fact is those kinds of eating when you're not hungry, eating really late at night, eating the wrong types of foods on a regular basis. And there is where we come into not only densely processed foods, but those that have 37 different ingredients, plus the chocolate, which is what you thought it was. Right? Yeah. But, you know, it's got stabilized or it's got this. Those toxic behaviors using skincare product in excess that are not really, should I say, for your internal environment, they're not safe. They have things like parabens, which are known obesogens. And, you know, we we wanna decrease the amount of sunscreen that we use that has parabens.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:29:39]:
And and there are places you can look and you can find, and I list some of them in the book as references to go to, to buy those products that work just as well. And those kind of toxic behaviors are what we need to attack. The problem with most people, Aaron, is that they try to attack them all at once. Yeah. And you can't do that. And I tell my patients that the first thing I want you to do is make a list of those behaviors that you think are really bad. Bring them back. Let's look at them.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:30:18]:
Okay? And we'll go over that. Then I want you to tackle 1 at a time. I want you to master 1 at a time. I want you to find a substitute or reverse that behavior, but here's the key. You have to be consistent. So what do I mean by that? Studies show that occasional exercise over a 1 or 2 year period of time doesn't really have an effect on your weight loss program. But consistent exercise actually changes epigenetics. That could be you set up your body is now gonna be messaged that you do your cardio workouts at the gym or at home on a on a on a elliptical trainer 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the mornings.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:31:14]:
Your body actually recognizes that. And that consistency for reasons that you and I will never understand, probably at least not during our lifetimes, that that changes your epigenetics favorably. So consistent behavior, a part of that is not getting depressed, staying positive. You're gonna have a bad day. You're gonna eat some dessert. You're gonna have something that's, you know, 4 French fries, whatever. A whole bag of French fries. You're gonna do it.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:31:56]:
What happens to dieters is they get depressed. What do they do? They eat more. And that because the fat, the salt tastes good. The sugar stimulates parts of the brain that says you're okay. And so people start to feel better. So behavior modification becomes a critical point to anyone who's gonna do weight loss. And that's one of the things that became extraordinarily important. And I dedicated a whole chapter in the book to this whole behavioral thing, this whole behavioral aspect of weight gain and weight loss and how in that case, the only agency that's important and is taking personal responsibility is not beating yourself up.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:32:54]:
It's really important that you stay positive. And, you know, think of Tony Robbins in a sense. I mean, just stay positive, you know, picture that picture. I mean, he wasn't wrong. He's not wrong. Yeah. I mean, if you can do that, it turns out you favorably affect your own epigenetics.
Allan [00:33:14]:
Yeah. I appreciate that. And one of the things you got into in the toxic behaviors that I think is really, really important, I wanna highlight this, is I think a lot of times we want we wanna do something. Okay. So I wanna lose weight, and we go into this thing. And we're like, okay. You know, I think the patient you had, it was it was ice cream. But I see this sometimes with clients with alcohol.
Allan [00:33:37]:
I wanna I wanna I wanna quit, but I I don't wanna quit. And I wanna wanna figure out what my my moderation, my line is. But sometimes we're not the kind of person who's going to play by the rules all the time, you know, even when we made the rules. And so you you called it negotiating with food. Right. We try to set a rule for ourselves. Okay. Well, I can I can have a couple drinks on a weekend or I can have ice cream on these days for these reasons?
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:34:12]:
It's like the the everything in moderation, you've heard that term. Right?
Allan [00:34:16]:
Yeah.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:34:16]:
What's moderation for you is not moderation for me. And that's the problem. So it's important to realize going in that you can't negotiate with the donut. You just, you're not gonna have, you're gonna lose. So I think I said a cookie. You can't negotiate with a cookie. I mean, you know, I'll just have the top half of this Oreo. Now you won't.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:34:39]:
You'll come back and get to a bottom half later. Don't kill yourself over it. Okay? Recognize that everything in moderation doesn't work. It's not, it's not a workable solution in reality. And studies have shown that over and over and over again. The interesting study sometimes in young kids, in young, you know, in kids, really youngsters, kindergarteners, 1st graders, they will choose healthy foods a lot of the time before they're inundated with TV and all the ads for all the Cocoa Puffs and whatever it is, that's out there. Remember, and I talk about this in the book, the food companies are not your friend. Okay? They're in they're in alliance with the diet companies.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:35:29]:
So together, they they make a a cabal, if you will, as far as I'm concerned.
Allan [00:35:34]:
Well, you can throw in the pharmaceuticals and much of the medical establishment as well. So they're they're they're all making money off the same thing.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:35:42]:
I think that my my colleagues are really not as well informed about obesity as they should be and as they want to be. I believe that there are a number of physicians who are perplexed and tear their hair out over the fact that no matter how much they admonish their patients, their patients continue to fail. And we talk about that in the book a little bit. But I wrote this book, Outsmarting Obesity, because I I really thought that it would appeal not only to the public, and I wrote it at a level that, not to to mean you, but you picked it up and read it.
Allan [00:36:25]:
I read it.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:36:25]:
And that's and that's great and probably enjoyed it and chuckled a little bit at it because I tried to add some humor. But, I I did also write it for the medical profession to to at least pick it up, read a chapter or 2, and and and think about the fact that they're battling maybe they're fighting the wrong battle with patients. I get the question all the time. Doctor Larkey, what do you think about GLP ones? What do you think about, you know, Ozempic and Wegovy and all of this? It's it's like a diet. It's gonna work as long as you take it. I think if you're not a diabetic and you're taking it, you're you're playing with fire. You know, you you if you don't need it, why would you take a chemical? And some of the people taking it with the people that say, woah. I don't wanna take this, COVID vaccine.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:37:16]:
I don't know what that is. Injecting it into my body. Maybe it's a and here they are injecting with Ovi to lose £5 to fit into that dress for the Oscars or whatever it is. And the fact that Chris Talley, who worked on this book with me, and he's a sports nutritionist, and a Hollywood nutritionist. So he, he really is dealing with all the professional sports teams. He's the guy. And, these are problems that, for example, athletes have when they stop playing. I mean, here, talk about regular exercise.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:37:55]:
Alright? I I have a grandson who plays hockey. He's now 16. He's playing travel hockey. He's looking to college. He wants to play college hockey. There isn't a moment in his life that he isn't active, but, you know, you get to be 40 and 45 and you're not out on the ice and playing hockey every day. You can't eat the same way. He could he could eat 3 people's meals for lunch and then dinner.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:38:24]:
And he's too thin. His coaches want him to put weight on. He's gotta eat protein, protein, protein. So our behaviors have to adjust to where we are in life. And that's the important message of the book, having Chris involved putting vignettes in every chapter.
Allan [00:38:45]:
Yeah. I I think that was that was fascinating to have him involved because you don't really I mean, yes. I I know Hollywood actresses and actors, they wanna look a certain they need to look a certain way for a part, and they need to do certain things. And some of it's some of it's okay, but some of it is just you shouldn't lose that much weight that fast. You shouldn't put on that much weight that fast. But you wanna give me $10,000,000? Okay. I'll put on $50,000,000.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:39:08]:
But I but I think the point I'm trying to make is that whatever plan you come up with has to be well thought out. It has to be smart, you know? Okay. I'm going to I I'm I'm morbidly obese. I need to do something. I'll start with with GoVy for 3 months. That will be the kickstart I need to lose 11, 12, £13 and know that I can do it. And now that I've read this book, I know step 2 is my behavior is gonna change and my relationship with food is going to change. Now people say when they're on the GLP inhibitors and so on and so forth, they they change their relationship with food.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:39:51]:
But basically, it makes you nauseated. That's what it does. It fills your stomach and, it makes you feel full. And, it does a lot of other not so good things. And I I see a lot of side effects now, with this. But any plan that you have to re restrict your calories for a 3 month or 6 month period, I wouldn't go longer than that because you're gonna be disappointed. You're gonna lose £25 and stop, and you're gonna gain 30. That's what's gonna happen.
Allan [00:40:23]:
Yeah. I think most of us have actually that that lost wanted to lose weight, started losing weight, experienced that that very thing. We lost the weight. We gained back more. And you you even explained in the book that yo yo dieting, yo yo weight loss is probably the worst thing we could do for ourselves from a health perspective. But, I want to dive into the process that you've put forward as the solution of what we can do to outsmart obesity. And the acronym is AIPE. And I want I look at that, and I and my head wants to say AIPE.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:41:00]:
Well, that's what I say. So you're okay.
Allan [00:41:02]:
It's ape It's okay. But I don't want we cannot ignore the I because
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:41:07]:
Right. So AIPE is accept, identify, prevent, and eliminate. And think of it in terms of toxic exposures, first of all. First of all, you've got to come to the acceptance that you're carrying a toxic burden. If you don't accept that, none of this means anything to you. Every one of us is carrying a burden of toxins, probably in the neighborhood of 2 to 300 different toxins if you did the entire blood panel, which would cost a fortune because we only do it for research purposes. But when they have done it, for example, newborns have over 200 toxins in their blood. A newborn baby is born with over 200 toxic chemicals in their blood.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:41:55]:
Well, they got it from mom. Okay. So they cross the placenta. The rest of us are just accumulating toxins. So accept the fact that you are carrying a toxic load. And on behavioral side, accept the fact that you have toxic behaviors with food. You have a toxic relationship with food. The second is identify, and I gave you a little insight to that with the behaviors.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:42:21]:
Make a list. Where are you getting exposed that you can do something about? You wanna change your cookware? That would be good. If you're using nonstick cookware that's chemically coated, they're perfluorochemicals. And, you know, those are chemicals that are obesogens. You cook an egg on it and it's going to get into your food. So identify, are you storing your cleaning goods in the kitchen? Don't, don't do that. Simple things like coming home from the dry cleaners and people that use a dry cleaner. If it's not a, a, a new wave green dry cleaner, and it's the old, you know, perchloric, perc cleaners using chemicals, you know, that that plastic covering on it be before you hang it in your closet, take the plastic covering, you know, outside.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:43:24]:
Let let it air out. Don't put it in your closet because those are chemicals that are getting on your other clothing. Try and avoid, you know, as many of these pitfalls as you can. Some you can't escape. And I tell people we eliminated all of our non stick cookware. I mean, they make good cookware that doesn't get screwed up and and works without chemical coating. But if I go to a restaurant, do I know what they use? I have no idea what they use. Go to Starbucks.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:43:54]:
Did they use a nonstick pan to make those muffins? Probably. So you're you're never going to be free of these chemicals, but you're gonna decrease your burden. So identify where things are going wrong. And I give lists of things in the book to identify and identify the behaviors as well. Now the next becomes interesting because they're different. For chemical exposures, you wanna prevent the absorption of these things that you can't get out of your life into your bloodstream. We should state for most of us, 80% of the chemicals get into our body because we put them in our mouth. We eat them or drink them.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:44:45]:
Those that use skincare, maybe it's 70% and more comes from from, the skin. We absorb them. The rest we inhale, but the inhalation part is not that important as it is eating. And so I tell people, if you wanna prevent the absorption, then the regular use of absorbance for the gut, in other words, to take along with your food so that these chemicals are bound in your gut and they go out the back end, so to speak, and they never become absorbed. They don't get into your bloodstream in the first place. Those are good products to be on your shelf for all of us because we are exposed no matter what happens. So this is the prevent absorption. That's what the prevention was all about.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:45:44]:
The prevention for behavior is once you have that list, tackling it one step at a time in a logical sequence. And we go through some examples in the book of how that could work. And the last is eliminate. There is the rub. So you have chemicals in your body. How am I gonna get them out? Well, it turns out there are a couple of ways. We talked about obviously sweat and using infrared sauna because you can stay in the sauna longer. That's the only reason infrared works.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:46:23]:
You know, any sauna, anything that makes you sweat a lot will obviously take it out of the fat because that's where that sweat is coming from. It's coming from fat cells, much of it. And so you can sweat out some of these toxins. Otherwise, we have to look at certain molecules. There are some unique molecules that you can take by mouth. You know, you you can obviously have them infused intravenously, but they have a lot of different complications. But taking them by mouth, they absorb into the bloodstream, and they will help solubilize these insoluble chemicals. Certainly, those that are heavy metals will go out immediately.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:47:12]:
And I I did a study, in coal miners, that looked like, you know, the these guys had lead levels and mercury levels and cadmium, and they just we gave them this this one concoction and it just woo. It poured out at the urine. It just and their levels came down and down and down because it's a chelator. It chelates the metals and doesn't chelate the ones you need, which is cool because you don't wanna do that with calcium because you need that. You don't wanna do that with magnesium. You kinda need that. Yeah. You don't wanna do it with potassium or sodium.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:47:49]:
Those are big molecules. They don't fit in there. But the smaller ones like mercury and and and and cadmium and the bad stuff, lead, they're smaller molecules. They fit right into the matrix and they're eliminated quickly. But because these chemicals, this this, compound has a net charge on it, it also attracts a lot of these organic molecules to stick, and they get eliminated too. Is this the only thing out there right now? It would appear that there are a few other thing, and this is a zeolite. It's it's it's called clinoptilawite, and I mentioned it. There are some that are absorbed into your body and others that are not.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:48:39]:
There's really, really good ones and really, really bad ones, so on and so forth. But even the bad zeolites, if you take them, by mouth, they will at least bind these toxins in your gut. So eliminating these toxins, it doesn't happen overnight, can make your fat, and it draws it out of the fat, which is cool. And that's really nice. So really, basically, what you're doing is looking at a system where, okay, I'm going to detoxify myself. It's not a weekend detox, you know, weekend at Bernie's, whatever it is. It's not that. It's continual and you use it.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:49:26]:
There are people that are putting it in drinks. There are people that are talking about putting it in haircare product because it can be absorbed. It it would be a a tremendous advantage for people to have their hands on this. From a behavioral standpoint, obviously preventing and eliminating kind of go close together. You're preventing the behavior. You've kind of once you've eliminated it, it's really it's really great. It's a great feeling. I'm one of the people that the ice cream thing.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:49:58]:
I I mean, I you put I I can't say no to ice cream. I don't know why. So I don't keep any in the house. That was my solution. There's none in the house.
Allan [00:50:09]:
Yeah.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:50:10]:
You know, that's and that was my solution. It may not be your solution, but I can't negotiate with with a pint of ice cream. I'm sorry. I just I lose that negotiation. Well, just it was in Italy, and every time they had dessert, everybody had gelato. I didn't have any. Do you wanna know something? I don't crave it anymore. It's a funny thing.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:50:33]:
I used to, but now I don't. For my wife, it's that toffee. Oh my god. She's if it's toffee in the house, she'll eat the whole can. So we don't allow it in the house. That that was her solution too. But everybody the AIPE approach is not an overnight lose a lot of weight. It is AIPE means I'm going to lose weight.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:51:00]:
I'm going to consistently exercise. My behavior modification is gonna be such that I'm gonna set up a schedule. I'm gonna stick to it. I'm going to eliminate some of these toxic behaviors that I have, and I'm going to go on a calorie restricted diet for 90 days. You can buy a plan. You could do whatever it is. And once you've done the plan and you've lost your 7, 10, £12, now you're going to put in place AIP. You're going to say, okay.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:51:37]:
I know now that I don't wanna gain the weight. My goal right now isn't more weight loss. It is to prevent the weight gain. And I have to be smart about it because I understand that my genes are telling my body to do something, and I need to try and reverse that as much as I can. And that combination of limiting the calories in and understanding why you're obese in the first place and why you're gonna gain it back if you don't do something, Modifying your behavior, eliminating these toxins from your body, doing all of this stuff, that is a prevention of the regaining of the weight. That was what the plan was all about.
Allan [00:52:22]:
I really, really wish that our government would be a big part of the solution for eliminate on this, but, I'm not gonna hold my breath. So this is something that we need to do. One of the core things I did wanna say is, like, okay. Because we're storing these things in our fat, when we're losing the fat, our basically load that's live at this given point in time in our body is there. This book is coming out. So having a good process through this whole thing and, you know, preventing more from coming in, eliminating it as it's being released, I think that's really a a great way to go through this. But, again, it's acceptance and and it's identification. So it is 8, but don't don't forget any one of these because all 4 of them are really, really important to get to the solution.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:53:14]:
Well, I'm glad you went through that. You know, I think it's important for the listener to understand, that, you know, forearmed is forewarned. That's the way I look at it. If you understand what's going on with your body, you're not gonna be so afraid of the fact that that that, you know, okay. I I went on a diet. I lost £20. I gained 1 or 2 back. You're not gonna exercise the rest of the way.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:53:41]:
You're going to have to have a better strategy than that. And that's what, you know, I wrote the book partly because I wanted to really help with people who struggle with this. So many of my patients just struggle with it. And, it is a source of tremendous anxiety and and it promotes abnormal behavior, not to mention, obviously, all the diseases that go along with it. And I wanna mention something quickly because I know we're running out of time, but I I would like to mention the fact that when you hear these people talk about healthy at any size, there is no such thing. You could be physically fit at any size. There's a big difference between physical fitness and health. All of the data point to the fact that obesity leads to a shortened life and obesity leads to illness.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:54:43]:
And days lost from work, days lost from your life, not to mention diabetic limb loss and so on and so forth. It's just it is not there is no such thing as healthy at any size. Physically fit at any size? Yes. Some of these people are fairly stable. That is they they haven't yet gotten diabetes, but they will. They will. And if you take a look at these large populations of people who feel that they're healthy, that is size, and they do all this, if they're obese, study after study, whether it's in the US, Great Britain, China, all these studies show they have a shortened life expectancy. They have a higher cardiovascular risk profile, and the cancer profile is at least twice what it is for non obese individual.
Allan [00:55:36]:
So doctor Langhi, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are 3 strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:55:46]:
From me from my point Yeah. Of view?
Allan [00:55:48]:
Yeah. Absolutely. That's why I'm asking you.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:55:50]:
First of all, accept yourself. I think that's the most important thing. People who don't accept it. So okay. I'm I'm I'm overweight. I'm personally overweight. I'm not obese, but I'm overweight. I would love to get rid of more pounds.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:56:09]:
Am I gonna go on a diet? No. I'm I'm going to continue to use the strategies that I mentioned. So be happy with yourself. Number 2, diminish the number of chemical products that you consume. And I mean, read labels, not the calories. Look at the ingredients. All those chemicals. If you can't yeah.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:56:36]:
Sodium chloride is okay. That's salt. It could be too much salt, but that's that's that's the number. The number 2 thing is read labels and understand that these are chemicals that really don't do anything great for you. And, number 3, I think that eating fresh food from, you know, to achieve wellness and having a a plan, an exercise plan that goes together for me. And that's how you achieve that happiness and wellness.
Allan [00:57:13]:
Thank you. Doctor Lonky, if someone wanted to learn more about you and your book, Outsmarting Obesity, where would you like for me to send them?
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:57:22]:
Obviously, it's it's available on Amazon now for preorder. It will be out on the on 10th September, in bookstores. They can go to my website, doctorlarke.com. That's probably the best place to go. I'm on Twitter and I'm on Facebook. There's Doctor Lonky. I'm all on, LinkedIn, which is more professional, but still fairly active. But I would ask them to go to the website first and, that'll link you to all the other all the other places, and you can order the book there.
Allan [00:57:55]:
Excellent. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.comforward/659, and I'll be sure to have the links there. Doctor Langhi, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:58:07]:
Allan, thank you for inviting me. Been a pleasure.
Allan [00:58:11]:
Welcome back, Rachel.
Rachel [00:58:12]:
Hey, Allan. That was an amazing interview. I mean, there's just so many big things that we could talk about. I can't even imagine reading his book. I'm sure it was incredible to get through. But my goodness. I mean, so much has changed. The obesity rate's going up.
Rachel [00:58:28]:
We know more about fat as a working for you or against you. I mean, just it's just overwhelming.
Allan [00:58:34]:
Yeah. Well, this is this is the book where I I learned that there's a 1,000,000,000 obese people on the planet, which I just thought was you know, when it first hit me, I'm like, well, that's insane. And then I It is. Think, well, the United States has probably 20% of them, which is true. And it's not just an adult thing anymore.
Rachel [00:58:52]:
No. Younger and younger. Yeah.
Allan [00:58:54]:
And so, yeah, this is a problem. And, you know, a lot of people will just say, well, it's just calories. You know, if you just do the do the things, if you just do the things, and they don't recognize that there are all of these other aspects to why we're carrying this extra extra fat that have absolutely nothing to do with what we're eating or when we're eating or how much we're eating. Some people are just going to have this propensity to store more fat because of the other things that are going on, that they haven't addressed yet. But a core thing I wanted to get into with you. We were talking offline a minute ago, is that I think a lot of people, like, look at fat and say, oh, fat bad. You know?
Rachel [00:59:38]:
Right. Yeah.
Allan [00:59:39]:
You know, insulin bad. And it's not that simple. Fat is an organ. It has specific purposes in our body, and so we need some fat. We need an amount, a healthy amount of fat. So it we we can't go out at that. And then, you know, they for a while, they're well, they they still did. There are 2 basic types of fat.
Allan [01:00:00]:
There's brown fat, and there's white fat. And so we know, like, babies are born with more more of the brown fat, and that helps them stay warm, and it helps do some other things for them. As we get older, we end up with, you know, more white fat. And so that's the fat and the visceral fat. So, you know, they're they've labeled fat to try to lead us down the line of saying this is the good fat and that's the bad fat. But the point that's the point being, though, is I think people just say fat is fat is bad.
Rachel [01:00:26]:
Bad is bad. Yep.
Allan [01:00:27]:
Yeah. And and and it's a little bit more complex than that.
Rachel [01:00:30]:
It is. Oh, it is. And we were talking about the chemicals all around us. It's not simply what you eat or how much you exercise. We're exposed to all these different, chemicals in our environment that, you know, it's it's they could play a big role as to how healthy we are overall or how much fat that we manage on a day to day basis. I mean, it's concerning sometimes how many chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis and what role it can play.
Allan [01:01:00]:
Yeah. I mean, you know, something as simple as as buying a new couch, Mhmm. And and the chemicals that they use to make it flame retardant. Are are off gassing in your in your house or apartment. Mhmm. Those could potentially be chemicals that will cause your body to want to store more fat. Mhmm. And one of the things that happens in the body is that the liver, which is primarily responsible for dealing with these chemicals that we're intaking, it's a pretty smart organ.
Allan [01:01:30]:
And so it can clean. It can do its job. But when it's overwhelmed, it has it has a bypass. And the bypass is to store the stuff in fat. And so for it to do its job, you may need to store more fat, to store more chemicals, because the liver's overwhelmed. And so it's just this balance of saying, okay, yes, nutrition is important for weight loss. We know movement is important to aid in weight loss. We know sleep is important to aid in weight loss.
Allan [01:02:01]:
And we know stress management is important for managing weight loss. And now there's a whole nother list of things that are also important. You need to be, Look at what chemicals are you and hormones and things you're exposed to. What's in your household cleaners? What's in your personal care products? I mean, you might love, love, love that face cream. Mhmm. But what's in it that could be a problem for you? And then that's when you kick in his his Ape acronym. So you accept that that face cream is bad for you.
Rachel [01:02:33]:
Mhmm.
Allan [01:02:34]:
Okay. You might love the way it looks. It makes your face look, your skin feel. But if it's causing you to put on body fat Mhmm. Then you have to come to terms with that, accept it, identify that that's what it is. Mhmm. Stop using it. You know? Yeah.
Allan [01:02:51]:
Find a find a face cream that doesn't have that ingredient in it, and, you know, maybe it won't work as well.
Rachel [01:02:57]:
You know? But Think about all the things you're exposed to on a daily basis. I mean, from your toothpaste in the morning, soaps, your shampoos, the makeups, of course. If you're cleaning the counter with whatever product you're cleaning the counter with. If you happen to have a nickel allergy, you probably shouldn't be drinking out of those really expensive insulated metal cups because then you're could be exposing your not just your lips and your your mouth, your palate, but also you're exposing your your insides to the nickel and and those metals. Plasticware, I drink I drink out a lot of plastic bottles when I'm on a run. I mean, just all day long, there's just all these things that you may not consider, as having an exposure to a chemical, but they're there.
Allan [01:03:44]:
Yeah. And so one of the big takeaways from the book, and, you know, because, again, he's a scientist. He's he's looking at this from a very specific point of view. Mhmm. And he's recognizing that this isn't it it is, but it it isn't just an individual problem.
Rachel [01:04:00]:
Mhmm.
Allan [01:04:00]:
There's going to have to be global, solutions to some of these problems like plastics and personal care products. And you see some of it. The European Union and Canada are a lot more stringent on what it allows to exist, for their people. United States is a little bit more lax in what's out there, so we're exposed probably to a lot more.
Rachel [01:04:26]:
Yeah.
Allan [01:04:27]:
And so it's just recognizing that this is out there. You can't totally eliminate all of it. We're just Mhmm. Any individual be impossible. But the more of those things that you're able to knock down and, you know, of course, do the do the core four first, your nutrition, your your movement, your sleep, and your stress. And then if that's not moving the needle enough for you, then you wanna start looking at other things that might be going on, like chemical exposures, hormone exposures Yeah. And the quality of, you know, and the quality of a lot of the foods and things that you're doing. So For sure.
Allan [01:05:02]:
You know, if you live in a city and, you know, there's lots of cars and you're running around, there's a lot of, you know, chemicals that are in the air that you're just running through. Oh, for sure. I used to hate running in the city. I I much prefer to run-in the country. Mhmm. It's it's it's nicer.
Rachel [01:05:18]:
It is.
Allan [01:05:19]:
But, you know, you are where you are. And so there are things that are gonna be outside your control, but then True. A lot of this is. And so this is this book's an opportunity for you to kinda go through and start doing that research that you can know. Okay. This is in this thing, and I should not be eating this. This is in this thing. I should not be putting this on my skin.
Rachel [01:05:39]:
Sure.
Allan [01:05:40]:
And then you can begin to eliminate some of those things or get filters to address some of those things so that it's not such a huge problem for you Mhmm. And you're gonna be better off for it.
Rachel [01:05:51]:
That sounds really great. His book is aptly titled, Outsmarting Obesity, because it is not just the easy things. It's not just anything. It is definitely a little complicated at times.
Allan [01:06:03]:
It can be. But start start with the big four. Mhmm. And then when you're when you're getting into this and then you wanna take it to the next level, this is a good book to get you primed on how to start that investigation.
Rachel [01:06:15]:
That sounds great. Amazing.
Allan [01:06:17]:
Alright. Well, I'll talk to you next week. Take care. You too.
Rachel [01:06:20]:
Thanks.
The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
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On episode 658 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Philip Pape and discuss how we can manage our hormones through nutrition, movement, etc.
Allan [00:03:00]:
Hey, Raz. How are you?
Rachel [00:03:04]:
Good, Allan. How are you today?
Allan [00:03:06]:
I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. We launched the, the workshop this week, so that's going on. And it's gonna it's gonna I mean, I'm so excited. Right now, you know, we're recording this beforehand, and it's just really been just kinda developing it and putting it all together. I'm really, really proud of this workshop. I really am. And so that's going on.
Allan [00:03:27]:
And in that workshop, I'm making an announcement. I'm revamping my program. Okay? And so the new program that I'm launching now is pretty darn special, and there's some bonuses associated with it now that is it's pretty much guaranteed it's gonna get you the results you want. So
Rachel [00:03:48]:
Awesome.
Allan [00:03:48]:
If you've been thinking about I gotta do something, I gotta do something, and you put it off till September because, you know, school and everything else, this this is the time. This is the time to reach out and let me know that you're interested in learning more about it. But, yeah, it's the bonuses just by themselves are are are so special, making this so much more valuable that this is the time. If you're going to do it, do it now because I can't keep these bonuses. So I stopped this launch, but that's it. So reach out to me if you're interested. Coach@40plusfitness.com, And, we can talk about the program and whether it's a good whether it's a good fit for you. But That sounds awesome.
Allan [00:04:29]:
I'm really excited about it.
Rachel [00:04:31]:
Great. Glad to hear it, Allan. Excited for your clients.
Allan [00:04:34]:
Yeah. And we're also working through the the music to figure out the new music, or we're gonna do new music. There were some votes in a Facebook group. If you're not a member of the group, that's the best place to go because that's where I'm doing the voting. Go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. That will take you to the group request to enter, and then I'm gonna have a a new post because I initially put 5 songs out there, and I got the initial batch of votes. And so we have we can keep the new music keep the music we have if that's what you'd like, or there's I'm narrowing it down to the top 3. So the new video that will be out there starting today is gonna be just the top 3 of the previous voting.
Allan [00:05:19]:
So there's still an opportunity for you to be involved in helping us make this a really good place to be, music you enjoy listening to on the kickoff part of this show, and then at the end, the full full version of it. So I'm interested to see what you think. So I'm I'm excited people are coming out there and and into the music and and liking them and and making comments about what they like and what they don't like. So it's pretty cool. That's kinda cool.
Rachel [00:05:44]:
Yeah. Very cool. That sounds awesome.
Allan [00:05:46]:
Alright. So what's going on in your corner of the world?
Rachel [00:05:49]:
Not too much. It's actually been quiet. Last weekend, Mike and I were camping, and at the campsite we were at, there was no cell service. Couldn't send a text, which means I couldn't receive a text, couldn't get online, couldn't check my socials. It was 100% peace and quiet. I could not have been happier.
Allan [00:06:10]:
Excellent. Excellent. That is yeah. The the digital detox is is something I think people overlook and and might actually be a little afraid of, being out of contact and out of connection. You know, I live I live in a 3rd world country. So, yeah, stuff goes down, power goes down, internet goes down. But I relish those moments. And that's when I reach over here and I grab one of these, a paper book.
Allan [00:06:35]:
They still make these. They still print these. Can you believe it? And that's yeah. I'll sit down and start reading, because I can't do it. You know, most things, you have to have the Internet for it to even work. You know? You don't have the apps on your on your computer much anymore. So Yeah. I can't get my work done.
Allan [00:06:51]:
I may as well learn something new
Rachel [00:06:53]:
and
Allan [00:06:54]:
enjoy my day. So I pick up a book, and I love it too.
Rachel [00:06:58]:
Nice. Very nice. It's wonderful.
Allan [00:07:00]:
Awesome. Are you ready to have a conversation with Philip Pape? Sure. Our guest today is the owner and head coach at Wits and Waits Nutrition Coaching. He is the host of the Wits and Weights podcast where he cuts through the noise and deconstructs health and fitness with an engineering mindset. Known as the physique engineer, he helps individuals in their thirties and forties and beyond transform their physiques by building muscle, losing fat, breaking through plateaus, and optimizing their hormones and metabolism without restrictive diets, excessive cardio, boring workouts, or sacrificing their valuable time and lifestyle. With no further ado, here's Philip Pate. Philip, welcome to 40 plus fitness.
Philip Pape [00:07:43]:
Allan, thank you so much for the opportunity. Great to be here.
Allan [00:07:46]:
So I'm doing a little bit of research on you, trying to figure out, okay, who is this guy? And I come across your page, and it it says you're the physique engineer. So let let's let's dive into that a little bit. What's that one?
Philip Pape [00:08:01]:
That that's one of those self made monikers, but, my background is actually in engineering, software engineering, project engineering, engineering management. And I talk about on my podcast all the time taking the principles of engineering and applying them to nutrition, to training, and to developing our physique. So it's evidence based, but it's like how do engineers think? How do they design? How do they break things apart and use data and feedback to, you know, ultimately get better results? So that's that's what it where it comes from.
Allan [00:08:28]:
Yeah. You know, I worked I I worked for a company. I worked for software companies, but I also worked for some physical engineering companies. One of them was in oil and gas. And it was it was always fascinating. I always enjoyed the conversations with engineers across the board. They just have it they do. They have a different way of thinking.
Allan [00:08:46]:
They're looking at a problem, and they're saying, okay. I've I've gotta solve this problem. And so it is a different way. I remember I was out on a floating platform in the middle of the South Asia Sea, and we had these there were these ropes. They were 18 inches in diameter, so really, really big thick ropes, and they were holding the 2 pieces together. And so the the deal was they were supposed to be going through this pulley system, all 8 ropes, and the pulleys weren't turning the way they were supposed to turn. And as a result, it was wearing the ropes, and one of them broke. And they go ahead, and they contact the manufacturer and say, okay, we need another one of these little ropes.
Allan [00:09:27]:
Just replace the rope that just broke. And we're like, that's that's not how rope making works. We have to make one long rope and cut it into 8 sections so they all have the same tensile strength. If you put one rope in there that wasn't made with that batch, then you won't have the same. So they're like, okay. Well, then we need to order 8 new ropes. And so but in the meantime, they're like, we can't just let this platform just sort of flop around out there because it's also responsible for drilling, so it had to be stabilized. So they decide, well, the only solution we have is to tie this thing in a knot.
Allan [00:10:04]:
Can you imagine the engineering that's required to be sitting on a floating platform and take an 18 inch rope and tie it into a knot? So again yeah. And then, of course, the engineers, when I when I worked at 3 Comm, they would as soon as an engineer would leave, the new engineer would come, and he needed more RAM. So we were looking at the RAM purchases, and we're like, okay. Something's not adding up here, and what we realized was happening was the engineers were all pilfering the the RAM out of his out of the new computer when someone left. You know? They would leave, and all the engineers would just seize on all that RAM that they had and leave the new guy coming in with not enough RAM so he wouldn't make the request for RAM. Every new guy was requesting RAM even when he was using the same machine. But
Philip Pape [00:10:46]:
Got it.
Allan [00:10:47]:
And so now we couldn't just look at serial numbers when we were doing inventory. We literally had to open up every machine to see how much RAM was supposed to be in there and whether it had more RAM than it was supposed to. So yeah. You you
Philip Pape [00:11:00]:
know, it's funny. There's so many there's so many funny engineering stories I I could say, but, like, people do not understand what goes into the things that we make and that they depend on oftentimes for their lives. Like, in an airplane, there are so many computers. Right? And the computers have to be hardened against cosmic rays because a ray from the sun could flip a bit in the computer and cause the software to fail. Right? It's like little things like that. And so when I look at the human body, I'm like, that's actually pretty easy to, like, train and eat well and, like, do the things we talk about here in comparison, so, it kinda takes the pressure off and,
Allan [00:11:35]:
you know But and it does but it does follow that because, like, I'll I'll have the conversation with someone. I'm like, okay. Food is information.
Philip Pape [00:11:42]:
Mhmm.
Allan [00:11:42]:
Your body takes what you eat, the quality of it, the quantity of it, the nutrients that are in it, and it starts making decisions based on the programming your body has. And so you're either feeding it good information that food is plentiful, there's plenty of nutrition, or you're feeding it bad information that food is scarce or the quality of our food isn't isn't what it's supposed to be. And, nowhere is this really more apparent than hormones because our hormones are the messengers that kinda carry that whole thing out. As we get older, I think it's pretty clear for women because they they get into perimenopause, which can last up to 10 years, menopause, which is gonna last for the rest of your life. So they see that change as almost an abrupt end and restart at some level. I mean, it depends on the perimenopause. It can go longer. With men, it's it's it's a little bit more of a slowly gliding in thing.
Allan [00:12:39]:
We don't even feel it. The water's boiling, and we don't even know. Let's talk about a little bit about those changes and what they actually mean for us from a health and fitness perspective.
Philip Pape [00:12:49]:
Yeah. Like you said, hormones, they're what they're one of those misunderstood things, kind of like gut health today. Right? There's a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation. Before I get into that, like, we use hormones as this doomsday scenario, especially at women that I work with where once you hit 40, right, or once you hit perimenopause everything just declines and it's a new phase of life where where nothing works, my metabolism's broken, I don't have the energy, like, it's almost a defeatist kind of thinking because we we give so much credence to the hormones. Now we're gonna talk about what actually changes. I like to flip that around, like, like, reframe it and say, this is a huge opportunity in a wake up call to actually optimize our lifestyle knowing that when we do that, the things that we probably should have been doing since we were in our twenties, but our bodies, like, didn't give us a feedback that we necessarily needed it back then. It can mitigate largely mitigate many of those changes. And so I always like to say, start there and say, women, men, doesn't matter.
Philip Pape [00:13:46]:
If you're making the choices you need to make, the hormone situation is much less of a variable unless, you know, you have a medical condition or something like that. But it is true, like, women, peri and postmenopause are seen in decline in estrogen in progesterone. They get all the symptoms that we can't relate to, like hot flashes and mood swings, weight gain. Guys who are married, you've gotta be, very empathetic to your wives, you know, oftentimes on a cyclical basis. Right? And the when you don't have things like strength training and the other stuff we're gonna talk about in place, for women especially, it leads to things like more visceral fat storage, more bone density loss, more muscle mass loss, and it's faster for them than it is for men. And that's where the, like, you know, frustration often comes from. And then they have DHEA. They have growth hormone.
Philip Pape [00:14:36]:
Both men and women have testosterone. Right? So we see all of that, Allan, from women's perspective, and the industry loves to play off of that and, like, sell products for menopausal women. Right? We know that because of that, but we'll get into what you can do instead where you probably don't have to worry about, you know, replacement therapy as early as you might think and and all of that. Men, it's testosterone. I mean, it it really does come down to that. We're actually pretty simple. It just starts to decline for some men sooner than others, as well as DHEA, and it could affect your mood. It could affect your sex drive.
Philip Pape [00:15:07]:
It could affect your muscle mass. And so if you have symptoms, I would suggest getting or even if you don't have symptoms, I would suggest getting a number early on, like, in your thirties as a baseline so that you can see where it trends over time. And if you have to deal with it later, you'll have the information. So, yeah, that's the big picture, Allan.
Allan [00:15:23]:
Yeah. And I I think that couple things that I'd like to bring out there is that, a lot of a lot of folks don't know this, but both men and women have testosterone, produce testosterone. For women, it's it's much less, obviously, but it does it does impact their capacity to lift weights and how they feel. It affects their libido and all those different triggers and things that it does in our body. You can stop producing it too. Men will slowly so so for women, it's menopause. For men, we refer to as andropause. But we're we're all going through this, this aging curve.
Allan [00:15:59]:
And if we we don't do anything, we're just we're just free riding. Wherever this thing's gonna take me, it's gonna take me. But it's always downhill. So Yeah. And we we need to do something. So I'd like to start that conversation kinda talking about nutrition because I I think that there's an underappreciation for how much nutrition actually does for us or against us. I think we know. We eat too much.
Allan [00:16:24]:
We we gain weight, but I I think that's the line where people kinda just say, okay. That's all you really need to know, but there's more.
Philip Pape [00:16:31]:
For sure. I be I think of nutrition as a few different things. You mentioned gaining and losing weight. So there is the energy balance piece, and oftentimes, that has a greater impact on our hormones than necessarily what we eat. You You know, people like to go straight to hormone supporting foods, and I like to start from are you even eating enough and supplying the energy you need, especially if you're lifting weights and you're training. Right? So energy balance is important, calories are important. Then we have our micronutrients and that is where yes, healthy fats, you know, having enough fat, especially for women is important. Having enough carbs is important.
Philip Pape [00:17:07]:
See a lot of people are on low carb diets and will find that maybe a moderate to high carb diet might support their hormones better and in the older age age group, which again is a big source of misinformation in the industry. And then we have our micronutrients micronutrients and fiber to kinda round it out having that diverse diet that supports your gut. Our gut health becomes more and more critical as we age, and guess what? The gut is very closely attuned to our hormones, both the direct hormones in our intestinal system that affect things like hunger and cravings. You you hear of GLP 1. Right? That's it's one of those the peptides affects that hormone, but also are linked to our pituitary gland, our adrenal system, all the other hormones, cortisol, stress, everything else. So nutrition has a much bigger impact than we think, but I think if you are supporting your goals and listening to the feedback as we talked about earlier, like an engineer, if you're gathering the data on how does my stomach feel? Do I have bloating? Do I have gas? How's my hunger? How's my performance in the gym? We can tie that back to the food choices you make without having to cut carbs, cut this, cut that. So that's where I would start.
Allan [00:18:09]:
Okay. Let let's talk a little bit about protein because I do think that, you know, there's concern about eating too much protein. There's concern about not eating enough protein. Where do you stand on that?
Philip Pape [00:18:23]:
Most people aren't eating enough. I think I think you stand there too. Right? Like, the evidence doesn't show that you could really eat too much protein, to be honest. And if you did eat that much protein, I'd love to see your diet because I don't I don't think it'd be super sustainable. You'd be basically just eating pure chicken breast all day. Yeah. So I don't think you can have too much. I think most people are under consuming, probably half, and I'm sure you've talked about the guidelines.
Philip Pape [00:18:45]:
You know, the RDA guidelines tend to be willfully inadequate compared to what especially aging individuals, especially women need to support muscle protein synthesis and at least preserve muscle if not build new muscle tissue. And so it's in that, like, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound is usually the number we throw out.
Allan [00:19:03]:
Yeah. It's it's kind of the funny thing is is these standards will be out there, and you'll see it on the on the sheet, you know, on the back on the back of the label, and you'll say, okay. Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and this is where I'm supposed to be, and this is what the government says. No. That's what the government says you need just to stay alive. Yeah. That's not an optimal way to live your life, is by government standards because it obviously not gonna serve you in the long run. I think one of the other things that's that's key with this because, again, I think one of the reasons people struggle so much with protein is the other information that's out there that they're now they gotta try to avoid.
Allan [00:19:40]:
Like, you know, I I don't I don't want the cholesterol. I don't want the saturated fat. And if I eat the saturated fat, then my cholesterol is gonna go up and and all that good. So tell us a little bit about that area, what your thoughts are there.
Philip Pape [00:19:53]:
I so there's a a whole bucket of things like that. Seed oils, saturated fat, you name it. I think if you have a diverse diet that's, like, 80% of whole foods, you're probably far beyond what most people are in terms of having the right balance of things in there. I will say there are you can have too much of things like saturated fat. You can definitely go a little bit overboard if you have a very high meat based diet. And if that's the case, you probably look at data and if your lipids are are higher than they should be, maybe that's an opportunity. But I don't like to fear monger with any of this stuff. Definitely seed oils, artificial sweeteners, like, they can be in your diet, you know? Again, you have to listen to your feedback, your biofeedback, and you have to see what it's doing for you.
Philip Pape [00:20:38]:
But, man, if you're lifting weights, if you're eating lots of protein, if you're if you're getting the energy, those things become much less of a concern, in my opinion.
Allan [00:20:45]:
Yeah. I I think 80 20 is is a good place to be for a general maintenance. But I say if you're trying to make some substantial change in your life, you're gonna need to go a little harder than that, at least for a period of time. Get your body clean. Get your body moving. Right? Because and you mentioned it earlier. It's like if we're eating the wrong foods or things that our body really actually doesn't know as food, if it's messing with our microbiome because of the things that we're eating, we're not getting enough fiber, we're not getting enough protein, we're gonna put ourselves in a state of inflammation, in many cases chronic inflammation. And that's got that's that's a cytokine storm.
Allan [00:21:25]:
You know? That's that's the cortisol going up. And cortisol is catabolic, so it's gonna make it very hard for you to put on muscle. And it's gonna be very likely that you're actually putting on fat in the one place where we don't want to put fat, which is our belly. And for women that are in menopause, that's some of the change. Is that stress and everything that's going on your body, that's where that fat's gonna end up now that you're wired slightly differently than you were before you went into menopause.
Philip Pape [00:21:52]:
Let let's let's talk about this a little more because I like that you challenged me a bit, and I can communicate a little bit better where I'm coming from here. So most people are consuming 60 to 70% processed foods in this country. Right?
Allan [00:22:04]:
Yeah. If I
Philip Pape [00:22:04]:
can get you to consume 80%, that's gonna that gets you from your 20 to 80%, you know, efficacy, let's say, minimum effective dose. But you're right in saying that we eat a lot of things that just don't work for us as individuals, and the only way you can do you can tell what those are is something like an elimination diet. It doesn't have to be extreme. But, you know, kind of backing off on certain things that you may find are trigger foods or think are trigger foods. And believe it or not, that could include something like broccoli. Even though we think of that as a perfectly healthy food, some individuals have a negative reaction to it. So I agree, Allan. There there's, like, a spectrum.
Philip Pape [00:22:40]:
It depends on who your client is and who we're talking to as a population. What I find is people will go right to the 1% solution first, and they'll just start cutting everything out, but they don't get enough protein, and they're not lifting weights, and they're not sleeping at least 7 you know what I mean? And and that's where we get into the kind of my approach is more let's let's let's do the big rock then the medium rock then the small rock, but I don't disagree that there are inflammatory foods and you don't want to eat more ultra processed foods and more triggering foods in than you should.
Allan [00:23:11]:
Yeah. Because sometimes it works like this. You sit there and you you it's, you know, girl scout season, and you you eat a whole sleeve of Thin Mints. Yes. It's happened.
Philip Pape [00:23:23]:
What's what's the what's the chocolate and coconut ones? Yeah.
Allan [00:23:26]:
Yeah. It's happened. And and but what happens then is because your body started tasting the sugar, it started thinking something sweet was gonna come with all the minerals and vitamins that would normally come with something like that. And you get through, and your your body's like, well, I didn't get the nutrition I I really thought I was gonna get. I want more. Now we're interpreting it more cookies, but that's not what our body was actually telling us. It's like, okay. There's there's supposed to be some vitamins and minerals in this stuff you're eating.
Allan [00:23:58]:
So where is it? You know? So I do think that we just we we do have to recognize that, you know, what 80 20 really is is not Girl Scout cookies. You know? Okay. So my calories for the week, you know, 20% of it was Girl Scout cookies. It's still generally trying to make sure you're giving your body the nutrition it needs.
Philip Pape [00:24:19]:
You know, it's interesting in that case, so I'm I'm gonna reverse engineer it.
Allan [00:24:23]:
Uh-huh. There you go.
Philip Pape [00:24:24]:
And if if somebody were to be eating that way, let's say it was a client of mine and they were tracking they'd be tracking things like hunger, they're also tracking the amount of fiber they get. Something's probably gonna be off in in that equation, like, they're they're not gonna feel great with their digestion or they're gonna have more hunger because they're eating this ultra processed food that doesn't fill them up. And so if you kind of account for the whole picture, the satiety, the fiber, you know, some micronutrients you're tracking, it it tend I find it tends to work for a lot of people that way as opposed to trying to force it necessarily. Yeah. It it's the same it's the same end result, Allan, is is what I'm getting at and I I totally agree we have to have the micronutrient diversity. Right? We have to have the fiber, the satiety. I want you to feel satisfied but not emotionally, you know, not not through emotional craving satisfaction, but through, hey. I'm full.
Philip Pape [00:25:13]:
My digestion's good. I can wake up in the morning after a restful night of sleep, and I can hit the gym and get all the reps. If anything's missing from that equation, then then then maybe there's a a problem there.
Allan [00:25:23]:
Alright. So let's move to the gym. We're gonna be working out. We wanna we want to lose most most folks would be in the state of saying, I wanna lose weight, and I'm adding more bat to my my belly. I know my muscle mass is going down, so I know the £20 I gained in the last 2 years. I know that's not muscle. I'm not gonna argue, and I'm gonna lie to myself that it's muscle. I know it's fat.
Allan [00:25:48]:
And I know if I'm losing muscle and I'm gaining fat and I'm getting heavier, that's that's not a really good route that you wanna take towards old age. What types of movement and how much should we be considering as a plan or at least a starting plan to get going?
Philip Pape [00:26:07]:
Number 1 for me is always gonna be building muscle, strength training, resistance training of some kind. I don't care who you are, how old you are, what limitations you have. You know, I I knew a guy, Kevin McShann, who is in wheelchair. He lifts weights. Like, you pretty much don't have an excuse. But more importantly from the positive perspective, lifting weights is so health centered more than people give it credit for. Hormones, yes. Right? Lifting weights can increase growth hormone and testosterone.
Philip Pape [00:26:35]:
We also know it improves your metabolic health. We also know it counteracts, frailty and loss of bone density and all of that. So oh, and it increases insulin sensitivity. Like, again, another thing people aren't all always aware of that it muscles are soup sync for glucose. So you can have a little bit more variety in your your diet, you can have the carbs, and you're supporting your activity. So that's the activity I'm gonna start with number 1. Number 2 would be just general movement. I think people need to be off their butt for a decent part of the day.
Philip Pape [00:27:06]:
Whether that's walking I'm not too specific about it other than getting enough activity because you know cardio is not gonna kill your gains you can walk as much as you want Just get up because being sedentary in sitting is its own risk factor, its own factor for mortality and disease. So lifting weights, moving, and not being sedentary are a good place to start.
Allan [00:27:28]:
Yeah. Now one of the things that I think a lot of people lose in this whole math is is they go with the concept that more is better. And when we're talking about hormones, that's not always the case.
Philip Pape [00:27:41]:
Okay. Is that a question? Sorry.
Allan [00:27:43]:
I sort of a question. I didn't ask it like a question, but I just
Philip Pape [00:27:45]:
I was I was giving you the space. Yeah. You could edit up
Allan [00:27:48]:
the the
Philip Pape [00:27:48]:
whole thing.
Allan [00:27:48]:
But but you kinda get the idea. So so tell tell me your thoughts on that, you know, the volume.
Philip Pape [00:27:54]:
So more in terms of training for Yeah. Hormones. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure. No.
Philip Pape [00:27:58]:
I'm a huge fan of, like, time efficiency and and efficiency of movement here. That's why I love compound lifts. Right? That's why I love big, full functional natural movements like the squatting, pressing, lift, you know, picking things up with your deadlift, hinging, you know, overhead, etcetera. But not just because they use the most muscle mass and let you lift heavy weights, but they're super time efficient. You know, you could do a couple of those or 3 of those in a session that last 45 minutes and do that 3 times a week. And for most people that gets you into the range of, you know, the 5 to sense 5 to 10 sets per muscle group per week that's like the minimum for for busy people. Beyond that, you know, 3 or 4 days having a little bit of extra in there is great but a lot of people overdo it with the cardio. Right? They're doing 3, 4 days, an hour plus on whatever elliptical running stair stepper and then they might lift 2 days or they might not be lifting at all.
Philip Pape [00:28:55]:
And that could definitely backfire in terms of cortisol when we talk about hormones. Yeah. Too much stress, not recovering enough, having too much muscle tearing when you're doing, like, loaded cardio, like we see in CrossFit, boot camps, things like that. I could go on, but, like, it is a good balance of mostly lifting, some walking, a little bit of cardio, and getting plenty of sleep and rest.
Allan [00:29:16]:
Yeah. I think the sleep and rest is is kinda one of the key components there. We, more is not necessarily gonna be better. So beyond movement and nutrition, those are the 2 core areas I think we should be focused to get rolling once we get that kinda stabilized. What are some other areas we can be working on to improve our our hormone profile and and feel better and feel younger?
Philip Pape [00:29:40]:
You mentioned belly fat before, which is a big concern of women, especially, you know, they even have a term. They just call it menopause belly. Yeah. And men have the beer gut. It's really the same phenomenon. It's either hormonally related or stress related from hormones. And in in women's cases, the estrogen has a kind of a fat storage effect. And the ways to mitigate that are stress management and sleep.
Philip Pape [00:30:05]:
Right? It's it's not gonna be rocket science. Alan probably talks about it in 600 plus episodes, probably 300 of those episodes. I'm sure you've said, like, you guys just gotta sleep. We we have seen plenty of studies that show sleep deprivation, which is typically less than 5 and a half hours or so of sleep, can lead to greater visceral fat storage. So your fat distribution changes. Also, cravings go way up. Your hunger hormones go up. Right? Leptin ghrelin change so that your body says, I need to eat because you're not giving me the sleep, so I'm gonna make up for it over here with the food.
Philip Pape [00:30:36]:
So just getting more sleep and managing stress can go a massive way toward mitigating some of the hormonal, you know, issues.
Allan [00:30:44]:
And, you know, we we we talk a little bit here about losing weight, and, you know, typically, I don't like talking about it from weight. But I've I've in 9 plus years of of doing this, what I've found is I can't just say fat loss because no one no one's gonna no one's gonna pay any attention if we're just talking fat loss. But this is what we really wanna try to do. If we're carrying excess fat, it's producing estrogen. That's one of the other things that fat does. It's not just this benign thing that's hanging on our body, making us look and feel bad. It actually does produce estrogen. So, guys, that's where those moves are coming from.
Allan [00:31:20]:
You know, it's the it's your body basically saying, you know, I got all this extra estrogen, all this extra fat, and the fat's just producing this estrogen. And you see, you not only you have less testosterone if you're not training and trying to get rid of that body fat, your body's actively trying to find new places to store it. I mean, your chest is one of those.
Philip Pape [00:31:43]:
Yeah. I mean, rather I guess rather than try to, like, address hormone issues directly, we address these lifestyle things that cascade to help in your hormones, and some of them have, like, a big bang for your buck. Right? Like stress. I mean, chronic stress is just so high these days, and the older we get, we have families, we have life obligations, women who are the you know, taking care of their household. Lifting weights can counteract that. In fact, lifting weights is the number one factor for improved sleep quality as well according to some studies. But one hack that I really like is lifting in the morning. I used to be ambivalent about it or kind of neutral, and I would say, look.
Philip Pape [00:32:19]:
Just lift weights when you can. And some people would even say that lifting later in the day is slightly be more beneficial. But what we find is whatever time of day you lift, if it's consistent, you'll adapt. But secondly, doing it in the morning has shown to be beneficial for cortisol, especially in older individuals just because it, for lack of a better phrase, kinda burns off the cortisol or it it it sets you up for proper movement early in the day like we're supposed to, and then your cortisol kinda ramps down and then gets you ready for sleep later on. So just a nice little hack there.
Allan [00:32:49]:
Yeah. Excellent. So what are some things we should avoid if we're trying to manage our hormones better?
Philip Pape [00:32:58]:
Okay. So I was I wasn't gonna go here. I don't know what you think, Allan, about just toxins in the environment and plastics and personal care products and all that. Like, I used to be one of those, like, I filed in the woo category. I'm just curious of your thoughts on that before I go down that path.
Allan [00:33:14]:
Well well, it's a it's a couple different things. Okay? Everything that goes into our body is is information. But beyond that, our liver is is maybe one of the most intelligent things in our body besides our gut and our brain. And the reason is that the liver liver has to fix everything. You know, it has to fix everything. And so if we've got these toxins in our body, the liver has to process it. Okay. When you drink alcohol, the body has to process that first.
Allan [00:33:45]:
So it shifts all resources to doing that, meaning it's not doing your body's not necessarily doing other things that it should be doing. So that's that's one break in your whole metabolic process is the toxins are messing with the systems that keep you alive and keep you healthy. The other side of it is because the the liver is such a smart organ, it knows that while you're over here putting on extra fat, that's a really cool place to shuttle that stuff off to and just say goodbye to it. You know? And and if if you have a kind of a history of gaining more than you lose each time you lose weight and gain it back, it just that's what it's gonna do. It's a a repetitive process. Let's just store it there. Let's just store it there. And so you you end up with, and I I just had this interview with a doctor not long ago, sick fat.
Allan [00:34:34]:
You end up with the body that has very large fat cells and a lot of toxic crud in them, and that does that causes dysfunction of those of those fat cells. So it is it is hard, if not impossible, to avoid all of these toxins. You know, it just it just is. But to the extent that you can know, okay, I I know that, like, weed killer, glossphate glossphate or how whatever what it's called.
Philip Pape [00:35:06]:
Like a glossphate. Yeah.
Allan [00:35:08]:
Yeah. I'm like, we know. Okay. Yes. It it it does a great job of killing weeds and us.
Philip Pape [00:35:15]:
It's an endocrine disruptor. Yeah. Exactly. It goes right to the hormones.
Allan [00:35:18]:
You know? And and so I think I think there's there is a a balance, and and this is probably where the 80 20 rule makes the most sense because, you know, if you aren't paying any attention to what's in your skin care products, your hair care products, of course, like, I just use shaving cream, but or
Philip Pape [00:35:37]:
Plastic containers, you know? Yeah. You're clean. Right?
Allan [00:35:40]:
Or where you're drinking your water from, you know, and and how that's handled. Even just our municipal water supplies and what could, you know, possibly be in those. And so there I think there's just a lot of opportunity there for us to think about, can I clean up these things a little? Because if we can reduce the amount that we're exposed to, we give our body a better shot at Yeah. Hitting it and and and keeping up with it and keeping us healthier longer.
Philip Pape [00:36:08]:
Yeah. I agree. That's why I brought it up because nor normally, again, talk about the bigger things. You mentioned alcohol. I could have gone there, like, reducing alcohols only has upside for hormones. We talked about overtraining. We talked about getting enough sleep. So I was like, where where is the other thing that people are curious about? And I was thinking of that because we've seen just in my generation alone, fertility rates skyrocket and, you know, what perimenopause coming on earlier and you're like, what's going on? And and there are some links with some of these endocrine disruptors in the environment.
Philip Pape [00:36:36]:
And it's it's not a woo thing, like, there's everything is manufactured and there's so much plastic and and chemicals used. Like you said, it's just being aware and kind of being educated, but not fear mongering. Just
Allan [00:36:49]:
Yeah.
Philip Pape [00:36:50]:
Shifting, nudging, nudging yourself to make better informed decisions.
Allan [00:36:53]:
Yeah. Because I mean, you know, like, we could sit there. If if we really listened to what they say, then we would think, okay. There's no way I'm eating fish. I'm not gonna eat fish because there's microplastics in the ocean, and I don't wanna consume the microplastics. And the reality is, yeah, there are microplastics in the ocean, but also the the core and and and mercury and everything else. But the core is there are some fish that are longer lived fish that eat other fish that are higher risk. So, you know, have some swordfish now and again, but it shouldn't be a normal staple for you all the time.
Allan [00:37:30]:
Sardines are a better choice because they're not the kind of species that's eating other fish. They're not a species that are gonna be alive long enough to get as much exposure. So there are better there are better choices from time to time. But it's, you know, you need the omega 3. So don't, you know, don't pooh pooh your health over one thing because of another thing. As scary as it might sound, you know, microplastics and, you know, mercury and Yeah. It's the dose. Have some fish.
Allan [00:38:01]:
Have some fish, cheese.
Philip Pape [00:38:03]:
It's it's the dose it's the dose and the exposure. Right? Like Yeah. Diet soda gets a bad rap, but, again, I think if you're if you're if you're drinking in moderation, it's really not gonna affect you. And then same thing with, like, dyes and things like that. People are wondering about whey protein, for example. I get questions all the time, like, what brand of whey protein? I said, just pick the brand that has as few ingredients as you're hap you're comfortable with
Allan [00:38:23]:
or Yeah.
Philip Pape [00:38:23]:
Or as many as you're comfortable with but at the fewest because, yeah, if you're eating, you know, 8 scoops of protein powder every day, and it's the kind with artificial sweetener and red dye and everything, maybe there's some cumulative effect that you're not gonna like down the road, and better safe than sorry kind of, thought on that. You know?
Allan [00:38:39]:
Yeah. And and I I you're you're completely right. It's like people will ask me. It's like, you know, what what whey protein do you do you usually use? And I'm like, I don't usually have to supplement protein because I eat.
Philip Pape [00:38:54]:
There's that too.
Allan [00:38:54]:
For sure. You know? I eat protein, and, and so I don't really have to do that very often. When I when I choose that I need to do it or I wanna do it, then, yeah, I'm gonna go with the purest I can get because and this is kind of a little known thing, is that whey whey protein is a byproduct. Okay? And and so the dairy people, they don't need it. They don't want it. They should throw it away before we decided we were gonna start using it for protein. But it's all just accumulated. It's it's not like there's a you know, this guy's making better whey than that guy.
Allan [00:39:28]:
For the most part, it's all they're all buying the same way.
Philip Pape [00:39:32]:
Mhmm.
Allan [00:39:33]:
And they're putting in their product. They're adding their own flavors and preservatives and colors and and all that type of thing so that they could sell you strawberry and chocolate and mocha, whatever. And then we can put it in bars and sell it to you that way so you're just basically eating candy to get to your protein number.
Philip Pape [00:39:54]:
It's true because when when you sell somebody did you know they actually sell pure whey? You could just get that and then kind of flavor yourself in a smoothie. Well, I don't like how that tastes. I'm like, well, okay. Now we've got a problem here. Like Yeah. You know, there's Well,
Allan [00:40:05]:
that's why I I'll buy the I'll buy the grass fed, grass finished way. And in a, you know, usually in a big bin, you know, there's a few companies I trust that they're not gonna, you know, the labels are what they say they are. And when you look on the back to the label and you turn it around, it says whey. It's the only ingredient. Exactly. Okay. And the other thing you can look at is, okay. So here's a scoop, and the scoop is 36 grams.
Allan [00:40:33]:
And how much protein do I get?
Philip Pape [00:40:36]:
Allan [00:40:41]:
You know? So there there are ways for us to reduce the exposure. There are ways for us to improve the quality and quantity of our sleep. There are ways for us to reduce our stress load through stress management and, getting negative people out of your life. And I think one of the biggest ones, and I'd like to get your take on this a little bit, is the effect that self talk has on our hormone profile.
Philip Pape [00:41:10]:
Oh, man. I mean, self talk goes directly to mood, right, and to mental health. In fact, I know we're gonna get to, like, 3 strategies to get and stay well. One of those I was gonna allude to was the positivity in your life. And and I use that kind of at a high level because I think everyone has different challenges. Right? Some people are more optimistic. Like, I have an optimism bias and so I tend to, like, think things are gonna go well and so I I I kind of embrace that future identity idea. Some people just everything the sky is falling all the time.
Philip Pape [00:41:43]:
Right? The sky is falling all the time. And so we do know that there's a direct link with the endocrine system with, you know, things like endorphins even just in the short term with it's not the self talk just in isolation, it's what the self talk then leads to. It it leads to kind of a lack of control, an external locus instead of an internal locus. Right? The lack of choice and empowerment and agency that's all associated with self determination. And, like, yes, I can go from here to there on my own volition. Maybe I need some support. That's great. That's fine.
Philip Pape [00:42:14]:
In fact, I encourage it. But, yeah, that that that's where I'd say the link occurs. And so Atomic Habits. Right? Everybody knows Atomic Habits by James Clear. I think in there, he talks about reversing how we think of what we do and and our behavior change instead of thinking, I need to do this to become this person. We think, I'm this person, so I'm gonna do this. And that's kinda like reframing the self talk into a positive identity. Yeah.
Philip Pape [00:42:38]:
So I think it's huge, Allan.
Allan [00:42:40]:
Yeah. Well, that's that's the that's the be, do, have kinda mindset where what are the people who do who are like this? What do they do? Just start doing those things, and then eventually, you will you'll be that person.
Philip Pape [00:42:53]:
Yeah. It's huge. So there's a woman in my group coaching. She calls me the positivity bully. That's what she's been calling me lately with in in all, like, positivity. Right? She but she's gotten to the point where she knows if something comes out of her mouth that's like a fixed mindset statement, like, I am this, she's immediately like, wait wait wait a minute. That's not the way I meant to say it, and she'll reframe it. So I'm like, I got you trained.
Allan [00:43:17]:
Yeah. It's working. It's not in the way.
Philip Pape [00:43:19]:
But it really is that. It's like reframing everything. And going back to being an engineer, like, one of the things engineers do is they don't have failure in their vocabulary. Everything that happens is just something that teaches you what to do. So even from a day to day, like, could either have an all or nothing mentality where I'm a failure and then boom I'm off my program or this happened, what do I learn from it and what do I do differently? And if I am having trouble doing something differently, there's another opportunity there with friction or reward system or whatever it is that encourages me to to make it easier on myself.
Allan [00:43:53]:
Well, Philip, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
Philip Pape [00:44:01]:
Alright. So fittest has gotta be strength training. I just have to like, everybody's gotta do that, man. I don't I don't there's no excuse, for hormone health, for, mental health, for self identity, all of that stuff we just talked about. So I would say, you know, lift weights, build that muscle, be the fittest person you can be till you're 95 and like I say, you croak doing a deadlift when you're 95. That's what I wanna do. That's fittest. Healthiest would be from a nutrition standpoint, I think starting from the big rocks like I mentioned earlier.
Philip Pape [00:44:31]:
I mean, I I love everything Allan says here getting into the all the details we need to nail down eventually. Protein and fiber, I think is a good starting place. If every meal has that, you're you you've made a step change, and then from that point, you can start to to go down the the tracking and the micronutrients and everything else. And then from happiest, I think we kind of alluded to it. It's getting positivity in your life. That's people who are positive, who support you. They may not get you. They may not totally understand you.
Philip Pape [00:45:00]:
That's fine. We know how family is. But it's kinda getting rid of the toxicity, getting rid of the negatives. And one one great way to do that is listening to podcasts like Allan's, joining groups online who who have the same goals, and, you know, consuming consuming positive content rather than say, for example, the political news these days.
Allan [00:45:21]:
Yes. There is that. Thank you.
Philip Pape [00:45:24]:
I can't help myself because it is entertaining, but, yeah, it could be too much.
Allan [00:45:28]:
It is. It it's it is too much, but alright. So, Philip, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about wits and weights, where would you like for me to send them?
Philip Pape [00:45:39]:
Send them to the podcast, wits and weights, and then they can just reach out to me at witsandweights.com. Alright.
Allan [00:45:45]:
So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.comforward/658, and I'll be sure to have links there. Philip, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness. Allan, thank you for the opportunity. Welcome back,
Rachel [00:45:59]:
Raz. Hey, Allan. That was a really fun interview. Philip sounds like a really interesting person and an engineer, a physique engineer. I sometimes it takes, like, a different way of thinking to figure things out. I I appreciate his, ability to do that.
Allan [00:46:16]:
Yeah. You know, whenever I'm working with someone, even when I was working with my just to myself Mhmm. I needed processes in place. I needed some things to make it easier, you know, to remove friction from what I wanted to do. And I didn't have a coach at the time to help me do that. So it was like, okay. What do I do to solve this problem? Because if I wanna do this, I have to solve this problem. So it was sometimes adding friction to things that I didn't wanna do and removing friction from things that I did wanna do.
Allan [00:46:48]:
And very much you start talking to engineers, friction can be a big part of any, anything that they're doing. And so that, you know yeah. I I I totally agree that you need to have some system that that you can rely on that's working for you and developing a good system for yourself. So that can be a challenge. But, once you get it done, it's it's it's actually really, really nice.
Rachel [00:47:10]:
Oh, absolutely. And it it's our lives change over time as we age. Like you had discussed, our hormones just get out of whack. I'm going through menopause and everything is different. And so, like, everything that I used to do in the past needs to change to address the way my body is working today, and and I think everybody that's aging is gonna go through similar situations. Maybe you're prone to heart disease or diabetes, or maybe you're prone to anemia or any other thing. So then there's no one size fits all. Everybody's gotta kinda troubleshoot little problem solving on their own issues and figure out how to deal with it.
Allan [00:47:51]:
Yeah. Well, there is no one size fits all, but there are some commonalities that we all share
Philip Pape [00:47:58]:
Mhmm.
Allan [00:47:58]:
You know, things we we should do and things we shouldn't do Mhmm. If if we wanna live healthy, you know, fit lives. And so, yeah, there there are some some similarities, but there are, yes, also some differences in how each of us apply those things.
Rachel [00:48:14]:
Mhmm. And on the things that we should do, you spent some time talking about strength training and how important that is at probably every age, but most importantly over 40.
Allan [00:48:24]:
Yeah. I would say don't don't don't strength train a kid under 10, but because they're growing and there's other things going on. But for everybody else, strength training should be core to what we do.
Rachel [00:48:36]:
Oh, absolutely. And then, like I had mentioned earlier, as as we do age and all of these things in our lives change, no matter how well you eat and no matter how well you exercise, if you can't manage stress and sleep, that's gonna just upset the balance of everything. It's 2 steps forward and one step back.
Allan [00:48:56]:
Yeah. Well, you know, stress stress is something that is basically, you know, in a normal situation, stress is good. I mean, you know, if there's a bear, the stress helps you. Like, if you're if you're about to step out into a highway and there's a car coming, and all of a sudden you get this surge of energy fight and flight, and you're able to jump back and not get hit by the car, that's that's that's good. I mean, you want that. You don't want to be relaxed, sloth, watching the car hit you. You you want that capacity to jump back and do the thing, that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do otherwise. But we live in a world of chronic stress.
Allan [00:49:34]:
So there's stressors that are always there. The bear is always there. The car is always there, and we can't we can't stay there. So we we have to implement things that are going to allow us to manage our own stress. And then where sleep is concerned. Yeah. It's it's the cycle that helps us do everything. Like, everything is built on that.
Allan [00:49:53]:
So if if you're not sleeping well and you're not going through full sleep cycles, you're not getting what your brain needs. You're not giving what your hormones need to cycle through because they're all set up on an on a cycle, a a daily cycle. And so that circadian rhythm is there to tell you, okay. And and so we know if you're not asleep between 10 and 2, that's a core time that your body would be doing the things Mhmm. That it needs to do. And, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I won't go to bed until 11 or 12. It's like, okay. That might be a problem if you're not feeling it.
Allan [00:50:29]:
If you feel like you're getting older faster than you should. You've got you've gotta get better sleep.
Rachel [00:50:34]:
Better sleep for sure. And then it was always nice to hear you discuss things to avoid. I mean, certainly the toxins in the environment, that's easy. We live around too many plastics and too many chemicals like our, Roundup and stuff like that. But you also mentioned alcohol, and that's kind of a controversial topic there.
Allan [00:50:54]:
Well, it can be, but it shouldn't be. I mean, let's let's face it. Okay. Most people that are using alcohol consistently, like on a almost daily basis, it is their regimen for stress management. It's, you know, and I understand that. I've been in a similar situation. I was working really hard and I was stressed in my job. You go back to the hotel, there's the hotel bar.
Allan [00:51:17]:
And it's nice. You have a few drinks, you forget about your day, and then you crash. The problem is that that doesn't really solve the stress problem. You just increased the cortisol problem. Again, the stress was still there. You masked it. You didn't solve it. You didn't reduce it.
Allan [00:51:36]:
And then as far as sleep, if you have alcohol in your system, you're not going through proper sleep cycles. You're not getting restful sleep. So you might be unconscious for 8 hours, but you did not get 8 hours of quality sleep. And so from that perspective, it is harming you more than it's helping you in all cases. And, yeah, okay, fine. Go have a couple drinks with your friends every once in a while. That's not a problem. But if you're using it as a coping mechanism, you really have to rethink that strategy because
Philip Pape [00:52:09]:
Oh, yeah.
Allan [00:52:09]:
It's it's not doing what you think it's doing.
Rachel [00:52:12]:
No. Gosh. Even maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it was kind of normal for the wine industry. You'd have a glass of red wine at dinner because it's supposedly good for you in some way. And and nowadays, there's just no way. I could not have a glass of wine with dinner and and sleep well. I just know that I'm up for a bed and I just sleep if I do. But, yeah, it's different, especially as you age.
Allan [00:52:38]:
Yeah. And so this is what we have to look at is is as we're trying to do this, you know, we're providing this information to our body, the quality of our sleep, the stress management, the strength training, the eating properly, the avoiding chemicals. All of those things are information in your body to get better, to heal, to feel better. And the way it does that is through hormones. And so if you can do the right things for your body, no matter your age, you're optimizing your hormones for what it is for where you are at that point in time. And as a result, you're going to get better results. You're going to feel better. You're going to be healthier.
Allan [00:53:21]:
You're going to lose weight. All those things that you want to do Mhmm. Just have to dial those things in. When we're older, we have to dial them in just a little bit more than we did when we were younger. But, yeah, it it you know, doing the things that your body needs you to do and avoiding the things that you shouldn't be, that's all a part of this challenge and how we get where we need to be.
Rachel [00:53:42]:
No. That's perfect. It was really great conversation.
Allan [00:53:45]:
Alright. Well, I will talk to you next week.
Rachel [00:53:47]:
Great. Take care, Allan.
Allan [00:53:49]:
You too. Bye.
Rachel [00:53:50]:
Thank you. Bye bye.
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