Dr. Vonda Wright: Formula to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle (Why your Current Workout is Not Giving You Results)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, It's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce
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(00:25):
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Head to Jysheddy dot me forward slash Tour and get
yours today. At what age are we actually all?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I believe that our perception of aging has to do
with what we feel in the future.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is there something that happened in our thirty five to
forty five range that our sleep starts to become less consistent?
How do we lose that stubborn belyfa.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Weight is not the measure for me, it's body composition.
I never say lose weight. I say we're going to
recompose your body.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Why is it that the high intensity interval training not
having the desired result.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Listen, many people die for twenty years. Jay.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
What's something you used to believe to be true about
health that you don't today. If someone listening right now
is between the ages of twenty to thirty, what are
those specific healthy habits that we need to invest in
the non negotia, That.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Is the perfect time to figure out your life habits.
Learn to prioritize your health over those things that are
going to tear you down.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
If someone said to you, I want to lose weight,
what is the best, healthiest quick way I can do it?
The number one health and wellness podcast, Jay Sheidy, Jay Sheidy, Hey, everyone,
welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to

(02:16):
become the happier, healthier and more healed. I'm so grateful
to have your ears and your eyes for the next
hour or so. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Today's guest is doctor Vonder Wright, an accomplished orthopedic surgeon, author,
podcast host, and researcher recognized for her expertise in sports
medicine and active aging. Doctor Wright is a motivational speaker

(02:39):
and author of the successful book Doctor Right's Guide to
Thrive four Steps to Body, Brains and Bliss, which helps
readers use practical advice to take action, change their attitude,
and measure their achievement for a more fulfilling life. Please
welcome to on Purpose, doctor Vonda Wright. Doctor Wright, it
is great.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
To have you here, truly my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
So thankful to have you. And there are so many
things I want to ask you about I was sharing
with you earlier. I really appreciate your clarity. I appreciate
your contextual advice to thoughtfulness with which you approve it,
your incredible academic background as well. And I want to
dive straight into a question that I'm asking almost because

(03:23):
I think it's something we all subconsciously believe, and I
wanted to ask you, at what age are we actually old?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I believe that our perception of aging has to do
with what we view of the future. I have never
believed the myth that is pervasive in this country that
aging is an inevitably climb from vitality of youth to frailty.
I've never believed that, And there have been so many
examples of people in my own life, and the athletes

(03:52):
I've taken care of, and even the regular people I
believe we can change the trajectory of our future investing
in ourselves today. I think that, and I've seen this.
Not only research I say I think this, but research
has backed this up. That when we invest in our
health as a daily basis, whether it's our mobility or

(04:14):
our sleep, or our nutrition or a variety of relationships
we have, that we don't have to go down this
slippery slope to frailty in which many people in our
country die for twenty years jay between sixty and eighty.
It's just three doctors visits a week. I believe that

(04:35):
we can be healthy, vital, active, joyful, and hopefully die
peacefully in our sleep. But that takes intention, That takes
purposeful activity every day, because time will take over if
we just let physics take over.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
I really love that perspective that you have, and I've
had experience of that. I remember in my early twenties
obviously feeling accept personally healthy from a natural standpoint, in
my late twenties to early thirties, almost experiencing a dip
because of a lack of focus and a lack of attention,
and then now in my late thirties feeling the best

(05:13):
that I've ever felt. And it's really fascinating to see
how even our ideas and language around aging. I think
we used to say, oh, well, I don't want to
be thirteen, and people still feel that, Oh my gosh,
I'm turning thirty. And then people will say, oh my gosh,
I'm going to be forty. Now, oh now I'm fifty.
And now people we age ourselves by how we talk

(05:34):
about age, how we dress, how we think about our age.
So I want to ask you, if someone listening right
now is between the ages of twenty to thirty, what
should their priorities be? What should they be focused on?
And we'll focus on other generations next.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Absolutely, if you're in your twenties going into your thirties,
you know, think about that time of life. There's a
lot of uncertainty in that time. Right, you're just finishing
your education, you may or may not have the job
of your dream, you may be living with your parents.
But that is the perfect time when there are probably
still other people taking care of you in some way

(06:10):
to figure out your life habits. Right, that is not
the time to skate along on your youthful zest or
your youthful biology, but learn to sleep learn to prioritize
your health over, for instance, those things that are going
to tear you down. I mean, listen, we're all young,

(06:30):
we all want to go out, we all want to
burn the midnight oil. But now is the time to
respect yourself enough to make the decisions to say, Okay,
five days a week, I'm going to focus on my career.
I'm going to focus on getting ahead. I am going
to take care of my body. And because I'm young,
I can play around a few days. But if we
do that seven days a week, we end up a

(06:51):
decade later with no habits, probably this beer belly we
never wanted, and you're getting teased with our friends. So
I think it's time now, as we're enjoying our youth,
to develop habits that will last a lifetime.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
How much harder is it in our thirties and then
in our forties to shift to those healthy habits than
if we started earlier.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I think if we start earlier, it's just our lifestyle,
it's how we live, right. It often, and I tell
people of this at any age that as we're layering
on our health habits, it may seem like a lot
at first, but if it's just how we live, then
it's no extra stress. Right. For instance, if you're used

(07:34):
to mobility almost every day, if you're used to making
food choices that do not involved a lot of fried foods,
or you understand that you can't be drunk every night
and still be healthy, then it is no effort to
live that way versus, oh my gosh, I've got to
do these five or six things. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah? But biologically, how much harder is it to like, say,
lose that beat.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
The good news is is that recently a study was
released that showed our first big hit of biologic aging
is about forty. Now that doesn't mean that mean that
means at a cellular level, the repair mechanisms become less efficient.
It means that our pluripotent stem cells, which we have

(08:22):
not only from our bone marrow but in every cell,
are actually less young. That being said, lifestyle can rejuvenate
those and we've done our own we've done that's part
of my research having done those studies. But so when
I say at forty it's the first big hit, our
actual intracellular biology becomes less efficient. We are able to

(08:44):
clear the toxins of metabolism less efficiently. We're able to
reduce the proteins that our cells make in normal living
from our DNA less effectively. So I don't want to
give thirty year olds a pass. I call the the
time between thirty five and forty five the critical decade,

(09:05):
just to get everything established, to get in the best
shape of your life, so that you're actually starting midlife.
Because when you look at life expectancy, midlife is forty, right,
and so we tend to think, oh, when I get old, well,
forty is midlife. If we arrive there having taken care

(09:26):
of the habits, it is significantly easier. Now it's easier
to start at forty than it is at sixty five.
I don't want to be discouraging to people if you've
missed the boat on twenty thirties, but that's what I
mean by biologically, there's a big hit about forty four.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
So I'm thirty seven right now, I'm seventy years away
from the first of that. From that first hit, yeah,
what would be the top priorities for someone between that
thirty five to forty five? What are those specific healthy
habits that we need to invest in that are non
negotiables with.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
The experience of age and working this long, your top
priority is to figure out how to sleep through the night.
Because secondarily, if I tell you to go build muscle
mass and to work on your VO two max, which
we can talk about all those things, if you're exhausted,
if you are not aware of your circadian rhythm and

(10:25):
when you should be going to sleep and when you're
waking up, you will not have the energy or the
brain power to do the secondary things, which number two
is mobility. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. It's top of mind
for me where everybody's talking about it. Now we are
to building muscle mass, but what people forget about is
this is prime time in both men and women's lives

(10:47):
to build your bone. We top out at bone density
around thirty So what does that mean. Well, we need
the thickest, strongest bones because we literally do live off
that for the rest of our lives. Now we can
get into this, but you can build bone back, but
you need the best bones, and that's what I would

(11:09):
focus on, muscle and bone. And then finally, everybody needs
to not treat their bodies like a garbage can. We
are not a trash disposal. Everything can't go in. This
is a temple, This is a meticulously designed machine. And
just like we would take care of the machines of
our cars by what we put in it, many people

(11:32):
don't think of their bodies in the same way.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, so well said, and so simply put, I deeply
appreciate how practical and thoughtful they are. Let's dive into
each one of them. Is there something that happens in
our thirty five to forty five and onward range that
our sleep starts to become less consistent?

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Well, particularly for women, forty to forty five becomes a
critical time that they might not even be aware of.
Because what we know, and you've probably heard of this before,
I've heard it on your podcast, women are born with
the amount of eggs that we're ever going to have
at birth. It's a miracle, right, and we slowly use

(12:15):
those such that at age forty we only have one
percent left. Well, it's our eggs that make our estrogen.
So as our total number of eggs decline, so does
our estrogen. And that's about the time when women go
from this normal cyclic pattern of hormones up and down
to haywire. And that's when we don't build muscle as well.

(12:40):
We don't build bone as well, but our sleep becomes
disturbed because our circadian rhythm is off, and so it
is not uncommon for women in their forties. This is
such a common time. We're all waking up at three
point thirty seven in the morning, not only because our
sugar is dipping and our bodies are waking us up

(13:00):
to save our lives, but because of the hormonal fluctuations.
So sleep becomes really difficult. But think about in our
early forties, because many women have chosen to put off
child bearing, they may have just come off of the
time when their children are up all night, and now
they're plagued by not being able to sleep. So becomes
a real big problem for men. Men don't realize it,

(13:23):
but men can start losing testosterone in their early forties too.
And the caveat to that is your testosterone may still
be in the normal range two fifty to over one thousand,
but most people don't. Most men don't check their testosterone
when they're twenty or thirty, so you still may be
in the normal range. But your normal I'm making a

(13:45):
random person ut here. Your normal maybe eight hundred and
fifty and now you're four to fifty, So for your body,
it's a dramatic change and that affects sleep cycles and everything.
So that's that's why sleep in our forties becomes more difficult.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
That is fascinating. I don't think I've ever heard both
those explanations for it in that way. So what do
we do about it? Because I know so many people,
so many friends that are going through exactly what you're saying.
Their sleep is started to decline, they wake up more
often in the middle of the night, they find it
harder to go back to sleep. What changes do they

(14:21):
need to make? Because if sleep is the pillar of
everything that we're about to talk about, I think it's
really important that we help people figure that out.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
I totally agree with you because there was a time
in my life when I didn't sleep in graduate school
and then I had a baby, and then I was
in residency, and it frightens me how much sleep I lost.
Because we know now it's so critical for longevity in biology.
But the things I'm about to say to you are
not rocket science, and yet I find there heard for

(14:53):
people to get in a habit of doing science shows
us we must go to bed and wa up at
the same time to set our daily clock. You know,
during the night we build up a protein called adenazine.
We wake up and it's at our highest we try
to see the sun unless it's the dead of winter,

(15:15):
and to start our day. But if we have uneven
sleep schedules, then that clock is off. So protecting your
go to bedtime and protecting your waking up time. So
for instance, I live on the East Coast, we're on
the West Coast. I have stayed on East Coast time, and.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
That happens to me when I come there.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
You will do that, yes, and then you're not exhausted
or jet lagged. It's a little weird if you have
to do business or go out. But if I'm having
a party at my house, I'm like, see yourselves out, guys,
you have fun. I'm going to bed. It's nine thirty,
so for our house it's nine thirty to five. Like
clockwork number one, number two. I am not a holder

(15:58):
to intermitt and fasting. But what I am a holder
to is time restricted, meaning I'm going to eat as
early as possible so that by nine point thirty everything
is out of my digestionis system. I am spending no
energy and that helps us sleep better. Number three, I
always say, don't throw rocks at me. But in midlife,
especially for midlife women, alcohol is a total sleep destructor.

(16:21):
Because when we're young, we think, oh, of course it
makes me sleep better. What it does is it makes
us pass out. But if you're tracking your sleep, you'll
see that you're not entering into the really deep sleep levels.
And this is being talked about a lot lately, except
I don't see people adjusting to it. I mean when
I find that when I work with my longevity patients,

(16:42):
they're willing to do almost anything except give up the
glass or two or four of wine at dinner because
it's so cultural, it's so almost like a ritual, and
people come to believe that they need that to relax,
when in fact it inhibits their sleep. So timing of sleep.

(17:03):
We talked about not eating three hours, We've talked about alcohol,
and then you know something, I do something that's very
helpful as I take my magnesium, which is a supplement
that I think most people need, especially for bones, at night.
I also suggest that women, if they're taking progesterone, take

(17:24):
it at night, and then all the other lifestyle things
blue glasses, turn off your phones, which I find hard
to do personally, but those are all legitimate ways to
help regulate. And then as things as silly as if
you find you're waking up at three point thirty seven
every morning like clockwork. You know what the clock is
going to say. That may be your blood sugar. And

(17:47):
I know it's my blood sugar because I often wear
a continuous glucose monitor. So if you eat a little
bit of protein right before bed, just a titch, not
a meal, not enough to disrupt this other advice I've
given you, that will make your sugar not dip so low,
and your liver will not and your body will not
wake you up, because your body wakes you up. I

(18:08):
know because I wear a CGM. When I wake up
that way, my blood sugar is fifty or forty and
my body's just trying to save my life.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
And what do you want it to be when you
wake up?

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Well, a fasting blood glucose should be eighty five or lower.
That is the level that we should all strive for,
not one hundred, not one hundred and ten, which many
people walk around within midlife. Eighty five.

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(20:00):
about people struggling with falling asleep and waking up at
the same time, you're a mother, I am. You've we
were talking about your wonderful daughter earlier and other children.
And when you look at that and you look at
that time in your life when you were staying up
and taking care of your kids and having erratic wake
up and sleep times, how do you get that back?

(20:22):
Can you get that back? Or is that just a
period that you write off and accept that I.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Lost that sleep? You know, I don't believe there's any
research that shows that I can restock eleven years of
not sleeping. But my obligation to myself now is to
start today. We can reverse the hands of time by
the lifestyle we do today. I can become biologically younger,
but I don't honestly think that I can get back

(20:48):
eleven years of sleep. But if we continue in those habits,
we just perpetuate the badness, right.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
What can we do during those years for the women
that listening, the parents that are listening, what can you
do during those years where that piece of advice is
going to be impossible to follow naturally? What can they
do to cushion that impact well?

Speaker 2 (21:08):
And this is so pertinent. I live through it. I
have daughters who are having children. Now. Simple things like
children can be scheduled. They will learn to go to
bed at a certain time and wake up at a
certain time. Not newborn infants, but once they get big
enough about three months, six months, depending how big they are,

(21:29):
they can learn as schedule. So let's schedule them. They
might wake up in the middle of the night, it
always happens, but if there's no schedule, children feel a
little insecure and will wake up more. So that's number one.
Number two, give yourself the grace. I want to talk
to all young parents. Give yourself the grace that when

(21:49):
your child goes down for a nap. Young children less
than three years old usually have two naps to day.
Give yourself the grace that the minute they go to sleep,
you don't have to go clean the house or get
on email, and lay down and sleep too. Just collect
sleep right, and then all the other habits. You know,
if you may feel like you need a glass of

(22:12):
wine to relax, that's just going to disrupt your sleep more. So,
those are simple things. I think the biggest thing that
I just said, as young parents, please give yourselves the grace.
It's an imperfect time in your life. You can't be
in control of everything, and your child is not going
to break. Children are so resilient. So as an old mother,

(22:35):
I'm saying that to the young mothers, there's no perfect way.
The young parents, there's no perfect way, but have the
grace to take the rest, lead the dishes in the sink.
Do not think that everything has to be perfect in
that really chaotic time in your life.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah. I think one of the things that is really
challenging people right now is our coltis are levels are
so high. We think of or we've trained ourselves to
believe that certain things help us rest and decompress, but
as you're saying with alcohol, they don't really. And I
think the SAME's true for watching something. And I used

(23:15):
to always feel like, Okay, well I can stay up
because I want to watch my favorite show, But actually
that decompression that I get from watching a show versus
if I change that for sleep, the sleep would have
been far more relaxing and rejuvenating. So say, I finish
all my daily chores and everything that I have to
do at ten pm. If I had the choice to

(23:35):
get into bed at ten and fall asleep or watch
a show for an hour and a half or an
hour or whatever it is, it'll be better for me
to go to sleep. But we've trained ourselves to believe, no,
the drink or the show will make me feel better.
How do we kind of deal with that emotional feeling
that makes us say, well, the show and the glass
of wine is better versus like, no, this rest is

(23:57):
actually going to do more work than any of that good.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think rituals is, which is what you're talking about.
You have a ritual of relaxing with wine, a ritual
of watching a show. I think rituals in life are
actually helpful. The bedtime ritual cannot be stimulating, right. It
doesn't mean that you can't watch twenty minutes of something
that's relaxing, but please do not overstimulate your brain with

(24:23):
some murder mystery or some you know, I don't even
know the shows where people shoot each other. Right, that's
not going to relax your nervous system, right, we want
so the ritual of slowing down, maybe some rom com
or something non stressful, or some something with beautiful music.
It's okay to have a ritual of drinking something, but

(24:44):
I find hot tea or something soothing. The ritual then
will help you train your body to go to sleep.
But the ritual can't be stimulating, is self defeating. Yeah,
and I'm sorry. Because of streaming, the show will be
there tomorrow. It's not like it's the only time you'll
have it available. Yeah, it's not like it used to be.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Absolutely And what's alcohol actually doing? Why is it disrupting
our sleep? Why is it that we can't get deep
sleep with alcohol? What's actually going on? You know?

Speaker 2 (25:13):
And I'm not a sleep expert, but I think it
changes the way we enter into rem sleep. It changes
the depth of us being able to descend into the
deeper and at a molecular level. I don't know. But
what I do know from having reading enough and watching
my own I don't want to say brands out loud,
but watching my own device, I can see that. And

(25:36):
I don't drink anymore actually, but I used to see
how I just would never end into up in deeper sleep.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, I know, definitely. I think it's really fascinating to
hear that. What's the we're talking about this powerful decade
of thirty five forty five, what's happening to our bones
and muscles? Yes, during that time, if we do nothing, well.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
If we sit around and do nothing, then most of
us in this country live in relative energy excess. Right.
It's not that we're in DT relative energy deficiency, which
is its own set of problems, but excess. So are
with excess and sedentary living, our body has to get
rid of the glucose we consume. So in our bodies,

(26:21):
whether we're eating protein or fat or carbohydrates, it's all
used for fuel. And when we overfuel, it's going to accumulate,
so we're going to gain weight as fat. And I
want to distinguish that for all of us, that weight

(26:43):
is not the measure for me. It's body composition, because
it's I once was invited to fashion weight and I
was a fish out of water. But one of the
things I observed is that there were very very thin
women who if I put them in a body composition
machine probably had very very low muscle mass, so it's

(27:08):
very possible to look thin but be mostly fat, which
is metabolically unfavorable. So imagine what happens if we're actually
visualizing that at a post tissue and you know, as
we age, there is a syndrome called sarcobesity, which means
we have too much out of post tissue and too

(27:28):
little muscle. So if we're in relative energy excess, we're
going to accumulate that unhealthy metabolic tissue and not make
enough muscle. I'm going to tell you, I mean, I'm
a surgeon, right. Our bodies with energy excess, they're like scrambling.
The closets full, the cupboards are full. Where are we

(27:49):
going to put this fat? I find it in the
shoulder joint, which is not supposed to have that much fat.
I find it infiltrating muscle as I'm operating, because our
body is just trying to stick it places because there's
just too much of it. That's what happens, especially because
many many jobs now are sedentary jobs. They're brain jobs,

(28:10):
they're not laborish jobs. We're actually getting up and using
our bodies, which frankly, is what we're designed for. We
are designed to move, so it's kind of against nature
to sit around all day, but that's what happens.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, and that's so scary to hear. Yeah, because, as
you said, the older we get, the heart it will
be to lose.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
But here's the good news. Yeah, you can totally reverse that.
But I hate the reason I pointed out weight is
because the words we use are I'm going to lose weight.
I never say that. I say we're going to recompose
your body. We are going to build muscle, and in
doing so, we will replace muscle with fat. Muscle weighs

(28:53):
more than fat for per volume, and so your weight
may not change, but your composition will be vastly different
and therefore your metabolism.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah. I've been working on that consistently, probably just for
the last six months. Yes, and I saw drastic shifts
in my skeletal muscle mass. My weight practically stayed the
same exactly, but my body composition is what was changing.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
And doesn't it feel and look different.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
It feels and looks different completely. But it was fascinating
to me, and it was exactly what you were saying.
It was weight training, eating more protein in my diet,
cutting out sugars, and it was simple changes, but it
was incredible to see how it looked different on paper.
It felt different, it looked different in real life, but

(29:41):
my weight was exactly the.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Same, exactly right, and it doesn't take that long.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
What would you say if someone says, I want to
change my body composition? If someone said to you, I
want to lose weight in their words, in your words,
change the body composition. I want to lose weight. What
is the best, healthiest, quickest way I can do it?

Speaker 2 (30:00):
I work mainly with midlife people forty to sixty five,
and in midlife people, here's the secret, sauce. We are
going to lift heavy. We're going to stop doing the
youthful twenty reps fifteen reps of a weight we are
going to do for women, my recipe is four reps,

(30:22):
four sets. For men, it can be eight reps four sets.
But what does that mean? Of the four compound lifts?
A push pull with the upper body, so bench press,
pull ups or some pull right, that's the upper body
compound motions, meaning in simple words, that we use multiple

(30:42):
muscles across multiple joints for the leg. I gets squats
and deadlifts four reps four sets at least twice a week,
better four if we can fit it in, but I'll
take two if we can't do four, and then we
augment those with supportive lifts. So for a bench press
for reps four sets heavy weights, the supplemental lifts are biceps, triceps,

(31:07):
led your cosmetic muscles that we see consistently doing that
number one. Number two, you have to feed that muscle
built with protein, right it's all that everybody's talking about
it right now. It's the truth. Great research has shown
that even and I don't suggest this, but even a
higher protein diet alone will help your body build muscle

(31:27):
mass even without lifting. I don't suggest it, but that's
what the data show. Here. Here is something that is
the recomposer. So you're lifting, you're feeding, and you're sprinting
and sprinting I know, right, Sprinting does not mean you're
running down a track like you sain Bolt. Sprinting is

(31:49):
a heart rate function. So I like people to do
their cardio really in three ways, but it's layered on
number one. Eighty percent of the time we're spending in
low heart rate based training. This is based on endurance
athlete data from an ego, San Martino, who has a
lab in my building. That's why I use this method,

(32:11):
but low heart rate. Eighty percent of the time. Twice
a week we sprint, which means we're getting our heart
rate up as fast as it can go. Now, I
happen to do mine on a treadmill and I'm running
as fast as I can without falling off the back.
But you could do it on a rower, you could
do it on an elliptical, you could do it on
one of those alpine machines, or on the road running

(32:32):
up these hills here. It doesn't matter. But you are
leaving nothing in the tank. That is different than high
intensity interval training when you're going at seventy five to
eighty five, and that's when a lot of people get
hurt and have to come to the orthopedic surgeon because
they do that five days a week. What I'm asking
you to do is do strategic stress as high heart

(32:54):
rate as your heart or your cardiologists will let you
go twice a week. It is that stimulus coupled with
heavy lifting, coupled with feeding that's going to recompose your body. Well.
I've seen it time and time and again.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Why is it that the high intensity interval training is
not having the desired result.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
It is too intense to truly be restorative, to truly
that the base training to truly which is about sixty
sixty five of your maximum heart rate, to truly be restorative,
to truly allow your mitochondria, which are the energy of
organelles in your body, to become efficient to use all
the food substrates. But it is not stressful enough to

(33:39):
really stimulate your body, especially for women in midlife who
have lost their estrogen by and large, or for men
whose testosteroni is You need that kind of stimulus for
your body to think, oh my god, I really need
to lay on some muscle and change my body composition
and listen. I used to do high intensity interval training
every day because I get bored and I'm like, I'm

(34:01):
just gonna sprint this out. But it wasn't at the
top of my heart rate. It was just below it.
This is what happens. You do that five days a week,
you develop muscle imbalances, you get hurt, You come to
your orthopedic surgeon. They say rest, which I actually don't
believe in I believe in active recovery for three weeks. Well,

(34:22):
your brain gets angry at you because it's used to
the daily dopamine hit and it's just a miserable way
to cycle in and out of injury. So this eighty
twenty method is not only backed up by great scientists,
but I've seen it in me. I've seen it in
the people I take care of it. It is the
key to recomposition. So we've got the eighty percent low

(34:46):
heart rate, we've got the twenty percent sprinting. When you've
got that down and it's your lifestyle, then what I
would love for people to do is work on their
VO two max.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Told me about that max is.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
The absolute measure of your fitness. It's oxygen. How your
oxygen is diffusing from your blood to your lungs, and
your heart's using it right. VO two max unaided, unsupplemented
will decline ten percent per decade as we age. We
just get less efficient. Yes, our stroke volume, which is

(35:24):
how much blood your heart pumps out x releases per pump,
the diffusion across your lungs. It all declines with age
unless you work on it. But why is that important?
You're like, oh, God, my votwo max. Why is that important?
Here's why it's important. There is a line called the
fragility line, the frailty line, after which you can no

(35:47):
longer take care of yourself, which none of us it's
hard to fathom now in midlife or in use, but
many seventy eighty ninety year olds get to it and
what it means with the voto max less than eighteen
for the man, less than sixteen for the woman, which
is the frailtea line, you can't take care of yourself.

(36:07):
You're gonna have to move out of this house, or
move in with your children, or God forbid, move to
a nursing home. Because if you can't get up from
a chair, you can't take care of yourself. So here's
how it goes. I usually give people my example just
so the numbers mean something. So when I was fifty,
I did the last time I did my VO two max,
and it hurts, so people don't like to do it

(36:28):
very often. But my votwo max is forty five. If
I did nothing by the time I was sixty, using
round numbers, it would be forty at seventy, it would
be thirty five at eighty it would be thirty ninety
twenty five. At no point in my life will I
cross the frailtea line. So we got to work on

(36:50):
that because you can increase your VO two max. So
you never reached that frailty. So how do you do
it? It's a different kind of working out. So sprinting, you
sprint for thirty seconds and then you completely recover four times.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Right in between.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Way you just you just get off the treadmill and
you rest, you recover, your heart rate comes back down.
Takes me a couple minutes, two or three minutes. For
VO two max training, it's four minutes as hard as
you can go, so it's slower than your sprint, but
it's still full out for four minutes, and then you
only recover for four minutes and then you do it again,

(37:31):
so twice three times. So it's very stressful, but that's
what will build your VO two max. So it seems
like a lot to say it all at once, but
once you layer it on, you do VO two max
once a week. J Yeah, I just do it on Mondays.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
How did we evolve to need that kind of training
because it seems so specific and mathematical and.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Well it's specific and mathematical because some brilliant peace has
figured out that this is how you do it. But
I think that historically, when we had to hunt our food,
not being able to get up out of a chair
is a bad thing for hunter gatherers, right, and so
I think we would just get it in our lifestyle.

(38:18):
We would be walking all day to forage. We would
be stalking something and then we're sprinting to go catch it, right.
I think it's the way we lived, Yeah, and we're
don't live that way, So now we have to have
this formula.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
That's interesting. Yeah, No, that's what I was trying to place.
I was like, that's so fascinating that this foreman is
formanutes off and when you hear about these things, you
go go, how did humans get there? That's kind of
where my mind goes.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, but it's the way a lioness hunts. Yeah, if
we do an analogy to a hunter, lioness will stalk
their prey for a very long time and then they rush.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah. Yeah, well I never thought about that, but it
makes a lot of sense and not running after our
food but.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Not most days.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, for the people that are going to be mad
if I don't ask this question, Okay, how do we
lose that stubborn belly fat?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Number one, Let's give ourselves some grace that this is
the way the human body is. Any person who's had
a child is going to be transformed, and that is
that is just the way it is, right, don't crucify yourself.
That being said, if we're living in a time of

(39:30):
excess energy all the time, the way that I've described
for you the high intensity interval, let's clarify that the
sprint intervals plus the weight lifting is what's going to
transform your body. And you may never get rid of
that extra little inch, but you'll get rid of most

(39:52):
of it. You'll get rid of the back fat, you'll
get rid of the heavy hips people don't like, and
you will decrease. Visceral fat, the fat that is inside
smothering your organs, will decrease. And that's what we really want. Right.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
What's the difference between the good fat and the bad
fat around our belly? Because I feel like we don't
know the difference.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
The peripheral fat is that which you can pinch, whether
it's on your hips or in your belly, around your
belly button, that's not the fat that's going to really
kill you. That's the annoying fat. That fat does make
a protein called leptin, which is bad for your metabolism,
It is bad for your bones. But it is the
visceral fat, the fat that you can only see on

(40:38):
a body composition or an MRI. That literally, we've got
this apron in our body. Under our skin. Under there's
a layer called fasci. It's white like you would see
on a steak. It's an apron of fat over our organs.
It's a protective well that gets thicker and then fat

(40:58):
is deposited around our organs. And that fat, the visceral fat,
is metabolically different than the preferle that you can pinch,
and it's that visceral fat that is what causes chronic
inflammation that leads to disease. So yes, cosmetically we want
get to get rid of the peripheral fat, but metabolically

(41:18):
we got to control the deep visceral fat.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
You've worked with so many athletes, and I just want
to I want to kind of go in front a
tangent before we come back. But I wonder with the
athletes you've worked with and to your earlier comments around
models and being at fashion Week, I was going to
ask you which sport do you find the actually healthiest
people in versus just fittest, or what is the difference

(41:46):
in How.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Do you see something about that? Yeah, I'll give you
three examples, and I'll tell you why. I think soccer
players have the best cardiovascular machine because on average, a
high level soccer player will run six to ten miles
on the pitch over the course of the ninety minutes
at different speeds. Right, maybe they're jogging up the pitch

(42:07):
and then they're sprinting, right, So they're getting it all in.
And usually they're muscular people, but they look more like
runners than people who lift weights, even though I know
they do right. So that's one group. The other group
that I've had the privilege of taking care of that
I think get it all in are rugby players. They're
running up their pitch, they're sprinting, but they have to

(42:30):
be full of muscle because if you've seen both male
and female rugby players, they are physically lifting each other
up as they have. No one's seen rugby, they're not
going to know what I'm talking about, but you know, Yeah,
so they lift each other up to catch the ball
in the air. That takes tremendous strength, not to mention rucking,

(42:51):
and I mean just the engagement they do.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, I played rugby growing up at BIT.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
I love rugby so much. They're just pent ultimate the
other group of athletes, but I think are tremendous both
in cardiovascular and muscle. Believe it or not, I've taken
through care of three professional ballet companies. The Pittsburgh, the Atlanta,
the Orlando Ballet Dancers are some of the best athletes
I've ever taken care of, and they do it such grace.

(43:16):
You would never know how hard it is. But it's
aerobic and it's muscular.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
What are the sports where you see the least healthy,
least fit, Well.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
You know, I think at an elite level, all athletes
are healthy because do not be fooled by the field athletes,
the shot putters, the discus, the javelin. You may think
that they're not fit because they're carrying extra body fat,
but they are tremendous specimens right, so body morphology can't
predict it. Gosh, I'll get in a lot of trouble

(43:47):
for this. I was once twice the head football doctor
for Division I schools at Pittsburgh and Georgia State, and
linemen are not always the most healthy people. They're strong,
carrying a lot of extra weight, and that bears out because,
on average is the sad statistics. On average a professional

(44:09):
football linemen, offensive or defensive, they die of metabolic syndrome
in their fifties and sixties. They turn out not to
be that healthy, and so I feel like as a
sports medicine community, we need to do better for them.
But to answer your question, maybe it's.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
That yeah, yeah, No, I was just intrigued and curious
because I think we have a vision of what we
think fitness and health looks like, and like you said,
often we think people are the leanist, or people are
the skinniest, or people who are the most built, or
whatever it may be. And I think that's partly our

(44:45):
challenge when we talk about these things, because most of
us are wanting to get healthy, either from an esthetic
point of view, you want your summer body, you want
your whatever it may be. And then from the other side,
there's this feeling from some of us who are just
like I just want to be healthy. I want to
be fit enough to take care of my kids. I
want to be healthy enough so that I can spend
time my grandkids. How should someone measure their fitness and

(45:09):
health right now? If they're listening, because a lot of
people will say, especially when they're younger or on the
younger side, they'll say, well, I feel okay, So how
do I know if I'm okay? Safe, unhealthy? Like what
do how do I feel that or experience that?

Speaker 2 (45:25):
You know what? I love that you said okay, because
I find a lot of people come to me or
maybe you're asking someone the street, how are you? I'm fine?
You know that fine? I think many people because we're
so busy, we're taking care of other people. I'm not
blaming them, but we live in this state of fine.
We learned either hot nor cold where this lukewarm health.

(45:48):
We're not dying, but we are not truly optimized. Right.
So if you're exhausted, if you have trouble sleeping, if
you don't have enough energy to do the things that
you truly believe that you enjoy in life, maybe you're fine.
Maybe we should invest some time and actually get some analytics.

(46:08):
You know, sometimes when I'm bringing people to surgery in
the preoperative time, we're asking them questions about their health
and do you have this, do you have that? And
people will say I have no health problems. Well, if
you've never been checked, if you've never had labs drawn,
if you've never been examined, it's not that you're not
that you have no problems that you don't know. So

(46:30):
I would answer that question by saying, if you don't
have enough energy, if you're dragging at work, if you
can't truly enjoy life, if you don't some days feel
like a total badass because you're full of energy and strong,
and maybe you're fine, but you're not optimized, and let's
invest some time and see where you are.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
What's the ideal length of work out if someone's working
out four days a week.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
I don't think there's an ideal length. You know, some
days my weightlifting takes me thirty minute. That's because I
power through it, and sometimes it takes an hour. I
think ideally, if we're talking about this cardio eighty twenty regiment,
it's forty five minutes of base training, and if you're
adding sprinting, that usually takes another fifteen minutes, So weightlifting

(47:16):
can take I don't think you have to be there
three hours unless you just want to hang out in
the gym, So it doesn't take forever. And it's not
about time, it's about what you put in that time.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, because I think a lot of people are feeling
like I only have twenty minutes a day?

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Is that true?

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Is that enough?

Speaker 2 (47:31):
Is that true?

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Do you tell me?

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Do we only have twenty minutes a day? I've been
doing this a very long time, and I tease people
that you can't out excuse me because over the I've
been practicing twenty five years and I've had the privilege
of taking care of probably one hundred thousand people. I
have heard all the excuses, and there are sometimes when

(47:54):
you legitimately do not have time. But I would say
that is the fraction of the time time, not the
reality of the time. And to the I don't have
twenty minutes, I ask you to examine how literally, and
I'm guilty of this, how long we're scrolling, how long

(48:14):
we're washing our dishes. Do you really have to spend
three hours every night cleaning your house because that's what
makes you feel not anxious at the expense of your health.
So I think you have more than twenty minutes. If
that's what you tell.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Me, it is so interesting. I was looking at it
from the point of view of relationships. I was looking
at some research that was talking about how, you know,
we say we don't have it time together, but the
amount of time as a couple we spend in front
of the TV is astronomical. It's like, I think it's
something like nineteen minutes a day minimum, and we're missing
on together time, We're missing out on connection time. And

(48:51):
I was looking at it from a purely romantic, intimate perspective.
But then when you look at it through health, and
I think for a lot of us, what I've found
it is is allowing our friendships and our romantic relationships
to be around fitness. I remember a friend, a couple
of my friends in the city. We've decided that whenever
we're hanging out together, we're playing pickleball for one and

(49:13):
a half hours, two hours, and we may go out
for dinner after that, but we're playing pickleball for a
consistent amount of time. We're all getting a workout, or
we're going on a hike, and that's not become our
form of bonding and friendship rather than oh, let's go
out for dinner, and the dinner was great, we got
to enjoy it. But now we're sedentary. We're sitting there
for a couple of hours. Maybe some people I don't

(49:35):
drink and most a few of my friends don't drink,
but the ones who are, they're now drinking. Whereas if
we're out playing sports, they wouldn't be thinking about that.
And same with me and my wife. We found that
cold plunging together or going to the infrared sauna together,
taking a book or taking our journal or whatever it
may be. We had to start replacing activities because you
may not have enough time to do it all. But

(49:57):
the main form of connection can be around a fitness
activity and actually you both end up feeling better about yourselves,
you feel better about each other. And whether it's a
friend or a partner, I feel like everyone walks away
from that experience having gained something rather than you know,
doing anything else. And so in the beginning, it may
take a reframe, but it transforms your relationships and it

(50:21):
transforms your health.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
And if you're just beginning a relationship or a friendship
or even deep into it, the endorphins that you're released
from the strategic stress actually increase bonding. So it's like
a triple goodness. It's fitness, it's relationship that's increased bonding
at as a chemical level.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Yeah, yeah, explain tell me what tell us more about that.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
When you exercise, our body releases hormones that are endorphins.
It's that high you feel and having that shared experience.
Or what if you're doing something like rock climbing and
it's a little terrifying, and the oxy tocin and the
bonding chemicals that are released because you're terrified in this experience,

(51:05):
those actually bond people.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
You know.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
That's why people that go through hard experiences together end
up as a band of brothers or a or a
tight knit group. So that can happen in relationship. So
advice out there if you if you want to bond
with this person, do something frightening with them.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Yeah, I know. I I completely agree with that. One
of my first dates that I went on with my
wife when we were dating was we went to a
ropes course. Oh my goodness, and it was so much
fun because there was like trusting each other, helping each other,
and there was that sense of thrill and I couldn't
agree more that. I think when you do. I remember
the first time me and my wife when skydiving, we

(51:44):
did it together. The first time we cold plunged, we
did it together. And you're so right. It creates a
different connection when you've both done something hard together. And
also something that's I think as couples we do people
have to go through so many emotional hardships together. It's
nice to do something physically together exact that isn't carrying
this emotional weight or stress, because that's something you probably

(52:05):
have on in the background anyway, and so this applies
for that. Yeah. I think if you're someone that struggles
with finding time, think about the way you spend time
with the people you love. And maybe you don't have
an extra twenty minutes or thirty minutes, but you can
change the thirty minutes you spend with your friend, or
you don't have an extra hour, but you can change
the way you spend the hour with your partner, and

(52:27):
all of a sudden, everything's changing.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
It's meaningful.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's meaningful. Yeah, it's meaningful, and like you said, it's
giving us so many other benefits. You mentioned magnesium earlier,
I did, and we were talking about the need for
stronger bones. Yes, what can we do to strengthen our bones,
because I don't think that's a conversation that we're having
that you know what, I am gonna.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
I'm so glad you came back to that, because we
think of bones as just like the strong, silent type
hanging out holding up our muscles. They don't say so much.
That's right, don't pay attention to our bones. But the
fact of the matter is that without bones, muscle, which
we're all enamored with right now, it's just a quivering

(53:08):
pile of metabolic tissue. The structure of you. The fact
that people recognize you, it's because your bones are holding
up your soft tissue, right, And I love to bear
with me. I like to think about the importance of
bones as even culturally, I mean Halloween in this country,
you view bones as this scary death object. But bones

(53:31):
are living. They replace every ten years. They are the
source of all the minerals that your body needs. They
are the housing of our internal organs. They are where
our immune system is made, our humatopoetic system is made
in our bones. Our bones are master communicators, releasing many proteins,

(53:53):
including one called osteocalcin. Osteochalson from the bones can go
to the brain and cause release of brain neurotrophic factor
which builds neurons. It can go to the pancrease and
the muscles and help you with sugar levels, and for
men it goes to the testicles and helps produce testosterone.

(54:17):
So just when we think bones are kind of boring,
bones are amazing. But even culturally, many cultures Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism,
many Eastern cultures talk about the reanimation of bones. Bones

(54:38):
are are thought to house the soul in some cultures,
and so it's only here that we're like, oh, skeletons,
and you know what, when we die, everything goes away
except the bones. It's the last record of ourselves. Right, So,
how do we build better bones? And that's why we
need better bones right.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
To that's click for me.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
That's all those reasons are why. But how how we
build better bones? Let's talk Nutritionally, bones are fifty percent protein.
It goes back to the same principles. We're not adding
on more principles, We're just can we please pay attention
to eating protein? Can we eat a non inflammatory diet?
So we're not eating seed, oils and fried foods and

(55:22):
those things with make gus hot red fire inside. Can
we please make sure we're getting enough vitamin D? Even
in sunny places we slather ourselves, we stay inside. We
need vitamin D. We need magnesium, A lot of trace
minial minerals like selenium and boron and zinc. We get

(55:43):
those in our food. If you really want to be conscientious,
you eat six prunes a day. But nutritionally, that's how
we take care of our bones. Our bones must have impact.
One of the early studies I did on active aging
ask the question can we maintain our bone density? And
if we can, what does it take? And I studied

(56:04):
masters athletes forty and over and I found that number one, Yes,
we can maintain our bone density into our eighties. How
do we do it? Impact exercise, So I add to
every regiment that I've already told you most of it, right,
the lifting, the aerobic, the nutrition. I add to every
regiment a jumping practice, whether it's box jumping for impact,

(56:28):
whether it's jumping up and down twenty times a day,
whether it's ten minutes three times a week where we're
jumping over little hurdles or in a plastic hexagon. It
is the impact, because this is how bones work. There's
a law called Wolf's law that just summarizes that the
mechanical stimulation, biomechanical stimulation is translated by our little bone

(56:55):
cells osteo sites into biochemical messages. Biomechanical stimuli like jumping
up and down is translated into biochemical stimulus that tells
the bone building cells, which are the osteoblasts, to build
more bone. So literally, get out the jump rope, jump
up and down, run up and down the stairs, and

(57:17):
it has to be a little impactful. Literally, you gotta
bash your bones a little bit. That's how you build
better bones.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Is that why functional exercises like squats and stairs and
things like that are somewhat better than machine exercises inside gyms.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
I prefer functional with free weights and bar bells because
it requires then you work all of your muscles, and
it requires neuromuscular pathways to keep you upright right. It
requires balance versus a machine. You're sitting there on a
leg press and frankly, we need to work our muscles

(57:52):
in the way that our body works our muscles. And
there is no time in the history of people that
your quadrceps are working sitting on a leg press. They're
always squatting, right.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, Yeah, that's the more natural movement it is. Yeah,
So as much as your workouts are mimicking natural, natural movements,
that's a healthy exercise.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
You know, even bench press. Think about it. I've been
traveling a lot lately. I need to lift a fifty
pound suitcase above my head into the bin without falling
over hitting somebody with it. Yeah, and so you practice
that with bench pressing and overhead lifts.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Yeah. You spoke about neural pathways there, and I know
you took a lot about the body brain connection. What
are we losing out? Because if you look at when
we're talking about aging, brain aging is such a big
part of it.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Yeah, war and frightening.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
And frightening, very frightening. I mean, I've had so many
countless family members, mentors, family friends who've had Alzheimer's, dementia,
stage four brain cancer. It's painful to watch the people
you love go through it. What is happening? What is
that body brain connection? What are we losing out in

(59:03):
the brain when we're not doing the things we've talked about, you.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Know, loss of cognitive function, is multifactorial. Dementia is different
than pure Alzheimer's with the plaques that accumulate. But we
know for sure, and there's just so much research that
we can maintain our brain with the physical activity we do.

(59:26):
I mean, for instance, I talked about the role of
bone releasing osteocalcin, which goes to the brain. There is
another protein that is stimulated to be it's called transcribed.
When DNA makes a protein when skeletal muscle contracts. It
also causes the transcription of a protein called CLOTHO, which

(59:47):
is the longevity protein. Part of clotho's role is to
go to the brain and stimulate neuron development. So there
are studies out of the University of Pittsburgh that showed
a six week walking program will grow the hippocampus, which
is the memory part of the brain, in double digits.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
You know, I don't know the mechanism that's worked out,
but I think at a very basic level, I mean,
we'll go back to the hunting analogy. That kind of
that kind of strategic stress on the body tells our
body that we're still living. We're not curled up in
a ball in some cave waiting on winter to die.
We are active, we have enough strategic stress that we

(01:00:30):
have to maintain because our body is so highly conserved
that if our body doesn't think we're using something, we'll
lose it. It will start resorbing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Like bone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
If I put a cast on your leg, you will
resorb the bone in your leg. Yeah, so I think
the brain is the same way. So back to what
maintains a brain. Well, muscle releases a protein that maintains
the brain. Bone releases a protein that maintains the brain. Right,
fascinat isn't that fascinating?

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Fascinating?

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Food has a role. But when we think of midlife,
we have to start talking about hormones, and the work
of Lisa Mosconi, who is at Cornell in New York,
has shown that in women and probably in men, but
her work is in women. The brain is covered in
estrogen receptors, so as we lose our estrogen, it affects

(01:01:24):
the brain. That's why we When I was going through perimenopause,
there was a short period of time when I wasn't
on hormones yet I'm in surgery and I know that
I want the thing that does this, but I could
not remember that it was called an atsent think how
frightening that is, you know, for a brain person like me.
I use my brain to help people make a living.

(01:01:46):
That was my estrogen receptors being totally empty. But once
I replaced my estrogen, my brain is a black box again,
you know. Isn't that frightening? But so I think it's
multifactorial when we lose it. But I also think that
all the lifestyle things we've talked about have proven out
in studies to be able to make a real impact
on our cognitive function.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Yeah. I think a really big thing about for me
and all of this as I'm hearing from you, is
just what you said earlier about how little we know
about our bodies, about ourselves, and how we base it
on just how we feel, which isn't the healthiest check.
It's almost like you're driving your car and it feels fine,
but there's so much going on behind the scenes that
if you didn't take it to the garage and get

(01:02:28):
it checked, you wouldn't know. And it was one of
the reasons I recently invested in function health because I
just wanted to find a way to make access to
information so much more easy for people. Yes, and just
having access to those lab results and those lab tests
so that you can actually go to your doctor and say, hey,

(01:02:49):
this came up, what does this look like? Or I
don't understand this or what about this? And I think
that's what's helped me so much. You were just with
Darsha and doctor Shah who's been my doctor, and I
find that he's able to flagged to me so many
things early on, which means we can deal with it
as opposed to end up in a position where it's
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Child or harder to reverse. I also find in myself
and the people I care for that become a little
addicted to our data, which is a good thing, right,
become a little competitive with myself when I'm wearing my
glucose monitor. Can I keep my glucose at eighty or
below versus it shoots up to one hundred and something

(01:03:28):
because I've eaten something disastrous and I don't want that, right,
So you can't change what you don't know. So I
think data is amazing for that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Yeah, I think we're living in that time as well,
where it's more specific. It's not just oh how many
steps did I do or whatever? R It's so much
more specific and You're so right that the only way
to hold ourselves accountable is to see the change. So,
like you said, if I eat this, I remember I
was eating. I was testing it out when I was
wearing mine. I don't wear it now, but I was

(01:03:56):
testing it for like three months and I was eating
what was claiming to be I was in the UK.
It was claiming to be a low sugar cereal that
was you know which which on the box looked like
you should have been fine. I don't eat cereal that often,
but I do when I travel because it's sometimes harder

(01:04:16):
to find something. I had this low sugar, low fat
CEI or whatever it was, my glucose spike.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
It was a lie.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
It was crazy. Well it's probably because it was rice based,
but yeah, either way, it was just like crazy spike.
And I thought, oh wow, like I would have thought
eating that every day would have done nothing to me.
And just you don't know what have been some of
the data points that have really helped you to make
changes in your life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Well, I've talked several times about this CGM, but I
think to your point, I think everyone should do it
for three months. They're not that expensive, but they're so
critical and it helps people really understand the effect of
food on them because from wearing mine and I got
I wore it for a year because I was just
so fascinated. I I know exactly when my blood sugar

(01:05:01):
is going to rise by what I do. My blood
sugar rises in surgery because it's stressful. Of course, I
am so sensitive to carbs. I try to eat only
fibrous carbs, complex carbs, but even that, I'm very sensitive too,
and I literally am a little crazed about it. I
never want to spike, although spiking and recovering is normal.

(01:05:22):
I just don't like how I feel when I'm like this,
so I like to be like this. But I'm very
sensitive to carbs, so I eat mostly protein green leafy vegetables.
I personally, because of my sensitivity, don't eat a lot
of fruit because it's nature's sugar. For some people, it
wouldn't matter for them. That's how I know that. In

(01:05:43):
the middle of the night, if I wake up, my
blood sugars fifty and I needed to supplement a little
bit so I don't drop that low. I want to
say something now about because I definitely want to talk
about this is sometimes people will find oh they're blood sugars.
Oh it's one hundred, it's one hundred and ten. It's fine.
Or their doctors may say to them, oh, you know what,

(01:06:06):
you're a little borderline. You're one hundred and ten. Just
do better. That is not warning enough in my mind,
because you would ask me earlier, what do I want
my blood sugar to be? I want it to be
eighty five or below, because studies have shown that for
every point above eighty five that you are, your fasting
blood sugar is consistently that is a six percent chance

(01:06:28):
of developing full blown diabetes melodis type two in ten years.
So if eighty five is what we want and one
hundred is what you are, fifteen times six is one
hundred percent chance of getting diabetes if you don't change.
Diabetes is a precursor to Alzheimer's. And so I'm just
so frantic when my patients say to me, oh, because

(01:06:50):
I look at their labs that their doctors have given them,
it's one hundred and ten. Oh, they said I was
pre diabetic. We don't need to worry. I'm like, you
do need to worry, and here is why. And so
I don't mean to scare people, but I think a
little fire is sometimes necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
I think so too. I think so too. I've heard
the same where people are like, oh, I'm pre diabetic,
and then nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Changes, right because it's not a warning.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
It's not warning. Yeah, yeah, it's and I and sadly, yeah,
it's just you have the control, then you have the power.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Then Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
One of the things I wanted to bring up with
you is this question of as we age about mobility,
because I feel like you kind of take for granted
how your body works, and then especially hip mobility. Yes,
what are some of the things we can do to
improve our mobility?

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
So when I prescribe exercise, especially in midlife, it consists
of four things. Flexibility and mobility, aerobics. We've spoken about
carrying a load, which is what I call weightlifting, and
equilibrium and foot speed. So let's talk about F and E.
The acronym is face. Let's talk about efny. Flexibility and
mobility means that all of our joints to move well

(01:08:01):
in aging need to be able to go through their
full range of motion. You need to fully extend your knee,
fully bend your knee. Our hip needs to be able
to at least bend to ninety and fully go straight.
When you see people who are aged shuffling down the street,
it's often due to muscle weakness and because their joints
just don't move anymore. So how do we prevent that? Well,

(01:08:26):
simple things like going through daily dynamic warm up, which
is simply putting all your joints through their full range
of motion every single day. Things like tai chi and
pilates and even yoga are amazing for maintaining that full
range of motion. It's not only the bones, however, It's

(01:08:49):
not only the capsule that just the surrounding of the joints.
But with time, the crosslinking and I'll explain more in
our tendons and ligaments become stronger. So tendons and ligaments,
which tendons connect muscle to bone, ligaments connect bones to
each other, are made of fibers of collagen in sheets.

(01:09:15):
The bonds between those collagen titan with age, So tendons
and ligaments get stiffer unless we continually put them through
their full range of motion so they don't lose that motion.
So the natural progression of aging is tightness and tightness
and tightness. But we can reverse that in the ways
we talked about. It's a daily practice, or at least

(01:09:37):
to three or four times a week practice.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Right, If someone's feeling exceptionally tight in certain areas of
their body, what else can they do to loosen it up?

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
So I like every workout to start with a dynamic
warm up, meaning we're going to warm everything up. So
I'll just for instance, it may sound simple, but it
is full arm circles, meaning it's pretending to be Michael Phelps.
You're putting your arms to your right, full arm circles,

(01:10:04):
trunk rotations, bending back and forth, twisting side to side,
hip rotations. I just grab a stable surface and bring
my hip forward, circle it all around, just ten reps even,
or if you want to sit on a ground, there's
this great hip mobility stretch called a ninety ninety. You
just you just bend your knees to ninety and you go,

(01:10:25):
you go back and forth, and so the same with
our knees.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
I think my train has been listening to you, yea
sill of those things that makes me very heavy, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
And then there's this wonderful stretch that it just feels
so good. It's called a bookend. Stretch. You lay on
a flat surface with arms out to the side like
a cross. You bend your knee up and then you
just roll it over and that stretches your lumbar spine
so you have full mobility. That's a dynamic warm up.
It's not hard, but you must start every workout with

(01:10:58):
that so that as you're spring or as you're lifting,
that everything is primed and ready. So that's the flexibility part.
The e face is equilibrium and foot speed. We've talked
about muscle. We've talked about bone and fragility. Many people,

(01:11:19):
even with low muscle mass, even with low bone density,
may be okay until they fall. One critical fall can
be and don't I can tell you all kinds of stories,
but it can mean the difference between life death, living alone,
not living alone. So what do we do about it?
We got to retrain our balance. Simply as standing on

(01:11:43):
one foot when you brush your teeth, literally you're standing
there tree pose hand, going back and forth. You will
retrain the neuro muscular pathways that degrade starting about in
your twenties. Yeah, easy. You must and alternate legs on
different days of the week. Right, you will retrain your balance.
So quickly, because we should be able to balance on

(01:12:06):
one leg for about twenty seconds, because what happens when
we reach over and we just fall over. Yeah, we
don't want to do that. The other thing is it's
very common to see all kinds of athletes doing agility drills.
You've seen it on the field, jumping up and down,
jumping over barriers. People like you and me need to
retrain the ability to have foot speed and agility so

(01:12:29):
that if you're like me and you leave your work
bag by the edge of your chair and you get
up too quickly, you can catch your foot and hop
over it instead of catch your foot and land flat
on your face.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
It's great to hear that there's so many simple ways.
Oh yeah, and some of this can just be built
into our lifestyle rather than having to find out the
time that's right. Wonder you said this earlier, and I've
been thinking about it as we've been talking, because I
think you've given such great practical advice. People can get
more depth inside your book, which I highly recommend. Thank you,

(01:13:00):
and we'll be putting the link in the caption so
you can order it. As you've been listening. I'd really
like you to dive into it for the specific advice that,
as you can tell, Vonder is so tactical and practical
it's great. But really a lot of this comes down to,
as you said, it's not time now, it's not knowledge.
We have it, you're sharing it freely right here. It's emotional.

(01:13:21):
And what I mean by that is we eat our feelings.
We feel exhausted because of stress in our life, so
we don't work out, We maybe lack self love, We
don't have a vision, as you said earlier, of a
healthier life ahead. A lot of us talk about our
college days as the best times of our lives. Everything's

(01:13:44):
in the past, and so much of what we've talked
about today is practical and tactical. But I kind of
wanted to get to this point of just how do
we transform our belief systems into recognizing that we're worthy
of a healthier life, that we deserve a healthier life,
that we're capable of one. And I wanted to ask

(01:14:05):
you about the similarities between vision costing as you call it,
and manifesting.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
I love that you've had it in this direction because
when I said earlier that I've been practicing a long
time and you can't excuse me. I think that people
make excuses or don't invest time in themselves for a
lot of reasons. One may be busyness, But what that
means is you are prioritizing everything else in your life

(01:14:33):
before yourself. And I think that people in relationships do that.
Parents do that, mothers do it a lot. But if
you don't invest in yourself, you will not be able
to invest in others. So sometimes it really is as
simple as I've got so much to do, I just
can't fit it all in. I'm going to get that
done first, a matter of priorities. Sometimes I believe you.

(01:14:58):
I believe what you said, which is it's self love.
I often say things like, until you believe you are
worth the daily investment in your health, nothing else will matter.
You have to put value in yourself. And whether we
were raised that we should be seen and not heard
because we're not valuable, or that women are told we

(01:15:20):
must be little and cannot take up space and therefore
we're not valuable, we need to do the inner work
to understand that we have value, not only to each
other but to ourselves. We inherently are created with value,
and that takes a lot of inner work, right. I
also think that for people who start out on a journey,

(01:15:43):
they've learned what they need to do, they're like, I'm committed.
We're right after the new year, and I'm going to
do this thing. What happens, I find I'd be interested
in if you think this will start out, we'll do
the hard thing. We'll do some harder things. When we
do hard things, sometimes we revert to the last place

(01:16:08):
that we felt safe.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
And if we revert to the safety of the couch
with the bond bonds, because psychologically and anxiety wise, that's
our safe place. Sometimes it's our safe place that will
kill us. Wow, it's just where there's the least mental turmoil.
So those are some of the reasons that I.

Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
Hit really hard. Yeah, And I really empathize with people
because I know when I didn't prioritize it. And it's
almost because we're so good psychologically showing up for other people, Like,
that's generally the only time anyone does anything is because
they have to show up for someone else. We show

(01:16:52):
up to work because we're expected to be there. We
show up for our kids because you love them, and
show up for your partner because you feel a response's ability
to them. But we haven't been trained or taught to
show up for ourselves because it almost feels.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
Less done, or we feel guilty. We feel guilty that
we're being selfish. Yesh, it's here's what's selfish? Gosh. And
I'm not really lecturing people, but people say a lot
because I do take I take call, I take care
of people who have broken big bones, and they say
things like, oh, I just never want to be a

(01:17:29):
burden to my children, and I understand that right. Sometimes
I respond to them like, well, you took care of
them for most of their lives, maybe they can take
care of you. But the reality is that if we
do not want to be a burden to other people,
then we must take care of ourselves. Because time and

(01:17:50):
physics and energy rolling downhill, there are time bombs of aging, inflammation, sinescence,
are stuff themselves. Get old that if we do not
reinvest in ourselves, the worst can happen. And if that
worst for you is being a burden to your children,
So if you want ensurance against that, then rise above

(01:18:12):
that feeling, you know, prioritize yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
Wonder what have I not asked you about today that
you feel cold to share.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
I think that if I could find a way to
help people understand that they were worth it, that would
be the end of my work, because it's You're right,
I do. I'm a communicator at heart. I'm a teacher
at heart. I like to connect people with their bodies
because listen, no wonder people are confused. The language of

(01:18:41):
medicine is Latin. What is the breakial plexus? What is
all these Latin anatomy words? How are people supposed to know?
My job is to connect you with your body and
to love it and understand it. But I'm going to
tell you for sure, that's still fifty percent of the time,
whether it's a reg doctor's visit or people have paid

(01:19:01):
a lot of money to get the best advice in
the world, they somehow don't take action, and they know
what to do and don't do it, and know what
to do and don't do it. And so I get
to the place where I meet them in the emergency
room with their broken hip, and they're laying there in
excruciating pain, frail, And if I could have just gotten

(01:19:24):
them to believe that they were worth the daily investment
in their health, that would be work worth doing. But
here's the deal. I can't make them. I've come to
understand I can't make you love yourself. I can't make
you care about your well being more than you care
about other peoples. I can just encourage you to do

(01:19:47):
the work, if that's what it's going to take to
realize that. Safety is often being strong, Safety is often
being mobile. Safety is preservation of your brain.

Speaker 1 (01:19:59):
Well said wonder Thank you so much. It's been such
a joy talking to you today. Oh I've learned so much.
You've blowned my mind multiple times. I'm so excited for
people to read your book. I'm so excited for people
to follow your work. We end every episode of On
Purpose with a final five or a fast five, and
so each one of these questions has to be answered
in one word to one sentence maximum Okay, and so,

(01:20:22):
doctor vonder Wright, these are your final five. Questionable one,
what is the best health advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Love yourself enough to give yourself the same grace you
give other people. To know that your efforts are not perfect,
but that it matters. Just trying matters.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Question number two, what is the worst health advice you've
ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
The worst health advice I've ever heard are all the
wacko diets, the grapefruit, the pickle, the soup diet. We
are all anything ending in a diet, suppose is an endpoint.
What I am helping people do is build a lifestyle

(01:21:12):
how we live, not a set amount of time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:16):
Let's talk about that for a bit. Do you think
that diets can be useful to get people to a
lifestyle or do you think they always kind of boomerang backwards.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
I think that if you are on a stringent diet,
you develop a mindset of austerity, and instead of thinking
about food occasionally, it's you obsess about it. And that
is counterproductive because if you are hungry all the time
or obsessed with oh I have to only eat half
a grapefruit, it takes over your brain. Versus if you say,

(01:21:46):
the way I eat is that I get a gram
of protein per ideal pound, and what does that mean? Oh, well,
I'm going to have an egg white omelet that's thirty grands.
This is just how I eat. Here's an example. When
I go out to dinner with people who know what
I say, they always are watching what I what I'm ordering,
and then They'll say things like, oh, I feel so

(01:22:08):
guilty I want to have and I say, don't feel guilt.
I'm not. I am just eating the way I eat.
This is it's not a sacrifice. It's just what I do.
So you do you, and I'll do me. But it's
a funny reaction people have. So do I think diets
can be helpful. I think a plant, a nutrition plan

(01:22:29):
can be helpful. Here's how many protein, Here's how much carbs.
These are the amazing sources. But a six week diet,
I think you get to the end, you may have
lost some weight. You've probably lost a lot of muscle.
Then you'll gain it back, and you'll gain back more
fat than you lost in the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
Yeah, and what are we losing when we lose muscle.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
We're losing the ability to uh, We're losing physical muscle.
We're losing the metabolic power to process our glucose. We're
losing muscle of volume to produce irison, the protein that
muscle produces that goes to the brain in variety. We're
losing the metabolic capacity, and we're losing strength so that

(01:23:18):
we can't get ab out of a chair. We fall
down more easily. We lose a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Yeah, I wish I knew that when I was young. Yeah,
I wish someone had told me that that's what muscle
did I know?

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
It's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
Yeah, I was just thought it was aesthetic when I
was young. I had no idea, and it is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
But that's the icing, that is not the cake.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
Question number three, can running be bad for you?

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
I want to dispel a myth right now that is
so common in the population. That is, there is no
evidence that running causes arthritis right running itself in studies
have shown that runners have on the whole, have less
heart disease, have left metabolic disease. They also, if they
don't lift weights, have less muscle. So that is the

(01:24:01):
only reason in my mind that running can be bad
for you, because unless you eat, unless you lift weights,
your body will eat the muscle that you have. And
that's there's a first serious runners there. They have a
body type. They're all thin, very low muscled. It doesn't
mean they're not fast. But that's the only time I
can think of question before.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
What's something you used to believe to be true about
health that you don't today.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
I used to believe that six days a week of
high intensity interval training was what was going to make
me the healthiest, And that's simply not true.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
What did it actually do.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
It made me hurt, It made me exhausted, and I
didn't recompose my body at all. I stayed the same composition.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
And why is that? Why does why did it not
recompose your boy?

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Because it wasn't intense enough, It wasn't sprint intervals to
really stimulate my body. And when we do the same
thing all the time, we we develop imbalances, and that's
where injury comes from. So when I did high intense
cinnreiical training five or six days a week, I would
always develop left achilles tendonitis write hip flex or pain

(01:25:12):
because I have these imbalances and I was augmenting that.
I was pounding that five or six days a week.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Fifth and final question, Yes, if you could create one
law that everyone in the world had to follow, what
would it be.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
We should walk everywhere. We should be like New Yorkers
and Europeans walking.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
All the time, walking all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
We're designed for it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
Yeah, it's hard in some cities.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
It is hard. We've made it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
But we're going to find a way up the stairs,
down the stairs, that's right right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
Get up from the desk. Our body doesn't care.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
I love it. The book is called dor Right's Guide
to Thrive, Four Steps to Body, Brains and Bliss. Doctor
vonder Wright, thank you so much for coming on purpose.
I hope you will come back again and again.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Oh I would love it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
And I genuinely learned so much from you today. Thank
you so much, my pleasure. If this year you're trying
to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check
out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor Peter
Attia on how to slow down aging and why your
emotional health is directly impacting your physical health. Acknowledge that

(01:26:19):
there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition
and health, and people are going to be shocked to
hear that, because I think most people think the exact
opposite

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