Exercise myths busted: Practical steps to sustain your health | Harvard Professor Daniel Lieberman

It surprises me how many people think it's normal to become less active as they get older, but they also don't understand how important it is to stay active as they get older. For me,

exercise

is definitely a chore, one of the

myths

is that our ancestors were built like Arnold Schwarzeneggar and all of that is false, all of that is false, we live in a world, however, where we no longer have to being physically active, so we have to

exercise

, that's really interesting, so when people say they hate exercising, it's because welcome to Zoe's Science and Nutrition, where the world's leading scientists explain how their research can improve

your

health

.

I'm

your

host, Jonathan Wolf, founder and CEO of Zoe, today we discovered that many of the things we've been told about exercise are a myth. I learned that it is normal to not enjoy exercise and how to overcome this problem. How to learn from our ancestors. Harvard

professor

Daniel Liberman is a world-renowned expert in evolutionary biology and anthropological anthropology beyond the walls of his laboratory. Daniel has traveled from Africa to Greenland to study non-Westernized populations and their physical activities in his latest New York Times bestseller Exercised Daniel brings together a decade of his research to debunk common

myths

about fitness and

health

awaits you Daniel thanks for joining me today is It's a pleasure and fun to do this in person.

Now we have a tradition that we always do on this show that we start with a quick round of questions that teachers generally don't love because the rules are that you can say yes or no or if you want. I have a one sentence answer. Are you willing to try it? Let's try it. Did our ancestors exercise? No, I see, that wasn't so bad. It makes us feel bad. No, is it normal that we don't like exercise? Yes, we need to make 10,000.

steps

per day Not sure, should we take it easy as we get older? No and lastly, can someone start exercising late in life and still absolutely benefit?

That wasn't so bad, was it? So I have one that you can have a complete sentence. What is the biggest myth about exercise that you have uncovered through your research? Well, I think it's the one you just asked, which is this idea that it's a normal thing as you get older and less active and, I think, of all the myths that I've been interested in, not only are, I think it surprises me. How much people think it's normal to become less active as they get older, but also people don't understand how important it is to stay active. as you get older, so you know for a thousand reasons, one of which is your mental health and your physical health.

Hi, I hope you're enjoying the show so far and learning a lot about why you thought of it. EX may not be entirely true now if you're not already a regular listener. I hope you feel like you can come back. It would mean a lot to me if you hit that subscribe button so you know every time a new episode arrives. This podcast is an Adree labor of love

sustain

ed by people like you who choose to listen to us. Well, back to the program. I thought I was raised with these stories. You know, if we lived in the African savannah, then the young people would run and kill them. the wild beasts and the hunting and the old men sat at home, but they were wise and old and that was their job, so I think that's definitely the um, you're laughing, but I think that's pretty much the story that they told me.

Yes, Kipling's kind of weird vision of the human being. It worries me now that I have the vision of Roger Kipling which doesn't sound good, but I think it's a kind of idea that you were old and the courage to survive was your wisdom and of course you wouldn't do anything physical. You just know you have to be supported by these strong young people. Well, wisdom is important and that is certainly one of the values ​​of getting older and, for sure. The wisdom that the elders impart to the younger is important, but they also work hard.

I think that's really interesting and I really enjoyed the book that I was reading on the plane and it made me think about exercise quite a bit and for me exercise is definitely a chore so I exercise two or three times a week because a big variety of scientists have convinced me that you know this is really important for my health, but it's definitely not fun and the pleasure I get from it is on point. It's done, I say, oh, I feel really good. Now I have, but I'm definitely not enjoying it very much. During the period where you know how to lift these weights and you know I know that's one of the things you're talking about. is covered in this book along with a whole host of other myths, so I really want to delve into that before talking about how we learn from our ancestors and how you know your own research has looked at both as what they might have done in the past and in modern hunter-gatherers, although I would love to start with a very simple question: is exercise good for us?

If so, why do most of us hate answering that question? Let's start with a definition, okay, so exercise is a form of physical activity, so physical activity is just moving around, you know, walking up the stairs to get to my office, you know, making breakfast, whatever, they're all forms of physical activity and exercise is a special form of physical activity where it is a discretionary voluntary physical activity that we do for the sake of health and fitness because I need to get to the top of the house to pick something up, yeah, and if you think about exercise that way and actually exercise comes from the Latin word that you know has to do with hoing, you know there's a reason when we, you, do your math exercises well, we call them exercises, you're not using anything but your brain, true, but it's modern behavior, right, no one, uh, until very recently exercised under voluntary discretionary reasons for the sake of health and fitness, true, you say it as if it were Obviously, but there weren't many people doing exercises in Roman times or in the well that is still recent until now.

As far as I'm concerned, for your recent idea, it's, yeah, I mean, I'm talking about prehistory, because for millions and millions of years people were physically active for two reasons and two reasons only when necessary. In other words, to get food or to avoid being someone else's food, or when it would be rewarding, think about playing. I mean children in all cultures play with adults. Playing and playing, of course, is very useful for all sorts of reasons, but our ancestors were not to exercise to make sure that when they went hunting they would be successful, no, they never, um, you say that again, but that's really interesting because we believe that now you need to exercise a lot in order to go and be successful in, you know?

If you had to run in a race, you think you need to exercise a lot to be successful in the race, but our ancestor didn't need to do that to get the no, yes, me. I mean there are many ways to answer that question, but let me tell you that the reason I started this book is that, actually, sometimes people make up these epiphanies well, but I actually had one when I was doing research in northern Mexico studying a native. The American population is famous for running the tumara and I was collecting data. He was being a good anthropologist.

I had my clipboard with all my questions that I worked out beforehand and I talked to ethnographer friends to make sure he was doing it the right way. So when he was measuring his feet and measuring his biomechanics and doing all kinds of things just me and a guy I hired to help me travel and we were sleeping on the floors in Pueblo and all that kind of stuff. people about training, that's what you're talking about. I got these really confusing answers, right, people didn't understand the question and I had a translator and finally there was this old guy I was interviewing.

I will remember. intensely and he was a shaman famous for long distance running as well, so I realized that my translator was asking my usual question, do you know how you train to run? and he looked at me and didn't even need a translator. Say why would someone run if they didn't have to and that's what you said and you know, this is a guy who runs like 100 mile races, right, he doesn't train, his life is his training, he's very physically active, he walks a lot. distances occasionally when I was young I used to run to hunt, but the idea of ​​getting up in the morning like this morning I ran about five or six miles just to run five or six miles in the different places that I go.

I do research and I, when I run in the morning, they laugh at me, they think it's funny and it makes sense because most people in most parts of the world for most of our evolutionary history struggled to get enough food, it was difficult , TRUE? I burned about 500 calories this morning running my five miles. If you're struggling to get enough calories, wasting 500 calories in the morning without any purpose is really, you know, not a good idea, it's true, it's maladaptive. On the other hand, when you are a child you learn skills, you develop abilities, you learn social skills, there are all kinds of good things that come from play, and play and adults continue to do it, but play is a special form of physical activity.

I don't think the game is an exercise; at least it doesn't fit my definition of exercise, so does that mean that the normal life our ancestors would have lived was essentially all the training they needed to be able to play? They could run or chase or whatever, so they didn't need to exercise because just their normal life provided the necessary training. Yes, they were, they were very physically active, right? And physical activity promotes a response from your body that, um, not only do you know improves or maintains your ability to perform, but it also has all kinds of health benefits, you know, the average hunter walks 10 to 15 km. every day, every day, no, there are no weekends, there are no holidays, there is no retirement, there is nothing, they do it day in and day out all their lives and often they are digging, sometimes they have to run, they have to climb trees, they have to lift things, you know, um um uh, their lives. they involve a reasonable amount, not a huge amount, but a reasonable amount of physical activity, um, and that basically gives them enough calories to get them through the next day and from time to time they do physical things for fun, they dance, but Dancing, of course, is very important to help you find a partner and have fun, and for social reasons again, it's fun, true, but, but, no group of hunters that I have ever met, heard of, or seen in ethnographic literature has gone looking for some rocks and then just simply pick them up so they are strong enough for your other tasks, yeah, or go for a mile run in the morning, whatever it is, it's inconceivable.

I love it because it's definitely at odds. I think a lot of what people think, maybe that's it. help answer I guess the second part of my question is if this is exercise because you also said that exercise is good for us. Then I thought: why do most of us hate him? This relates to the fact that we historically never really needed it. do the exercise, yeah, well, I mean again, remember that physics is a physical activity that is good for us, exercise is a type of physical activity, but if you are a postman, you know a postman and you walk, you know, handing over a man, that is physical activity. is not exercise and it is good for them, they are one of the first very famous studies, in fact, the first major study to show that physical activity is good for health was done in London with bus drivers and they compared bus drivers bus you know with the people who were walking. up and down the bus picking up tickets definitely a long time ago CU has been one of them for a long time.

I remember when I was a kid riding buses in London and there was a man with this little thing that used to do that right and then there was the driver, he was right and the driver would sit in a seat all day driving the bus and the seizure rate heart rate in the drivers was twice as high as the drivers, twice and the only difference was that the bus driver was sitting all day and he was walking he was walking and then there was a follow-up study because they thought well, maybe the drivers Drivers are really stressed because they have to deal with London traffic, so they compared the postal workers in London with the people who worked in the post office, who, who, were they managed correctly by managers and again exactly the same right result, so that was in the 1950s, right and since then, of course, we've had, you know, I couldn't even count the number of studies that show how important physical activity is for health, but again, that is physical activity, not exercise, but if you are already a very active personphysically and you don't need that much physical activity to get the benefits, just a moderate amount is more than enough to promote health. and you're struggling to get enough food, which is the case for hunter-gatherers and most subsistence farmers.

The people I work with in Africa, for example, are struggling to get enough food, you know, running like I run, maybe 30 to 50 miles. a week, you know, that's a lot of calories and if you're stressed about calories, it's a really bad idea, I mean, you're actually putting your family at risk, so when people say we hate exercising it's because we ask people doing something that is inherently unnatural and the example I love to point out is if you ever go to an airport, a shopping mall, a subway stop or wherever there is an escalator next to a staircase um um I was in the subway here in Boston going to the South Station and I got off the subway car and everyone stood in line and waited in line to go up the escalator and I was one of the few people who went up the stairs because I have to otherwise I'm a hypocrite, right?

Do you take the stairs because you know it's good for you but you hate doing it anyway or are you in this exception for some reason? No, i do not do it. It's not like climbing the stairs, I like the stairs, but if anyone looks, I'm Mr. like I'm Mr., you should be physically active, anyone catches me on the escalator, I'm in trouble, so you're in the same world that I. meaning you don't enjoy it, you're just trying to override the natural tendency to basically be lazy and not do this, like you know most people, if you put a piece of cake in front of me and an apple. right, I'm going to want the cake and I have to override my instincts to eat the cake instead of the apple and if no one is looking I might have the right cake and sometimes I know people who seem to really enjoy exercise and they They like these extreme things like Iron Man or Ultra marathons or everything else, so are you saying they're a little weird, which I've always suspected?

Well, I think it's more complicated than that, I mean, I enjoy it, usually. I rarely enjoy starting to exercise, okay, but I'm usually glad I did it when it's over and that's what you mentioned at the beginning, so I want to say this morning was no exception. It was a beautiful morning here in Boston, the weather was perfect. Wouldn't it have been better to run and I was hesitating and complaining and finally my wife said, come on, just go, it's time for you to go and you know I didn't really enjoy the first mile. I never do it, but then I settled in and I enjoyed it and when I got home I was glad I did it, but I've done it enough to know that I get some benefit and I'm reasonably fit, which isn't a horrible task, is it? , but if?

I am not in shape and have difficulty exercising properly. If I'm overweight or haven't exercised in a long time, it's hard and we shouldn't make people feel bad for not liking it, because it's actually normal and we shouldn't. making people feel bad for feeling like they're inhibited or you know you have to overcome some inertia and you're saying that's deeply ingrained in us, it's actually that our body is evolved to protect those who I know you have to protect our calories, not wasting energy doing this exercise, so you know that every time you do it, you deserve a big round of applause is what I hear, like you're overcoming something that's actually natural to say.

Well, don't waste your energy doing this because after all, if you really needed to do this, you would go and do it anyway because you won't get food or whatever, at that point you wouldn't need this strong desire to do it. Exercise and you'd be like, well, I have to walk so far to get this food, otherwise I'm going to be hungry and that's definitely worse, yeah, I mean, I think you've made it more complicated. than necessary, I mean again, just to simplify it, it's not really complicated, right, we evolved to be physically active for two reasons and two reasons just point when it was necessary or rewarding, okay, so if we want to help people to exercise, we have to do it. make it necessary or Waring or both, so if I'm going to meet a friend for a run, I don't necessarily think of it as exercise.

Hey, I'm going to go find myself. I go to meet my friend Elena, which I do. every Friday morning and we run together and it's fun we chat about the week and this etc. and I don't think about it as much as I think about working out, it's my you know, weekly meeting with my friend and neighbor Elena or maybe I have a trainer, right? and my coach says you know how to train for the Boston Marathon on Tuesday. I want you to do this, he made it necessary for me and I signed up for this race and I better train otherwise I will be humiliated.

Or we have a terrible time so we use carrots, we use sticks, but it's really very simple, you know, we evolved to be physically active because it's necessary rewarding now that we live in this world where people know that it's good for them to be physically active. AK exercise because they don't otherwise you know they sit and sit all day and somehow have the willpower to get over that dislike of what they are doing or find ways to make it fun, that's brilliant, so one way is that. Suddenly, instead of this being unpleasant, there's a way that makes it fun and you actually talk about dancing in the book and that surprised me a little bit, in my mind I enjoy dancing, that's definitely not an exercise, It's funny and then you point.

Well, it's actually a lot of exercise, but as you happened to think, you don't think of it like that, it's just fun and therefore you just respond in a different way. Yeah, I mean the tarar I mentioned before is famous for its drag dancing people, everyone talks about their drag races, they have dances, I've been there, I can't keep up with them and they will dance for 24 hours, 24 hours, yes, they go on and on and on and on. There's a lot of drinking going on, it's a party, they're having a great time and that, of course, is obviously training, right, um, of course, it's not, they don't consider it training and, of course, it helps them because dancing. it's jumping and running, it's actually just jumping from one leg to the other, that's interesting, now you've already mentioned some of these, but I really wanted to ask you, you know, have you visited a lot of these remote tribes around um, the world to understand how they live their lives and I guess you could help our listeners understand why you do that and what it means, um, what helps us understand well, you know, I think it's normal to think that your life is normal, right, yeah, you know , I think it's normal, a child, that's absolutely how we all think, it's safe.

I mean, I think it's normal to get into a metal box and travel around the city, to get into a metal tube and fly. from one content to another and eating breakfast cereal that comes in a box and we could go on and talk about all the very modern things that we think are normal, but we didn't evolve that way, did we? We evolved to U to be Hunter meets for Almost all of our evolutionary history we are Hunter and then for thousands of years we were subsistence farmers before the industrial age, if you want to understand how bodies work and how physical activity affects us, diet and all these things.

You can't just study people in Cambridge, Massachusetts or London, or you know Toronto or wherever you have, you have to go out into the rest of the world, which is how people you know, other people use their bodies. There's a colleague of mine, Joe. Henrik, who has written this wonderful article, called the weirdest people in the world weird for him as a rich, industrialized, Western-educated democrat. In reality, only about 10% of the world fits into that category. A colleague of mine did a study in which we showed that more than 90% of the world fits into that category. % or about 90% of all biomedical data, psychological data, medical data comes from Europe and North America, a little bit from Australia, we are generalizing about human beings from a very small sample, unusual, downright strange, so If you want to understand how and why we do it. the way we are how our bodies evolved to function what it's like to be physically active how physical activity and aging works and you have to do it, you can't just study people in the west, you need to travel to other places and that's why Do it, it's interesting, we've covered on the podcast some scientists who specifically look at the gut microbiome and obviously that's something that Zoe is very interested in and one of the things they talk about is a little bit similar to this, which is when Look at the gut microbiome of the people you're talking about as weird people, so Westernized and industrial that this microbiome is incredibly reduced compared to the microbiome you see elsewhere and it seems like you're saying more broadly, in a sense, our set. lives and how we understand things like the ones we need.

You're saying that we need to move away from how we might be living in the West because actually these kinds of pre-industrialized environments are a much better way to really understand what our bodies are. are built and what would be really healthy for us, yeah, I'm G, I'll give you a simple example like, what did you wear today? A small bag of stones exactly, so that's strange, right, um, and it's strange, yeah, I mean, in most towns, in most of the world, people spend a lot of the day carrying heavy things. , they carry babies, they carry food, if they hunt an animal, they have to take it back to the camp, they carry water.

I mean, if you and I want water, we just go and turn on a little tap. Well, it turns out well, that's incredibly recent. If you lived in London just 150 years ago, you'd have to go to the local well, pump it up and then take it back to your you know, also filled water with glue. We know that we don't carry anything anymore, right, and that's why we think that how the back works, almost all the data we have on the biomechanics of the back refers to people who sit in chairs all day and never carry anything and, If you really want to, you want to do it.

To understand how the back works and how physical activity affects the bench, you have to go places like where I go, like for example, we are working in Randa this summer, where people have to carry absolutely everything. It's really interesting, so what you're saying. It's what we consider normal and we learn it by looking at everyone around us as if it's normal not carrying a lot of weight is actually strangely abnormal and not the way our bodies are built or evolve because it's never really been that way until recently. bit. very recently in a small part of the world, yeah, to go to a supermarket, buy a shopping cart, put boxes of food in it, carry the shopping cart, you know, then you can take the bag to your car, um and That's all, that's all. from going to the supermarket to the way you carry food to the supermarket, all of that is completely abnormal, so I've never been to any of these places and neither have many of our listeners, so what's surprising?

What is different? because there are some things that you know, we understand obviously that environment is quite different from ours, but the example you just gave is like, oh, I've never thought about what's so surprising that you're taking away. um, about how we lived versus I don't know how to answer that question because Ian, there are so many things that are different in our world. I think actually what surprises me the most is how human beings are just human beings, right? People are lazy everywhere. it's, you know, jealousy and whatever we often tend to romanticize the past and and and and and and and and you know, think about the old days when we were farmers or hunter-gatherers and they had difficult lives too.

I mean, I think, I think the more I think. I travel all over the world and work and live with other cultures. The more I realize how you know, scratching beneath the surface, there are many things about humans that are the same, but also, of course, there are many things that are very different from us. The diet, of course, is very different. I mean, think after this interview you're going to think, "I'm hungry, what should I have for dinner? Should we have Italian? Should I have pizza? Should I choose Chinese or vegetarian?" restaurant or we just think it's normal to choose what you're going to eat if you're a farmer or hunter-gatherer you don't choose what you eat you eat what you have the right to eat what you grow we think it's normal you know, wearing shoes and exercising and sitting in chairs all day and not carrying things.

I mean, I could go on and a lot of people are surprised when I mention the water they like. They must not know it on some level, but they just haven't really thought about how plumbing has transformed our lives. I think it s true. I think if you don't experience this, it's really interesting what you said. I keep thinking about transportation, which is what I think catches my attention because I think I'm so used to this.idea that it is not really necessary to carry things a lot and, therefore, you have to exercise. where you carry heavy iron weights because I've been told it's very important for my health and you're like, well, you're just doing that because until very recently, of course, you were carrying a lot of heavy things just to function, so it's It's like we would have to substitute these things that would have simply happened as part of our lives.

You know, even funnier, you've probably spent money buying heavy iron things to carry around. I mean, that's really funny. I mean imagine explaining it to Hunter. Well, or your great-great-great-grandparents who are farmers somewhere in England or wherever they think you're the dumbest person on the planet. I mean, I think just explaining it to my dad to be honest, I think he has the same attitude as the hunter I was describing about the exercise, he says, well, why would you do that if you don't have to? So I'm not sure I have to go back that far.

I'd love to talk about something like that. So, from the exercise myths that come out of this, I think there are a lot of different things that you've learned from this experience, but it seems like one of the things that you've learned from a lot of these different people. that you've been in and I think in a lot of other scientific literature, if I understand, there are quite a few things that we say today about exercise that are not only not well supported by science, but could actually be completely myths. You start, what would you do?

There are so many things that are difficult to know. Well, I started the book with the first section of the book on inactivity, because if you want to understand activity, you also need to understand inactivity. Two sides of the same coin and I think one of the myths is that our ancestors were incredibly physically active, you know, they were built like Arnold Schwarzenegger and they were incredibly strong and incredibly fast and they worked very hard and they never sat in a chair. ever and you know I always slept eight hours and all that all that is false um all that is false all that is false so first of all our ancestors or Hunter gather even farmers are strong for many people, but they are It's not super strong because after all muscle is expensive, right, if you build weights and lift weights to bulk up you'll add a lot of muscle mass, but muscle is really expensive tissue, there's a reason we have this , use it or lose it.

The physiology is that if you don't need them you don't want to pay for the extra calories, right? You're saying that as you gain muscle you need additional calories just to support those existing muscles. Yes, you spend a good amount. you know 30 40% of your metabolism just paying for your muscles just sitting there not even using them they are very necessary to keep them in stock yes they are expensive tissues so you want enough you want to be economical you want enough but not too true because if you have too much muscle and then you don't get any food, then you could end up dying.

That's what I was saying, I mean, the fundamental basic principle behind life is that you eat food and then you have babies, right? that's the Life Food equation in babies, that's all Evolution really cares about, which is a bit depressing, but it's a bit depressing anyway, well that's what it's all about, y'all Organisms ultimately try to bring in energy using that energy to reproduce and create other versions of themselves and unfortunately we are really no different but energy is a limited resource for most organisms and was until recently and it's still that way for a lot of people today, so every time you spend some time running, you know, in the morning or or or or paying for your unnecessary muscle, that's energy that you're not spending on reproduction, to this we call it Energy Allocation Theory, so spending energy that's in, let's say, extra muscle that's then taking energy away from reproduction and that's how we evolved a long time ago. a system to add muscle and when you say take away from reproduction, I think a lot of people are a little confused, you don't literally mean having sex, you mean something much more than hormones, you know, your, your, your testosterone levels or you or your your. your estrogen levels, your progesterone levels and you know exactly the energy that is allocated to reproduction or you know breastfeeding, I mean breastfeeding, you know it's very expensive 600 calories a day to produce breast milk, so we have all kinds of adaptations to add muscle when we need it so you know how to exercise and from time to time atrophy occurs to lose that muscle when we're not using it and that's helpful and that's why again, just to make sure we're all following If not We do this physical exercise, we see that our muscles shrink.

This is our Evolution, protecting us and saying, "Well, clearly you don't need it, so I can reduce it, that will reduce the number of calories you need." your muscle so you can actually use this for something else because you know getting calories is difficult as far as our body is concerned although it is no longer true we can get them very easily in the right gathering and therefore hunters -pickers that I have met and I haven't met many because there aren't that many on the planet, but you also know that if you look at the literature, you know that they are reasonably fit and strong, but no, none of them have volume.

They are not super strong, right, because and also they mainly practice resistance, not much strength physical activity, so that is a myth, another myth is that they never sit down and a former student of mine, Dave Rean, who is at the University of Southern California, did a wonderful paper a few years ago in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that shows that, actually, if you look at the time they spend sitting, of course, they're not in chairs like the ones we're sitting in. Now, they actually sit as much as Westerners. right, yeah, because because, you know, if you're not being physically active, it makes sense to save energy, right, and you know, the cows, my dog ​​sits, the cows sit, you know, the birds sit, I want I mean, moose sit, all animals sit, why should I?

Humans sit, so this idea that sitting is the new smoking is, um, uh, I think it's been overblown, the average hodza, for example, these are groups of people in Tanzania that have been well studied. You know, by putting sensors on them, they sit down. hours a day, wow, because I feel like that's what they're telling everyone now after the pandemic, you know on their Zoom what they shouldn't do is sit eight hours a day, but you're saying they had to do it. They are sitting more, yes, now of course the thing is that when they are not sitting they are doing physical activity, so the problem is that if you look at the epidemiological data on sitting, it turns out that it is not working time which is so associated with poor health, but in reality, you spend your free time sitting, so if you spend all day sitting at work and then you go home and you sit up all night watching TV and you sit on your C to go to work and you sit in your car to know if you are never physically active then of course you are going to pay a price for that, but it is not the sitting itself that is bad, it is the fact that you are not doing none of these activities furthermore, because our normal experience, as you say, as human beings is a lot of time sitting but then a lot of physical activity for a living and our problem is that we have continued sitting but we have also gotten rid of the rest of this physical activity and we have become sitting, that's part of it.

The other is how long you sit. What's called a sitting session turns out that if you spend time in a hunter's camp or a farmer's village or whatever and you know that people are sitting down but then they get up. they constantly get up because of the kids they get up to cook they get up to do this they get up so the average amount of time they spend sitting at any time in any fight is about 15 minutes, so I like to sit for 3 hours straight absorbed in watching the TV exactly like that and it turns out that intermittent or interrupted sitting turns out to be much healthier than uninterrupted sitting because when you get up you are actually, by activating your muscles, you are activating all kinds of machinery in your body, which is almost like turning on correctly the engine and the car, so even when we sit back down, there is a conclusion here, what is that?

Get up every once in a while, you may be fine if you get up constantly, but sitting for an extended period of time is not good, it's not good for us and that's not how we've naturally evolved to be right, so some people are. . phones telling them you know or their wristwatch rings every 15 minutes and telling them to get up and go pee or make a cup of tea or whatever, that's fine. Hello, I hope you enjoyed our trip back in time today receiving exercise tips. by the way, our ancestors lived talking about going back in time, we've actually had 18 months of conversations like this with world-leading scientists, all focused on getting you a longer, healthier life now if you have little time and want to know the key takeaways.

Without all those hours of listening, we've got you covered, our team just created a free guide outlining the top 10 discoveries from our podcast that can make a real difference in your life. To get it, just go to the free zoe.com guide or click the link in the show notes and please let me know what you think of it. Well, back to the show, one of the things I like about this is that my wife makes fun of me a lot because she really likes drinking tea and uh. So that means that, um, and I also have some tea at work, it means that after every meeting, basically, well, I need to go make a cup of tea and, obviously, that means that I can't sit in my desk.

I have to go make a cup of tea and come back and of course if you drink a lot more liquid then you also need to go to the bathroom more often so now I can say it's very important for my health because uh you. Be, world leading

professor

, explain, this makes me more like I was supposed to be, that's right, yeah, not just because it makes you more like you're supposed to be, it's just that even without knowing Hunter meets, it did . To be healthy, do we need to make fundamental changes to the way our lives are somehow arranged so we can start moving?

Because our lives are very different, right? and clearly we are not going to end up living a life that way. that our ancestors did, you're not suggesting that we get rid of water in our house and things like this, presumably, so a lot of very intentional decisions need to be made to try to get closer to the way we need to live to be healthy. I think the answer is obviously yes. You know, we live in a world where our lives don't match our biology in many ways. Think carefully about the diseases that are most common today. 2 diabetes heart disease uh cancer um arthritis um osteoporosis um depression anxiety all of these are much more common today than in the past and we have and we have good data to prove it, and by past I don't really mean even a long time ago and most of those diseases are known most of the time when someone walks into a doctor's office for a health visit the vast majority of those visits are for preventable diseases the vast majority at least 70% by most estimates and how do you prevent well those diseases, well, I mean, over and over, and over and over again, it all comes down to some basic and simple things, besides not smoking, diet and exercise, sleep is important too, of course, since You know, avoiding psychosocial stress is important, but, Diet and exercise are obviously fundamental and we live in a world, however, where we no longer have to be physically active, so we have to exercise and tell me a little more because I think that Isra, you have seen the point where it is you.

What we're doing is we didn't exercise before we just had a life where we had this type of activity, so what do you know? Is there such a thing as a typical hunter-gatherer lifestyle? Is it very clear what type of activities they did? that therefore we need to build or is it that it actually helps us understand because you already mentioned that you know this like we used to, we carry more, how can you make me a little bit clearer picture of what, what, what does this life do? I want people to want a recipe, right?

And that's part of the problem, which is that there's no simple recipe, but people were physically active, they were sitting but not sitting for long periods of time all the time, they didn't have access to, you know, industrially processed foods. to which all kinds of garbage have been added and the fiber has been removed. Etc um and um, and whatYou know over and over again, if you look at the literature, you'll know even if you didn't know anything about our hunter collection. or farming ancestors, you would already know that, right? I mean, who doesn't know that exercise is good for them and not eating?

You know McDonald's every day is good for them. Everyone knows that the problem is that we live in a world where, once again, physical exercise. Activities become optional and it is less expensive and easier to buy industrially processed foods that are unhealthy and that is why people now have to give them up. I mean, I pay more money for foods that have less added sugar, right? And I pay more. money for foods that haven't had the fiber removed, the world has essentially become sort of upside down, so it requires us to be intentional about how we organize our lives in terms of physical activity and diet, that's just a sad truth in our lives and there are all these people out there who are trying to make money off of our desire to be comfortable with our desire to have energy-dense foods, you know, and we have to figure out how to do it. get over that you know everyone I know likes it you know and understands that exercise is good for them it's just that a lot of us struggle to exercise so I think part of the problem is that we shame and blame them right ? they feel bad somehow they're lazy there's something wrong with them yeah I think that's absolutely the story we're used to it's like this we should do this and if you're not doing it it's somehow there's something wrong with you either a moral failure or a physical failure and I feel like that's actually become even more important in the culture in the last um, even like 10 years, absolutely the culture of fitness is such that you know, just do it. right, you know, just do it and everyone else you know and and you know we need to understand that if you look, if you put couches and escalators and, you know, nice comfortable chairs and whatever in the Kalahari desert, the hunter.

Those who gather there would take advantage of them as much as you and I do well, so we need to find ways to help people help themselves without being dictatorial, you know, without being kind of fascist about it, and That means finding ways to help. people make physical activity necessary or they make it rewarding or both and I think that's our societal challenge and I would love to talk about that right before we do it, there were a couple of these myths that I would love to just just cover first so which I think you mentioned the principle, the quick questions about this idea that when you get older you should retreat and slow down, it's very true, no, so we recently published a paper called the active grandparent hypothesis, so there may be heard of the grandparent hypothesis, the idea that humans evolve to become grandparents.

Most species rarely live after they have stopped reproducing, while the average human lives about two decades after the end of reproduction, making us very unusual for other species. and one of the reasons, of course, is that older people impart the wisdom that we talked about before, but also if you go to any pre-industrial society, you don't know, the grandparents are in the fields digging and cultivating, the grandparents are in the Hunter-gatherers are out there, you know, digging for food, hunting and providing food for their children and grandchildren, we evolved to stay active throughout our lives and the important thing about this is that being active slows down the aging process of the we can talk. why that's the case and it promotes health, both mental and physical, allowing people to live longer, so it's a feedback system because remember until recently we made a distinction between duration of health and life expectancy. life and until recently there was no correct medical system. doctors didn't exist your life expectancy was your life expectancy as soon as you got very sick you died well what physical activity really does is not that important in extending your life expectancy although it does what is really important is that it extends your life expectancy. life expectancy in slowing down aging and activating repair and maintenance mechanisms that keep the body functioning very well, so the fact that people evolved to be physically active as they aged actually helped them age so that they could be actor grandparents and I feel like a lot of people hear this I feel like you surprised them a little bit because I think we're absolutely used to this idea that there's a big distinction between a grandparent and a parent and grandparents are definitely not like dating, you know, in the equivalent of hunting and digging in the field is like well, you know, no, obviously they're going to be too fragile, they're not going to be strong enough, that's a different thing and now, if I were thinking about this meeting of hunters, I guess they feel in the middle. of the Village and taking care of little kids so you know people in their 20s and 30s can go out and do these really physical things, nothing could be further from the truth so there's a wonderful study done by an anthropologist named Kristen Hawks who showed that among the Hodza again, we always return to the Hza because they are

practical

ly the best group of hunters together and stable.

Grandmas actually spend more time digging up ERS, you know, food than mothers. Grandmas dig more than mothers, yes, because because mothers are dealing with their children, you know there are a handful? Grandma can go away and spend more time, of course, they also take care of the kids a lot and other things like that, they can actually spend more time and end up digging more tubers. I've seen this myself some of these grandmas like my God, they're like machines, they're like it's hard to keep up with them, they're like bulldozers, right, um um, so they're actually working harder than the mothers and Of course , they don't do it as a form of exercise, they do it to help their children, their children and their grandchildren, but this is what really helps them.

There is a more famous study on exercise and aging. In fact, it was done here in Boston, at Harvard Medical School, by a guy named Ralph Paffenbarger. uh he found out that if you wanted to study aging and exercise, Harvard was actually the best place on the planet and the reason is because the Harvard Alumni Association development office never lets go of their students because they're constantly asking them for money. Okay, you're never alone until the day you die. Harvard will ask you for money and that's why they thought this is perfect. We can get the Harvard Alumni, meet the development office to allow us to follow a group of Harvard alumni as they get older, find out how they're doing, give them a questionnaire, find out how active they are, if they smoke, etc., and then discover the effects. about aging and what it showed was and of course it's been replicated many times, but this is a classic article in the England Journal of Medicine that showed that as people age, the effect of exercise increases their life expectancy.

For example, Harvard students who were 20, 30, or 40 years old and exercised more than sedentary students in the same class had approximately a 20% lower mortality rate when they were 60, 70, or 80 years old after correcting by other factors. They had a 50% lower mortality rate, so once you're in your 60s and 70s or 80s and people exercise, we have a 50% lower mortality rate. longevity and of course since then we understand the mechanisms behind that because every time you exercise or you're physically active you go up the stairs or you know, go dig up some root vegetables or you carry water instead of turning on the F, whatever you do . right, what you're doing is you're stressing your body, right, it's you, your muscles, do you have little tears?, your mitochondria and your muscles, those are little organelles that produce energy, they're actually producing reactive oxygen. species, they're actually causing oxidation, as you know, when you brown an apple, they're producing these little chemical chemicals that are reactive, right when you're heating up, so you're actually heating up.

In reality you know that changing you are damaging your proteins there are a thousand bad things that happen when you sound bad you are describing all the bad things that happen it is stressful it is a phonological stress in every system of your body it is stress however we evolved to be physically active, so for each of these stresses, our bodies activate repair and maintenance mechanisms, so we activate WE produce antioxidants that eliminate all those free radicals, those reactive oxygen species that we produce U proteins and enzymes that eliminate the proteins that have been damaged we produce enzymes that repair the mutations that are caused in our DNA by exercise.

I mean, I could go on well, everything you can think of is correct, it's been natural selection for billions of generations, not just of humans. but our ancestors have produced answers so that if physical activity is not harmful to us, it is actually the reverse need to do physical activity to trigger all these benefits exactly because we never evolved to not be physically active, so we never we involve. activate these mechanisms in the absence of physical activity and we are evolved and our body is fine, obviously I will only activate repair after damage and I never imagined that you could go a whole day without having to do a lot of activity and trigger it, that is one part, and the another is that of course you wouldn't want to do it, it's very difficult to program the body just to repair exactly that damage, right, you tend to overdo it, so the analogy is often used like imagine you've spilled your tea on the floor right now. and then you cleaned it, the floor would actually be a little bit cleaner after you cleaned it well because then than now because it's actually not that clean That's right, and that's exactly the same with these repair and maintenance mechanisms, actually we tend to overshoot them, so the bottom line is that physical activity is not bad for us, otherwise people who exercise would die younger.

Instead, we activate these repair and maintenance mechanisms. mechanisms that actually prevent that, actually we, that really improve all aspects of weo, that's why exercise slows aging because actually, through these repair and maintenance mechanisms, it slows down the aging process and we No, we haven't invented a way to take a pill that just turns on these repairs and we will never do that because you have to take a whole pharmacy every day and plus each of those pills would have side effects. There is another important benefit of exercising when you are younger, which is exercise. Remember we talked.

Before about energy, right, and there's a limited amount of energy you have, well, it turns out that if you're physically inactive, right, if I don't exercise, my body will think, oh hey, extra energy, let's increase the hormones and this is especially true. In women, inactive women have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone and of course that's the body's natural way of trying to increase fertility, but they're actually already quite fertile so what happens is that you are actually unnaturally increasing reproductive capacity. hormones that increase cancer risk, so people who are physically active actually have lower cancer risks.

Breast cancer rates are 30-50% lower. I will say that again, 30 to 50% lower in people who only spend 150 minutes a week. of exercise, it's 20 minutes a day, that's incredible and the reason for this is partly due to this ignition of energy. I'll give you another example, um um, remember we talked about the repair and maintenance mechanism when you go out and do things right. you encounter the outside world you activate your immune system one of the things that activates one of the types of cells that are activated by exercise are cells called natural killer cells which sound horrible but they sound a little scary and they are also I also called them cytotoxic cells again it sounds a little scary but to say this but these are the cells that protect us against cancer they also protect us against viral infections and various other things we heard a lot about them during covid so people who exercise in they actually are. activate cell types and then move them around your body through the circulatory system, thus protecting them from the damage they may suffer, but also from the damage that comes from cancer.

Natural killer cells are our first line of defense against cancer cells, so if you look at the data, almost all forms of cancer, almost without exception, people have significantly lower cancer rates if they do regular physical activity. and that's again because we activate these systems that we wouldn't otherwise activate in absence. ofphysical activity is amazing so it's an incredibly strong argument that you're making about physical activity and exercise and so I'd love to start talking about

practical

advice because you also started from the beginning saying that we're all naturally ready . We try to avoid doing any unnecessary activities, so there's a huge tension between all this incredible impact on our health and actually how we naturally evolved to avoid doing all of this, so I'd love to have a really smart view.

You know most people listening to this will say I hate exercise. I hear you say it's important, but you know people talk to me about important things that I should do all the time, but you know it still is. It's hard to do, is there any insight from everything you've learned that can help us understand how we can try to find a way to do this activity well again? You know I'm not a psychologist, so you should follow my advice. with a grain of salt, but again I go back to this first principle, which is that we all have to be physically active for two reasons and two reasons only when it is necessary or rewarding and the fact of the matter is that we are not going to do it is necessary to most people, right, most people don't have to be physically active to survive, so I think we should focus more on the rewarding part and, for me, the most rewarding types of physical activity and I think that's true for most. people are making it social, I mean, just think about the way a lot of people like when they complain to me about exercise, they, you, I go to the gym and I go to the treadmill and I hate it, you know, maybe They will make it rewarding by listening to this podcast or something like that.

You know, sometimes when I'm forced to get on a treadmill, I mean, believe me, I don't know, I listen to something or I watch something or whatever, but really the best social activities are when you're with a friend, When you're with other people and it stops being exercise, it becomes fun, and that's why sport is kind of a sport instead of exercise. Because it's actually social and it has this kind of competitive element to it, yeah, if you're tired , your friends say, "Come on, keep going or whatever, and you have a little bit of peer pressure to keep going and you know the miles go by if you're running or whatever you're doing or going for a walk or whatever." that you go for a walk with a friend that you don't consider it as exercise you are going to walk with a friend right and so I think we know that dancing, you mentioned it before, dancing is exercise, right But we don't consider it as a social activity and why?

What don't we have? Why don't we have more public dances, why don't we have more, you know, towns and cities, you know, bands on the corners for people to go and dance at night? I mean, we can think of all kinds of ways to do this right, but no because I think our imagination has been limited by the way we've industrialized and corporatized physical activity and it doesn't have to be any of those things, no. There's nothing wrong with it, you know, but it's not like that. It doesn't really work, what are the kind of exercises you think we should do?

Because, again, I think this is also an area where there are a lot of myths, right? um, about you know you should do 10,000

steps

or you need to do it. Do you know this particular type of exercises? What is it? Well, that's part of the medicalization of exercise. We prescribe it as a pill. ISS, the problems in your world are are you worried about Alzheimer's? Are you worried about cancer? Are you worried about heart disease? Etc. Are you injured? Are you not in shape? Are you overweight? There will never be a solution, but I would say this and I think there are some.

Some very simple principles are that no matter who you are, something is better than nothing. Just a few thousand steps a day have been shown to provide benefits over none. and also, the more you do, the more benefits you get, but those benefits tend to diminish, so you don't need to run marathons or ultramarathons, it won't help you at all and we didn't evolve to do any. Well, we didn't just evolve to walk, although walking is the most fundamental form of physical activity, we also evolved to carry and pick up things and whatever, so mixing it up is always a good idea, so just walking would be enough activity for people. people or you're saying it's actually better than nothing, but clearly there are other things you have to do to achieve it, which is kind of what I've taken away.

I don't really know what enough means, do you? Again, whatever you want to do is better than nothing, so if all you can do is walk a little, that's fine, but if you have the ability or inclination to do more than just walk and do vigorous physical activity because walking is what we call moderate physical activity, right? increase your heart rate to about 50% of your maximum is for walking, which is good, walking is the most fundamental basic form of physical activity bar none, so if you're going to do something, walk and this goes back to your saying of It's amazing how far people walk in these gathering environments, yes and yes, and I think you mention also that they don't necessarily run as much as maybe we did, well, sometimes they run, but you know they don't like to run.

They don't run five miles every morning, right, maybe once a week they could run a little bit, you know? So you're saying it's not like every day they're rushing to do something they have to do, no, definitely not. I love the way you say some of these things and they are so obvious from your experience, it's so funny and I think I have no idea what would be normal in this environment, but again, it's just because it's normal. It doesn't mean that's what we should do, that's the myth of the paleo diet. If you eat like the ancestors of Hunter GA, you will be you.

It doesn't work that way. Our ancestors did not evolve to be physically. active to be healthy, they evolve to be physically active to survive and reproduce, so it is not a model of exactly how we should be today, it only gives us information about what we evolved to do and helps us understand the imbalances that we have in the world today but it's not a recipe okay, it doesn't mean that we have to live exactly like because I think a lot of people are hearing that we should try to live as close as possible that's easy that's wrong that's a very bad way to use evolutionary data and That's the myth of the paleo diet.

You're saying it's easy, but I think that doesn't mean it's obviously not true. Also, they didn't have medicine, they didn't have refrigerators, they didn't have any. You know, there are all kinds of good things that we've invented today and, um, we should abandon them because our hunter-gatherers didn't have as much of an attempt to understand which of those things by not having them or hurting us and adapting to that. Instead of just assuming that everything they did they liked just assuming that their diet is always better or that their particular answer is not always the right one, we call that the naturalistic fallacy that what you know was done in the past or what is natural must necessarily be better sometimes.

It's a reasonable way, you know, to start thinking about things, but we use science to test these ideas, so this is like saying that now we know that if you boil water it kills germs, that's a good thing that doesn't happen. we make. No, and just because we haven't done that in the past doesn't mean yeah, yeah, Hunter only had unboiled water, so I'm never going to have boiled water, okay? That's an example where you're saying I could have actually let you know that there's just progress that we didn't understand. Yes, we don't have to abandon, abandon all kinds of modern things.

The reason you're talking about the activity is because our body is acquiring this. um activity to trigger all this maintenance and repair and we haven't found an alternative today in our lifestyle to solve that, so we need to create this activity to trigger it, it's what our bodies um evolved to require some degree of physical activity to activate. All these repair and maintenance mechanisms to modulate our hormonal levels, all these kinds of things and if we eliminate them from our environment we get into trouble, so the key thing is to do some physical activity. More is better than none and mix it up and if you want to try to do it if you're struggling to do it don't feel bad about yourself there's nothing wrong with you and B try to make it fun you know because yes it's fun and it's social so, for example, I have a uh, I like to run and I often run with friends, um, and on Tuesdays I run with so-and-so and on Fridays I run with so-and-so and on Sundays we have this great group of runners. and we often email each other the night before it's like, hey, see you Tuesday at 7:15 and I guarantee Tuesday at 7:00 it's like, oh my gosh, I'm like, what am I doing?

It's not raining or cold or I have to work at this job. I have to get ready for class or whatever. You know whatever and I don't want to do it, but I already promised you. my friend Aaron that I'm going to be there and if I'm not there he'll get mad and then I go and you know, we often complain in the morning and neither of us want to see each other and So you know, after 10 or 15 minutes, you know it's well, so we made it necessary for each other. We made this commitment and we forced you to do it and then in the end it's also social because you know he's a good friend and we have. we chat about this and that and uh so we've made it necessary and social and there's all kinds of ways to do it, you can know, join a club or have a gym or know that there's a trainer.

I mean, if you have money, there are a thousand ways to do it and we all have to find our own ways to do it, but that I know works, and people telling me you know they're struggling works, the other thing is we often do hyperbolic discounting, which is a fancy word for H. I'll do that next time. You know it's the famous marshmallow test. You know you can eat one marshmallow now, but if you wait 20 minutes, you can eat two marshmallows. and we're really bad about it, right, um, and how often do we like it?

I walk into the building I work in, right. My office is on the fifth floor, it's an old Victorian building and I can guarantee you everything. The one time I go into the building I would like to take the elevator okay every time but I don't um and I think that's okay you know what I'm going to take today tomorrow I'm going to take the elevator the only reason you don't don't take the elevator It's just that if someone sees me in the elevator they'll call me a hypocrite right because I talk about you like you forced yourself to go up the stairs declaiming how terrible it would be if every time I get there my brain does this little hyperbolic discounting trick saying: you know what It's the elevator today tomorrow tomorrow I'll use the stairs, right?

I'm no different from anyone else, so we need ways to trick ourselves out of that kind of hyperbolic discounting because it's a natural basic. Fundamental instinct, we all do it. I do not care who you are. Now you've talked quite a bit about walking and how important that is when conducting war activities. I was interested in the type of weights and transportation because you're like Ted. that a little bit and I think a lot of people tend to think of exercise like it means going for a run, but weights are important too, yeah, yeah, could you tell me about those two?

So weight is really important for aging because one of the big problems with aging in the Western world is something called sarop penia, which is a long fancy word that basically means you're getting frail, so Sarco means muscle and pinea means loss, so loss of muscle and as people become When they are older, they tend to lose muscle mass and become frail and you know that getting up from a chair is difficult and you know that doing basic tasks is difficult and when That happens you become less physically active and that further exacerbates muscle loss. It's a vicious cycle and then of course it becomes very serious because then you lose quality of life and then you're less able to walk, you walk slower, all these things happen, the way to prevent sarcopenia is to do some weight training. strength again because I don't live in a I don't have to carry water I don't have to carry anything in my life so I like you I go to the gym and I have weights and I lift them And I hate doing them, but as we get older, you feel like it's something essential that what you should do, it is absolutely important, which is why almost all major health organizations recommend that as people age, it is essential that they do weight training at least twice. per week and you don't have to gain crazy amounts of weight, just enough that you know it sounds like you're saying you know in these tribes that you visit, all these grandparents just carry around a lot of weight all the time. no, but they carry food, I mean, they're not cars, I mean, but you don't weigh, but I mean, things that are heavy, they just carry things, yeah, there's no, there's no shopping carts, there's no cars, but.

Their children are not doing this for them, they have to carry their children, yes, at a certain point theKids can help carry St, but there are always babies to carry and you know when you go out and dig a bunch of tubers you have to do it. bring them home right now, you're not going to, you can't call an Uber and have Uber deliver it to you or I think what's really interesting is I still have it, you know, I still have this in my mind about well. Okay, but if they're in their 40s and 50s, they have adult children, aren't their adult children the ones doing all this for them?

So they don't need to carry these things, not in the slightest, no, everyone works, everyone carries you, you go out and hunt a Kudo, you know, you can't just leave it there, you have to take the Kudo home, so everyone is still strong because they have to use their bodies, you know? and they're not doing crazy things, uh, you know, so it's not necessary, and studies show that you know only a moderate level of 10 to 12 repetitions, several of the ones you know and several. The basic muscle groups don't have to be very heavy, it's enough basically to prevent that kind of muscle loss, so once or twice a week, it's not crazy, there's already this transformation, I mean, and you can also incorporate it like I have this one of the The way I do it is that every morning I make coffee for my wife and I and we have a French press and I let the coffee sit in the French press for 4 minutes and while I'm doing that I go to the I go out and do push-ups I hate push-ups, I promise you, I don't enjoy doing that, but I've made it my little habit and now I know that when the coffee is there I have to do my little push-ups and it works um and it's one of the ways in What tricks me into doing it uh at least you understand coffee in the end is that what you're saying, I drink coffee in the end and it's like it's my habit.

I'm still impressed that you're pretty disciplined there because I think unless I had a trainer or someone leaning over me, which is. My trick on this is that I need someone to make me do it, but I've made it a habit which is useful so now it's a habit and trust me I really don't ever want to do it but I can complain and whatever. I also know that if I'm G, you know how to talk to someone like you. I don't want you to know how to be a liar. Could you tell me if there is any difference in this advice between men and women?

No, absolutely not, I mean both. men and women involve being physically active um and um and it's important for both of us um it's important for everyone um and um I would say these are universal, so I'd love to wrap that up just with your help. to recap your weekly workout routine because I think we got snippets of that through the podcast. I think it's really interesting to see what it's like. I'm a little strange, how is it. Well, tell us. I think a lot of people are going to do it. being interested is like okay, you say all this like, what do you really do Daniel?

Well, I love running. Well, then I run, probably, so you really enjoy this despite everything you've said so far, really good, I really enjoy it. I like to run, but I never really enjoy the first few miles of a race or very rarely, right, but I, um, but I like to run, so I usually run, you know, five times a week, sometimes I do spin biking in the basement, um and me. try to do weights, you know, just a few, not a lot, about twice a week, you know, I do squats and stuff like that and I do push-ups when I make my coffee.

I try to get up every once in a while and it's like you, I'm a tea drinker so I get up to make my tea and then I microwave it because it gets cold and you know all that kind of stuff and um and that's it, It's quite impressive, as if it were a high level. of activity and what fraction of that, if someone told you tomorrow we have this magic pill so you know we can solve the health part, what would you still be doing? I wouldn't believe you because, first of all, there is the exercise itself.

There's no magic pill, I mean, sometimes it's oversold, you know, I hope I haven't oversold it. I mean, it reduces the risk of cancer, but it won't necessarily prevent you from getting cancer, but again I participate in, I exercise, not alone. because it makes me feel good and makes me feel vital, vigorous and healthy, but it is also the way I have made many friends. I mean, some of my best friends are my running mates, right, it's part of my life, so. This is like talking about dancing again, once it becomes just fun and enjoyable, then it is not done just for health and therefore it is easier to stick with it than anything else, so I don't think about running as a simple exercise, running as part of my social activity. life and, um, yeah, sometimes I run it alone in the morning, but I often run with friends, so, you know, I would say a large percentage of my friends I met and made friends while running amazingly.

I have a lot more questions, but Unfortunately, we're in the moment, so I think we started talking about exercise and this idea that our ancestors used to exercise is just wrong. What they used to do is a lot of physical activity largely because they had no other option if they wanted to. To get water or food or anything else, you have to do this and that because until very recently we were always in this desperate need of trying to find enough calories just to

sustain

ourselves and have children, we do everything else. evolved to minimize waste so why would you do a lot of exercise if you don't have to and similarly you know our muscles are designed to shrink if they're not actively used because they have this calorie cost to sustain them.

They weren't like the huge Tarzan Cent, you know, walking around everywhere unless they really needed to and, unfortunately, we're in this world where our muscles naturally want to shrink and we don't do any of these activities anymore which are very different and I think You also talked about how we now understand that although this activity in the short term can cause harm to our body in many ways, it activates these incredible repair mechanisms and the total impact of that is that it's actually repairing everything. of us, so if we're active, we're actually repairing our bodies and if we suddenly stop being active, these systems that should be working all the time just don't work and so you describe these incredible statistics.

I think about how he knows. your 60 years 7 years 80 years if you are active then you know that your probability of dying each year I think was like 50% lower, so this is a big change. You also said that it's a complete illusion that as we get older we should stop exercising. And so this thing that I think we're all used to in the West is not at all the patterns that you've seen visiting all these different hunter-gatherer tribes where you know you might be grandma or grandpa, you keep digging the tubers and carrying the water. and everything else and as a result you are much stronger than we would be here today and that loss of strength is a huge risk factor for all of us and unfortunately that means you need to carry some weight, so think in terms of talking about practical advice, we need to be active, we need to walk, but we also need to lift weights and we have to fight this natural desire not to do it and I think you really gave us some. great tips, of which I think what interested you the most is to make it social so that suddenly this is fun, it's not just that really boring thing of going to the gym alone, but you're actually going to meet friends or you're going to go dancing or you know whatever those things are, so it makes it a lot easier because it's natural to not want to exercise and this idea that if someone is listening to this you know there's something wrong with them, they don't want to do it, actually. you're saying it's the other way around, of course you don't want to do it, you need to create ways to want to do this activity and the good news is that if you do it, it really affects your health and I think the other thing you talked about a little bit It's just that sometimes the start is worse, so you say you actually hate starting to run, but then you really enjoy it.

There is a kind of positivity at the end of this, if you can get past this initial problem, I would say thank you very much. I thought this was very interesting. I hope I can tempt you back in the future because I know there are a lot of things we don't talk about, like sleep and other areas, it will be a pleasure, thank you, thank you, thank you Daniel for joining me on Zoe, science and nutrition, today we destroyed some myths, they made me feel much better. I don't enjoy exercise and I also heard some practical advice on how we can reap its benefits, but to truly optimize our health we must also ensure that our bodies receive the proper nutrition and if you want to understand how to support your body with the best foods for you , then you might want to try Zoe's personalized nutrition program.

You can learn more and get a 10% discount by visiting zoe.com. slmp podcast as always I'm your host Jonathan Wolf Zoe's Science and Nutrition is produced by yell huin Martin Richard Willen and Tilly fford see you next time.