[ENG] ☕ Il Caffe' Dell' Alchimista- Coffee with the Alchemist ⚗️ Dr.Doug McGuff, Body By Science, Ultimate exercise

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to another coffee in English withme the alchemist. Today we have the
distinct pleasure of hosting a true luminaryin the world of health and fitness,
a medical professional whose expertise Trashan's traditionalboundaries. Having thrilled to introduce you none

(00:22):
other than McGough. The mcgoth isa name synonymous with revolutionary ideas in the
fields of exercise, physiology, health, optimization, hell longevity. As a
physician, author, an educator,the Tordak mcgoth has dedicated his life to

(00:46):
exploring the science behind strength training,metabolic health and the profound impact these factors
have on our overall quality of life. Get ready to expand your legs,
challenge preconceptions, and embark on ajourney towards a healthier, more vibrant you.

(01:08):
As we engage in a top provokingconversation with the one and only to
Tach macaf The coffee is ready.Let's stave in. Hello, Hello,

(01:34):
Hello, hello, hello, canyou see me? Let's see start reading
piles minds mcgof Oh, I seeperfect, I know this location. You
use that room for a mostly Yeah, this is a this is a little
study with the desktop computer and bringthe laptop in here, so I got
multiple things going. This is afamiliar room for people. Cool cool,

(01:59):
So so thank you for being hereand for your time. So, first
of all, thank you for beinghere today. We met a little bit
more more or less two years agoin Barcelona for the first time. This
was I also had the opportunity tointerviewing Mark Alexander is sending you do things

(02:22):
so and today I want to gothrough over so here I have this,
I have this. This is theQ and a book is very hard to
find actually, so it's coming straightfrom the US. And of course Body
by Science. And the first thefirst question I have. The Body by

(02:45):
Science is I think eleven years old? Yeah it is. Yeah, a
lot of a lot of time.So in your opinion, what has changed
during this eleven years? What ifyou today you the opportunity to write add
second parts part two. I don'tknow what kinds of stuff you will include,

(03:07):
Okay. So if if the questionis how would I rewrite the book
on its release date back in twentytwelve, I probably would not change anything
because it seemed to work out prettywell. If I was to rewrite it
or make an addendum for today,there are a few things I would probably
change and how the book is structured. One is I wouldn't spend as much

(03:32):
time or as much emphasis on demonizingsteady state activity or running or things of
that nature. That's one thing thatI would do. The other thing that
I would de emphasize is just thenotion of the big five. I think
what came through that book and whenpeople get through reading it, is they

(03:53):
think that those five exercises are somehowspecial and that one should never deviate from
that for any reason, whether itbe equipment availability or just changing a routine
over time. People a lot oftimes get very locked into that as something
prescriptive, when the real purpose fordoing that is I just wanted to select

(04:14):
some big, simple to perform movementsfrom a coordination and complexity standpoint that would
cover the whole body. So Iwould de emphasize that as a best way
of approaching things somewhat. And theother thing that would have to be updated

(04:34):
now is to wrap the whole notionof MYO kinds, which are chemical signaling
model kills released by exercising muscle.Because body by science was full of observations
about how the benefits of strength trainingseem to be greater than just getting stronger,

(04:59):
and US now offers an underpinning explanationfor that observation and why why it's
true? Great, it's cool.Yeah, we will we will talk a
little bit more about the Mayo kinds. Yeah into looking six. Yeah,
about the Big five. Just everthis I repeated the joke about the Big
five. You mentioned in one ofthe interviews with Mark Alexander that you were

(05:24):
in pain and everyone was focused inthis Big five like a recipe magic one.
But again, and you mentioned it, We're lucky we were not in
Germany because they are more strict inuh in the thought yeah, yeah,
when I went and spoke in Dresden, you know, and it's just different

(05:46):
cultures behaved differently and have a differentorientation. And I had no idea how
popular this was in Germany. AndI think it is because the the book
seems to offer a very kind ofregiment at locked in approach, and they

(06:06):
culturally just seem to like that alot. But it was hard to not
just completely knock people that have thatsort of orientation. It's difficult to not
just completely knock them off the rails. When you suggests you don't really have
to do it that one. Iwas like, what this confusin? Yeah

(06:29):
exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly Yeah. I mentioned them with
Mark also the Big five the learningwho is that a lot of advantage in
using those five. But again pushpoll, push pool and legs. So
is the concept is the basic conceptthat one we can of course change a
routine in order to for a variety, but the concept are still still the

(06:56):
same. Yeah. Going back tointer luke and sick, it's in particular
because I read recently a little bitconfused because of so if you want to
introduce the Mayo kayans in general conceptand the importance of interlugen sis and effects,
because there are the parentings a controversies. It is positive or negative,

(07:20):
okay, So all these things existin our body for a reason, So
it is context dependent as to whetherit is positive or negative existing in the
right balance with other chemical messagers andthe body. It's obviously a good thing.

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It's one of the major inflammatory sideof kinds that initiates the innate immune
response. Whenever we encounter an infectingorganism, a foreign body like a splinter
that's gotten in that needs to bedealt with or an infection of some sort.
Interlucance is one of the inflammatory CIDEOkinds that initiates your body's response to

(08:05):
this, and it is involved inwhat's called the innate immune response. So
we have two responses to an infection. Initially, we activate an innate immune
response, and that's where these chemicalmessengers come in mark the side of trouble,
and that sends out a chemical messagefor all sorts of white blood cells,
neutrophils, and different other side ofkinds to attack the invading organism and

(08:31):
kill it through a destructive process that'sgoing on while the second half of the
immune system is taking its time toramp up, and that's adaptive immunity,
and that's the part where your bodyis making a specific antibody to the invading
organism that will fit it like lockand key and tag it for destruction.

(08:54):
So the first part of your immuneresponse is kind of like D day at
Normandy, and then the second partof your immune response is more like a
laser guided and missile. But youneed D day at Normandy to have the
time to make the laser guided missile. So inter Luke and six is one

(09:16):
of the CIDA kinds that if youdon't make a good transition between innate and
adaptive immunity and don't shut down innateimmunity as you proceed into adaptive immunity.
Inter Luke and six is one ofthe major drivers of CID, a kind
storm. So when that spends outof control, you have uncontrolled inflammation running

(09:39):
away like a wildfire. And becauseof that, Interluke and six has kind
of been pegged as a bad player. It's also, when chronically elevated,
a major driver of chronic diseases ofinflammation, whether that be arthritis, coordinary
artery disease, fill in the black. So it's kind of gotten a bad
name. Is a bad player.Well. Inter Luke and six was one

(10:05):
of the first cytokinds or chemo kindsthat was identified as responding to high intensity
exercise. And what we found whenyou look back on that research is that
when you do high intensity exercise likehigh intensity weightlifting, you have a huge,

(10:26):
huge, acute spike in inter Lukeand six, I mean going up,
you know, hundreds thousands fold.And the immediate reaction to that was
this can't be good because this isa bad player and we're spiking it hugely,
But what we found is that thosehuge spikes create a down regulation of

(10:52):
the inter luke and six receptors thatreceive that chemical message. So what we
trade off for these huge acute spikesis over a longer span of time,
a general lowering of the inner suitinterluking six levels in our bloodstream in our
system over the more chronic basis.So these acute spikes in this inflammatory cytokine

(11:16):
result in a general lowering over time. I think of it in the same
way that when you exercise or youdo aerobic exercise, you're spiking and elevating
your heart rate, but the overalleffect over the other twenty three hours of
the day is that your heart ratecomes down. So it's a similar sort

(11:37):
of adaptation to that spike. Sothat's how that was discovered to be linked
to resistance exercise or exercise in general, and kind of open the whole pathway
for this notion that muscles are sendingout chemical messengers as well and they have
effects in the same way that cytokinesdo. But as we delve deeper,

(12:01):
what we found is that the chemicalmessengers released from muscles cytokinds released from muscles
which have been termed mild kinds largelyhave opposing anti inflammatory properties that help to
prevent events like cytokine storm that helpedto prevent diseases of chronic inflammation. And

(12:22):
it's just a whole basket of benefitsthat we weren't aware of before on anything
other than an intuitive level, it'sreally clear. So we need to avoid
spikes. Off the spike what ifwe overtrain or is he's also caused by
overtraining? Is if we theoretically yeah, I mean, particularly if you're someone

(12:46):
that is in a state of kindof chronic inflammation. And a lot of
people do this when they try toget on the bandwagon about exercise, and
I think a lot of time whatknocks them off is is they get inspired
and they're really going to hit it, and the whole you know, Western
work ethic of more is better kicksin and then they overtrain. And if

(13:11):
you have so many acute spikes layeredon top of chronic systemic inflammation, you
know, you can kind of spinthe whole thing out of control. And
that's where a lot of people,I think fall off the wagon with too
much exercise or exercise that's too toomuch in volume relative to intensity. I

(13:33):
think there is an important balance thathas to be struck there. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, okay, andthen not considering that, we can stock
also the stress during disperiod, butany any stress or other stressors on top
of this, and recently doctor JimSteel has mentioned a couple of studies about

(13:54):
the recovery and stress. So stressis influence into infancy in speed and effectiveness
of a recovery after workout, afterany any physical activity. So this is
something to be taken to account forsure. Let's go. One of the
best concepts. I really liked itbecause it's clear and it is very nice

(14:18):
is the bend the aging core ofthe physiological bedroom concept. If you want,
briefly just to define the physiological headroomand then if you in your experience
during these years of training and ultimateexercise you have what have you found in
relation to that? Yeah. Sothe concept of physiologic headroom was actually first

(14:45):
discussed by Arthur Devaney, who's sortof the grandfather of the of the kind
of a paleolithic or evolutionary based dietand fitness, and he came up with
that concept. So I got togive him credit for that, but I
just lashed onto it because I reallylove it. The physiologic headroom is basically

(15:07):
just the delta or the difference betweenwhat you're capable of doing or what your
output is at complete rest versus theabsolute most output that you can generate through
exertion. So it's basically the gapbetween the most you can do in the
least you can do, and thatkind of overall I believe to find your

(15:33):
health, especially as it is linkedto movement, because as animals, we
have to understand that our most basicbiologic function is movement. It's how we
acquire energy, it's how we getfood, and without movement, we can't
get food, we can't keep frombecoming food. So that definition of physiologic

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headroom is the grossest and most basiccurrency of our health and functional ability.
In industrialized societies, what you're seeingin terms of physiologic headroom is it's fairly
high in youth, but now earlierand earlier in youth and young adulthood that

(16:17):
starts to trend downward, and youhave this gradual downward trend of physiologic headroom,
where by midlife your functions severely compromised. A lot of people that are
I'm fifty eighth, that are myage can't get up off the floor,
you know, they can't get onthe floor to play with their grandchildren,
things of that nature. They havea hard time getting up out of a

(16:41):
chair without really straining, moaning orgroaning. So that degradation of physiologic headroom
over time is basically defining our healthstatus. And as we delve deeper into
that bigger, grosser metric and getmore annular, I think what we're finding

(17:02):
is as that physiologic headroom declines,the chemical messages that are coming out of
muscle naturally decline as well. Andthese are very largely anti inflammatory molecules that
oppose the inflammazone. So the diseasesof modern civilization that are largely driven by
a really crappy diet have a feedforward effect on the lack of physical activity

(17:29):
and the lack of anti inflammatory mildkinds that are being released by the muscle,
and it just kind of goes into a death spiral, even if
it does not shorten the lifespan byvery much. What it means is for
most adults in Western societies, theymay be spending more than half of their

(17:51):
life at a very suboptimal level interms of quality of life. And it's
a real tragedy. It does shortenlife, but more importantly, it shortens
the health span. I would haverather have, you know, seventy seventy
five good years at my current levelof functioning than a hundred years where I

(18:11):
spend half of it, you know, not able to function well at all.
And if that were the tradeoff,I would take it. But it
turns out that the two go handat hand. Health span and lifespan will
track each other. Yeah. Clearin your experience, a practical experience during
these years and having implemented the trainingregime, you advocate and you follow long

(18:37):
term client. I'm talking about longterm client. Yeah, so that's that
is the most you know. WhenI first opened my training facility it's Personal
Training Facility, Ultimate Exercise in nineteenninety seven, you know, I was
all oriented towards you know, bodybuildingathletics, getting people in, seeing how

(18:57):
far I could take them. Andbecause of the privacy, because of the
degree of safety involved, that startsto select out for an older clientele.
And that turned out to be mymost pleasant surprise because they were the ones

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that were having the most impressive tangibleturnarounds, and in a very short period
of time, in a period ofsix to twelve weeks, you would have
people whose lives were completely turned around. You could have people coming in on
walkers or four prong canes that withinweeks had completely discarded any need for that

(19:44):
whatsoever. I had older patients thatwould come back from a trip and say,
for the first time in twenty fiveyears, I put my own luggage
in the overhead been, I gotmy own luggage off the luggage carousel,
I went to the growth restore,picked up a fifty pound bag of dog
food, put it in the backof my car, and went, did
I really just do that? Andover time, these clients have stuck with

(20:10):
me. And the neat thing isis I have clients in different occupations.
I have a client that owns hisown farm and does independent farming, and
he said, you know, atthe time I came here, I was
on the verge of retirement and havingto pass the farm onto my children.

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And he goes, within a fewweeks he said, that's not necessary,
and he's still running and working hisfarm. You know, ten fifteen years
down the line, I have agentleman that right now we're doing some home
remodeling and you know that's pretty hardlabor involved that, And he's told me,
he says, you've extended my career. And as we go on with

(20:55):
the demographics of our society, Ithink that's one of my most significant contributions,
because the demographics of society is changingwhere this is not a post World
War two baby boom generation where thereare tons and tons of young people and
tons of young people working into theworkforce, so you have more working people

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than you do retiring people. It'sexactly the opposite. Now we are in
what's called stage four or five demographics, where in less older people continue to
function at a high level and continueto contribute to the economy, the whole
thing's going to collapse. And ifthe health status of westernized society stays as

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poor as it is, the healthcaresystems are going to collapse and take the
economy down with it. And themost important thing that drives human evolution,
it turns out, and what drovethe development of our big, big brains
is not just sexual selection, butthe ability of our species to have intergenerational

(22:02):
knowledge and wealth transfers and that's reallythe boomer generation needs to wrap their head
around. It ain't all about us. Our job is to pass this on
to the younger generations, to passknowledge and wealth downstream to people that are
coming up. And in some weirdindirect way, doing this kind of exercise

(22:25):
has really contributed to that. Thatthat's very very very great. This is
also applicable, is applicable worldwide.I mean in the Western world. Absolutely.
I'm Italian and I stay in Italy. I traveled worldwide and I see
that the trend is the same everywhere. So okay, that's that's good.

(22:48):
M Let's go a little bit moreinto some questions after my reading of the
Q and a book of Body byScience Quena book. So for what's concerned?
As are those those are also questionsthat I've been asked and some by
the most of people. For whatconcerned viotwo max okay, which is the

(23:11):
gold standard for cardio fitness. Nowyou can better define Vioto max as as
it is and is impacted by mitochondrialadaptations and most of the time, and

(23:33):
we don't want to go into thecardio no cardio and aerobic acrobic but but
is there But I would like tounderstand the strength training in particular high intensity
strength training and mitochondrial adaptation and BOTWOmax. How are they link together?
Okay, so I'm not trying tomake this less complicated than the long explain.

(23:59):
Yeah. So the first thing wehave to recognize is that when we
are talking about BOTWO max or oxygenuptake, we are basically measuring different forms
of exercise against a measuring tool thatis relatively primitive. So basically, it's

(24:23):
measuring the amount of oxygen that you'reable to utilize when you're performing exertion.
That oxygen utilization occurs inside the mitochondria. So if we're looking at the screen
that I'm on right now, ifthe entire square of the screen that we're

(24:44):
looking at is the cell everything thatI'm sitting in, imagine that I'm floating
in a liquid cytoplasm, Okay,and within the cytoplasm is an ancient bacteria
that got in incorporated into the cellis a symbiotic organism because it eight the
waste products of this cell, andin the process of eating those waste products,

(25:11):
it generated a lot of energy.So the cell said, hey,
why don't you just come inside hereand live. I'll give you my waste
products you turn it into extra energy. I will protect you from the outside
environment in exchange for all that extraenergy that you generate as your own waste
product. So we're each using eachother's waste product as each other's fuel,

(25:38):
which is really cool. So whathappens is out here in the cytoplasm,
the cell's basic metabolic process is somethingcalled glycolysis. So we take in glucose,
we shuttle it through about eighteen ortwenty steps, and in the process
of doing these chemical reactions, wegenerate off some ATP or energy. The

(26:03):
end product for the waste product ofthat process is pyrubate. Pyrubate is eaten
by the mitochondria. It gets shuttledthrough the citric acid cycle in the electron
transport chain, which is a complexseries of chemical reactions that generate a lot
more ATP. How well this doesthat is a measure of how much oxygen

(26:30):
you can utilize, because this isan oxygen dependent process. Where is this
out here is an oxygen independent process. So it turns out that how much
this gets ramped up depends on howquickly you deliver pyrubate to the mitochondria.

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So whenever you do any sort ofexercise or steady state activity, you're just
increasing the delivery rate of pyruvate intothe mitochondria, making it ramp faster.
And that's how VO two max adaptsbecause if you make more pyruvate, the
mitochondria will go, oh, let'smake more of us. Yeah, okay.

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So one of the ways to makecertain that you maximally stimulate VO two
max is out here. This glycolysiscan cycle faster than the mitochondria can take
it up, so you can generatepiru eight faster than the mitochondria can take

(27:36):
it up. So and high intensityexercise like pigh intensity strength training, you
deliver pyruvate as rapidly as possible andyou max out mitochondria's ability. So that
is a way of maxing out VOtwo max at the microscopic or mitochondrial level.
So that's why when you see theseinterval training protocols like a habit of

(28:00):
protocol or thirty second sprint with oneminute rest repeated several times, those produce
just as much VO two max improvementas forty five minutes of jogging and that's
what those studies are about, andthe same thing is true of resistance training,
So there's that. The thing thatpeople can flate in their heads,

(28:22):
though, is there are different waysof adapting to an exercise stimulus. So
doing high intensity strength training and improvingVO two max and this mitochondria as much
as possible doesn't mean that you canjust do HIT and be geared up and
ready to go run a marathon.And there's some reasons for that. One

(28:48):
of the reasons is that you havedifferent muscle fiber types, and different muscle
fiber types have different amounts of mitochondriain them, So your slow and intermediate
twitch muscle fiber types have more mitochondriain them, so your mitochondrial density is

(29:18):
higher in those specific muscle fiber types, whereas the higher order motor units,
the fast twitch motor units, relymore on turning glycolysis really quickly and have
fewer mitochondria in them. So ifyou train more along the high power output

(29:38):
strength continuum, you're going to havea disproportionate increase in the size an amount
of your higher order motor units,which have a lowertochondrial density. If you
train chronically with low intensity, steadystate. At your size, those higher

(30:02):
order motor units are never recruited,so your body shuts down those higher order
motor units and allows them to atrophy. That's why marathon runners look very skinny,
cochectic, and some of them evenlook like they just walked out of
a prison camp. But by eliminatingthose higher order motor units, they have

(30:26):
muscle that is made up of ahigher mitochondrial density. If you train like
Ussein Bolt, then you're going tohave preferential growth of these higher order motor
units, and by simple volume,you're going to have some mitochondrial dilution,
so you're going to be less wellsuited to run a marathon. In fact,

(30:48):
I heard someone in an interview onetime ask Ussein Bolts trainer. You
know, there was just some speculationabout I wonder what Ussein bolts mild time
is, and the answer he gaveis, I don't know. He's never
run a mile. So but noone can say that you're saying Bold is

(31:10):
not arobically fit, because he is. That's determined by how much you have
stressed the capability of the mitochondria.Where you fit on the endurance sprint continuum
is going to be a matter ofspecialization. So I hope that puts it
together with it wore well, well, every time you talk, I have

(31:33):
in my mind some pictures and drawings, so I really have. I would
like to do a sort of sketchor whether you are saying, because it's
a yeah, I can't imagine exactlywhat is happening, so yeah, that's
great, that's so. Yeah.This is also I assume it's also linked
to genetic genetics. Saw the musclecomposition, of course using bold is gifted

(32:00):
in some way, and O there'sanother way. So because correct fembrong,
the the number of fibers is geneticallypredetermined. It's correct. There are some
change because yeah, so training canwe are a lot more plastic than we

(32:23):
realize, and there is hyperplasia ofmuscle fibers. You can increase the numbers.
There are genetically predetermined things that aregoing to make you more predisposed to
being a sprint but a sprinter.But really it's sort of a marriage of

(32:44):
genetics and training and specialization, andsometimes it just works out with a vengeance
and an athlete like that. That'san example of that. But by the
same token, there are all sortsof genetic markers that we thought would determine,
you know, who's going to bethe best sprint athlete. If you
have a specific polymorphism of the ACEgene, which interestingly these days is the

(33:09):
receptor on which the stars cop twovirus binds to get into the cell.
If you have a certain genotype ofthat receptor, you are better suited for
sprint activity. The same thing withan acting in three gene which codes for
one of the proteins and the slidingfilaments of the scalable muscle. Same thing

(33:31):
with interluken fifteen that determines you know, what your muscle size and muscle strength
is going to be. And thereought to be a perfect recipe of having
these different polymorphisms that would make thebest sprint athlete possible. But when we
look at the best sprinters in theworld, none of them have this magic

(33:52):
combination. A lot of them arelacking the ideal genotyper screen, but it
still turns out that you're a worldclass printer. So there's just a lot
of unseenes going on, and wehave a lot more plasticity and control over
how we want to express our bodiesthan we realize yeah, clear, clear,

(34:15):
Well thank you, and what aboutnow we jump here and there?
So talking about your experience, becauseI received a lot of questions about sweat.
Okay, so it's really needed tosweat a lot in order to have
an effective and efficient workout or reallythis when when presenting your protocol Body by

(34:44):
Science or any other super slow adda protocol, this is what is one
of the first questions I I received. So can you please finally from your
from your side and from your practicalexperience in your gym. Yeah. So
I think the reason people think aboutsweating as being some sort of marker for

(35:07):
the effectiveness of a workout is becauseI think they're kind of conflating cause and
effect a little bit. Most people, if they work out, are going
to work out in normal temperatures,and skeletal muscle performing hard work generates a

(35:30):
lot of heat, so the mitochondriaworking hard, but a lot of what
they put off as the byproduct isheat energy. Brown fat has a lot
of mitochondria in it that are uncoupledfrom oxidated phosphorylation. So what that means
is rather than making ATP, theyjust make heat. Also, muscles as

(35:50):
they work have a lot of internalfriction, and that generates a lot of
heat, and that heat needs tobe dissipated, and that heat is dissipated
in different ways. There's conduction,which means if your body's against a cold
surface, heat will transfer from anarea of high to low concentration. There's
convection, meaning you just radiate heatout into the thought environment. And lastly,

(36:15):
there's evaporative heat loss mechanism, andthat's what we particularly evolved that really
drove our human evolution. We don'thave fur, and we are able to
sweat, so we are able todissipate the heat of exertion better than any
other animal. That's why we survivedBy persistence hunting, you can go after

(36:38):
an antelope and just jog in azigzag pattern and overheat it to the point
where it just collapsed and they needto walk up and kill the thing.
That's largely how we survive. Butwe rely on that evaporative heat loss mechanism
when we work hard. But thatevaporative heat loss mechanism has limits. When

(37:00):
you're just pouring sweat and pouring sweat, you're not getting any cooler, so
eventually you're going to reach exhaustion becauseyou can't dissipate heat effectively enough. And
when you're doing really really hard work, by the time you're sweating, it's
already too late because you're accumulating heatat a rate at which you can no

(37:22):
longer dissipate it effectively. So thiswas discovered kind of accidentally during the osteoporosis
research project way back in the nineteeneighties. So what happened is in the
training environment. I don't know ifyou've ever experienced when a refrigeration, when
an air conditioning unit is starting tobreak down and it develops a free on

(37:45):
leak and the coils get frozen,what you'll have is a situation where it
overcools right before it dies. Well, this was going on in the building
where they were conducting the research,so for several days, the room got
overly chilled, it got down intothe low sixties. And what they discovered,

(38:07):
just accidentally was that all of thetraining subjects performance went through the roof.
They went much further before they reachedmuscular failure. And what they began
to realize is that the effective dissipationof heat allows the exertion process to go
on for longer and the depth ofinroad and fatigue to be greater. So

(38:32):
what happened is the incorporation of acool environment so that you never had to
tap into an evaporative heat loss mechanismwas permissive for a higher level of exertion.
And that's why we use these coolertemperatures in our training environments. Sweating

(38:52):
is a marker for harder work atnormal temperatures, but if you're going to
do really, really hard work,if you can avoid sweating, you can
work harder for longer and impose abetter training stimulus than if you had sweat.
So it just serendipitously turned out tobe both something that enhances your training

(39:15):
but also as a great little marketingtool because you can come in, you
can get the best work out ofyour life, and you don't have to
take the time to shower, changeclothes, get sweaty and stinky and all
that sort of stuff. So itturned out, just by complete fluke of
serendipity, to be a discovery abouthow we could make our training better.

(39:37):
That's cool. That's cool. It'slike we have a certain a fixed amount
of energy, and when we dissipateenergy is wetting on other ancillary activities we
remove from the same pot energy thatwe can use to improve MARC and sweating

(39:59):
is an interest thing. I rememberhearing about the cyclist Miguel Indurain, who
was like one of the best climbersin the history of cycling, and they
talked about when they were testing hisVO two max, he would sweat more
than any other athlete they've ever seenin history, so that when they would

(40:23):
do a VO two max test onthem, they would literally have to mop
the floor around the ergometer when theywere done. And a lot of what
makes sweating cause the system to breakdown is a lot of electrolytes were released
in sweating, and those electrolytes arenecessary for muscle contraction and relaxation, and

(40:45):
as those get lost, your abilityto perform in a high level degrades very
quickly. But what they discovered withMiguel Indurain is they decided to actually test
his sweat and what they found isthat it was completely devoid of electro lights.

(41:05):
He splat essentially completely free water andhad no electro light depletion in the
process, which they believed his abilityto heat dissipate without loss of electro lights
is one of the things that madehim such a great climber. So there's
just all sorts of little unknown variablesout there that affect the form. I'm

(41:27):
fair advantage, but I think thisis a That's what force is all about,
is the first time, I well, coming back to his wedding,
and so it's really necessary and neededto drink very frequently during a workout,
short a normal workout. I mean, I'm not called him about the two
three four hours ultim out or somethinglike that. You're talking about during one

(41:52):
of our workouts. Yeah, Now, now, the only reason a lot
of times will take a water breaktraining our clients. But the main reason
for that is the high level ofexertion generates really rapid breathing because the lactic
acidosis that you generate has to becompensated for by blowing off carbon dioxide,

(42:14):
and people get a dry, reallydry, cottony mouth, and sometimes just
a little water a break to kindof moisten your mucous membranes and also just
to have enough of a break tokind of get your wits back to continue
and finish the rest of the workoutis beneficial, but from a physiologic hydration
standpoint, by the time anything youdrank would be into the central circulation to

(42:38):
have an effect the workouts over.So cleah leeah, this is what I
was thinking. So coming back tosince we're talking a little bit about lactic
acidosis, So when pytobate accumulate andit's converted into lactic acids, the lactic

(42:59):
asis, the intense workout, yep, is there reutilize How is it recycled
it because you mentioned a yeah,yeah, So let's go back. I'm
going to pick up my mouse again, my micochondrial mouse. I'm going to
go back to our cell again.What happens is if you deliver pyruvate to

(43:19):
the mitochondria faster than it can takeup, the pyruvate stacks up out here
in the cytoplasm because it can't getinto the mitochondria. When that happens,
pyruvate is acted upon by an enzymein the cytoplasm called lactate dehydrogen ase LDH
converts pyruvate into lactic acid, andthat lactic acid starts to accumulate and it

(43:46):
is an acid and it trades offhydrogen ions. So you'll have a higher
content of hydrogen ions in the bloodstring, which is going to drop the
pH of the blood. But thelactic acid, when you stop exertion,
that's all stacked up out here canget acted on in the opposite direction,

(44:07):
converted back to pyrouvate and cycled backthrough the mitochondria, just as if it
was being pushed through at a ratethat the mitochondria could handle it. So
in that way, in the halfhour or so after a high intensity workout,
all that stacked up lactate can getconverted back to pyroubate and then shovel

(44:30):
through the mitochondria, and it's almostas if you're getting a steady state benefit
after the conclusion of your workout.The other thing is everyone thinks of lactic
acid because acutely it does degrade performancesomewhat, so they think of it as
a negative performance degrading thing that weneed to avoid. But actually the reason

(44:52):
we make lactate is because our bodyuses lactate its fuel, so our brain
can use lactate to function in theabsence of glucose. Lactate can be taken
back, can get out into thecentral circulation, so it can diffuse across
the cell membrane of the cell,get out into the central circulation that's carried

(45:15):
by the venus circulation back to theportal vein of the liver, and in
the liver, lactate can be pushedback up the glycolosis pathway, so glycolosis
running backwards. It's called gluconeogenesis.And you can convert lactate back to glucose

(45:35):
and then recycle it back down thepathway. So a well trained athlete and
this chemical process where it goes backto the liver and is converted back to
glucose is called the Corey cycle coRII. Well trained athlete can actually get
a second wind out of their lacticacid or like a little nitro boost because

(45:55):
they can recycle it and keep going. So there'll be a period the fatigue
and then a kick in of asecond wind kind of experience as they recycled
this back to glucos and run itthrough the pathway again. Clear clear,
perfect, Thank you. I remember, and I think it was the twenty
one convention. You draw the allows. He's a very nice video. I

(46:22):
would put all the videos that everyoneout that one has had the most views
of anything I ever did. AndI had a very well prepared. I
really agonized over what I was goingto say to these young men and made
a very elaborate presentation, and atthe last minute, I mean right before

(46:45):
they called me up there, Ijust had a feeling about the audience that
I was in front of, andI just scrapped the whole thing, and
I just that whole talk that's inthe twenty one convention thing, I just
completely pulled out. I asked anddid right there on the Greek Sports because
I thought, what these young menneed to understand is that certain things just

(47:10):
can't be reduced into a sound bite. So what I thought is, I'm
going to take these poor suckers andI'm going to drag them through a semester
of med school biochemistry and make themrealize that if you take the time to
skip the get sound bite and gothrough the complexity, once you've gone through
the complexity, the simplicity of itstarts to strike you. And that's what

(47:37):
led to that, I think,this is the basics. And then I
remember talking about the fructos. Iremember that you drew a line straight,
so because fructose is go straight intobite bussing a lot of steps before reducing.

(48:00):
Yeah, I can explain that kindof briefly. So fructose is just
one of the steps and the degradationof glucose as it drives through glycolosis.
So you've got glucose, and you'vegot glucos six phosphate, and then the
next meal of box step is glucoseone six diphosphate, and then the next
step is fructos one six diphosphate fructossix phosphate. So there's a level of

(48:22):
glycolosis where it's changed into fructose.Well, at that level of glycolosis,
that junction of glycolosis is a pointin a feedback cycle. So imagine this
fructose level in glycolosis is being thetemperature sensor in your thermostat. So as

(48:46):
you proceed, if you have ahigh energy state and you move glucose all
the way through the glycolosis cycle,and you move it all the way through
the mitochondria, as you get abouttwo thirds of the way through the mitochondria,
you generate a chemical called citrate.Citrate is like the temperature in your

(49:08):
house, Like if you're cooling yourhouse to seventy degrees, when the ambient
temperature gets to be seventy degrees.That feeds back to the thermostat and turns
off the air conditioner. So whenyou're in a very high energy state,
you're pushing energy through the mitochondria andthat generates enough citrate that feeds back at

(49:30):
the level of fructose and shuts offglycolisis. So when you're in a high
energy state, if you intake anycarbohydrate, especially if you intake fructose as
in high fructose corn syrup, it'sblocked from going down glycolosis because the thermostat
has turned off the air conditioning.So the only thing that can happen at

(49:53):
that level is it gets shuttled acrossthrough a process called denovo lycogenesis, where
you turn fructose into triacyl glycerol ortriglycerides, which are mobilized for fat storage.
So, when your energy state ischronically high, citrate feeds back to
fructose, block skycolysis and shuns everythingtowards fat. And that's where a lot

(50:16):
of people in Western society, throughthe Western diet, are chronically stuck.
Everything they eat gets shuttled into fatstorage. And because so much of the
kind of fat that they eat isa type of fat that doesn't allow fat
to be moved out of storage.They end up over stuffing their fat cells,

(50:37):
so they have energy trapping or internalstarvation. They can eat, but
that intaked energy never gets able tobe used for energy utilization. All just
gets shun in towards storage. Sothat's why people are constantly hungry and constantly
refeeding. And the industrial food companiesknow is when they say you can't eat

(51:01):
just one, they need it becausethey have engineered the food to be that
way. Clear, Clear, that'svery true. That is true. One
of the last questions, because weare going towards out the hand of our
conversation in terms of warming up oractually for that we're talking about the standard

(51:22):
Big five or one of your typicalworkouts in your facility. Do I need
to warm up to do some dynamicsomething before starting the exercise or guy goes
straight into that. In general,no, so with a relatively slight it

(51:47):
doesn't have to be tin tin,but a cadence controlled strength training regiment builds
the work warm up into the initialrepetitions because relative to your capable ability,
you are holding back somewhat. Soyour first two repetitions may represent anywhere between
twenty five and fifty percent output,and as you accumulate fatigue, the difference

(52:14):
between your output and the resistance you'vechosen starts to close and then it becomes
hard. So literally, at theconclusion of the set, you're becoming too
weak to hurt yourself. So thewarmup is built into it. I would
qualify that by saying that sometimes peopleneed a little bit of a warm up,

(52:35):
not for physiologic reasons, but forpsychological reasons, just to kind of
you get ready for it mentally.In that case, that's fine. The
other case in which a warmup mightbe necessary is if you have a deranged,
arthritic or injured joint. So sometimespeople have bad knees and doing a

(52:58):
white warm up sort of gets movementgoing in the synobium, which is the
lining of the joint that produces thelubricating fluid. Sometimes the warm up will
generate a little bit of that lubricatingfluid before you go to the higher load.
So if someone has an inner jointor chronically inflamed or deranged joint,
sometimes those people benefit from the briefwarm up before they launch into the full

(53:23):
high intensity workout. Yeah, butas you mentioned, we can do this
warm up basically mimicking the same legbreasts we do the first reps at twenty
five percent. I don't know assomething that just do have them blood flowing
and this lubrication ongoing, and thenthat we can well no, So what

(53:45):
I'm saying is not going to selecta weight that's twenty five percent of what
you're going to use your set.What I'm saying is when you pick a
weight, the weight is a constantamount, and then you're just lifting and
lowering and lifting and lowering across thatconstant amount. But towards the end of
the set, the amount of forceyou're able to produce is coming down to

(54:09):
what the weight is and then droppingbelow what the weight is, and that's
what failure is. So when youselect your training weight or leg press,
what I'm saying is those first twoor three repetitions actually because your capabilities up
here as you go across the set. So what happens is your capability to

(54:29):
degrades down to the level of thelake. But during the first few repetitions,
that first repetition pie represents less thanfifty percent of what you're actually capable
of. So those first few repetitionsin a standard high intensity set represent a
warm up which you are fully warmby the time that you get to the

(54:51):
really high exertion portion of the set, and you're now literally too weak to
hurt yourself. You can't generate enoughforce to exceed the structural abilities of your
body. Very cool, very cool. I remember, I think in the
twenty one convention in you and alsoDrew Bay, it was a nice,
nice way of seeing this and withthe graphic exact Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(55:15):
This is another tool that weekend wecan show to the public. So
we had that quite at the end. So you mentioned that the beginning that.
Okay, in Germany you your bookvery popular. I'm not sure in
Italy because I don't know. Iprefirst of all, are you planning a

(55:37):
new a new work is something todo issue and anything new in the this
year or on the next one interms of book writing in me, yeah,
yeah, no, probably not inthat time frame at all, mostly
just because it's such a slow movingprocess. But no, And with regarding

(55:58):
your question, I've approached McGraw hillmultiple times about translating into Italian. But
it's it's weird, it's I didn'tunderstand so much about book publishing that I've
learned over the years. Translation intoother languages doesn't happen from the publisher's standpoint.

(56:19):
What happens is someone in the countryin question approaches McGraw hill and asks
for the rights to publish it intheir language. So, I mean,
Body by Science has been translated Ibelieve into German and that was done via
Werner Keyser. It's been translated intoKorean. Yeah, I mean, like,

(56:45):
where did that come from? Ihave no idea. So someone that's
a publisher in another country approaches McGrawhill and ask for them why it never
works where you where I can justgo to the publisher and say, hey,
why don't you put this out inItalian and they're like, no,
we don't work that way. Ihave to ask us for the rights and
then we make royalties off their work. So it's a weird process. So

(57:09):
if you can find some rich benefactorin Italy that wants to do it,
then that buys a way. Ifwe go this is my intention, we'll
see best way to connect, probablythrough the website, which is doctor McGuff
dot com or d R McGuff dotcom. That's just sort of a general

(57:34):
landing spot. There's a blog thatI haven't added to in sometime. There's
a link to the YouTube channel onYouTube it's just doctor Doug McGuff channel,
but there's links to there. Andalso the phone consultation, the process that
I do has a scheduling software onthere for anyone that wants to do phone

(57:57):
consultation. That's available there as wellas well our schedule podcasts through the consultation
software, that kind of thing.Yeah, yeah, I follow you on
different Yeah. On YouTube. Youproduce some really nice short videos maybe now
and then. So one of thelatest is about the protests solding mediators.
I really invite everyone to have alook. And so are you Are you

(58:21):
on the same I think it's quitetreacent about the protsolving mediators, so ye,
and I'm happy to report that actuallythat's getting some traction. Now,
Okay, there's a critical care specialistat Harvard named Bruce Levy that is starting
to launch a trial looking at asub segment of pro resolving mediators and using

(58:44):
them in side of kind storm asit relates to COVID nineteen. So I
really think and there's a new videothat will come up soon I'll put up
in the next few days. Ireally do think there's been a lot of
focus on what's so unique about thestars CoV two virus and how it's you

(59:06):
know, how it's expressing itself inthis pandemic. But I think one thing
that has not really been looked atas well as it should be is what
are the unique nature of the humanpopulation which is being infected. This is
driving how this pandemic is expressing itself, And I think peculiarities of the Western

(59:28):
diet, the heavy heavy loading ofomega six relative to omega three fatty acids,
and in particular how much lenelaic acidis in our diet and therefore incorporated
into our body is a lot ofwhat is likely driving the cytokine storm and

(59:49):
probably explains why obesity seems to bea major risk factor, because most people
in westernized societies have become obese,not simply by over consumption of energy relative
to output, by single disruptions,by these very novel industrial seed oils that
are incorporated into our bodies and reallydrive information. So yeah, there's a

(01:00:15):
lot to be learned about us asan organism rather than the virus. Yeah,
Yeah, clear. Yeah, butthe diet I will mention after these
your your your quote, I thinkwe did the perfect diet is just to
keep straight the way from the sunto the plate something like that. I
will quote the exact yes, yes, and so with this, I really

(01:00:37):
thank you for your time and Ithink this is a very fruitful conversation.
We will be in touched by emailof chat in the next week, so
thank you very much again. Allright, very much, right, hey
too, See prop gives took usto it. I clicato agricatole, so

(01:01:04):
do so gero I giraldo I clicadoode Victas t say is subscribed. I
condiviso so lefat ben macen LEVESI fat

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