PNTV: Sitting Kills, Moving Heals by Joan Vernikos (#315)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes. TV. Today we've got another great book, Sitting Kills, Moving Heels by Joan Vernikos. Sitting Kills Moving Heels Subtitle How Simple Everyday movement will prevent pain, Illness and early death. And exercise alone won't. Joan Vernikos is the former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division, which means essentially she was in charge of making sure that the astronauts were healthy before, during and after their space flights. She also created some amazing exercise machine that has the potential to keep astronauts who go to Mars in shape. Crazy stuff. Which reminds me of Adam Steltzner's the Right Kind of Crazy. We have a note, an episode on that as well, and Chris Hadfield's Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth While we are leaving Planet Earth. Those are worth checking out. So we've got a philosopher's note, bunch of big ideas. Let's jump right in with Gravity 101. So as the director of life sciences at NASA, what Joan discovered was that when the astronauts leave Earth, they leave the gravitational field of Earth. Amazing things happen that deteriorate their physical health. So she talks about all the stats and it's truly remarkable. It takes like a decade to lose a percent of bone density after the age of 20, right? We lose about a percent of bone density every decade or so. She says that in outer space, outside of gravitational pull, astronauts can lose that much bone density, a percent of bone density, in as short as a week, as long as a month. Right. It's unbelievably rapidly accelerated. Their blood plasma goes down, their aerobic capacity goes down in truly astonishing with astonishing speed. All because they left gravity's pull. Well, Gravity101, she says, can be applied to our lives on Earth. And if we, like the astronauts, don't engage in gravity consistently, our health is going to deteriorate more quickly than it should. And we're going to experience all the diseases we don't want to experience. How do we eliminate gravity from our lives? We sit all day long. It's the sedentary lifestyle that won't have the same rapid effects of an astronaut completely leaving gravity 24 hours a day. But it's going to erode our health and well being at a rate that we do not want it to. So that's Gravity 101. You've got to use gravity you can't sit with all day long. We talked about it in our last episode. Don't just sit there. You can be active and sedentary. It's not enough to exercise, you need to engage in small little micro movements throughout the day. NEAT is the acronym that Joan references that captures these types of movements. So non exercise. This is our acronym for neat. Non exercise activity thermogenesis. Thermogenesis, neat Non exercise activity thermogenesis. Basically the bulk of the energy that we burn on a daily basis is not from a 30 minute workout. It's from all the little movements. Even me moving right now like this, shifting my weight or stretching, or doing very, very, very simple. Non exercise activity that creates energy is the primary source of our well being and vitality. That's essentially the theme of the book. And how do you engage in neat movements? Non exercise activity thermogenesis. Well, you engage in gravity, right? And she says, look, if you only had to learn one thing in this whole book, it would be stand up more often, change your posture often. The easiest, simplest way to engage and work with gravity in a positive sense. She says, particularly those of us who are approaching the older realms, right, the elderly. She says the number one thing you need to be able to do to maintain self sufficiency is to be able to stand up, right? We got to maintain that ability. She says, count the number of times that you get up from bed, from your desk, from whatever, and make sure you get up at least 32 times a day, even every 15 minutes. Stand up from your desk, literally just stand up and then sit back down. That would have remarkable, simple, but positive effects on your overall well being. So remember, gravity is neat. Engage in these non exercise activity thermogenetic motions. The third idea here is G habits and opportunities to move. So how do we go about doing that? She gives us a ton of different examples. I will share a few of my favorites. Now, the first example we just talked about, standing up, right? Stretching is another really big one. Super simple. You're not going out and busting out a big workout, but just stretching throughout the day. She says anytime you are wondering what to do, stretch, what you're going to do next, stretch, right? Just simple, simple movements. You can just put your hands above your head. That's going to have a surprisingly positive benefit. She says, look for the things that you already do and you can do throughout the day, every day, 365 days a year, for the rest of your life. And engaging in more of those habits, G habit style is going to be powerful. Another G habit idea is to stand tall, right? So you can stand like this and kind of slouch or you can stand tall. Standing tall is a very do it right now. Stand tall or sit taller. If you're slouching and. And feel that, what are you working against as you stand taller? Gravity, in a very subtle sense. But those subtle little things added up, compounded over time, have a huge, huge impact. So don't only stand tall, walk tall. She says. Imagine walking tall again, you're fighting gravity. She references some cool stuff, too, that the speed of your gait, how quickly you walk is going to influence how long you live. Pick up the pace on your walk a little bit. Stand tall while you do it. Another little fun fact, the Amish walk. Eighteen Amish men, on average, walk 18,000 steps a day. I love that, 18,000 steps a day. So here's one more fun one. So you're stretching, you're standing tall, you're walking tall. And then she says, put a book on your head. That's one way to work with gravity. If you have a book on your head and balance the book on your head right, while you're walking or while you're sitting or while you're reading. When I was typing, when I was reading it, I had a different book on my head, right? It was tough to read it with that book on my head, but I had a different book on my head, and it's amazing. You can't slouch when you have a book on your head. Try it. When I was typing the note for part of it, not the whole thing, I had a little book on my head. So do that. Feel that posture that you have when you're balancing a book on your head. That's the energy you want to feel, like a thread through your head and your spine, pulling your spine up and your head gently up, lengthening your spine. That's what we want to look for. Chi habits and then OTMs. This is Michelle Seeger again, don't just sit there. Katie Bowman style. You want to find opportunities to move throughout your day, right? Little things. Park further away from the grocery store. Even if there's a spot close by, park a little bit further away and walk. Take the stairs up and down. Apparently, the down is even better from a gravity perspective because you're getting that impact. Find little opportunities to move more throughout your day. Fourth, big idea is to think strong. So she references Ellen Langer's counterclockwise work at Harvard, which we talked about, right? Amazing stuff where you can bring houseworkers into a study. They actually went out to these house cleaners or hotel cleaners, I should say, right? Who were cleaning up rooms, and they split them into two groups. One group, they told, hey, what you're doing is exercise. When you're changing sheets or you're vacuuming or you're cleaning the bathroom, this is how many calories you're burning. This is truly exercise, right? Then she told the other group nothing about their behaviors related to exercise. Right? So the group that was told that their behaviors were in fact, exercise stuff they were already doing didn't change what they did, but they changed the way they thought about it. And at the end of the study, they found that this group that started thinking differently about their movements, their body fat percentage went down, their blood pressure went down, all these other health metrics were improved. Nothing changed in their behavior, but their mindset toward their behavior changed. It's extraordinary stuff. What we think about what we're doing matters. Joan tells us, think strong. As you're going through your day, think strong. I referenced another study that Ellen Langer did where you can bring people into a lab and have them think of Air Force pilots and actually dress up like Air Force pilots, then take a vision test, and they will outperform people who are simply taking a normal vision test. Simply assuming that you are an Air Force pilot and you assume that pilots have really good vision improves your performance. So what we're saying to ourselves, what we're thinking matters. So think positively, think strong. Fifth big idea is a good one. Telomeres. You've probably heard of telomeres at this point. Telomeres are basically the caps at the end of our chromosomes which protect our DNA and help our cells healthfully replicate, right? So as we age our telomeres, little caps at the end of chromosomes shrink, they get shorter, right? And the length of your telomeres is actually a great indicator of your overall health. You can think of your telomeres as kind of like the caps at the end of your shoelaces. You know, those little plastic things at the end of your shoelaces? When those break down, your shoelaces fray, and they're one step closer to going to the trash, right? We need to have really nice, healthy, strong caps at the end of our shoelaces. We need to have really strong, nice, healthy caps at the end of our chromosomes if we want to be optimized. Now, all this is relevant to this discussion because as you would guess, being sedentary is a great way to shorten the length of your telomeres. You need to engage in your G habits, get your neat on, etc. But she makes the important point that in research, people who are sedentary are shown to have shorter telomeres, but so are people who exercise too much. So it's not about exercising more per se. Exercise is important. None of this discussion about getting neat on yourself is to say that you shouldn't actually go out and engage in physical movement, often vigorous physical movement. But you want to find the right balance, right? There's too little and there's too much exercise. We want to complement all that with these simple little micro movements. So keep that in mind. If you want to have optimal telomeres, you want to exercise but not too much, and you want to make sure that you are not sedentary. And perhaps the worst equation would be over training, right? Being too active and simultaneously super sedentary, which is possible. You can be a hardcore training monster going out for your Ironman and still be sedentary if you're spending the rest of your time in a commute to work, or at your office desk, or watching TV or surfing the Internet or whatever. So again, engage in these tiny little movements. Keep your telomeres happy. Think strong. Remember that fascinating research that how you perceive yourself and what you're doing affects the actual physical outcomes of it. Ellen Langer Style G Habits Opportunities to move. Find them. Remember that the greatest source of your energy expenditure is not your 30 or 45 or 60 or even two hour long workout. It's the non exercise activity stuff that generates the most energy. We want to consciously, deliberately engage in more of it. And Gravity 101. Those astronauts that go into space, leave our gravitational pull, have their health basically destroyed almost immediately. We're doing that on a slower basis when we don't engage with gravity consistently. So remember, sitting kills. Healing comes from moving. Moving heals. How can you move a little bit more today? Get on that and have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube. So I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. 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