2 Million Steps to Better Health: Movement, Community, and Closing the Longevity Gap | Ep. 301 - The Aging Well Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
We often talk about movement as medicine, but what happens when
one man takes that seriously enough to walk over 2,000,000
steps in 30 days? For Kwame Terra, that wasn't
just a personal challenge, it was a call to action in the
beginning of a national movement.
Welcome to the Aging Law Podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategies behind living a longer,
healthier, and more purposeful life.

(00:24):
Hi, I'm your host Doctor Jeff Armstrong, an exercise
physiologist with a passion for making science simple and life
better as we age. This conversation will help you
see walking, community health, and your own daily choices
through a new lens, one that turns personal grid into
collective impact. A path to aging well Kwame,
welcome to the Aging Well podcast.

(00:47):
Let's start with the big headline over 2,000,000 steps in
30 days. What inspired you to pursue that
challenge and what did it take mentally and physically to
achieve it? Yeah, the the inspiration
actually started about a year before.
So as you know, I run the Bear Health platform and on this
platform we do monthly steps trackers, monthly steps

(01:10):
challenges where the community just kind of, you know, for no
incentives or anything, just compete with one another to see
who can take the most steps eachmonth just to improve their own,
you know, health and well-being.And I had actually asked one of
my users who was also kind of a team member working with us in
different capacities, if he would help me prepare to take
1,000,000 steps in 30 days to raise $1 million for their

(01:33):
health. So this is May 2024.
And so he basically is trying todevelop the strategy.
How many steps do you have to take per day?
You know, when should you walk based on, you know, based on
your work schedule and everything to accomplish
1,000,000 steps in 30 days. Again, that's about 15 miles of
walking per day, 33,000 steps per day, five hours or so.
And so he'd wake up early in themorning, get a 2 hour walk in,

(01:56):
you know, obviously cover some ground throughout the day, you
know, at work. And then he then he would go do
another two hour walk in the evening.
And that was pretty much how he got it.
Well, it's the 54 year old man and he ended up losing 20 lbs
and getting taken off his blood pressure medication as a result
of that challenge. And this was all, you know,
motivated by a campaign to raisemoney.

(02:17):
But we never even really got around to the money.
And he was just having such a transformative experience with
the steps and he was just ravingabout it everywhere.
He passes me the baton in June and I do 1,000,000 steps in 30
days myself. The next month.
Another user who had participated in one of our major
challenges at the beginning of the year said, hey, you know, do
you have any other challenges, you know, coming up?

(02:38):
Because, you know, it doesn't even have to have a major
incentive or anything like that.Just looking for something new.
I'm like, well, do you want to try to do 1,000,000 steps in 30
days? And he said, why not?
And so he did it in 28 days. He lost like 25 plus pounds.
Two more users did it in August,another one in October.
And and then we all just got to talking like, hey, what do you
think the world record is? Do you think any of us could go

(03:00):
after? So that's how it started, you
know, relatively organically. And I don't think that I mean, I
can guarantee that last year, beginning of the year and the
previous 30 years of my life, I wasn't thinking about breaking
the world record for the most steps in 30 days.
But because walking had become such a, you know, powerful part
of our culture and a powerful way to help people transform

(03:20):
their health just made sense. And and it's super accessible,
right? Something that people can really
wrap their heads around. And so it was it was maybe late
March of this year. I knew I'd wanted I wanted to do
it. I wanted to go after the world
record at some point this year, exactly when was still be too or
was still to be determined. And I was at an event and they

(03:41):
were talking about like marketing and you know,
influencer marketing and how to become an influencer.
Like, well, actually maybe maybethis is my moment.
Maybe this is when I go after the step challenge.
As we're getting ready to prepare for the official launch
of the Bear Health app this fall, let me do something to
raise some awareness that's aligned with what we do.
And yeah, so a few days later, it's April and I'm and I'm
clocking 67,000 steps a day. Wow.

(04:04):
That's quite a feat. So what were some of the
unexpected lessons or turning points during that 30 days?
Yeah, you know, the most surprising thing was how quickly
my body was able to adapt to the, to the demand and obviously
something that no one's ever done before.
I, I wouldn't say it's the, the peak of human capacity as it
relates to steps in a day because I still was working.

(04:25):
I mean, I was working while I was walking, but still like if
all I was doing was walking and eating and getting treatment,
then I could have gone farther than than I did.
But yeah, the the very first week was was really challenging.
Again, bodies adjusting to the demand.
I mean, I'm learning about new parts of my legs that I didn't

(04:46):
even know were there because something new would start
hurting each day, starting to experience sharp pains in my
head because just wasn't fuelingproperly and hydrating properly.
And again, so I eat a whole foodplant based diet and I eat about
once a day. So intermittent fasting.
And so I'm not often that hungry, just, you know, at
baseline. But now I'm burnt.

(05:06):
Now in this challenge, I'm burning like 2500 calories a day
and but I'm still not necessarily feeling hungry.
Now as soon as I start eating, Ican, you know, I can put every
put everything down. But again, still like being
intentional about that. So, so I was experiencing sharp
pains in my head even when I wasjust like laying down.
So I'm like, you know, getting kind of concerned about, you

(05:26):
know, the risk here because, youknow, I want to do this.
This is an exciting challenge. People seem to be excited by,
inspired by, you know, every dayI would be posting my total step
count from that day. And then like the cumulative
step count, you know, for, for the, for the challenge.
And even myself, like looking atthat each day, I'm like crazy,

(05:47):
you know, I'm the one doing it. I'm just looking at like, that's
actually insane. This is this is this is kind of
this is kind of crazy. But so yeah, that was that was
the first thing, just it was really challenging the first
five days. I was kind of to be expected,
but you know, it's always a little bit rougher than than you
might have anticipated. And then again, second thing was
like my body adjusting after about 5 or 6 days to the demand.

(06:10):
And in a lot of the initial fears that I, that I had around
like continuing started to subside and I was, well, I was
pretty well ahead of pace for the record, which is also
encouraging because again, I'm clocking 67,000 steps a day, 30
to 35 miles of walking per day. And literally I wake up at 5:00
AM, going to walk for four hours, get back, shower, head to

(06:32):
the office, make sure everythingis good, go to the fitness
center, walk for four hours, go back to the office.
I mean, that was actually crazy walking around the, the fitness
center. It's like 150 meter loop and I'm
just around and around and around.
And then I in the evenings I would go out somewhere, like I
would walk to a friend's house. They they walk with somebody.
Walking with people really helped just the time go by.

(06:53):
And even when I had like severalhours of walking left after
walking with them, it just, it just made it just made it a bit
more worthwhile. And you know, we know that
spending time with people is essential to, to health and, and
well-being. So yeah, I walked to festivals
from I walked from the university to the festival, but
it's like hour walk just to go to the festival and walk back.
And again, I was just walking pretty much everywhere because I

(07:15):
literally didn't have time to doanything else.
I was on my feet for about 14 hours per day.
That's insane because I mean, the fact that you did that many
miles on just in general, but doing it on top of working a
full job, you know, that's just incredible.
I mean, I can't imagine doing that.
But it shows I do have a bit of flexibility with my job as I own
my own company so. Yeah, but still, I mean, you

(07:38):
got, you got to work, you know, some hours.
I mean, it's not like, you know,you can just totally blow it all
off and let somebody else do allthe work.
So that's pretty impressive. It should be a good example to
people that you know when we talk about getting minimum of
10,000 steps a day. Come on, you have time.
You can do it. It's not that hard.
Right, Yeah, yeah, definitely puts things into perspective for

(07:59):
people. I I received one message from a
friend when I finished and it said great job, way to get it
done. You inspired us all.
I'm out of excuses. Last part.
I'm out of excuses. Really, really hit me because
that's really where I want people to get to.
Like, it's not that, you know, the excuses that people feel
like they have aren't, you know,reasonable, right?

(08:20):
But it's just not an excuse. Yeah, they really, they really
are none if, if someone can manage to, to walk 15 hours a
day and get their work done and have a relationship.
I went, I went to my cousin's concert performance at A at a
thrift store. I went to a festival, you know,
I, I was doing all of these things and running a startup and

(08:40):
walking 30 miles a day. And so it's not, it's not
something I recommend on a regular basis at all, but you
can squeeze an hour and a half of walking in.
Yeah, it's really not that hard.And I teach my students about
opportunity costs. You know, we all have that same
24 hour day. What are you doing with those
hours? And there's obviously things
that are not negotiable. You got work hours, you got to

(09:01):
take time to eat, you got to take time for social
connections. But when you want to fit
exercise in there, it's just okay, well, how much time are
you spending just scrolling on your phone?
How much time are you playing video games or watching Netflix
and doing all that stuff? You can watch Netflix and walk.
You know, you have a treadmill which you know, we'll talk a
little bit about accessibility and some of those things here in
a little bit. Yeah.

(09:22):
And then you tell me a good point is sorry, sorry to cut you
off. I have some of my students often
tell me, like, they just don't feel like they have enough time
to do everything. And so then I would, then I'll
stop whatever I'm doing. I'll go to this whiteboard
behind me and I'll write 168. And they're like, what's that?
I'm like, that's the number of hours we have in a week.
And so how many hours are you inclass?
Can we do that? A full day's worth of doing

(09:59):
nothing leftover, yeah, you know, 5 hours a day where they
could be idle and still hit everything.
Working out, sleeping class, studying.
Like, where is that time going? It's there just.
A matter, Yeah. I was thinking it's like makes
you wonder what do I, what am I doing with all that time?
Well, tell us about bear health.What is it and what problem are

(10:19):
you aiming to solve through the platform?
Yeah. So the problem that we're aiming
to solve is the life expectancy gap between black people and the
rest of the population. So there's about a six year life
expectancy gap. Right now, average life
expectancy in the black community is about 72 years.
Rest of the population, rest of the country is 78 years.
And sometimes I want to tell people that six years doesn't

(10:41):
sound like a lot to them, especially, you know, if you've
lived 72, right to most of us, that that's a long time.
So what's another six? But when you extrapolate that
across the the entire black population, about 50 million
people, we're losing about 268,000,000 years of time.
You know, time is our most valuable asset.
And so that's time without work,right, Growing our wealth.

(11:02):
That's time without investing, that's time without our family
passing down wisdom. And that's really the root of it
all. And obviously we're a health
company because what's driving these disparities are these
conditions like early death caused by hypertension, type 2
diabetes, committing cancers. So we have to address that.
But it's really about getting time back so that we can

(11:24):
achieve, you know, our maximum potential.
I always reference a story from my mom, who's a good friend,
lost their husband to a stroke at age 46, leaving their 13 year
old son to have to grow without a father like the it's we can't
quantify the implications of that story.
And that's not an isolated story.
This is happening across the board, right?

(11:44):
Pick children are losing their parents early in life.
And then now they are just less prepared and less apartment to,
to navigate life. And in a, in a, in a country
that has already shown that that, you know, does things to
it'll make it harder for for certain people.
And so, yeah, that that's reallythe problem that we're trying to
solve. And it starts with our app.
Now our app is about health awareness, health literacy.

(12:08):
So most of us don't know our current health status.
Most of us aren't aware of the short and long term implications
of that. And so I wanted to communicate
that clearly to the community. And so we have a health score,
kind of like a credit score for your health, something that,
again, most people can wrap their heads around that health
is very complex. As you know, there are several
metrics that mean a bunch of different things to to

(12:29):
individuals when they, you know,get these, these metrics from
their doctors. Or how many steps am I supposed
to be taking today for the best health, right?
So instead of like having everybody track 100 different
metrics around their health, we simplified into a number that
represents their relative risk, relative health risks, right?
So the higher score, the lower your risk, the lower your score,
the higher your risk. So basically, if you have a low

(12:50):
score, you're more likely to have a significant health event
on a given day compared to someone who has a high score.
And the score changes in relative real time.
So it's not a static score whereyou do this one time and then
maybe a year later you check in again.
If you go on a run one day, yourscore is going to go up.
If you if you're inactive for a week, your score is going to go
down and it'll let you know you're trending down.
And that real time feedback is important so that we can start

(13:10):
drawing the connection between our lifestyle, our day-to-day
life and our health outcomes. And that's the first, that was
the first idea I had when I cameup with this for during the
COVID-19 pandemic. And everyone was having severe
outcomes with COVID-19. But it was, you know, mainly
praying on people who had these comorbidities, whose immune
systems were compromised by conditions that we know are

(13:33):
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(13:55):
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viewers and listeners. Thank you.
And now back to the podcast. One of the things that we really
try to challenge on this podcastis the idea of inaccessibility
to exercise in longevity. And we, I like to RIP on the,

(14:15):
the billionaires with all their,you know, longevity protocols
and their bio hacks and buy thissupplement that's going to cost
you hundreds of dollars a month.What are the obstacles to health
and longevity for underserved communities, particularly the
African American communities? Yeah, I mean, there are, there
are tons, tons. That said, it is possible to be

(14:37):
healthy black in America. My grandfather is 87 years old
and have a single chronic healthcondition.
Grew up in the Jim Crow S here in, in, in Louisiana.
Again, that's not to say that those aren't valid reasons not
to, to be in, in your best health.
It's, it is, it's your job, yourresponsibility.

(14:58):
You know, as far as like healthcare goes, that there's

(15:22):
definitely significant issues there like availability, not
just, you know, do people kind of can people afford it?
Because when you look at access,there are three components.
And the third component is actually the one that we are
going to be working on the most.And I think kind of what you're
referencing here. So there is availability, right?
So are there healthcare centers around?

(15:42):
Are there grocery stores around?Are there, you know, walking
places that you can walk nearby?Affordability, right?
So cool, there's a clinic, there's a grocery store, but can
I afford the food or the services had those institutions.
And then the third one is, I don't even know if this is
technical term, but desirability.
Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to eat healthy

(16:04):
foods? We were forced to prioritize
things that weren't necessarily related to this or we weren't

(16:31):
educated hated, right. We had education stripped from
us, you know, throughout there our time here.
And so again, that is it's an awareness thing.
First you have to even know thatthere's a problem.
Then you have to know that it's a problem that you should solve.
And then you have to in some sense make it convenient.
Again, this this excess accessibility component to where

(16:52):
people actually do it because it's hard to switch from
growing. You know what you grew up on
your fast food diets all your life.
And then and then go eat a wholefood plant based diet or eat
just a cleaner diet in general. That's a really, really hard for
people to change area, you know,change different aspects of how
they cook like, and, and it's really that friction that is in
the way. It's not it's not that people

(17:13):
can't afford to buy beans and rice and and these are some of
the cheapest foods, you know, onthe planet.
It's it's not a matter of the four business.
It's I don't want to eat that. I want to eat this and I get it.
How can you compete with, you know, McDonald's burgers?
And I don't use these these things but.

(17:38):
About 10% of our students are black, you know, individuals
from the African American community.
And then we have, oh, that's predominantly white mixture of,

(18:00):
you know, city, rural and those types of things.
It's a pretty diverse but not diverse culture.
But trying to educate my students and understanding that,
you know, it's not about just simply saying, hey, yeah, you
got to lose weight. You got to change your diet.
You got to get do these things to get healthy.
You got to address how I label it as a kind of a biomechanical
psychosocial problem. You know, there's, there's a lot

(18:23):
more to it and it's interesting kind of listening to you.
I've always put a lot more emphasis.
We got to, you know, make it accessible to the individuals.
If if we don't develop communities that people feel
safe to walk in, they have access to walking, they have
access to more grocery stores and healthy produce.

(18:45):
I was really. Proud of myself that when?

(19:09):
I lived in New York about, it's actually about 30 years ago now
that I was able to survive in about $25 a week for groceries,
which I thought was pretty good.And that was, you know, 19 and
early 19 or late $1980. But we had a recent guest on
here, Louis Burdis, who really focuses on diabetes reversal.

(19:33):
And he's like yourself is on a totally plant based diet.
And he was telling me that, you know, he lived for how many
different weeks that he just challenged himself and it was
like 20 bucks to eat healthy. And I was like, OK, that's, you
know, in today's dollars. So I don't feel so proud about
what I did, you know, 30 years ago.

(19:53):
But it just speaks to the fact that we tell people it's
expensive to eat healthy becauseyou think it's got to be
organic. And it's and we, we start
putting meat in the whole thing.Yeah, it gets expensive if
you're eating meat, but if you're on a plant based diet,
you can eat really affordable. But it's that education and and
that willingness to put the timein.

(20:13):
So you know, it's I love what you're doing.
And I'm, I'm sure I'm going to learn so much from this
conversation, but I want to backstep a little bit to your
barathon. This sounds like a really bold
vision. How does the event work?
What are your goals in terms of participation and impact for
that program? And so the barathon is going to

(20:34):
be our our annual run slash walkathon for the company.
We're actually going to be pushing it back to probably to
the spring because the the app is the official release of the
app is happening in two months and the barathon is currently
scheduled for the end of end of October, so about 2 1/2 months.
But the timeline between the release and the event, which is

(20:55):
getting tighter and tighter to where, you know, again, when you
first release an app, there's going to be potential, you know,
kinks and things like that that we need to work out.
And so we're probably going to push it back to the spring, the
same month that I did the the 2,000,000 steps as an
individual, we're going to try to break the world record for
the most people in a virtual runslash walk event across multiple
venues. The current record is 773,000

(21:17):
people and our goal is to get a million people to move.
Now, this is the ultimate objective of the barathon,
whether we accomplished that in,you know, in, in April 2026 or,
or 2027 or whatever it may be. That's the ultimate like first
objective. Can we get a million people on
our platform, log a mile or moreon the same day and then break

(21:37):
that record? This year's theme though, is
bear health to the moon. And so that's still going to be
a thing where it, which is kind of like a secondary goal where
we're going to try to see if we can cover enough distance as a
community on barathon day to reach the moon.
So the moon is about 239,000 miles away.
And on that day, however many users we have on the app, we're
going to design people a distance, you know, based on

(22:00):
that, you know, if we have 200,000 people on, everybody
only has to walk a mile. If we have 120,000 people on,
then everybody's got to do 2. So that's really from from when
we released the official app in October to the date that we
ultimately set for Barathon Day in April.
That will be essentially the campaign.
So we'll try to partner with as many nationwide Wellness

(22:22):
organizations as possible. There will be satellite stations
for for the barathon, right? So, and the idea is going to be,
at least for the campaign anyway, the content will be like
us taking off on, on, you know, the release date of the app
trying to reach the moon. And, you know, along the way,
we'll do some content where it'slike we're on our way, but now
we're running out of fuel. So we have to find more partners

(22:44):
to, to get more people on the platform to, to fuel all make it
all the way to the moon. And so that would be kind of
like our launch campaign over the next 6 to 8 months or so.
You know, what I've learned is that you have to take the focus
away from the activity and you don't have to.
But for most people, I think we need something bigger than go
take 10,000 steps a day. We, we need some sort of

(23:06):
objective that's related to it that ultimately leads to the
same outcome of 10,000 steps a day or, or what have you.
But it's way more engaging and it just makes people feel like
it's a life. It's not, it's not a, some a
task that they have to do for their health.
For example, yesterday I ran 24 miles, 24.5 miles.
Why? I've never actually done that.

(23:27):
Why did I do that? There was a challenge here in
New Orleans for between the run clubs where a representative
from Nike put on it this challenge called The Bigger.
I forget exactly what it's called, but they just released a
new shoe, a new Romero kind of like regular everyday running
shoe. And they wanted to like let
everybody demo the shoe as a part of a challenge.

(23:48):
And so I run a run club. It's called Soul Running.
And there's another run club called the Five O 4th, another
one called Boring Run Club. So from 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM or
6:00 AM to 6:30 PM, however manymiles you log in the Vameros go
towards your teams total. I ran 24.5 miles.
Another one of my team members ran 30 miles.

(24:08):
Another person who had never ranmore than 5 miles in a single
day ran 23 miles and our team, though a bit smaller, ended up
winning by like 15 miles. It was the best moment.
Nobody got paid anything. No one, no one was asked, hey,
can you make sure you everybody just showed up on their own
accord? And that was really a clinic on
on, on health engagement, honestly, because, yeah, people

(24:32):
were hurt. Now everybody's ready for the
next for the next next. I mean, again, whatever you call
the next shoe drop, whatever next demo, and again, everybody
did something that day that theyhad never done before.
So many people had done something that day that they had
never done before. And those kind of transformative
moments open people's minds to what's possible for their
health, you know, and that's, you know, these, these the

(24:54):
culture that we have here in America is like that have to
become like this gym rat. You have to, you know, wake up
at 5:00 AM, hop in the cold plunge, go to the gym, do your
thing, get back home, take your supplements, like you were
saying earlier, you know, sit inthe the sauna, the sauna, get
your get your red light therapy.I'm not saying all these things
aren't going to be advancing howor for us, it's not going to

(25:15):
increase longevity. But the overwhelming majority of
us don't need to do all of thosethings.
We're treating those things almost like medicine or like we
treat medication like it's goingto fix the problem.
I think those things can certainly enhance your health.
But if you don't move every day,if you don't eat right, it
doesn't matter how much red light therapy you do, doesn't
matter how many eyes of baths you take, you know?

(25:37):
Yeah. The Blue Zones, I'm sure you're
familiar with them. They don't really go to the gym.
They're the healthiest people inthe world.
Like it. It always confuses me why we why
we look to our blueprint as the blueprint for health when there
are tons of populations around the world that are outliving us
by 20 years and we don't look tothem first.
And when when my friends ask me all the time, what do I get my

(26:00):
protein from? And like, how am I going to stay
healthy with on a, on a plant based diet, like the longest
live people in the world, 95 to 100% plant based dyes.
I'm just going to get it from the same place that they get it
from the plants. And so again, they're they're
ego things. There are just propaganda right
in, in in our culture that has made made health less

(26:22):
accessible, but it's available and affordable on the whole.
There's there are definitely cases where people literally
can't afford food there, their cases where there aren't any
clinics at all nearby. And that does have a direct
effect on health outcomes. But on the whole.
And I find in those situations, too, where people can't afford
food, we don't support them verywell in terms of helping them

(26:43):
get access to it. You know, I gripe all the time
and I see these, you know, on the news.
We'll see people that are doing food drives and you're carrying
these boxes of food. And what's right on top of that
box is a loaf of white bread. And it's like, if we think it's
so important for people to have adequate nutrition for their
health, why can't we invest a little bit?

(27:03):
And yeah, it doesn't have to be expensive quality stuff, but
give, you know, bags of beans and rice and, you know, good,
healthy, quality food. So the people have the
opportunity to take that and putit into their bodies and improve
their life. But instead, we're just going
to, you know, let's get them thecheapest food we have.
You know, church does a food drive.

(27:24):
Everybody just, you know, oh, I got this can of green beans that
I haven't eaten. So I'm just going to throw that
in the box. It's like, no, let's, let's try
and do better. No, yeah.
It, it makes you wonder what theobjective is for me when you,
when you have a full-fledged system that you know, is
essentially funding the food that we are eating, especially

(27:46):
in, in underserved communities through, through SNAP and
benefits like that. It makes you wonder what the
goal is, right? To me, if you have a, if you
have the wherewithal as a systemto, to create health and to, to
make sure that people have the, what they need to and to improve
their, their health and it's notprovided.
In fact, the opposite is. It just makes you wonder, you
know what the actual objective is.

(28:06):
Because it is easy to provide health for our communities.
I mean, I, I see no obstacles toit.
And as rich as we are, the fact that we only have one Blue Zone
in this country and you know, you talk about the standard
American diet and the acronym issad.
That's pretty sad to me. You know, we, we are the ones

(28:28):
that are say we're providing food across the globe and yet
it's not food. No, these are foods.
These are food. That's what I call them food.
What was I going to say? You know, interestingly, people
who live in food deserts, right,where they, where they say food
isn't accessible or they say healthy food is inaccessible,
they are actually more likely tobe obese and overweight.

(28:49):
If you were there where there isless food, there's more obesity.
And, and it's because of the because of the food that's being
consumed, such high calorie, high processed food that people
are over consuming because theseare also addictive foods right
there. They're not just, you know, a
snack here, they're there. They're a snack with a bunch of
components in it that make you want more and more and more and

(29:11):
more of that. And it's just, it's, it's hard.
It's hard to fight against that as an individual, especially
because the rest of your environment is doing the same
thing. If you try to go off against the
grain now you on some level probably having to cook for
yourself and you're in your house with your family.
People are looking at you like, what are you doing?
Your plate looks super sad to you.
Like have you ever, I don't knowif you've ever been out with a
group of friends and like ordered they some sort of

(29:33):
makeshift plant based meal from from the the restaurant because
they don't have anything on the menu.
And then they come out with likea few pieces of lettuce and like
a piece of bread. And it's just like, this is not
doing a good job to like promotewhy people should eat healthy,
you know, and it, it's, it's hard.
That's the hardest part. So what does your daily plant
based diet look like? I'm getting a little off topic.

(29:55):
I'm interested because I'm trying to shift to a much more
plant. I say more plant centered.
I don't like the term flexitarian because flexitarian
to me just kind of sounds like, yeah, yeah, you want to be a
vegan, but you just don't have enough committal strength.
Yeah, yeah. I always thought flexitarian was
an interesting term. It flexitarian to me is the same

(30:15):
person that says I try to eat healthy, right Sometimes, you
know, and you know when people say I try to means like they
definitely aren't. And again, it's no problem and
you don't have to prove anythingto me.
Another prove anything to you. Like it's your life.
This is your choice. But you know, if it's important
to you, like actually commit. Yeah.
So every day I would typically start with handful of nuts.

(30:37):
So when you look at I I literally go off of the Blue
Zone guidelines, except I don't eat any any meat at all on the
Blue Zone guidelines. They say that blue zones eat
maybe like meat, 3 or 4 * a month, poultry, you know, fish a
couple times a month, minimal, minimal eggs.
Again, they're still eating these these animal products in
some areas, but the the volume is so small compared to most

(31:05):
Americans that are eating meat are probably eating.
Anywhere from probably 6:00 to eight or more ounces in a meal.

(31:34):
OK, Yeah, they're not doing thatat all.
And so again, it's it's not thatyou have to be plant based to
eat healthy or to be healthy. It's it's, it's the volume, the
sheer volume of animal products that we're consuming.
It's just not, it's not how we evolved and then and and we
adopted it too quickly and it's causing problems.
After I'm done snacking on my nuts throughout the day, I'll

(31:54):
have some form of beans, rice, potatoes, mixed vegetables, some
sort of salad with that as well.And yeah, just mix it up again,
different variations of beans. So I'll do chickpeas one day,
I'll do black beans one day. I'll do, you know, quinoa one
day. I'll do brown rice one day.
And and I'm also not a tyrant with myself about this, right?

(32:15):
If I'm out with friends and and there's like a Impossible burger
option, like I haven't like, youknow, I know what I'm doing on a
regular basis. That's what we have to make sure
we get right. It's like what we're doing on a
regular basis because that's ultimately what shapes your
health. But yeah, that's pretty the
first, but after? So that you need to sleep.

(33:00):
If you have to choose between sleep and exercise, go to sleep,
right? You have to choose between
eating and sleeping. Go to sleep if you can like
manage to stay, stay asleep despite being hungry.
But your body needs time to restand repair.
And if while you're sleeping, you're digesting, it's not or
yeah, you your body rest and repair during sleeping.
That's pretty obvious, but if your body's working while you're
trying to sleep, you're not going to sleep as efficiently

(33:22):
and then therefore you're not going to feel as good when you
wake up in the morning. Our bodies are bombarded with a
variety of toxins daily food in our food, in our water, in our
air, and there's not much we cando about that.
But when we take a break or whenour bodies get to take a break
from work, right during sleep, it can go in and, and kind of
clean up the system, right? They call this during the

(33:42):
fasting state or or all top of you where basically your body is
breaking down old damaged cells and proteins and them into new
or younger ones. But most of us are eating around
the clock. We never get a break and and
most of us are deceased. I was kind of curious about the,
you know, eating one meal a day and it being plant based and
being able to, I mean, the quantity of protein you need to

(34:04):
get in and the, and then I thinkwe're learning a lot and I'm
having to unlearn a lot about protein, how much protein we
actually need to build muscle and to survive.
But you know, it would seem likeit'd be a lot more difficult to
consume enough calories and whenyou're eating plant based
because you're going to have a lot of beans, a lot of fiber and
vegetables in that that, you know, to get those calories in,

(34:25):
you're going to be stuffing yourself.
I can't imagine eating for me, Iprobably need about probably
about 3000 calories to maintain weight, probably a little bit
less if I want to. So you're burning a little bit
about. 3000 a day. Yeah.
And I'm also, I mean, I weigh 225 right now and so I probably
should be cutting back to about 2500 calories a day.

(34:46):
But even to get that in in one meal is.
Challenging in one meal. But you're eating nuts through
the day, so I see now that that's where you're getting a
little bit more of those calories and you're getting
healthy fats, healthy oils. My problem is I snack on nuts
and eat a couple extra meals a day, which doesn't help me much.
I'm trying to balance that all out a little bit more, yeah.

(35:09):
Yeah, I say skip breakfast or skip dinner, like one of the
two. That can go a long way.
You know, the average American maybe in the 1950s was consuming
about 2500 calories a day, 2200 calories a day.
Now the average American is consuming about 32 to 3036
hundred and we're not moving more.
By the way, no, we're moving. Far less and so as far as the

(35:31):
obesity epidemic goes like that explains it simply it's not it's
not that suddenly we are just undisciplined, right.
Everything about our environments have changed and,
and and just like any other human beings, we we fall victim
to our environment. So but but yeah lots of things
to unlearn, especially as it relates to protein.
If you eat enough calories and you were just a normal person

(35:52):
that is just trying to get through life as a regular
person, maybe have a, you know, minimal fitness program where
you're, you're exercising, you know, 30 minutes a day,
something like that. If you're eating enough
calories, you will get enough protein from the plants.
Again, I'm not saying everythinglike lettuce.
Maybe you would like if you ate 3000 calories lettuce, which I
don't even know how possible that is.

(36:13):
Maybe I. Don't think it is possible.
Yeah, maybe you didn't get enough protein, but if you're,
if you're eating a, enough calories of a balanced plant
based diet, you will get enough protein.
Now, if you're trying to bowl right for like some sort of
weight lifter or something like that, I do think like you can
afford to have a little more. And I highly recommend reading a
book called Proteinaholic by by Doctor Garth Davis.

(36:36):
I believe that's his name. He's a he's a plant based
bariatric surgeon in Houston. And he wrote this book called
Proteinaholic because he used tobe, you know, on the other side
of the the protein conversation.But now he's, he talks about how
we essentially are over consuming protein and obviously
in the American diet. And so he, he recommends I
forget what it was, but for me, so I'm, I'm, I'm 140 and I think

(36:58):
he said something along the lines of like 50 to 60 grams of
protein per for, for me, right. So it's about a, it's about a
gram of protein per kilogram of weight.
So I think I'm about around 60 or so for in kilograms.
Again, I don't remember exactly and, but it but as as an
athlete. So I, I'm AI guess I'm an
endurance athlete at this point.And maybe a little bit more,

(37:20):
maybe maybe like a 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram.
But but this need for a, a gram per per pound of body weight or,
or even more. He doesn't believe that there's
any evidence supporting that that leads to any measurable
difference in your muscle gain compared to eating less.
And, and my protein levels personally are above average.

(37:43):
And because we we kind of equateor conflate muscle size and mass
to protein levels in the body, and they're not necessarily the
same thing. I'm a smaller guy.
I run a lot, so that's part of it too.
But my protein levels from my diet are fine.
Yeah, I, you know, teaching exercise science for now, though
it's been 27 years since I finished my PhD.

(38:05):
I feel like I'm having to uneducate myself and change how
I'm teaching in just so many ways.
And a gentleman we had on the podcast, I think it was the end
of last year. His name is Doctor Robert
Lufkin. He wrote the book Lies I Taught
in medical School. Oh wow.

(38:25):
And yeah, and I'm feeling like, you know, I probably need to
write a book, the lies I taught in exercise science because, you
know, there's been so much change over the years.
I mean, for one thing, when I was in Extra, you know, when my
master's program, it was all, everything was about high carb
and high cardio exercise. We didn't teach about resistance

(38:47):
training and we didn't teach about the quality of carbs or
the protein in the carbs. And you know, we also, as we
started shifting into weight training, you know, it's high
protein is important for, you know, build building muscle and
for athletic performance and everything.
And yet, you know, you see the longevity research, lower

(39:08):
protein gives us longer life, more plant based gives us longer
life. And you know, we're we're
leaning into keto now, which is stupid.
And there's just so many things that I feel, especially doing
this podcast, talking to people like yourself and, you know,
countless other guests on recently that have kind of been

(39:30):
turning the screws on me. I plant based, plant based,
which is a hard, hard adjustmentfor me.
But you know, and I've been of that mindset that you can't
possibly get enough protein eating plant based because we,
we talked about it's incomplete proteins.
And the reality is it's not incomplete proteins or just a
different balance. And when you look at leucine

(39:50):
being such an important protein for turning on M Tor in the
muscle to be able to maintain muscle mass, but that's also
protein that increases our risk of cancers and other health
conditions. Too much leucine also shortens
our lifespan. So it's like there's a lot to
move through in this process. And you know your goal in trying

(40:12):
to educate, you know your community is a monumental task
because. Where are they getting the
information? And, and there's so much
probably unlearning that you have to teach in order to get
communities that are healthier. Yeah, which is, you know,
there's a good point is a very tall task to get people to
change their one first become aware, then understand the need

(40:36):
and then actually commit to the change and stick to the change.
That's I can only do that probably with like 12 people a
month, you know, for or 12 people a year.
And I feel like that might be might be extreme.
So what we are shifting to instead as a far solution is how
do we make people aware it's pretty easy, get them to

(40:57):
download the app and learn theirhealth score.
And then how do we connect them to a community of people who are
already doing this right in a sense, like using the community
to hack the learning curve. Like all of these aspects that
we're talking about. Again, it's really complex to
and you need, you need a lot. You need lots of professionals
sitting down with individuals educating and that's just not
super scalable, more efficient. And So what we do instead now is

(41:22):
again, we make people aware of what they currently like, where
they currently stand with their health.
We help them develop an objective, right?
So you have to have the objective of like being healthy
or running more or what have you.
And then we connect them with a community that's already doing
that or is already on their way.So for example, with running,
let's say someone wants to run more.
They saw a post online, they seea bunch of people that they

(41:42):
would like to be around running.So now they want to run more.
OK, cool. You want to run more.
Next you need some sort of time bound test of your ability to
run or test of your test or measure of whatever your new
objective is. I want to be healthier.
So three months from now, you need to have a test of that,
that health or test of that, that running capacity.
And then third, you just need a community of people who are

(42:03):
already doing it because being or just being around them,
you'll be able to borrow essentially the energy and the
perspective and the, the, you know, the, the forward thinking
of their, of that community. And then you just kind of start
naturally. Oh, well, all of a sudden I'm
eating a plant based diet more or all of a sudden I'm running
more because my friends are overhere running and my community's
over here running And it doesn'tfeel like again, this task.

(42:25):
Our run club meets up at 7:00 AMon a Sunday.
People actually don't like running, right?
I don't like most of us don't like running.
In fact, we were talking the other day about how, you know,
running isn't really like a game, running and track and
these aren't games. These are something that you
play. These are something that these
are things that you do compared to like playing baseball.
It's nice. It's not game at all and it's

(42:46):
it's primarily suffering, but people who had not run before
are getting up every Sunday morning at 7:00 AM to be around
people that they do like and then they're willing to do
something that they don't as a result.
And so that's what we're really trying to get efficient about
now. So there are tons of communities
nationwide written in more and more coming around every day.

(43:07):
Maybe it's 20 people in this community or 10 people in this
community. And maybe this community is
about, you know, painting and maybe this community is about
meditation. And again, everybody's
different. We need, we need to have space
and environments for everyone. So how do we bring people onto
our platform, help them understand their current health
status, identify what their objectives are, and then connect
them to a community? To me, that's the solution

(43:29):
really. And then overall, how do we, how
do we essentially create a community where we're ultimately
everybody promotes that in their, in their different ways
and we solve the problem seamlessly as opposed to, you
know, one-on-one service? So how does the app certain work
to do that when I mean, you're in New Orleans and I'm sure the
app is not intended to just serve people locally that you

(43:52):
want this to be. I would imagine even
international would be the loftiest of gold, right?
So how does it work to do that? Did it connects these people far
distant from where you are to communities and you know, insert
small town USA. Yeah.
So, so we are focused primarily in New Orleans to start.

(44:12):
We are still on our beta app forthe next two months.
So we've been on our beta app for about 18 months now have
about 2500 users, predominantly in New Orleans, probably about
7580% of people are in New Orleans.
And we've learned a lot, right. These strategies that I'm
explaining to you now have come as a result of everything I've
learned over the past 18 months.And essentially we were kind of

(44:33):
building our blueprint here. So I've identified one that
people are interested in knowingtheir health score.
Great, great. I'm glad people are are open to,
to finding out that number maybemore so than they are going to
the doctor. Great, because this could be a,
a, a kind of do it right, a first step for for that.
And then we list resources in our directory.

(44:54):
So Bear connect is this kind of like our directory platform
where people can find providers,they can find, again, community
meetups, events and and again, making it to where everything is
kind of right there in your handfor folks.
And then we hope we also host the events ourselves, like run
club beat UPS, wall club meetups, you know, hit workout
meetups, again, giving, making, making fitness and whatnot more,

(45:16):
more accessible and affordable for people.
And now that I feel like we've kind of gotten that model down
here in New Orleans. And again, we're still we're
still more or less pre launch, we're going to actually be
opening up a space called Bear Connect here in New Orleans
where essentially an in real life version of the app where
we'll curate a healthy life calendar where people can swap

(45:36):
out one or two or three things that they do per week with one
of the things that we offer thatserve the same function, but in
a health promoting way. And that's essentially going to
be our model. We're still testing out the in
real life version of things herein New Orleans before we expand
for users who aren't in the city.
What we're going to do is we're going to build up this
repository of community Wellnessbrands, organizations, meetups,

(46:00):
so that when someone comes on the platform in another city,
but we don't have a physical presence there, they can find
their community. That's really what Bear Connect
like. The brand promise of Bear
Connect is it's like find your community at Bear Connect or
Bear Connect, find your community.
And that's how it'll start. And then we also have tons of
challenges that take place virtually on the app.
And so people have become friends with competed with

(46:22):
complete strangers just from just because they were going toe
to toe in a steps challenge in, in, in June.
You know, and that's really where I would say folks who
aren't here can spend the majority of their time kind of
connecting with what we do and, and being able to benefit from
what we do is by participating in our virtual challenges.
So each month we do a total workout duration tracker who can

(46:43):
take, who can work out, essentially spend the most time
working out, who can take the most steps, who can cover the
most distance, who can run the most miles and who can burn the
most calories. And you know, you're competing
against yourself and you're alsocompeting against others each
month. And, you know, people are pretty
engaged. You get 50 to 100 people
engaging in those challenges, each challenge on a monthly
basis. And again, we're still early and

(47:04):
growing, but it's again, the seeds of this structure that
helps make it to where health isjust a part of your life, not
some extra task that you have todo.
And that doesn't mean that therewon't be some individuals who
need more than just the wrap around community accountability
and the awareness. Some people do need like

(47:24):
tailored one-on-one. And we will find them as we as
we engage with our community andbe able to either connect them
with the services they need for that or eventually deliver those
services ourselves. But to to me to solve the best
way to solve the problem is in away that makes people feel like
it's just like it's not something else to do.
Because then then that's also less work for us as a company.

(47:48):
Over over time. So say we have a viewer or
listener in again, insert City USA that you know, maybe they're
already on a good path to being healthy.
But they say I want to help my community get healthy, get
involved. What can they do to grow the app
and to grow participation in kind of their own area to make

(48:10):
it kind of easier for you for your app to be successful?
Yeah, the best thing that someone can do to help is 1, you
know, download the app themselves.
They can download our beta app search in the Google Play or App
Store. It's a DACA do DACADOO you can
use access code Jeff Armstrong to to get in and then create
your account, join a challenge. But if you could also maybe host

(48:33):
a challenge within your community, be able to promote a
commute or challenge within yourcommunity.
It could be 1020 people, whatever, but just get people
involved in in that that aspect of what we do.
Maybe we can work together on anincentive to get people to join
and and they will, they will be incentivized, not necessarily
who can take the most steps because sometimes the

(48:53):
competition, like for just the top prize can like a lot of
people won't engage because theyjust don't think that they're
going to be the person. But if it's you have to join and
you have to hit a certain measure that accessible to most
people, but still, you know, hitting a standard that's
important for health. So for example, at the beginning
of the year we did a challenge where we gave away 2 tickets to

(49:14):
Super Bowl 59 if you completed 59,000 steps in a week.
So that's about 7000 or so stepsper day.
Again, a good step total. Not something I told her that
most people aren't hitting everyday, but that most people could.
So there, you know, everybody got gets better, but it's not
about who who can take the most steps, although that that
naturally emerges, right? Who can take the most steps

(49:36):
because we're where we are competitive.
And and I had a 64 year old ladydo a 2 million or do 1,000,000
steps last month on the app. Oh wow, you.
Know it's just again, what's your excuse?
Let's see, what else haven't I asked you about?
The the intersection of HealthEquity, technology and
community empowerment? Is is really powerful?
Yeah. What gives you hope as you do

(49:59):
this work? What what gives me hope is
actually just seeing results from the community again.
Doctor Eric Griggs lost 20 lbs, got taken off his blood pressure
medication. He's he's he's kept that weight
off, he's kept off the medication.
That's what we started this for,to predict, prevent and reverse
the chronic conditions that plague our community.
So any time that happens, like I'm not, I'm not like, man, you

(50:20):
know, we're not, we're not far enough along yet.
We haven't accomplished our goals.
Every single time that happens, I feel like I've accomplished
our goal. And if and if it only happens
five times and in the life of the company, I'll still be proud
of that. So those are the things that
definitely keep me going is the stories of people literally
walking down or off their medications in a matter of
months and then realizing that that's possible.

(50:41):
It's, it's like that shift again, that that's really hard
to do. That's really hard to, to create
in an inorganic way, right? Like lecturing to people to make
that shift is a bit harder than when they just take on a
challenge and they transform themselves.
It's a bit more sustainable thatway.
So that, that definitely gives me encouragement.

(51:02):
Honestly, my work ethic is, is one of the most encouraging
things about this is, you know, so coming from a public health
background, HealthEquity concentration, they, they talk
about this process called community based participatory
research. And basically it's an approach
to research and development where you involve the community
you aim to develop solutions forin, as equal partners in the
design and development of these solutions, right.

(51:24):
That sense of ownership that people have input.
They, they know that people likewhen things are tailored, you
know, to them even like obviously on the individual
level. Well, there's a principle in
startups called customer discovery and it's literally the
same thing. Go talk to people with problems,
come up with solutions and test those solutions with those
people. And what makes a successful
startup or what makes a solutionsuccessful, right?

(51:46):
Because my goal here is to have a successful solution because I
want to solve this problem. And what encourages me is having
these baseline principles that give me the best chance at
achieving that outcome. So my job as a founder is to
talk to more people or as many people as possible who are
dealing with the problem that I'm trying to solve.
So, you know, people, Black people, dealing with health
issues, and then test as many solutions as I can to solve

(52:10):
those problems and as condensed a time frame as possible.
And I know that I'm doing that. And so that's really encouraging
to me. And, and we are also constantly
getting positive feedback from outcomes, specifically also just
from like investments and thingslike that.
And so that, that really that's really encouraging because you
can you, you have ideas about what you think would be great.
And, and you don't really know if they are until you put them

(52:32):
on reality. And so to be fortunate enough to
get positive feedback and see results when solving the problem
that we aim to solve, like that's really encouraging.
Like we need, we need to be ableto recognize measurable progress
on our goals to stay like happy and fulfilled as human beings.
And we're not getting that and it sucks.
And so I'm glad they were able to get this.
So that that's been encouraging because I really enjoy this
work. It's not just about the

(52:53):
potential for bear health to become a billion dollar
enterprise. I really think that we should
solve this problem because we'rewasting people and wasting or in
losing time. So bear health in for the
listener viewer and they maybe they haven't seen it.
It's spelled small B capital E, capital H, capital R Well, where
does that come from? Yeah.
So, so bear health stands for orbear stands for the black

(53:14):
electronic health records. So just like a traditional E or
an EHR system. So it's black electronic health
record and the goal here, and that's a secondary component of
our product. So we have our app, which will,
you know, just be a health and Wellness platform, but then all
of our user data goes into the health score report or the black
electronic health record and it'll be stratified by city,

(53:37):
state, zip code, parting organization, race, things like
that. But you know, this is a two-part
problem and we can't, you can't do one and expect the other to
or not improve the other and expect a solution to actually
take. So there are two components of
health, right? So we need to raise the
awareness that the health literacy of the individual, but
we also need to improve the environments to where they're

(53:57):
health promoting. We do 1 without the other.
It's not going to work if we if we only improve health literacy
and health consciousness, there will be a few people within
communities that transform themselves, but but they might
slip back into the old ways because the environmental
pressures are so strong. And if we just improve the
environments, not the minds and the minds will recreate the old
environment. So we have to do them both at

(54:18):
the same time. And so the ABA real time health
education for individuals and then the health score report is
a real time database of user health insights that we use to
inform and Dr. community health interventions.
So we'll see the average health score overall, we'll see the
average health score by category, average health score
by gender. And then we'll look at these
insights on a monthly basis and say, OK, well, we're doing well

(54:40):
overall, but our mental health category is low or we're doing
well overall, but the physical health category is low.
So let's focus on that for messaging and challenges and,
you know, meet ups for this month and see if we can nudge
that up a bit. And so every month we're looking
at this data and actually since we started tracking it last
December, there's we've increased from 5:33 average
health score overall to 546. So we've gone up, you know, 13

(55:04):
wait at 13 points overall, whichagain there are 2500 people on
the platform and we're still in the fair range.
So still elevated risk, but we're trending upward.
That also is what excites me themost about what we, what we've
done done so far and what we're doing is being able to see that
on a monthly basis, knowing thatthrough our efforts to
collective communities, health is improving.
But yeah, that's that's that's bear health.

(55:25):
So with the the kind of community average scores, would
there be an opportunity down theroad to be able to kind of track
what areas, regions of the country are doing well, what are
doing poorly, kind of creating challenges?
Say, hey, you know, Atlanta, you're falling behind.
You know, New Orleans is really kicking your butt.
You got to start stepping up, doing some more and and getting

(55:47):
those people that are kind of guiding the communities to say,
hey, we got to step it up. But then also to say, OK, well,
what's going on in this community that is becoming an
obstacle for them getting healthier and what can we do as
communities to improve that opportunity?
That's exactly what it's for andwe're bringing real time data to
it. That's, that's, I would say
they're like the unique aspect, most unique aspect of it is that

(56:10):
we're not waiting 6 eight monthsafter a community needs
assessment to determine what a community needs.
Because honestly, 6-8 months later, the community probably
has different needs, right? Things are changing all the
time. And so we get to see this in
real time. But absolutely, like the vision
is again, we've done a team challenge and team challenges
are the most engaging people. People go hard for team

(56:31):
challenges. Last year we did the Greater New
Orleans Steps challenge where wesplit the city up into the West
Bank, Orleans proper, North Shore, and then there's an area
called Laplace or Metairie to Laplace.
And then we did Team USA for those who were on the app but
not in the area the, the competition was which team can
have the highest average step count if people were walking.

(56:53):
And so I can't wait to do New Orleans versus Atlanta versus
Houston versus Dallas, you know what I'm saying?
And again, health promotion thatisn't about just take 10,000
steps a day, eat a healthy diet.It's as a part of your
experience. And so, yeah, but but then to to
your other point, like learning from each city, OK, so Black

(57:13):
people in Atlanta are doing wellcompared to black people in New
Orleans. Let's go talk to the people in
Atlanta and find out, you know, what is it about their lives?
What is it about their environments leading to to them
having better health outcomes? And see if we can apply some of
that to New Orleans and we'll beable to find this out for, you
know, a variety of demographics communities, right, This rural

(57:33):
community like, and I think particularly for rural, rural
communities will be interesting because there are some rural
communities that are doing well.Most aren't, but some are.
And so let's go find out what's going on there, see if we can
apply some of those things. And then most importantly,
evaluate the impact of those interventions in real time as
opposed to waiting five years down the road to see if the
health outcomes change. We can see if the health
outcomes change next month, or at least we're if we're trending

(57:56):
that way or not. Yeah, I think same thing
globally, right? We'll do what I really want to
do, hopefully this year or role next Olympics is the the the
Olympics International Steps Challenge where you join your
country and we and we go after you know, it was actually funny
when we did the greater New Orleans steps challenge last
year. It was I came up with the idea

(58:18):
in as a relate or in relation tothe Olympics happening last
summer. And so the challenge was from
the Monday before the last day of the Olympics to the last day
of the Olympics. So Monday to Sunday.
And I use the rings and everything.
And it's like the greater New Orleans.
So I forget exactly how how I how I framed it, but I framed it
in a way that for somehow it gottheir attention and they sent me

(58:39):
a pre cease and desist of the use of their their of their, of
their logo. I was like, man, how did they
even know about this? That's kind of crazy.
But anyway, great challenge. And when I responded to them, I
was like, hey, sorry about that.Happy to take it down.
We'd love to do this officially four years from now, though,
with an international step challenge.

(59:00):
They didn't respond, but you know, it's good for the story if
you make it happen. But yeah, so to say, yeah,
that's the idea. And I had no idea what I would
be promoting step challenges andhonestly become known as The
Walking guy. Like I'm here trying to create
this big vision for, you know, health in the black community,
build this platform and brand and be this entrepreneur.
And all I really managed to do in the first year was become

(59:20):
known as The Walking guy. And so I figured I might as well
lean all the all the way in. And that's why I went for the
for the 2,000,000 steps this year.
Say baby steps, but that sounds a little bit kind of cliche.
Yeah. No pun intended on that.
But, you know, you got to start somewhere.
And I think if you're identifiedas The Walking guy, but you

(59:41):
know, a few more steps down the road, again, bad pun, but you
know, you're going to be identified as the guy who has
significantly impacted the health of the black community.
So, you know, I, I love what you're doing and I think it's
great. And So what does aging well mean
to you? And we've talked about kind of
health and we talked about, you know, increasing or decreasing

(01:00:04):
that gap in lifespan for the community.
But sure, you want to do more than just have people live
longer. So what does aging well mean to
you And. Again, not to sound like it's a
pun. And how can we take one more
step toward starting it today? Yeah, aging well.
So the, the definition of publichealth is the art and science of

(01:00:25):
prolonging life. And to your point, we don't just
want people to live a long time because we can keep people
alive, keep sick people alive for a long time.
That doesn't mean that they're living well.
And I think that the definition,or at least in my experience so
far with this work, I think the the definition is missing a
component and it's really missing a mental health
component. I think the definition should be
we prolonging the desire to live, right?

(01:00:46):
Public health should be about prolonging the desire to live
because the desire to live is the root of longevity, right?
I'm sure you know people who have you know what's your what's
your practice outside of education?
Do you? Do you?
Were you a person or trainer or physical therapy?
Yeah, I did some personal training.
Corporate fitness was kind of the stuff that I was doing
before I got the PhD and startedbecoming an academic.

(01:01:09):
And so, so you're aware that people who who want it do better
under the same training programs, right?
Doctors talk about patients who are dealing with the same
serious issues, those who want it more or more likely to
survive, who want to survive, want it more likely to survive.
It's because our bodies are listening to us all the time.
And, and, and you know, the, the, the, the body follows the

(01:01:29):
mind, body follows the eyes and all that stuff.
And so, you know, these things are a bit spiritual,
metaphysical, but at the same time it, they're real.
And that's what I really want toaccomplish.
That's what ageing well, looks like to me.
It's how do we set up society? How do you set up people's lives
such that they want to be here as long as they possibly can not
to miss out on the experience that we have here?

(01:01:51):
That to me is what aging the well looks like.
It's like always wanting to be here till your last breath.
And that's what I'm really trying to create just on a
personal level beyond, beyond bear health.
And obviously we'll do that in some capacities through bear
health, but that's that's what aging well looks like to me,
people who are. Not.
Happy, fulfilled and want more. That's where purpose comes in.

(01:02:13):
I think a lot. We talked fair amount on purpose
here and when I spell purpose I always put a capital P because I
think it infuses a little bit more of that spiritual piece
that you made reference to and you know that wanting to do more
than just kind of live longer. Yeah, and again, it's the
society's job and we are society.
So it's our job to create that environment because it is going

(01:02:36):
to be dependent on the environment.
We're not going to be able to like at scale on an individual
level, will this into existence and and convince everyone to
join along in this, this missionto live a purpose driven life.
Again, we'll, we'll be able to get certain folks, but on some
level they were probably alreadypre, you know, destined for that
type of they just needed one little nudge here or there.

(01:02:57):
But how do we get it to where the majority of people, you
know, because of how we structured the society, want to
live a long time and want to create that?
This isn't, this isn't to say wecreate an environment where
everybody's having just like a blissful time because they have
everything that they need. It's like, how do we set it up
to where people are looking for challenges because they are
looking for growth? And then then we're looking to
move our, our, our, our population forward in ways that

(01:03:20):
we haven't even thought of, you know, And so that's, that's
really to me is what the ideal society looks like and what
ageing wealth really looks like.Because it isn't obvious that
we're, that we're going to have to, this may be a big, it's not
obviously we're going to have todie if we don't want to very
soon, right. Someone said that the first
person that will live to 200 hasalready been born.

(01:03:40):
And so there are a lot of advances being made right now
that will extend lifespan if people want that.
So then it begs the question, how do we get people to?
Want and to want it and and do something with it because we can
live longer and we can hit that 200 year mark.
But if we're not really doing anything to further mankind,
what have we really accomplished?

(01:04:01):
There we will get bored with that and mess something up and
just so that we have something to do.
And so instead of having to let things fall apart and then solve
that problem just to feel like we have an engaged life, how
about we figure out how to make sure that everybody has their
basic needs to reach their full potential and then see what what
the maximum potential of human human beings are from there as

(01:04:24):
opposed to another one. Sounds kind of toxic.
Great goal. So I asked this question of all
my guests and you've kind of alluded to a lot of it already,
but what are you doing personally to age well?
What am I doing personally to age?
Well, yeah. So eating less often is what I
understand to be the most powerful way to extend your
lifespan. So that's the first thing I do.
Intermittent fasting, I eat about 6 hour window, I would say

(01:04:48):
like on a regular basis. Sometimes I do extended fast
five to seven days. And this will be a fast from
kind of like everything, phones,food, I'll drink water on these
fast and I drink water during myintermittent fasting too.
You do kind of need to drink water like it's your job.
And part of why you're feeling hungry often is because you're
dehydrated. So definitely make sure that

(01:05:10):
you're drinking water. Complete side note, but but
important for when people are deciding to go on a on a fast.
That feeling of hunger is primarily driven by a hormone
called ghrelin that is released based on your regular eating
schedule. So if you're accustomed to
eating at 8:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 6:00 PM, your body's going to
release ghrelin so that it's similar stimulate hunger so that

(01:05:32):
you will eat. If you skip breakfast, you, your
body will still release ghrelin and you're sure you're going to
feel like you're hungry, but that doesn't necessarily mean
that your body needs food or nutrients.
You probably already have what you need, right?
And so just a mental thing that people need to be aware of as if
they if they start on a fasting diet.
So that's one thing. I simplify my life a lot.

(01:05:56):
I have three goals at least right now, and I'm sure my life
will get more complex once I'm done with this kind of early
stage giving birth to bear health, my health, my business
and my family more or less on special occasions is what
matters to me right now. And that simplicity, being able
to focus, minimizes not only thenumber of distractions, but the
number of issues in your life. And I and I know that not

(01:06:19):
everybody has that opportunity. But again, you know, depends on
what you want and what you're willing to sacrifice.
To want something is to be willing to sacrifice everything
to that end. That's what it really means to
want something. And so and so that's kind of
like where I am right now. And so, but, but that has helped
my mental health tremendously because I'm not dealing with the
complexities of or as often withthe complexities of, you know,

(01:06:39):
relationship turmoil and things like that.
Again, I'm not saying this is the way to live forever.
I don't think so. But it is best for what I'm
trying to do right now, which ismaintain focus on finding the
best solution to this problem and ultimately to live to age
well. Like I, I try as hard as I can
every day so that at the end of the day, on no level am I

(01:07:01):
judging myself. I think before I didn't, I
didn't really receive compliments well.
I wasn't like anti the compliment.
I just didn't really care. Because honestly, this isn't,
this isn't my best. I'm not saying it's not good or
admirable or recognizable. And it wasn't actually until I
started building this company. And it just requires your
absolute best. You can't compete with the world

(01:07:23):
of companies if you're not, you're not out working people if
you're not, you know, getting more and more creative than
other people. And so I've had to try my
absolute hardest and whatever the in it, it's really taught me
the importance of like focusing on the activities that give you
the best chance at the outcome that you desire.
It is absolutely helped me understand that the outcomes

(01:07:43):
that I want in my life are not entirely within my control.
And I think we all can get caught up trying to essentially
control the outcome or where we get anxiety around like if what
we're going to do is going to lead to the outcome that we
want, is it worthwhile if it's not?
So I've gotten to where what makes me happy each day will
make me Philly say is that I've done as much of the work as I

(01:08:05):
can that I know gives me the best chance at the outcome.
Not that guarantees the outcome,but that gives me the best
chance. And so if tomorrow everything
fails, I'll wake up, I'm going to run, have some water, maybe
go hang out with a friend, go find a job, you know, like being
OK, because I know that I put itall in there, that that's really

(01:08:25):
important. And in a in a perspective that I
don't think that many people carry, you still carry a bit of
anxiety around what's going to happen.
Yeah, perspective is the most powerful tool that we that we
have. We get to choose how we
experience this. We get, Yeah, we get to choose
how we experience it. And if it, and if your, your
current perspective makes you feel like crap and hate the

(01:08:46):
world, like you can literally change that.
That's so crazy. Nothing can, nothing has to
change about your external environment.
You can just change the way you look at that.
And all of a sudden it's a better experience, at least one
that you can better contend with.
Right. Because because contending with
something voluntarily is much different than continuing with
it. And you feel like your your
back's against the wall and everything is stacked against
you. Even if it is, again, choose to
see it the other way to give youthe best chance.

(01:09:08):
Hey, getting out of it. Those are three things coming
on. Yeah.
Great words, and I don't know ifwe can add much to that.
Is there anything we miss talking about?
Anything else? One thing I do want to kind of
under score as we get to the endof this conversation is how can
people connect with the app? How can they connect with you?
There's some some specific linksthat you want to share with our

(01:09:29):
viewers and listeners. Yeah, for sure.
So yeah, like I said, download our app, find out your health
score, use access code Jeff Armstrong either all caps all
together or all lowercase all together, and then follow us on
social media at Bear Health. I can't promise that all of the
content will be about health, but it'll be worth watching for
sure. We have the social media intern.
She's great and I actually don'teven know what she posts every

(01:09:51):
day, but I've been getting positive feedback from from from
our community on Wichita. So follow us on Instagram and
pretty much all platforms at Bear Health, that's Behr Health.
And then follow me personally atKwame Terra kW AM ETERRA.
You'll probably either see me working or running at some point

(01:10:12):
in that content because it's pretty much all I do right now.
But yeah, and then find a way toto have a great time while
you're here because I'm interested, like in knowing what
it is that makes people feel like life is worth living.
I asked this question on my Instagram page the other day and
got some interesting insights because at first my goal was to
maximize health. But now my goal is how do I
maximize the Yeah, how do I maximize the desire to live?

(01:10:34):
That's the new focus. Begin again.
I think everything is more central to to the original
problem I'm trying to solve anyway.
We'll have to have you back on once everything kind of gets
rolling and get an update on theprogram.
And then just kind of keep underscoring on this podcast
what we can do to kind of help your community, the community

(01:10:54):
around the globe and just make everybody healthier and better
equipped to contribute to society for 200 years.
So. Every time I say that if you
were like, I don't want to be around for 200 years and again,
that is that's where we need to dive in.
And it's a challenger I know as popular as Elon Musk is lately,

(01:11:16):
but heard him in an interview. I don't know how recent it was,
but he was asked, you know, about, you know, living longer
like, you know, Brian Johnson istrying to do.
And he's like, no, I, I don't wanna live forever because that
works to the detriment of society, that if we live too
long, we don't get new ideas. We kind of get caught into the

(01:11:38):
same rut. Maybe.
But, but I think, you know, yourapproach is going beyond that.
You're, you know, we're, we're trying to give people purpose
and a reason to continue to live, to try and grow society.
You know, I think we're under, we're just on the cusp of a
spiritual evolution and we've, we've kind of evolved physically
as humans. Now it's time to evolve in that

(01:12:00):
spiritual dimension where it's, you know, we're more other
centered and we're more community oriented and united
and all those types of things. And I think we're kind of on the
potential of doing that. And I know like your app is is
working to do a good part of that.
So keep doing what you're doing,keep in touch and keep aging
well. Thank you for listening.

(01:12:24):
Hope you benefited from today's podcast.
And until next time, keep aging well.

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2 Million Steps to Better Health: Movement, Community, and Closing the Longevity Gap | Ep. 301

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}2 Million Steps to Better Health: Movement, Community, and Closing the Longevity Gap | Ep. 301