The Art of Manliness - How to Avoid Death by Comfort

00:00:00.000 Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break from new episodes today, so we're going to rebroadcast

00:00:03.240 episode number 941, How to Avoid Death by Comfort with Paul Taylor. Hope you enjoy it. We'll see

00:00:08.900 you on Monday with a brand new episode. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of

00:00:20.320 the Art of Manliness podcast. Nietzsche's maxim, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,

00:00:25.120 isn't just a sound philosophical principle. It's also a certifiable physiological phenomenon.

00:00:31.420 Toxins and stressors that could be deadly in large doses actually improve health and resilience in

00:00:35.580 smaller, intermittent ones. The ironic thing my guest points out is that it's the fact that we're

00:00:40.460 not getting enough of this sub-level stress these days that's really doing us in. Paul Taylor is a

00:00:45.440 former British Royal Navy Air Crew officer, an exercise physiologist, nutritionist, and neuroscientist,

00:00:50.720 and the author of Death by Comfort, How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It.

00:00:56.340 Today on the show, Paul discusses the science of hormesis, how small doses of intermittent stress

00:01:00.980 can make us more resistant to chronic stress, and why you need to embrace what Paul calls

00:01:04.960 discomfort harvesting. We talk about some now familiar topics like fasting and cold and heat

00:01:09.540 exposure with fresh inspiration as to how important they are to practice and how to do them effectively.

00:01:14.680 We discuss how hot a sauna needs to be to get the benefits of heat exposure,

00:01:17.780 Paul's suggestion for how to make an ice bath on the cheap, what may be the single best type of food

00:01:22.700 to eat to improve your gut's microbiome, a form of fasting that's got anti-cancer benefits but is

00:01:27.620 so accessible it won't even feel like fasting, what supplement to take to mitigate the effects of

00:01:32.380 a bad night's sleep, and much more. We end our conversation with how to use what Paul calls a

00:01:36.820 ritual board to stick with your healthy habits and resist the soft underbelly of modern life.

00:01:42.480 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash stronger.

00:01:47.780 All right, Paul Taylor, welcome to the show.

00:01:59.840 Brett, thank you for having me. I'm a long-time listener, so it's great to be on.

00:02:03.920 Well, thanks for listening. So you got a new book out called Death by Comfort,

00:02:07.740 how modern life is killing us and what we can do about it. You have an interesting career because

00:02:12.820 you are a neuroscientist who's also an exercise physiologist and a nutritionist. So how did you

00:02:19.780 end up combining these three areas in your career? Well, it all started, I went to university and did

00:02:24.960 a master's degree in exercise science. And then I joined the British military, I joined the Navy,

00:02:29.560 and I flew helicopters for a number of years. I also went through combat survival and resistance

00:02:35.000 to interrogation training, which started my interest in this area. And then I ended up doing

00:02:40.800 helicopter search and rescue. And I did another master's in nutrition because I didn't want to

00:02:45.720 sort of hang around doing nothing on when we were waiting for the call. And I always had the intention

00:02:51.540 of leaving and starting as a physiologist and nutritionist. So I did that. I moved to Australia,

00:02:57.240 met my wife in Ecuador, actually. She's an Aussie, dragged me kicking and screaming to Australia. 1.00

00:03:01.840 And I set up as a physiologist and nutritionist working one-on-one initially. And then I realized

00:03:08.340 that it wasn't so much about the science, it was about behavior change. And so that's why I went on

00:03:15.340 and did another, I went back to university and studied neuroscience. I'm now kind of topping it

00:03:20.900 off with a PhD in psychology. So I'm kind of what I call, I call myself an integrationist and a

00:03:28.420 pracademic. So I like to take all the geeky academic research and turn it into practical tools and solutions

00:03:35.220 that people can use. And now I do a lot of corporate speaking and translate that science

00:03:40.700 for everyday people.

00:03:42.220 All right. So let's talk about your book, Death by Comfort. You argue that the comfort revolution

00:03:46.780 that we've experienced for the past 100 years is killing us. How has increased conveniences,

00:03:53.680 increased comfort made us sicker?

00:03:55.900 So we need to start with a fundamental principle here. Professor Frank Boost, legendary exercise

00:04:02.520 physiologist, said that the human genome has not changed for over 45,000 years, and that

00:04:09.000 the current human genome requires and expects us to be highly physically active for normal functioning.

00:04:17.400 And it's not just that. So if we take the movement piece, we don't hunt or gather anymore. And we

00:04:23.500 know that the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania and in East Africa, Hadza women and girls

00:04:29.600 take double the steps of women and girls in modern societies. Hadza men and boys, three to four times 0.99

00:04:35.620 the steps. But when it comes to intensity of movement, they do seven to 10 times the amount of

00:04:42.040 moderate to vigorous physical activity. And what we now understand is that exercise is a very powerful

00:04:48.420 driver of your gene expression. So where we're not exercising, we lose all those positive changes

00:04:54.460 in gene expression that actually help us to be healthier. And then we have the convenience of food.

00:05:00.940 You know, now with the rise of ultra-processed foods, particularly in the last 30 or so years,

00:05:07.340 and I know, Brett, in your country, 60% of all calories consumed are ultra-processed foods.

00:05:12.460 Australia is not far behind. And teenagers, American teenagers, 66%. And these things have

00:05:19.700 lots of additives in them that disrupt our gut microbiome, that make us eat more. And it's these

00:05:26.360 convenient foods that are actually destroying us. And then the other thing is that we live in

00:05:32.440 thermoneutral environments now, where we've got heating and cooling and we're no longer cold or hot.

00:05:38.440 And that actually robs us of these ancient biologically conserved mechanisms that protect

00:05:45.400 us and make us healthier when we're exposed to intermittent stressors of movement and some

00:05:51.260 nutritional stress, but also the thermal stresses as well. So we're missing these things that are

00:05:56.060 fundamental to our biology.

00:05:58.680 So we've reduced stress, but in the process, it's counterintuitively increased chronic stress in a

00:06:05.680 lot of parts of our lives.

00:06:07.340 That's correct. And there's a whole heap of research that shows that people who exercise

00:06:12.300 and who are fitter deal with psychological stress better. And we also know that exposing yourself to

00:06:18.360 heat and cold just helps with what I call stress fitness. And that's my PhD is now focusing on stress

00:06:25.280 fitness. But I like to use the analogy of physical fitness. So all of your listeners will understand

00:06:30.500 that there's a continuum of physical fitness. You can be low fit, moderate, high fit, or very fit.

00:06:35.480 But you've got to do the work. People who are up high on that continuum, they do the work. And you

00:06:42.060 know as well as anybody, Brett, that if you stop training for a couple of weeks, you slip down that

00:06:46.900 continuum. And this is what's happening with modern life. We're not getting those inputs that actually

00:06:53.040 build our stress fitness. And then we see we have all teenagers, young people, and older people who are

00:06:59.820 just not prepared for the inevitable stress that is thrown at them in terms of life.

00:07:06.400 And so this all goes down to this idea in science. It's hormesis. Can you walk us through the science

00:07:12.660 of hormesis? What is that?

00:07:14.400 This is my favorite branch of science. And kind of summed up by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,

00:07:20.020 that which does not kill us makes us stronger. So hormesis is defined as sublethal exposure to

00:07:28.100 stressors or toxins, which at high levels can kill you, but at low to moderate levels induce stress

00:07:35.580 resistance. And there are over 600 known hormetic stressors. And so exercise is one cold exposure,

00:07:43.660 heat exposure, but also the sun, UV radiation. You get too much of that. You get skin cancer. You don't get

00:07:48.980 enough. You get low vitamin D. We know even small doses of nuclear radiation, which we used to think

00:07:55.280 is damaging. Now we actually see can enhance longevity in people. So there are a number of

00:08:01.680 stressors, nutritional stressors as well. Polyphenols, these little things that compounds that you get in

00:08:07.640 certain foods, mostly fruits and vegetables that are small doses of toxin, but actually upregulate our

00:08:15.340 protective genes. So we get a net benefit when we expose ourselves to small doses of intermittent

00:08:22.540 stress because it upregulates our protective genes. So cellularly, we become more resilient

00:08:29.520 or increase our stress fitness because of exposure to that small dose of stress.

00:08:35.080 Gotcha. And this hormesis, it's the stress, it goes on a U-shaped curve, right?

00:08:40.440 So that's right. There's this, you reach a point where you're going up in the stress and it hits a

00:08:44.500 sweet spot. And then if you keep increasing the stress, you start having diminishing returns.

00:08:48.920 It starts going down and becomes detrimental. That's right. And then it becomes detrimental.

00:08:52.900 And we see that from everything. You know, you see that in exercise. Now that's starting to come out

00:08:57.960 that the people who are doing the most, and we're talking here, marathon runners, people who do lots of

00:09:04.560 triathlon, these guys, sometimes they actually don't live longer than people who do no exercise. Now

00:09:10.860 it's not all of them. So there's some individual stuff that we don't understand, but basically all

00:09:17.380 of these hormetic stressors follow that same curve that you just described. And it's a little bit like

00:09:22.740 Goldilocks in the three bars. It can't be too little. It can't be too much. It's got to be just right.

00:09:28.780 And a lot of our upbringing, it's too little exposure.

00:09:32.060 Sure. All right. So let's walk through some ways we can start adding some more good stress in our

00:09:36.040 life, reducing the comfort in our lives a little bit so we don't have death by comfort. We've been

00:09:41.200 talking about exercise. Let's talk about what goes on in our bodies when we expose ourself to the

00:09:46.260 stress of exercise. Because it is a stressor. Like you feel good after a good workout, but when you're

00:09:52.780 doing the workout, it's actually a stressor. So what's going on in our bodies when we exercise?

00:09:58.440 Yeah. You've hit the nail on the head here, Brad. And you know,

00:10:01.200 I spoke to thousands of people over the years about exercise. Some people go, yes,

00:10:04.860 I'm into it. Others go, I don't like it because it makes me feel uncomfortable. And I say to them,

00:10:10.340 it's supposed to be bloody uncomfortable. That is why exercise is good for you, because it's a

00:10:15.760 stressor that activates these stress response genes that actually protect us. And then there's

00:10:23.240 another wave of gene expression called metabolic priority genes. These are hundreds of genes that

00:10:29.040 are upregulated whenever you expose yourself to the stress of exercise. And then we have other genes

00:10:35.080 that improve our mitochondrial function. So it is by exposing ourselves to moderate intermittent

00:10:42.780 amounts of stress in the body, we're upregulating gene expression. And what we now know is that exercise

00:10:49.900 releases a whole host of things called myokines. Some people call them exokines. These are molecules

00:10:57.540 that are released from your contracting muscle that we now know get into your bloodstream. They not only

00:11:04.420 affect the muscle, but they get into your bloodstream and affect pretty much every single organ and every

00:11:10.380 organ system in the body in a positive manner. And recent research shows that these myokines or

00:11:16.740 exokines are carried around the body by these things called exosomes. And so it gets pretty

00:11:22.020 technical, but I just want people to understand there are massive changes in gene expression and

00:11:27.600 release of these myokines that then tell the organs and the organ systems in your body to improve how

00:11:35.800 they're actually operating. Yeah. One myokine that people might've heard of is BDNF. What is BDNF?

00:11:43.160 So BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor and neurotropic means nerve growth, right? So it helps

00:11:51.320 you to create new brain cells in areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus and maybe some other areas,

00:11:56.580 but it also protects the brain cells that you have against damage. And we know there's a couple of

00:12:02.600 ways that BDNF is released. So there are two myokines that cross the blood brain barrier. One of them is

00:12:09.140 called ericin, and that crosses either from cold exposure or exercise. That crosses the blood brain

00:12:15.780 barrier and triggers the release of BDNF. And then lactate, you know, people know about lactic acid.

00:12:21.420 We used to think that was a waste product. We actually now know that it is fuel for some

00:12:27.280 different cells, including our brain cells. And lactate actually crosses the blood brain barrier

00:12:32.460 and triggers the release of BDNF. And some of your older listeners, Brett, will remember miracle

00:12:37.980 grow in the United States. You know, this stuff that you sprinkle over plants and they would grow

00:12:43.200 like crazy. BDNF is miracle grow for the brain. Oh yeah. Some other myokines you mentioned in the

00:12:48.660 book. There's myokines that drive metabolic adaptions, such as muscle and bone, growth and repair,

00:12:54.740 improved immune function, healthier gut, healthier liver, healthier pancreas.

00:12:58.160 And there's one myokine IL-6 has anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So again,

00:13:04.720 the stress of exercise can help reduce inflammation in the long run.

00:13:09.600 Yeah. And this is the thing. So when you exercise, there's a transient increase in inflammation followed

00:13:15.700 by a drop off in inflammation. And often that's the sort of thing that we see. So you have to look

00:13:23.120 at the long-term benefits of all of these molecules. And there's, the body is just so sophisticated and

00:13:29.680 we're still trying to work out exactly what goes on when we expose ourselves to things like the

00:13:36.380 stress of exercise or other different stressors. So one thing you do when it comes to physical

00:13:40.700 activity and physical movement, you encourage people to think of their daily activity consisting

00:13:45.560 of three parts, movement at the workplace, incidental movement, and dedicated. So walk us through these

00:13:51.480 three areas and how can we increase our movement in these three areas?

00:13:55.160 Yeah. So the workplace, you know, I always say to people, if you have a job that involves lots of

00:13:59.980 physical movement, that has got to be worth thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a

00:14:04.380 year because of the net effect on your health. But lots of us these days have got jobs that involve

00:14:10.020 chronic sitting. And we know that chronic sitting is really, really bad for your health. And so I always

00:14:16.480 encourage people, we know that if you're sitting for 20 to 30 minutes plus, there are significant

00:14:22.260 negative changes in your gene expression. So it's just getting off your bum at least every 30 minutes,

00:14:28.240 I encourage people, and just do some movement. Ideally, you know, the best case scenario, I've got

00:14:33.780 kettlebells and clubbells sitting right beside my desk. And every 30 minutes, I get up and swing some

00:14:38.800 kettlebells and clubbells around. But if you're in the workplace, you can just quickly walk them down a

00:14:43.200 couple of flights of stairs. What that does is it's going to create positive gene expression,

00:14:47.720 offset the sitting, but it's also going to burn up any stress hormones if you're having a stressful

00:14:52.400 day. Then the other thing I talk to people about the workplace is it's just look for opportunities

00:14:57.160 to move. And I've got a rule that when I'm on the phone, I stand up or you can go walking whenever

00:15:03.360 you're on the phone. And then trying to do things like walking meetings and stuff like that, just any

00:15:08.320 way that you can add these in. Then when it comes to our incidental stuff, it is about these little

00:15:15.540 movement snacks and doing, I call them these little movement snacks, just one to two minute bursts

00:15:21.280 throughout the day. And I have exercise equipment strategically placed all around my house that

00:15:26.620 acts as a bit of a trigger. And actually one guy, when I did a corporate workshop, it was the second

00:15:31.840 time he'd see me and he actually said to me, we have changed our family that when we go into the

00:15:36.700 village for a walk, we actually take the long cut rather than the shortcut. And I thought, you know

00:15:43.100 what? That is just brilliant. You know, how many times have we driven past 30 perfectly serviceable

00:15:49.440 car parks just so we can get as close as possible to our destination? And we're losing that opportunity

00:15:56.800 to move. And then with exercise, look, I think everybody's convinced of the benefits of doing

00:16:03.340 more. But for me, one of the most important things is to do exercise that you enjoy. Like that

00:16:09.760 is just really clear from the research that when you find something that you enjoy, you're much more

00:16:16.420 likely to do it. But also really remember about the benefit of these movement snacks. And researchers

00:16:23.180 call them VILPA, vigorous intensity lifestyle physical activity. So these are just little one to two

00:16:29.820 minute bursts of physical activity that we do throughout the day that we're starting to see

00:16:34.020 are really, really beneficial. So it's not just going to the gym or going for a run. It's those

00:16:39.420 little movement snacks that are important as well. Yeah, you could do movement snacks while you're

00:16:43.160 watching TV. Absolutely. Every time the adverts come on, there's an opportunity to do movement snacks

00:16:48.740 or just do them while you're watching stuff. You know, get an exercise bag and watch your favorite

00:16:53.440 podcast or watch TV while you're doing some stuff. That's ideal. Yeah, I love the kettlebell. I actually

00:16:58.720 busted out my kettlebell after I read your book and put it someplace in my house that I walked by.

00:17:02.880 I sit down a lot from my job. So I've been doing movement snacks for the kettlebell because it's so

00:17:07.020 easy. It takes up a little space and you can do all sorts of things with it. Yeah, they're just

00:17:12.220 brilliant. I'm a massive fan of kettlebells and clubbells. Okay, so move more at work, do more

00:17:17.260 incidental. And the movement at work and the incidental movement, you talk about how a fitness tracker can

00:17:22.700 help with that, right? Counting your steps, seeing your movement. You don't want to get obsessive about

00:17:26.520 this stuff. But I like the Apple Watch because I can look at it and be like, oh, you know, I haven't

00:17:30.940 really done much today. I'll get up and take a 20-minute walk.

00:17:35.400 Brett, I'm exactly the same. I have an Apple Watch and I have my active energy set for 750

00:17:42.600 calories every single day. And it's that trigger and it's just making sure that you're doing it.

00:17:48.160 And oftentimes, you know, if I'm sitting a lot as well, I'll look at it and I'll go, oh my God,

00:17:52.320 I just haven't done stuff. And it just, it gives you that little prompt to actually go and do stuff.

00:17:56.900 So, you know, us neuroscientists will tell you what gets measured gets managed. And I'm a big fan

00:18:03.200 of knowing how much you're actually moving. That's really, really key.

00:18:07.480 All right. And with dedicated exercise, pick something you like. Just get sweating out of

00:18:11.600 breath frequently throughout the week. That's it. Exactly.

00:18:14.840 Okay. Let's talk about this idea of, you call it discomfort harvesting. And we can do that by

00:18:21.420 exposing ourselves to heat and cold. So how can cold showers allow you to do discomfort harvesting?

00:18:29.960 Yeah. So firstly, let me define discomfort harvesting. So in psychology, a psychologist will

00:18:34.860 talk a lot about discomfort tolerance, you know, the ability to tolerate discomfort. But I prefer the

00:18:41.120 term harvesting because tolerance kind of has the implication that this isn't that good for me and I

00:18:46.760 just need to kind of tolerate it. Whereas harvesting, you're actually reaping the benefits.

00:18:52.280 So we know there was a landmark study done in Holland about seven or eight years ago where they took a

00:18:57.860 bunch of workers and randomly assigned them into two groups. And one, they got to have a cold shower

00:19:03.700 at the end of their normal shower for 30, 60 or 90 seconds. And the other group, the control group,

00:19:09.380 just did their normal shower. And they measured their health, their sickness and their absenteeism.

00:19:13.520 And they found at the end of the year that the cold shower group had a 29% reduction in sickness and

00:19:20.280 absenteeism, which is just massive. Now, since that study, there's been lots of other studies that have

00:19:26.880 shown that there are really huge benefits from exposing yourself to cold water. And it activates

00:19:33.660 something called the cold shock response. So this is an ancient mechanism that as soon as

00:19:41.100 cold water touches your skin, we have neurons just under our skin that send a very quick signal to

00:19:48.040 the brain. And the brain activates this full body response, body and brain response to the cold.

00:19:55.600 And it upregulates protective genes. It increases noradrenaline. I think you Americans call it

00:20:01.800 norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain, which are really useful chemicals for motivation and for

00:20:08.900 mood. And we get all of these physiological upregulations in protective gene expression

00:20:15.540 just from that cold water response. And we know there's a recent study that showed that

00:20:20.320 if you get into an ice bath at about four degrees, just for 20 seconds, you get a whopping

00:20:26.820 three to 500% increase in dopamine and noradrenaline or norepinephrine, which is just huge. And it

00:20:34.420 persists for hours. So it has positive lasting effects on your mood. And we're now actually seeing

00:20:40.420 people with treatment-resistant depression being successfully treated with cold water therapy.

00:20:46.100 No, we had a guest on the podcast last year, Dr. Mark Harper, who wrote a book called Chill,

00:20:54.240 The Cold Water Swim Cure. He's an anesthesiologist, but he swims out in the ocean when it's freezing.

00:21:00.160 And that led him, he started researching how to prevent hypothermia during surgery.

00:21:05.340 And that led him to research the benefits of cold water exposure in managing the body's overall

00:21:10.140 stress response. I guess when anesthesiologists put people under, they have to keep the person cold.

00:21:14.480 That's right.

00:21:15.540 It has all his protective benefits. And he started doing the research and like the people who do the

00:21:19.560 cold water swimming, they get some of the similar benefits. So yeah, like you said, people who have

00:21:24.480 been able to manage the depression with cold water exposure, decrease inflammatory diseases like

00:21:30.100 rheumatoid arthritis and things like that, all because of cold water exposure.

00:21:34.240 Yeah. And the reductions in inflammatory markers, you know, we cannot underestimate those benefits

00:21:41.000 because if you look at the vast majority of chronic diseases, inflammation, chronic inflammation

00:21:47.320 is a key driver of that. So that seems to be one of the many benefits of this cold water exposure.

00:21:54.700 And we know that you get activation of heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins and changes

00:21:59.360 in gene expression when you regularly expose yourself to the cold. So it's about getting comfortable

00:22:04.700 with being uncomfortable. That's what I mean by discomfort harvesting.

00:22:09.840 How cold does the cold water need to be to get the benefit? Do we know that?

00:22:14.100 So yeah, I had on my podcast, I interviewed Professor Mike Tipton, who is from the UK,

00:22:20.340 would certainly know the guest that you talked about. He's the world leader in cold exposure.

00:22:24.980 And he reckons that 15 degree water, that's now that's centigrade. I'm not sure how that

00:22:30.120 translates to Fahrenheit, but 15 degrees centigrade seems to be the trigger for the cold shock response.

00:22:38.000 But I recently saw a research paper where they had people in 20 degrees centigrade water,

00:22:43.440 but they had them in for 20 minutes and they got some benefits. So there seems to be a trade-off

00:22:47.560 between time and temperature. But it's really, it's at about that 15 degrees centigrade that seems to be

00:22:55.680 around that area. Yeah. So 15, in Fahrenheit, that's 59, about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. And then 20,

00:23:03.120 that's 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. And it's important for your listeners to understand,

00:23:07.660 Brett, that there is a trade-off between temperature and time. So the colder you go,

00:23:12.000 the less time you need to actually spend in it. So I know some people who get into ice baths and

00:23:16.060 they're in there for 10 minutes. There's really no benefit above being in an ice bath for around a minute.

00:23:22.760 You know, the vast majority of the benefits are going to kick in there. There's not really a benefit

00:23:28.340 for staying in as long as you possibly can, other than maybe a bit of psychological toughness.

00:23:35.000 Is this something you can do every day or should you do it every other day?

00:23:38.420 We don't have any data on that. Look, I think the best thing, Sonia Sonnenberg did a restart study and

00:23:45.640 she found that the optimal dose was about 11 minutes of exposure over a week, right? So I think

00:23:52.860 we need to see other research replicating or doing similar studies to her until we can say definitively,

00:23:58.220 but let's take that as a guide for now. Gotcha. So yeah, I do my cold, I do a cold shower before I

00:24:03.020 work out. That's when I do it. That's what I like to do. Oh, interesting. And yeah, but it's hard to do

00:24:07.500 cold showers or cold baths in Oklahoma during the summer because the water is just lukewarm because it's

00:24:13.220 115 degrees outside. So now it's starting to cool off and now we're starting to enjoy it. Yeah, I can't,

00:24:18.420 I don't want to spend like the $6,000 for one of those ice tubs, whatever. I'll give you a little

00:24:23.240 hack, Brett. Okay, what's that? So get an old fridge freezer and, you know, one of those chest

00:24:28.560 freezers and put silicone on the inside. So you silicone it up and then you just plug it in on a

00:24:34.160 timer and fill it up with water and run it three to four hours a day. And you can get it to around

00:24:40.400 the three to four degrees and then you just need to jump in. There you go.

00:24:43.220 Boom. Saved yourself $6,000. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:24:50.420 And now back to the show. What's another discomfort harvesting activity is exposure to heat. Now,

00:24:56.520 this is something I do regularly. I've got a sauna. I did fork over the money for a sauna. I've really

00:25:00.140 enjoyed it. So what happens to our bodies when we are in a sauna or even exercising out in the heat?

00:25:06.740 Yeah. So that increasing core body temperature, again, activates the heat shock proteins and it's the

00:25:12.960 heat shock proteins that seem to be the driver of the cellular changes and changes in gene expression.

00:25:19.300 And the other thing that a sauna does is it works as an exercise memetic. So it seems to mimic the

00:25:27.220 benefits of exercise. So you'll notice when you're in a sauna that your heartbeat goes up, your heart rate

00:25:31.860 goes up, your stroke volume goes up. And that's some of the benefits that we get from low intensity

00:25:36.960 aerobic exercise. And studies out of Finland have shown that people who have regular saunas four to seven

00:25:42.340 times a week live seven years longer than people who don't. Now, one of the other benefits that you

00:25:48.380 get is around this discomfort tolerance. So with the heat, and I have a sauna as well, I forked out on

00:25:54.820 one. It's the best money I've ever spent. And with that heat, you know, that discomfort that you feel

00:26:00.180 when you get really, really hot, that actually releases dynorphins in the brain. These are kind of

00:26:06.740 like the cousins, the opposite cousins of endorphins. So endorphins are the feel-good chemical. Dynorphins,

00:26:12.500 that thing that says, Brett, this is horribly hot. You need to get out of here. And it turns out when you

00:26:17.480 activate the dynorphin system reasonably regularly, you actually make your endorphin system more sensitive.

00:26:26.100 So you actually get better feel-good chemicals from other exposures. So that would seem to be another

00:26:32.180 independent effect. But there's just so many changes from your cardiovascular system and your

00:26:38.220 hormonal system, heat shock proteins that happen when you expose yourself to that heat, that we get

00:26:44.400 all of these net benefits. Another benefit, we've had a guest on the podcast, Charles Rison. He's a

00:26:50.880 psychiatrist, and he wrote a book called The New Mind-Body Science of Depression. And the argument he

00:26:55.840 makes is that one potential cause of depression is inflammation. Not all people who are depressed,

00:27:01.240 but some people who are depressed have increased markers for inflammation in the body. And so what

00:27:06.120 he's found is if you put these people in a sauna, you have that acute increase in inflammation because

00:27:11.540 you're sitting in the sauna. It's a stressor. And then in the long run, it reduces overall inflammation

00:27:16.640 and it can help alleviate major depressive symptoms. Yeah, absolutely right. And it's a little

00:27:22.180 bit like exercise in that you get that transient increase of inflammation and then you get a net

00:27:27.060 reduction afterwards. So yes, absolutely true. And we see that actually a sauna is pretty effective

00:27:33.620 for depression, as is cold exposure. How hot does a sauna need to be to get the benefit? Like how long?

00:27:39.000 What's going on there? Yeah. So look, again, we can't say absolutely definitively, but studies have

00:27:46.580 shown that 80 degrees centigrade, again, you'll need to do the conversion to Fahrenheit, but at 20 minutes

00:27:54.020 activates heat shock proteins. Now, possibly that could be less. This is really about increasing

00:28:00.520 your core body temperature by one degree. And I actually did an N equals one study on my infrared

00:28:07.580 sauna, which only goes up to 70, but infrared, as you may know, Brett, it penetrates deeper into the

00:28:13.420 body. So potentially increases your core body temperature at lower temperatures. I did an N equals

00:28:19.520 one using a rectal thermometer, which we won't go into, but saw those benefits. Now that is N equals 1.00

00:28:24.900 one. But we know that any exposure to significant heat where you're caused your body to sweat

00:28:32.820 significantly is going to have those benefits. But if you want the heat shock proteins, it would appear

00:28:39.760 it is around that 80 degrees centigrade, but maybe lower for an infrared sauna. And again,

00:28:46.140 it's a trade-off against time. Okay. So 80 degrees centigrade, that's 176 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:28:51.060 So that's pretty hot. That's hot. Now, that doesn't mean that that's when they saw the increase,

00:28:57.400 but they didn't in the study look at 70 degrees. So it may be that there could be less than that.

00:29:03.520 And I think that there would be certainly be less than that when you look at an infrared sauna. And

00:29:08.620 actually, we're going to do some research over here in Australia. I'm collaborating with people over

00:29:12.560 in New Zealand to look into that. So maybe I'll let you know down the track once we work it out.

00:29:17.400 Yeah. So when I do the sauna, I like to go really hot. So I get it to about 180 and then I just do it

00:29:22.040 for 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And then if it's cold outside, I like to get outside, kind of just be out

00:29:28.180 there in the freezing cold and then get back in.

00:29:31.160 Yeah. The nice benefit of winter, I live in Melbourne in the south of Australia and I have a

00:29:36.820 swimming pool right beside my sauna and the swimming pool gets bloody cold in winter. So I'll get from

00:29:42.160 the sauna into the pool, back into the sauna, back into the pool. The only thing I would say,

00:29:47.000 Brett, for people around cold exposure is if you've just done resistance training,

00:29:53.060 you don't want to get into the cold straight away because it dampens the inflammatory response

00:29:57.560 and we need that inflammatory response to drive muscle protein turnover. So I will generally do

00:30:04.860 resistance training, get in the sauna. If you get in the sauna right after you've done strength

00:30:09.240 training, you get a three to 500% increase in growth hormone. So that's the one time though

00:30:15.300 that I wouldn't do the hot, cold, hot, cold. I just want the heat right after the strength training.

00:30:21.500 Yeah. That's why I do my cold showers before my workouts rather than after. Let's talk about

00:30:26.780 our diets. We kind of mentioned this earlier. How has our modern diet made us sick?

00:30:31.980 Look, this is, I think, the biggest underappreciated impact on chronic disease is the massive change

00:30:43.780 in our diet. For all of human history, apart from the blink of an eye, the last 30 to 50 years of

00:30:51.040 human history, we have eaten natural foods that have been alive recently. Now, there is a massive

00:30:59.420 global increase in ultra-processed food consumption. And there is a food classification system that came

00:31:06.080 out of a university of Brazil called the Nova classification that I think is the best ever

00:31:11.080 invented. So it talks about the level of processing that we have on processed foods. I call these low

00:31:17.960 HI foods, low human interference. And I always say to people, look at a piece of food and if you can

00:31:23.580 recognize that it's been alive recently and minimally interfered with by humans, eat it.

00:31:28.920 It's fine. Don't worry about the fat, the carbohydrate, the protein. But if you're looking

00:31:33.700 at a piece of food and you're going, Mr. Krispy Kreme donut, I don't remember seeing you running around

00:31:39.160 on four legs, then it is in your treat food. So I'm not saying never eat it. I talk about the 80-20

00:31:44.900 rule. And the research that's come out of Nova, there's literally around 100 research papers all

00:31:52.420 showing the health risks when we increase ultra-processed foods in our diet above around

00:31:58.600 a 20% mark. And you see that 20% mark in countries like France, Spain, and Italy. In America, it's about

00:32:06.400 60% of calories from ultra-processed foods, worse for kids. In Australia, in the United Kingdom, New

00:32:12.160 Zealand, Canada, all more than 50% and Mexico as well. And it is this massive rise in ultra-processed

00:32:19.740 foods. So let's define it. They are foods that go through industrial-scale processing and have lots

00:32:25.680 of additives in them, not just fat, salt, and sugar, but preservatives, artificial flavors, emulsifiers

00:32:32.360 that make them feel great in the mouth. And we know that a lot of these chemicals disrupt our gut

00:32:37.640 microbiome and that we also eat much more of those foods. A randomized control trial took a bunch of

00:32:44.780 people. Half went on an ultra-processed food diet, half were on a normal diet, matched for fat,

00:32:49.940 carbohydrate, and protein. They did it for 14 days and then they swapped over. And when people were

00:32:55.380 eating ultra-processed food, they ate 500 calories a day more. So what we know about these ultra-processed

00:33:03.320 foods, there are amazing scientists all around the world working out what's called the bliss point

00:33:09.160 in the brain. These are certain combinations of fat, salt, and sugar, any two of those three

00:33:15.040 that actually hijack our reward systems and give us a massive hit of dopamine and make these foods

00:33:20.960 addictive or moreish. So we eat more of them and they're empty calories. So there's two mechanisms

00:33:26.940 that happen here. One is you're eating a lot of crap and that is damaging our cells and damaging 0.82

00:33:33.280 our whole processes. But we are also crowding out good foods, things like fruits, vegetables, 0.90

00:33:40.640 fresh meats, fish, all of those things that are really beneficial for us. So we get more rubbish in

00:33:46.080 and less good stuff in. So it's a bit of a double whammy. Okay, so your guidelines for countering this

00:33:52.120 food ecosystem we find ourselves in. First one is eat a low HI diet, so low human interference diet. And

00:33:59.000 it doesn't mean to eliminate all those foods, but 80% should come from low HI diets. So whole foods,

00:34:05.840 oatmeal, yogurts, meats, vegetables. If you eat 80% of your diet coming from that, you're probably

00:34:11.460 going to be okay. Correct. Correct. And don't worry so much about the fat, the carbohydrate,

00:34:16.420 the protein. Just eat real foods. And you know the clue, real food does not have ingredients.

00:34:21.540 Real food is ingredients. You also talk about another rule is feed both of your brains. What do you

00:34:27.120 mean by that? So yes, the second brain, the enteric nervous system. So this is basically your gut

00:34:33.180 microbiome. And we know that a lot of neurons reside in the gut microbiome. And there's a two-way

00:34:40.400 connection between the brain and the gut. And we know that basically, if you look at most chronic

00:34:46.540 diseases, lots of neurodegenerative diseases, obesity, diabetes, there are disruptions in the gut

00:34:54.300 microbiome. And we get really good evidence that this is causative. When you look at fecal

00:35:01.440 transplants on either animals or humans, where you can take the gut microbiome of an unhealthy

00:35:07.680 mouse or human and transplant it into a healthy one, and they actually develop diseases. Or vice

00:35:13.900 versa, you can take an unhealthy mouse, generally we do these on animals, and transplant the gut

00:35:19.360 microbiome of a healthy mouse and the disease disappears. So we know there's pretty good evidence

00:35:24.700 that it's causative. And we know that there are certain things that are very beneficial for our

00:35:29.960 gut microbiome. We've known for decades that fiber is good because there are a certain class of bugs

00:35:36.980 in your microbiome that munch fiber and they give off these beneficial short chain fatty acids that are

00:35:43.980 really good for our heart and our brain and the rest of our body. And what we also know is that fermented

00:35:50.260 foods, so there's a great study come out of Stanford University a couple of years ago, where they took a

00:35:55.460 bunch of people on the SAD diet, as it's called the standard American diet. And half of them, they put on a

00:36:01.660 high fiber diet, half of them high fermented foods. And they measured markers of inflammation. And they

00:36:07.600 actually thought that everybody was going to do better. But what they saw is that some people on the high

00:36:13.740 fiber diet did better, some did much worse. They didn't tolerate the fiber well. Everybody on the

00:36:20.640 fermented foods diet did better. And what it seems to be is that when we eat fermented foods, they send

00:36:26.980 signals to our gut microbiome to actually be healthier. And they proliferate the ones that digest

00:36:33.900 the fiber. So my take out from that study is, if your diet's not so great, start to add in some

00:36:40.460 fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, Greek yogurts, these sorts of things, some cheeses,

00:36:48.400 miso soup, anything that's got pickles or vinegar. Add that into your diet first, bit by bit, and then

00:36:55.340 start to add in fiber and particularly what we call resistant starch. And then you'll create a much

00:37:01.360 healthier microbiome. And at the same time, reduce your amount of sugar and processed foods because

00:37:06.880 they're the ones that really drive an unhealthy microbiome.

00:37:10.520 Yeah, I love kimchi. My mouth's watering just thinking about it. It's so good on your eggs.

00:37:14.760 And then resistant starch, that's found in things like peas, beans, lentils, whole grains. There's

00:37:20.820 supplements for resistant starch. I know raw potato starch and high mace and other starch that you can

00:37:26.300 supplement with.

00:37:26.940 And banana, banana flour and stuff like that. Yeah, they're supplements. But yeah, you get them in

00:37:31.580 peas, beans, lentils, these sorts of things. The skin of apples and stuff like that. So it's just

00:37:37.980 eating lots of fruit, vegetables, peas, beans, pulses, those sorts of things.

00:37:42.540 And the other rule is embrace nutritional hormesis. What does nutritional hormesis look like?

00:37:47.480 Yeah, so there's two aspects to this. One is these hormetic polyphenols. And so things like,

00:37:54.560 a lot of people talk about broccoli being superfood and sulfuraphane that's in it.

00:37:58.780 And people talk about it being an antioxidant. It's actually not. It's a small dose of poison

00:38:04.200 that creates an antioxidant effect. And we know that lots of fruits and vegetables have these

00:38:11.240 hormetic polyphenols, little small doses of poison that the plants use as protective mechanisms against

00:38:17.600 insects. But because we are much bigger, they just create a very mild metabolic stress. And that

00:38:24.420 upregulates protective genes, things like superoxamide, dysmatous, catalase, glutathione,

00:38:30.640 perioxides. These are things that drive your antioxidant defense system. So by eating small doses of toxins

00:38:37.260 that we find in plants, we get a net beneficial effect. And then the other hormetic stressor

00:38:43.840 is intermittent fasting. And humans have done intermittent fasting unintentionally since the start of time,

00:38:52.140 or since we've been around anyway. And it turns out that there are lots of beneficial biological

00:38:58.220 processes that happen when we go without food for a little bit of time. We get a cleaning up of our

00:39:03.940 sales that's called autophagy. And we can then switch over. We develop metabolic flexibility.

00:39:09.760 We switch over from running off glucose to running off ketone bodies that can actually be very,

00:39:15.480 very healthy for us. So there's a whole heap of different fasting strategies,

00:39:20.380 which we can go through some of them, if you like, just at a top level.

00:39:23.660 Yeah. Like what are ones that you like, fasting protocols that you like for a beginner?

00:39:27.760 Yeah. Look, for a beginner, I think to dip your toe in the water, Brett, there's really good benefits,

00:39:33.680 anti-cancer benefits from doing a 13-hour night fast. So nil by mouth other than water.

00:39:41.040 And I used to be a late night snacker. And I saw this research that showed that it reduced the incidence

00:39:46.780 of breast cancer and breast cancer recurrence in females when they did a 13-hour night fast.

00:39:52.300 But they also understood the mechanism from animal studies that basically at night when you're asleep,

00:39:58.260 your DNA repair enzymes are switched on. And these are little enzymes that run all the way through

00:40:04.060 your body, checking your cells, looking for cancerous and precancerous cells. And when they find them,

00:40:09.280 they execute them, right? Which is pretty cool stuff, right? But when we eat late at night, 0.65

00:40:15.220 we have these peripheral clocks in our liver and our pancreas that sense the nutrients

00:40:19.820 and switch off the master clock. And these DNA repair enzymes don't happen. So their research said

00:40:27.440 that basically people who eat late at night significantly increase their cancer risk. So I think

00:40:32.820 starting off with a 13-hour night fast. And when I first did this, I'm thinking,

00:40:37.560 God, how am I going to get through the night? So I ran an experiment. I didn't eat. And I woke up

00:40:42.200 in the morning and I wasn't dead. I'm like, who knew? So you just repeat the experiment, right?

00:40:47.460 And you find that it's just habit really. And appetite's not really hunger. And then you can

00:40:54.720 extend that if you like to a 16-8 protocol. I'm sure you've had people talk about this. This is where

00:41:01.240 you compress your eating window into an eight-hour window and you fast for 16. But it doesn't have

00:41:08.300 to be 16. It can be those 12, 13 hours and anything above that is useful. And then, and I only suggest

00:41:16.240 this for people who are over 40, is doing an extended fast, like a four or five day water fast. Because

00:41:23.920 what seems to happen then is when we do that, we get system-wide autophagy. So what happens basically

00:41:31.020 is that when there's nothing coming in, the body uses this as a cellular sprinkling. And it just

00:41:37.540 goes around in it and it recycles cancerous cells, precancerous cells, and these senescent cells.

00:41:44.560 These are cells that are supposed to have died, but they haven't really done it properly. And they kind

00:41:49.080 of hang around in a zombie state and they release inflammation. So you get that whole cleanup

00:41:55.340 metabolically and cellularly when you do those extended fasts. And maybe do that once or twice

00:42:00.880 a year, particularly if you've got poor health, that can be really good. And what it also does

00:42:05.820 is it kills off our autoimmune cells first. So there can be a real cleanse cellular from doing that.

00:42:12.940 But I also want to caution people around this. I mean, I did intermittent fasting for quite a while.

00:42:19.080 And I lost a bit of weight and I was getting DEXA scans, but I noticed that I was losing a lot of

00:42:24.340 muscle. And so for me, this is a trade-off. And because I'm now in my 50s, I do not want to lose

00:42:30.220 muscle. I'm metabolically healthy. So I'm looking at, okay, so what are my goals here? Well, I know

00:42:35.160 I'm metabolically healthy and I want to be maintaining at least and probably building muscle

00:42:39.560 before I go into my 60s. So I've taken a break for a while from intermittent fasting. So I always say

00:42:45.400 to people, what are your goals? If it is about improving your metabolic health,

00:42:50.180 then fasting, go and knock yourself out. But as you get into your 40s, 50s, and certainly into your

00:42:56.140 60s, you need to be aware that you're not eating into your muscle mass. So it becomes a bit of a

00:43:01.560 trade-off then.

00:43:03.160 Okay. So we've talked about some different ways we can incorporate more good stress in our life.

00:43:07.040 Exercise, move more, cold showers, heat exposure, eating better foods. And some of these foods have

00:43:13.820 hormetic properties, doing some intermittent fasting maybe. Let's talk about rest and recovery.

00:43:19.160 What role does rest and recovery play in adding good stress to your life?

00:43:23.780 So the way I would start to answer that question is by telling people that most of the gains in

00:43:31.020 athletic performance in the last 10 years, and certainly the last five years, haven't been

00:43:36.080 through training methods. It's been through recovery. So recovery is really, really important

00:43:42.080 to have an athlete being a sustainable peak performer and not dipping into overtraining

00:43:47.800 syndrome. And we know that the links between overtraining syndrome and corporate burnout are

00:43:54.140 just so deep. The ideology of those conditions is pretty much identical. So recovery is the one

00:44:02.080 variable that we can all use in order to make sure that we stay in optimal health, particularly if we

00:44:09.280 have stressful lives. And a little tip here, a little kind of preview is that recovery is not

00:44:15.060 sitting with your feet up watching Netflix, drinking a bottle of wine or half a dozen beers. That is

00:44:20.400 relaxation. So they're very, very different. So I think recovery here is absolutely fundamental.

00:44:26.920 And with recovery, I'm talking about things like exercise, like the cold and heat that we talked about,

00:44:32.040 but also breath work and sleep hygiene and taking regular, I call them brain booster breaks throughout

00:44:39.580 the day, do a little burst of exercise and then to do one to two minutes of breath work, drink a bit of

00:44:45.200 water. That is like taking your brain out and then plugging it into the wall to get a recharge. And then

00:44:50.880 when we talk about macro recovery, that's about sleep and having good sleep hygiene practices are

00:44:57.220 critical. Because when you're asleep, that is when your brain cleans out the toxins. The brain

00:45:04.220 actually doesn't have a lymphatic system. It's got a glymphatic system that starts with G and that

00:45:10.880 happens at night. That's when we clean our brain out of toxins. And we know that sleep is so important

00:45:17.260 for biological repair. I don't know if you know anything about this, but something I've been thinking

00:45:22.880 about when it comes to sleep is, I wonder if there's like any hormetic benefit for occasionally

00:45:29.200 having a crappy night's sleep or even like pulling an occasional all-nighter. Because when I think back

00:45:35.500 to caveman days, I don't think people really slept very well. I mean, they didn't have good sleep

00:45:42.720 hygiene. I mean, you're sleeping outside around a lot of people, there's crying babies. I don't imagine

00:45:48.380 them having the best sleep compared to where, you know, us, we have, you know, we're in a dark 60

00:45:52.760 degree room with, you know, the eight mattress and all this stuff. So I wondered if there is like a

00:45:59.020 benefit of sometimes having a crappy night's sleep. Like maybe, maybe we're made to handle the stress

00:46:05.300 and little doses can be good, maybe. Yeah. And look, we don't know. So these are the things that

00:46:13.280 there are, there are, hermesis works in mysterious ways. But what I would say is there may be a small

00:46:20.260 benefit, a small hermetic benefit to a little bit of a lack of sleep. Because we know that there are

00:46:25.920 some physiological changes that potentially could be beneficial. But again, it would be very

00:46:32.020 intermittent if there was. And having consistently good sleep, just because there are so many

00:46:38.440 fundamental biological processes that depend on having good sleep. So yes, having a bad night's

00:46:45.480 sleep every now and then, certainly not as bad as some people might think. And I would caution people

00:46:51.620 again, you know, we talked about Apple Watches earlier on, that research shows that, say Brett,

00:46:56.200 they had me and you in the study, and it was engineered that we both have five hours of sleep a night.

00:47:01.520 If they tell you that you had good sleep, and they tell me that I had bad sleep, right, but we both had the

00:47:08.240 same. And then we do test of cognition, you will do much better than I would. So a lot of this can

00:47:14.300 be the placebo effect that when you look at your watch, and you go, oh, I had bad sleep, you

00:47:19.220 automatically then your mood decreases, your cognitive performance decreases. So just be overly

00:47:26.040 worried about looking at watches because they are guessing. Basically, they're using heart rate and

00:47:31.420 movement to try and guess when you're asleep and what stage of sleep that you're actually in. The best

00:47:37.080 indicator is whether or not you wake up feeling refreshed. Right. Or even if you don't wake up

00:47:41.440 feeling refreshed, you could have had like enough sleep for what your body and mind needed. I've had

00:47:46.000 those moments where I slept, you know, solid seven hours, but I'm just like feeling groggy and not

00:47:50.880 great. And I think, oh my gosh, my workout's going to suck today. I'm gonna have a bad... But I ended up

00:47:55.200 crushing it in the gym. Work was great. I just... Yeah, never... I like that word, the opposite of

00:48:00.220 placebo is nocebo. Yes, correct. Yeah, never nocebo yourself. So if you had a bad night's sleep,

00:48:06.080 just don't worry about it. That's right. And you know, a brilliant little hack, right? If you have

00:48:11.760 a bad night's sleep, take some creatine. Because creatine monohydrate... So think of our energy

00:48:18.480 systems. We got ATP-PC, we got the lactic acid and the aerobic energy system, and creatine plays

00:48:24.820 directly into ATP-PC. It's phosphocreatine. And the research now shows that creatine is really good

00:48:32.300 for the brain. I mean, all of your cells use creatine, but I've got research papers, which I

00:48:36.800 can flick you and you can put them in the show notes that shows that if you take creatine after

00:48:40.780 a bad night's sleep, that minimizes the negative effect on brain function. That's cool. I didn't know

00:48:45.940 that. So you offer some concrete advice on how to put these practices we've talked about today

00:48:51.580 into routine action. Like we were talking about earlier, a lot of the work of a trainer or a coach,

00:48:57.120 it's behavior modification. So you have to think a lot about this. And one idea that stuck out to me

00:49:02.140 was this idea of the ritual board. What is a ritual board and how can it help someone create healthy

00:49:07.260 habits? Yeah. So a ritual board, I kind of stumbled across this thing. I created it when at the age of

00:49:13.040 41, I decided to become a professional boxer, which to my wife's disgust. But I put my goal on the

00:49:18.820 ritual board to be a professional boxer and I put my why. So for me, always connecting a goal

00:49:24.220 to a deeply held value is really important. And my why was authenticity. But then I'm saying,

00:49:29.700 okay, what's the process that I need to do? And so I put down a whole heap of things that I needed

00:49:35.560 to do. You know, going to a boxing trainer, starting three times a week, going up to six,

00:49:40.360 right? Doing my runs, doing my visualization. And then I had a whole heap of little movement snacks

00:49:46.680 on there. And so all this is all about the process, right? So we have goals, but then we

00:49:52.920 have a process. What are the habits that we need to do to get it? And you write these all down on a

00:49:58.100 board. I just use an A4, wasn't I? I've got one right beside my desk. And you have a weekly target

00:50:04.640 for each of those things. Now, the key thing is have some hard ones on there, like go and do a

00:50:10.320 workout, you know, go and do some healthy shopping. And then when you're highly motivated,

00:50:14.080 do the hard stuff. But you've got to have lots of easy ones there, right? So put on,

00:50:20.380 I might do 100 kettlebell swings a week, but you can do them in blocks of 10. So then when you look

00:50:26.200 at your ritual board, you just go, hey, I'm just going to go do 10 kettlebell swings. And then you

00:50:30.420 take it off, you write down, I've done 10. And that creates a feedback. So what this is all based on the

00:50:36.240 work of BJ Fogg, Professor BJ Fogg, brilliant guy in terms of behavior change. And you need a trigger

00:50:42.160 to do the behavior. And you need a feedback mechanism. And this ritual board acts as both.

00:50:47.780 Because when I see it sitting beside my desk, it becomes a trigger to do something. And then when

00:50:52.980 you take it off, that is giving you feedback that actually you are making forwards motion towards your

00:51:00.260 goal. And the big thing I had my epiphany on that was I realized the more I was interacting with it,

00:51:06.900 the more motivated I was getting. And then I'm like, oh, you muppet, the natural rewards for the

00:51:12.420 brain, food, water, sex, nurturing, and achievement. And so when you achieve something, and especially 0.97

00:51:18.500 when you take it off, that releases a bit of dopamine. And dopamine is the chemical of motivation.

00:51:25.520 So what we now know is that motivation follows action, not the other way around. And lots of people

00:51:32.240 are waiting for the motivation fairy to come along and give them a big dollop of motivation before

00:51:37.920 they get started. The motivation fairy is the ritual board. That's what I found.

00:51:42.960 Yeah, you have a picture of your ritual board in the book, right? So at the top, you've got your goal,

00:51:47.940 and then the why of that goal. And then you have these rows of these different exercises that you

00:51:53.360 want to do throughout the week. And then each exercise has a numeric goal for the number of times

00:51:58.780 you want to do that exercise during the week. So on yours, you have bag work 12 times a week,

00:52:05.340 chin ups, you're gonna do 50 reps during the week, sumo squats 200. And then you have columns for each

00:52:10.540 day of the week, where you can write down how many times you did the exercise that day. And the goal is

00:52:16.700 you want to do enough each day. So you hit your weekly goal. So you know, basically, with this ritual

00:52:21.200 board, you're gamifying your goal. Absolutely. And the key thing, Brett, is you got to have lots

00:52:26.880 of easy ones on there. So you interact with it, and have it somewhere where you will see it regularly.

00:52:33.220 So my original one was on my bathroom mirror. I've also had times in the kitchen. Now I have it right

00:52:38.440 beside my desk, because I spent a fair bit of time at my desk. Did you become a professional boxer?

00:52:43.320 I did. And I've now retired undefeated, 1-0.

00:52:46.740 Do you box at all? Like just, you know, sparring?

00:52:51.840 I do do a bit of it. But I'm kind of, I was tempted to get back into it. But just there's so

00:52:58.320 much research about the negative effects of repetitive trauma to the brain. And it doesn't

00:53:04.580 have to be massive. So it's something that I love. But I do very, very intermittently. Like I'll do

00:53:11.780 plenty of boxing training. But the sparring, I've kind of backed right off from because I want to

00:53:17.420 have a healthy brain when I'm in my 80s and 90s. Well, that's cool. I mean, you did that when you

00:53:21.360 were 41. That's really inspiring that even if you're in midlife, you can still do something big like

00:53:25.980 that. And I think, you know, the part of this, Brett, is that we do need to do hard stuff. And so I

00:53:31.900 generally, every decade, will go out of my way and do something that is really, really challenging.

00:53:37.780 You know, I've also gone to the Amazon and had a three-week trek deep into the Amazon to visit

00:53:43.260 Matias Indians and went through a rite of passage there. So, you know, every 10 years or so,

00:53:48.940 I do a really hard challenge just to make, just really to counter that development of the soft

00:53:54.800 underbelly that we get with modern life. What do you got scheduled for your 50s?

00:53:59.200 So my wife has actually thrown one to me and it's made me really uncomfortable. And I know,

00:54:05.320 she said to me, why does it always have to be physical? She said, why don't you go and do a 0.53

00:54:08.960 five-day or a 10-day silent retreat? And for an Irishman, we're talkers. That makes me very

00:54:16.540 uncomfortable. So I think that's going to be my next one.

00:54:20.080 I love that. Well, Paul, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:54:23.520 about the book and your work?

00:54:25.460 So probably my website, paultaylor.biz. I also have a podcast,

00:54:30.520 the Paul Taylor podcast and Instagram. I'm at paultaylor.biz on Instagram. And then you can

00:54:37.900 find my book. Most of your listeners, I think will be in the States and just on Amazon death

00:54:42.200 by comfort. Fantastic. Well, Paul Taylor, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:54:46.000 Thank you very much for having me. And I would like to say just, I have to say this, Brett,

00:54:50.240 I have to give you a thank you from my wife because I listened a few years ago to you

00:54:56.240 interviewing Greg Creech from the Togo Institute. And I sent it to her and said,

00:55:02.880 you need to listen to this guy because my wife's a coach and she listened to it. She loved it. And

00:55:07.280 she went and studied with Greg for a year on Japanese psychology. And she's been doing that

00:55:12.220 for a couple of years and practicing with her clients and getting brilliant results. So thank

00:55:16.020 you for that. You've had a big impact in our household.

00:55:18.740 Well, thanks so much for letting me know. That's great to hear. Greg, that's one of my favorite

00:55:21.540 interviews that we've done.

00:55:22.960 Oh, he's awesome. I've had him on my podcast twice. I had him on just two weeks.

00:55:26.240 He's just, he's brilliant.

00:55:28.280 Fantastic. Well, Paul, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:55:30.480 Thank you.

00:55:31.700 My guest today was Paul Taylor. He's the author of the book, Death by Comfort. It's available

00:55:35.180 on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website, paultaylor.biz.

00:55:40.400 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash stronger, where you find links to resources.

00:55:44.480 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:55:53.220 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:55:56.000 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast

00:55:59.120 archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty

00:56:02.360 much anything you think of. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take

00:56:05.760 one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. Helps out a lot. And if you've

00:56:09.020 done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member

00:56:12.520 who you think we have something out of it.

00:56:14.320 As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay.

00:56:17.740 Remind you to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:56:21.240 Thank you.

00:56:36.240 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - November 06, 2023

How to Avoid Death by Comfort

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