Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Exercise is the most
powerful lever to live long and
well.
Recent studies show even morebenefits for blood pressure,
inflammation, sleep and weightloss.
New evidence helps us optimizewhen and how we exercise.
(00:22):
How we exercise.
Hi, I'm Dr Bobby Du Bois andwelcome.
To Live Long and Well a podcastwhere we will talk about what
(00:42):
you can do to live as long aspossible and with as much energy
and vigor that you wish.
Together, we will explore whatpractical and evidence-supported
steps you can take.
Come join me on this veryimportant journey and I hope
that you feel empowered alongthe way.
I'm a physician, ironman,triathlete and have published
(01:04):
several hundred scientificstudies.
I'm honored to be your guide.
Welcome, dear listeners, toepisode number 38, rethinking
Exercise New Evidence andSmarter Moves.
Exercise new evidence andsmarter moves.
(01:31):
Well, this is a new type ofepisode and, as always, I want
your feedback, either throughcomments or taking my
questionnaire about the podcast.
I will have the link in theshow notes.
So this episode will begin witha brief, brief review of what
we've talked about before, aboutexercise, and then we will
concentrate on what is new.
(01:51):
Well, why now?
Well, your questionnaireanswers and just feedback from
listeners.
You've requested moreinformation about each of the
six pillars the exercise, thesleep, the nutrition, the
mind-body harmony, the exposureto heat and cold and social
(02:14):
relationships.
Now it turns out just aboutevery day I get studies that
come across my desk.
I get various newsletters,table of contents of journals,
and they're really interestingstudies and many of these fall
into the six pillars, some fallinto other topics and I put them
into folders on my computer.
(02:36):
And now it's time to startbringing those articles back out
and packaging them up andsharing them with you.
Articles back out and packagingthem up and sharing them with
you.
Well, we are going to talkabout exercise and I've alluded
to some aspects of my exercisejourney, but I thought I'd take
a minute or two and tell you alittle bit about it.
(02:57):
When I was in my 20s, while Iwas going to medical school and
I can't say this was the rightdecision, but this is the
decision I made I looked aroundat people who were 40, 50, 60,
and I said, well, a bunch ofthem look old.
What is it?
I could do as a 20-year-old,20-something medical student
(03:18):
where I didn't have a lot oftime that might keep me from
looking old.
And so I noticed in older men,their biceps didn't look so good
, their abdomen didn't look sogood.
So I thought, okay, what I needto do in my 20s is focus on
those two parts of my body andhave worked or thought about
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that ever since.
Well, in my late 30s I got themarathon running bug.
Everybody was doing them atthat time and I decided, okay,
if I'm ever going to do it, Ibetter get going before I'm 40.
Well, I started with shorterraces, worked my way up to
marathons.
(03:59):
Ultimately, I've done about 14of them.
I qualified and ran the BostonMarathon, which was a high point
of my marathon career.
Then I turned 50.
And at the time everybody wasdoing cycling classes.
So this was in the gym.
This was long, long beforePeloton or things you might do
(04:21):
at home.
And so I had a bunch of buddiesin those classes and they said
oh, you know, we're going to gobiking outdoors.
Would you like to come with us?
Of course I had just turned 50,.
Time for a nice present formyself bought myself a bicycle.
Well, now that I was doingrunning and I'm doing biking, I
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figured well, it's only one moresport, that's swimming.
I'll start doing triathlons.
And so I started triathlons andI worked my way up to longer
and longer distances andultimately to the full Ironman
distance.
Now I've done about not about.
I've done four full Ironmantriathlons and 13 or 14 half
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Ironmans and that turns out tobe about, for swimming, about
2.2 miles.
Then you get on the bike for112 miles and then you run a
full marathon 26.2 miles andthat's called the full Ironman.
Half Ironman obviously is halfthat distance.
In November I am scheduled todo another Half Ironman here in
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Texas and I'm trying to do oneof these a year.
So I'm trying to keep at it.
Many of you have asked what's myexercise regimen and I'll talk
you through that at the end.
I have an ask for you, mywonderful listeners Can you
share this podcast with otherpeople?
(05:53):
If each one of you shared itwith one, two or three people,
or send it out to yourdistribution list, to friends or
colleagues, that would make ahuge difference.
Now, as you know, there are noadvertisers.
I get no financial benefit outof doing the podcast or the
articles I write in on mywebsite or the newsletter that
(06:17):
goes out.
If you're on my newsletter andagain, if you want to sign up
for any of those, just go to mywebsite,
drbobbylivelongandwellcom.
But the more people who listen,more people can learn and
hopefully I can help more people.
So please, please, if you'reable to, please share the link.
(06:41):
Okay, well, as I said, theseepisodes are going to have two
parts to them.
First, I'm going to review whatwe talked about before, and
exercise was episode number two,so it goes way back to the
beginning, which is about a yearago.
I've been doing this now for abit over a year.
As we talked about in thatepisode, and I've mentioned it
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many times since then, exerciseis the single most powerful
longevity lever.
If you follow the aerobicguidelines I'll get to those in
a moment exercise is associatedwith a 20 to 30% reduction in
your risk of overall mortality,heart attack, stroke, cancer and
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reductions as well in risk ofdementia.
And it's never too late.
As I talked about in thatepisode, they did studies in
65-year-old to 85-year-olds andthey had substantial benefits.
So even if you haven't had alife of exercise, please, please
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, start now.
We also talked in that episodeabout a full exercise program
has four components.
Yes, we talk a lot about theaerobic part 150 to 300 minutes
a week in zone two.
150 to 300 minutes a week inzone two, meaning you're
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exercising hard enough.
So it's not that easy to talk.
But second element, strength,once or twice a week, is
important.
Third, balance and flexibilitywork is important.
And lastly, high intensity oranaerobic work.
All right, so that's what wetalked about before.
Please listen to the episode ifyou wish.
(08:29):
Now for the new stuff thatcrosses my desk almost daily and
I'd like to divide these into acouple of categories.
Some of these are meta-analyses, meaning somebody went to the
literature, said there's 10studies, 20 studies, 50 studies
in people, and they summarizedit statistically and that's a
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pretty good sort ofstate-of-the-art.
What's the summary of theevidence?
Tell us.
So some of what I'll share isof that meta-analysis type.
Others are sort of smallstudies, new studies, but
tantalizing findings.
So I can't say we have adefinitive answer, but they're
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very fun and interesting and Iwant to share them with you.
Okay, I'll divide these newstudies into two categories,
just like with my originalepisode.
First, what are the benefits ofexercise?
And there's new studies showingnew benefits.
As always, I will put links inthe show notes and if you want
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to read about them and click onlinks, just subscribe to my
newsletter or read my articles.
Both of those, again, areavailable at my website.
Okay, what are some benefitsthat have come across my desk in
new studies?
First, exercise can help ourblood pressure.
(10:00):
There's a whole series ofstudies that we're seeing more
and more.
Now that people havesmartwatches and Fitbits and
Oura rings, you can do studiesin lots of people very, very
quickly and easily.
Well, in this study, 14,000people wore a blood pressure
monitor.
Now, your normal smartwatch isnot going to measure your blood
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pressure.
This was something they addedand people wore, and what they
found excitingly is that moreexercise was associated with a
lower blood pressure.
I do point out in this study itwasn't just fast walking, it
was actual exercise, and whatthey found is, even with 15 or
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20 minutes a day, there weresignificant changes in blood
pressure.
Now, these were not massivefalls in blood pressure.
It was a few points On anindividual level that might or
might not be enough to get yourblood pressure under control,
but on a population level,dropping your blood pressure two
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, three points is enough toreduce population level
cardiovascular outcomes by 10 or20%.
So it's a big deal.
Will it help you?
By all means, give it a go.
Do it in the N of one style andlet me know what you find All
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right.
Second benefit exercise canimprove our sleep.
So five to 10% of us haveinsomnia.
By all means, listen to mysleep episode and the do's and
don'ts, the 12 very practicalthings you can do to make things
better.
So what came across my desk?
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Well, it was a meta-analysis of19 studies, and what they found
is that people who exercisedhad improvements in objective
measures of sleep and subjectivemeasures of sleep, so things
like people fall asleep and theywake up an hour, two hours
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later.
That seemed to improve thewaking up process and sleep
efficiency, meaning, how much ofthe night were you actually in
useful sleep?
As I've talked about before, welook for a dose response.
So these were observationalstudies and so it's not the
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perfect evidence, but when yousee more is better and even more
is even better, better.
That is a clue that maybe it'sactually accurate.
And they did find that moreexercise was associated with
even better improvement in sleep.
So that's important to know,all right.
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Third, exercise can help withweight loss.
Look, we eat, and we probablyeat faster and more than we can
exercise, but that doesn't meanexercise can't help us.
Now this is a hugemeta-analysis 116 randomized
controlled trials with about7,000 people, and what they
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found is even people whoexercise just 30 minutes a week
lost weight, had some additionalweight loss beyond whatever
they were doing, and once againwe found a dose-response
relationship 30 minutes, someweight loss.
60 minutes, 120 minutes, so onand so forth, more weight loss
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up until about 300 minutes aweek, which is about five hours,
and for each additional 30minutes of exercise a week was
about additional one poundduring the duration of the study
, not per week or per month, forthe full duration of the study.
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Number four exercise appears tobe associated with depression or
with a lack of exercise.
Here was also a meta-analysis,a summary of 33 observational
studies Again not a clinicaltrial, but a lot of people,
about 96,000 adults.
What they found is that peoplewho had higher step count during
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the day, that walked more, thatwas associated with fewer
depressive symptoms.
Now, for these people it wasabout 5,000 to 7,000 steps at
least for the benefit to beobserved.
Okay, let's take a step backhere.
This is always an issue Is it achicken or is it an egg problem
(14:41):
?
Just because we observe therelationship, it may not be that
walking more reduces depression.
It could be the other wayaround, that as people feel down
and sad and depressed, they maynot feel like going for a walk
as often.
So this is one of thesefindings which you could look at
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as oh I better get my steps in,it'll help my mood.
Or maybe it's the other wayaround Not that the walking's
going to hurt us.
Of course, it's wonderful forus, but just take this with a
little bit of grain of salt.
All of these studies, or manyof the studies I've just
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mentioned, you're going to seemore and more of them, because
so many people are wearingsmartwatches and Fitbits and
that data is automatically attimes uploaded to the cloud and
then researchers might be ableto work with the data.
So we're likely to see more andmore studies like this.
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Here's an exciting one Strengthtraining.
Now, this isn't aerobictraining, this is strength
training.
Lifting weights Seems to reducemarkers of inflammation, and
I'll do a study in an episode oninflammation.
But inflammation's beenassociated with all sorts of
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diseases obvious ones likeulcerative colitis and others,
but as well with heart attacksand cancer.
And what this article was aboutwas 19 clinical trials.
So these were actually studieswhere people either did strength
training or didn't.
Folks were in their 60s orabove and what they found is one
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of the key markers bloodmarkers of inflammation that's
often measured CRP or C-reactiveprotein, fell when people did
resistance training.
Now, these studies didn't tellus that the diseases associated
with inflammation went away orwere reduced in risk, but the
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measure of inflammation in theblood went down with exercise
and maybe that will beassociated with less disease or
less severe disease.
This article wasn't able totell us that.
And the last benefit, one I'mvery excited about many of you,
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as you get older, will as well.
Exercise may affect brain volume.
So the hippocampus is a regionof the brain and it's associated
with memory and it tends todeteriorate, tends to shrink, as
we get older.
Now, it shrinks whether we havedementia or we don't have
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dementia as we get older, so itdoes seem to be related to aging
and maybe to loss of memory.
Now, this wasn't a huge study,but it had 165 people and they
found that folks that had higherfitness levels, their
hippocampus was bigger and ifthey had higher fitness levels,
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their memory, their spatialmemory, was better.
Now, every study has flaws.
This one on brain has flaws,and all the other ones I just
talked to you about on brain hasflaws and all the other ones I
just talked to you about.
But when you step back and lookat all of the articles, all of
the studies, like in a court oflaw, there's what's called the
preponderance of evidence, notbeyond a reasonable doubt, but
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the preponderance of evidence.
So for me, the preponderance ofevidence, even though many
studies are flawed, suggest thatexercise has lots of benefits.
Okay, maybe you're convincedEither continue the exercise
you're doing or maybe you'regoing to do even more exercise,
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and I hope you are convinced.
I would love that to be thecase because I really really do
believe it is our strongestlever to live long, meaning more
years, but to live well, goodyears, preview of coming
attractions.
I'm going to record my nextepisode about how many good
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years do we have left, meaningwhatever age we are.
Are we going to live a lotlonger, just a little bit longer
?
Are we going to be veryfunctional or are we not?
And can we predict that?
Because that obviously couldaffect our life and how we think
about our life and how we spendmoney and save money and
everything else.
(19:29):
And yeah, no more on that rightnow.
Okay, so if you're convincedexercise is good, then of course
you want to maximize thebenefit of that actual exercise
and make a really good protocolfor you.
All right, so here's somestudies.
Again, these are notnecessarily the answer, but
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they're intriguing and you cantry many of them out yourself
and see if they work for you.
Listen to my episode on N of 1studies if you want to get some
more detail on how to do it.
Here's one Don't exercise toolate in the day.
That was the finding of a recentstudy that was published.
(20:12):
Now we know, and I've justtalked about it, that sleep
helps insomnia.
I mean, excuse me, exercisehelps insomnia.
So if we have problems withsleeping, getting exercise is a
good thing.
But exercise revs our body up,it increases our sympathetic
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fight or flight activity and italso wakes us up.
Now, when it's time to sleep,we kind of want the opposite.
We want to calm our mind, wewant to calm our body, which is
the parasympathetic nervoussystem part of our body.
Okay, so that's the background.
(20:54):
Here's a study.
They asked the question does itmatter what type of time of day
that we exercise related to oursleep?
There were about 14,000 peopleaverage age in their late 30s,
and they looked at data on folkswearing various devices like
the Fitbits and smartwatches andthey looked at it for about a
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year and they looked at whenpeople normally went to bed and
went to sleep and how long theytypically slept.
Then they asked the question,since they know when they
exercise because they had on aFitbit or whatever else, they
knew when they exercised andthey knew when they went to bed.
So they then asked the questiondid the time of day or night
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that they exercised affect whenthey went to bed?
On average, these folksexercised about once every three
days, so a couple times a week.
So you know, not anunreasonable group of folks to
look at.
What they found reassuringly isthat if you exercise at least
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six hours before bed so if yougo to bed at 10 pm and you've
exercised before four in theafternoon there was no negative
impact on sleep.
Okay, so that's good.
But if you exercise less thantwo hours before going to sleep
the usual sleep time thosepeople went to sleep 36 or fell
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asleep 36 minutes later and itseemed to affect sleep quality.
So that's within two hours.
Well, there was also an impactwhen it was two affect sleep
quality.
So that's within two hours.
Well, there was also an impactwhen it was two to four hours.
Again, if it's 10 o'clock isyour bedtime.
If you exercise from 6 pm on,it might have some impact.
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They also found a dose responseand you know I love to find
dose responses.
What does that mean?
The closer to bedtime, the morethe impact.
The more intense the exercise,the more impact on sleep.
It didn't seem to happen if youjust went for a gentle walk.
They were looking at folks whoactually exercise, who actually
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exercise.
Okay, so let's ask our chickenand egg question Is it that the
exercise close to bed woke us up, got our sympathetic system
working in overdrive andtherefore couldn't fall asleep?
Or is it the opposite, justthat people got home late, they
didn't get around to exercisingtill late and therefore
everything else got backed upand they went to bed later.
(23:42):
So it had nothing?
One could argue it has nothingto do with the fact that they
had a sympathetic thing going onin their nervous system, but it
may just have been a simpletime thing.
I kind of think that it's real.
Why?
Because that same type ofintense sympathetic response
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happens after cold plunge andwakes people up, myself included
, and I can't do a cold plungebefore bed because I'll never be
able to fall asleep.
So I actually think it's real.
But for you, do an N of 1 trial.
Do your exercise, do yourintense exercise, but perhaps
(24:25):
finish at least four to sixhours before you want to sleep.
Okay, next article.
This was fascinating.
It was tantalizing.
It was in the press and afascinating article all around
For my women in my life.
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I'm thrilled by the results ofthis study.
For the men in our lives, meincluded not as good news for us
All.
Right, so what did we learn?
Well, we know, in general,exercise is good for all of us.
It has so many benefits.
But in this study they askedthe question do women benefit
(25:09):
more than men in doing exercise?
So we all do exercise.
Do women get more benefit thanmen in doing exercise?
So we all do exercise.
Do women get more benefit thanmen?
This was a study of 400,000adults across a range of ages 27
to 61.
They followed these people for20 years and what they found
(25:30):
again was exercise folks, thatexercise that was associated
with a lower rate of death, andfor women, that was a 24%
reduction.
That's fantastic.
For men there was a reduction,but that was only 15%.
So women got almost 50% morebenefit in the database.
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50% more benefit in thedatabase.
Now for everyone.
Exercise lowered the risk ofheart attack or stroke.
But again, women got 36%benefit, men 14%.
Now even more tantalizing thatwomen got benefits with less
exercise, that those benefitswere evident with 57 minutes of
(26:19):
exercise per week versus men 100minutes.
So not only did women seem tohave more benefit, they seemed
to get that benefit with lessminutes exercising.
Now there's a lot of theoriesas to why that might be the case
.
Men have more muscle mass, moremass in general, so maybe it
(26:43):
takes more for the male body toget the benefits.
Who knows?
It's an observational study.
It's fascinating, it'stantalizing, and if you're a
woman who isn't exercising a lot, now's even more reason to do
so.
But the study showed that onlya third of the people in the
study actually met theguidelines for typical exercise,
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the 150 to 300 minutes.
So we can all benefit andperhaps women will benefit more.
Okay, next fascinating thingabout how to exercise.
You might have heard aboutweekend warriors.
So weekend warriors are folksthat don't exercise during the
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week, but they get all theirexercise on the weekend, they
have more time, they have lessstress, and Saturdays and
Sundays, that's when they playpickleball, that's when they get
to the gym, that's when they gofor a run, but Monday through
Friday not so much.
And so this was a study of89,000 people in the UK biobank.
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Again, this is an observationalstudy, it isn't a randomized
trial, and folks wore anaccelerometer like a Fitbit or a
smartwatch and they wore it forabout a week and they tested
things.
And this is a study that oftenI don't like because they
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measured a zillion things and,as you know, when you measure a
zillion things in a database,you're likely to come up with
something positive.
But they did this in aninteresting way.
They looked at several hundreddiseases and they compared
people who exercised with peoplewho didn't exercise, and
compared the weekend warriortype of exercises versus those
(28:35):
that exercise all week long, andthey looked at things like
hypertension, diabetes, obesityand a bunch of other things.
In these several hundreddifferent diseases.
There was no difference theexercise was beneficial, whether
it was all during the weekend,as a weekend warrior, or whether
(28:56):
it was spaced out.
So doing the exercise when youcan is all that matters.
So what's the tip here Get theexercise when you can.
We've talked before about shouldI skip sleep to get to the gym.
No, you can't make up yoursleep, but you certainly can
(29:17):
make up your exercise, and youcould do it on the weekend.
So that's wonderful, okay, butwhat if you don't sleep?
Well, there was an interestingstudy that compared folks.
These were healthy runners, andthey made them do a 10
kilometer time trial, meaningthey put them on a treadmill and
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had them go as fast as possibleor maybe it was an outdoor time
trial, I'm not exactly sure 6.2miles, and they measured how
long did it take to completethat distance?
And then they compared themwhen they had a normal amount of
sleep, like eight hours, versusa restricted sleep where they
only gave them three hours.
(29:59):
Not surprisingly, when theyonly had three hours to run,
that distance took longer.
Instead of 49 minutes to do it,on average, it was 52 minutes,
so about 5% longer.
What they then examined is well, what if we gave them caffeine?
Well, it reversed the effect ofless sleep.
(30:22):
Now, I'm not suggesting thatyou don't sleep and then you
take caffeine for it, but whatthey found is that, even if lack
of sleep hurts you the next day.
In terms of exerciseperformance, caffeine appeared
to reduce it in this small butagain tantalizing study.
(30:46):
Well, I want to finish off withone last study, and this is
interesting.
There's been a lot writtenabout cold plunges and strength
exercise.
You know, should you do a coldplunge after you do a strength
workout, will it affect how yourmuscles repair and get bigger
and stronger?
Well, I don't know that.
(31:07):
I want to definitively answerthe question with that, but they
really did an interesting study.
They took 12 men and they hadthem do a resistance strength
exercise workout.
Then they put one leg in coldwater and one leg in normal
water and what did they find?
(31:28):
They looked at their blood flowin the two legs.
Not surprisingly, the bloodflow was reduced in the cold leg
.
You know cold leg.
There's contraction,vasoconstriction, the blood
vessels get smaller and theblood flow microvascular blood
flow is lower.
That's not a surprise to me.
(31:49):
Flow was lower.
That's not a surprise to me.
What was a surprise is thatlowered vascular change, lower
blood flow was reduced for up tothree hours.
And they also found that aminoacids, which build protein,
there was less uptake in themuscles.
I've talked in my prior episodeabout exposure to heat and cold,
(32:13):
and I mentioned how the coldplunge, which might only be
three minutes, the impact goeson for hours and hours in terms
of how you feel.
Here's another study thatsuggests that the benefits or
the changes or whatever, goes onfor hours.
So I found that veryinteresting.
(32:34):
As I mentioned at the outset, Iwanted to share with you what
my regimen is for exercise.
Might be interesting for you.
I do about three races a year.
I do a shorter distance,triathlon, called an Olympic
distance.
I do a swim run raceathloncalled an Olympic distance.
I do a swim run race every yearwith my brother.
(32:55):
It's a fun thing where you do aseries of run, then swim, then
run, then swim, and you'regenerally going from island to
island.
So you run across an island,jump in the water, swim to the
next island, get out, run acrossthat island, jump in the water
and do that again.
So that's something I train foronce a year.
(33:15):
And then I do an Ironmandistance or this year it'll be a
half Ironman distance once ayear.
So how do I get ready?
And it varies during the timeof year and whether it's a
shorter race I'm getting readyfor or not, but in general, I
try to swim one day a week.
I do a long bike and followedby a run, so you get off the
(33:38):
bike immediately run.
Sometimes the year that's abouta two and a half hour session,
sometimes it's more like threeor four hours.
Again, it depends upon what I'mdoing that time of year.
I try to do an indoor bike oncea week.
I do a strength session, asI've talked about.
I have a trainer that comesonce a week because I won't do
(33:58):
it by myself, and then I try todo a speed run on the treadmill,
short intervals, once a week.
So that's about typically fiveor six hours of exercise a week.
It can be more, it can be less.
All right, let's wrap up.
Exercise has so many benefits.
(34:19):
Please do it.
Do it when you can during theweek.
As we learned, the weekendwarrior does fine.
You can do it in short bursts.
It doesn't have to be an hourat a time.
You can do five or ten minutesif that's all you have at that
moment.
It is the single best way tolive long and to live well, and
(34:41):
I want both of thosecharacteristics for you.
And if you have a chance,please share the podcast with
others.
Until next time, take care,have some fun exercising and
then, of course, live long andwell.
Thanks so much for listening toLive Long and Well with Dr
(35:05):
Bobby.
If you liked this episode,please provide a review on Apple
or Spotify or wherever youlisten.
If you want to continue thisjourney or want to receive my
newsletter on practical andscientific ways to improve your
health and longevity, pleasevisit me at
(35:25):
drbobblivelongandwellcom.
That's doctor, as in D-R Bobby.
Live long and wellcom.
That's Dr, as in D-R Bobby.
Live long and wellcom.