The Science of Longevity Begins With the Habits You Can Repeat Transcript

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Welcome to Pelon's Move for Life podcast. In this podcast, we peel back the layers of our in-class programming and we talk about the science behind fitness. In each episode, you're going to get direct takeaways from wellness experts in the health and wellness space. How much of a role do genes play? I think a lot of people thought that so much of your life is dictated by genetics. It's really about 25%. How quickly you can recover from a workout actually can tell you a lot about how healthy you are. Why should people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s start thinking about longevity? Truly just initiating some sort of exercise or resistance routine that can literally reduce their mortality, but also increase their functionality. We're going to learn more about living longer, healthier, and happier lives together. Hi everyone, Matt Opris here and I'm so excited for our conversation today. As a Pelaton instructor, I love nothing more than talking about the science behind fitness. And today we're going to talk about how fitness impacts longevity. And as a new dad, this is a super important subject to me because I not only want to be around as my kid gets older, but I also want to play an active role in his life and demonstrate what a healthy lifestyle looks like. All right, so first I want to give a big welcome to our guest today. She's a physician, medical contributor for NBC News, and a part of our wellness advisory board at Pelaton, who also happens to be a good friend of mine. Please welcome Dr. Kavita Patel. Great to be with you, Matt. Thanks for having me. So, Dr. Patel, for those who might not know you, please tell us a little bit about your background and why is longevity such a passion of yours. Yeah, so I'm trained as an internal medicine doctor and that means essentially that I'm a doctor for adults, but I train in everything. And over the years of practice, I've seen so many cases where we could have prevented someone from a fall or we could have helped somebody by just getting them started with walking for even 5 minutes a day and that could make a difference. And I see this over years and years. I can't tell you how many people at the ages of 60, 70, 80 start to do some of these exercises and they see changes.

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They're able to walk stairs, lift groceries, things that matter to them. And I think that's part of why I've been so passionate not just about the research behind it, but how do we get that research actually into people's hands so they can do something with it. I don't want to just see it in a journal and a scientific print. I want this to become alive. And I think that's what inspired you and I to kind of join forces on this. No, I love this because as a coach, this is what I've been seeing throughout my entire coaching career. Yeah. And now this is the science that speaks to what's actually happening. So it's like we're bringing these two worlds together. And I hope people and our community learns a lot from this and has a lot of fun with this. And the science has advanced so much just even in the last like five years. We're learning more and more just like we just talked about walking. Walking that can matter. Heart rate. We're going to get into all these fun topics today. It's an exciting time to be I'm sure to be a physician but also to be a coach because things are changing so quickly and all the things we've seen for years. The studies are now supporting it. Absolutely. Okay. Now let's start off with the basics. What is longevity and why is it so important? Yeah. So longevity really is thinking about kind of how your life or your biological clock, which is kind of what we talk about with our years, how that matches up to your health span or how healthy you are and how active and functional you are. And so people sometimes get confused longevity feels like something for old people or maybe it's for once you get a certain age. That's wrong. It's an important topic for anybody at any age. Even as you know with a newborn you can never start too early to think about the kind of life you want to live. So sometimes people talk about longevity is think about the last 10 to 20 years of your life. But I like to say think about every year and kind of what you want to do to be the healthiest you can be in that moment. And that's almost like putting money into a bank account so that you can use it all the time today and even years from now. It reminds me of a quote from my coach from high school and he was just like he told everyone at the end of their senior

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year. He goes, "I don't just want to see you running now. I want to see you running when you're 60, 70 years old. I want to bump into you when you're out there running." And I'm like, "That is stuck in my head ever since then." I'm like, "Okay." So, whatever I'm doing, I'm not sacrificing the ability to do that later in my life. Yeah. I'm preparing for that. And you forgive yourself. So I've seen a lot of like even just people who start a routine or start something and then they they life happens they stop happens to me then they stop and they get frustrated but I think we're talking about having that longevity kind of be part of how you think about today is the first day I can start on helping the rest of my life be better and that just gives you a different mindset. I love that. So one thing that comes to mind is genes. People often say like, you know, good genes run in my family and I'm doomed because my family history and like this is this definitely conversation I've had with my wife as you know having a baby it's like well okay what do our genes say? We we actually looked into this free baby. Um you know is that accurate? How like how much of a role do genes play? Yeah, I think a lot of people including myself when I was in medical school thought that so much of your life is dictated by genetics. But we now know from an accumulation of studies that it's really about 25% of your health. That's a significant amount, but it's not as much as people think. Is it? Yeah. No. So that means that about 75% is in your control. Now, some of it might not be in your control like the environment or the air you're breathing, but a lot of it is in your control. And that should give you a sense of you're not doomed by how or where or when you were born, but really about what happens from your birth, as you said, to model for yourself and for the people around you. And one thing I learned in school was uh that just because you have a gene doesn't mean it'll be expressed. Yes, it's that's exactly right. And with science, we're actually seeing advances where even with an expression of a gene met, that's a probably another episode, but you can actually manipulate that expression. It's incredible what what's happening with genes is so fluid. But

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again, it should just reinforce that often when people think my body or I'm the way I am, my health is the way it is because of genetics, that that's not necessarily true. Yeah, I think that's an important point for everyone to really take home is there's some genes that we have that we can think about getting in front of and being proactive with, but a lot 75% of your longevity is in your control, right? And that means that it's not something that I find that also hard sometimes because people feel like they failed. Not at all. It's just again today is the first day of like your path to longevity and you just think about it that way. It's a reset. You don't need to kind of feel like your past dictates your future necessarily. Yeah. I I always think about that in terms of every new every day next day is a new day to, you know, reset. Yeah. Absolutely. It's never too late. Okay. Let's talk about numbers. I love numbers. You love numbers. We do. We love numbers. Z is really excited for this part of the conversation. What should people be tracking to optimize their longevity? I see people like I've got trackers. You got trackers. Yeah, we do. Um, you and I are believers in like data. I love the data. Yeah, I do. And I think the data is important. So, I we we're referring to like some of our wearables, but we know that when we're riding a bike or on a treadmill or in a row, we can see also things that are very important. So, I'm going to call out there are a lot of different markers for longevity. So, we're going to hear a lot about kind of you can add more to this, but I want to try to get some basics that cover like kind of four big areas. And that just gives you a sense of what are the things you might want to just try to identify in advance. So heart rate or heart rate variability. So when we talk about measuring heart rate, we know from studies that depending on how like either it long it takes to get to a certain heart rate or how quickly you can recover from a workout actually can tell you a lot about how healthy you are. So meaning for example that when you do your power zone classes or I do your power zone classes and I can see

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how my heart rate changes that if I can improve that variability and change it that'll directly translate in studies we've done in hundreds of thousands of people to all cause mortality. Meaning that the more I can actually control my heart rate variability, being able to know when to elevate it and how to recover appropriately, that can translate to literally saving my life, reducing all cause mortality. We're going to link to the scientific articles in our show notes so that people who are interested in learning more can see all the numbers, how it broke down by different ages, but it's what you do in your power zone training. You try to teach people to look at their heart rate. That's one component. The second one really is around your kind of overall cholesterol and I'll just call it uh you know good cholesterol and bad cholesterol are both important in your body and there's different markers we talk about HDL LDL I like to use as a back of reference the HDL is high density you want that number to be as high as possible because it's a protective cholesterol LDL you want that number to be as low as possible because that can indicate cardiac risk if it's too high the Third is around your sugars. Oh gosh. Hemoglobin A1C. We've talked about it. That's confusing to a lot of people because some people can actually check their sugars and may have had their finger pricricked and they get their glucose checked. The hemoglobin A1C is actually a better, it's a blood test. It's a better monitor of how your sugar's been handled in your body over the last several months. That can tell us a lot from whether you're a diabetic to how you handle after you kind of eat a certain type of food, how you might handle that food over time. And then finally, the key piece that you and I I know you're going to nerd out on, V2 max. That's an area we can talk about how how hard or easy it is to measure. It's something we do in a lab setting, but V refers to volume. O2 refers to oxygen. This just tells you how your body uses oxygen and how efficient you are. And here's something that might

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surprise people, not you, is that the more efficient you are, the lower your risk of everything from heart disease to even neurodeenerative disorders. So, we love to talk about these numbers and get people to understand their own numbers and how they can improve them. Yeah, a couple of these stick out to me. Well, the first one, heart rate variability. Part of exercise is recovery, right? And if the if your recovery is not high quality, then you're not going to be prepared for your next bout of exercise. And so one thing that we've learned from HRV is is starting to quantify how are you recovering. And if I was a coach, like coaching a team, I would have everyone like I would have HRV on all my athletes because it's just like I would see, okay, I know how they're doing in training sessions, but how are they doing outside of training sessions, right? How are they recovering? Because recovery is where you absorb the training, right? And if you're not absorbing the training, then we can't we have no platform. We can't build the next training session, You got to keep recovering. Uh so what we're seeing, you know, with alcohol specifically is that it really inhibits the the recovery process. Yeah. So it slows it down. Slows it all Right. What's Do you have a sense of what's optimal from a recovery period or is it It changes it. It's different based on your age, right? Maybe I know a lot of different things. I've seen studies that even show by gender. So, we know that there's age, gender, which gets back to I think that if I were trying to figure out what do I do with what what my heart rate, what I tell people is just know what your baseline is. Try to I think you're exactly right. It's not just your heart rate during training. I I love the fact that because I can check my heart rate in different ways. I can do it at times of stress. Yeah. When I'm relaxed and it just gives you more data on how you recover and also how you kind of get into literally like the zone for certain kinds of training and that training may just be outdoor walking. So we'll talk about how walking is is activity but that heart rate tells you so much with such an easy way to

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measure from oh it's doing it old school on your wrist or on your neck that's your karateed to some of the wearables we've talked about. Absolutely. And and again, the faster you recover, the faster you can get back to training, the more training load you can put on your body, which if that this all comes back to your rate of adaptation, right? So the faster that you're adapting to the training, the more training load you can take on, which means your peak level of fitness you can obtain within a certain amount of time is much greater than someone else that's not able to adapt as quick. And that translates on the health side and the science that we said behind it that translates to study after study that shows that exactly that pattern you described also translates to literally reducing all cause mortality. So not just from cardiac disease but we're talking like everything from cardioabolic diseases, neurodeenerative diseases. It's incredible what that one little data point can tell you about your health. I see this is why I love I I preach this you know this in classes is I talk about like using performance as a leading indicator for health can be sometimes beneficial and thinking about well if we're get if we're performing better which is exciting and fun we're likely getting healthier health healthier along the way. Yeah. And uh you know the the other number I hold true to my heart here is the LDL cholesterol which is my own genetic struggles. And and the complexity behind LDL has been something I've been learning about lately. And yeah, and I'll touch on that because uh I know that there's so much more. We can't get into everything. So we'll do what we can in show notes and try to get it to it. And check out the show notes, y'all. be but I want to emphasize like we're calling out LDL as you appropriately pointed out because that's a good example where there is a very small percentage of people that have a genetic predisposition to really high LDLs which can put them in incredible risk for heart disease but the majority of us fall into kind of a I'll call it a bell curve where some of us are low some of us are under like in the middle average and then some are really high and people always ask me well what am I aiming for

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and we used to say, you know, lower is better LDL. You want it as low as possible. What we're finding in some studies is actually that maybe you don't want to go as low as possible, but you want to try to emphasize that if you're at a higher risk, you want to probably talk to your doctor about whether you need any medication to go lower if it's high. And then at a certain LDL, we also now know there are additional cholesterol markers that might be helpful. And that's something called apo lipoprotein or apo. You'll hear about this in some of the longevity literature. But I want to say that like it's just an example the LDL that is of a blood measure that's simple to get at a doctor's office that can start to give you a window into how your health is. Interesting. Quick side question on that. Yeah. So the end result of a elevated LDL level is that calcification. So, it's a great question. So, the reason we focus on cholesterol and we talk about good and bad is that that is a it's not the only factor, but it's a real major driver in plaque in our pipes or in our arteries and to your point calcifications. And you'll hear I'm glad you brought up the word calcium. This leads to a kind of an side note of when we find someone with a higher cardiac risk, we can do other things like a calcium coronary or a heart calcium score for the very reason you're pointing out that things like high cholesterol can lead to plaque which can lead to literally calcium deposits and you can measure this technology is amazing. You can actually measure this in the blood and we also have like scans and things we can do. Again, I use that LDL number a little bit, Matt, just as a front door. It just tells us a little bit about where you are in an important way, but it's not everything. And we can do other things depending on that result. Yeah, I recently did the calcification score just to see I've I have too. Yeah, it was fascinating. It was just to see like how far along like how it gives you an idea of how serious and how

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aggressive you need to be with numbers like your LDL. It's data. I think it's everybody's right to have that data. And something patients ask me, it's hard when you're in a doctor's office. Usually they're rushed and you know there's something else that you're there for. But I always encourage people just say like, "Hey, is there anything else I should be checking that's come out that might help me?" Because some people like me as a doctor, sometimes we're just so in the zone of like what you're here for and we kind of need to step back and say, "Yeah, you know, Matt, actually, let's talk about your family history. You have a higher history of heart disease. Maybe we'll add in a calcium score this time because you're pretty healthy. You're Matt Wilpers. But we also know getting back to that 25% genetics does play a role. And how can we learn more about that? And I'd like for the listeners to think about some of the tools we're giving you today are tools to be more proactive. Yeah, that's right. And and ask ask these questions of your physician versus just sitting back and taking in the data and saying, "Well, if they're happy, I'm happy." Well, you should also be asking questions and here are some things you could be here are some tools in your tool belt that you could be asking about. Yeah. And remember, key part of health is not just your doctor. We'll get into this. This is like a lot of podcast episodes that I'm excited about, but we'll talk about sleep, nutrition, and sometimes different professionals handle different aspects of your health. And so, I think a lot of just today we want to cover longevity and some key markers, but there's so many people that play on that team of keeping you healthy. All right, I could stay in this forever, but let's keep going. So for those listening who think longevity doesn't really matter till later in life, why should people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s start thinking about longevity? So we know that like just like think about it as the um foundations that we would put down in a house. So you might say like all right, the first thing that you do when you're building a new house is you see that concrete going in and it's building that foundation. That's exactly why thinking about it in your I would even offer your teens. I mean, I talked to my eight and 10year-old about, you know, just how to think about movement and why sleep is important. And

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I I always say to my 8-year - old, I said, "Your brain is like refreshing just like the computer when you sleep. And it helps your body refresh, too." So, I think it's never too early, and it's also never too late. But we also do know from literature and studies that have shown that when you do kind of pay attention to some of those key markers and indicators in your 20s that you can actually literally live longer but also live a healthier life in the function of what you want. So you just described wanting to be able to play with your son and being able to do things as you age. That's exactly what we find when we study populations that start to kind of or live in communities like blue zones or communities where they think about health from the beginning. We see that they live longer and they're happier, meaning they're content with what their functionality is and they're satisfied even at the end of their life. We don't talk enough about the end of our lives. It's a little topic we're scared of, but when you start early, we all see statistically that the last years of your life are the most satisfying. That's fascinating. I one thing that pops in my head is you and I'm going through this now is skinincare. Uhhuh. And I, you know, my parent, my mom got me started very early on skincare when I was young. Sunscreen on sunscreen, moisturizer, all this stuff. And then as I've gotten older, like uh I've kept it up with it. Yeah. and and everyone's like, "Your skin looks amazing." I'm like, "That didn't happen like today. That happened like back back when my mom was, you know, helping like getting me on top of all this stuff." And so it reminds me of of just simply like a skincare routine. Yeah. You would think when you're young and you're like, "I don't need to do this. Come on, mom. I've got I've own kids do it to me. I'm like, I don't need sunscreen." My daughter the other day said, "Well, it's cloudy outside. I don't need sunscreen." Ah, but you do. So, I think you're exactly right. Like that's why an early investment, but it's so little. Think about the time to put the skin care together or just what we're talking

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about with moving more or sleeping. It seems like just those little nudges can have such huge effects over time. Yeah. And making those routines early, right? Gosh, it makes it easier later in life. It really does. You don't Again, I always say in class, you guys hear me say this all the times, routines are easy to form, hard to break. Yeah. So your bad routines are are like hard to break. Yeah. And so getting it started early, even better. And I, you know, another thing that sticks in my mind is I came up I was a CPA and um I always made sure to take care of my health along the way and and I I was going through that as in my 30s and coming out of my 20s into my 30s I saw a very like all of a sudden it was like boom those who took care of their health and wellness and those that didn't looked very different. Yeah, they do. And it was like it happened like 32 33 right? And I was like, "So, and I have stayed on top of my my routine, whereas my friends did not." Yeah. You look very different. Yeah. You remind me. Um, there's a friend of mine, a cardiologist, Dr. Eric Toppel. He wrote a book called Super Aers. You're what we would describe as a superager. So, somebody who put Exactly. There's I should be careful about keeping Matt's ego in check. Ego blowing up right now. But it's you're reminding me of like there are things we see when we look at people in their 80s, 90s, 100. I actually have a patient 106. I actually take care of her and her daughter and her granddaughter 60s 80s and 106 and I'm like, "What are you guys doing? Eating, drinking, and they described as having like honestly we'll get into this in another episode. They describe having a happy life when they started too where they remember kind of having great friends and eating healthy and moving by taking trips together and going on hikes together even at a young age. So super aging when you say what is longevity. It's how do you want to live at all ages and it starts young but I want to emphasize something. It's

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never too late to start. We'll get into this. I don't want people to feel doomed that they've got to do something. We can So let's talk about that. Yeah. So what what would people say to people who think that it's too late to start? I hear that sometimes. It's like I feel that way. Like how many times have I told like people people come to me they're like you know I'm like you should you know work on you know running strength training whatever they're like ah it's you know I'm old it's too late I'm like right it's too late for me I felt that way sometimes when I try taking new classes for example on the row I was like I can't do this I never did rowing before I can't do this but here's what I'll tell you the science shows us this is what kind of go back to the data we've seen in cohorts of studies of people in their 60s and 70s that and who were not necessarily active before that even doing lightweight, we're talking about walking, we're talking about low inensity exercises, even just resistance or balance exercises can reduce it their mortality and actually improve their function in the double digits. So, it depends on what you do. You do have to kind of, as you said, stick with the habit. But looking at population of of patients in their 60s and 70s, both men and women, we found that starting truly just initiating some sort of exercise or resistance routine on a regular basis. What is regular? Usually two to three times a week, but doing something every week that that can literally reduce in reduce their mortality, but also increase their functionality. Because what do people want in their 60s and 70s? They want to be able to kind of move freely, do the things that they've been doing and not feel like they depend on anyone. This there was a cohort that was done in Europe that showed just starting that. And again, these are people who didn't do really much of anything on a regular basis prior to their 60s. It's never too late. And we also have a study of 80 to 90 year olds who have just started resistance training. And that's especially important for women around just kind of making sure that they have at any age,

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but resistance training, bone strength. I'd love for them to start as early as possible, but we know that it's never too late. And that even starting in their 80s can reduce chances of a fracture, a fall. And I think that's exactly when I think about how I want to age, that's exactly the stuff that's important to me. And that's something we see I see at Pelaton. after classes when we have live studio audiences we have photograph line people come up and take photos but they also tell you stories about their their training and a lot of times I'll see the same people maybe it'll be months before I see them again maybe it be last week sometimes it's years and y'all the transformations I've seen in people 30s 40s 50s 60s that just got started they come back dropped 40 pounds got stronger it's it's like a totally person. Yeah. And it's it there's no one thing that's right, but I think that it's amazing to just have I think you've said it, consistency, you know, we need to just make sure that whatever you do, you make it a habit. And there no there is no limit to the age in which to start. So anybody who's watching or listening, I encourage them just even out the door, a couple of minutes a day can make that difference. And the science proves that. And and again, we something we always come back to and we'll talk about this in our we talk about more about fitness, but frequency, duration, intensity. Remember, intensity is the least important. If you're just getting started, frequency is the most important. So, just having a consistent frequency of working out at low intensity, big bang for your buck. You You do not need to wake up the next day a sore mess. That's right. To get a lot out of your training. All right. So, we go into this top five segment here. I love it. We're top five daily mistakes that shorten lifespan. I feel like we need a little music to get into the top five. Okay, good. That's good. All right. So, sitting too much and move and moving too

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little. That's the top mistake that I see people making. So what everyone asks me and I think they always ask you how much do you need to you know when you're talking about frequency or duration and certainly intensity but we know that the American Heart Association you and I have talked about it like a goal would be 150 minutes a week but that can sound really daunting. So I always say like anything that can help you just create a habit is a good place to start. But what the science shows us about how much to move is that movement even at a low intensity of about 75 minutes a week is incredible. So sometimes you hear about the 11 minutes a day that kind of gets viral in social media. That's kind of how they broke down. It's really that 75 minutes a week study of lower intensity that it it's a bit of a sweet spot. Yeah. That's why you have to check out the Move for Life program. It's it's a program over the course of four weeks that starts you off much lower than 150, right? And it works you up to 150 and we break it up into small chunks in order to help you develop the habit of exercising every single day. It's just getting out the door even around the block. You can do anything. All right, so second Yeah. What's the second one? Sleep. Oh boy. Sleep. I I suffer from this. I am a horrible insomniac. So it's trust me it's something that I personally have to I I have depended I've become dependent on Pelaton meditation to actually help put me to sleep that works for me but I think everybody probably at some point in their life has some issues with sleep and the only thing I want to mention about the science of what we know people always ask me what's that magic number of hours so there's a bit of a U curve to the science of sleep and we know that there's actually an amount meaning if you look at the shape of a U that too little is bad and then we know that too much is bad on the other side of the U. But sitting at that kind of an upside down U. Sitting at the top of that U is that sweet spot that ranges usually from

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7 to nine hours. And so I tell people look I care more and again with these wearables a lot of more people learn about their sleep. I care much more about the quality of your sleep and getting back to duration. So learn about your habits. We tell people to try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day because even on a weekend when I was a teenager, I used to think I could just sleep in and kind of bank my sleep. We know that that doesn't work. So, sleep deprivation is another huge mistake. And there's a lot we have for content to help people get to sleep. And there's a lot more out there. If you are suffering from insomnia, get help and learn your data. Having a newborn baby has ma has made me, you know, reconnect with sleep in an in a very direct way, but also makes me realize that like we have to go back with babies to to the very basics of learning how to self soo, put yourself to sleep, having routines around sleep. And I'm just like, these are things that we've all forgotten about. All forgotten, but and we should retrench ourselves and saying having that pre-sleep routine. That's right. Your awake routine. Like it's super important. I'm glad you bring that up because in the era of screens, like I'm I'm guilty. Again, I told you I'm not the model patient here, but we tell people to get rid of screens because of the blue light an hour before. It is so hard. So I it gets back to your point about routine and really giving yourself like the most kind of like tranquil environment and I can imagine you and I are sitting in New York. Not easy to kind of put the noise out, but you need to have that routine and kind of the quiet and it's just like a baby. The same applies to adults. I just think about if I just apply half of what we're doing for our baby to my own sleep routine, I will be doing phenomenal amount of food. That's right. Let's keep going. What's number three here? All right. So, we're also I'm very excited. You and I have talked about social isolation and loneliness. That's number three. I'm excited to get into this because I

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think people might be shocked to learn that and we'll dive more into some of the science, but loneliness, being lonely, can be almost equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. That blows my mind. Wow. But that's literally been proved in the data that when you take people who have been isolated and you can actually be around a lot of people Matt physically or even have kind of people that you are in a family with and still be lonely. So it's really about the feeling of you're really isolated and socially and emotionally kind of alone. And so that's something that I think not enough people have paid attention to. I've often called it like the extra vital sign. we've got our blood pressure, our heart rate, our temperature, respiratory rate. But just taking a moment and doing a screening question about people's loneliness can tell you a lot more about their health and how you can actually improve your health. And in doing that, just by I find it that even plugging into like the Pelaton community can help with kind of that feeling like I'm not all alone. And I think that's why it's been so important to have like the instructors foster those connections. But that literally has been shown to save lives. It's incredible. Wow. I It It also improves performance. It does. So it goes back It all comes back with Matt to performance. But I think that it's And so one tip I have is go through We all have smartphones. Go into your smartphone and look up a contact or somebody that you haven't texted or connected with in a while and just send them a text right now and tell them that you're thinking about them or that you miss them. And it'll be kind of amazing to see if everybody listening does that just pulls out your phone, sends a text, somebody that you have in your contact list, so somebody arguably that you know, and you send them something that says, you know, thinking of you and miss you. And it's just amazing to see like kind of what ripple effect that can create. And just that little action can create something that can try to fight again almost like smoking almost a pack of cigarettes a day. Imagine I know

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if you can just turn around that behavior with a habit. jumping ahead. Lack of purpose and meaning. And this will be a little bit I like to think of this as it doesn't mean that you have to have all your life goals and kind of everything planned out for you, but just having something that you're excited about. I like to tell people that um sometimes we talk about all the things that are wrong and what's going on in our lives that we want to change, but I tell people like what's one goal? It doesn't need to be some earthshattering goal. It could be get out the door every day for five minutes. And that's just something I need to do. And I tell people, don't try to boil the ocean. Just find something that they are passionate about. It could also be 5 minutes phone free with my kid, but something that feels like if you get that done today, you really felt like you found something that gave you more purpose, more meaning, and you've moved the bar a little. And it's hard, but I I do think that truly, and here's again the science behind it. We know that people who have kind of identified goals albe it small, medium, big, doesn't matter. People who identify goals even sometimes write them down that they are more likely not only to accomplish them but they are more likely to feel the satisfaction from the accomplishment of the goals. So I have been a big we're carrying people who can't see us. I've got a pen and paper. I'll be a big fan of just okay today, you know, try to go to bed at 900 PM or try to go to bed at 10 p. m. Write that down. Type it on your phone in a note, whatever the equivalent is and set that kind of for an intention. And that really does matter. Get on the bike. Even if you don't know how long you can stay on the bike, get on the bike. That can be an example of kind of a way to get meaning in your daily activities. And it builds out to what we call longevity. That's awesome. That makes total sense. I mean, how often it feels so good to either check something off or cross it off the list even at that basic level. It's very satisfying. I think I went off the deep end with my career. It's just like

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something out now. It's like maybe is it possible to have too much meaning in your life? It's possible. It's never which gets us to our last one. Yeah. All or nothing thinking. There we go. That's that's too many of us live in the you know zero to like it's it's all or it's nothing. I've either done all of this and I've accomplished everything or I'm a failure. And I think that like everything in life, nothing is zero or 100. Everything is constantly even Matt like by the hour you can have moments in your day where you're like I'm not getting anything done. I'm a failure. Getting out of that thinking you and I have talked about mindset. I've mentioned like a great influence on not just myself but a lot of professionals I know is Carol Dwek mindset. She's a psychologist at Stanford now and I I have like the privilege of knowing her and working with her. But talking about like this all or nothing thinking gives you what we call a fixed mindset where you're not open to growth, you're not open to change and you end up actually so where does this go with health? We know that people who have that kind of all or nothing thinking or some sort of fixed mindset are more likely to be alone to feel like they did not accomplish both personal relationships and professional relationships in their life and they're actually not as happy like at over periods of their life. So Harvard done a happiness study for decades and decades. Studied and followed people people with a kind of all or nothing mindset were likely to die earlier also likely to be unhappy at the time of their death. People that had kind of this growth mindset that got out of this all or nothing thinking were much more likely to live longer and be happier. And again, this whole podcast is about longevity. What does that mean? We just want to live longer and happier. However that looks for you and wherever that looks for you. That's a I think it was Emma Lovewell that says progress not perfection. That's right. It's and that's that all or nothing thinking. I

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suffer from it. You can like I said hour to hour it can shift. But if you turn it around and um I've taught like myself to say like I when I first came to the bike and I would try to do your longer classes. I remember you're like well I'm doing a 90-minute class and I remember thinking I can't do that. And what I've learned to do is to say I can't do that yet. So I've added the word yet. There you go. I still haven't done it, Matt. What? But I blame time. Not that I don't want to do it, but I used to say to you like, I can't do that. I turn that into I can't do that yet. And I look forward to the day when I come. Maybe that'll be a live class. Maybe not. I always start those classes off by saying one thing. Just moving for 90 minutes is success today. Totally. And if you're able if you're then able to like level up to get to hit the zones we are at even better. But simply moving for 90 minutes is going to give you like a biggest portion of well the 90-minute class when you told me about doing that and I was like I can't do that and I shifted my brain. It's like I can't do that yet. So add the word yet to anything that you think you can't do. Expect a photo you know get back. That's right. Those are our five men. Those are our top five. There we go. So let's let's bring it home then. How can people start implementing these longevity habits right now? Right? I think we talked about breaking this down into like bite-sized chunks and that could mean just listening to we've talked about the move for life programming. You can use that as your way to start, but it just to me is keeping it simple, getting you can either just move in where you're at, whatever place you're at indoors or even getting out the door so that you can start a habit. But it's what you said to me. It's consistency and it's kind of having something on a regular basis that you can adapt. And we're going to get into so many other areas, nutrition, sleep, etc. But it it doesn't need to be intimidating. Just do something. Dr. Patel, thank you for being here today and for sharing just a little bit of your wealth of knowledge with us

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today about longevity. It was great to be with you, Matt. This was fun. Thank you. I look forward to our next time together. We're going to be talking about exercise in our next episode and how it impacts not only our lifespan but also our health span. And we're also going to dive into the differences of the impact from different modalities like strength training versus cardio. And of course, this is all supported with peerreview research. Thank you for joining us for this first episode of Move for Life. Remember, longevity isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So keep moving, stay connected, and remember, you're not just training for today. You're training to move for life. Thank you.