Why Vigorous Exercise Is 4–10x More Effective Than Moderate (New Evidence)

0:00 For decades now, we have these [music]

0:01 physical activity guidelines looking at optimal health,

0:04 saying you want to be engaging in about 150 minutes

0:07 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week,

0:12 but there's a new study that really kind of overturns

0:14 that idea and we just can't ignore it anymore.

0:17 So, I think the biggest headline

0:18 from this study was that vigorous [music] intensity

0:21 physical activity is four times as potent

0:23 at reducing the risk of all cause mortality.

0:26 That's pretty big.

0:26 [music] But it actually gets even bigger

0:28 when we look at cardiovascular related mortality.

0:31 For all of the main outcomes, including cancer,

0:34 1 minute of vigorous activity was equal to 53 to 94 minutes.

0:38 Wait, just pause for a minute.

0:40 1 minute of vigorous physical activity equivalent

0:43 to an hour of like gentle walking.

0:46 Time efficient right there.

0:47 That's insane.

0:48 [music] It's insane.

0:49 We need to stop thinking in terms of minutes and steps.

0:53 Those are like outdated metrics because if

0:55 you're just chasing a number like steps, it might kind of be meaningless.

0:58 Welcome back to the podcast.

1:00 Today we're going to be discussing this almost universally accepted

1:04 rule that for every 1 minute of vigorous intensity exercise,

1:08 that's equivalent to 2 minutes of moderate intensity exercise.

1:12 And we're going to talk about whether

1:15 or not that's accurate and where it came from.

1:17 So today's podcast is more of a journal club type of episode where we're

1:22 going to be discussing a new study that really kind of overturns that idea.

1:26 So I'm joined by endurance athlete Brady

1:29 Homer who has a master's in human performance.

1:32 He's also an author of the book B2

1:35 Max Essentials and he's a former podcast guest.

1:38 He was on the podcast a few months ago

1:41 on the How to Train According to the Experts

1:43 podcast where we were talking about our how

1:45 to train guide which Brady also was a collaborator on.

1:48 So I'm pretty pumped to sit here and have

1:50 this first episode of a journal club for Found My Fitness.

1:54 So um you know hopefully we'll do more of these.

1:57 So let's uh what do you think?

1:58 Let's get started.

1:59 For sure.

1:59 Yeah.

1:59 I think this will be a interesting new structure kind of for the podcast.

2:02 New for you know some of our episodes and I'm excited to see how it goes.

2:06 Excited to talk about this study.

2:07 I think it was really a eye opening one in my mind.

2:10 Um, so yeah, let's get into it.

2:11 Eye opening but not surprising, right?

2:14 Totally.

2:14 So, okay.

2:15 Well, let's I'm going to start off by just talking about what this, you know,

2:18 one to two rule is for people because they

2:20 might be like not exactly understanding what I'm talking about.

2:23 So essentially, you know, for decades now,

2:26 we have these physical activity guidelines that's put

2:29 out by the World Health Organization and, you know,

2:32 other organizations that essentially state these physical activity guidelines,

2:38 which essentially are for optimal health, which is kind of sort of vague,

2:44 but for optimal health, you want to be engaging in about 150 minutes to 300

2:48 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week or if you're

2:54 going to be doing more vigorous intense um vigorous type

2:57 of physical activity that would be more like 75 to 150 minutes.

3:01 So that's essentially your you're you have this one to two rule

3:04 right where it's like okay for every one minute of vigorous intensity

3:07 physical activity you're going to be doing 2 minutes of the moderate

3:10 intensity activity and that's kind of um where this rule came from.

3:15 And I don't know that it's necessarily it's

3:19 not necessarily telling you if you're trying to reduce,

3:22 you know, different disease risks.

3:24 So cardiovascular disease or cancer, you know,

3:27 fill in the blank, whatever disease.

3:28 It's not really telling you that.

3:29 It's just kind of like this is the guidelines, right?

3:32 So let's talk about the origin of this one to two rule.

3:35 It really didn't come from direct measurements of health outcomes.

3:39 Essentially, it's researchers that calculated,

3:43 you know, for vigorous intensity exercise,

3:47 you're burning about twice as many calories

3:49 as you do for moderate intensity exercise.

3:53 So, it's really comes down to energy expenditure, not health outcomes.

4:01 Yeah.

4:01 And that was kind of like the biggest not surprise to me

4:04 because I've you know known about this stuff for a long time.

4:06 But when you really dig into it,

4:08 it's like what what's the foundation of these recommendation it is based

4:11 on the idea of this thing called

4:13 metabolic equivalent or metabolic equivalent of task.

4:16 People maybe will um have heard that referred to as METS or MES.

4:19 And basically it is just what's

4:21 the caloric expenditure of these various different activities.

4:24 If you know you're doing a light activity

4:27 that might be somewhere between you know like

4:29 0 to three mets moderate activity 3 to six

4:31 mets vigorous activity over six mets and it's

4:34 basically saying what's your oxygen consumption or your you

4:36 know calorie burn during these activities and so

4:38 by that logic yes moderate activity you burn

4:41 you know that might be three to six mets.

4:43 Well if you're going harder than that that's

4:45 double the mets double the caloric expenditure.

4:48 So you need half as much physical activity to get

4:50 the same health benefit as um the more moderate intensity activity.

4:54 So that kind of formed the foundation of that either 75

4:57 to 150 minutes of vigorous 150 to 300 minutes of moderate

5:01 and it makes sense logically but as you just said you

5:04 know well for for what what health outcomes are we looking at?

5:08 Are we just focused on calorie burn?

5:09 So yes if if it's just focused on calorie burn yes the two are

5:13 equivalent but health is a lot more as you know than just burning calories.

5:17 um people are focused on different health outcomes

5:19 like improving their fitness or improving their cardiovascular health,

5:21 improving their diabetes risk.

5:23 So when you look at it from that perspective,

5:25 it really changes the way that you think

5:26 of well maybe it's not all just about metabolic equivalence.

5:30 Maybe it's about something different and we should be looking

5:32 at the value of physical activity um in different ways, right?

5:35 Um I think that's a really good point

5:37 because I think people that are more focused

5:39 on weight loss aren't necessarily the people

5:42 that are looking at the physical activity guidelines, right?

5:45 Those are the people that are counting calories and they're, you know,

5:48 it's a very different they're trying to figure out how

5:50 much exercise they need to do to trim down body recomposition.

5:54 Whereas people that are actually looking at the physical

5:56 activity health guidelines generally in their mind

6:00 have this concept of how much exercise do I need to like age better, right?

6:04 Like that's generally what people are

6:07 thinking when they're looking at these guidelines.

6:09 How much exercise do I need to do to really age better?

6:13 And so it it's it's kind of unfair because you know these guidelines if

6:17 they not aren't necessarily indicating how much

6:20 exercise we need to do or what type

6:22 of exercise we need to do to to really age better um then it's time

6:25 to change these guidelines and I think we're going to talk a lot about that.

6:28 But I also wanted to mention you know you're talking about these metabolic

6:31 equivalents with respect to light moderate

6:34 or vigorous you know intensity physical activity.

6:38 There's some examples for the guidelines that are given which aren't

6:43 necessarily what I would think of as moderate or or vigorous.

6:46 So for example, they say light activity is

6:49 like casual stroll or maybe like you're standing.

6:52 So just not sitting or maybe you're washing dishes.

6:55 And then the moderate activity is like brisk walking.

6:58 So you're walking more briskly or you're you're maybe

7:00 doing a leisurely cycle or you're doing some yard work.

7:02 That's considered considered moderate intensity physical activity.

7:05 And then vigorous activity is running, swimming,

7:09 more recreational sports or if you're like,

7:11 you know, playing with your kids outside,

7:13 sprinting around, playing with your puppy or your dog.

7:15 So those those are sort of some of the guidelines, you know,

7:19 in terms of how you define light, moderate, or vigorous physical activity.

7:25 Um, yeah.

7:26 And I do think that's important just for framing kind of when we start

7:29 to talk about this study for framing

7:30 our discussion today because when people hear vigorous especially,

7:34 you know, as you usually talk about on your podcast,

7:36 it's vigorous intensity is kind of this high-intensity interval training.

7:39 But when it comes to the guidelines,

7:40 vigorous is a lot less vigorous and people

7:44 are probably familiar with zone 2 training.

7:46 I would just consider like when you hear vigorous

7:48 in the context of this discussion or the physical activity guidelines,

7:51 that's like zone 2 intensity or above basically.

7:53 So it includes high-intensity interval training,

7:55 but it also includes things are a little less

7:58 intense than one might consider high-intensity interval training to be, right?

8:02 Yeah.

8:02 So typically, you know, especially in this podcast,

8:05 I've talked a lot about vigorous intensity exercise

8:07 and with regards to like heart rate measurements, right?

8:10 like people are wearing these wearable

8:11 devices and they're measuring their heart rate

8:13 and usually it's like you're getting into the 80% max heart rate or above,

8:17 you know, and and I it like you said,

8:20 you know, it's it's really not that includes vigorous.

8:23 Yes.

8:24 But like especially when we get into this study that we're going

8:27 to talk about today and looking at the physical activity guidelines in general,

8:30 vigorous is a little bit less than that.

8:33 So it does include more of that zone two type of training, but you are running.

8:36 You are able to maybe have, you know,

8:38 say a few sentences while they may be breathy, you can still state them.

8:42 That's actually considered vigorous if we're actually

8:45 just talking about the physical activity guidelines.

8:47 Yeah, very important.

8:48 And then also just, you know, I think we sort of already stated this, but just

8:53 to kind of reiterate talking about the potential

8:56 flaws of the physical activity guidelines is one

8:59 potential like looking at long-term like health outcomes, right?

9:03 Two would be like relying on self-reported data,

9:06 and that's something that we're going to get into today.

9:09 You know, when you're trying to ask people to remember their physical activity,

9:13 and you're going to talk about this a little bit more,

9:16 um, it's just not accurate.

9:17 And then the third one would be that it's not it's not actually able

9:21 to capture um some of these like you know you're playing with your kids

9:25 or you're you're sprinting around with your puppy

9:26 right these short bursts of physical

9:28 activity that do matter right so you're not you're not including that as well.

9:32 So why don't we get into this new study it was pub p p p p p

9:35 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p published

9:35 in nature communications wearable device based day wearable device-based

9:40 health equivalents of different physical activity intensities against mortality,

9:44 cardioabolic disease and cancer.

9:47 very good study.

9:48 Um maybe we can kind of start off with you know

9:51 the how the study was set up like some of the methods.

9:55 Yeah, sure.

9:56 So this was by um it was by a group led

9:59 by Stamatakus is the first kind of author on it and importantly they're

10:03 the they're the group behind a lot of these Vilpa studies Rhonda

10:05 that you've talked about a lot

10:06 the vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity studies.

10:09 So they authored this study and they mine data from the UK bio

10:13 bank that's just a huge it's kind of similar to like the NHANES

10:16 in the United States where just lot cohort of a ton of individuals looked

10:21 at for you know decades or more um they have all this health data

10:25 on them objective data subjective data so for this study they focused on um

10:30 73,000 more than 73,000 adults from the UK bio bank who were aged 40

10:35 to 79 so that's kind of important I think as well they were you

10:38 know middle-aged to to older aged adults and they tracked them over 8 years.

10:42 So the follow-up period in the study was 8 years on average.

10:44 Um and the important part of the study

10:47 is how they measured their physical activity.

10:49 It was measured using these wearable devices, these wristworn accelerometers.

10:53 They wore it for a week at the baseline

10:55 of the study and so then they took all their physical

10:57 activity from that one week and then you know that was

11:00 used to establish these physical activity levels for these individuals.

11:04 Kind of a limitation there.

11:05 Obviously, physical activity was only measured

11:08 for a week using these accelerometers, but you know,

11:10 as we'll maybe discuss later, uh it seems like a limitation, but in a way,

11:14 I almost feel like it's a strength because

11:16 the strong association with these health outcomes almost

11:18 assumes that this activity that they were doing

11:21 during that one week may have been consistent over,

11:23 you know, the next eight years or or something like that.

11:26 Um so, well, it's also I mean you it's measuring everything, right?

11:31 It's measuring the short burst of exercise that you would never think about.

11:35 Like if someone were to ask me how many minutes I exercise a week,

11:38 I would only include my structured defined

11:41 workouts that I set aside to work out.

11:44 I wouldn't include, you know,

11:46 the three times a day I'm sprinting around my yard with my puppy or, you know,

11:50 once a day that I'm playing soccer with my son, right?

11:53 I don't include those, but I'm absolutely getting my heart rate up, right?

11:57 And that was, I think, the major strength of this study.

11:59 So instead of self-report which a lot of the previous

12:01 studies for the guidelines did this one was objective data

12:05 and yes it captured it captured what physical activity they were

12:08 doing what exercise they were doing I guess so their structured

12:10 workouts but also as you mentioned just everything they did

12:13 throughout the day this device was measuring every single activity

12:16 in 10-second bursts throughout the day every 10 seconds it measured

12:19 you know what is the intensity that their activity is and

12:23 I don't want to get

12:23 can we pause for a minute when you say what

12:25 the intensity their activity is and their accelerometer right So people might

12:30 be confused and they again might be going back to heart

12:32 rate like when they hear wearable device and they're thinking intensity.

12:35 I know my brain goes right there like heart rate.

12:38 Can you kind of explain like how they were able

12:41 to define light moderate and you know vigorous with this accelerometer data?

12:48 Yeah, I'll do it the best I can without getting

12:50 like way too complicated on how the accelerometers measure physical activity.

12:53 So yes, not intensity not based on heart rate

12:56 in this study which would be the common convention and maybe

12:59 your wearables measure that using you know heart rate

13:01 the wearables we have today like your you know Apple watch.

13:04 So an accelerometer is literally a device that you wear on your wrist

13:07 and it is measuring the direction

13:10 of movement and the physical intensity of movement.

13:12 So if I move my wrist say slowly

13:15 that might be light activity intensity light intensity activity.

13:18 If I move it more vigorously that might be vigorous intensity.

13:22 So this accelerometer device is measuring, you know,

13:25 the intensity of people's movements throughout the day,

13:28 the direction of that intensity because it just has this physical,

13:32 you know, an accelerometer in it which just

13:34 measures the direction and the intensity of physical activity.

13:37 And so every 10 seconds throughout the day,

13:39 it's measuring their intensity of physical activity.

13:41 And then based on a certain threshold of how intense their movement

13:45 is that would get bucketed into being a light intensity activity,

13:48 a moderate intensity activity or a vigorous intensity activity.

13:52 So every 10 seconds this thing is measuring

13:54 you know what type of activity you're doing.

13:55 It gets bucketed into one of those three intensities and then summed throughout

13:59 the day and then throughout the week to say you did this much vigorous,

14:02 this much moderate and this much light activity.

14:05 So it's a little bit difficult because most

14:07 of the devices we have these days are not accelerometer based.

14:11 They're either heart rate based or they're you know

14:12 actually using a GPS like most of these devices.

14:15 But I think that's the best way of describing it.

14:17 But the important thing there is that this is how the intensity

14:21 was measured in this study not using say something like a heart rate.

14:24 What I what I was thinking about um when

14:28 when kind of reading the paper and like talking

14:31 about it with you is how it would categorize

14:35 like let's say someone was like doing bicep curls, right?

14:37 Cuz your wrist is moving but you're not really walking.

14:41 You're not really moving distance-wise.

14:43 So is that something that would be picked up

14:46 by this device and considered and what bucket would it be?

14:50 Cuz like some people can be like moving fast, right?

14:52 It would and that would be I think even regardless of the um

14:56 speed at which you were moving that dumbbell that would probably be categorized

14:59 as like a vigorous intensity activity

15:01 because it's purposeful movement and you know

15:03 it's you know the force and the torque at which you're measuring your arm.

15:06 So that would be probably categorized as a vigorous intensity activity.

15:09 It doesn't necessarily matter whether you're

15:11 moving physically forward or backward in space.

15:14 It's just like what is the um speed or the intensity

15:17 at which your body is is kind of moving.

15:19 Okay.

15:19 Okay.

15:20 So, yeah, a little bit complicated, but you know,

15:21 that's the best way to describe it without considering that.

15:24 Yeah.

15:24 I mean, considering that because you know the a lot

15:26 of times when people hear the word vigorous intensity,

15:29 you know, activity, they're not really thinking of resistance training.

15:33 So, maybe like you can give some examples at least.

15:36 I know the study laid out some

15:37 examples with respect to what's actually considered,

15:41 you know, vigorous versus moderate versus light.

15:43 And then um obviously we talked about what

15:46 what examples are considered that for the health guidelines,

15:48 but they're pretty similar.

15:49 They are similar.

15:50 This study they said, you know, light activity, they gave some examples of it.

15:53 That would be just uh light household chores.

15:55 So even maybe you're um you know,

15:57 emptying the dishwasher or sweeping or vacuuming or something like that.

16:00 That would be considered like light activity based on this study.

16:03 Moderate activity would be something like actively commuting.

16:06 So, say you were riding your bike leisurely

16:08 to work or you were commuting to work,

16:10 walking from the bus to work, going up some stairs,

16:12 doing maybe some more moderate household chores.

16:15 And then vigorous, they gave some examples like, you know,

16:17 outside playing with your kids or you're you're

16:20 running or you're riding a bike or exercise.

16:22 Exercise would be categorized into that vigorous bout,

16:24 but or that vigorous type of activity,

16:26 but really anything, you know, purposeful movement I think is,

16:29 you know, I were chatting offline.

16:30 It's anything that would be purposeful movement.

16:33 you're doing this for a reason of, you know,

16:35 either to exercise or to get somewhere.

16:37 That would kind of be considered vigorous in this study.

16:40 So again, like the guidelines maybe a little bit less

16:42 intense than what people imagine when they think of vigorous,

16:46 which I think is kind of cool because when

16:48 we start to discuss the benefits that vigorous activity had,

16:51 it goes to show just the power that even kind of purposeful movement,

16:54 even if it's not high-intensity interval training, can have.

16:56 Yeah.

16:56 And I think it is important to point

16:58 out like physical activity versus exercise because people

17:02 do typically when they think when they hear

17:05 even physical activity they think you know structured exercise.

17:09 It's a very I think a very common you know thought

17:12 is structured exercise is physical activity

17:14 but it's not necessarily structured exercise.

17:16 It includes it but it can also include all the things

17:18 that you mentioned where you're you know playing with your kids

17:20 or you're playing with your dog or you're um sprinting

17:23 up the stairs you're walking to work or things like that.

17:25 This is all physical activity and that's what this is all capturing for sure.

17:29 And it's kind of interesting when you think about

17:30 that too because when we talk about the guidelines,

17:33 I think a lot of people hear that and say

17:35 150 to 300 minutes of physical activity a week,

17:38 that means I need to be in the gym for 150 minutes to 300 minutes.

17:41 But again, physical activity is different than exercise.

17:44 Physical activity is any physical activity you're doing throughout the day.

17:47 Exercise is defined, structured, a workout,

17:51 like a training regimen that you, you know, go to the gym and you set aside time

17:54 for, but physical activity can be things done throughout the day,

17:57 just integrated into your daily life as well.

18:00 Right.

18:00 Right.

18:01 Um, okay.

18:01 So, health outcomes that were tracked in this study,

18:05 we have, do you want to mention the health outcomes?

18:07 They pretty much tracked anything people are interested in in terms of health.

18:11 So, all cause mortality, death from any cause,

18:13 most people are aware of what that is, cardiovascular disease mortality.

18:16 So deaths from anything related to cardiovascular disease,

18:20 heart attack, stroke specifically.

18:22 Um major adverse cardiovascular events or MACE.

18:24 So that's heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular death.

18:27 Um type two diabetes incidents and then cancer incidents

18:30 and that included physical activity uh related cancers as well.

18:34 Um and one of the important points too about these health outcomes is that a lot

18:39 of the problems with some of the previous studies

18:42 were it's this idea of the healthy user bias.

18:45 Um so oh people who are more physically active do they have

18:48 lower disease risk or do people who have less disease do more activity?

18:52 Well they controlled for that in this study

18:54 by excluding people who if you developed any of these diseases within the first

18:58 12 months of the study they were excluded.

19:00 And additionally anybody with a disease at baseline was excluded.

19:03 So they tried their best to sort of take care of this sick user or healthy

19:06 user bias which I think strengthens a lot of the the outcomes in the study.

19:10 That's a really uh important point.

19:12 Um, okay.

19:13 So, I'm going to I'm going to kind of get

19:14 into some of these major findings in the study.

19:17 And I think before getting into that, um,

19:20 I just want to talk about that when we're when we're talking about

19:23 the minutes to reduce all cause mortality

19:25 or cardiovascular related mortality or cancer related mortality,

19:29 generally they were talking about this range between

19:31 5 to 35% risk reduction in in, you know,

19:36 reducing those mortality rates or disease incidents

19:38 in the case of type two diabetes.

19:40 Um, you could go above that and we'll

19:41 get into that when we talk about dose response.

19:43 But I just want people to kind of be aware of that's kind of like the range

19:47 that we're talking about here is like any

19:48 anywhere between 5 to 35% like risk reduction.

19:52 Yeah.

19:52 And I think the main thing too then to also

19:54 mention before you get into the risk reduction was

19:57 and this was I think the most unique aspect

19:59 of the study is they calculated something called the health equivalence ratio.

20:03 So basically what they wanted to know in this study

20:05 was how many minutes of light activity or vigorous activity

20:10 do you need to do to get the equivalent amount

20:12 of risk reduction to a minute of vigorous intensity activity.

20:15 So it was this they called it the health equivalence ratio in this study.

20:20 They they were basically looking at you know does this one to two going back

20:23 to the 1:2 rule that we talked about does this one to two rule hold up?

20:27 Do you need if you do twice as much um moderate activity,

20:31 does it give you the same disease reduction as a mo

20:34 a minute of vigorous or is there like this skewed ratio?

20:37 Is there more vigorous activity?

20:38 You know, does that give you more risk

20:40 reduction compared to a minute of, you know, light or moderate activity?

20:43 So, when we're talking about it, you know,

20:45 a lot of these studies just look

20:46 at risk reduction at X level of physical activity.

20:49 One of my favorite parts of this study

20:50 was this health equivalence ratio thing that we're

20:52 going to talk about because it really um

20:54 sheds some light on the impact of vigorous activity.

20:56 That's great.

20:57 I love it.

20:58 Um, okay.

20:58 So, I think the biggest headline from this study was that vigorous

21:03 intensity physical activity was it wasn't a two to, you know,

21:07 it wasn't twice as better than moderate intensity, right?

21:10 We're talking anywhere between four times better

21:13 to almost 10 times better than moderate intensity exercise, which is pretty big.

21:18 Um so first of all when it comes to all cause mortality it seems as though

21:23 one minute of vigorous intensity physical activity was

21:27 equivalent to about 4 minutes of moderate intensity activity.

21:33 So basically in terms of reducing all cause mortality

21:36 right so this is the death from all non

21:38 non-acalental causes right [snorts] and um if you think

21:41 about that you know vigorous intensity physical activity is

21:43 four times as potent in terms of you know

21:47 you can get the bigger bang for your buck

21:49 four times as potent at at reducing the risk

21:51 of all cause mortality than moderate intensity physical activity.

21:54 That's pretty big.

21:55 Um but it actually gets even bigger

21:57 when we look at cardiovascular related mortality.

22:00 And this is a really really important point

22:03 because you know cardiovascular disease is the number

22:07 one cause of death in the United States

22:09 in many developed nations including many European nations.

22:13 Um so it's something that's really really important

22:17 and what I'm about to say will blow people's minds.

22:20 I know it blew mine and that is that vigorous intensity physical

22:23 activity in [snorts] for every one

22:25 minute of vigorous intensity physical activity you

22:28 had to perform 7.8 eight minutes almost eight minutes of moderate intensity

22:34 physical activity to get the same

22:35 reduction risk reduction in cardiovascular related mortality.

22:39 I mean that is insane, you know.

22:43 So it it kind of like you know if you're

22:45 thinking about I'm spending 75 minutes doing mo sorry doing

22:51 intense like more vigorous types of exercise you're running

22:54 or cycling or whatever and you're thinking about that and go

22:57 how much time will I have to spend doing

22:59 moderate intensity physical activity to get that same benefit health

23:03 benefit on reducing my cardiovascular disease mortality risk you'd

23:06 have to you'd have to multiply it by essentially eight and that's huge right

23:12 um Another big one is type two diabetes.

23:14 So, this one isn't so surprising to me either and probably not to you as well.

23:18 Um, vigorous for every 1 minute of vigorous intensity physical activity,

23:22 you had to spend about 9.4 minutes doing moderate intensity physical activity.

23:27 So, it's almost 10 times as powerful

23:30 at reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

23:34 And it's really not it's it it's not that um surprising

23:38 because we do know that exercise intensity really does drive a lot

23:41 of the metabolic adaptations and benefits that occur from exercise

23:45 with respect to improving insulin sensitivity

23:48 and blood glucose regulation and whatnot.

23:50 But I mean 10 times nearly 10 times right that's nuts.

23:55 Um and then the last big I would say headline

23:58 here with respect to comparing vigorous to moderate is cancer mortality.

24:02 So for every one minute of vigorous intensity physical activity,

24:06 you had to spend about 3.4 or 3.5 minutes um doing

24:10 moderate intensity physical activity to get

24:12 the same reduction in cancer mortality.

24:14 So still underestimating, you know,

24:18 if you're looking at the physical activity guidelines,

24:20 underestimating the effect that vigorous intensity physical

24:22 activity has on every single health outcome.

24:27 You know, I mean, it's just I feel like

24:30 if people were to think about it like this, they

24:32 would get so much more dopamine from their like

24:35 more vigorous workouts where they would just be like,

24:38 "This is really doing something, you know,

24:40 this is really doing something beneficial for my overall

24:43 health and for like the way I age." Um, so

24:46 and I think maybe that's something we talk about later,

24:48 but I just think that this could and probably

24:51 should change the way like these wearable device companies

24:54 program their algorithms and program their the way they

24:57 like gamify physical activity almost to enhance the um,

25:01 you know, the rewarding aspects of the activity that you're doing.

25:05 Oh yeah, definitely definitely we should talk about that and I 100% agree.

25:08 Um, but before we get there,

25:11 let's you're they're going to talk a little bit more about

25:13 the insane difference between vigorous

25:15 physical activity and light physical activity.

25:18 I mean, it's it's so crazy to think about

25:21 um the difference between those that the time efficiency

25:25 is like you just you can't you can't ignore

25:29 you can't ignore how efficient vigorous physical activity is.

25:32 Yeah.

25:33 Some of these numbers were kind of incredible in the study and like

25:36 some sometimes you look at them you're like does this like make any sense?

25:38 But the numbers were insane for the health

25:41 equivalence ratio of this light activity.

25:43 Now moving from what you were just talking about moderate

25:45 to what's the equivalence of light activity to vigorous activity.

25:48 So for all of the main outcomes including cancer light activity u one minute

25:53 of vigorous activity was equal to 53 to 94 minutes um of light activity.

25:59 So to get the same mortality risk reduction as 1 minute of uh running,

26:04 you might need say an hour or so of gentle walking.

26:07 Just kind of using a practical example there.

26:09 Wait, just pause for a minute.

26:10 One minute of vigorous physical activity.

26:13 So let's you know, let's just listen to this.

26:15 An hour equivalent to an hour of like gentle walking.

26:20 Time efficient right there [laughter] for sure.

26:23 Um for diabetes prevention, it was nearly an hour and a half.

26:26 So 94 minutes of light activity was equal to 1 minute of vigorous uh intensity

26:31 activity for the cardiovascular disease outcomes.

26:34 Um 73 minutes for cardiovascular dis disease mortality,

26:37 86 minutes for um major adverse cardiovascular events.

26:41 And then for cancer mortality, this one was the largest one.

26:44 Um 1 minute of vigorous activity was equal to 156 minutes.

26:48 So nearly 2 and a half hours of light intensity um activity.

26:52 So I think all those numbers again they seem a little bit extreme but you know

26:56 that's what the data were showing and I

26:58 just think it goes to show that even like

27:01 as we just talked about not even high-intensity

27:03 interval training just vigorous purposeful kind of efforts

27:06 zone 2 or above had this massively outsized

27:11 benefit on health outcomes compared to light intensity activity.

27:15 And I think you know this I think you know you and I have talked

27:17 about high intensity before and this isn't

27:19 to say that the light intensity activity is useless.

27:22 Um obviously any we both agree any movement is better than just sitting around.

27:26 Um but the study did find some benefits.

27:29 So for all cause mortality and diabetes prevention there

27:32 were some benefits to doing more light intensity activity.

27:35 Um but there were some outcomes.

27:37 So say for cardiovascular disease mortality, stroke, heart attacks.

27:41 It actually didn't really seem to have much of a benefit.

27:43 Doing more light intensity physical activity didn't significantly reduce.

27:47 So there were, you know, 5 to 10% risk reductions,

27:49 which the authors actually didn't consider to be

27:51 meaningful in the context of this study.

27:53 So doing more physical activity if it were light didn't seem to produce an extra

27:58 risk reduction for a lot of these outcomes

28:00 other than diabetes and all-c cause mortality reduction,

28:04 which I think is kind of important to uh point out.

28:07 There was a quote in the study from the authors.

28:09 They said not even the largest amounts of daily LPA or low-intensity

28:13 physical activity can elicit the health

28:15 benefits of moderate or vigorous intensity.

28:17 So I think that tells us kind of all we need

28:19 to know about the study that was kind of a very apt conclusion.

28:23 Yeah, I I I agree.

28:24 I mean I think I think I was reading in the paper that you

28:28 know it was it the for light physical activity it was capped at like 15%.

28:33 you got like a 15% reduction in, you know,

28:36 cardiovascular related mortality and some of these things,

28:38 but like you know, it just it didn't go beyond that.

28:40 Even if you did hours and hours and hours,

28:42 that's like that's what you were capped at or like 10% for cancer,

28:46 something like that.

28:47 So, it's like again, you're just like,

28:49 you know, you just you could for hours be doing light

28:52 physical activity and you're only going to get that like 10% cap, right?

28:55 There wasn't really a there wasn't really a dose response,

28:57 a potent dose response observed in the study.

28:59 whereas um with the vigorous intensity physical activity there

29:03 was but like before I I get to that I do want to I did forget to mention um

29:07 the risk of having a heart attack or having a stroke.

29:11 So these are these adverse events you were

29:13 talking about with vigorous intensity physical activity for every

29:16 one minute of that vigorous activity you needed

29:19 about um 5.4 minutes of moderate intensity activity.

29:23 So again, you know, heart attacks, strokes,

29:26 like those are major events that you want to avoid.

29:28 And so, you know, you could you could you could be so much more

29:31 time efficient if you're doing vigorous physical

29:34 activity versus the moderate even and certainly light.

29:36 I mean, that's like again,

29:38 I don't want to like you said being sedentary is a disease.

29:42 We know that being sedentary is

29:43 an independent risk factor um particularly for cancer.

29:46 And I think that was where you were saying there was actually more was it?

29:49 Yeah, cancer benefit.

29:51 Uh it was uh let's see I think it was

29:53 just for all cause mortality and diabetes was for light activity.

29:56 Cancer cancer did have that huge equivalence

29:59 when it came to the light versus vigorous.

30:02 It was like 200 156 minutes I think of

30:05 you know light activity you needed for the risk reduction of vigorous.

30:08 Um but yeah no dose response for cancer for light activity either right.

30:11 Um but yeah so be so being sedentary is bad.

30:14 So anything that makes you not sedentary is better.

30:18 But I mean, if we really if we're talking about being physically active,

30:22 I'm going to be I'm going to be honest.

30:23 I think we need to be talking about at least moderate,

30:25 at least preferably vigorous.

30:27 And in fact, vigorous,

30:28 it doesn't even have to be as vigorous as we usually talk about on this podcast.

30:32 I mean, we're talking I talk about a lot about the the benefits

30:35 of going high intensity for the brain and all the, you know,

30:37 it is still time efficient,

30:38 but but right now we're talking about vigorous and it

30:41 has a little bit of a wider range, right?

30:43 So, a little more room.

30:44 Yeah.

30:45 which I think is a I think is

30:46 kind of liberating as well because we're not saying,

30:49 "Oh my god, you need to do 300 minutes of high-intensity interval training."

30:53 The Norwegian 4x4, right?

30:54 [laughter] Yeah, exactly.

30:55 The Norwegian 4x4.

30:56 It's you just I mean,

30:57 if you get that amount of zone 2 just exercise is is beneficial.

31:02 So, it's not Well, maybe, you know, we'll talk about this later,

31:04 too, but yeah, it doesn't you don't need to be doing constantly hit.

31:07 It's just these crazy benefits with this purposeful

31:11 zone 2 even intensity movement is pretty pretty incredible.

31:15 It's that we're really just dramatically

31:16 underestimating the power of doing exercise,

31:20 you know, and and getting our heart rate up.

31:21 I know we're not measuring heart rate, but essentially they do correlate, right?

31:24 um with the dose response curves with vigorous exercise we

31:27 did see a linear effect both vigorous and moderate intensity

31:31 both but with the vigorous I know that you could

31:34 spend about 30 to 40 minutes per day doing this vigorous

31:38 type of exercise and that was associated with 50%

31:41 or more greater reduction in like many of these categories

31:45 for health outcomes you know cardiovascular related mortality all cause

31:48 mortality so type two diabetes incidents right 50% or more reduction.

31:54 That's pretty robust.

31:56 And again, that was at the higher

31:57 end of the vigorous intensity physical activity.

32:00 Um, but there's definitely a dose response that that was seen there.

32:03 Yep.

32:03 And with moderate, too.

32:04 So, up to about 50 minutes per day, you kind of saw this linear dose response,

32:08 uh, this risk reduction up to about 50 minutes per day of moderate activity.

32:11 And then after that, you didn't see more

32:13 risk reduction basically from getting more moderate activity.

32:16 And then moving on to light activity, as we sort of already just mentioned,

32:19 not much of or zero dose response relationship.

32:23 So you do some light activity, you get about a 10 to 15% risk reduction,

32:27 but doing more of that up to say even 2 to three hours

32:30 a day of that extra light activity didn't really seem to reduce risk much more,

32:35 right?

32:35 Um, okay.

32:36 So let's I think that's pretty clear

32:38 that we are dramatically underestimating the value of vigorous

32:40 intensity physical activity in in terms of reducing

32:44 the risk of a variety of different, you know, negative health outcomes, right?

32:49 And so that's pretty clear, but the question is why is that, right?

32:54 And this is something that I would say

32:56 we've sort of talked about on the podcast before.

32:58 I've had a lot of different exercise physiologists, Ben, Dr.

33:02 Ben Lavine, Dr.

33:03 Martin Cabala on the podcast,

33:04 and we've talked a lot about the adaptations to physical activity.

33:08 Um, so I want to kind of start off

33:10 with the effects on cardiovascular health and the adaptations

33:14 that occur in the cardiovascular system because I think

33:17 it's probably one of the most important concepts here.

33:20 And um, it does really come down to this idea of the stronger the stimulus is,

33:27 the greater the adaptation.

33:29 Right?

33:29 Now, obviously you can always take something to the extreme case, right?

33:33 If you were to exercise all the time non-stop, like that's not good.

33:37 But we're not talking about that.

33:38 So the stronger the stimulus, the better better the adaptation.

33:42 And one of um just to kind of reiterate

33:45 to people before we talk about the adaptations,

33:48 you know, remember one minute of vigorous physical

33:51 activity was equivalent to almost eight times, right?

33:55 So 8 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity.

33:59 That's a big difference.

34:00 Um, and so one of the big adaptations

34:05 here really comes down to increased blood flow.

34:08 It's just getting your blood pumping moving

34:12 because what happens is there cause this causes

34:15 what's called sheer stress on your vascular

34:18 system on the interior lining of the arteries.

34:21 And what shear stress is is essentially just the friction of the blood

34:25 flow against this interior lining of the arteries in the vascular system.

34:28 Right?

34:29 there's a friction there.

34:30 And so the stronger the exercise,

34:33 the more vigorous the exercise, the faster your heart is pumping.

34:36 And that's why heart rate does come into this.

34:39 The the more your blood flow is moving, right?

34:42 So you're getting a stronger sheer stress.

34:44 And that is actually not a bad type of stress.

34:47 It's a good type of stress.

34:48 The sheer stress causes your endothelial cells lining your arteries

34:54 to adapt um and in a way where it improves vascular function.

35:00 It improves endothelial function and it causes

35:03 these endothelial cells to secrete beneficial molecules.

35:07 So one of those would be nitric oxide.

35:10 Many people have heard of that.

35:11 And the other one would be prosttocyc.

35:13 And both of these compounds are causing vasoddilation.

35:18 you know, they're improving blood flow,

35:20 but over time and as you continue to repeat this sheer stress,

35:25 what happens is you're improving the flexibility of your arteries,

35:30 you're making them more resilient.

35:32 They're able to handle stress better.

35:34 You're improving their overall functioning and you're making

35:36 them more resilient and resistant to atheroscerosis, right?

35:40 And that is essentially I think at the crux of what's going on here

35:45 with respect to why vigorous intensity

35:47 exercise is so beneficial for cardiovascular health.

35:50 Um we know Dr.

35:51 Lavine has come on the podcast and talked about you know some of the benefits

35:55 of doing more vigorous intensity exercise

35:57 and how you get more stronger cardiovascular adaptations.

36:01 And if we look at even that study he did in middle-aged adults where he took,

36:05 you know, 50-year-olds and put them on a pretty, you know,

36:09 I would say the exercise program, if you if you look at look at it,

36:12 it was like all all vigorous according to this definition of vigorous.

36:15 Um, and it was what, five hours a week, about five hours a week,

36:19 five to six hours a week, I think, right?

36:20 And and so if we're if we're talking about the definition in this study,

36:23 it was pretty much all vigorous because they were either running doing

36:26 like a zone two type of run or they were doing Norwegian 4x4,

36:29 some high-intensity interval training, some resistance training in there.

36:32 And after 2 years, they reversed the structural

36:35 aging of the heart by about 20 years, you know, and that's pretty profound.

36:39 So the cardiovascular adaptations are real.

36:42 They are real.

36:43 Um yeah and I mean a lot of the if you read any of the randomized

36:47 control trials too just comparing moderate intensity

36:51 training to high intensity interval training if

36:54 you look at the effects on endothelial

36:55 function like you mentioned in artery stiffness

36:57 it's it's not it doesn't even come

36:59 close like when even when they're volume matched.

37:01 So you say you do the same amount

37:03 of volume of moderate intensity and high intensity interval training.

37:06 It's high-intensity interval training always wins

37:08 in terms of improving vascular function.

37:10 And it's just it all comes down to really that sheer stress that you mentioned.

37:13 It's so higher intensity more shear stress it's be it's good sheer stress

37:17 is almost like a bad name for it because like you said it's

37:19 kind of sounds bad you don't want sheer stress but like you do

37:22 the more sheer stress you get the better and it's not just a simple

37:26 dose response it's just not like an area under the curve I guess type

37:29 of thing it's you can't just do more

37:31 low intensity because you're not getting the it's

37:33 the intensity of the sheer stress not the amount over time that actually matters

37:36 for those endothelial adaptations so it's really important

37:39 to do hit uh in that respect for sure

37:41 that's a really good point because it's kind of like thinking of a light breeze

37:45 blowing across your face versus a strong wind, right?

37:48 Like there's a difference between a light like you can't have

37:50 you could have a light breeze last for a really long time,

37:53 but it ain't going to knock over some trees, right?

37:55 Like it's not going to like you need that you need that stronger wind.

37:58 And that's what you need with the sheer stress in your vascular system.

38:01 It needs to be stronger to to cause, you know,

38:04 to basically signal to your body, hey, this is stressful.

38:07 Let's respond to that stress.

38:09 But it's not so stressful, it's not a heart attack kind of stress, right?

38:12 like that's too much stress, right?

38:14 It's just enough to like give you these adaptations so that

38:18 when you have really stressful situations happening,

38:21 your your your arteries and your vascular system respond better, right?

38:25 So, um I really like that you pointed that out.

38:28 Let's let's talk about, you know,

38:30 how [snorts] heart and lung function together, right?

38:33 Like the cardiorespiratory, you know,

38:35 system and how vigorous intensity activity really plays a role there as well.

38:39 Yeah.

38:39 So I think similar to kind of the cardiovascular stress, the endothelial stress,

38:43 higher intensities of exercise are going to increase you know metabolic demand,

38:48 increase your oxygen demand in your muscles which is going to force

38:51 your body to need it needs to deliver more oxygen to your working muscles.

38:55 That means your heart is going to work harder.

38:57 Your stroke volume is going to go up.

38:59 So stroke volume for people who may not be familiar,

39:01 it's the amount of blood that your heart is pumping out per beat.

39:04 So it fills with blood and it pumps it out

39:06 and and usually expressed in something like liters per minute.

39:09 That would be your your stroke volume.

39:11 It forces your stroke volume to go up.

39:13 Your heart rate obviously goes up during more vigorous exercise,

39:15 but also your lungs are going to fill and you know

39:17 be stressed more to deliver more of that oxygen to your body.

39:20 And so that's another one of these reasons why vigorous and you

39:24 know even zone 2 intensity of exercise up to a point,

39:27 they're going to stress the cardio the cardiac system,

39:29 the heart and the lungs more.

39:30 That's going to force your body to adapt

39:31 and your heart is going to get stronger.

39:33 your lungs are going to get stronger.

39:35 And I think one of the key adaptations there is obviously

39:39 again the the increase in in stroke volume that you get.

39:42 That's one of the best predictors or that's

39:44 the main thing that increases when V2 max increases.

39:47 So if you look at these studies showing, you know,

39:50 what's the main adaptation that gives you a better V2 max,

39:52 it's higher stroke volume because that gives you a greater cardiac output.

39:55 Your heart can pump more blood to your body.

39:57 You can use more oxygen during exercise.

40:00 And so that's one of the reasons why HIT

40:03 is so effective because it increases your oxygen demand more.

40:06 It forces your heart to work harder

40:07 and you're improving that that stroke volume.

40:09 And then same thing with the lungs.

40:11 I think the lungs are a little bit not less adaptable,

40:14 but they do adapt less because in a lot

40:16 of people unless you have asthma or something like

40:17 that, the lungs are a little overbuilt uh maybe

40:20 for exercise like most of us have plenty of lung function,

40:23 but the heart is really what's going to adapt there.

40:24 And so I think that you know again

40:27 is why we see this efficiency with his vigorous

40:29 intensity exercise in this study and in others

40:31 because you're just the heart is being stressed more.

40:35 You're going to have a stronger heart if you're engaging

40:37 in more higher intensity activities that are forcing the heart to adapt.

40:41 Going back to Ben Lavine I think he cited you know that similar study but he

40:45 talked about how especially after say age

40:47 50 60 70 you need these higher intensities.

40:52 Again, it doesn't have to be hit, but it has to be pretty vigorous to force

40:55 the heart to adapt and prevent cardiac fibrosis,

40:58 cardiac stiffening of the heart.

41:00 If you don't get that high intensity training, um,

41:03 you know, like low-intensity really just doesn't cut it.

41:05 And so, you know, in this study,

41:06 the cohort that we're talking about, they were aged 40 to 79.

41:09 So, that might be why vigorous exercise

41:11 had this outsized benefit on specifically cardiovascular outcomes,

41:14 that 8 to1 ratio like you mentioned,

41:16 that incredible like higher than some of these other outcomes.

41:19 Um so I think that's why there was that outside benefit as well.

41:23 Yeah.

41:23 I think for people um with respect to like

41:26 why is it important to improve your V2 max

41:29 you know your cardiorespiratory fitness that being a pretty

41:32 important marker for longevity and you know for lowering

41:36 your your risk of death from all causes of mortality

41:39 right so essentially like we've talked about this before

41:41 last podcast we did together right people with the highest

41:44 cardiorespiratory fitness as measured by V2 max they

41:48 had a 5year increased life expectancy compared to the lowest

41:52 people with the lower or lowest cardiorespiratory fitness

41:55 or the they had a 80% lower allc cause mortality right so any way you look at it

42:00 you know if you are in that higher cardiorespiratory

42:03 fitness range you are talking about you know a lifespan

42:07 life expectancy you know extension if you compared

42:10 to if you were not in that in that range

42:12 for sure and after about age 30 to 40 into your 50s

42:16 your v2 max starts to decline about 10% per decade so

42:19 if you're not doing something to maintain that yes you can build

42:22 it up as much as you can into your 30s and 40s,

42:24 but if you aren't engaging in moderate

42:27 to vigorous intensity exercises at age 40, 50,

42:30 60, 70, your V2 max is just going to continue to drop 10% per decade,

42:34 the only way to maintain that or even build

42:36 that is to do these more vigorous types of exercise.

42:39 Yeah.

42:40 And I I think this is kind of important again, you know,

42:42 I know people are going to be

42:43 confused because we've talked about vigorous intensity exercise

42:46 in such a different context than this study

42:48 and also than the physical health guidelines.

42:51 And you know, I just going back to the study that um Marty

42:54 Gabbala cited on the podcast a few years ago where he talked about,

42:58 you know, 40% of people that are

43:00 meeting the guidelines for moderate intensity physical activity.

43:04 So that would be 150 minutes to 300 minutes a week

43:07 doing this what is defined as moderate intensity activity, right?

43:10 Um they are unable to continue

43:12 to to improve their their cardiorespiratory fitness,

43:15 their V2 max and unless they're engaging in more vigorous types of exercise.

43:19 So again in this regard it seems as though the vigorous

43:23 intensity exercises is not as vigorous as perhaps once thought, right?

43:29 What are what are your thoughts on that?

43:31 Yeah, I I would agree.

43:32 And I think one of the reasons maybe why we're seeing that signal

43:36 there is because when we talked about the methodology of the study,

43:40 these devices were capturing all the activity

43:42 that they were doing throughout the day.

43:43 And you and I are going to talk about

43:44 I think exercise snacks and vulpa a little bit later.

43:47 But and I think that's why we're seeing this extra added benefit

43:50 of this vigorous and moderate activity

43:52 is because this device was capturing everything,

43:55 not just those intense those sessions that people remembered.

43:58 So it was really getting like the full spectrum

44:00 of activity throughout the day and seeing this massive risk reduction.

44:04 But yes, I mean with regard to the non-responders thing,

44:07 I think that specifically might refer to, you know,

44:09 adding some deliberate high-intensity interval training into your, you know,

44:13 uh, schedule during the day.

44:15 But yeah, um, I think it's another illustration of how

44:18 just like the low intensity kind of, uh, doesn't cut it.

44:22 and the guidelines, you know,

44:24 some people don't respond well to the guidelines and we either need an update

44:26 or you need to do more or probably some combination of the both.

44:30 Yeah.

44:30 More emphasis on on vigorous I think too as well.

44:34 Um okay so some of the other adaptations let's talk about you

44:36 know the type two diabetes lowering the new diagnosis of type two

44:40 diabetes was very profound right here

44:42 we're talking about almost vigorous intensity

44:45 was almost 10 times as effective right that's big so why is

44:49 that and again that is something that I've talked about a lot

44:52 and I did a podcast like a solo cast on vigorous intensity exercise

44:56 and talked about you know why vigorous intensity seems to be really key

45:00 uh for improving metabolic health um when you when you are working harder,

45:05 when you're working your muscles harder, um when you're when you're basically

45:10 forcing your muscles to produce energy quicker,

45:14 um what ends up happening is you're not using your mitochondria all the time.

45:18 You're sometime you're going to be using your mitochondria,

45:20 but you're sometimes going to be making energy without them as well.

45:22 And so you're going to be making

45:24 something called lactate as a quote unquote byproduct,

45:28 which is not necessarily a byproduct.

45:29 It's an active metabolite.

45:31 And why is that important?

45:32 Because lactate is not only a metabolite in some

45:37 in some ways it actually acts as a hormone.

45:39 It is a signaling molecule that's signaling

45:41 to you know other proteins to other organs

45:45 to to basically work harder and like respond to this hard work that is going on.

45:50 Right?

45:50 So um with improved insul in insulin sensitivity we do know

45:53 that vigorous intensity exercise for one it does cause your muscles to contract.

45:57 Right?

45:57 So you can actually just in and of that of itself if your muscles are um

46:02 you know contracting you can basically cause 50

46:05 to 100 times more um contractions than at rest.

46:09 That's a lot right and that actually forces glucose to come into your muscle.

46:12 So your muscle is a big sink for glucose.

46:15 Um but your muscle also has to transport that glucose across it.

46:18 And that's where lactate comes in because when you're working hard,

46:21 you are produc your muscles are producing lactate and that lactate

46:26 um essentially signals to your muscle to increase these glute 4 transporters.

46:32 These are the transporters that are responsible for bringing glucose

46:35 out of your circulation and pulling it into the muscle.

46:38 And um and so lactate is actually what is responsible for that for that you know

46:42 signaling to increase the glute 4 number

46:46 or transllocation to the cell surface muscle cell surface.

46:50 Um and so what happens is that you're basically with the more

46:53 intense or the more vigorous intensity the activity the more

46:57 glucose you're going to bring in because you're having more

46:59 of those transporters there and the transporters

47:01 actually last around for a while.

47:03 So there's a lasting effect.

47:04 It's not like they just they're there when

47:06 you're working out and then they go back.

47:07 No, they stay active for quite a while, right?

47:10 Bringing more glucose in.

47:12 And so it's it's un it's unbelievable to um to to actually

47:16 think about how beneficial vigorous intensity

47:19 activity is if you're thinking about, you know, a 10 times efficient.

47:23 I've seen I know that um there's been

47:25 a couple of studies showing that vigorous intensity activity,

47:28 you can do like 15 minutes of vigorous intensity activity and that's equivalent

47:32 to like 45 minutes of moderate intensity in terms of um glucose regulation.

47:36 I would say there's even other studies out

47:38 there showing like a 1:5 ratio as well.

47:41 But this study itself, if we're talking about outcome, not just biomarker data,

47:46 we're talking about outcomes, we're talking about new diagnosis of diabetes,

47:50 it suggested a 1:10 ratio almost.

47:52 It was 9.4, but almost 1:10.

47:55 Um, so I really do think that this confirms that, you know,

47:58 obviously we've looked at a lot

48:00 of biomarker data with these randomized control trials.

48:02 We've had Marty Cabala on the podcast talking about,

48:05 you know, tons of these the, you know,

48:07 trials showing that if you do high-intensity interval

48:09 training for volume matched moderate intensity continuous exercise,

48:14 you will get improvements in insulin sensitivity and blood

48:18 glucose regulation and a lot of different metabolic markers.

48:21 Um, again, volume matched.

48:22 Um, it wasn't necessarily 1 to 10,

48:25 but it was there there were improvements whether it was like a 1 to three,

48:28 one to five, you know, whatever it was,

48:31 it was definitely for volume matched, it was better.

48:33 Um, but but we're talking about again even more than

48:36 that if we're looking at the actual type 2 diabetes diagnosis.

48:41 Yeah.

48:41 I mean, I feel like it aligns with a lot

48:43 of his studies that he's done because I mean, I know his group has done some

48:46 of these sprint interval training studies where they're doing less

48:50 than 10 minutes of exercise per workout and then

48:52 you compare that to a 45 to 60 minute.

48:54 So, it's it almost kind of lines up with what we're seeing in this study,

48:58 the 1:10 ratio with the in, you know,

49:00 in some of his actual randomized control trials,

49:02 that 1 to 10 sort of ratio between

49:04 the sprint interval training and the moderate training too.

49:07 Um, and one of the things though I wanted to mention,

49:09 I think I think the signal here for diabetes risk was probably the most drastic,

49:14 that 1 to 10 ratio of moderate to vigorous.

49:17 And obviously, you know, exercise is important for it.

49:20 But I think what's important,

49:21 probably why this signal is showing up in this study is because the movement

49:25 throughout the day is what I think is so important for glucose control.

49:29 Yeah, if you do a workout in the morning

49:31 and don't do anything the rest of the day,

49:32 you're going to be probably pretty insulin sensitive throughout the day.

49:35 But what really is better is doing, you know,

49:38 10 15 minute kind of bouts of movement throughout

49:40 the day if you're really trying to improve your glucose control.

49:43 And so I think that's one of the reasons why in this study

49:46 that objectively measured every single type

49:48 of physical activity people were doing,

49:50 the vigorous exercise was shown to be so beneficial

49:53 because you're if you're just moving more throughout your day,

49:56 you have better glucose control.

49:58 You're definitely going to have better long-term outcomes

50:00 then for diabetes risk and things like that.

50:02 you're going to have lower HBA1C,

50:04 better in insulin sensitivity, lower fasting glucose.

50:07 Um, and so I think that's sort of why that that's

50:09 showing up here in in the actual outcomes like you said,

50:11 which for most people are more important than the biomarker data probably,

50:15 right?

50:15 Yeah.

50:16 And I also um just want to add on to that like a couple of things.

50:19 One, you know, that makes a lot of sense too, by the way.

50:21 You know, doing the exercise throughout the day

50:23 and the fact of the matter is this specific

50:25 study that was published in Nature Communications did

50:28 pick that up because of the accelerometer data.

50:30 But I do want to emphasize the the the lactate

50:34 signaling here and just knowing that as you

50:36 are getting that vigorous intensity exercise that is really

50:40 like it's not just a muscle contractions glucose in thing.

50:42 It's a glute 4 transporter where you're you are

50:46 for a longer period of time throughout the day

50:48 and perhaps even the next day somewhat but definitely

50:51 for 24 hours it's those transporters are active and ready.

50:55 And so I think that's another really just powerful effect of you know

51:00 the intensity of exercise on top of the fact that we also know

51:04 that when you engage in more

51:05 vigorous intensity exercise the lactate also signals

51:09 to another protein called PGC1 alpha which

51:12 is responsible for the growth of new mitochondria.

51:14 This is mitochondrial biogenesis.

51:16 So this is happening in your muscle cells as well.

51:18 Um and this is improving metabolism of not just glucose

51:21 but you know other substrates like fatty acids as well.

51:25 And so I think there's this long-term effect.

51:28 And if we're looking at, you know,

51:29 type two diabetes, we're not just looking at biomarkers.

51:32 Like you I don't know you necessarily would pick that up on biomarker

51:35 data if you're just looking at blood glucose regulation or insulin sensitivity.

51:38 But if you're looking over the course of like,

51:40 you know, several years, and you have better mitochondria,

51:44 more healthy mitochondria on top of like, you know,

51:47 improved glucose regulation through the glute transporters and all that.

51:51 Um, you probably are also going

51:52 to just see a healthier metabolic profile, right?

51:55 I mean, that's something else to to for sure.

51:58 I think unless you were measuring like with a continuous glucose monitor,

52:02 you really wouldn't measure that, you know?

52:03 I think sometimes these fasting I don't know how

52:05 much stock to put in say like a fasting biioarker

52:07 of your fasting blood glucose taken one time per year

52:11 like every single year like what does that really mean?

52:12 But now that we have access to CGMs and technology like that, I

52:16 think you could actually you would actually see it in that data,

52:19 right?

52:20 um especially well you know and we don't really have any good

52:23 biomarkers for mitochondrial health like that's

52:26 like not it's it hasn't been translated

52:28 to the to the clinic yet it's something that researchers can do in fact um

52:32 looking at talking about some of the studies

52:33 that Marty Gabbala cited on the podcast

52:36 previously for volume matched exercise highintensity

52:39 interval training is better at increasing mitochondrial

52:42 biogenesis than moderate intensity exercise again it

52:45 has to do with that stronger stimulus causing the adaptation When you're forcing

52:49 your muscles to work so hard that they

52:52 can't produce all the energy they need from just using their mitochondria alone,

52:56 they it forces them to also use just glucose.

52:58 Without mitochondria, your your your muscle's like,

53:01 "Dude, I need more mitochondria.

53:03 This isn't working, right?" So,

53:04 that's an adaptation that's happening and it makes sense.

53:07 And so, I know a lot of people for for I've

53:09 at least gotten a lot of questions from people talking about,

53:12 "But I thought zone 2 training was the best for mitochondria." And

53:15 you know, it depends on what we're talking about here.

53:17 If we're talking about mitochondrial biogenesis, you know,

53:20 great zone 2 does in increase mitochondrial biogenesis,

53:23 but you know, if you start to go a little more vigorous,

53:26 you actually can get a stronger stimulus.

53:28 And I know that's um what we're talking about here, vigorous includes zone 2,

53:33 but I'm just saying generally speaking,

53:36 um it the more it just gets back to this whole idea, right?

53:39 The more intense the stimulus, the greater the adaptation to a degree.

53:42 Obviously, you don't want to go to the complete

53:44 extreme where it's like all you do is work out.

53:47 Like I'm not going to say that's all you do, but you definitely work out a lot.

53:50 Sometimes it seems like that.

53:51 My wife will tell you maybe sometimes it seems like that.

53:54 But yeah, I regarding the the biomarkers of mitochondrial function.

53:56 I know that's not what we're like talking about,

53:58 but it is interesting to you know hopefully someday we have like

54:02 a an ability to look at you know a non-invasive test of say your mitochondria.

54:06 I think the best thing right now which a lot of which people

54:09 have access to but it's kind of burdensome is to test your lactate during

54:13 exercise or your resting lactate if your resting lactate is elevated or if you

54:17 do low intensity exercise and your lactate

54:20 levels are spiking up your mitochondria probably

54:23 are not good that's like a poor way to describe it but either

54:26 poor mitochondrial function not enough mitochondria so

54:29 I think like a lactate test during

54:31 exercise is probably the best way like

54:32 currently non-invasively without having a muscle biopsy

54:35 done but sooner or later hopefully we have some sort of biioarker to say,

54:39 you know, what do your mitochondria look like?

54:41 Yeah.

54:41 No, and yeah, people can buy these lactate

54:43 meters and it's a little fingerprint test you can

54:45 do and I've done it several times and it's it's kind of fun to do as well.

54:48 So, I encourage people to try that out.

54:50 I think another sort of surrogate marker in my mind is also

54:54 looking at oxidative stress markers because

54:57 when your mitochondria are not functioning well,

54:59 if they're damaged, if they're unhealthy,

55:02 they will produce more reactive oxygen species.

55:05 they are the major generator of reactive oxygen

55:07 species and so you know that's another sort

55:10 of surrogate marker I would say as well

55:12 but yeah it's kind of annoying that we don't

55:14 have a direct marker of mitochondrial function and I

55:16 know people are working on that but you

55:18 know everything takes a long time to to make its way to to our our homes

55:23 yeah for sure unless you want to go get one of these huge like

55:26 health panels done that cost probably several thousand dollars to do but I I

55:30 mean honestly like maybe maybe it doesn't matter too much but it would be

55:33 interesting for people to know you Does

55:36 this protocol actually increase your mitochondria or not?

55:38 I mean, the biohackers out there want to know, right?

55:40 They do for sure.

55:41 And we were talking about this urthan a compound on on the drive up here

55:45 and and how that's important for mitochondrial health

55:48 and we're actually going to cover it in in newsletter,

55:50 but um I'm I'm taking it right now and I'm like it's all it's all

55:54 what [snorts] am I measuring to know if it's really doing anything, right?

55:56 I guess B2 max would be something to measure,

55:59 but you have to have good baselines and I don't have all that.

56:02 So, you know,

56:03 yeah, sometimes it's all uh I guess exercise in faith, maybe.

56:07 Hoping this boosts my mitochondria.

56:09 At least I think it does.

56:10 So,

56:11 before we continue, I just want to mention something important.

56:14 If you're finding these episodes valuable,

56:16 please consider subscribing to the channel and clicking the notification bell.

56:20 It's the only way to ensure you'll be notified when a new episode goes live.

56:24 Many people assume they'll be alerted automatically,

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56:29 We cover a lot of detailed evidence-based content here and I

56:32 want to make sure that you don't miss any of it.

56:35 Now, back to the episode.

56:36 Okay.

56:37 Well, I want to circle back to sheer stress because um that also plays

56:41 a role in some of the mechanisms

56:44 behind the reduction in cancer mortality as well.

56:48 And that's something that uh Dr.

56:49 Carrie Karnier talked about on the podcast.

56:52 So, you know, the the reductions in cancer

56:55 related mortality weren't as high as, you know,

56:57 the type 2 diabetes risk reduction, but they're still significant enough, right?

57:02 You're talking 3.5 you for every one minute of vigorous activity,

57:06 you have to spend 3.5 minutes of, you know,

57:08 moderate intensity activity, almost four minutes, right?

57:11 You if you if you round up, I I would say it's almost four minutes.

57:14 Um, why is that the case?

57:16 Well, there's probably a lot of again mechanisms,

57:18 but one that I think that's super interesting is

57:22 that sheer stress that's improving your endthelial function that's improving,

57:26 you know, the function of your arteries and in your blood vessels,

57:31 it's also playing a role in killing cancer cells.

57:34 And you might go, what what are you talking about?

57:36 So when people when people have a primary tumor,

57:40 the cancer cells that make up that primary tumor don't all

57:43 necessarily stay at that site of the of the tumor, right?

57:47 So what happens is often times you have these cancer

57:50 cells that'll escape the primary site either through the lymphatic system,

57:54 they get into circulation, and when they're in circulation,

57:58 they're called circulating tumor cells.

58:00 And those circulating tumor cells are not like your normal blood cells.

58:04 They're not like your normal white blood cells

58:06 or red blood cells in your in your circulation.

58:08 They are all kinds of messed up.

58:10 They have tons of different mutations.

58:13 Your body is ready for them to die.

58:16 Like they are ready to die.

58:17 They are primed to die.

58:18 And the only reason why these cells are not dying is because they have found

58:23 a way to increase all of their proteins

58:27 that are basically stopping them from dying.

58:29 And it's like a balancing.

58:30 There's like these proteins inside your body that that promote death and there's

58:34 these other ones that like stop death and it's really just a balance.

58:39 So like when the balance goes into promoting death, the cell dies.

58:42 If you've got that anti- death, so they're called anti-apoptic proteins,

58:46 if they're higher, like even if they're like supposed to die,

58:49 as long as that signal is saying no, don't die,

58:52 they won't die even though they're all kinds of messed up, right?

58:54 And so cancer cells are that's that's kind of why you know chemotherapy,

58:59 radiation, these things that are very they're damaging, right?

59:02 It's a it's a major stress on all cells.

59:06 It's a death signal.

59:07 It's why it's it does effectively kill cancer cells is because

59:11 they're they already have so much of that pro-death signal there.

59:14 There's just a little bit of the anti-aptopic

59:16 signal and they're just waiting to raise above it.

59:18 And so that's what those things do, chemo and you know and so on.

59:22 So, um, unfortunately,

59:23 they also kill normal cells as well because it's a very strong death signal.

59:27 Um, when it comes to these circulating tumor cells, they're ready to die.

59:30 And I know I went on a tangent.

59:31 I'm sorry.

59:32 I studied cancer cancer in my in graduate school.

59:35 Um, they're they have these mechano sensors

59:38 on their cell surface and and so they're very

59:41 sensitive to mechanical forces and movement and that is

59:45 something that can act as a death signal.

59:47 So if you think about the shearing forces, right, shearing forces of blood flow,

59:51 that is a friction against these cancer cells that again are responding in a way

59:57 that it's it's a it's a negative stress to them and they die.

1:00:00 And that's something that's been shown in vitro.

1:00:02 Um it's it's something that if you

1:00:04 look at people that have circulating tumor cells,

1:00:07 if they engage in physical activity,

1:00:09 they're less likely to have cancer recurrence or cancer metastasize.

1:00:13 So, the circulating tumor cells,

1:00:14 why why is it so dangerous to have them in circulation?

1:00:17 Well, for one, um let's say you were you already

1:00:20 had cancer and you were treated with cancer successfully, quote unquote.

1:00:24 Let's say you're you you know, you had chemo, radiation,

1:00:27 maybe surgery, maybe all of the all three of them, right?

1:00:29 And and now you're tumor free, whatever.

1:00:31 Um so, you're in remission.

1:00:33 But the problem is is that currently in the clinic,

1:00:36 we're not looking we're not doing single

1:00:38 cell analysis and looking at every single cell

1:00:41 in every single organ to make sure there's not even one cancer cell left, right?

1:00:44 Like we're just saying, "Oh, the tumor, we don't see the tumor.

1:00:47 Therefore, we, you know, cancer's gone." What happens is these single

1:00:51 cells they do escape and if they get

1:00:54 into circulation they'll maybe go some maybe

1:00:56 they'll travel to another organ like the liver

1:00:58 or something and um it might take a couple of decades three four decades and all

1:01:04 of a sudden you're having symptoms and you're

1:01:05 like well I have liver cancer now right

1:01:07 so cancer recurrence happens maybe it's in the even in the same the same organ

1:01:12 whatever um the the point here is

1:01:14 that the circulating tumor cells are really they play

1:01:16 a role in cancer metastasis to other organs and they play a role in cancer

1:01:20 recurrence in people that have already had cancer

1:01:22 and perhaps been treated successfully with a cancer.

1:01:24 So, um the shearing forces are really important here because they do kill

1:01:28 the circulating tumor cells that is associated

1:01:30 with improved outcomes either in cancer recurrence

1:01:33 and mortality and that is reflective in what this study here is showing

1:01:37 um that vigorous intensity physical activity is

1:01:39 associated with a lower uh cancer mortality.

1:01:42 And I know that was a very long- winded way of explaining it,

1:01:45 but it is a little bit of a passion of mine.

1:01:47 So, um I think I think there's other mechanisms at play,

1:01:50 but I do like the shearing forces one because

1:01:53 you know it's something that people don't think about,

1:01:55 but it is I think once you once you hear it and you think about it,

1:01:58 you're like, "Oh, that makes sense.

1:01:59 It makes sense." It makes sense to me.

1:02:01 I mean, I've heard you explain it, you know,

1:02:02 multiple times and even the studies that, you know,

1:02:05 Carrie Kier was involved in and that we kind

1:02:07 of researched and you guys talked about in your podcast.

1:02:10 It's like exercise directly kills it kills the circulating tumor cells,

1:02:13 which I think is um interesting.

1:02:15 Oh, I was wondering, you know,

1:02:16 whether you think the stronger sort of risk reduction maybe from exercise

1:02:20 in this study could have been due to just the fact that, you know,

1:02:23 cancer does have obviously a genetic and kind of environmental component.

1:02:26 So maybe that's why we're seeing that one to it

1:02:28 was like four maybe ratio instead of the 1

1:02:31 to 10 or 1:8 ratio with cardiovascular disease

1:02:34 or uh diabetes risk that we saw in this study.

1:02:37 Yeah, I mean there's obviously cancer,

1:02:39 there's so many things that are involved

1:02:40 and I think you're going to talk a little

1:02:42 bit about some of the hormonal and other

1:02:43 cellular responses which I mean hormonal response

1:02:46 like there's there's a lot of things going on with with cancer but yeah there

1:02:49 there is a genetic component and there's other

1:02:51 environmental factors that play a role as well.

1:02:54 Yeah.

1:02:54 So then just moving on to I guess we had two more

1:02:56 mechanisms sort of um the hormonal cellular responses as you mentioned I

1:03:00 think you kind of covered that pretty pretty well but obviously

1:03:03 with these vigorous intensity activities you

1:03:05 get more adrenaline more cortisol more growth

1:03:08 hormone anything that you get with low intensity activity is sort

1:03:10 of just heightened with high-intensity activity

1:03:13 hence the idea that you don't want

1:03:15 to overdo high-intensity exercise because you get too much cortisol too much

1:03:19 you know adrenaline and if you don't let that recover and then go

1:03:21 back to normal and do it again it could lead to you

1:03:24 know burnout or overtraining however we we want to define it but um

1:03:28 you just get sort of this more better hormonal millu I guess

1:03:32 during um highintensity and vigorous exercise that you get during low inensity

1:03:36 exercise which I think explains probably the reduction in all of these you

1:03:40 know different outcomes diabetes cancer um cardiovascular disease but the last

1:03:45 thing I think that is important with vigorous exercise for especially when

1:03:50 we're talking in the context of older adults is this muscle fiber recruitment.

1:03:54 So most people will be aware

1:03:55 that muscle fibers are categorized into different types.

1:03:58 We have type one which are referred to as slow twitch muscle fibers.

1:04:03 Then we have type two.

1:04:04 There are subsets of type two and maybe don't need to go

1:04:07 into the details of those but we have 2 A, 2 B and then 2X.

1:04:11 They kind of go on this spectrum from very fast oxidative

1:04:15 glycolytic to sort of these this mix between aerobic and glycolytic fibers.

1:04:19 But we'll just put them in these buckets of type one and type two for now.

1:04:22 type two or fast twitch, type one or slow twitch fibers.

1:04:25 During low intensity activity,

1:04:26 we're going to activate those low or those slow twitch fibers.

1:04:30 So, if you're leisurely walking, you're doing the dishes,

1:04:33 just to use some of the examples from from this study,

1:04:35 you're going to be activating those low intensity, those type one fibers.

1:04:38 Even if you're doing something like endurance exercise, for the most part,

1:04:43 probably type one fibers are going to be activated.

1:04:45 And then as you increase the intensity of exercise,

1:04:48 increase the force of, you know, or the weight of something that you're

1:04:51 moving if you're lifting weights that you're going

1:04:53 to progressively activate more type one fibers and then

1:04:56 move on to the type two fibers eventually.

1:04:58 And so in the context of this study, I think, you know,

1:05:00 why are we seeing this outsized impact

1:05:02 of of vigorous movement throughout the day?

1:05:05 Well, if you're doing more vigorous movement,

1:05:07 you're activating these type two fibers more um

1:05:10 and you're giving them more of a stimulus.

1:05:12 And type two fibers are the type of fibers

1:05:14 that will atrophy first and lose strength first with with age.

1:05:18 So you lose type two fibers first and then we move

1:05:20 down to losing those type one or weakening of type one fibers.

1:05:24 And so the more vigorous exercise you're

1:05:26 engaging in just even if it's just chores, even if it's if you pick up a box,

1:05:30 you're engaging type two fibers depending on how heavy that box is.

1:05:33 Obviously if you're carrying your kid, you might be engaging type two fibers.

1:05:37 Um, so just doing this more vigorous activity throughout the day

1:05:40 and then obviously engaging in highintensity exercise and vigorous exercise,

1:05:44 you're going to engage more of those type two fibers

1:05:46 and those play I think a role important role in a few things.

1:05:49 So for diabetes, going back to what you talked about, more glucose.

1:05:53 So if you can activate those type two fibers,

1:05:56 you're going to be able to use more glucose,

1:05:58 better your insulin sensitivity, lower your fasting blood glucose.

1:06:01 Um, but with all cause mortality too,

1:06:03 it's kind of interesting because, you know,

1:06:05 I know that one of the people who talks

1:06:07 about this most is like Peteria, but you know,

1:06:09 the leading cause of death or one of the leading

1:06:11 causes of death among older adults is you fall,

1:06:13 you break a hip, you're in bed for several weeks, you never recover from that.

1:06:17 Well, what type two fibers are important

1:06:20 for, these are these are the power fibers.

1:06:22 These are what if you trip over something and you need

1:06:24 to catch yourself or you need to just prevent yourself from falling,

1:06:28 the type two fibers are what are going to be responsible for that.

1:06:31 And if you have more power producing fibers,

1:06:33 stronger type two fibers, you're going to be less likely to fall.

1:06:36 Hence, you're going to be less likely to experience these disuse

1:06:39 atrophy or these um catabolic crises as you've referred to it before.

1:06:44 And so, I think that when you look at a cohort of adults like this one,

1:06:48 over 70,000 people who inevitably are probably experiencing falls at older ages

1:06:54 and that could be one of the reasons

1:06:55 contributing to their all cause mortality rate.

1:06:58 um that go, you know,

1:06:59 they're doing more vigor vigorous activity, they're less likely to fall.

1:07:02 They probably have a lower um chance of experiencing all cause mortality.

1:07:07 And so just trying to tie that into maybe

1:07:09 a few of the different outcomes in this study,

1:07:11 diabetes and all-c cause mortality,

1:07:12 I think that's why we see the benefit there is because if you're

1:07:15 doing more of this low in or this high intensity activity throughout the day,

1:07:18 you're engaging more type two fibers and we got to protect those.

1:07:21 Um they're the ones that go first.

1:07:23 Power and strength decline with age and that's

1:07:25 a result of the loss of type two fibers.

1:07:27 primarily.

1:07:28 Really good points, Brady.

1:07:29 I I 100% agree.

1:07:31 I mean, I think that's probably really tied

1:07:32 into the the reduction in all cause mortality.

1:07:35 And it's also, you know, one of the big reasons why I I I engage in CrossFit.

1:07:39 I do across a lot of CrossFit types

1:07:41 of training because I'm getting I'm getting the functional,

1:07:46 I'm getting the explosive power, I'm getting the strength, you know,

1:07:49 I'm I'm doing I'm doing all that type of um resistance training,

1:07:52 but it's mixed in with aerobic and these high-intensity vigorous,

1:07:56 you know, types of workouts.

1:07:58 And so, you're really just getting it all.

1:08:00 And and for me, it's it's a very

1:08:02 timeefficient great way to get the whole shebang right.

1:08:06 It's not just the the cardiorespiratory um improvements but also the effects

1:08:12 on the muscle improvements and muscle health and strength as well.

1:08:14 Um, so the other thing I that I wanted

1:08:17 to mention with respect to the adaptations was inflammation, right?

1:08:20 I mean, so the more intense the the exercise stimulus,

1:08:25 you're in you're actually generating inflammatory compounds.

1:08:28 IL is 6 being like the big one

1:08:30 and and that IL6 is is actually um signals to, you know,

1:08:35 have this anti-inflammatory response.

1:08:37 So, it's funny if you look at the curves,

1:08:39 you'll see like a timing effect where it's like isleisle 6 peaks

1:08:42 and then like it shifts like I don't remember how much later it is,

1:08:46 maybe an hour or so,

1:08:47 you start to see isle 10, which is an anti-inflammatory cytoine.

1:08:50 And I'm not talking about in this study,

1:08:52 I'm talking about other studies that have looked at inflammatory biomarkers,

1:08:54 but you'll see this strong anti-inflammatory response.

1:08:57 And this is part of that um you

1:08:59 know something I've talked about before in the podcast

1:09:01 for several years is this hormetic response where

1:09:04 you're in you're engaging in this type of stressful

1:09:08 activity which in this case we're talking about

1:09:10 physical activity and the more vigorous it is

1:09:12 the more stressful it is and that is

1:09:14 a stress on the body and that does cause inflammation.

1:09:17 It does cause oxid oxidative stress.

1:09:18 is causing is a stress on the body, but your body is able to adapt to that.

1:09:23 And the adaptations is really what we're going for, right?

1:09:26 And so the stronger you're getting this inflammatory response,

1:09:29 you're getting that anti-inflammatory response that then lasts, right?

1:09:33 It's like it's not just like countering the a little

1:09:35 bit of inflammation that you generated during your workout.

1:09:37 It lasts throughout the day.

1:09:39 And so like as you experience other stressful things in life,

1:09:42 whether it's you ate your, you know, ate a bag of chips or whatever, I mean,

1:09:46 obviously you're going to have the calorie intake,

1:09:48 but you the inflammation generated,

1:09:50 you're going to deal with it just a little bit

1:09:51 better than if you hadn't have been physically active, right?

1:09:54 And so the in inflammation and the anti-inflammatory

1:09:57 adaptation that's that's responding to that inflammation

1:10:00 is also important because inflammation is a a driver

1:10:02 of many chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease,

1:10:05 including cancer, type two diabetes, you know, it plays a role in everything.

1:10:08 brain aging and we didn't get into that but I do feel like this is a good time

1:10:12 to just mention it because we're talking about mechanisms

1:10:15 and I've mentioned you know the lactate signaling molecule we

1:10:18 know that lactate generated from exercise particularly as you get

1:10:22 into that vigorous type of exercise that it does get

1:10:26 into the brain there's actually human studies showing that gets

1:10:28 into the brain and we know it's a signaling

1:10:30 molecule for brain drive neurotrphic factor very important growth factor

1:10:34 for brain health to grow new neurons to, you know,

1:10:38 improve the neuroplasticity of the brain.

1:10:41 Um, plays a role in brain aging.

1:10:43 So, it's it's not it it just goes everywhere, right?

1:10:47 It's not just the the outcomes we're looking

1:10:49 at, but also brain I think brain health.

1:10:50 I wish that would have been looked at like Alzheimer's disease, right?

1:10:53 Like that would have been another really I really

1:10:55 wish they would have put that on there because

1:10:56 I I think and I don't know if we've covered it,

1:10:58 but I'm sure that there are studies out there because the UK bio

1:11:02 bank is so huge and they've published hundreds of studies at this point,

1:11:05 but I'm pretty positive and I can't site audit off the top of my head,

1:11:09 but I know there are studies linking some of the same

1:11:11 UK bioank physical activity data to slower brain aging.

1:11:14 And what's cool about the UK bioank is

1:11:16 they literally have measures of not just Alzheimer's risk,

1:11:19 but physical atrophying of these different brain areas.

1:11:23 And so, yeah, again, I don't have a study,

1:11:25 but I know that they've published studies

1:11:27 from the UK bio bank showing probably dose responses

1:11:29 with moderate and vigorous exercise and physical aging

1:11:32 of the brain and then lower risks of dementia, Alzheimer's, you name it.

1:11:36 I mean, it's, you know,

1:11:37 it's pretty uh inevitable that you're going to see that risk reduction there,

1:11:40 right?

1:11:40 It's it's pretty clear again like if

1:11:42 you can do that vigorous intensity activity,

1:11:44 you're going to get you're going to get more bang for your buck.

1:11:47 It's going to be worth so much more than we previously thought.

1:11:50 It's not just two times as good.

1:11:52 I mean, it's it's much more than that.

1:11:54 It's four times as good.

1:11:56 It's eight times as good.

1:11:57 It's 10 times as good, right?

1:11:58 Depending on the outcome we're looking at.

1:12:00 It's it's just so much better than we thought.

1:12:02 Yeah.

1:12:02 And I think that I think us discussing the mechanisms, you know,

1:12:06 while I think it's super important

1:12:09 because it the mechanisms explain why vigorous

1:12:13 exercise is more beneficial for health outcomes

1:12:16 than we thought with that 2:1 ratio.

1:12:19 And that's why it's has such this outsized benefit because it's it's

1:12:22 setting this louder signal to the body regardless of what you look at.

1:12:25 You look at cancer, you look at blood glucose,

1:12:27 you look at um the cardiovascular adaptations,

1:12:30 the overall signal is just louder.

1:12:31 And it's not just a matter of, oh,

1:12:33 you burn twice as many calories, so it's twice as good for your health.

1:12:36 No, you're this.

1:12:37 You can't really quantify it.

1:12:38 It's an exponentially better increase for X

1:12:41 outcome that you're looking at this physiological mechanism.

1:12:45 It's an exponential increase when you up that intensity.

1:12:47 And so I think it's important

1:12:49 for people to know what mechanisms are responsible.

1:12:51 And then knowing that you can see well

1:12:53 this is obviously why vigorous exercises is better

1:12:56 or vigorous physical activity rather to use the correct

1:12:58 phrase um compared to lighter and moderate intensities.

1:13:01 Brady I totally agree and I think that you

1:13:03 know obviously like for people that are focused

1:13:06 on weight loss like great 2:1 ratio you know

1:13:09 that's that's perfect for you to consider as well

1:13:11 as counting your calories or you know figuring

1:13:13 out you know how what you're consuming cuz

1:13:15 that that's obviously an important factor for weight loss

1:13:17 but like we're not talking about weight loss here.

1:13:19 We're talking about reducing our risk for, you know,

1:13:22 cardiovascular disease and cancer and diabetes.

1:13:24 And so, it is really important to realize that 2 to1 ratio is just out the door.

1:13:28 It's out the door.

1:13:29 And and and we didn't talk about all the mechanisms.

1:13:32 I mean, we could we could spend like five hours just

1:13:34 talking about mechanisms and people would be so angry with me.

1:13:36 But like immune related responses, I mean,

1:13:38 there's so many other things going on.

1:13:40 When you exercise, there's like 500 different molecules changing and you know,

1:13:45 different physiological processes happening.

1:13:47 I mean, you just That's why you can't pill up exercise.

1:13:49 Y like you just can't it won't ever happen.

1:13:52 Yes, I said that it won't ever happen.

1:13:54 Someone's going to come out with an exercise pill and it's going to totally

1:13:56 not be an exercise pill and it's going to be one aspect of it,

1:13:59 but like you just there's so many different physiological adaptations that are

1:14:03 occurring in different organs and you're just it's it's it's really a panacea.

1:14:08 It really is.

1:14:10 Yeah.

1:14:10 Everybody wants that say, "Oh, well PGC went out,

1:14:12 but that's like the exercise pill." It's like,

1:14:14 well, that's just that's just one part of it.

1:14:16 Small part.

1:14:17 It's one small part.

1:14:18 I know.

1:14:18 I mean, there's so many things to focus on.

1:14:21 I mean, that's why I I've really like in the past few years,

1:14:25 exercise has been like the focus of not only this this podcast,

1:14:28 but just in my personal life.

1:14:30 Like, I've it's a priority.

1:14:32 Like, no matter what, I get exercise.

1:14:34 And it could just be 10 minutes.

1:14:36 It could be 10 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise.

1:14:38 And now after this study,

1:14:40 I'm even more excited about my 10-minute workouts because there

1:14:43 I'm really getting more than I even thought I was.

1:14:46 Totally.

1:14:46 So, um, let's talk about some of these, you know,

1:14:48 sort of short bursts of physical activity,

1:14:51 starting with the vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity studies.

1:14:54 These are the Vilpa studies.

1:14:56 Um, we've talked about these before on the podcast.

1:14:58 Marty Kabala came on.

1:15:00 He's been a co-author on some of these papers.

1:15:02 Um, talking about this concept where,

1:15:05 you know, researchers are using these accelerometers.

1:15:08 They are measuring people's everyday movement

1:15:11 in these short bursts that they don't necessarily consider.

1:15:15 if you sit down and ask them about

1:15:17 their physical activity for the past week, right?

1:15:20 So, these short burst of, you know,

1:15:22 carrying groceries up three flights of stairs or I

1:15:26 raced to the get to catch my, you know,

1:15:28 subway because I didn't want to miss it or yeah,

1:15:30 I was playing with my new four-month old puppy

1:15:33 puppy like I do twice a day or whatever.

1:15:35 Like, these are short bursts of your physical activity

1:15:37 where you're getting your heart rate up in everyday situations.

1:15:40 It's not necessarily a structured exercise snack,

1:15:42 which you know also is another way of doing that, but it's again it's

1:15:46 the stuff that people are just sort of everyday doing as part of their lives.

1:15:49 And um there's just I think mounting evidence now there's beneficial outcomes

1:15:55 with these types of short bursts of physical activity that we just can't ignore.

1:16:00 We just can't ignore it anymore.

1:16:02 And I've probably cited this one nature study like a million times,

1:16:05 so I forgive me for the people that have heard me say this a million times.

1:16:08 I think you're responsible probably for the I don't know however

1:16:10 many like downloads of that article on their website they have.

1:16:13 Yeah, it's pretty popular.

1:16:14 It's pretty popular um study.

1:16:16 So people these these short vilas can be

1:16:20 anywhere between 1 minute to 3 minutes in length,

1:16:23 you know, they're they're they're not super long.

1:16:25 It's certainly not 10 minute on the pelon, right?

1:16:27 One to three minutes and they're done multiple times a day, right?

1:16:30 Because it's like just your everyday life is what we're talking about.

1:16:33 And so I one of the most profound findings of the study I like to talk

1:16:38 about one of the one of the Velpa studies is um on the upper end of that.

1:16:42 So people that are doing like the three minutes

1:16:44 short burst and they're doing that three times a day.

1:16:46 So a total of almost 10 minutes a day, right?

1:16:48 It's like 9 minutes a day they're getting this physical activity

1:16:52 and those individuals have a 50% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality,

1:16:57 40% reduction in all cause mortality, 40% reduction in cancer related mortality.

1:17:02 pretty robust.

1:17:04 I mean, especially if you start looking at some of these other studies

1:17:06 where people are engaging in their structured

1:17:08 physical activity based on their memories,

1:17:10 their their brains ability to recall in the last week what they've done done,

1:17:14 it's even more robust than some of that.

1:17:15 And and the reason I like that and and I know that you

1:17:19 feel the same is that because it's actually capturing what's really going on.

1:17:23 It's capturing the real movement here.

1:17:26 And um so these studies these these vis

1:17:29 vigorous intensity lifestyle studies there's multiple studies of them.

1:17:33 There was one also that was recently done in women and looking at like some

1:17:37 of their um their cardiovascular disease risk

1:17:40 and it was is pretty profound I think.

1:17:42 So some of the some of the risks in the women

1:17:44 um let's see if I can find that study.

1:17:47 Yeah.

1:17:47 So it was a 45% lower risk of major cardiovascular events in women

1:17:52 doing Vilpa and they were just doing 3.4 4 minutes per day.

1:17:56 So this is much less than nine minutes as I just discussed.

1:17:59 So they're doing 3.4 minutes of filas per day

1:18:02 and that's a 45% lower risk of major cardiovascular events.

1:18:05 A 67% lower risk of heart failure compared to the women

1:18:10 that weren't doing any of these physical activity bursts throughout the day.

1:18:13 And if you think about that, that's not a lot of time.

1:18:15 And you know, we all have aging parents.

1:18:18 like like just imagine if we could get them to do

1:18:21 4 minutes a day of some kind of vigorous intensity activity.

1:18:26 Now, maybe your parents are retired and they're not necessarily

1:18:29 trying to get to the subway or the train or whatever.

1:18:31 is going to be more of a structured exercise snack.

1:18:34 And I'll let you kind of talk about some of that.

1:18:36 But like we, you know,

1:18:37 they can engage in jumping jacks or maybe chair squats or people that are,

1:18:41 you know, maybe not older, they can do burpees or, you know, you know,

1:18:44 body weightight squats or, you know, push-ups,

1:18:46 like a combination of all these things.

1:18:48 Um, and we're talking about really having a pretty

1:18:51 outsized effect on reducing some of these negative health outcomes.

1:18:54 Um, and the other thing is is that what was so

1:18:57 interesting is there's another study that really it was a Vilpa study.

1:19:01 When I say Vilpa again people,

1:19:02 I'm talking about vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity.

1:19:05 This is not something this is this isn't going to the gym and doing Pelaton.

1:19:09 This is just your movement throughout the day.

1:19:11 Um, being as measured by with an accelerometer.

1:19:14 Um, the benefits were equivalent to people

1:19:16 that were doing structured exercise, right?

1:19:19 So there was like 62,000 people um who

1:19:22 actually did exercise and they compared that to people

1:19:25 who were doing Vilpa and it was crazy

1:19:28 but the same outcomes in terms of risk reduction.

1:19:31 It was comparable and I love that.

1:19:34 I love it so much because it really it really shows

1:19:39 that your body doesn't care if it's structured exercise or not.

1:19:42 It just wants the movement.

1:19:44 It just wants the movement.

1:19:45 So super important to to point out.

1:19:48 Yeah.

1:19:48 And a lot of those studies, most of those studies too were in nonex exercisers.

1:19:52 So they were in people who reported or said that, you know,

1:19:55 I don't regularly engage in structured exercise

1:19:58 and I just then they just did Vilpa.

1:20:00 So the non-ex exercisers benefited that and like you said,

1:20:03 similar to people who exercise, which is kind of a crazy finding.

1:20:05 Um, and it's interesting cuz reading all

1:20:07 these studies and in the past few years is

1:20:10 is something that I definitely had changed my mind on in that I used to think,

1:20:14 oh, if you're not going to the gym for 30 to 40 minutes,

1:20:17 and obviously it depends on the goal you're training for.

1:20:19 If you're training for a competition or something,

1:20:21 you need to do a dedicated training session.

1:20:23 But if it's kind of just for health outcomes,

1:20:26 it used to be, oh, you 15 minutes at least,

1:20:29 and if you're not doing 30 to 45, it's kind of a waste of time.

1:20:31 But now it just seems that even if it's less than

1:20:34 10 minutes and they even removed it from the physical activity guidelines.

1:20:37 The guidelines used to say 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous or 150

1:20:41 to 300 minutes of moderate performed in bouts of 10 minutes or longer.

1:20:45 And they actually nixed that part from the guidelines.

1:20:48 It's not even in there anymore.

1:20:49 So they no longer acknowledge that you need to do it in 10 minutes or more.

1:20:52 You can do it in whatever length bout you want to.

1:20:55 Obviously probably a minute maybe minimum, but to four minutes is great.

1:20:59 And so it's something that I've changed my mind on personally in regards

1:21:02 to if I'm talking to people about how they should do activity.

1:21:04 It's no longer it needs to be 30 minutes or more.

1:21:07 It's just like accumulate, accumulate, accumulate as much as you can.

1:21:10 Like you said, your body, it really doesn't care.

1:21:12 It's not your body doesn't have a watch

1:21:14 or a clock where it's measuring your physical activity.

1:21:17 It kind of just knows like how much you're doing

1:21:18 over the day and the stimulus that it's that it's getting.

1:21:21 For sure.

1:21:22 Yeah.

1:21:22 And I was talking to someone yesterday about this who, you know,

1:21:26 is interested in health and wants to be healthy but like hates exercise.

1:21:30 And their response was, "Thank God.

1:21:32 Like the running with my dog that I'll like do in burst or like with my kid like

1:21:37 counts." And I think that's important because it's not

1:21:40 that we're disincentivizing people to not engage in structured exercise.

1:21:44 We're rewarding people who do this unstructured

1:21:47 exercise and we're saying keep doing it.

1:21:50 It matters.

1:21:50 It adds up.

1:21:52 And I'm totally with you on it.

1:21:53 You know, these these Vilpa studies,

1:21:55 these vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity studies

1:21:58 have really changed my mind as well.

1:21:59 I was probably less of a snob than you because you're an endurance athlete,

1:22:02 but I was somewhat of a snob thinking like, no,

1:22:05 you have to like you have to have structured time and like,

1:22:08 you know, get your heart rate up and really like dedicate time to this.

1:22:12 and and these studies even at first I was kind of like well how

1:22:15 is it you know okay let's say 10 10 minutes a day you're doing

1:22:19 that every day so that's what 70 minutes it was even less than

1:22:22 that was 9 minutes so it was even less right so like you're like okay

1:22:25 around 70 minutes a week I'm getting

1:22:27 a 50% reduction in in cardiovascular related

1:22:30 mortality but the guidelines say 75 minutes a week is the minimum now I

1:22:35 get it like this study is saying no we underestimated what the vigorous you

1:22:40 know activity really is giving you in terms

1:22:42 of benefit for these health outcomes, right?

1:22:45 Because of the way everything was calculated,

1:22:47 it wasn't based on health outcome data and it wasn't based on, you know,

1:22:52 actual empirical data measuring, you know, how vigorous, you know,

1:22:56 your exercise is and how that correlates to health outcomes.

1:22:58 And so this is all it's so important.

1:23:02 It's unbelievably important and I'm so excited about this paper.

1:23:05 Yeah.

1:23:05 And I mean it makes total sense too

1:23:07 because if you look at the these are separate

1:23:09 studies but if you look at the VPA studies

1:23:11 okay so say you're doing four minutes a day

1:23:13 of vila well then what is that that's equivalent

1:23:16 to maybe for cardiovascular disease that's equivalent to 45

1:23:19 minutes a day of moderate activity or um you

1:23:23 know 100 maybe 200 minutes of low inensity physical activity.

1:23:27 So if you use the equivalence ratios that we were just talking about and apply

1:23:30 it to the Vilpa studies that also kind of adds up with like the risk reduction.

1:23:33 So that's kind of exciting to me.

1:23:36 Also, you see this convergence.

1:23:37 Some of it is coming from the same bioank data, which is interesting,

1:23:40 and it's the same group, but you see that convergence there of okay, well,

1:23:44 the story is actually like making sense now that we

1:23:47 this or at least like the data are are lining up with one another,

1:23:50 which is exciting to see.

1:23:51 I love I love how you put that because you

1:23:53 know like even just this morning I I spent you know

1:23:56 sometimes I'll spend 10 minutes like just sprinting around

1:23:58 with my puppy like playing chase or tag and um or like

1:24:02 a 5-minute bout and another five-minute bout and now I

1:24:05 have to think about that in terms of okay if that's

1:24:07 if I'm looking at you know cardiovascular related mortality let's

1:24:11 multiply that by eight because that's how much moderate intensity you

1:24:14 know physical activity that's equivalent to and it really does incentivize

1:24:18 you to find ways is to like engage in this sort

1:24:22 of like everyday life like intermittent burst of physical activity

1:24:26 where you're you're like I'm going to find a way

1:24:27 to like move around like hit like run around

1:24:29 and play soccer with my kid or whatever you know sport

1:24:32 with your with your kid or your your puppy or your dog

1:24:34 or I mean it's just I I just love it.

1:24:37 I think it really helps um reinforce the importance

1:24:40 of this like movement throughout the day, right?

1:24:43 I mean this is how humans used to be too, right?

1:24:45 It's a more natural way.

1:24:46 I mean exercise is inherently sort of this weird kind of thing.

1:24:50 I mean, the fact that you're taking time out

1:24:52 of your day to go move is kind of weird.

1:24:54 It's not how we would have evolved, you know?

1:24:56 We just evolved with like lots of movement throughout the day,

1:24:58 low intensity, and then sometimes it would be high intensity.

1:25:00 So, it's like the fact that I woke up this morning at 6:30

1:25:04 and went and just ran 15 miles and then came back to my hotel.

1:25:07 It's like it's weird.

1:25:08 That's not what we were like designed to do, but you know,

1:25:10 obviously it's kind of in fun to do that because you're training for stuff.

1:25:13 But yeah, I think we were more designed for just this different type of activity

1:25:19 throughout the day and vila was like would be inherently a part of that, right?

1:25:24 I mean, we've created this problem of being sedentary, right?

1:25:28 Because of the way we work with exercise, right?

1:25:30 Now we have to like find a solution to that problem we've

1:25:33 created and that solution is now we have to like designate time,

1:25:37 make it like a thing, you know, and so yeah, and then it becomes like this work.

1:25:41 It's like oh and it's some people in their mind they're like oh I have to like

1:25:44 take time to do this whereas like if they were just to you know do some

1:25:48 of these structured exercise snacks right like you know

1:25:50 some examples would be again like you could just

1:25:53 do some jumping jacks or I don't know if you want to get into any of those but

1:25:56 yeah we can talk about some of the exercise snack stuff.

1:25:58 Um I think before I mean a lot of people

1:26:01 have heard exercise snacks because you've talked about it before

1:26:03 but I think what makes them different from Vilpa is

1:26:06 that exercise snacks and some people don't like the name.

1:26:09 I've posted about studies on exercise snacks

1:26:11 on social media and people don't like it.

1:26:13 I don't know if it's because it has this connotation with food,

1:26:15 but I like the idea of calling them like micro

1:26:18 workouts or um maybe like micro doing exercise or something,

1:26:22 but the difference between exercise snacks and vila is that snacks are planned.

1:26:27 So, you kind of set out time to do them.

1:26:28 They're still short, but it's say an example of So,

1:26:32 you gave some examples of Vilpa.

1:26:34 It's oh, if you're commuting to work, you know,

1:26:35 you're going to run up the stairs maybe

1:26:36 with your suitcase if you're traveling or something.

1:26:38 So that's a minute of vila or you're going to sprint to catch the bus.

1:26:42 It's not something that you plan,

1:26:43 but it's something that you injected intensity into.

1:26:46 With exercise snacks, it's different.

1:26:47 It's you set aside time and they have more of a protocol aspect to them.

1:26:51 So I'm going to do five 30 second sprint.

1:26:55 Maybe you have a pelaton at home and it's

1:26:56 next to your desk at, you know, you're working.

1:26:58 You get on the pelon and you just cycle as hard

1:27:00 as you can for 45 seconds and you get off.

1:27:03 You do that five times throughout the day.

1:27:04 Maybe, you know, every hour you do it or something.

1:27:06 So you don't even really have to change.

1:27:08 into exercise clothes, but it's structured.

1:27:10 You planned on doing it or you go out to your home gym

1:27:13 and you do a set of squats or you do a set of uh,

1:27:17 you know, a bench press or something like that.

1:27:19 So, the exercise snacks are structured, but they're still short and they're sort

1:27:23 of just still injected in throughout your day.

1:27:24 So, you don't have to change, you don't have to go to the gym,

1:27:26 you probably don't have to shower after doing them.

1:27:28 Um, that's kind of the idea behind those.

1:27:31 And examples of that I mentioned a couple you know but would be like

1:27:35 a lot of the studies they'll use sprints on a bicycle or something like that.

1:27:38 And what's crazy is that I think you can't do the Vilpa a lot of that comes

1:27:43 from the observational studies but with exercise snacks

1:27:45 people like Martin Gabbala other groups have actually done

1:27:48 studies on them and they've shown improvements in V2

1:27:50 max of two to three milliliters per kilogram of oxygen with just you know 6 to 8

1:27:55 weeks maybe of just performing these exercise snacks regularly.

1:27:58 And that's similar to what you're

1:27:59 going to get through structured exercise training.

1:28:01 A lot of these people are untrained when they start,

1:28:03 so they have a lot of room to improve.

1:28:04 And if you're somebody who regularly trains,

1:28:06 you might not see that magnitude of an improvement.

1:28:08 But I think it goes to show again

1:28:10 that you can get these adaptations with exercise snacks.

1:28:13 If you don't have the time or don't want to make

1:28:15 the time to set aside 30 minutes um a day to say exercise,

1:28:19 you can really just get on the rower, get on your Pelaton for 30,

1:28:22 45 seconds, do that five to 10 times throughout the day.

1:28:25 So that's kind of the idea behind exercise snacks.

1:28:27 You plan them, you set them out.

1:28:29 They have a protocol to them.

1:28:30 That's a little makes them a little bit different than Bila,

1:28:32 but it's still sort of the same philosophy where you don't

1:28:35 have to exercise for 30 to 45 minutes at a time.

1:28:38 Yeah.

1:28:38 My favorite snacks that I do is are just actually air squats.

1:28:41 And doing 3 minutes of air squats burns like you don't have to have any weight.

1:28:46 It's like a different kind of ouch, you know,

1:28:49 than like lift like heavy lifting, which I also do.

1:28:51 Um, and you know, you just you can again

1:28:53 you just like you don't even need any equipment.

1:28:55 You just get up and do them.

1:28:56 But it's nice to know that it's like, okay, three minutes.

1:29:00 Well, if we're talking about,

1:29:01 you know, reducing my cardiovascular disease mortality,

1:29:04 you can multiply that by eight because that's how

1:29:05 much time I just spent doing moderate intensity physical activity.

1:29:08 Or let's say you only do 1 minute.

1:29:10 Again, multiply it by eight.

1:29:11 It really it really puts things in perspective.

1:29:14 And I think, you know,

1:29:15 these sort of short bouts of structured exercise, snacks, or these, you know,

1:29:19 vigorous intensity physical activities that we're doing,

1:29:21 running with our kids or dogs or whatever,

1:29:23 running up the stairs, all these things.

1:29:25 Now, I think we we've talked about them before and all the benefits,

1:29:29 you know, but now I think we can even put numbers to them, right?

1:29:32 Where we can start to go, oh, I just, you know,

1:29:34 this is really like worth eight times the amount

1:29:36 of moderate intensity that I really did save time.

1:29:39 Dopamine, okay, reinforcement.

1:29:41 I'm going to continue to do that.

1:29:42 Right?

1:29:43 The the behavior is going to be repeated.

1:29:45 Um, it gets it gets past the phrasing of, oh,

1:29:48 I only have I only did four minutes of exercise.

1:29:52 Well yeah you only it's only four minutes but we need to stop

1:29:55 thinking in terms of minutes and steps I think because it's those are

1:30:00 like outdated metrics it's minutes are important but what is the value

1:30:03 of a minute of a minute of different type figures or different intensities

1:30:07 of exercise is different a minute is not a minute is not a minute

1:30:10 so we need to just I think get past this idea of yeah

1:30:13 it was just like four minutes or it was just um you know

1:30:18 just we it's just 10,000 steps because what 10,000 steps of how intense,

1:30:22 how what was, you know, we're going upstairs.

1:30:24 It's right.

1:30:25 Context is key there.

1:30:27 I challenge people like to what Brady just said.

1:30:29 I mean, a minute if you just go for a minute leisure stroll,

1:30:33 just walk for one minute and compare that to how

1:30:36 you feel after doing just one minute of air squats

1:30:40 or burpees if you really like want to like you're going to see the difference.

1:30:44 They're not equivalent.

1:30:45 They're not equivalent.

1:30:46 And you can feel it.

1:30:47 You can feel it, right?

1:30:48 I mean that in and of itself and I think that brings us to implications

1:30:53 for these public health guidelines which we've been

1:30:55 hinting at you know I'd say all along.

1:30:58 We can also talk about some of the tech in wearable device as well

1:31:02 but I mean I think the bottom line here and I don't know what

1:31:07 it takes to get updates in these types of guidelines but I think they

1:31:12 need there needs to be an update like this is something that needs to happen.

1:31:16 Um, you know, we have empirical evidence here.

1:31:19 We're not just looking at weight loss.

1:31:20 It's not all about, you know,

1:31:23 caloric expenditure, energy expenditure here, right?

1:31:26 We're looking at actual health outcomes and we're

1:31:28 looking at what it took in terms of like,

1:31:31 you know, the types of exercise to achieve

1:31:33 those risk reductions and those health outcomes.

1:31:36 And right now the 75 minutes to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity activity,

1:31:42 you think that's just that's what you need to do to get,

1:31:44 you know, 150 minutes to 300 minutes of moderate intensity activity.

1:31:48 That 1:22 ratio out the door out the door.

1:31:52 Would you agree?

1:31:52 I mean, it's really I I would agree with that as well.

1:31:55 And I think if you just look at some

1:31:57 of the newer I mean I think clearly, you know,

1:32:00 there are people out there in public health who have

1:32:02 more experience in public health than me and creating guidelines.

1:32:05 I'm obviously probably not qualified to make exercise, you know,

1:32:07 guidelines or but if you look at a lot of the data out there,

1:32:11 I mean, we were talking about this in the drive here.

1:32:13 It's I they are obviously based in some evidence on health outcomes,

1:32:17 but I think that they probably need an update.

1:32:20 And I think that a lot of the data would show you need a lot more moderate

1:32:25 intensity activity or the dose response of that is

1:32:27 much higher than the 150 to 3 minutes,

1:32:30 which actually had been increased a little bit.

1:32:31 They recently added the 300 minutes.

1:32:33 It used to be just 150, but I think yeah,

1:32:35 based on what we've been talking about today, I mean,

1:32:38 they certainly need an update and probably an update where we exclude a lot

1:32:43 of these earlier self-report studies and just say

1:32:46 we have so much data from wearable devices now.

1:32:50 We have big health data.

1:32:51 I mean, you know, and we have companies like now Google and Aura and Fitbit.

1:32:56 I think you Google probably owns Fitbit,

1:32:58 but it's just everybody has a wearable these days.

1:33:00 And the fact that we can't mine some of these larger

1:33:03 data sets like the UK bio bank or the NHANES

1:33:06 and formulate better guidelines that are based on objective evidence

1:33:09 I think is kind of a disservice probably to public health.

1:33:13 Um maybe it's similar to the food pyramid.

1:33:16 I'm not even sure anybody looks at those guidelines and is like okay

1:33:19 I need I'm going to get 75 minutes per week of vigorous activity.

1:33:23 I think they need an update and I

1:33:24 think that the idea that we're just saying yes,

1:33:26 you know, twice as much moderate if you're, you know, been vigorous,

1:33:30 that certainly is um a little bit outdated based on what

1:33:33 we've talked about today and just other data that's out there.

1:33:36 Yeah, I do I do think that I don't know that people look at the food pyramid,

1:33:39 but I do know that people ask me all

1:33:42 the time about how much exercise is optimal for like,

1:33:46 you know, aging the best and and lowering my risk for, you know,

1:33:49 disease X, Y, and Z, right?

1:33:50 And so I do there's definitely a lot of people that are

1:33:52 interested in health that look at those guidelines and even people

1:33:55 like me who are trying to figure out like what are

1:33:58 the guidelines and how do I communicate this information to the public.

1:34:01 I mean I'm I am using those guidelines as well.

1:34:04 Now I feel like my my my you know I' I've shifted

1:34:08 my understanding of that those guidelines and I have a different sort of take

1:34:12 on them where where it's like okay

1:34:14 well maybe we're really undervaluing the importance

1:34:17 of vigorous physical activity and so that needs to be communicated to people.

1:34:22 You know maybe we don't say look this is the new

1:34:25 guideline because obviously like you said we don't make the guidelines

1:34:28 and there's probably a lot that goes into making these guidelines

1:34:30 that we don't quite understand or maybe there isn't I don't know.

1:34:33 Um, but you know, I think we can at least communicate to people that, hey, look,

1:34:39 there's new studies out there now showing that it's

1:34:42 not just a oneto two ratio and and in fact,

1:34:44 depending on the health outcome we're looking at, that ratio changes,

1:34:47 you know, and that's that's how biology is.

1:34:49 It's not just this big blanket thing, right?

1:34:51 I mean, it's we always try to make things simplified for everyone,

1:34:54 but they're not simplified.

1:34:55 Like, there's lots of nuance here.

1:34:56 And I think that they should be communicated in our public health,

1:34:59 you know, guidelines.

1:35:00 they should be they should be communicated

1:35:01 to anyone that's interested in improving their health.

1:35:04 And I do agree with you.

1:35:05 I think um we have so much data now on these wearable devices.

1:35:08 And as I mentioned, you know,

1:35:10 before um I'm on the health advisory board for Google's Pixel.

1:35:13 They did buy Fitbit.

1:35:14 It's now Pixel.

1:35:15 And um I know that they're they do publish a lot like they're one of the few

1:35:19 um groups that have this wearable data

1:35:22 that does academic publications and really are evidence-based.

1:35:25 And so I know they're going to be probably working on this as well.

1:35:28 Um at least updating some of their what what what they're doing as well.

1:35:32 Um and Whoop Whoop does a lot too.

1:35:34 They I feel like every every other

1:35:36 week I'm seeing a Whoop study usually published

1:35:38 in Nature where they they do a lot of interesting stuff with their data too.

1:35:42 So it's just you know showing

1:35:43 that you know physical activity and different types

1:35:45 of exercise and even like when you perform it at different times of day.

1:35:48 I mean, I think this kind of going back to the idea of simplicity,

1:35:53 the public health guidelines for some people like they have to be simple.

1:35:56 And I think that go that has informed sort of this, well,

1:35:59 we're just going to say 150 to 300 minutes or 75 to 150 because it is simple.

1:36:03 If you make it too complex, people get confused and they just say forget it

1:36:06 like I'm not even going to try to do it.

1:36:08 So, I think from a public health messaging perspective,

1:36:12 it's important to sort of have these blanket ranges of physical activity.

1:36:16 But I don't know, imagine a scenario where you have,

1:36:19 you know, how much exercise do I need to do?

1:36:21 Well, for what?

1:36:22 Are you concerned about cardiovascular disease?

1:36:24 Then you probably should do this much.

1:36:26 If you're just concerned about cancer or diabetes,

1:36:28 maybe you need to do this much.

1:36:30 So, we could almost get more granular with the guidelines in a way,

1:36:33 but um I think I understand the idea that public health messaging at some

1:36:37 point needs to be you can't turn people off from the idea that, well,

1:36:40 this is just too complex.

1:36:41 I'm not going to exercise at all.

1:36:42 Um, so it would be interesting to have

1:36:45 a scenario where you have different guidelines for different outcomes.

1:36:47 You know, do you want to age better?

1:36:49 Do you want to are you trying to be like a super high performer?

1:36:52 Or are you just trying to like, you know, control your blood glucose better?

1:36:55 You obviously need a different level of activity for those different.

1:36:57 I would say if we're going to simplify the guidelines that we at least

1:37:00 have to get rid of the 1:2 and maybe go with the lowest ratio,

1:37:03 which was 1 to 3.5, right?

1:37:06 Like that would be but the question is are these guidelines based

1:37:12 more on the outcome data that was used for vigorous activity versus moderate.

1:37:18 Right?

1:37:19 And again going back to the questionnaire

1:37:21 data because it was questionnaire data too, right?

1:37:22 Like we need that there just there needs to be an update first and foremost.

1:37:26 there needs to they need to look at more actual empirical data that you know

1:37:31 as as measured by accelerometers and then

1:37:34 from there it's like okay we are we looking

1:37:35 at how much how much do we need for either vigorous or moderate and then make

1:37:40 the ratio and adjust it there instead

1:37:42 of this two 1:2 based on energy expenditure right right

1:37:46 I agree and it's like we don't even need because we have

1:37:48 so much data I don't even think we need to do use

1:37:50 that assumption anymore we can really say valid like what is what

1:37:53 is the range where you get this maximal risk reduction we have

1:37:55 that and And we can just say okay for the guidelines like let's

1:37:59 use that 5 to 35% risk reduction and say for 5% risk reduction

1:38:03 you need x am minutes and then up to 35 you need

1:38:05 that that's where the dose response is and that's how much activity you need.

1:38:08 I think it would give us much probably different

1:38:11 numbers than we currently have similar to kind of steps.

1:38:14 I mean we do it all the time for steps.

1:38:16 I think with the recommendation of how many steps

1:38:18 you need another thing that probably needs an update but

1:38:22 definitely needs an update.

1:38:22 I mean, I think steps need to go out and it needs to be agree.

1:38:26 It needs to be more like the minutes of of uh either vigorous or moderate.

1:38:30 Probably mostly vigorous because that's like the easiest.

1:38:32 I mean, you could do, you know,

1:38:34 4 minutes of vigorous activity a day and it be actually meaningful um

1:38:37 at least according to the data with the women reducing the, you know,

1:38:40 risk of heart attacks and stuff.

1:38:41 So um but that also reminds me with respect

1:38:45 to these guidelines I know you had mentioned how in like 2018

1:38:48 the guidelines were updated to they removed the the the point

1:38:51 that exercise had to be in bouts greater than 10 minutes.

1:38:55 So that was at least removed.

1:38:56 But I think that we need to go even a step

1:38:58 further and it needs to say you can accumulate these you

1:39:02 know in bouts of one even even as low as one

1:39:05 minute right like it can be accumulation of short bouts of exercise.

1:39:10 Like if people read that it really does like incentivize

1:39:13 them to engage in these like short things where they're

1:39:16 again playing with their playing with their puppy or if

1:39:19 they're working then they're and they you know commute to work.

1:39:22 It's like it's it's really incentivizing them to keep doing

1:39:24 that and perhaps even speed up the pace a little bit, right?

1:39:27 Pick up the pace.

1:39:28 Yeah.

1:39:29 I I think an explicit statement of accumulated in bouts

1:39:33 of one minute to however long you want to make it.

1:39:36 I think that would be a great addition probably.

1:39:39 Yeah.

1:39:39 Um and then the fitness trackers and apps.

1:39:41 I mean that's another thing, right?

1:39:42 Yeah.

1:39:43 I mean I just think about and again I'm not you know I'm

1:39:46 not in this sector and I'm not you know creating these devices but I'm

1:39:50 just imagining you know a scenario where like how cool would it be if

1:39:54 one your wearable activity tracker kind of and a lot of these do it.

1:39:58 I know my aura ring does where it will automatically

1:40:00 just kind of track and suggest activities that I do.

1:40:03 But you know if you have a activity tracker you

1:40:05 go and play for your puppy 10 minutes during the day.

1:40:06 you come back, we sensed an activity that you

1:40:09 just did for 10 minutes and you can, you know,

1:40:11 press a button where it'll log it into your day's activity and then

1:40:14 it will reward you in some kind of like this was worth,

1:40:17 you know, 10 minutes of vigorous intensity

1:40:20 activity for your heart points or whatever

1:40:22 you're getting or maybe you're you get

1:40:23 some sort of metabolic point for that activity.

1:40:26 I think wearable devices integrating that type of um technology in there

1:40:31 for the incentives that dopamine boost like you mentioned would be fantastic.

1:40:35 I mean gamifying it

1:40:36 if if throughout the day like oh I sprinted to catch catch the bus

1:40:39 and my watch logged it and I could look in there and see like what was

1:40:41 that what was that worth regarding the I mean we have so much data

1:40:44 and the ability to do that it would be cool it would gify it and I

1:40:47 think in terms of adherence putting that kind

1:40:50 of things in there some people find

1:40:51 that silly some people that's what they need in order to engage in that type

1:40:55 of activity you need that constant oh my gosh I just gained like 20 heart

1:40:59 points from that vilpa that I did or from that exercise snack that I did.

1:41:02 So I think one that's where I see a lot

1:41:05 of this being implemented where I think it would be

1:41:07 would be super cool and then also just updating yeah

1:41:09 the the value of the physical activity in these devices

1:41:12 where it's it's not just uh oh that activity

1:41:15 was more vigorous so I got twice as many points

1:41:17 as if I did a moderate let's let's put

1:41:19 these health equivalence ratios like integrate them into the algorithms.

1:41:22 Yeah 100% 100%.

1:41:24 I mean, I think that is that needs to be

1:41:26 done um for all the devices and you know,

1:41:30 the one to two it's it it like it's worth so much more than that.

1:41:33 Now, I'm the kind of person that actually doesn't I just

1:41:35 go off the way I feel like I I I work out.

1:41:38 I do a workout and I like it's so important

1:41:40 for my brain and my mental health and my mood.

1:41:42 So, that's kind of what I am seeking when

1:41:45 I'm doing my you even my short exercise next.

1:41:47 I do one minute of like air squats and I feel really good after that.

1:41:51 It's just one minute.

1:41:52 I I really do.

1:41:53 Um, so that's what I need.

1:41:55 But I, like you said, some people really,

1:41:56 and I know people like this who they like

1:41:58 love all this like gamified stuff and and I'm like,

1:42:01 okay, that's more power to you.

1:42:02 That's great.

1:42:02 If that's what it takes and if that's more rewarding

1:42:04 and that's getting the dopamine and it's reinforcing the behavior.

1:42:07 Um, and a lot of people it does, then we need to do it.

1:42:10 It needs to be we need to be reinforcing

1:42:11 that behavior because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, right?

1:42:14 Which I think gets us into this other conversation of, you know,

1:42:20 all out, all intensity or nothing, right?

1:42:23 like, you know, I've definitely gotten some

1:42:25 push back um on social media for being

1:42:28 the person that likes to talk about going going hard or or going home,

1:42:31 but um I don't necessarily say that, but uh

1:42:35 I think it's important to just again point it out.

1:42:39 It doesn't mean that everything you do has to be vigorous, right?

1:42:43 Um, and I think again we keep going back

1:42:46 to the definition of vigorous in this study in the guidelines.

1:42:49 Like it just means that you need to do purposeful stuff throughout the day.

1:42:52 It doesn't mean you always need to do hit.

1:42:54 You do you do need to do some HIT,

1:42:55 you know, during the week, maybe a couple times per week.

1:42:58 But, um, yeah, I think the idea that we're not

1:43:00 this isn't to say that low inensity activity is meaningless,

1:43:03 but it's just um, you know,

1:43:05 the the purposeful stuff has an outsized impact on health.

1:43:09 Yeah.

1:43:09 It it's not, you know, it's not meaningless, but boy, it's close.

1:43:16 When it comes to like reducing disease, statistically meaningless,

1:43:19 you have to do a lot of it, right?

1:43:21 You really do.

1:43:22 You have to do a lot of it, right?

1:43:24 I mean, I guess if you are willing to, right?

1:43:26 If if somebody is just like, I I'm not going to ever exercise.

1:43:29 The only thing I'm going to do is light walking and house tours.

1:43:32 Okay, that's fine.

1:43:32 But you probably need to do, you know, 10 hours a week of it.

1:43:36 And if that's what you want to do, I guess that that's fine.

1:43:39 Um, so yeah, not meaningless.

1:43:41 And I guess like again, what's your definition of meaningless?

1:43:44 You know, is it statistically because based on this study,

1:43:46 it's statistically no risk reduction, but clearly better than sedentary.

1:43:50 So is it is it better than what?

1:43:52 I think that's the key question to ask.

1:43:53 Yeah, it's better than being sedentary,

1:43:54 but it's not better than putting a little

1:43:56 more effort into whatever movement you're doing.

1:43:59 Right.

1:43:59 Right.

1:43:59 And I also think that like this vigorous

1:44:03 activity isn't necessarily like going all out either.

1:44:06 Right.

1:44:06 So like some of these people if they

1:44:08 like going for their leisure walk very light

1:44:10 walk they can pick up the pace and do some interval walking and that is that is

1:44:15 something I think a lot of pe like

1:44:17 even people with diseases you know and stuff can

1:44:20 do right like that's a very like because you if you pick up the pace for like

1:44:23 10 seconds even 20 seconds right um you're

1:44:26 doing a little bit of interval walking you're

1:44:27 just you're you're just getting you're you're just

1:44:30 cranking it up a little bit and then you

1:44:31 can continue your light walking I think that's

1:44:33 something that people can experiment with um at home

1:44:35 especially especially the ones that really just love

1:44:37 doing their light walking 10 hours a week.

1:44:40 Um you know so um but that kind of gets

1:44:44 it transitions us into this special populations you know does is

1:44:50 there is there any population that we have to be concerned

1:44:53 about for doing you know vigorous intensity and I do get

1:44:56 this question a lot from people older adults I'm old

1:44:59 can I do a vigorous type of workout again we're not

1:45:02 [snorts] talking necessarily about just

1:45:03 highintensity interval training although that does

1:45:05 include it we're talk also talking about you know maybe cycling

1:45:09 or you know running or jogging and to a point I

1:45:13 think even jogging was considered more vigorous right so um like

1:45:17 you had pointed out you know this study included adults

1:45:20 that were up to age 79 so they're definitely older adults 65

1:45:24 and older right so older adults did massively benefit from engaging

1:45:28 in vigorous intensity uh physical activity um I would say

1:45:32 that essent you know most most of people that are older

1:45:37 and let's say they've never really done any kind vigorous intensity activity.

1:45:40 It's not that you have to just start it right away.

1:45:42 You can work your way up progressively, right?

1:45:45 I mean, that's just something to keep in mind.

1:45:46 Like it's easy to kind of just work your way up to it.

1:45:49 Start out with the interval walking and then

1:45:50 like start in doing a little bit of light

1:45:52 jogging in sometimes or or maybe you're just

1:45:54 going to be that person that does these short,

1:45:56 you know, one minute chair squats or, you know,

1:45:59 something that's you're going to accumulate more

1:46:00 of the shorter intervals throughout the day as well.

1:46:04 Um but it is important to point out that um

1:46:07 as you're getting older as you mentioned you know

1:46:10 the muscle mass engaging the type 2 fibers because

1:46:13 they're really going uh your cardiorespiratory fitness is is decreasing.

1:46:17 I mean all of these things there's so much I

1:46:21 would say um there's so many reasons why older adults should

1:46:26 be trying to engage in some form of vigorous intensity activity

1:46:29 and not just following the moderate intensity aspect of the guidelines.

1:46:32 Yeah, absolutely.

1:46:33 I mean, I think that for one, any, you know, obviously even old or young,

1:46:39 if you've never done HIT, highintensity vigorous exercise,

1:46:42 you need to ease yourself into it.

1:46:43 You need to kind of, you know, adapt to it before you do it.

1:46:46 But there are, I mean,

1:46:48 hundreds of studies on, let's just use keep using the Norwegian 4x4,

1:46:52 for example, but adults can do that protocol safely,

1:46:55 effectively, several times per week, and they're not burning out.

1:47:00 They're not it's not unsustainable.

1:47:02 I mean, you hear all these words and it's just like

1:47:05 for the people doing the research and even in graduate school,

1:47:07 I was a part of several of these different studies where we used

1:47:10 the Norwegian 4x4 and we were looking at the effect of on endothelial function

1:47:14 and we had people who were 65 years old with diabetes coming in and they

1:47:18 were doing a couple of these 4x4 protocols a week, 85% heart rate max.

1:47:22 It's like you can do it.

1:47:23 I mean, they're it's the only exercise that they're doing.

1:47:26 It's a couple times per week and even if it's 85% max heart rate,

1:47:30 it's it's a fairly low absolute intensity because they're not that in shape.

1:47:34 So, people can do it and then I think it's important,

1:47:38 you know, older adults can do it and they need to do it.

1:47:40 Going back to what Ben Lavine was talking about,

1:47:43 I mean, at a certain age, past a certain age,

1:47:45 if you don't engage in the vigorous exercise, you're just not going to adapt,

1:47:50 especially with regard to the cardiac the cardio cardiac adaptations,

1:47:54 the cardiovascular system.

1:47:55 the heart just needs that extra stimulus and without it,

1:47:59 the heart's just going to continue to stiffen fibrosis as you age.

1:48:03 I know we already sort of mentioned that, but um so yeah,

1:48:05 not only is it feasible, but it's probably necessary for for older

1:48:09 adults to engage in this highintensity interval training.

1:48:12 I just think that there's this skewed idea when you talk about doing HIT

1:48:15 that people think it's they're training like

1:48:17 Olympic athletes and it's it's really not.

1:48:19 It's Thank you, Brady.

1:48:20 Just read the some of the clinical studies and it's pretty apparent.

1:48:24 There there's definitely a group of people that like to push back when I you

1:48:27 know anytime I like post or talk about doing the Norwegian 4x4 for some reason.

1:48:32 It's it's really I'm not I mean I'm not talking about like non-stop Norwegian

1:48:36 4x4 like four times a day every you know five times a a week.

1:48:40 I mean this is like you know once or twice a week.

1:48:43 You can do it like it's not and again like you said

1:48:46 it's it's a you know the relative you know heart rate changes right.

1:48:50 So for someone who's not that fit, you know,

1:48:52 85% of their max heart rate is not that it's not that hard.

1:48:57 I guess it's hard for them, but like Right.

1:48:59 It might be 50 to 100 watts or something if they're on a bike,

1:49:02 which is a fairly low, you know, it's like spin class, something like that.

1:49:05 Yeah.

1:49:06 Right.

1:49:06 Um the other question that often I get has to do with women.

1:49:11 And like there's this idea that, oh,

1:49:13 women really can they engage in high-intensity interval training?

1:49:17 Can they really go?

1:49:18 And again, we're talking a little bit more

1:49:19 on the the high end of vigorous here, right?

1:49:21 In in regards to like high-intensity interval training.

1:49:24 Um, can can women do an hourong high-intensity interval training session?

1:49:28 Is it is it bad?

1:49:29 Are there stress hormones going up?

1:49:30 Is it you know, all those all those things

1:49:32 that you hear from influencers on the internet?

1:49:35 Um, my take and my read of the literature and my experience.

1:49:39 So, I do I do highintensity interval training.

1:49:41 I do like a crossfit type of training three hours a week right now.

1:49:47 Currently, I'm going to start doing four.

1:49:49 And two of those hours,

1:49:51 it's like the full hour is like it's a pretty pretty intense.

1:49:54 And then two of the other um days where it's an hour each,

1:49:57 I'm doing like strength training the first half half,

1:49:59 which isn't really getting my heart rate up

1:50:00 that much except for when I'm lifting heavy.

1:50:02 Um and then I do like a 20-minut hit at the end.

1:50:05 And hey, I'm everything's going great for me.

1:50:08 I'm not I'm not burning out.

1:50:09 I mean, I don't feel like I, you know,

1:50:11 I'm like like burning at both ends at all.

1:50:13 Um but let's talk about actual evidence here.

1:50:16 I think yes women can engage in high-intensity interval training.

1:50:20 Yes, they can do highintensity workouts.

1:50:22 I think where this whole thing originated from was

1:50:25 were these studies where women were massively reducing their calories

1:50:30 and they were doing caloric restriction and engaging in a lot

1:50:34 of like highintensity exercise and that can like cause amenorhea.

1:50:38 It can shift hormones, right, where you're not ovulating.

1:50:42 And that's really like the origin of like some

1:50:44 of this like I don't even know where it's gone.

1:50:46 It's gone to places where I'm like people are like, "Oh,

1:50:49 you can't do HIT." I'm just like,

1:50:50 "What are you talking about?" Yes, you can do HIT.

1:50:52 Like being a female doesn't mean you can't do HIT.

1:50:55 Obviously, you have to listen to your body.

1:50:56 If you are on your cycle and you're feeling like all the time

1:51:00 when I'm on my cycle and I'm starting to do a hit, like I tone it down.

1:51:03 I tone it down.

1:51:04 Like yeah, I mean there's obvious things here

1:51:06 where you're not going to perform your best,

1:51:08 you know, depending on what the day is.

1:51:10 But that's even for people that are not female, right?

1:51:12 I mean, like you have those days too, right?

1:51:15 Right.

1:51:15 I shouldn't do Hit all the time either.

1:51:16 Men shouldn't do Hit all the time.

1:51:17 They should listen to their bodies.

1:51:18 They should listen, you know,

1:51:19 program it strategically into their training cycle.

1:51:22 I I also don't really know where this idea that I think it refers to maybe

1:51:26 more so like I don't permenopausal postmenopausal women

1:51:29 should be careful with HIT but like so

1:51:32 sure and there are certain you know hormonal

1:51:34 changes that happen at that time but again

1:51:35 if we look at what the studies are showing if you do it in a smart

1:51:38 way that women can benefit just as much

1:51:40 as men there's not really a biological reason

1:51:42 I think to think that there would be any detrimental effects as long as you do

1:51:45 it smartly and again like you mentioned fuel

1:51:47 adequately you know relative energy deficiency in sport

1:51:50 red S is a if if you're doing more activity than you're fueling your body for.

1:51:55 And women are um more prone to kind of that under fueling than maybe males are.

1:52:01 Um especially kind of in the endurance sports realm.

1:52:03 Yeah, you can overdo it just like anything.

1:52:05 But I think to scare women and say, "Oh, you shouldn't do HIT because it's,

1:52:09 you know, going to be like too much cortisol or something." I mean,

1:52:12 the point of it is kind of to increase

1:52:14 cortisol and then you recover and do it again.

1:52:16 I mean, that's just do it smartly.

1:52:18 So, yeah, we're not I don't know.

1:52:20 I I'm not sure where it has gone to weird places this idea.

1:52:23 Um you will get I'll get an Instagram reel every now and then

1:52:26 where it's like you know you shouldn't do you need to women need

1:52:29 to train like this a different way and a lot of ev evidence

1:52:32 out there for strength training and endurance

1:52:34 training doesn't just really support that idea.

1:52:36 I think I I you know it's funny that you mentioned the cortisol

1:52:39 cuz that thing you just brought up one of my little pet

1:52:41 peeves like you actually like the spikes of the stress hormones

1:52:45 again you're having this hormetic response where your body adapts to it.

1:52:49 The the problem with cortisol isn't the like little

1:52:52 spikes that you're getting from like working out hard.

1:52:54 The problem is like the chronic activation of a cortisol

1:52:58 like every single day with all the stress.

1:53:01 Um it's not it's not the you know the types of exercise stress.

1:53:04 know, are people doing these high-intensity workouts like every single day?

1:53:08 I mean, like maybe tone it down a little bit, but you know,

1:53:12 again, listen to your body as long as you're not overdoing it.

1:53:15 And most people are not overdoing it.

1:53:17 Okay.

1:53:18 Most people are not overdoing it.

1:53:19 No, most most people aren't.

1:53:20 I think one thing to consider too is like, yes,

1:53:22 if you're also a working professional and doing

1:53:25 also training on top of that, you know,

1:53:27 if you're not a professional athlete whose only job is to train,

1:53:29 then you also have to consider life stress.

1:53:31 You have a family, you have kids, you have a full-time job.

1:53:33 But again, I think this, you know,

1:53:36 that applies to everyone, not just males, females.

1:53:40 Um, so, right, it applies to everyone and now

1:53:43 we know how incredibly efficient HIT workouts are,

1:53:47 more than we previously even thought.

1:53:48 We were underestimating.

1:53:49 And so, again, all the reasons to do it.

1:53:51 Um, when it comes to chronic illnesses and stuff, again,

1:53:54 it's another thing where you have to like talk to your physician,

1:53:56 listen to your body.

1:53:57 I mean, you know, the there's there's there's ways

1:54:01 that you can do these sort of exercise snacks,

1:54:03 whether it's the interval walking or a little bit

1:54:05 a step above that and you're doing maybe some chair squats.

1:54:08 I mean, I have my 70-year-old mom who isn't the in greatest health.

1:54:12 Um, you know, she's doing CrossFit two to three

1:54:14 times a week for it's a senior's class,

1:54:16 but I mean, she's doing things like chair squats and she's doing, you know,

1:54:20 she's doing lifts and stuff with very light weights and, you know,

1:54:24 there's there's there's a progressive way to like get

1:54:28 this is definitely vigorous exercise for her for sure.

1:54:31 Um, and so I I think that, you know, again,

1:54:33 people can even with chronic illness and chronic conditions, you know,

1:54:38 definitely talk to your physician,

1:54:39 but there's ways that they can engage in particularly these, you know,

1:54:42 shorter bursts of exercise as well.

1:54:44 Um, and then athletes, right?

1:54:46 I mean, that's something that you're the athlete in the room.

1:54:49 Yeah.

1:54:49 And obviously when it comes to to athletes,

1:54:52 you know, the this discussion that we're having,

1:54:54 I think, is totally separate from, you know, athletes are training.

1:54:58 They are training towards a goal.

1:54:59 they're training for a marathon

1:55:00 or a CrossFit competition or something like that.

1:55:02 So, I think some of these maybe guidelines on physical activity,

1:55:06 you want to like integrate movement throughout your day, they still apply,

1:55:09 but maybe a little bit less because if you're doing dedicated activity,

1:55:12 you know, I think most athletes aren't

1:55:14 concerned about getting the recommended physical activity.

1:55:17 Most are are getting just, you know, fine physical activity.

1:55:21 Regarding HIT and vigorous exercise, you know,

1:55:23 obviously athletes are going to need to engage in that.

1:55:26 So the conversation is is a little bit different and you do when you

1:55:29 are training you need to be a little bit more deliberate about maybe only

1:55:33 do one or two higher intensity exercise

1:55:34 sessions per day because you are training

1:55:36 every single day or maybe six or seven you know six days per week.

1:55:40 So um it's a little bit different and I

1:55:42 think there are some studies you can certainly overdo it.

1:55:45 You can certainly overdo high-intensity interval training.

1:55:47 There are study interesting study that I read recently it showed that if

1:55:50 you do too much it actually like

1:55:52 harms your mitochondria and causes mitochondrial dysfunction.

1:55:55 So athletes can certainly overdo that.

1:55:57 Um I think the takeaway here um if we go back to our study is athletes,

1:56:02 you know, outside of training,

1:56:03 you're definitely improving your health and I think good, you know,

1:56:06 focus on your long-term health if you're not getting paid to do it.

1:56:08 I'm not getting paid to train for a marathon.

1:56:11 Um so I still want to run fast,

1:56:13 but I also am like concerned about my long-term health.

1:56:15 And so thinking about it that way,

1:56:17 you want to make sure to balance it so that you don't

1:56:19 harm your long-term health in the pursuit of, you know, being healthy.

1:56:22 Sometimes you can be kind of counterproductive in that way.

1:56:24 So, um, I think balancing it,

1:56:26 there's this common thing in athletic circles, the 8020 kind of split where,

1:56:30 you know, if you're doing six exercise sessions per week,

1:56:34 four of those are easy, two of those are hard.

1:56:35 I think that's kind of a good framework,

1:56:36 a good uristic for for people to follow.

1:56:38 And I tend to sort of balance my exercise that way.

1:56:42 Like 20% of my weekly exercises maybe harder,

1:56:46 80% is is typically pretty easy in terms of the the distribution.

1:56:49 Um, but yeah, I think, you know, if if athletes are thinking about how

1:56:55 to balance it and if they're concerned about

1:56:57 the long-term health implications and they also want

1:56:59 to reduce their disease risk like everybody else,

1:57:01 I think kind of the same principles here apply.

1:57:03 Just don't overdo it.

1:57:04 Make sure to integrate HIT a couple times

1:57:06 per week and um balance that with recovery.

1:57:09 Yeah.

1:57:09 uh just since since you are the athlete and you mentioned your your 8020 rule,

1:57:13 how many everything you do would be considered vigorous by the way

1:57:17 according to this study that we're

1:57:19 talking about here today in nature communications.

1:57:21 How many hours a week do you spend being physically active?

1:57:25 Now, you're not probably not going to count when you

1:57:27 run with your dog or you run around with your kids.

1:57:28 So, we're talking about the structures, not everything,

1:57:31 just the the time that you set aside to do your actual like runs and and hits.

1:57:36 So the running and biking stuff during the week probably

1:57:38 combined 13 to 15 hours of that like a week.

1:57:41 I mean I'm working out seven days per week most days.

1:57:43 I'll take a rest day every couple weeks.

1:57:45 So 13 to 15 hours of that couple hours

1:57:48 of probably dedicated strength training and then the physical activity

1:57:52 stuff I do actually despite being very you know

1:57:55 just training I do try to get decent physical activity.

1:57:58 So, walk 30 minutes maybe a day.

1:58:01 Just do a couple walks also just to kind

1:58:02 of break up the monotony of like sitting in a chair,

1:58:06 which I don't think is good even for highly active like athletes.

1:58:09 Um, and I'll also do some of the exercise snacks, which is kind of interesting.

1:58:12 But my exercise snacks are actually

1:58:14 in the form of these resistance training exercise snacks.

1:58:16 So, I all in my office, I have a pull-up bar and the door frame.

1:58:19 I have kettle bells and stuff.

1:58:21 So, every like little bit if I need a break during the day, I'll do these.

1:58:24 I'll do HIT, but in the form of resistance exercise to sort of uh build strength

1:58:28 if I don't have time to like make it to the gym or something during the week.

1:58:30 But yeah, that's kind of what my activity looks like.

1:58:32 So, it's a lot of volume.

1:58:34 And you're right that based on this study,

1:58:36 it would be categorized as probably vigorous.

1:58:39 Um, but obviously a lot of it is light.

1:58:41 If you looked at my heart rate, you know, it's 60 maybe 70% of heart rate maxes.

1:58:46 A lot of that stuff.

1:58:47 So, it's still at a fairly low heart rate.

1:58:49 Even your runs?

1:58:50 Yeah, a run.

1:58:51 You know, I might do a run if I go pretty easy.

1:58:53 My heart rate's going to be 120 beats per minute, which is pretty low.

1:58:57 What's easy for you, Brady?

1:58:58 Easy in terms of like speed.

1:59:00 No, like 7 minutes per mile.

1:59:01 You guys hear [laughter] that?

1:59:03 That's easy for Brady.

1:59:04 7 minutes per mile.

1:59:06 Oh my goodness.

1:59:07 So, like sometimes I'll be on a run with Dan and we're just I mean,

1:59:10 it's like, you know, 10 minutes a mile.

1:59:12 I'm like, we're talking and like, you know, it's a it's a fun leisurely.

1:59:16 Yeah.

1:59:16 It's definitely like we're having conversation.

1:59:17 We're talking and it's like it's time that we get to hang out.

1:59:20 Like I go for runs with like friends and it's

1:59:22 like we we we catch up on our run, right?

1:59:25 So it's like it's it's a leisurely run.

1:59:26 It would be considered I think vigorous according to the study,

1:59:29 but I'm just sitting here going if Brady's do this is like nothing to him.

1:59:34 He runs like for 20 miles at 7 minutes a mile.

1:59:36 I mean that's insane.

1:59:37 It's insane.

1:59:39 Yeah.

1:59:39 Takes a lot of time to build up to that.

1:59:40 But again, you know, if we did a if we did a CrossFit workout,

1:59:43 you probably would be able to outdo me in that one.

1:59:45 Probably smoke you.

1:59:46 I'm really I'm really becoming a crossfitter.

1:59:48 Um, but you know, your your exercise snack that you that you talked about,

1:59:52 I think you just described CrossFit.

1:59:54 Like that's what CrossFit is like.

1:59:56 My workouts, you know, it's like we're doing these like intense we're

1:59:58 doing kettle bell swings and it's not strength training.

2:00:01 So, it's like a lighter weight,

2:00:02 but you are getting your heart rate up and you are you are,

2:00:04 you know, doing resistance training.

2:00:06 So, you are obviously like working your muscles

2:00:08 and and challenging your muscles as well.

2:00:10 And it's why I just love it.

2:00:11 It's just so efficient.

2:00:12 It's time efficient for like everything.

2:00:14 Yeah.

2:00:14 I think if I think it's probably the ideal regimen,

2:00:16 the the CrossFit and then the high rocks is

2:00:19 kind of what everybody is interested in doing now.

2:00:21 I think one of I want to train for one.

2:00:23 I think those are probably the best.

2:00:25 If I had to pick an ideal like this is the ideal workout regimen for life.

2:00:29 It's probably one of those obviously I mean what I'm

2:00:31 doing is not I'm not I'm optimizing for one thing.

2:00:34 I love doing endurance training and that's what I'm going to do.

2:00:36 But if I had to, you know, pick what's ideal,

2:00:38 certainly those are the best cuz you're getting kind of the best of both worlds.

2:00:41 especially with high rocks,

2:00:42 which has a little bit more of the running component compared to CrossFit.

2:00:45 So, I think you're you need to be

2:00:46 really aerobically fit and strong to do high rocks.

2:00:49 Not to say that you don't with CrossFit,

2:00:51 but there's not there's not a lot of running with CrossFit.

2:00:53 No.

2:00:53 No.

2:00:54 There's more like shuttle sprinting and stuff.

2:00:55 Yeah.

2:00:56 Yeah.

2:00:56 Um, lastly, I want to mention before we

2:00:58 kind of just conclude this up, uh, children.

2:01:01 And, you know, a lot of people are like wondering what what I

2:01:04 think I think the takehome here with children is sports are important, right?

2:01:09 like get them involved in some kind of sports,

2:01:11 whether it's team sports or individual sports.

2:01:14 Those things all matter and they're important not