Qualy #9 - The importance of exercise for brain health
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
199.86555
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Tim Ferris joins Dr. Kelly to talk about his new book, "Exercise and brain health" and why exercise is the single most important thing you can do to generate or preserve brain health.
Transcript
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welcome to the qualies a subscriber exclusive podcast qualies is just a shorthand slang for
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subscribe so without further delay i hope you enjoy today's quali that's another change in my belief
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system i think today versus i don't know five or six years ago i think five or six years ago i didn't
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think exercise was that important to longevity which actually sounds ridiculous for anyone who knows me
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because i was probably exercising four hours a day but not because i believed it would make me live
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longer it was just sort of soothing my addictions but i think today i feel i am much more convinced
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by a lot of the data you've described certainly the central stuff when we published this paper earlier
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this year with richard isaacs and that you and i were talking about it before we started recording
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we wanted to get a sense of like if you took a completely unbiased approach and look at the
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literature what was the single most compelling thing you could do to generate or preserve brain health
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and we came away thinking that it was actually exercise and i remember when the analysts were
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kind of going through this and showing me all the data i was like come on guys there's no way exercise
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could be the most important thing for brain health and again i'm saying this is a guy who loves
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exercise more than anybody but it just struck me as there's no way and again i think part of it was
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i was just thinking about it through the vascular lens and obviously you know i think better than i do that
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when you start to think about brain health you have to think about it through a vascular lens
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a metabolic lens growth factor lens i mean they were overlapping but distinct pathways that are going
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to influence brain health and so i was kind of humbled by that and now i guess in many ways i'm a little
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more adamant about it with my patients uh not that i wasn't you know adamant before but this is like
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boy if you're if you're not active every day like we got to change that i actually the the main reason
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i exercise is for my brain it's certainly just not only for you know preventing neurogenetic disease
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and atrophy and all that but just because it affects my executive function and affects my anxiety
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levels it affects my ability to make decisions i absolutely if i have something that's bothering me
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or giving me anxiety or have to make a really important decision going for a long run really helps
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me and there's been studies showing that it helps with executive function long-term planning like
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aerobic exercise um specifically you know and then in high intensity interval training all that stuff
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they all they all do different things well that's the thing we couldn't we couldn't tease this out of
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the literature which again probably is just a limitation of shitty human clinical trials but
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that's the second order question right which is if you're going to take the tim ferris approach
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which is what's the minimum effective dose because there are some people like maybe you or i
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who i think just generally like exercise and and also get these other benefits these endorphin
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benefits but there are some people who are like look what do i need to do like i'm going to treat
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exercise like medicine and i think in that setting i'm still not clear so if you were that person would
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i say ronda as long as you are lifting weights one hour three times a week like if you can only give
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me three hours would that be how i'd want you to spend it or would i rather you be doing anaerobic
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aerobic type thing like i mean that's to me those are where these biomarkers start to become very
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important because we're not going to generate hard outcome studies with that level of control
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once you you know try to control that many variables and be that strict about it you're going to very
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much lose a hard outcome prospectively but if we knew what to measure right and that's you know would
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we be measuring an integral of igf for example so how much it rises how much it falls and then what
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that looks like over time but i guess that's the funny thing right like the more we learn the less we
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know yeah absolutely i i think that we definitely don't know the answer to that question but i think
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there's a lot of data out there showing for example strength training you know there's benefits on the
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brain that's been shown published this benefits on preventing muscle atrophy there's benefits on
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preventing cancer incident like that's all been shown for strength training for aerobic and you know
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this high intensity interval training is also also seems to be making its way as well like like there
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was a study that i that i found vo2 max this is you know the ability of your your body to
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transport oxygen during exercise which also is an indicator of when you're not exercising and
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obviously transporting oxygen to the brain for example is extremely important vo2 max declines with
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age like one percent per year i forgot starting at what age but you know so 10 per decade so that's
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almost parallels the muscle mass decline does it does parallel exactly and there was a study showing that
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24 sessions of high intensity interval training where it was like a 45 minute session five minute
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warm-up five minute cool down and then you know in between the max intervals which were like pretty
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long like a minute there was you know the 70 percent of max water anyway so 24 of those increased
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vo2 max by 12 percent so you're literally taking an entire decade of decline and like reversing it with
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the 24 yeah that's that's actually a good point i when i was more active as a sort of competitive
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you know in cycling you we would get our vo2 max tested about twice a year ryan flarity who we were
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talking about before the podcast who's one of my close friends and you've got to know him as well
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i learned from ryan that actually vo2 max is not the most important indicator as a runner or cyclist
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it's vvo2 max or pvo2 max that matters in other words for a runner vvo2 max is much more predictive
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of performance which is the velocity you carry at vo2 max and for a cyclist it's pvo2 max which is the
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power output at vo2 max that said every time you go to test you want it to test well so you know
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over time i learned how to game the system you know i want to make sure my vo2 max is in the 70s
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which again to put that in perspective like that's not at the level of professional athlete or
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something like the guys that are winning the tour de france are in the high 80s or low 90s
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in terms of milligrams per mil per kilogram but nevertheless just altering my training for three
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weeks before a vo2 max test and dropping my weight so if i shed two kilograms and did those types of
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intervals i actually had it down to a science where there was a workout i would do you know in carmel
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valley you've got the 56 that goes out and it's got a bike path next to it there's a section of that bike
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path that is 1.6 miles long and it goes up at about four percent and just doing repeat intervals of
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that which takes about four minutes all out to go one direction and then about six minutes to cruise
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back four of those that was it twice a week for like three weeks and your vo2 max exploded now of
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course the question is is that like you know cramming for the test getting the result but not
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necessarily like do you have to keep doing that to get the decade-long benefit i don't know the answer
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but i agree that like if you can maintain muscle mass and you can maintain peak aerobic performance
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it's not it doesn't even matter at that point if you're living longer you're clearly living better
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right like if you if you don't budge anything on maximum lifespan you've dramatically improved
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median lifespan right and that's a you know that's for most people that's what matters it is yeah for
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me it is i mean i what's the what's the maximum lifespan that like a human's like 120 124 or something
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121 or 124 maybe like that yeah living beyond that i mean that's i think the goal is really to
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at least for me i think that's a lot more achievable is increasing my my median health
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span right my health span you know so so basically preventing staving off cardiovascular disease cancer
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alzheimer's disease those sorts of things so that i'm so that i'm living healthier and also you know
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a little bit longer but obviously not 125 or six yeah i hope you enjoyed today's quali now sit tight
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