How to Avoid Death by Comfort
Episode Stats
Summary
Paul Taylor is a former British Royal Navy Air Crew Officer, an exercise physiologist, and neuroscientist, and the author of Death by Comfort: How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It. In this episode, Paul discusses the science of "hormesis," how small doses of intermittent stress can make us more resistant to chronic stress, and why you need to embrace discomfort.
Transcript
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Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break from new episodes today, so we're going to rebroadcast
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episode number 941, How to Avoid Death by Comfort with Paul Taylor. Hope you enjoy it. We'll see
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you on Monday with a brand new episode. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of
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the Art of Manliness podcast. Nietzsche's maxim, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,
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isn't just a sound philosophical principle. It's also a certifiable physiological phenomenon.
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Toxins and stressors that could be deadly in large doses actually improve health and resilience in
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smaller, intermittent ones. The ironic thing my guest points out is that it's the fact that we're
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not getting enough of this sub-level stress these days that's really doing us in. Paul Taylor is a
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former British Royal Navy Air Crew officer, an exercise physiologist, nutritionist, and neuroscientist,
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and the author of Death by Comfort, How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It.
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Today on the show, Paul discusses the science of hormesis, how small doses of intermittent stress
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can make us more resistant to chronic stress, and why you need to embrace what Paul calls
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discomfort harvesting. We talk about some now familiar topics like fasting and cold and heat
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exposure with fresh inspiration as to how important they are to practice and how to do them effectively.
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We discuss how hot a sauna needs to be to get the benefits of heat exposure,
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Paul's suggestion for how to make an ice bath on the cheap, what may be the single best type of food
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to eat to improve your gut's microbiome, a form of fasting that's got anti-cancer benefits but is
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so accessible it won't even feel like fasting, what supplement to take to mitigate the effects of
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a bad night's sleep, and much more. We end our conversation with how to use what Paul calls a
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ritual board to stick with your healthy habits and resist the soft underbelly of modern life.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash stronger.
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Brett, thank you for having me. I'm a long-time listener, so it's great to be on.
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Well, thanks for listening. So you got a new book out called Death by Comfort,
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how modern life is killing us and what we can do about it. You have an interesting career because
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you are a neuroscientist who's also an exercise physiologist and a nutritionist. So how did you
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end up combining these three areas in your career? Well, it all started, I went to university and did
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a master's degree in exercise science. And then I joined the British military, I joined the Navy,
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and I flew helicopters for a number of years. I also went through combat survival and resistance
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to interrogation training, which started my interest in this area. And then I ended up doing
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helicopter search and rescue. And I did another master's in nutrition because I didn't want to
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sort of hang around doing nothing on when we were waiting for the call. And I always had the intention
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of leaving and starting as a physiologist and nutritionist. So I did that. I moved to Australia,
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met my wife in Ecuador, actually. She's an Aussie, dragged me kicking and screaming to Australia.
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And I set up as a physiologist and nutritionist working one-on-one initially. And then I realized
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that it wasn't so much about the science, it was about behavior change. And so that's why I went on
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and did another, I went back to university and studied neuroscience. I'm now kind of topping it
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off with a PhD in psychology. So I'm kind of what I call, I call myself an integrationist and a
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pracademic. So I like to take all the geeky academic research and turn it into practical tools and solutions
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that people can use. And now I do a lot of corporate speaking and translate that science
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All right. So let's talk about your book, Death by Comfort. You argue that the comfort revolution
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that we've experienced for the past 100 years is killing us. How has increased conveniences,
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So we need to start with a fundamental principle here. Professor Frank Boost, legendary exercise
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physiologist, said that the human genome has not changed for over 45,000 years, and that
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the current human genome requires and expects us to be highly physically active for normal functioning.
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And it's not just that. So if we take the movement piece, we don't hunt or gather anymore. And we
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know that the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania and in East Africa, Hadza women and girls
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take double the steps of women and girls in modern societies. Hadza men and boys, three to four times
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the steps. But when it comes to intensity of movement, they do seven to 10 times the amount of
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moderate to vigorous physical activity. And what we now understand is that exercise is a very powerful
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driver of your gene expression. So where we're not exercising, we lose all those positive changes
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in gene expression that actually help us to be healthier. And then we have the convenience of food.
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You know, now with the rise of ultra-processed foods, particularly in the last 30 or so years,
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and I know, Brett, in your country, 60% of all calories consumed are ultra-processed foods.
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Australia is not far behind. And teenagers, American teenagers, 66%. And these things have
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lots of additives in them that disrupt our gut microbiome, that make us eat more. And it's these
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convenient foods that are actually destroying us. And then the other thing is that we live in
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thermoneutral environments now, where we've got heating and cooling and we're no longer cold or hot.
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And that actually robs us of these ancient biologically conserved mechanisms that protect
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us and make us healthier when we're exposed to intermittent stressors of movement and some
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nutritional stress, but also the thermal stresses as well. So we're missing these things that are
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So we've reduced stress, but in the process, it's counterintuitively increased chronic stress in a
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That's correct. And there's a whole heap of research that shows that people who exercise
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and who are fitter deal with psychological stress better. And we also know that exposing yourself to
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heat and cold just helps with what I call stress fitness. And that's my PhD is now focusing on stress
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fitness. But I like to use the analogy of physical fitness. So all of your listeners will understand
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that there's a continuum of physical fitness. You can be low fit, moderate, high fit, or very fit.
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But you've got to do the work. People who are up high on that continuum, they do the work. And you
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know as well as anybody, Brett, that if you stop training for a couple of weeks, you slip down that
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continuum. And this is what's happening with modern life. We're not getting those inputs that actually
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build our stress fitness. And then we see we have all teenagers, young people, and older people who are
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just not prepared for the inevitable stress that is thrown at them in terms of life.
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And so this all goes down to this idea in science. It's hormesis. Can you walk us through the science
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This is my favorite branch of science. And kind of summed up by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,
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that which does not kill us makes us stronger. So hormesis is defined as sublethal exposure to
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stressors or toxins, which at high levels can kill you, but at low to moderate levels induce stress
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resistance. And there are over 600 known hormetic stressors. And so exercise is one cold exposure,
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heat exposure, but also the sun, UV radiation. You get too much of that. You get skin cancer. You don't get
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enough. You get low vitamin D. We know even small doses of nuclear radiation, which we used to think
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is damaging. Now we actually see can enhance longevity in people. So there are a number of
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stressors, nutritional stressors as well. Polyphenols, these little things that compounds that you get in
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certain foods, mostly fruits and vegetables that are small doses of toxin, but actually upregulate our
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protective genes. So we get a net benefit when we expose ourselves to small doses of intermittent
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stress because it upregulates our protective genes. So cellularly, we become more resilient
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or increase our stress fitness because of exposure to that small dose of stress.
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Gotcha. And this hormesis, it's the stress, it goes on a U-shaped curve, right?
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So that's right. There's this, you reach a point where you're going up in the stress and it hits a
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sweet spot. And then if you keep increasing the stress, you start having diminishing returns.
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It starts going down and becomes detrimental. That's right. And then it becomes detrimental.
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And we see that from everything. You know, you see that in exercise. Now that's starting to come out
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that the people who are doing the most, and we're talking here, marathon runners, people who do lots of
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triathlon, these guys, sometimes they actually don't live longer than people who do no exercise. Now
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it's not all of them. So there's some individual stuff that we don't understand, but basically all
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of these hormetic stressors follow that same curve that you just described. And it's a little bit like
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Goldilocks in the three bars. It can't be too little. It can't be too much. It's got to be just right.
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And a lot of our upbringing, it's too little exposure.
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Sure. All right. So let's walk through some ways we can start adding some more good stress in our
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life, reducing the comfort in our lives a little bit so we don't have death by comfort. We've been
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talking about exercise. Let's talk about what goes on in our bodies when we expose ourself to the
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stress of exercise. Because it is a stressor. Like you feel good after a good workout, but when you're
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doing the workout, it's actually a stressor. So what's going on in our bodies when we exercise?
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Yeah. You've hit the nail on the head here, Brad. And you know,
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I spoke to thousands of people over the years about exercise. Some people go, yes,
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I'm into it. Others go, I don't like it because it makes me feel uncomfortable. And I say to them,
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it's supposed to be bloody uncomfortable. That is why exercise is good for you, because it's a
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stressor that activates these stress response genes that actually protect us. And then there's
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another wave of gene expression called metabolic priority genes. These are hundreds of genes that
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are upregulated whenever you expose yourself to the stress of exercise. And then we have other genes
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that improve our mitochondrial function. So it is by exposing ourselves to moderate intermittent
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amounts of stress in the body, we're upregulating gene expression. And what we now know is that exercise
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releases a whole host of things called myokines. Some people call them exokines. These are molecules
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that are released from your contracting muscle that we now know get into your bloodstream. They not only
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affect the muscle, but they get into your bloodstream and affect pretty much every single organ and every
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organ system in the body in a positive manner. And recent research shows that these myokines or
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exokines are carried around the body by these things called exosomes. And so it gets pretty
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technical, but I just want people to understand there are massive changes in gene expression and
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release of these myokines that then tell the organs and the organ systems in your body to improve how
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they're actually operating. Yeah. One myokine that people might've heard of is BDNF. What is BDNF?
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So BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor and neurotropic means nerve growth, right? So it helps
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you to create new brain cells in areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus and maybe some other areas,
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but it also protects the brain cells that you have against damage. And we know there's a couple of
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ways that BDNF is released. So there are two myokines that cross the blood brain barrier. One of them is
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called ericin, and that crosses either from cold exposure or exercise. That crosses the blood brain
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barrier and triggers the release of BDNF. And then lactate, you know, people know about lactic acid.
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We used to think that was a waste product. We actually now know that it is fuel for some
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different cells, including our brain cells. And lactate actually crosses the blood brain barrier
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and triggers the release of BDNF. And some of your older listeners, Brett, will remember miracle
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grow in the United States. You know, this stuff that you sprinkle over plants and they would grow
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like crazy. BDNF is miracle grow for the brain. Oh yeah. Some other myokines you mentioned in the
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book. There's myokines that drive metabolic adaptions, such as muscle and bone, growth and repair,
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improved immune function, healthier gut, healthier liver, healthier pancreas.
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And there's one myokine IL-6 has anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So again,
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the stress of exercise can help reduce inflammation in the long run.
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Yeah. And this is the thing. So when you exercise, there's a transient increase in inflammation followed
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by a drop off in inflammation. And often that's the sort of thing that we see. So you have to look
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at the long-term benefits of all of these molecules. And there's, the body is just so sophisticated and
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we're still trying to work out exactly what goes on when we expose ourselves to things like the
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stress of exercise or other different stressors. So one thing you do when it comes to physical
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activity and physical movement, you encourage people to think of their daily activity consisting
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of three parts, movement at the workplace, incidental movement, and dedicated. So walk us through these
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three areas and how can we increase our movement in these three areas?
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Yeah. So the workplace, you know, I always say to people, if you have a job that involves lots of
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physical movement, that has got to be worth thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a
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year because of the net effect on your health. But lots of us these days have got jobs that involve
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chronic sitting. And we know that chronic sitting is really, really bad for your health. And so I always
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encourage people, we know that if you're sitting for 20 to 30 minutes plus, there are significant
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negative changes in your gene expression. So it's just getting off your bum at least every 30 minutes,
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I encourage people, and just do some movement. Ideally, you know, the best case scenario, I've got
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kettlebells and clubbells sitting right beside my desk. And every 30 minutes, I get up and swing some
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kettlebells and clubbells around. But if you're in the workplace, you can just quickly walk them down a
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couple of flights of stairs. What that does is it's going to create positive gene expression,
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offset the sitting, but it's also going to burn up any stress hormones if you're having a stressful
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day. Then the other thing I talk to people about the workplace is it's just look for opportunities
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to move. And I've got a rule that when I'm on the phone, I stand up or you can go walking whenever
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you're on the phone. And then trying to do things like walking meetings and stuff like that, just any
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way that you can add these in. Then when it comes to our incidental stuff, it is about these little
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movement snacks and doing, I call them these little movement snacks, just one to two minute bursts
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throughout the day. And I have exercise equipment strategically placed all around my house that
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acts as a bit of a trigger. And actually one guy, when I did a corporate workshop, it was the second
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time he'd see me and he actually said to me, we have changed our family that when we go into the
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village for a walk, we actually take the long cut rather than the shortcut. And I thought, you know
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what? That is just brilliant. You know, how many times have we driven past 30 perfectly serviceable
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car parks just so we can get as close as possible to our destination? And we're losing that opportunity
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to move. And then with exercise, look, I think everybody's convinced of the benefits of doing
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more. But for me, one of the most important things is to do exercise that you enjoy. Like that
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is just really clear from the research that when you find something that you enjoy, you're much more
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likely to do it. But also really remember about the benefit of these movement snacks. And researchers
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call them VILPA, vigorous intensity lifestyle physical activity. So these are just little one to two
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minute bursts of physical activity that we do throughout the day that we're starting to see
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are really, really beneficial. So it's not just going to the gym or going for a run. It's those
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little movement snacks that are important as well. Yeah, you could do movement snacks while you're
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watching TV. Absolutely. Every time the adverts come on, there's an opportunity to do movement snacks
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or just do them while you're watching stuff. You know, get an exercise bag and watch your favorite
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podcast or watch TV while you're doing some stuff. That's ideal. Yeah, I love the kettlebell. I actually
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busted out my kettlebell after I read your book and put it someplace in my house that I walked by.
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I sit down a lot from my job. So I've been doing movement snacks for the kettlebell because it's so
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easy. It takes up a little space and you can do all sorts of things with it. Yeah, they're just
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brilliant. I'm a massive fan of kettlebells and clubbells. Okay, so move more at work, do more
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incidental. And the movement at work and the incidental movement, you talk about how a fitness tracker can
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help with that, right? Counting your steps, seeing your movement. You don't want to get obsessive about
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this stuff. But I like the Apple Watch because I can look at it and be like, oh, you know, I haven't
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really done much today. I'll get up and take a 20-minute walk.
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Brett, I'm exactly the same. I have an Apple Watch and I have my active energy set for 750
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calories every single day. And it's that trigger and it's just making sure that you're doing it.
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And oftentimes, you know, if I'm sitting a lot as well, I'll look at it and I'll go, oh my God,
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I just haven't done stuff. And it just, it gives you that little prompt to actually go and do stuff.
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So, you know, us neuroscientists will tell you what gets measured gets managed. And I'm a big fan
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of knowing how much you're actually moving. That's really, really key.
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All right. And with dedicated exercise, pick something you like. Just get sweating out of
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breath frequently throughout the week. That's it. Exactly.
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Okay. Let's talk about this idea of, you call it discomfort harvesting. And we can do that by
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exposing ourselves to heat and cold. So how can cold showers allow you to do discomfort harvesting?
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Yeah. So firstly, let me define discomfort harvesting. So in psychology, a psychologist will
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talk a lot about discomfort tolerance, you know, the ability to tolerate discomfort. But I prefer the
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term harvesting because tolerance kind of has the implication that this isn't that good for me and I
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just need to kind of tolerate it. Whereas harvesting, you're actually reaping the benefits.
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So we know there was a landmark study done in Holland about seven or eight years ago where they took a
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bunch of workers and randomly assigned them into two groups. And one, they got to have a cold shower
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at the end of their normal shower for 30, 60 or 90 seconds. And the other group, the control group,
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just did their normal shower. And they measured their health, their sickness and their absenteeism.
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And they found at the end of the year that the cold shower group had a 29% reduction in sickness and
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absenteeism, which is just massive. Now, since that study, there's been lots of other studies that have
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shown that there are really huge benefits from exposing yourself to cold water. And it activates
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something called the cold shock response. So this is an ancient mechanism that as soon as
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cold water touches your skin, we have neurons just under our skin that send a very quick signal to
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the brain. And the brain activates this full body response, body and brain response to the cold.
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And it upregulates protective genes. It increases noradrenaline. I think you Americans call it
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norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain, which are really useful chemicals for motivation and for
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mood. And we get all of these physiological upregulations in protective gene expression
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just from that cold water response. And we know there's a recent study that showed that
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if you get into an ice bath at about four degrees, just for 20 seconds, you get a whopping
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three to 500% increase in dopamine and noradrenaline or norepinephrine, which is just huge. And it
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persists for hours. So it has positive lasting effects on your mood. And we're now actually seeing
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people with treatment-resistant depression being successfully treated with cold water therapy.
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No, we had a guest on the podcast last year, Dr. Mark Harper, who wrote a book called Chill,
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The Cold Water Swim Cure. He's an anesthesiologist, but he swims out in the ocean when it's freezing.
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And that led him, he started researching how to prevent hypothermia during surgery.
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And that led him to research the benefits of cold water exposure in managing the body's overall
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stress response. I guess when anesthesiologists put people under, they have to keep the person cold.
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It has all his protective benefits. And he started doing the research and like the people who do the
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cold water swimming, they get some of the similar benefits. So yeah, like you said, people who have
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been able to manage the depression with cold water exposure, decrease inflammatory diseases like
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rheumatoid arthritis and things like that, all because of cold water exposure.
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Yeah. And the reductions in inflammatory markers, you know, we cannot underestimate those benefits
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because if you look at the vast majority of chronic diseases, inflammation, chronic inflammation
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is a key driver of that. So that seems to be one of the many benefits of this cold water exposure.
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And we know that you get activation of heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins and changes
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in gene expression when you regularly expose yourself to the cold. So it's about getting comfortable
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with being uncomfortable. That's what I mean by discomfort harvesting.
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How cold does the cold water need to be to get the benefit? Do we know that?
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So yeah, I had on my podcast, I interviewed Professor Mike Tipton, who is from the UK,
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would certainly know the guest that you talked about. He's the world leader in cold exposure.
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And he reckons that 15 degree water, that's now that's centigrade. I'm not sure how that
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translates to Fahrenheit, but 15 degrees centigrade seems to be the trigger for the cold shock response.
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But I recently saw a research paper where they had people in 20 degrees centigrade water,
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but they had them in for 20 minutes and they got some benefits. So there seems to be a trade-off
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between time and temperature. But it's really, it's at about that 15 degrees centigrade that seems to be
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around that area. Yeah. So 15, in Fahrenheit, that's 59, about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. And then 20,
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that's 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. And it's important for your listeners to understand,
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Brett, that there is a trade-off between temperature and time. So the colder you go,
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the less time you need to actually spend in it. So I know some people who get into ice baths and
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they're in there for 10 minutes. There's really no benefit above being in an ice bath for around a minute.
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You know, the vast majority of the benefits are going to kick in there. There's not really a benefit
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for staying in as long as you possibly can, other than maybe a bit of psychological toughness.
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Is this something you can do every day or should you do it every other day?
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We don't have any data on that. Look, I think the best thing, Sonia Sonnenberg did a restart study and
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she found that the optimal dose was about 11 minutes of exposure over a week, right? So I think
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we need to see other research replicating or doing similar studies to her until we can say definitively,
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but let's take that as a guide for now. Gotcha. So yeah, I do my cold, I do a cold shower before I
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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
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cold showers or cold baths in Oklahoma during the summer because the water is just lukewarm because it's
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115 degrees outside. So now it's starting to cool off and now we're starting to enjoy it. Yeah, I can't,
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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
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
00:33:33.280
our whole processes. But we are also crowding out good foods, things like fruits, vegetables,
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
00:37:26.940
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,
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
00:43:03.160
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
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?
00:52:46.740
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
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
00:54:25.460
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
00:55:22.960
Oh, he's awesome. I've had him on my podcast twice. I had him on just two weeks.
00:55:28.280
Fantastic. Well, Paul, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
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.
00:55:53.220
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
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00:56:09.020
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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.