because you're moving vertically up and down, you get these big surges in blood to the brain should like fertiliser for your brain cells. For me, the two sort of units main exercises really are the squat and the push up. And if you do those, then you're doing pretty well.
Welcome to the high performance health podcast with your host Angela Foster. The show where we talk about everything you need to break through limits and achieve a high performance, mind, body and lifestyle.
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Hi, friends, I have the love episode, I think for you today looking ahead towards the New Year. If you're thinking about introducing healthy habits and how you can do things simply and easily and integrate them seamlessly into your life, then I think you'll really enjoy this episode with Dr. Michael Mosley. He's coming to talk about his new book, just one thing which talks about all different kinds of bio hacks that you can use to really upgrade your health, your performance and your longevity, including things like intelligent exercise is absolutely fascinating because I actually learned about how I always knew that exercise enhanced BDNF, but what I learned from Dr. Michael Mosley on this episode is that doing squats in particular, is really, really helpful to your brain. And BDNF, which is kind of like Miracle Gro for your brain. Because of the increase in blood flow moving between up and down push ups also good but maybe not as good, according to the researchers squat. So you're going to find out a tonne of things on this episode just like that. We also talk a little bit about wearables, and whether they're accurate, we didn't have time to dive into too much detail on that. So I'm going to be talking about wearables and things like aura and whoop straps and how, what their accuracy is like for things like HRV and resting heart rate and calorie estimation, in a bite size episode, alongside kind of special considerations for those of you that are more active and athletic, so that you can avoid things like low energy availability. So look out for a bite sized Podcast coming out soon in relation to that. But today, as I say, we're going to be diving into all the latest science on how you can really upgrade your health, your performance, your longevity, in very simple ways that fit seamlessly into your day. A few things you can add in as well to your morning routine, but don't take too much time. So Dr. Michael Mosley is the number one International Best Selling Author of the fast diet, the eight week blood sugar diet, the clever guts diet, the fast 800, fast 800 keto and fast asleep and including now, the latest book, just one thing, which is a fantastic book, if you haven't read it yet, you can go and get that from all good bookstores and also on Amazon. You've probably seen if you're in the UK, Dr. Michael Mosley on TV. He trained to be a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London before joining the BBC where he spent three decades as a science journalist and executive producer and he's now a well known TV personality. And he's really renowned for bringing together the latest scientific research and creating easy to follow sustainable weight loss programmes. He has some very easy as I say hacks and little exercises and things that you can do today. So it's a very practical focused episode. So without further delay, let me introduce you now to Dr. Michael Mosley.
So, Dr. Michael Mosley, I am so excited to have you on the show. I have a tonne of questions for you. But firstly, a very warm welcome to the show. Thank you. So awesome to have you here. I think we were just chatting offline there about how important metabolism is for longevity for performance, and of brain and body. And I think that's probably the perfect place to start. But I guess my first question would be, why do you think so many people are currently struggling with their metabolism?
I think it is largely because we're eating so much junk food, processed food. And by that I mean food which is from takeaways, but also the bright coloured, brightly packaged, pre cooked meals that you buy in supermarkets and all those other things which are made in factories, and unfortunately, these sorts of foods are quite alien to us in the sense that we did not evolve to eat Things like that. And we also know that from quite a few studies, that when people eat over processed food, they just eat a lot more of it. And that really messes with our metabolism, as well as our waistline, and our ability to metabolise sugar, and things like that. So I think that's the major villain, if you like, is the rise and rises of processed food. And we know in the UK, around half of calories consumed from processed food. And with kids, it's up to 70%. So that is an astonishing rise. And really, it's happened since the 60s and 70s. And that's when we have seen the rise of obesity worldwide, took off in a spectacular fashion, then, and that was likely think, throughout Christmas food
is spectacular. So good way to describe it as fast. I think one of the things that, you know, when I when I work with people is and I think this is just a part of life is many people who are listening to this, actually, they may not be very overweight, but they're struggling with kind of losing seven pounds. It's what I call body composition, right where they're under muscled, and they have a little bit too much body fat. And I think that as we're ageing, because we're fighting that kind of degradation in muscle mass, we actually do have to work at it on a consistent basis to maintain it. I know that you have various different diet plans that people can follow with a lot of clinical research behind them. And we were talking about your initial one that people can go on where they've dropped their calories down to about eight to 900 calories a day. But the way that's designed is not to kind of break their metabolism and lead to that rebound in weight gain. Can you describe for people listening, how they might go about this, and what's important when you're structuring a nutrition plan?
Sure. So this is based on something a book I wrote a couple years ago called The fast 800. And also, there's an online programme called fast eight hundred.com. And around 35,000, people have been through it so far. So we have a lot of data on them, we know kind of what's happened to them, and we can keep track. And also because there are health coaches involved. When you do the programme, we also get an enormous amount of feedback that way. And so this is a sort of three stage programmes. So the first stage is rapid weight loss, if you're suitable, and obviously, not everyone is suitable. But you can discover the criteria for good website. And that's broadly 800 to 1000 calories a day, every day, for up to 12 weeks. And it very much depends on your motivation, and how much you have to lose and why you want to lose it. But if you are significantly overweight, if you suffer from obesity, then this can be a very effective way of shedding those extra kilos, it has to be done properly, you need to have good nutritional balance, you must have high quality protein in your diet, because otherwise you will lose muscle. Indeed, that was a problem with all the early rapid weight loss diets is that protein content was no and the crazy ones, like the cabbage soup diet, again, you're not going to get much protein in cabbage soup. And it's becoming increasingly clear just how critical protein is for our health. So that's kind of stage one. Stage two is what describe the five two diet, which I'm famous for, because I invented it 10 years ago. And the idea there is yes, you've cut down to 800,000 calories, but you only do two days a week. So you're kind of graduating from very rapid weight loss, you know, still substantial weight loss. And then stage three is what I would call them the way of life, broadly, lowest carb Mediterranean style diet, which you can sustain, you know, from now on. And it also comes with an exercise regime, and also ways to manage your stress, and mindfulness exercises and things like that. Because I think those are those are the three things you've got to crack, basically healthy weight, mindfulness, stress management, that these helps me sleep, obviously. And third thing is exercise, because you've got to exercise because you need to maintain your muscle mass. And you were saying, you know, it's scary how quickly people lose it. And the stats suggest that off the age of 30, you're going to lose, you know, between up to 10% every decade, unless you do something about it. And that means resistance exercise over and above anything else really. I mean, obviously you need to do the aerobic, but resistance is a core part of our programme
is interesting, isn't it as well, actually, because I think a lot of people default to going out and just going for a run and they think that will help to burn fat. And they underestimate just the impact that resistance training will have at rest, but also in terms of improving things like insulin sensitivity, as well. What do you have people do? How do you sort of divide that up? Is it a sort of two to three times a week initially resistance training? It's obviously easier to get results isn't it an unconditioned individual than it is in one someone who is already quite conditioned?
Absolutely. So we have different levels. Depending on you can enter your level. Depending on how fit or on fit you are at the moment and we have sort of, you know, craned exercise physiologists who will guide you through it, but it's essentially as you say, it's three, maybe four times a week. It is a form of HIIT, high intensity resistance training. So you, you know, do a combination of different forms with mainly using your body weight. But there's also stuff with weights. So you, for me, the two sort of units main exercises really are the squat and the push up. And if you do those, then you're doing pretty well. And then there's lots of refinements beyond that from plank, sideways planks, you name it, you can throw it in. But I've just written a book called just one thing. And one of the things I write about there is the benefits of the press up in the squat, not just for building muscle, but also because the effect on the brain. So I spoke to a researcher at the University of South Wales, who's been looking into this. And he said that one of the advantages of the squat and press up is because you're moving vertically up and down, you get this big surges in blood to the brain. And these trigger, the release in the brain of a substance called BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factor should like fertiliser for your brain cells. So he came up with a phrase basically cause intelligent exercises, because he's demonstrated cognitive improvement in people who do these particular exercises. And, you know, compared to running on a rubric, the benefits are much, much bigger. Certainly, you know, minutes done, because you can get things over and done within a surprisingly short amount of time.
It's interesting, it's music to my ears, because it means that all that glute training that I do in the gym is paying off not just in terms of aesthetics, but in terms of my brain as well. And actually, you know, it's interesting, because I think when I was looking into it as well, the research, like if you're listening to things I'm trying to learn as well exercising at the same time, so I'll often listen to a podcast or read an audible book, while I'm training in the gym. And I do find that I retain things better, I think my concentration is better. So what were you saying that does that apply to both the squat and the pushup?
Yes, it does. So because in both cases, you are going through a vertical motion, probably more, you get more bang for your buck with the squat, because it's quite you move more. And another thing I write about in the book is eccentric exercise, which you may be familiar with concentric and eccentric. So there's been some fascinating research, this is the difference. So if you're lifting weights, then as you lift them up, that is the concentric with you're tightening the muscles as you lower them down that eccentric, or eccentric. And surprisingly enough, there's some researchers in Australia who demonstrated that almost all the benefit comes from the going down, they did a study in which they got people either to do just lift the weight, or just lower the weights, or lift and lower. And it turned out that just lowering the weight was as effective as lifting and lowering. And so he said, you get the same results with half the amount of effort. And he also did another study, which very entertaining where he got a group of overweight women to walk either up six flights of stairs or down six flights of stairs, and they had to take a lift the other way. And they did this three or four times a week for six weeks. And at the end of that time, the women who had been walking downstairs got the most benefit, they burned more calories, they got bigger improvements in their bone density, and bigger improvements in things like their cholesterol scores and fat scores. We've seen what you would expect better if you go upstairs and downstairs. But downstairs seems to be even better going upstairs. And that's what I love about turn, you come across all sorts of weird stuff. Rises me.
People that dodge the lift that well, they take the lift and dodge the stairs, actually a really good place to start them is take the lift up and walk back down to the office.
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And that seems to be because as he explained, when you exercise, as you know, you do micro tears, basically, you damage yourself. And it's the repair, which happens in your off days that actually were with body builders back stronger, it responds to damage by going okay, I need to build back stronger. And when you're going down stairs, and indeed, when you're learning the weights, or indeed when you're going down on the squat, you are damaging your muscle more than when you're going up. And it also requires greater, in a way effort to do it to mean to make sure that you're not seriously damaging yourself. But it says micro tears which seem to contribute to the fact that the metabolic rate is higher, and you burn more calories going downstairs and upstairs.
I suppose actually when you look at mountain biking, right when you're going down, it is actually much harder to control. Then you're going up to this effort but when you're going up but people I think underestimate actually trying to hold right when you're going down a steep hill.
Absolutely. And when you go up a mountain, you think that when going up you find when you're going down If you can't say, oh, well, the reason I'm feeling tearing down must be because I've had to go up the mountain. And that's, you know, this is payback time. But actually, the reality is it's either work getting the gig up, that's why you feel really knackered when you're on the way down
when you're going down. And it's good as well. Eccentric movements are actually good for connective tissue aren't there as well. The joint joints,
huge benefits all around. So yeah, at the very least, if we're going to shut the lift, do book downstairs. And you'll get benefit from that. I always want to have people in escalators blessing people standing on escalators going down I think really this is, this is the minimal amount of effort you could make, you can walk down a set of escalators. Sadly, our built environment has created such a way as to encourage us to do as little as possible. And I think that's obviously a huge part of the problem with the modern world is that we have made it too easy.
For sure. And actually that non exercise Activity Thermogenesis what we call NEET, is responsible more when you look at it as a component of total calorie burn. And then people's exercises. And I think just under 20% is attributed to knit and 10% to exercise whereas most people are kind of labouring under the assumption that if they've got to sheduled a session at the gym, that's okay. Whereas actually, it's the movement I was reading an article recently that was talking about people doing calf raises or twitching their calf muscles at their, at their desk, and just how much that was contributing to calorie burn.
Absolutely. And all these bits help. A few years ago, I did a film for Horizon called The Truth about exercise, in which I discovered the joys of high intensity interval training and the amount of benefit you get from very short periods of time. But as part of that, I also joined an American professor. He gave me one thing he called his neat pence. And they were basically a pair of pants that can measure all the movements you did during the day. It turned out they weren't big enough. And he basically was estimating how many calories I burned. And it was clear I was sitting around for too much. So yeah, that was
Yeah, yeah, very entertaining. I was actually looking at one of your articles before the show. And it was around you doing HIIT training and looking at the improvements that you saw through hit training, in terms of insulin sensitivity, but you didn't see the same improvements as they were expecting in terms of vO two Max and they put that down to genetics. Can you explain a bit about that? Because it's very interesting.
Sure, because, as I'm sure you know, VO two Max is an incredibly important measure of your health. Indeed, Professor Jamie Timmons, who was having this sort of, he was guiding me through this exercise programme, he said, the two greatest predictors of life expectancy are probably your insulin sensitivity. That's incredibly important. And the other one is your, your, you know, your, your VO two Max, you're basically clear how much oxygen can you the maximum amount of oxygen you can burn when you're really pushing yourself. So the best way of doing it is going to a lab they put on oxygen mask, they put a mask on you. And they measure how much oxygen you breathe in and out as you push yourself to the absolute limit on a bike. But most of us can't do that there are online calculators, or the simplest thing is to measure your pulse. Because your policies actually again, not a bad measure of your aerobic fitness should what this thing is measuring. And so I did this hit programme, and it did great things for my insulin sensitivity, but not so much for my view to match my view to Max was okay for someone my age. I'm now 65 I think it was 55 when I made that film, but he had taken Jamie had taken a blood sample before I started the whole thing. And he said when I came back, and we measured everything and I said well, I'm bit disappointed, it didn't get better. He said we've measured your particular genetic marker, and we predicted on the basis of that, that you would get almost zero benefit. In terms of back you might stomach getting worse, but it's very unlikely you'll ever be able to boost it that much. Because he said you were right down there at the bottom score. So he said, on the other hand, I have the markers of someone who puts on muscle very quickly if I wait train, so there are swings and roundabouts that our genetics to some extent will determine our body shape that also with sports we're going to excel in. I'm clearly never going to be an Olympic athlete because my but maybe I could become a weightlifter.
You can start competing in bodybuilding competitions.
Absolutely. I do think so that's kind of one of the things and I try not to get discouraged. I still do all the things, you know whether it is pushing myself with hip programme or running. But I these days, you know, and sanguine with the fact that my view to Mexico is never going to be wildly impressive.
And what about So do you still see like duction in your resting pulse? Or do you just find that no matter how much aerobic activity, you're doing that stent to stay? Are you sort of just trying to maintain a level?
I probably maintain, I'm 65. So maintenance is good. And my rescue pulse is normally about 5860. So it's kind of okay. It's never gonna get down into 30s. But it's okay. And so, yeah, my age, I think it's mainly painted, is to about trying to preserve, particularly my muscles, but my aerobic fitness is obviously a kind of big thing. And the other thing is, obviously, because I discovered back then this was 10 years ago, that I had type two diabetes, that was sort of the result of blood test, Jamie hinted at it, he said, your insulin sensitivity has improved, but it was from a pretty low base. And anyway, it's coming down in type two diabetes. And then rather than go on medication, which is what my doctor recommended, and went off to find out if there was way of curing myself. And that's what led to the five two diet. So I actually made another film for Horizon series. And this was called Eat fast, live longer. And that was when I discovered the benefits of intermittent fasting. And like when I came back, during the course of the Edit, so we shot everything. And then during the course of the edit, I actually went on the five two diet. So at the end of the Edit, we would know whether I had succeeded or failed in reversing my diabetes. And indeed, I managed to lose 10 kilos in eight weeks. And at the end of that time, my blood sugar's were right back to normal, which is where they have stayed ever since. So that was breaking with at times, diabetes was regarded as an incurable disease. The science has moved on since then. But what I was did was deemed impossible at the time, or at least remarkably unlikely. And so that's kind of what sent me off on this sort of mission. Find out more about health, and indeed, question, a lot of the stuff that I've been taught because it turns out a lot of it's nonsense.
Yeah, so glad you did, because it's led to so many interesting books and documentaries. Can you explain like with insulin sensitivity, because I think everyone now, you know, he's very familiar with like controlling blood glucose, certainly, my audience listening to this will be and they often are wearing continuous blood glucose monitors to measure it, and to see, and actually people are now sort of obsessing with keeping that blood glucose within a very tight range. But then we also have insulin sensitivity and devices like lumen, for example, that people know about the show you are you burning carbs, or fats was actually going into the cell, which is also a useful kind of understanding that people can have, if you have good insulin sensitivity, Is it risky to be spiking your blood glucose, for example, even for a workout, you now come back and you load up with some carbohydrates? How important do you think it is that we actually control that range? Obviously, if we're constantly spiking, it will be reducing, or it will be developing insulin resistance over the long term. But I think it's just helpful for people to really understand the difference.
Sure. So the thing about insulin, which I'm sure you and your listeners probably already know, is essentially, it. It's, it's a response to an increase in your blood sugar levels. So your pancreas releases insulin that brings your blood sugar's down. And what your insulin does is primarily is it stops fat burning, it picks up sugar and it stuffed it into cells. That's its main role. Other things like stress, cortisol and things like that, that will also lead to a spike in insulin. So what you want to be doing is producing a little insulin as possible, but enough to actually do its role. And that's what insulin sensitivity is all about. Insulin resistance, which is the bad thing is essentially your body because it's been constantly exposed to big blood sugar spikes has to keep on pumping out more and more insulin until the point where you develop Type Two Diabetes and your pancreas packs up. That's kind of the problem. So in terms of spikes, ideally, as you say, you don't want to get lots of spikes. But to be honest, it doesn't matter that much. And keeping your body is very, very good at regulating your blood sugar levels. The main thing is, is they go up Do they come down pretty fast. And that's the best measure because that's a sign that your body is responding to the blood sugar spike because you've had a big carb meal or a big coffee lewd after workout, and your body has gone right gotta deal with this, bring it down. And that is exactly what he's supposed to do. And if it's doing that efficiently and well then you have nothing much to worry about. concern comes obviously when it's not doing that when your blood sugar's stay high. When you have a meal and you have a persistently high level. Those I love those blood glucose metres I also wear them occasionally. I use mainly for interesting which foods I respond to which I don't. And my wife Claire, who's very different physiologically to me in the sense that you know, she can eat pretty much what she wants. She had been slim all her life. I tend to fat because that's kind of how my father was and and she He responds really quite differently to the same foods, whether it is rice, bananas, whatever, a, I respond quite aggressively to sugary foods doesn't stop eating them, but it's not a good thing. But if you actually want to kind of measure your overall blood sugar control, you're better off doing something called HB a one C test, which is a kind of measure of how your blood sugar control has been over the last few weeks or months. And that is a kind of more reliable measure. But I wouldn't worry too much about a few spikes, particularly if they come down fast. The only thing I'd say is eating late at night is probably a pretty bad thing. Because when I did a an experiment where I did that, I had exactly the same meal for breakfast. And then evening, it was a big frappe. And in the morning, blood sugars, blood fat shut up, shut down. In the evening, they shut up and stayed up. Because interesting. My body was not, you know, basically everything closed down to the right. It's like going to a restaurant and think give me a meal. And the waiter saying me not sure about that. And then they get grumpy. And the process is very slow. So ya know, eating late at night is dependency, bad view. And there's lots and lots of research, which points out that so I don't know why the Spanish. But yeah,
they do it. Yeah. And seem to be okay. So when you have that meal, because I'm like you I have a family history of type two diabetes, and I have PCOS. So for me, it's constantly like, it takes work right to manage blood sugar. When you have that late meal, was it very, very close to bedtime? Was it late in the evening, or?
Yeah, so I did one at 10 in the morning, and then the other was 10 in the evening. So I'd fasted the night before. And then it was 10 meetings, it was pretty late, but not crazily late. And the problem is the your whole circadian rhythm, your body clock, everything is basically going Oh, time to close down for the night time to shut down. And it's not really ready to digest the foods and food. Plus, you're not going to do anything in the way of activity. After you've done it. Or at least in the morning, you eat it, you go out for a walk, you go out for a run, you just kind of tootle around the house, you do something. Whereas if you haven't late night, you're going to be going to bed in about an hour's time. And then you're just going to be lying there. And that big load of food which is sitting in your gut, probably not going to help your sleep, and it's going to hang around and the fat is going to hang around and sugar is gonna hang around. So yeah, it's pretty clear. This is one bit of advice is, and this is time restricted eating, which I'm kind of really interested in. I wrote a section again in the book, The just one thing book on time restricted eating. And the advice there from Professor Sachin Panda, who's kind of the guru of it. He's kind of the scientist who's been behind it Salk Institute, since the early days, he basically says try not to eat or drink anything with calories, within three hours of going to bed. That's the sort of tip.
Yeah, I've read that. And so he definitely finds eating earlier in the day better, right. So if you're going to do that time restricted eating, try and bring your meals earlier was I think a lot of people are doing that they're restricting their eating and doing things like the 69, or some people doing one meal a day. And then they're having it all in the evening, and just fasting all day because they find you know, concentration benefits and things like that, but it's not so good.
Profession Panda, basically, he had breakfast at about eight and then he had an evening meal at six, we tried to finish his evening meal with a family by six. So that gives him a 1014 10, which he thinks is probably optimal. But for most of us there obviously, it's difficult because you have a social life you have things going on. So I kind of been for more 1212 and prior to stop, and don't always succeed by 8pm and then not eat again until 8am, maybe 9am Next morning, but it's if all of these things were bad, sort of make it work in your life as much as anything else. Because otherwise you can go bonkers.
Yeah, you can control it. And then you've got the stress, right, which is increasing your blood glucose anyway. Yeah. So with their stress management, because you made an important point there that I think people often overlook the stress and see how much that impacts metabolism. Do you look at things like heart rate variability as a metric for seeing how people are managing their nervous system and how it's reacting?
You can if you're doing it, you know, on a sort of proper scientific bases. Broadly, I we rely because the online programme is essentially a digital programme. So we rely on questionnaires and things like that as to how you're sort of pooping. And they seem to be reasonably accurate as a measure of people are quite good at self reporting on stress. And there is sort of physiological stress and psychological stress and although they're not the same thing, they do kind of cross over. You can also get those sorts of you know, cortisol, saliva free things where you can measure them. And that's kind of interesting. I am more interested in I guess in how I feel, then what a blood or urine or another ways test tells me I like to have Second home, which is problem as well haven't found a good variability. But again, as you say, heart rate variability is kind of that sort of there, but not really there. It's not terribly reliable as a source of anything. And that
is that we strap look at the whoop and the aura night and see. And I've noticed a difference with eating, as you say, like, if I've eaten earlier, my HRV is gonna be a lot better overnight, and if I eat late, yeah, I'm sort
of sceptical about a lot of the data you get out of those sort of Fitbit type machines. I mean, for one thing is they're incredibly inaccurate measuring the amount of calorie burn, because, you know, I tested them against a proper, you know, with a scientist from university boss, where we actually measured, you know, properly how much calories I was burning compared to what machine said, and it was out by about 80%. So that was 80%. Absolutely, in which direction? Oh, told me I was burning vastly more than,
that's what I've noticed, or seems to think I burned way more calories. And I believe
absolutely, quite often, it's because what they're doing is they're giving you a gross calorie burn post to the net to where you want to know is how many more calories or my burning compared to if I'm just sitting in a chair, having a gin and tonic. And that's not what they give you. What they give you broadly is the is how many carries you may have been. And even so their figures I think, are wildly inaccurate, at least based on some of these things. And I also look to another type of watch, which was supposed to measure my blood pressure, tested it against a blood pressure monitor that was just crazily out I mean, wildly, wildly inaccurate. So where I have prepared these devices with anything, which is a gold standard, they have been actually underwhelming. And the same is true for the sleeping metrics. They're there. They're not terrible. They're not good either. Again, I've paired it been in the sleep lab, where I'm wearing a device, but I'm also wearing EEG, you know, scalp device, which measures how much sleep I'm having. And there's very little concordance between what the wrist thing tells me happened at night, and what the machine that measures my brainwaves says has actually happened. So again, it's just not that great. And I guess it's not surprising, because it's not a direct measure. It's an indirect measure. And to exaggerate the amount of sleep you're getting, for example, because you know, you're still it assumes that you're sleeping, whereas you could be lying there fretting. So I am quite sceptical about this.
Interesting, interesting, because I remember speaking to Dr. Matthew Walker in London who read while we sleep, and he was wearing your ring, and he said that this was a couple of with this pre lockdown. And he thought that the it was about 60% accurate compared to a lab at that point. But at least I suppose you can take the view that you're measuring against yourself, you're kind of self quantifying night or night. So
it depends on whether you think 60% is good or bad. It's terrible. I think
it's the best. I still like my data, though. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So I don't think they've got any better. They might have been a bit better since then. I lost a couple years ago. And as Matthew Walker said, they were about 6% and orange one of the best, you know. So, yeah. And there's also a slight tendency of people to obsess about it. So there is a condition known as also Samia, where people become obsessed by the data from the risk devices, whatever. And so rather than going actually I slept fine last night, you know, I feel fine. I don't feel sleepy. They look at it. Oh, my God. I did not get enough deep sleep. I did not get enough REM sleep, I'm sure. My crown. Sometimes you just gotta go, how do I feel? And if I feel fine, then you probably got enough sleep. Alright.
I know you've been doing a lot of research recently on how you can live to 101. This is very exciting. Because I think what seems to be the case at the moment is we've got very good at keeping people alive. Kind of almost unfortunately good right at keeping people alive in 15 years of ill health potentially, but not necessarily that good at extending healthy life expectancy. What have you found on your travels across the world is going to keep us in really good health to to over 100
Okay, so that was obviously a catchy title. And the reality is, what we want to do is we want to I don't wanna live on one. And what I want to do is live in terribly healthy and then get run over by a bus or something or, you know, die windsurfing at the age of 80 or something like that. So what I was looking there is primarily at healthy ageing and what are the markers of healthy ageing in different populations and individuals and also looking at things like I'm hearing muscle mass and things like that, and some of the high tech stuff. So for example, we went to the pharaoh Islands, which are, you know, Danish, but somewhere way north of here, they're halfway between Denmark and Iceland. And they are mad keen on football in the den in the Faroe Islands. So one of the things we looked at the project they did there, but they got a group of women who were in the 40s and early 50s. And who already had signs of quite advanced osteoporosis, weakening of the bones. And they were randomly allocated, this was nine years ago, to either swimming or playing at five side football. And then they kind of just let them get on with it. And within a short, while, this one has kind of given up. But the five aside football has went on, because they just enjoyed it, it was sociable, you know, they loved it. And 10 years later, when they did DEXA scans on them, looking at broken bone density, they now have the bone density of 30 year old, these were people you would naturally assume, because they had quite advanced osteoporosis would have gotten a lot worse, of those 10 years said is absolutely reversed. And they have fantastic bone density now. And that's all because kind of football is a terrific sport, for bones, because you get all the jiggling, the jumping, as you know, bone strength is all about impact, bang, bang, that's why running is good fit. But also football seems to be spectacularly good for it, because you kind of constantly and because it's fun. And that's the other key to any form of exercise, you got to keep doing it. And the only way you're gonna keep doing it is if you enjoy it, or you're incredibly motivated. So I was I thought I was rather good. I also had my own myself scan while I was there just to have it. And I was pleased to see I had my spine and the spine of a 30 year old because I do a lot of press ups to press up is good for the biceps but spectacularly good for the spine.
Oh, they were really good for the spine.
Absolutely. And so I had family history of osteoporosis. My mother had the you know, my grandmother, they answer it, you know, maybe in the female line, but not something I and they become more and more bent as they get older, and the vertical crack to something I'm very keen to avoid. So yeah, I was very pleased with that. But that was an example of quite a simple intervention, leading to very profound change, you know, when it comes to bones, and we looked at that in various things, and we also looked at
a huge change. I mean, the bones of a 30 year old, that's massive.
Yeah, absolutely. It was terrific. And the other thing we look at is obviously a lot of things around hearing eyesight. We went to Okinawa, which is famous for all the old people there. And that was really, really interesting, because they have the highest percentage of centenarians and monasteries in the world. So the highest number of people who are currently on the population as percentage, who are in their 90s, and 100. But the average life expectancy is no better than ours. And that's because the younger dying much faster, there is just a particular group of people who seem to be living a healthy old age. And that actually seems to be to do with the fact that after the second world war, they were severely calorie restricted. They basically had to live on the local food, which was mainly kind of veg, with quinoa and sweet potato, but that's kind of grosser and white rice really doesn't. And we've really limited amounts of meat. So they are striking evidence of the benefits of calorie restriction, particularly in sort of young to middle age, because now the load of pork and things like that, indeed, when I was knocking our one of the favourite dishes, everything seemed to come with spam, because they'd been colonised by the Americans. So the kids are all kind of dying of Western diseases, their life expectancy is lower than most Japanese now, but there is this group of people who stand that, and it's really interesting, also went to the zoo,
do you think to the calorie restriction
and to some degree to the diet, but I think it's almost wholly down to carry restriction that they were forced when they were in their 20s and 30s. And maybe in their 40s as well. And when they got the opportunity they went back to eating. They also have other sorts of good habits like the idea of your eat 80% of your plate, you know, you don't eat to do MC Thor. And they also have a rather lovely thing where they all kind of, they have small groups where they gather to support each other. So I we filmed with the heart surgeon who's still operating at the age of 92. And his wife has died. And so they formed one of these mutual support groups and every Saturday eight of them gather together to sing karaoke because that's what he loved to do. And so there's a real sense of sort of bringing together in a group support and I think there is loads and loads of research that shows that loneliness kills you. And that the one of the great predictors again of healthy life expectancy is number of close friends you have there was something called the Harvard Health Study, which is the longest running study ever. And which began in the, I think, late, early 1930s. And they got a bunch of people who were then in about 18, from Harvard University, and also from the wrong types of track, JFK was one of them. And then they just followed them throughout the course of their life. And they're all now dead. And they found the single greatest predictor of who would lead a long and healthy life was the number of close friends they had.
Interesting. So don't shut yourself away and work too hard and
nourish your friends and your relationships. Yeah,
absolutely. You're your book as well, just one thing, fantastic book on how to develop micro habits, right, so people can leave, I love everything about what you do. And you teach really just empowers people to take tiny steps that make big changes and compound over time. I know there's lots of them in there. But can you talk us through give us three key ways that people can do one small thing that will improve their health?
Absolutely. So I think, and I've talked about the squat and the press up, that's kind of what I and my wife, Claire do. First thing, you have to ideally, the things should be quite short, at least initially. So that you're going to do it, and it should be tied to something else you're already doing. So the that becomes a trigger. So you need these trigger these attachments to turn something into a habit. So in this case, we roll out bed. And we get out we do a sort of short programme of squats and press ups and you know, the plank and things like that there's a great sort of app, you can download called the seven minute workout, which kind of takes you through all this. And obviously, if you want to go on beyond that, terrific, you can go down the gym, you can pump on but this, I would have grabbed the absolute minimum, that you do this, and it takes two or three minutes. And then typically I'll go and have a cold shower, start off with warm shower, wash myself, getting cold shower, turn the old Cold, at least, and scream a bit, but about 40 seconds is enough. Again, a lot of researching benefits, cold water swimming, but I'm never going to do that. And there have been studies, there was a study from Holland, which I wrote about in the just one thing, but where they got people either to do 42nd cultures, or just warm showers, and there were about 5000 of them. And they found those who had the cold showers. In the subsequent winter, they were much less likely to develop colds, flu or take time off sick. So we know again, all what's good for the immune system. And indeed good for mood. No studies on showers per se, but there's a study published very, very recently, where they randomly allocated people to either kind of walking on the beach or swimming in the sea in a cold water programme. And those who swim in the sea. These are all people who had a moderate to severe depression. And the ones who went swimming, were the ones who got the most benefit. And there were indeed, changes in the blood you could see. So these are kind of a couple of things I do also singing, thinking if you're dancing, you don't
like dancing and singing, my children don't like me singing.
I did a programme a while back for a series I made called Crush me on the doctor. And as part of that, we got a group of people to either sing in a choir or cycle for 30 minutes a day in a group or read instructions from a washing machine that was kind of a control group. And what we were doing is we were measuring levels of something called the endocannabinoids. These are cannabis like substances that your body naturally produces. And we found that the singers got the biggest boost in the endocannabinoids. So they felt happiest and up for it. And they had the most buzz. So that was kind of encouraging. And as I said the good news, you don't have to be good. You just have to do you just have tolerated for the family members. So I didn't share helps me
double whammy culture at the same time. Exactly.
Yeah. And my wife probably leaves the bathroom at that point. Yeah.
What's the magic of 40 seconds then? And do you need to go full immersion? If you've got to get your head under I know there's like some evidence isn't there around the neck? I mean, I actually love splashing my face with cold water feels really nice as well. But if you're in the shower, do you need to be kind of going for like under the answer limits because I think a lot of people are gonna cower, right and I've done my 40 seconds it's up.
Absolutely. So the reason for 40 seconds that seems to be the minimal amount of time. When they did this duck study they did 20 seconds, 40 seconds and two minutes, people were asked to do and 40 seconds and the two minutes. Benefits The 20 seconds not but was no difference between the 40 seconds and two minutes. So if you like two minutes, great. 40 seconds seems to be enough. The rule is basically you need to stay in there long enough. after you stop hyperventilating. So when you go first go in, you're gonna go screaming. But when you get your breath under control, that's kind of probably when he can come
out. And is that for immunity or is that long enough as well for like producing more brown fat and improving metabolic rate and mitochondria. And thanks,
probably simply for immunity. I suspect and I haven't seen enough studies, but I know they're looking at the was a study done, where simply putting your hand into cold water was enough to induce this was nothing in university an increase in brand fat and did at this time. Yeah, I still haven't turned off thermometers on gas on I got temperature gauges around the house, I can show Claire, she's agreed we can go down 16 degrees. And there was a study where they got people living in a house and the house, they adjusted the temperature of the house between 27 degrees and about 17 degrees. And when they were down 17 degrees, they produce back 40% More brand fat than they did when it was at around 21 degrees. So it is a powerful way of inducing brand fat, but it's a speck 40 seconds and culture isn't going to do it. Make the most of the cold winter,
outside, right and
keep heating off in your house if you can bear it, because that seems to be it takes a bit of while for brands out to induction to begin. It's clearly a sort of, you know, a retained ability that we have from back in the day when our ancestor was shivering around at 12 degrees.
I mean other tips for immunity? Well, I
think one of the things you absolutely ought to be doing is eating things like oily fish. We know that omega three, that's again, one of the tips in book Kreinik that I aim to we only fish two or three, maybe four times a week. We know it's very good for the heart, we also know it's very good for the brain. And it is you know, things like salmon, and mackerel. And Anthony is also pretty rich in vitamin D. And all of these are important elements for your immune system. Omega three, absolutely vitamin D. Yes, the only one anyone knows about it's vitamin C. And vitamin C, frankly, I did an experiment where we tested a whole, we tested a bunch of people to see what their vitamin levels were. And these were people who are overweight or obese. And the only thing that was super abundant in was vitamin C. Oh yeah, mostly other things rather marginal below the line. And particularly if you were Asian, African and vitamin D, even in mid summer was below the line, but the only thing they were super abundant in was vitamin C, because people can um, you know, go over them and say yeah, but actually probably, it is a very important Theremin for your immune system. But it's remarkably unlikely you will be deficient in it. Whereas some of the other things you may well be
Yeah, genetics play a part don't know with vitamin D. Yeah, very much. So amazing. You have share so many tips. And there's a whole lot more in your book. Just one thing. It's a fantastic book. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find you more about you what you're doing? There's a new a new series coming out. Is there on longevity?
Absolutely have live 201 not sure the date. We haven't quite finished it yet. So if they can want to follow me They can find me under Dr. Michael Mosley on Twitter. And they can also find me on Instagram. I think I'm Michael Paisley official because there are dozens of fake Michael Mosley is on there. And you can also find me via my wife, Dr. Claire Bailey, who's on Instagram and she also posts lots of recipes. She does all the recipes for our books. And indeed, she carried out a lot of original research with Oxford University, looking at the benefits of rapid weight loss. So she she has a lot of great content. If you're interested in science and you're interested in food. That's Dr. Claire Bailey, spelled ca o ar ri Bailey, B. L E Y. Amazing.
And there's a fantastic app that you have as well with all the diet plans as well. Right to make it easy for people. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Thank you so much. We will link to all of that in the show notes. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for coming. Thanks for
Thanks for listening. Remember to review and subscribe. You can grab the show notes, the resources and highlights of everything Angela mentioned over at Angela Foster performance.com You can also snatch up plenty of other goodies including the highly helpful Angela recommends page which is a list of everything she personally recommend to optimise your mind, body and lifestyle
