Limitless Aging Starts With Stress You Can Recover From Transcript

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hi Peter how are you Hi how are you doing well thank you um I love the show and I love jerk I find your work like extremely uh extremely fascinating because this I just love to shatter you for like a year if I could but um so like you're working very intimately with Chris for I think like a better part of a year maybe a little more than that um what did you sort of like grass because we've seen Chris Hemsworth the movie star but now you get to work with Chris Hemsworth the man and you get to see how much effort he puts into his daily craft so like what did you sort of just learn from him like working so close together yeah I mean that's that's sort of one of the real pleasant surprises of this whole thing um you know when we started this project uh when Darren and I started talking about this um we had a certain actor in mind for it who we both knew very well already and you know and then when at the last minute due to scheduling stuff and it kind of made more sense to you know bring someone else in and that someone was Chris um I was like oh that's great I'm gonna get to know somebody new but I didn't know that that person would be a person I would like so much and um you know I think anybody who's met Chris will just immediately speak to kind of the kind of guy he is which is absolutely the real deal and you just when you're with them there is no thing about this guy being like the biggest movie star in the world um and yeah I mean he works incredibly hard and uh that means he's incredibly regimented about his training one of the things I think people probably don't understand about being quote unquote a movie star is the hours that they work are insane you know and Chris has probably never had more than four to six weeks off in the last six years so that means he has to be able to incorporate his training into his day job which means a lot of times he's got to do these workouts at really horrible hours and you know when he's exhausted and he's you know freezing cold or whatever so um you know he's he's really Relentless in pursuit of his craft and I also was just kind of Blown Away by

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how quickly he embraced the challenges and a lot of these challenges you know they were sprung on him in real time on film right so it's not like he had a chance to prepare for some of the things that he had to do um Beyond kind of what you as the viewer are seeing on screen and I that actually was probably the thing that surprised me the most was the ability that he had to very quickly learn something new and uh adapt to whatever stress is put on him yeah yeah absolutely and then so like I want to hop through the episodes but it's like one of the first I think that you appear in is the Shock episode and you do work with him um dude in the sauna and said but we also see him like uh work and work in the extreme cold so like as you're um as it's getting colder or as like as it's getting hotter it's like when you're um is it beneficial to continue training outside in the cold for this longevity the the longevity that you're uh talking to with Chris or is it something that you should be doing more acute like maybe just like a 30 seconds hour shower or something yeah I mean I think again the data on Cold versus heat as it pertains to longevity at this point in time looks as follows uh I think the evidence in favor of heat therapy which sauna is the data for which we have the most uh is the modality for which we have the most data so so specifically the use of dry sauna which is what we did in that episode um I think the data are very compelling though far from Ironclad because much of it is epidemiologic that regular exposure you know 20 minutes at least four times a week at a high temperature you know north of about 180 degrees Fahrenheit but there really are health benefits of doing that specifically with respect to risk reduction of cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative disease when it comes to the cold side the data aren't really there yet that you know intermittent cold exposure is going to

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add to your lifespan um however there are certain benefits I think that come from cold probably with respect to [Music] um uh mental health so I think there are real benefits uh in terms of even brief exposure to really cold water for example uh in terms of some of the neurochemicals that get released as a result of that that are very uh favorable with respect to mood and I think there's a clear advantage to cold exposure whether it be ice bath or things like that as it comes to reducing inflammation and I think that can be very important as an adjunct to training so again a big part of you know living longer is exercising and you know exercising can take its toll on your body it's it's acutely a very stressful thing so it's you know it's a little bit about kind of managing that yes and then you in the strength episode you do talk about um like because Chris does all the muscle like you know he's doing all the weightlifting he has huge muscle and but you show him it's like uh that he's not quite there with the endurance I'm sure he's further along than most the Regular Joe like myself but um so like what kind of uh endurance guy I know the series sort of emphasizes swimming and how it became such a strong thing but it's like running boxing any sort of cardiovascular like just that gets the heart rate pumping or is there the specific things that you should be looking for when you're sort of um doing the the endurance training yeah I mean I think the most well-crafted cardio training program probably regardless of which modality you use should be about 80 at relatively low intensity and about 20 at relatively high intensity and that's true really across the gamut right so if you look at the best endurance athletes in the world which are probably professional cyclists you know professional runners you know so people that are winning you know winning the Boston Marathon and winning the Tour de France you know they might be training 25 to 30 hours a week but they're still following that formula 80 of it is still at what is for them a very low intensity now if you or I tried to go out and keep up

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with those guys on their low intensity day we wouldn't last six minutes literally but it's all relative to your level of fitness and so the question is probably less about should it be swimming should it be cycling should it be running it should be is it something you enjoy enough that you can spend 80 percent of your time doing it and can you do it safely because that's the other principle here which is you know you can't get injured doing these things so you just have to have the biomechanics for it so you know I used to love running I don't run anymore I do a little bit I'll Sprint but I just think at my age the risk reward isn't quite there and I can ride a bike without any impact and you know pound out more of that time that I need doing it and I think another thing you have to factor in is you know what works with your lifestyle as far as you know do you live in a cold climate where it's harder to be outside or do you like cross-country skiing and you live in a place where you can do it um I think that the higher intensity stuff gets a lot more attention you know I think people you know are more inclined to think I'm going to go out and do a boot camp or a hit workout and those things are they're important but you you never want to forget that you have to have a big base to the pyramid to build a high peak and you know the high intensity stuff is the peak but the higher you want that Peak the bigger you actually need that base and that base comes from that steady state modest intensity cardio training yeah and I got into the long distance cycling this summer and my knees are thinking um but um so like we see him do the swim we see him do the uh decline but it felt like the most intense thing that you put uh Chris through was the four day of the fasting and um was how what was that sort of experience and what's sort of the um when you sort of like see that that because I think you said in the show um it takes about three days before you really see those ketones start to pop it's like and I think you mentioned that you kind of are sort of alluded to that you've done it longer so where have you

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kind of seen like the best results um I think four days was pretty good to just like jump in cold turkey four days was a big first fast and uh Chris had never fasted before and he didn't get a chance to prepare for it because literally he was finding out about it the day we talked about it on camera so that was like he literally was learning when we were having our last meal but that was going to be our last meal um and four days is big I think for your first time doing it fast uh you know three days is a lot um so again fasting is a is an interesting tool I don't think it's a tool that necessarily would apply to everybody because you have to be careful about how much muscle mass you're willing to spare because that's really the the you know fasting comes with all these metabolic benefits in the short run and potentially the long run it also comes with a very acute short-term consequence and that is a loss of lean tissue and that's why Chris was an ideal candidate for it because he has so much lean tissue he has so much muscle mass we knew we could put muscle mass back on him so it wasn't really a problem um and on top of that of course you know crispy and Chris of course he has more challenges to do for most people when you're doing your first water only fast it's you know just being able to walk around is a challenge and as you saw in the episode I mean Chris had to learn how to spear fish and I you know I it blew my mind what he was able to do because I I really I thought there was a very good chance we were not going to eat that night and then he was not going to be able to catch a fish for dinner yeah now that was a great um just the shot is amazing and so like like you mentioned earlier like the night like you want to sort of avoid the injuries they sort of uh like the sort of nagging injuries but has in your research uh when you're doing these different uh you know practices like endurance training uh shock training and it's like have you noticed any sort of like properties that maybe help accelerate the healing like when you're doing like the cold water

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showers or something as you sort of excel maybe like if you're having wrists because Chris was having wrist and Ankle sort of issues throughout the training definitely the cold can help with that um ultimately though I think a lot of it comes down to identifying you know in Chris's case look the ankle was you know I mean that's just a FL that goes that you know those types of injuries are going to happen I think the more common injuries people have tend to be acute on chronic meaning they do something and they say oh I tweaked my knee but the reality of it is there is an underlying imbalance there that predisposed them to that injury and I think those are the areas where you're going to get the most bang for your buck in the management of injuries in other words injury management is about prevention it is about understanding what are the instabilities that lead to lower back pain right like why is it that you know half of Americans perhaps more could be as could be three quarters of Americans will experience at least one significant bout of lower back pain in their lifetime and the reality of it is even if you one day bend down pick something up and your back goes nuts it didn't you didn't just hurt at that moment that was just the straw that broke the camel's back so it's really going and finding out what are the movement patterns that begin with your breathing pattern by the way that are predisposing you to the imbalances that render you susceptible to that which I think again just speaks to this broad concept of everything in this field of longevity comes down to early early identification and prevention and so like I mean Chris is Chris and he's one of one but when you're dealing with your uh regular patients like if you were like if I was one of your patients or something like what are like maybe like three or five steps like you would sort of give this like start music it's not like it's not a race to start a marathon where you start taking beats like what are like actionable changes that people can make in their everyday sort of lives to uh get you know just get started on this journey uh with respect to exercise or just in

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general everything just and just in general the yeah I mean I think on the nutrition side probably the things we want to make sure of the most are understanding do they need to be in a caloric deficit or are they at are they you know calorically fine so that's an important distinction to make and then most importantly of the caprises is your protein so where are you on protein intake because I do think most people are actually under muscled clearly not a problem for Chris but the average person walking around probably doesn't have sufficient muscle to get them to the end of their life the way we envision them getting there so a big part of that is having adequate protein intake and having it spaced out the right way and having the right proteins and then pairing that with the right kind of training so protein would be one I think the other one is really having a well-structured exercise program that emphasizes all the things we talked about with cardio so using that 80 20 rule in intensity and then on the strength side it's basically making sure that you have a really well well-rounded strength program and again that's going to vary depending on the patient if it's a patient who comes to me who's never lifted weights before well it's going to look very different they don't need much stimulus to improve but they can get injured very easily easily and it can get hurt very easily if it's you know you're coming to me and you said hey I've been lifting weights my whole life great now it's about saying well are we doing the right things and are you lifting heavy enough and are you lifting uh the right you know muscle groups enough and usually as you know it's not just one muscle group it's really about combining movements that use multiple muscle groups that impact day-to - day stuff and then I think you know just rounding it out I mean the lowest hanging fruit on this is sleep uh it's it's really making sure that a person is getting the optimal recovery uh in bed and you know sleep is probably the most underappreciated no Tropic we have meaning the thing that promotes you know even day to day just cognitive function there's no quicker way to rob a person

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of their cognitive function than to sleep deprival yeah and I noticed in the series also when you're sharing a meal with uh Chris you don't really like waste any like piece of that salad that you guys are eating in like the first episode and stuff like what are your sort of uh nutritional like gold like what kind of meals are you looking for is like because you do eating fish but Chris is eating pretty much anything and it's like but you're also you're very disciplined about it so what sort of uh what are you sort of following like when you're um picking out your meals for throughout the day throughout the week well again I anchor first and foremost to protein so most of my eating kind of revolves around getting my you know my amount of protein which is for me it's sort of getting uh 25 of my protein four times a day and I'm trying to Target about one gram of protein per pound of body weight so in other words I'm really trying to Target a quarter of a gram of protein for uh for every pound of body weight four times a day and and then after that you know how do I fill in the gaps well I mean I'm you know we used a continuous glucose monitor at times during the the show so it's sort of understanding glucose tolerance you know how much carbohydrate can a person metabolize somebody like Chris can eat a lot of carbohydrates it's got a lot of muscle he's very insulin sensitive other people might need less carbohydrate um and then of course just kind of having a sense of like do you need to be in caloric excess are you trying to actually gain weight uh are you trying to lose weight and are you trying to fix some of the underlying metabolic things that can you know result from excess calories in your life such as liver disease which of course is an enormous epidemic right now awesome well thank you so much this is a really great it's been a great uh great to talk to you thank you so much for your time yeah thank you very much