Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Wellness and Healthy Lifestyle show on your VOCM.
Now here's your host, doctor Mike wall Welcome to the show.
I'm your guest today, doctor Mike wall That's right. We're
doing something a little different and fun this week, with
none other than viocm's own Greg Smith stepping in as
our guest host. It's a bit strange being on the
(00:25):
other side of the mic, but I've got some exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
News I want to share. I have a new book
coming out in January with Breakwater Books called Health Explored,
and I thought, what better opportunity to talk about health
and wellness and reflect on the incredible stories and lessons
I've gathered from people all around the world that actually
be a guest on the show. So sit back, relax,
and join me as I share some of my favorite
moments and share what health really means to me. Now
(00:50):
that I've had all of these unique perspectives.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well, very excited to be a guest hosting tonight the
Wall Show here on VOCM. And well my guest is
none other than Mike Waller himself and kind of a
bit of a role revereversal. I was on the first
season of this show Mike. And now after four seasons,
I guess four years of this, we've kind of get
to ask you some questions and learn a bit about you.
Had a great time. A new book on the way,
(01:15):
But thanks for joining me, Mike. Yeah, it's great. I
really appreciate this.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You know, there's so many people would trust to host
the show, but being the producer, it's a perfect fit.
And yeah, it's great to be here and be on
this side of the microphone for once. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
So, as mentioned, four years of the radio program and
a lot of different things I spawned ever since we
launched this show, and the next thing to come from
this is a new book. But I guess before we
get into that, let's talk a bit about you and
in this whole process of talking wellness and exploring all this,
because I remember the initial conversations we.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Had and when we finally made it of reality, it
was pretty exciting. Yeah, totally, And I remember I remember
coming to you guys. It was literally the first episode
was during COVID, so you know, it was right into
the fire of learning how to do it all myself,
which was great. Guys are so baesent and understanding for that.
But really, what it had come down to is I had
a career in health and wellness for a long long time, right,
(02:06):
and as part of that I would work with companies
and different individuals and give them advice. But when I
got away from that and I became a professor, I
had the opportunity to teach more people, including the community.
And I think sometimes in science we are really good
at keeping all this information inside the walls of university
and not sharing with the community. And sometimes when it
is shared, it's complex and it's confusing, and it discourages
(02:28):
people from actually making a difference when it comes to
taking action. So the show stem from that. We've done
four years now. We've had well over three hundred guests.
It's been a real rollercoaster of meeting people on every
sort of topic you could imagine. And really what it
led to was meeting incredible people that I had incredible
conversations with that I wanted to learn more, and so
(02:48):
I ended up going and visiting them and seeing their
culture and their health practices firsthand. And that's kind of
where the book came out. Yeah, and this talked about
the book a little bit, because the thing about this
is this is an outlet for you to add your
voice too, because although you're talking about this weekly on
the radio, you're kind of learning about this stuff as
you're doing presenting it to the audience.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So we're learning alongside of you, really, but you don't
really get to add your insightce but you do have
a long career in this, so just talk a bit
about that.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, I think that's part of it. You know, when
you have a responsibility when you're sharing health information to
make sure you're sharing information that's accurate and unbiased, if
that makes sense, And so, you know, one of the
things I take really seriously is how do we have
an interview with somebody and be able to take that
information and then take the listener along so that ultimately
they can get the key points and the takeaways about
(03:33):
how they can implement it into their life if it's
a relevant type topic, or learn more about it if
it's a condition or something along those lines, something that
we need to know as a community. But one of
the things that happens along the way is I have
my own background and education, my own experiences, and I
take my own little bits and pieces out of it,
and sometimes when I'm doing the radio show or any
other form of media. I have to stick to the
(03:56):
real black and white side of it. But when I
was traveling and I started to go to these different
countries and now I've been over fifty five countries and
met well over two hundred individuals in these countries about health,
I was able to make a journal and I started
writing notes down just at the end of the day.
My father used to keep a journal and it was
always important to him. So I started to keep notes.
And what I found was I started to be able
to blend some of these philosophies between science and then
(04:18):
the cultural aspects of health I was learning about. And
I found there's a lot of synergies there that can
actually be really valuable for us, but they tend to
be quite different than the way we do health here.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, I think. You know, it's funny when you talk.
I do a lot of musical interviews. As you know,
we always say music is a universe language, but health
can be that way too. It could be a universe
language to help one another. Depending where you're too. It
doesn't already matter, right.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh, I think so. I think it's one of those
things that's that's universal to every single person, right, Like
they say, ninety six percent of people have at least
one health condition, thirty three percent five But the rest
of us, even if our health is absolutely perfect, it's
still something that's top of mind all the time. And
health is so broad it is definition. It used to
just be exercise or calories and weight loss and all
these other things. But I'm so glad to see it
(05:00):
expanding so much further than that that it talks about
things like our happiness, our mental health, our financial health,
our community, and all these different things that really add
the flavor to life. And so I think that you know,
as part of that, it's important to share these different
dimensions of health, and when you do that, you're able
(05:20):
to reach people that typically might not tune into health,
if that makes sense, because they were thinking it was
this old school approach towards wellness. But the reality is,
I think it's so much broader than that. And the
more I've learned, the more I've devalued some of those
things that used to be priorities and added a lot
more value to the things that I might not have
considered as important before. What are some of the themes
that I kind of resonate throughout the book. Well, those
(05:41):
are a few things that are really, really big, And
I think that one of the things is that we
live in this part of the world and we're a
really small, poor part of the population of the planet, right,
and we live a certain way, and we tend to
think that the way we live is completely normal. But
there's literally billions of other people in the world that
live very different lives in us and do things extremely
different to us. When they look at our lifestyle, they're
(06:01):
a little bit confused by it. Right. There is a
huge value on community and culture and other parts of
the world. While I interviewed actually as part of the
radio one time professor from Harvard who wrote a book
called The Lonely American, and it was about this part
of the world. We want to have space, and we
want to have broad open communities where we have lots
of land to ourselves. But what that does is that
really separates us from each other.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
We're fortunate in Newfotlant Laborador to have that sense of
community that's sort of absent in other parts of the country.
So I think we can value that more than most.
That was a big thing that really stood out to me.
And then the fact is that a lot of people
here take our health and we turn it into a checklist,
we turn into something that's stressful, something that we have
to achieve, while other places are really just building into
(06:44):
the way that they live and as a result, they
have longer, healthier and happier lives. And so those are
the types of things that I've started the question. And
remember my background was intense exercise, physiology, medical training, all
these different things to be able to look at the
pure least scientific side. And the more I've learned, the
more I've been able to understand how the information I've
(07:05):
learned in the past can interpret that. But it really
is kind of absent from how we prescribe health, for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Talk a bit about I guess maybe why you're hoping
people will get from the book, because I think everybody
will read as for their own whatever benefit.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
But what do you hope they get from Well, it
comes out in January twenty twenty five, and the Breakwater Books,
of course, is our publisher for this, and the reason
they wanted this is because there's a need for you know,
I wouldn't call it a self help book, but sometimes
when you're trying to learn a new concept. It's important
of context in a story. So I would say that
the book is a combination of three main things. It's
(07:39):
a story, so it's my interpretation of what whatever wellness
experience or people or place I was visiting did to me.
Then there's a component of how do you take these
and turn them into actionable items that you can apply
in our lives in our part of the world that
makes sense for us. And then the third part is
it's got beautiful photography by Braden King, who's the director
of a TV show but also a talented photographer. He
(08:01):
actually did our first promo for the radio show and
that's how he got involved in the video Side with Me,
which is really funny, so full circle moment. So it's
a book that's beautiful to look at. It's got short
stories at about eight pages long, with a little bit
of a meaning inside of them. And then it's got
action items that you can use to implement these if
the theme resonates with you in your life. So that's
what I hope people get out of it, entertained, informed,
(08:24):
and maybe some practical advice. I guess you.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Kind of brought up Brickwater Books here. So while we're
on that topic, talked about that partnership.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
How came to be. Yeah, so Rebecca Rose, I've known
her through circles and business for a number of years,
and I've known several people that work at Breakwater, and
obviously they're a local publisher. They do a lot for
the local community and foster the arts here. And when
I came back, I had written up a sample chapter.
We had some photos from Braden that we threw together,
and we put together a little pitch for them and
(08:50):
we said, hey, look we've got a collection of stories
from all over the place, and the biggest challenge was
like trying to bring it down to twelve chapters. And
they love the concept. They were fortunate enough to hook
me up with an editor who taught me how to write.
Writing a scientific journal or a thesis is not the
same as writing a book, I'll tell you that. And
it was a bit of a long process, but it
(09:11):
was a good and very rewarding process. It was nice
to sit in front of the fire quite regularly and
have moments where I could just think they were wildly supportive.
So now it's off to the printers and pre orders
are available and people are ready to pick it up
for the new year, so hopefully they can implement these
things into their health practice. Stay with us because after
(09:34):
the break, I'll share some more stories of my upcoming book,
Health Explored by Breakwater Books. We'll be right back after
the break. Welcome back today. I'm sharing some of the
highlights of my new book, Health Explored by Breakwater Books
with wellness stories from around the world.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Maybe we'll show it gears a bit, like can just
talk a bit about the journey of their writing, because
they had their journey. You've been traveled all over and
obviously you know you've taken a lot in so maybe
first things first is talk about maybe some of the
surprising things that have come out of this was what's
some of the surprising lessons or insights that have you taken
from all this?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah. Yeah, It's one thing to read about something in
a book, or even to interview somebody on the radio,
because the vast majority of the people that I went
to go travel with were on the radio show. So
for I take about somebody like doctor Sancho Lamo, she
just aired an episode recently. We re aired it. It was
on happiness. She was going to UNB New Brunswick to
(10:36):
do her PhD in happiness, and I was able to
connect with her and interviewer, and she was telling me
about how their country values happiness above all things. So
imagine every country has a gross domestic product which they
used to make financial decisions and policies. But in Bhutan,
which is this tiny kingdom hidden in the middle of
the Himalayas, they value GDP, but they also value something
(10:56):
called GNH growth national happiness. And to them, I won't
put a policy forward even if it makes lots of money,
if it doesn't make people healthier or happier. And I thought, wow,
this is fantastic, and I wanted to go there. My
father had passed away. He had promised me to find happiness,
and so I said, why not go to the place
and values at the most. And when I went there,
what I realized, and this is the biggest aha moment
(11:17):
I think I've out of all my travels, was that
our entire definition of happiness is completely different than theirs.
So in our part of the world, happiness is joy
or ecstasy, it's getting the new thing. Some major accomplishment.
But in their part of the world, happiness is contentment.
It's steady stream. It's when nothing is going super right
or super wrong, it's just this steady state. And that's
(11:38):
the Buddhist pilosophy of the middle Path. And for me,
that was really enlightening because it took something that I
thought I really knew. I've actually got a tattooed on
my chest and my father obviously knew what it was,
and then it changed my entire definition of something that
I like. Again, I'd done radio shows on and studied
and really made a priority of my life, and those
are the types of messages and things that I think
(11:58):
came through in the book that I wrote, a boot
because I don't know. I think that if we're not
open to new perspectives constantly, and we think we're an
expert in one thing or another, then we miss an
opportunity to really gain insight.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Speaking of getting insight and then understanding, you spend years
obviously studying, practicing.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know, medicine.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
How did your understanding of I guess all the hell
evolve over this process of writing a book, Because once
you started to dive into those stories that you've collected
and then you started thinking about it all. Obviously things
must have percolated a bit. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So like for anybody listening, I'm I'm a medical researcher,
so I have a PhD in medicine, so that means
I can train doctors on how to be doctors. But
I'm not a practicing physician, right, So everything I've been
doing has been about like learning the art of in
order to understand the science of it. And so with me,
I did my PhD in nutrition and exercise, and two
of the things that really altered my perspective was I've
(12:52):
been all over the world. I went to Okinawa, where
the oldest women in the world live. They have a
primarily vegetarian diet. They have some meat, so they they're
not vegetarian by our strict sense, but essentially the majority
of their diet is vegetables. And I was in Costa
Rica where they eat rice and bean, some of the
most simple foods you could ever imagine. And they're not
counting their macronutrients or their calories or anything, but they're
(13:14):
living exceptionally long lives. And there's some insights we had
there that the nutrition side of things is important because
what do they to use it for. They use nutrition
to bring culture together, to bring people together. There's a
consistency to how they eat. They eat local foods that
are readily available to them, even if they're not absolutely
perfect foods, and as a result, they have lower incidents
(13:37):
of the types of diseases we see in our culture
all over the place, And I think that there's this
pressure on people here that we have to be perfect
because that's what's being advertised to us. But people are
doing things wildly simply in other parts of the world,
and they're living really good. So if we could somehow
remove that stigma around what perfect eating is in our
culture and just get better, we'd probably have remarkable changes
(13:59):
in our health. So that was one of the first
insights because obviously the foods we eat are massively important
to us. The other two insights around exercise, which are
things that I really studied a lot of, was in
most parts of the world, people are what's called passively active.
So here we're like, we got to go to the
gym for forty five minutes or an hour every day,
hit our heart rate zone, do a certain routine. But
(14:20):
in the rest of the world. What they do is
they just stay active throughout today, and there's lots of
research that shows five minutes of activity here and there
is really good for us as opposed to just doing
a one hour workout. So for those people that can't
get to the gym and do these other things, being
active throughout today, doing gardening, going for walks, even when
your kids at hockey practice, going around the top of
the arena, all these things are wildly valuable for our health.
(14:40):
And then the last thing was I came from this
exercise science background where everything was perfect, and I used
to train people they would have a prescription. And when
I went to Norway, which are probably the fittest people
in the whole world, I mean wildly fit. You go
to a restaurant at night, no one's wear in a suit.
They're wearing gortex because they just finished hiking Amountain and
now they're getting a bite to eat. The concept that
they use is they play. They just do stuff they
(15:03):
love and they enjoy, and they don't stress about it.
They don't worry about some sort of prescription for exercise.
They just get out there and do stuff they really
enjoy and as a result, their entire culture is very
fit compared to ours. So those are a couple of insights.
So what I thought I knew really well, so what
I learned and I couldn't have been more wrong, you know, Yeah,
for sure. So anything that maybe you know that you
(15:25):
that you learned or that you took in that kind
of challenge, why you've you know, what you've been trained
to do and what you've learned all this training over
the years. Yeah, I think that some of those things
were really important. And then I think the other thing
is that the impact of community is so important for
people for our happiness and for our purpose in life.
(15:45):
A couple of communities that really stood out to me
was Costa Rica. Costa Rica is one of the places
where the poorest people live longer than the richest people.
They can't go work nine to five because the infrastructure
doesn't exist a lot of the time, and instead what
they do is they find find ways to commune with
one another. Music is important, that resonates with you, and
it resonates with us here in Newfland and Laborator. We
(16:07):
know this community is important, get togethers, food, all these
different things, and so that has a massive impact on
their mental health. And whenever you meet somebody that they
go put a vida, which means pure life. And what
that's saying is it reminds everybody to be optimistic all
the time. So no matter what's going on, you say
pure life and then people are like, yeah, life's pretty good.
And I love that perspective because I think sometimes in particular,
(16:29):
we look at our weather and everything else we have here,
it can be really challenging for us to keep that
optimistic attitude. But when you do do that, and these
people have a lot less than we do in a
lot of these communities, right, but they're wildly optimistic. That
was a big one. And the other one is as
we age here, we tend to have a much different
attitude towards our seniors than other parts of the world. Okay,
(16:49):
and in Okanawa, they were revered for their contribution to
the community and they have a philosophy there called icky
Guy and this philosophy basically means a reason for being,
a reason detra and no matter what space of life
through and they always have a purpose and that's really important.
So as they change from being a child to being
an adult and working from an adult into being a
(17:11):
retired person. They've always got this purpose and this reason
for getting up out of bed each day. And I
think that's something that we should evaluate as a community
and make sure that individuals at all stages of life
are part of our community and recognize for how valuable
their contribution is.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
All this stuff we've been talking about, obviously, I guess
easy to say.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Some of the key themes right across this book care Yeah.
I think that some of the key themes would be
that health doesn't have to be as complicated as we
think it is. It's the simple things in life. It's
the connection with people, it's the playing, it's the enjoyment.
It's making sure that the activities that we're doing in
life contribute to our overall well being. And we can
(17:51):
do that. We can cook a meal that's healthy, that's
good for our long term health and good for our
social health and brings us together. We can create purpose
for people that can contribute in our communities that allow
them to not be lonely. I mean, loneliness takes ten
years off your life if you're lonely, and you can
have all the money in the world and all the accomplishments,
(18:11):
but if you get lonely later on in life. That's
not good for us. So there's that and that we
overcomplicate things way too much. And I think one of
the reasons why we do this show and why you
guys believed in doing this show here on sting Ray
and VOCM, is because the information that people should have
access to should be free. It should be readily available
for people to have that information. Because in our part
(18:32):
of the world, we tend to only get wellness as
soul to us. And sometimes that's not necessarily what's best
for us, it's what's best for the organization selling it.
Stay with us because after the break, I'll share some
more stories of my upcoming book, Health Explored by Breakwater Books.
We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back today
(19:00):
hearing some of the highlights of my new book, Health
Explored by Breakwater Books with wellness stories from around the world.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
This switch gear is a bit more now talk some
key concepts of health selling, the lessons and one of
the major themes that I noticed when when you sat
over a bit of a draft of the book where
we look at before we had this chat, Keithing really happiness.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
And we talked touched on this already.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Why is happiness such a critical part of of wellness
in your view?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, so I'll give you a bit of a personal
story on this one. And this this was something that
really stood out to me. I had a time in
my life when I was very busy with business, right so,
I had a wellness company and we did some really
fun stuff all over the world. But it was busy.
It was really busy. I realized that everything was a checklist,
everything was action. I'm trying to get things done. I
was under a lot of stress, and my father had
(19:48):
pancreated cancer and I've talked about this in the radio
before and that he was really close to me. And
my father had a really interesting life, and he told
me before he passed he wanted me to find happiness.
And I thought I was doing pretty good. But then
when I started the really peel back the layers, I
realized there were some areas in my life. There were
pretty big gaps, right Like, I was really focused on
work and yes, health, but the rest of my hobbies
were not exist and my social life wasn't as good
(20:10):
as it should be. And so I decided to look
at that, And the reality is is that if we
only focus on a one dimensional life where we're only
focused on career accomplishment or really one dimensionally, you don't
have these other things to lean on it. So I'll
kind of like be in like a stool or a bar,
you know, like if three of the four legs are
loose and somebody puts too much pressure in that stool,
it snaps, no matter how strong that one leg is.
(20:30):
And that's really what health is. And the Maori in
New Zealand have this fantastic concept around happiness and health,
and that is that it's like a meetinghouse with four walls,
and there is mental health, and there's physical health, and
then there's community health, and then there's like social health.
So what they're doing is they're balancing out the equation.
And I think that happiness is really what the culmination
(20:52):
of that balance is. I think it's really hard to
be happy unless you have balance. You know, you can
be accomplished, you can be successful, but it's hard to
be happy unless you're actually truly healthy. And health is
such a broad thing that brings those elements together, So
that's why it's such a main theme and I think
that that resonates with people. People are looking for happiness,
and one of the reasons might be is that we're
(21:12):
looking at one area but not the whole picture.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
You highly And we've talked a couple of times already
about some of the different practices from around the world
as you experienced, whether it was forest bathing or mindful
of this, Which of the practice is really sort out
to you the most?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Boy, Yeah, I got two. One of them was forest bathing.
You just said it. Forest bathing was incredible. Okay, So,
first of all, Japan is mind blowing. I've always wanted
to go to Japan. I've been to Asia before, but
I had never been to Japan. And I'll tell you,
Tokyo is a site to be seen. It's the biggest
city in the whole world. It's wildly organized, no traffic,
(21:48):
Everything is tickney boo. It's perfect. It was a very
very cool city. But it's also a city that's known
for people to work so hard they die on a
subway because they've worked themselves to death. It's a culture
of accomplishment. Now, it's not surprising that that group of
people that are working in that efficient have created a
way of being able to get the most out of nature.
(22:08):
And so I went to a forest just outside of
Tokyo called Okutama, and I met with the founder, the
first scientist to ever quantify the benefits of being in nature,
and he developed something called forest therapy, or what's called
hinrin Yoku in Japan. And I have hiked East Coast
Trim whole life. I live on Marine Drive in Logi Bay,
you know, so it's on the night doorstep. I proposed
(22:28):
to my wife on the East Coast Trail. But I'd
never experienced anything like this because what they did was
they took a very simple trail, only a kilometer and
a half long. It was flat so people could access
it no matter if they had any mobility challenges, and
they made you use your five senses. So the first
thing I did is took my shoes off. I got
in the water. It was cold on my feet. I
felt the cold, and when I came out, they made
me stack stones. So I was concentrating, I was feeling
(22:52):
the water, I was seeing the stones. I was hearing
it gurgle around my feet. I got my shoes on.
I walked across a bridge. There's a sign that has stopped,
unless when you stop and listen, you realize they hit
a waterfall behind a tree you would never know was
there unless you paid attention. When you walk on the trail,
it's full of cedar chips that smell beautiful, so you
can get the sense of smell. You can feel the
softness of it. And then halfway through they give you
(23:13):
a tea, so you're tasting this herbal tea. They ring
a bell. They ask you questions about what you've done
throughout the day, what you could have done better this week,
what your goals are, and they do therapy to give
you a gingerbread cookie that tasts a certain way, and
you continue walking until you lay in your back watch
the clouds go by with flowers next to you so
you can smell them. It was completely sensory and as
(23:34):
a result, I was so immersed another thought of stress
and ever came through my head. And now I can
take that on the East Coast Trail and apply it.
And that's really what I wanted to capture in the book,
is that we can do that anywhere. They just thought
of it, and they created a trail specifically for it,
but we literally have unlimited whether that be a trail
in the city or walking through Bannerman Park. You know,
there's lots of opportunities for that. So that was a
(23:55):
real aha moment. And then one other experience I had
recently was in Norway and I've seen this cold plunge
stuff and I'm like, what's with this cold plunge, Like
is it just macho and cool or what? And I
didn't really understand the value, and I thought, sure, it's
great to ice your joints or whatever. But what I
didn't realize until I met my friend Andreas and Norway
is that it's actually used as a way to trigger
(24:15):
a stress response in our body and then learn how
to control it. So the only way we get stress
is some bad happens to is we get a bad email,
bad news, something happens, and then we get this horrible
response in our body where we get agitated. It's really
hard to control it when something real is happening in
our life. So what they actually do is they jump
in this freeze. I've jumped into zero degree water in
the Trumpso Harbor in the Arctic Circle. It was freezing,
(24:38):
and what do he made me do is stay there
and regulate my body and control this thing, so he
knew I was safe, my body could be controlled. I
calmed myself down. And that's what they did for They
use it to train themselves so when that real action
happens in life, when we have that fight or flight
response because something bad happens, we can control our bodies.
And as a result of controlling our bodies, we can
think clear and that allows us to control our stress.
(24:58):
And that was cool because I thought it was something
completely do. I thought it was just this cool, hardcore
thing to do, but it's nothing like that. The real
reason is to be able to train yourself to deal
with stress.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
That's actually really cool because Yeah, the first time I
saw it, I was like, this is just something you
are doing it on social media me too?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Can you even deal without having your camera on? Yeah? Exactly. Yeah,
this is the interesting part of this too.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
You've had an interesting intersect between the health of our
plants and of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Who we own to Canada. Yeah, I think that the
environment is changing, right, We're seeing weather patterns change.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
All over the world.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Right. So I was in Morocco where the Sahara Desert,
believe or not, is actually getting drier, and then like
a couple of weeks ago, it just got massive rains,
and now the whole thing is a lake in the Sahara.
It's just strange. It hadn't rained for a couple of years,
and Nowson, it's just flooded. Weather is changing. But I
realized that the planet and its health directly impacts ours.
And I think there's a perfect example of it right
(25:49):
here in our own backyard. The last chapter of the
book is called on Thin Ice, and I went it
to Nane and I worked with the organization called smart Ice.
And what smart Ice does is it takes these ice
thickness sense and puts them behind snowmobiles. When I first
went to Nane, and I apologize to anybody from the
reason that realized how oblivious I was. I wasn't aware
of how remote it was right and how important the
(26:12):
ice is. You know, you hear about it, but until
you're there, it's really difficult to understand. I mean, Nane
is surrounded by mountains. There's no main road in and out,
so you need to use the ice to get out.
And it's a small community, which means if you want
to get to your camp, you've got to take the
ice if you want to get wood, or you want
to go hunt, or have traditional useful land in any
way whatsoever, then you need to have the ice. And
(26:34):
the ice is thinning and as a result, it's changing
their access to recreation all these things that contribute to
their health and their wellness and their food and everything
in their culture. And so I went up there and
spent some time with my friend Rex up there from
Smart Ice. He was an incredible host, and we went
out in the ice and we saw this, and that
was a really important intersect where I saw that, yeah,
you know what, like the Arctic and the people that
(26:56):
are probably contributing the least to the damage in the
planets are probably paying the biggest price right now. And
to me, that was something that really resonated. It's in
our own backyard and it's happening, and it's impacting our health.
And I think that when we see these disasters around
the world, we're seeing the Yeah, it's uprooting people, it's
changing lives, and we have to look at taking care
of our whole planet as well as ourselves. Stay with us,
(27:18):
because after the break, I'll share some more stories of
my upcoming book, Health Explored by Breakwater Books. We'll be
right back after the.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Break, nutrition, exercise, keeping the cold at bay, whatever keeps
you feeling great, the wellness and healthy lifestyle showed on
your VOCM. Welcome back today.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I'm sharing some of the highlights of my new book,
Health Explored by Breakwater Books with wellness stories from around
the world.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So we touched it a couple of times, but I
want to dive into a bit more cultural differences that you've.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Kind of experienced health practices that are radically different than
you see here on this part of the world, because
obviously you've seen a lot some of the stuff that
you've already touched on a little bit.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah, I'll give you an example. It's kind of an
interesting one. Two things I was and it's just such
a funny perspective because we're so skewed, right, like the
way we think about things. I was in the desert
in Sahara back to Morocco, and we camped out in
the middle of the desert, which was far out. I mean,
I'm telling you, the desert is so quiet at night.
It's like I don't know the silica or what, but
it like perts your ears. It's so quiet. I was
(28:23):
sitting on a sand dune and I said, it's so quiet.
He's like, yeah, the desert sounds like the sound of
wind with no wind, so it sounds like nothing. And
later on that night, we cooked up a traditional dish
called the tajin a ta Jean's this really cool pot
where you sort of make a pyramid of vegetables and
meat and you put it all together and you cook
it on open coals and it sort of steams it.
It's incredible. It's it cooked dinner without the boiling water. Okay.
(28:45):
And I said to the guys, like, oh, yeah, do
you choose these vegetables and stuff because they have health
benefits or whatever? And he's like, man, this is what
we have. I was like right. And it was the
same thing like in Oakanawa they have sixty percent of
their diet being like sweet potatoes because that's what they
grow there. So that's the first thing is that we
are really privileged to be able to eat gluten free
or lactose free or vegan or whatever the heck diet
(29:06):
we want. That's a real privilege to have that food.
And even though it's expensive and all those other things
that's not something that's really available in the rest of
the world. And then another thing was sometimes we have
to force ourselves to have mindfulness, and other places it's
forced upon them and they value it because it's part
of their life. I was heading out of the desert
in Morocco and I met this guy. We're trying to
(29:28):
film something and get all these things done before we
packed up, and I was like, yeah, you know. I
was like, we're kind of in a hurry, and he goes,
we got a saying around here because when we go
to meet with them, they meet morning or afternoon, and
they might be there in the morning, make me in
the afternoon. He said, if you're in a hurry, then
you're already dead. And I was like, okay, noted. And
then what I do jumped on a camel which goes
(29:49):
like so slow for four hours for the next thing,
and you know what, probably one of the most present
times of my entire life, because that resonated. I was like, Wow,
you know what, and how much of our lives are
we wasting worrying or stressing paying attention what's in front
of us? Amazing?
Speaker 3 (30:02):
You know, we're getting I guess a bit of time
here to get some final thoughts and maybe you know
how to get the book and stuff. But I guess
we'll start off with this, And this might be a
bold question, goes to the book is not out yet, but
you're you're.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Sitting with it, waiting to get it out. But how
do you.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Think your book is going to contribute to the to
the broader conversation around health and well being? Because obviously
you've been the voice of it for a few years
now on our AA waves and we've been reached out
to you.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
But I don't think the book's going to contribute. I
think that I might be in a bit of a
unique situation where if you look back to my training,
I was one of the first graduating classic kinesiology in
the country, so exercise science was like brand new back then,
and since then it's skyrocketed and it's forefront of everything.
I hope that this book is seen as a bit
(30:45):
of a bridge between the two. That sometimes we can
go a little bit too far and we can lose
sight of what's really important, right and you can't see
the forest of the trees. And I hope that it
reminds people and This is what it's reminded me is
that even though there's perfect ways to do things, there's
probably better ways to do things that make more sense
(31:07):
for us as human beings that connect us to the
things that we are used to having in our communities
and in our lives. And so I think that having
a PhD and all these other credentials and then looking
at things and saying that maybe we're not totally on
the ball for this, and maybe we're missing something and
maybe we've overcomplicated it is kind of nice and reassuring
to everybody, because all we're ever told is we're not
(31:27):
good enough for health, right, And I'm saying that, you
know what, maybe some of the advice I gave over
the years wasn't one hundred percent right. It wasn't probably
the best thing for people. But you know, we're always
learning and we're always evolving, and so people, hopefully it
can be open minded, learn about different cultures and then
use that universal human experience to say, hey, that might
work in my life here in another completely different part
of the world.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Open mind that I was saying that before you even
said it, just a lot of its simple I went
through my own health journey years ago and to figure
it or out and just got to be open minded
about some of those things you think you might know
what all. Sometimes that's for any aspect of my nutgeles
out the totally like that that angle on it there.
Speaking of that, I guess you know. I've, as I mentioned,
went through my own journey of health from years ago.
(32:07):
Still struggle with it from time to time. But for
someone listening today, maybe just beginning that journey towards better
health or looking to make that step, where should they
begin with this book?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah? I think that the book is full of all
different information that's really important, and I think that often
we take on too much at one time. If you're
a scientist and you do an experiment, you only test
one variable at a time, because if you tested twenty things,
you'd never know what was the thing that made the difference. Right.
So the reason we did it this way is that
you can read the book over time. You can take
(32:40):
one of these five or six tips that are at
the end of each one of them, and you can
try them slowly over time. This might be a year
long process. Right. Just try something, If it resonates with you,
keep it, If you don't like it, get rid of it.
I don't expect everything in this book to make a
difference for everybody, but I do know that there's little
nuggets that will probably be helpful. So I would say this,
if you're starting at zero and you go to one,
that's huge. That's one hundred percent increase in being good.
(33:01):
And if you're a ninety and you go to ninety one, fantastic.
But in general, take it slow, take it easy, don't
put pressure on yourself. Don't think that there's this expectation
that you have to be perfect and find things you
truly enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you'll never stick
with it. And if you can stick with it, that's
what changes our life and our health. Now, obviously udo's
(33:25):
flow down, effor. I know you long have to know this.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
What's next for you after the release of the book, editing,
planned for trips or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, I mean, I got to be honest with you.
I was telling you the other day off air that
you know, the most rewarding thing I do outside of teaching,
because I love teaching at the medical school. I think
it's a huge privilege. I love working with our students
and my colleagues. But I love the radio right and
I think that having a book and having the radio
show and we're on Sting Ray allows us to be
(33:54):
able to get bigger and better guests. And what I'm
really excited about is using this to be able to
attract and better guests for our radio shows that all
of our listeners here in VOCM can tune in and
get all that information. You know. If there's one thing
I can contribute, that would be that we could get
global perspectives related specifically to the people in our community.
A part of the Healthy Cored Community Engagement Committee, and
(34:16):
one of the things that I really want to do
is see what we can do as our little small
towns and our province and our communities to try and
improve our health. So that's really what I'm going to
focus on right now. Who can we get, what stories
can we tell, and how can we inspire change in
health here at home?
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Last thing, pray. I guess you know what comes out
in January. We mentioned the pre order, so kind of
talk us through that for now. If people want to.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Get it get out of first yeah, sure. So people
can go to Breakwater Books and they can pre order
it there, but you can also go to Barnes and Noble, Intogo, Chapters, Coals, Amazon,
They're all readily available through there, so you can pre
order on those sites and you can get a copy
of the bookshiped as soon as it's ready, which really
excited about. It's nice because the people in this community
(35:01):
have been able to give me a voice to be
able to tell these stories. And now these stories are
being taken across the country and to other countries as
well through this book. So people pick up a copy
and they find it interesting. That means the world to me.
But more than anything, thanks to everybody forgiving the opportunity
to be able to do these things and be able
to share these stories.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I know you got to It's pretty solid online president
social media wise, So I encourage folks if to get
the book pre order whist they get in their heads.
Obviously you want to hear folks while they think about it,
and they can reach out that way one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
And also if they want to hear a story for
the radio, you can reach out to us. Anytime I
get lots of listeners messaging me. I'm super easy to find.
You can reach me through the station there's lots of
ways online to get a hold of me. Ultimately, this
whole health series, whether it be the book or the
show or whatever, is about making sure we're armed with solutions.
So if it's relevant to you, it's relevant to probably
(35:51):
thousands more of you in the community. So please let
me know. And I appreciate everything. Thanks Mike, Yeah, thanks
for having me. I'd like to thank Greg for a
guest hosting tonight. It's been over four years of us
being on the radio here on VOCM and Stingray, and
I'm really grateful to all of you who tune in
each week. It's not often that I get to share
some of my personal favorite moments and experiences, and without
(36:14):
this radio program, I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity
to travel and meet the incredible people I've written about
in this upcoming book now. It comes out in January,
and if you're interested in picking up a copy, you
can pre order it now. It's filled with amazing stories
and practical tips you can use to improve your health.
You can find it at Breakwater Books online or at
your favorite bookstore like Indigo, Chapters, Barnes and Noble, Coohle's,
(36:38):
or Amazon all these sites have pre orders available. I
hope you enjoyed today's episode, and don't worry. I'll be
back as the host next week with new topics and
health and wellness that matter to us here at home.
Thanks for joining me. We'll see you back here next
week for another episode of the Wellness and Elty Lifestyle
Show on the Stingwry Podcast Network and your CEM
Welcome to the Wellness and Healthy Lifestyle show on your VOCM.
Now here's your host, doctor Mike wall Welcome to the show.
I'm your guest today, doctor Mike wall That's right. We're
doing something a little different and fun this week, with
none other than viocm's own Greg Smith stepping in as
our guest host. It's a bit strange being on the
(00:25):
other side of the mic, but I've got some exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
News I want to share. I have a new book
coming out in January with Breakwater Books called Health Explored,
and I thought, what better opportunity to talk about health
and wellness and reflect on the incredible stories and lessons
I've gathered from people all around the world that actually
be a guest on the show. So sit back, relax,
and join me as I share some of my favorite
moments and share what health really means to me. Now
(00:50):
that I've had all of these unique perspectives.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well, very excited to be a guest hosting tonight the
Wall Show here on VOCM. And well my guest is
none other than Mike Waller himself and kind of a
bit of a role revereversal. I was on the first
season of this show Mike. And now after four seasons,
I guess four years of this, we've kind of get
to ask you some questions and learn a bit about you.
Had a great time. A new book on the way,
(01:15):
But thanks for joining me, Mike. Yeah, it's great. I
really appreciate this.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You know, there's so many people would trust to host
the show, but being the producer, it's a perfect fit.
And yeah, it's great to be here and be on
this side of the microphone for once. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
So, as mentioned, four years of the radio program and
a lot of different things I spawned ever since we
launched this show, and the next thing to come from
this is a new book. But I guess before we
get into that, let's talk a bit about you and
in this whole process of talking wellness and exploring all this,
because I remember the initial conversations we.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Had and when we finally made it of reality, it
was pretty exciting. Yeah, totally, And I remember I remember
coming to you guys. It was literally the first episode
was during COVID, so you know, it was right into
the fire of learning how to do it all myself,
which was great. Guys are so baesent and understanding for that.
But really, what it had come down to is I had
a career in health and wellness for a long long time, right,
(02:06):
and as part of that I would work with companies
and different individuals and give them advice. But when I
got away from that and I became a professor, I
had the opportunity to teach more people, including the community.
And I think sometimes in science we are really good
at keeping all this information inside the walls of university
and not sharing with the community. And sometimes when it
is shared, it's complex and it's confusing, and it discourages
(02:28):
people from actually making a difference when it comes to
taking action. So the show stem from that. We've done
four years now. We've had well over three hundred guests.
It's been a real rollercoaster of meeting people on every
sort of topic you could imagine. And really what it
led to was meeting incredible people that I had incredible
conversations with that I wanted to learn more, and so
(02:48):
I ended up going and visiting them and seeing their
culture and their health practices firsthand. And that's kind of
where the book came out. Yeah, and this talked about
the book a little bit, because the thing about this
is this is an outlet for you to add your
voice too, because although you're talking about this weekly on
the radio, you're kind of learning about this stuff as
you're doing presenting it to the audience.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So we're learning alongside of you, really, but you don't
really get to add your insightce but you do have
a long career in this, so just talk a bit
about that.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, I think that's part of it. You know, when
you have a responsibility when you're sharing health information to
make sure you're sharing information that's accurate and unbiased, if
that makes sense, And so, you know, one of the
things I take really seriously is how do we have
an interview with somebody and be able to take that
information and then take the listener along so that ultimately
they can get the key points and the takeaways about
(03:33):
how they can implement it into their life if it's
a relevant type topic, or learn more about it if
it's a condition or something along those lines, something that
we need to know as a community. But one of
the things that happens along the way is I have
my own background and education, my own experiences, and I
take my own little bits and pieces out of it,
and sometimes when I'm doing the radio show or any
other form of media. I have to stick to the
(03:56):
real black and white side of it. But when I
was traveling and I started to go to these different
countries and now I've been over fifty five countries and
met well over two hundred individuals in these countries about health,
I was able to make a journal and I started
writing notes down just at the end of the day.
My father used to keep a journal and it was
always important to him. So I started to keep notes.
And what I found was I started to be able
to blend some of these philosophies between science and then
(04:18):
the cultural aspects of health I was learning about. And
I found there's a lot of synergies there that can
actually be really valuable for us, but they tend to
be quite different than the way we do health here.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, I think. You know, it's funny when you talk.
I do a lot of musical interviews. As you know,
we always say music is a universe language, but health
can be that way too. It could be a universe
language to help one another. Depending where you're too. It
doesn't already matter, right.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh, I think so. I think it's one of those
things that's that's universal to every single person, right, Like
they say, ninety six percent of people have at least
one health condition, thirty three percent five But the rest
of us, even if our health is absolutely perfect, it's
still something that's top of mind all the time. And
health is so broad it is definition. It used to
just be exercise or calories and weight loss and all
these other things. But I'm so glad to see it
(05:00):
expanding so much further than that that it talks about
things like our happiness, our mental health, our financial health,
our community, and all these different things that really add
the flavor to life. And so I think that you know,
as part of that, it's important to share these different
dimensions of health, and when you do that, you're able
(05:20):
to reach people that typically might not tune into health,
if that makes sense, because they were thinking it was
this old school approach towards wellness. But the reality is,
I think it's so much broader than that. And the
more I've learned, the more I've devalued some of those
things that used to be priorities and added a lot
more value to the things that I might not have
considered as important before. What are some of the themes
that I kind of resonate throughout the book. Well, those
(05:41):
are a few things that are really, really big, And
I think that one of the things is that we
live in this part of the world and we're a
really small, poor part of the population of the planet, right,
and we live a certain way, and we tend to
think that the way we live is completely normal. But
there's literally billions of other people in the world that
live very different lives in us and do things extremely
different to us. When they look at our lifestyle, they're
(06:01):
a little bit confused by it. Right. There is a
huge value on community and culture and other parts of
the world. While I interviewed actually as part of the
radio one time professor from Harvard who wrote a book
called The Lonely American, and it was about this part
of the world. We want to have space, and we
want to have broad open communities where we have lots
of land to ourselves. But what that does is that
really separates us from each other.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
We're fortunate in Newfotlant Laborador to have that sense of
community that's sort of absent in other parts of the country.
So I think we can value that more than most.
That was a big thing that really stood out to me.
And then the fact is that a lot of people
here take our health and we turn it into a checklist,
we turn into something that's stressful, something that we have
to achieve, while other places are really just building into
(06:44):
the way that they live and as a result, they
have longer, healthier and happier lives. And so those are
the types of things that I've started the question. And
remember my background was intense exercise, physiology, medical training, all
these different things to be able to look at the
pure least scientific side. And the more I've learned, the
more I've been able to understand how the information I've
(07:05):
learned in the past can interpret that. But it really
is kind of absent from how we prescribe health, for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Talk a bit about I guess maybe why you're hoping
people will get from the book, because I think everybody
will read as for their own whatever benefit.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
But what do you hope they get from Well, it
comes out in January twenty twenty five, and the Breakwater Books,
of course, is our publisher for this, and the reason
they wanted this is because there's a need for you know,
I wouldn't call it a self help book, but sometimes
when you're trying to learn a new concept. It's important
of context in a story. So I would say that
the book is a combination of three main things. It's
(07:39):
a story, so it's my interpretation of what whatever wellness
experience or people or place I was visiting did to me.
Then there's a component of how do you take these
and turn them into actionable items that you can apply
in our lives in our part of the world that
makes sense for us. And then the third part is
it's got beautiful photography by Braden King, who's the director
of a TV show but also a talented photographer. He
(08:01):
actually did our first promo for the radio show and
that's how he got involved in the video Side with Me,
which is really funny, so full circle moment. So it's
a book that's beautiful to look at. It's got short
stories at about eight pages long, with a little bit
of a meaning inside of them. And then it's got
action items that you can use to implement these if
the theme resonates with you in your life. So that's
what I hope people get out of it, entertained, informed,
(08:24):
and maybe some practical advice. I guess you.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Kind of brought up Brickwater Books here. So while we're
on that topic, talked about that partnership.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
How came to be. Yeah, so Rebecca Rose, I've known
her through circles and business for a number of years,
and I've known several people that work at Breakwater, and
obviously they're a local publisher. They do a lot for
the local community and foster the arts here. And when
I came back, I had written up a sample chapter.
We had some photos from Braden that we threw together,
and we put together a little pitch for them and
(08:50):
we said, hey, look we've got a collection of stories
from all over the place, and the biggest challenge was
like trying to bring it down to twelve chapters. And
they love the concept. They were fortunate enough to hook
me up with an editor who taught me how to write.
Writing a scientific journal or a thesis is not the
same as writing a book, I'll tell you that. And
it was a bit of a long process, but it
(09:11):
was a good and very rewarding process. It was nice
to sit in front of the fire quite regularly and
have moments where I could just think they were wildly supportive.
So now it's off to the printers and pre orders
are available and people are ready to pick it up
for the new year, so hopefully they can implement these
things into their health practice. Stay with us because after
(09:34):
the break, I'll share some more stories of my upcoming book,
Health Explored by Breakwater Books. We'll be right back after
the break. Welcome back today. I'm sharing some of the
highlights of my new book, Health Explored by Breakwater Books
with wellness stories from around the world.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Maybe we'll show it gears a bit, like can just
talk a bit about the journey of their writing, because
they had their journey. You've been traveled all over and
obviously you know you've taken a lot in so maybe
first things first is talk about maybe some of the
surprising things that have come out of this was what's
some of the surprising lessons or insights that have you taken
from all this?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah. Yeah, It's one thing to read about something in
a book, or even to interview somebody on the radio,
because the vast majority of the people that I went
to go travel with were on the radio show. So
for I take about somebody like doctor Sancho Lamo, she
just aired an episode recently. We re aired it. It was
on happiness. She was going to UNB New Brunswick to
(10:36):
do her PhD in happiness, and I was able to
connect with her and interviewer, and she was telling me
about how their country values happiness above all things. So
imagine every country has a gross domestic product which they
used to make financial decisions and policies. But in Bhutan,
which is this tiny kingdom hidden in the middle of
the Himalayas, they value GDP, but they also value something
(10:56):
called GNH growth national happiness. And to them, I won't
put a policy forward even if it makes lots of money,
if it doesn't make people healthier or happier. And I thought, wow,
this is fantastic, and I wanted to go there. My
father had passed away. He had promised me to find happiness,
and so I said, why not go to the place
and values at the most. And when I went there,
what I realized, and this is the biggest aha moment
(11:17):
I think I've out of all my travels, was that
our entire definition of happiness is completely different than theirs.
So in our part of the world, happiness is joy
or ecstasy, it's getting the new thing. Some major accomplishment.
But in their part of the world, happiness is contentment.
It's steady stream. It's when nothing is going super right
or super wrong, it's just this steady state. And that's
(11:38):
the Buddhist pilosophy of the middle Path. And for me,
that was really enlightening because it took something that I
thought I really knew. I've actually got a tattooed on
my chest and my father obviously knew what it was,
and then it changed my entire definition of something that
I like. Again, I'd done radio shows on and studied
and really made a priority of my life, and those
are the types of messages and things that I think
(11:58):
came through in the book that I wrote, a boot
because I don't know. I think that if we're not
open to new perspectives constantly, and we think we're an
expert in one thing or another, then we miss an
opportunity to really gain insight.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Speaking of getting insight and then understanding, you spend years
obviously studying, practicing.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know, medicine.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
How did your understanding of I guess all the hell
evolve over this process of writing a book, Because once
you started to dive into those stories that you've collected
and then you started thinking about it all. Obviously things
must have percolated a bit. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So like for anybody listening, I'm I'm a medical researcher,
so I have a PhD in medicine, so that means
I can train doctors on how to be doctors. But
I'm not a practicing physician, right, So everything I've been
doing has been about like learning the art of in
order to understand the science of it. And so with me,
I did my PhD in nutrition and exercise, and two
of the things that really altered my perspective was I've
(12:52):
been all over the world. I went to Okinawa, where
the oldest women in the world live. They have a
primarily vegetarian diet. They have some meat, so they they're
not vegetarian by our strict sense, but essentially the majority
of their diet is vegetables. And I was in Costa
Rica where they eat rice and bean, some of the
most simple foods you could ever imagine. And they're not
counting their macronutrients or their calories or anything, but they're
(13:14):
living exceptionally long lives. And there's some insights we had
there that the nutrition side of things is important because
what do they to use it for. They use nutrition
to bring culture together, to bring people together. There's a
consistency to how they eat. They eat local foods that
are readily available to them, even if they're not absolutely
perfect foods, and as a result, they have lower incidents
(13:37):
of the types of diseases we see in our culture
all over the place, And I think that there's this
pressure on people here that we have to be perfect
because that's what's being advertised to us. But people are
doing things wildly simply in other parts of the world,
and they're living really good. So if we could somehow
remove that stigma around what perfect eating is in our
culture and just get better, we'd probably have remarkable changes
(13:59):
in our health. So that was one of the first
insights because obviously the foods we eat are massively important
to us. The other two insights around exercise, which are
things that I really studied a lot of, was in
most parts of the world, people are what's called passively active.
So here we're like, we got to go to the
gym for forty five minutes or an hour every day,
hit our heart rate zone, do a certain routine. But
(14:20):
in the rest of the world. What they do is
they just stay active throughout today, and there's lots of
research that shows five minutes of activity here and there
is really good for us as opposed to just doing
a one hour workout. So for those people that can't
get to the gym and do these other things, being
active throughout today, doing gardening, going for walks, even when
your kids at hockey practice, going around the top of
the arena, all these things are wildly valuable for our health.
(14:40):
And then the last thing was I came from this
exercise science background where everything was perfect, and I used
to train people they would have a prescription. And when
I went to Norway, which are probably the fittest people
in the whole world, I mean wildly fit. You go
to a restaurant at night, no one's wear in a suit.
They're wearing gortex because they just finished hiking Amountain and
now they're getting a bite to eat. The concept that
they use is they play. They just do stuff they
(15:03):
love and they enjoy, and they don't stress about it.
They don't worry about some sort of prescription for exercise.
They just get out there and do stuff they really
enjoy and as a result, their entire culture is very
fit compared to ours. So those are a couple of insights.
So what I thought I knew really well, so what
I learned and I couldn't have been more wrong, you know, Yeah,
for sure. So anything that maybe you know that you
(15:25):
that you learned or that you took in that kind
of challenge, why you've you know, what you've been trained
to do and what you've learned all this training over
the years. Yeah, I think that some of those things
were really important. And then I think the other thing
is that the impact of community is so important for
people for our happiness and for our purpose in life.
(15:45):
A couple of communities that really stood out to me
was Costa Rica. Costa Rica is one of the places
where the poorest people live longer than the richest people.
They can't go work nine to five because the infrastructure
doesn't exist a lot of the time, and instead what
they do is they find find ways to commune with
one another. Music is important, that resonates with you, and
it resonates with us here in Newfland and Laborator. We
(16:07):
know this community is important, get togethers, food, all these
different things, and so that has a massive impact on
their mental health. And whenever you meet somebody that they
go put a vida, which means pure life. And what
that's saying is it reminds everybody to be optimistic all
the time. So no matter what's going on, you say
pure life and then people are like, yeah, life's pretty good.
And I love that perspective because I think sometimes in particular,
(16:29):
we look at our weather and everything else we have here,
it can be really challenging for us to keep that
optimistic attitude. But when you do do that, and these
people have a lot less than we do in a
lot of these communities, right, but they're wildly optimistic. That
was a big one. And the other one is as
we age here, we tend to have a much different
attitude towards our seniors than other parts of the world. Okay,
(16:49):
and in Okanawa, they were revered for their contribution to
the community and they have a philosophy there called icky
Guy and this philosophy basically means a reason for being,
a reason detra and no matter what space of life
through and they always have a purpose and that's really important.
So as they change from being a child to being
an adult and working from an adult into being a
(17:11):
retired person. They've always got this purpose and this reason
for getting up out of bed each day. And I
think that's something that we should evaluate as a community
and make sure that individuals at all stages of life
are part of our community and recognize for how valuable
their contribution is.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
All this stuff we've been talking about, obviously, I guess
easy to say.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Some of the key themes right across this book care Yeah.
I think that some of the key themes would be
that health doesn't have to be as complicated as we
think it is. It's the simple things in life. It's
the connection with people, it's the playing, it's the enjoyment.
It's making sure that the activities that we're doing in
life contribute to our overall well being. And we can
(17:51):
do that. We can cook a meal that's healthy, that's
good for our long term health and good for our
social health and brings us together. We can create purpose
for people that can contribute in our communities that allow
them to not be lonely. I mean, loneliness takes ten
years off your life if you're lonely, and you can
have all the money in the world and all the accomplishments,
(18:11):
but if you get lonely later on in life. That's
not good for us. So there's that and that we
overcomplicate things way too much. And I think one of
the reasons why we do this show and why you
guys believed in doing this show here on sting Ray
and VOCM, is because the information that people should have
access to should be free. It should be readily available
for people to have that information. Because in our part
(18:32):
of the world, we tend to only get wellness as
soul to us. And sometimes that's not necessarily what's best
for us, it's what's best for the organization selling it.
Stay with us because after the break, I'll share some
more stories of my upcoming book, Health Explored by Breakwater Books.
We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back today
(19:00):
hearing some of the highlights of my new book, Health
Explored by Breakwater Books with wellness stories from around the world.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
This switch gear is a bit more now talk some
key concepts of health selling, the lessons and one of
the major themes that I noticed when when you sat
over a bit of a draft of the book where
we look at before we had this chat, Keithing really happiness.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
And we talked touched on this already.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Why is happiness such a critical part of of wellness
in your view?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, so I'll give you a bit of a personal
story on this one. And this this was something that
really stood out to me. I had a time in
my life when I was very busy with business, right so,
I had a wellness company and we did some really
fun stuff all over the world. But it was busy.
It was really busy. I realized that everything was a checklist,
everything was action. I'm trying to get things done. I
was under a lot of stress, and my father had
(19:48):
pancreated cancer and I've talked about this in the radio
before and that he was really close to me. And
my father had a really interesting life, and he told
me before he passed he wanted me to find happiness.
And I thought I was doing pretty good. But then
when I started the really peel back the layers, I
realized there were some areas in my life. There were
pretty big gaps, right Like, I was really focused on
work and yes, health, but the rest of my hobbies
were not exist and my social life wasn't as good
(20:10):
as it should be. And so I decided to look
at that, And the reality is is that if we
only focus on a one dimensional life where we're only
focused on career accomplishment or really one dimensionally, you don't
have these other things to lean on it. So I'll
kind of like be in like a stool or a bar,
you know, like if three of the four legs are
loose and somebody puts too much pressure in that stool,
it snaps, no matter how strong that one leg is.
(20:30):
And that's really what health is. And the Maori in
New Zealand have this fantastic concept around happiness and health,
and that is that it's like a meetinghouse with four walls,
and there is mental health, and there's physical health, and
then there's community health, and then there's like social health.
So what they're doing is they're balancing out the equation.
And I think that happiness is really what the culmination
(20:52):
of that balance is. I think it's really hard to
be happy unless you have balance. You know, you can
be accomplished, you can be successful, but it's hard to
be happy unless you're actually truly healthy. And health is
such a broad thing that brings those elements together, So
that's why it's such a main theme and I think
that that resonates with people. People are looking for happiness,
and one of the reasons might be is that we're
(21:12):
looking at one area but not the whole picture.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
You highly And we've talked a couple of times already
about some of the different practices from around the world
as you experienced, whether it was forest bathing or mindful
of this, Which of the practice is really sort out
to you the most?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Boy, Yeah, I got two. One of them was forest bathing.
You just said it. Forest bathing was incredible. Okay, So,
first of all, Japan is mind blowing. I've always wanted
to go to Japan. I've been to Asia before, but
I had never been to Japan. And I'll tell you,
Tokyo is a site to be seen. It's the biggest
city in the whole world. It's wildly organized, no traffic,
(21:48):
Everything is tickney boo. It's perfect. It was a very
very cool city. But it's also a city that's known
for people to work so hard they die on a
subway because they've worked themselves to death. It's a culture
of accomplishment. Now, it's not surprising that that group of
people that are working in that efficient have created a
way of being able to get the most out of nature.
(22:08):
And so I went to a forest just outside of
Tokyo called Okutama, and I met with the founder, the
first scientist to ever quantify the benefits of being in nature,
and he developed something called forest therapy, or what's called
hinrin Yoku in Japan. And I have hiked East Coast
Trim whole life. I live on Marine Drive in Logi Bay,
you know, so it's on the night doorstep. I proposed
(22:28):
to my wife on the East Coast Trail. But I'd
never experienced anything like this because what they did was
they took a very simple trail, only a kilometer and
a half long. It was flat so people could access
it no matter if they had any mobility challenges, and
they made you use your five senses. So the first
thing I did is took my shoes off. I got
in the water. It was cold on my feet. I
felt the cold, and when I came out, they made
me stack stones. So I was concentrating, I was feeling
(22:52):
the water, I was seeing the stones. I was hearing
it gurgle around my feet. I got my shoes on.
I walked across a bridge. There's a sign that has stopped,
unless when you stop and listen, you realize they hit
a waterfall behind a tree you would never know was
there unless you paid attention. When you walk on the trail,
it's full of cedar chips that smell beautiful, so you
can get the sense of smell. You can feel the
softness of it. And then halfway through they give you
(23:13):
a tea, so you're tasting this herbal tea. They ring
a bell. They ask you questions about what you've done
throughout the day, what you could have done better this week,
what your goals are, and they do therapy to give
you a gingerbread cookie that tasts a certain way, and
you continue walking until you lay in your back watch
the clouds go by with flowers next to you so
you can smell them. It was completely sensory and as
(23:34):
a result, I was so immersed another thought of stress
and ever came through my head. And now I can
take that on the East Coast Trail and apply it.
And that's really what I wanted to capture in the book,
is that we can do that anywhere. They just thought
of it, and they created a trail specifically for it,
but we literally have unlimited whether that be a trail
in the city or walking through Bannerman Park. You know,
there's lots of opportunities for that. So that was a
(23:55):
real aha moment. And then one other experience I had
recently was in Norway and I've seen this cold plunge
stuff and I'm like, what's with this cold plunge, Like
is it just macho and cool or what? And I
didn't really understand the value, and I thought, sure, it's
great to ice your joints or whatever. But what I
didn't realize until I met my friend Andreas and Norway
is that it's actually used as a way to trigger
(24:15):
a stress response in our body and then learn how
to control it. So the only way we get stress
is some bad happens to is we get a bad email,
bad news, something happens, and then we get this horrible
response in our body where we get agitated. It's really
hard to control it when something real is happening in
our life. So what they actually do is they jump
in this freeze. I've jumped into zero degree water in
the Trumpso Harbor in the Arctic Circle. It was freezing,
(24:38):
and what do he made me do is stay there
and regulate my body and control this thing, so he
knew I was safe, my body could be controlled. I
calmed myself down. And that's what they did for They
use it to train themselves so when that real action
happens in life, when we have that fight or flight
response because something bad happens, we can control our bodies.
And as a result of controlling our bodies, we can
think clear and that allows us to control our stress.
(24:58):
And that was cool because I thought it was something
completely do. I thought it was just this cool, hardcore
thing to do, but it's nothing like that. The real
reason is to be able to train yourself to deal
with stress.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
That's actually really cool because Yeah, the first time I
saw it, I was like, this is just something you
are doing it on social media me too?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Can you even deal without having your camera on? Yeah? Exactly. Yeah,
this is the interesting part of this too.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
You've had an interesting intersect between the health of our
plants and of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Who we own to Canada. Yeah, I think that the
environment is changing, right, We're seeing weather patterns change.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
All over the world.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Right. So I was in Morocco where the Sahara Desert,
believe or not, is actually getting drier, and then like
a couple of weeks ago, it just got massive rains,
and now the whole thing is a lake in the Sahara.
It's just strange. It hadn't rained for a couple of years,
and Nowson, it's just flooded. Weather is changing. But I
realized that the planet and its health directly impacts ours.
And I think there's a perfect example of it right
(25:49):
here in our own backyard. The last chapter of the
book is called on Thin Ice, and I went it
to Nane and I worked with the organization called smart Ice.
And what smart Ice does is it takes these ice
thickness sense and puts them behind snowmobiles. When I first
went to Nane, and I apologize to anybody from the
reason that realized how oblivious I was. I wasn't aware
of how remote it was right and how important the
(26:12):
ice is. You know, you hear about it, but until
you're there, it's really difficult to understand. I mean, Nane
is surrounded by mountains. There's no main road in and out,
so you need to use the ice to get out.
And it's a small community, which means if you want
to get to your camp, you've got to take the
ice if you want to get wood, or you want
to go hunt, or have traditional useful land in any
way whatsoever, then you need to have the ice. And
(26:34):
the ice is thinning and as a result, it's changing
their access to recreation all these things that contribute to
their health and their wellness and their food and everything
in their culture. And so I went up there and
spent some time with my friend Rex up there from
Smart Ice. He was an incredible host, and we went
out in the ice and we saw this, and that
was a really important intersect where I saw that, yeah,
you know what, like the Arctic and the people that
(26:56):
are probably contributing the least to the damage in the
planets are probably paying the biggest price right now. And
to me, that was something that really resonated. It's in
our own backyard and it's happening, and it's impacting our health.
And I think that when we see these disasters around
the world, we're seeing the Yeah, it's uprooting people, it's
changing lives, and we have to look at taking care
of our whole planet as well as ourselves. Stay with us,
(27:18):
because after the break, I'll share some more stories of
my upcoming book, Health Explored by Breakwater Books. We'll be
right back after the.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Break, nutrition, exercise, keeping the cold at bay, whatever keeps
you feeling great, the wellness and healthy lifestyle showed on
your VOCM. Welcome back today.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I'm sharing some of the highlights of my new book,
Health Explored by Breakwater Books with wellness stories from around
the world.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So we touched it a couple of times, but I
want to dive into a bit more cultural differences that you've.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Kind of experienced health practices that are radically different than
you see here on this part of the world, because
obviously you've seen a lot some of the stuff that
you've already touched on a little bit.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah, I'll give you an example. It's kind of an
interesting one. Two things I was and it's just such
a funny perspective because we're so skewed, right, like the
way we think about things. I was in the desert
in Sahara back to Morocco, and we camped out in
the middle of the desert, which was far out. I mean,
I'm telling you, the desert is so quiet at night.
It's like I don't know the silica or what, but
it like perts your ears. It's so quiet. I was
(28:23):
sitting on a sand dune and I said, it's so quiet.
He's like, yeah, the desert sounds like the sound of
wind with no wind, so it sounds like nothing. And
later on that night, we cooked up a traditional dish
called the tajin a ta Jean's this really cool pot
where you sort of make a pyramid of vegetables and
meat and you put it all together and you cook
it on open coals and it sort of steams it.
It's incredible. It's it cooked dinner without the boiling water. Okay.
(28:45):
And I said to the guys, like, oh, yeah, do
you choose these vegetables and stuff because they have health
benefits or whatever? And he's like, man, this is what
we have. I was like right. And it was the
same thing like in Oakanawa they have sixty percent of
their diet being like sweet potatoes because that's what they
grow there. So that's the first thing is that we
are really privileged to be able to eat gluten free
or lactose free or vegan or whatever the heck diet
(29:06):
we want. That's a real privilege to have that food.
And even though it's expensive and all those other things
that's not something that's really available in the rest of
the world. And then another thing was sometimes we have
to force ourselves to have mindfulness, and other places it's
forced upon them and they value it because it's part
of their life. I was heading out of the desert
in Morocco and I met this guy. We're trying to
(29:28):
film something and get all these things done before we
packed up, and I was like, yeah, you know. I
was like, we're kind of in a hurry, and he goes,
we got a saying around here because when we go
to meet with them, they meet morning or afternoon, and
they might be there in the morning, make me in
the afternoon. He said, if you're in a hurry, then
you're already dead. And I was like, okay, noted. And
then what I do jumped on a camel which goes
(29:49):
like so slow for four hours for the next thing,
and you know what, probably one of the most present
times of my entire life, because that resonated. I was like, Wow,
you know what, and how much of our lives are
we wasting worrying or stressing paying attention what's in front
of us? Amazing?
Speaker 3 (30:02):
You know, we're getting I guess a bit of time
here to get some final thoughts and maybe you know
how to get the book and stuff. But I guess
we'll start off with this, And this might be a
bold question, goes to the book is not out yet, but
you're you're.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Sitting with it, waiting to get it out. But how
do you.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Think your book is going to contribute to the to
the broader conversation around health and well being? Because obviously
you've been the voice of it for a few years
now on our AA waves and we've been reached out
to you.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
But I don't think the book's going to contribute. I
think that I might be in a bit of a
unique situation where if you look back to my training,
I was one of the first graduating classic kinesiology in
the country, so exercise science was like brand new back then,
and since then it's skyrocketed and it's forefront of everything.
I hope that this book is seen as a bit
(30:45):
of a bridge between the two. That sometimes we can
go a little bit too far and we can lose
sight of what's really important, right and you can't see
the forest of the trees. And I hope that it
reminds people and This is what it's reminded me is
that even though there's perfect ways to do things, there's
probably better ways to do things that make more sense
(31:07):
for us as human beings that connect us to the
things that we are used to having in our communities
and in our lives. And so I think that having
a PhD and all these other credentials and then looking
at things and saying that maybe we're not totally on
the ball for this, and maybe we're missing something and
maybe we've overcomplicated it is kind of nice and reassuring
to everybody, because all we're ever told is we're not
(31:27):
good enough for health, right, And I'm saying that, you
know what, maybe some of the advice I gave over
the years wasn't one hundred percent right. It wasn't probably
the best thing for people. But you know, we're always
learning and we're always evolving, and so people, hopefully it
can be open minded, learn about different cultures and then
use that universal human experience to say, hey, that might
work in my life here in another completely different part
of the world.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Open mind that I was saying that before you even
said it, just a lot of its simple I went
through my own health journey years ago and to figure
it or out and just got to be open minded
about some of those things you think you might know
what all. Sometimes that's for any aspect of my nutgeles
out the totally like that that angle on it there.
Speaking of that, I guess you know. I've, as I mentioned,
went through my own journey of health from years ago.
(32:07):
Still struggle with it from time to time. But for
someone listening today, maybe just beginning that journey towards better
health or looking to make that step, where should they
begin with this book?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah? I think that the book is full of all
different information that's really important, and I think that often
we take on too much at one time. If you're
a scientist and you do an experiment, you only test
one variable at a time, because if you tested twenty things,
you'd never know what was the thing that made the difference. Right.
So the reason we did it this way is that
you can read the book over time. You can take
(32:40):
one of these five or six tips that are at
the end of each one of them, and you can
try them slowly over time. This might be a year
long process. Right. Just try something, If it resonates with you,
keep it, If you don't like it, get rid of it.
I don't expect everything in this book to make a
difference for everybody, but I do know that there's little
nuggets that will probably be helpful. So I would say this,
if you're starting at zero and you go to one,
that's huge. That's one hundred percent increase in being good.
(33:01):
And if you're a ninety and you go to ninety one, fantastic.
But in general, take it slow, take it easy, don't
put pressure on yourself. Don't think that there's this expectation
that you have to be perfect and find things you
truly enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you'll never stick
with it. And if you can stick with it, that's
what changes our life and our health. Now, obviously udo's
(33:25):
flow down, effor. I know you long have to know this.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
What's next for you after the release of the book, editing,
planned for trips or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, I mean, I got to be honest with you.
I was telling you the other day off air that
you know, the most rewarding thing I do outside of teaching,
because I love teaching at the medical school. I think
it's a huge privilege. I love working with our students
and my colleagues. But I love the radio right and
I think that having a book and having the radio
show and we're on Sting Ray allows us to be
(33:54):
able to get bigger and better guests. And what I'm
really excited about is using this to be able to
attract and better guests for our radio shows that all
of our listeners here in VOCM can tune in and
get all that information. You know. If there's one thing
I can contribute, that would be that we could get
global perspectives related specifically to the people in our community.
A part of the Healthy Cored Community Engagement Committee, and
(34:16):
one of the things that I really want to do
is see what we can do as our little small
towns and our province and our communities to try and
improve our health. So that's really what I'm going to
focus on right now. Who can we get, what stories
can we tell, and how can we inspire change in
health here at home?
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Last thing, pray. I guess you know what comes out
in January. We mentioned the pre order, so kind of
talk us through that for now. If people want to.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Get it get out of first yeah, sure. So people
can go to Breakwater Books and they can pre order
it there, but you can also go to Barnes and Noble, Intogo, Chapters, Coals, Amazon,
They're all readily available through there, so you can pre
order on those sites and you can get a copy
of the bookshiped as soon as it's ready, which really
excited about. It's nice because the people in this community
(35:01):
have been able to give me a voice to be
able to tell these stories. And now these stories are
being taken across the country and to other countries as
well through this book. So people pick up a copy
and they find it interesting. That means the world to me.
But more than anything, thanks to everybody forgiving the opportunity
to be able to do these things and be able
to share these stories.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I know you got to It's pretty solid online president
social media wise, So I encourage folks if to get
the book pre order whist they get in their heads.
Obviously you want to hear folks while they think about it,
and they can reach out that way one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
And also if they want to hear a story for
the radio, you can reach out to us. Anytime I
get lots of listeners messaging me. I'm super easy to find.
You can reach me through the station there's lots of
ways online to get a hold of me. Ultimately, this
whole health series, whether it be the book or the
show or whatever, is about making sure we're armed with solutions.
So if it's relevant to you, it's relevant to probably
(35:51):
thousands more of you in the community. So please let
me know. And I appreciate everything. Thanks Mike, Yeah, thanks
for having me. I'd like to thank Greg for a
guest hosting tonight. It's been over four years of us
being on the radio here on VOCM and Stingray, and
I'm really grateful to all of you who tune in
each week. It's not often that I get to share
some of my personal favorite moments and experiences, and without
(36:14):
this radio program, I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity
to travel and meet the incredible people I've written about
in this upcoming book now. It comes out in January,
and if you're interested in picking up a copy, you
can pre order it now. It's filled with amazing stories
and practical tips you can use to improve your health.
You can find it at Breakwater Books online or at
your favorite bookstore like Indigo, Chapters, Barnes and Noble, Coohle's,
(36:38):
or Amazon all these sites have pre orders available. I
hope you enjoyed today's episode, and don't worry. I'll be
back as the host next week with new topics and
health and wellness that matter to us here at home.
Thanks for joining me. We'll see you back here next
week for another episode of the Wellness and Elty Lifestyle
Show on the Stingwry Podcast Network and your CEM
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