Brian Johnson explains how a brief walk after eating, especially carbohydrate-heavy meals, clears glucose from your bloodstream and improves energy. Using a glucose monitor and Dr. Casey Means' research on mitochondrial health, he found that post-meal movement is one of the simplest ways to control your metabolism.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last plus one we talked about my new obsession with getting three to four hours of zone two training per week up from my prior one hour to meet my new Peter Attia approved target so I can increase both my lifespan AKA how long we live and my health span AKA how long we feel. Great note. We want to push both our health span and our lifespan as far out as possible. No need to live longer and have the last X years decades of our lives kind of suck because we're not healthy right now I promised I'd tell you why I am prioritizing a walk after a meal. I got that idea from Dr. Casey Means in her great book Good Energy. Dr. Means is a Stanford trained MD who grew disillusioned with the traditional medical approach of treating symptoms of chronic diseases rather than solving the systemic issues that caused the chronic diseases and led to those symptoms. So she stepped back, re architected her approach and shares her wisdom via her practice, new book and other projects. Now the main thesis of her work well, her book is called Good Energy. She tells us that good energy is a sign of good health. The short story Good energy is created via healthy mitochondria, which are created via healthy lifestyle choices, essentially dominating our basic fundamentals of eating, moving, sleeping, etc. Now, one of the main things we want to make sure we optimize so we can have heroic energy is our basic metabolism. Now one of the measures of whether or not our metabolism is functioning well is our glucose and insulin levels. We want to make sure this is dialed in, which is why doctor Means also created an app called Levels that integrates with a continuous glucose monitor I was wearing until not too recently and helps you track which foods work for you and which don't by measuring your glucose before, during and after meals to track their effects. Now I signed up for the app and got a glucose monitor for the first time and really enjoyed seeing the data. And one of the micro pro tips Casey shares is that it's wise to go for a walk or do a mini workout after a meal with carbs. Why it helps your body put that glucose to work and get it out of your circulatory system where chronic excess levels can lead to chronic health issues. So that's why I've been going for a quick walk after most of my meals. It's also why I hammered a sunrise workout the morning after. That night I deliberately went off the rails a bit with a sugar bomb dessert. And that's today's plus one. How's your energy? And what's one thing you know you could do to take it to the next level? And what's one thing you know you could stop doing to take it to the next level? Get on that today.
