Build Muscle After 30: The Daily Carrying We Stopped Doing | Dr. Thomas Hemingway

Our world right now has this hyperfocus on all the little gadgets, all the little biohacking tools. And yet there's so much power in the things that we've been doing as humans for literally thousands of years.

A lot of people, they hit their 30s, they hit their 40s, 50s, and they start just accepting low energy, weight gain, stiffness, poor sleep, brain fog, aches. They just see it as like, oh, I'm just getting older.

Your genes are not programmed to get older once you turn 30, 40, 50, or even 60. None of this was part of the design.

You know, most people, they don't really want to live forever. They want to be able to get up off the floor, carry the groceries, hike with their kids, play with their grandkids, keep their mind clear, keep their body useful, keep doing the things that make them feel alive. Today, we're talking about longevity, but not the abstract biohacker version. We're talking about staying capable in the body you actually live in. My guest is Dr. Thomas Hemingway, a board-certified physician who helps people become biologically 10 to 20 years younger so they can keep doing what they love for decades longer. He's also a father of 6. Yes, I said 6. An outdoorsman, a surfer, a biker, a skier, and a rock climber. Thomas, welcome to Everyday Ancestral. You said you want to be surfing at 100. Most people hear longevity and think, how do I live longer? But I hear a different question. How do I stay capable enough to keep doing what I love? So, what do you think is the real key to longevity that people aren't talking about enough?

It's just our, our world right now has this hyperfocus on all the little gadgets, all the little this and that, the supplements, you know, the sort of biohacking tools. And yet there's so much power in the things that we've been doing as humans for literally thousands of years. Because here's the thing, you know, our DNA, like our human DNA, literally hasn't changed in thousands of years, right? We have changed, meaning mostly our environment. We've changed our environment. We've changed the way a daily, you know, routine looks like, right? We don't get outside enough. And for me to be able to live a long, healthy, vibrant life, it's not just years on the calendar. It's not, you know, I want to be 100 just to hit 100, or as some say, 120 is going to be the new 80. Like, I want to be literally doing the things that I love and enjoy right now today with not only my kids, but my grandkids, my great-grandkids. Like, if I'm not surfing at 100, I'm not sure, you know, I want to be doing things that bring me joy. I want to be sharing experiences. I want to be active in every way. Of course, I want to pick up my own groceries, but I want to do more than that. I want to be going on hikes with my great-grandkids. And that's what brings me joy, is spending those moments with the people that I love and care about. And I think that the thing we've lost along the way is we're kind of intellectually being stimulated by all these ideas with respect to all the latest and greatest, you know, supplements and biohacks and red lights, and should I have this blue blocker glasses or that one? And we just forget about the simple things like, let's just get outside at sunlight. You know, let's watch the sun come up. Let's also be outside in the evening. Let's be outside during the day. Let's get natural light. Let's eat real food. And those are the things that are gonna empower us to actually have the health and the vibrancy that I think we all really want for the rest of our lives, as long as they may be.

You know, I've always been curious though about the whole biohacking community because they do talk about, you know, getting morning sun and watching the sunset, but then they're also so dialed into the tools and the red lights, as you mentioned. Do you think we're meant to always have access to the tools that biohacking professes? Because if you think about it ancestrally, we would've been trapped Due to the season. So, we wouldn't have had sun all year long, but maybe we would've been traveling to where the sun is. I'm not sure. What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, that's a good point. And, I think that that's part of what I don't feel like we have a great sort of grasp on modern day is that our bodies were literally engineered and built to survive all sorts of environments, both like you say, wintertime with very little sunlight, as well as periods of scarcity where we just couldn't find food. And we're designed for that. Like, our body can be flexible in that way. And I think one of the biggest problems we have is present day, we have access to anything and everything 24/7, 365, right? You can click something on your phone and you get your order by the evening in some places, or here in Hawaii, it's 5 to 7 days. We can get stuff from, you know, an online ordering shop like Amazon. But back in the day, you know, we didn't have all of those things available 24/7. And so when you ask about these biohacking tools, whether they be red lights or a grounding pad or cold plunge or sauna, all these things that are great, and I'm not here to knock any of 'em, I love them all. But I think most of the things that we really truly need, we can have access to for free, like the sunlight. Grounding, right? Just take off your shoes, walk outside in the grass, or if you're close to a beach or a lake or some, some natural, area, like just slip your shoes off. You don't need a couple hundred dollar grounding pad. Like you don't need that stuff. I mean, it's great if you got it, but you don't need it, right? There's so much available naturally.

Yeah, no, it's a good point. And then, and then we complain that we don't have enough money to, you know, buy the, the quality food or, or whatnot. But the reality is, is we could be doing a lot of, a lot more natural, low cost or no cost rituals. It's hard to not talk to you about the 6 kids.

It's a lot of kids.

It's a lot of kids. And most studies, while they show kids are, you know, incredibly fulfilling, they also talk about how having kids age you faster than not having kids. So I'm just wondering, as a father of 6, like, how has that shaped the way you think about health?

I mean, for me, my kids, my family, my wife, like, family is Everything. Connection with other humans is everything. And I think it's kind of like, like you shared, a double-edged, you know, sword, if you will. The kids in a lot of ways, and literally at the end of the day for me, are probably my greatest gift that I have, the thing that I most love and enjoy, but also they can be my greatest stress. I mean, try having 4 teenage boys all at once, all into different things and different challenges and And many of them, the, I think, most difficult challenges, which can be the mental health challenges, because still even present day, I feel like we don't have a lot of resources for a lot of these things. And these last, I would say, 2 to 4 years and a couple of my kids have brought upon the most stressful times I've ever lived through, both for myself, for them, certainly. And looking back, I wouldn't change a thing. We've all grown from it. And I look forward to every single day of the future. And for my wife and I, we, we We were married 8 years before we even thought about having kids. So we like didn't start banging 'em out like on day 1. And so my youngest is, I have 2 that are still in elementary school and I'm, you know, just entered my 53rd year of life. And so I got the whole gamut. I got 2 kids that are done with college, I got 2 in high school, and then I got my 2 littlest ones in elementary school and they give me more fuel for living. that extra decade or whatever it is than almost anything, because I do want to be around not only for them, but for their kids and their kids' kids. Like, I want to be a great-grandfather. Like, absolutely. Like, I want to have that whole family group together.

It sounds like we almost share this, that the kids really help give us the why, the why of wanting to live a long time, right? And really, without them, maybe we wouldn't be as diligent with our health or as Kind of, you know, aware of our health.

Yeah, absolutely. No, it gives you more of a reason. I, I remember about a decade ago, I was working a shift here at one of the local hospitals in Hawaii, and, um, 48-year-old guy came in with a massive heart attack, and it was like a huge wake-up call for him, and he didn't even know he had heart disease. And sadly, a lot of guys, especially girls as well, in fact, the most common killer in women as well as men throughout the whole world is heart disease. And almost all of it is preventable. And he came in with this massive heart attack. Fortunately, we resuscitated him. He didn't die. And once he came to and things had stabilized, he said, Doc, dude, my my daughter's getting married this year. Like what can I do to make sure I can be there for her? And I just and it was just like this wake-up call to me that like it's not just me that loves my kids and wants to be there for my kids, but I think every human that has children wants to be there for them. And sadly, present day. A lot of our conveniences get in the way of of our health, and and that's where sort of the ancestral piece is so I think pertinent because our modern day conveniences, like I shared earlier, being able to order stuff 24/7, get food 24/7. We never have any of these prehistoric challenges where we couldn't find food and we couldn't find shelter and all that. Like we have everything available. We have all the biohacking available, and in in in most ways it's made us more sick. We're the sickest generation. that the world has ever seen, right? I mean, 80% of folks here in the US and developed world have trouble with being overweight or obese. Nearly 50% are either diabetic or almost diabetic, pre-diabetic. I mean, these are numbers we've never even seen before. And it certainly wasn't a problem of our ancestral brethren and sisters back in the day. They didn't have any of this.

Yeah. I mean, it makes me sad that, that The story of the gentleman with the, the heart issue, and then, and then talking about wanting to be there for his, his daughter, it, it definitely begs the question. So a lot of people, they, they hit their 30s, they hit their 40s, 50s, and they start just accepting low energy, weight gain, stiffness, poor sleep, brain fog, aches. They just see it as like, oh, I'm just getting older, right? So, so what should we question about that?

Yeah, I mean, question everything. The problem is modern, you know, Western medicine, whatever you want to call it, like you go to your doctor and they're going to tell you, oh, you're just getting older. Like, reject that, reject that. None of this was part of the design. Your genes are not programmed to get older once you turn 30, 40, 50, or even 60. In fact, you're probably aware of this, James. One of my favorite recent studies, I'd say of the last decade, was one from Science where they studied metabolism. And the thought has always been, oh, you know, when I was a teenager and 20-year-old, I could eat whatever I wanted. My metabolism was so fast and I never gained weight and, and whatever. And this study basically debunked that myth that your metabolism slows down in adulthood. Basically, between the ages of 20 and a little over 60, there's basically no appreciable change in your metabolic rate, like zero, none, nothing. And even after 60, there's just a minimum decline, but not even less than 1% a year. Like, it's, it's a minimum. It's not even much. But after like mid-60s, it was starting to slowly decrease your metabolic rate. But what's different is that we as humans, especially in, in North America and most of the world now, we are moving less. It's not our metabolism that has slowed down. We have slowed down, right? I mean, you remember when we were all, you know, in our teens and early 20s, we were getting outside every single day, whether it be for a sport that we pursued in high school or college, or just being out with our friends, you know, riding bikes or whatever it was after the school day. Like, we were always moving. Present day, we as American and North Americans in most of the world, developed world, we just don't move that much, right? We go to one office or one desk and we sit there for 6 to 8 hours and we get up and then we go to a place to eat. We sit there for 2 hours and we come home and we sit and watch TV for a few hours. We hardly move at all. I mean, our metabolism hasn't slowed. And this study in Science, I thought, was just groundbreaking because it was a true wake-up call that we can't be blaming our metabolism. We just need to look in the mirror and say, what am I doing? You know? And the cool thing is we can do more. Like, if you're not doing much, like, just get out and walk after you eat. Walk for 5 to 10 minutes after every meal, and it'll change things dramatically. It's so simple. You don't need a gym, right? You don't need weights to do that. Just move after every time you eat for 5 to 10 minutes, 10 minutes ideally. And actually, the the other study that came out of Science Journal, which was about three years ago, was that if you move for 10 minutes after eating, say you eat three meals a day, that 30 minutes will be much more powerful. Than going and walking for 30 minutes continuously. So, if you just break it up after each meal and walk for 10 minutes and you eat 3 meals a day like I do, then boom, you've already walked for 30 minutes during the course of the day. And, that 30 minutes is actually more effective and more powerful than if you scheduled 30-minute walk at some point in your day. For me, that was earth-shattering as well because most of us complain of not having enough time in our schedule. I don't have time to go to the gym. I don't have Well, well, there's lots of things we can do and make the first one a quick 10-minute walk after every meal. It's powerful.

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Yeah, I would say the first thing that goes is just our movement patterns, right? We just, we are not moving enough. And part of that is just the condition of most of our employments where we're sitting at a desk. But maybe one thing you could do is you could convert your desk into a standing desk. Right now, as we're chatting, I can stand and jump and move. I always work at a standing desk, like 90+% of the time. I just, I'm kind of a fidgety guy. I've always been a little bit ADHD. I like to be on the move and I just love to, be able to move. And I've noticed that in my, in my 50s, my back really kills me if I've sat more than an hour in a row. When I go on a plane, people make fun of me because I carry a sacral pad and a lumbar pad and like all this stuff to make it more doable because I fly a lot. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I personally don't like sitting because it makes my back hurt and it's not good for my body. And I just like to move and it's not good for my energy. So I would say the movement goes first. And the quality of our nutrition. I would say those 2 things go first. Sleep is always something that I think most working adults undervalue, underappreciate, underrate. In fact, I just was listening to Matthew Walker yesterday. He gave a talk on sleep, which he's like the world's expert. And he even said in his career, it's really dawned on him that he feels like sleep should be the foundation of everybody's health. We always say diet and exercise, sleep is kind of the, third leg and not really getting the attention. But if you don't sleep well, it's amazing how quickly things will change. Literally in 1 or 2 nights' sleep, you can already be borderline diabetic. Your fasting blood sugars will elevate after 2 or 3 nights of short sleep, which is less than 5 hours. And I know I did that to myself for decades. I slept less than 5 hours and I've repented from that. I've been shooting for 7 hours and I'm doing pretty darn good the last decade. And it's made a huge impact. Huge difference.

Yeah, hands down. I, I always vote for sleep when I talk about the 4 pillars, and I, I always vote for it first because I noticed that the other 3 pillars, you know, if we name 'em, you know, movement, uh, nutrition, and then stress, those are all decided by my sleep. So they're all important, but that one, if that one's off, the other 3 are guaranteed to be off.

And you also notice the effects more quickly. Like your body can go a day without eating, like We got the machinery. Like, it might not feel good for somebody who hasn't ever tried fasting, but you'll survive. You can go a day without exercise, you'll survive, but you can hardly go a day without sleep. Like, immediately your body has ramifications to that. Your cognition goes down, your stress levels, you know, cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine, all of that is through the roof. Like, it's more immediate. Like you said, sleep is foundational. And I think even myself included, I'll be honest, I didn't value it. until about a decade ago. And now, it's something I literally program into— my phone beeps at 10:00 at night and it's like, okay, dude, you got 30 minutes max and you got to be in bed. And, it's a challenge because I got 4 teenage boys and they don't want to be in bed at 10:00 at night. So, it's a little bit of a struggle, but I make it happen and I don't regret it. It's been a literal game changer for hormones, for my energy, so many things.

So, if sleep is that key, the real key to the longevity, what are some tools, some natural tools people can do to support their sleep?

Yeah, I would say first and foremost, you just gotta have a routine. Like, if anybody's ever had a young child, a baby, like, they love routines. There's this whole sort of, you know, bedtime ritual, if you will. But most importantly, it's just the timing of it. Like, you need to have a set time, you pick, and most people need between 7 and 9 hours. There's almost no one that can survive and thrive off less than 7 hours of sleep for a long period of time. You got to schedule it. So, you have to have a routine. So, if that's going to bed by 9:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., whatever that time is, try to go to bed at that same time every single night. Have that set as part of your routine even on the weekends for the most part. So that you can get your 7 to 9 hours of sleep. So number one, it's routine. Number 2, it's the things about your sleep environment, right? You gotta have darkness. It was always dark outside, right? We didn't have lights. We didn't have a way to have a device to look at blue lights. We had no light at night. We, we literally have evolved to have this ability to sleep at night because of a hormone called melatonin, which can only be released if there's no light. And, and that's a big problem with a lot of us is we stare into our phones or, or tablets or, or screens, TVs, whatever it may be till the moment that we're ready to go to bed. And, and so melatonin hasn't had a chance to build up cuz it can only build up in darkness or, you know, leaning towards darkness. So if you have the ability to dim your lights at home, like I have every light in my whole house on a dimmer and the last hour before bed, all of those lights are dimmed. And so my body is already naturally going, okay, it's gonna be time for sleep, you know, in an hour. And, You know, and this is kind of what happened naturally with the sunset, right? The sun doesn't go from bright to dark in a minute. It's over an hour or so. You have that whole phase where your body gets used to it. So I would say number one, routine. Number 2, darkness. Number 3, it's gotta be cool. And for guys like me that live in a warm place, or if you're in the South or Southeast, I was in Florida last week, like it's hot. If you don't have a way to cool your room to 67, 68 degrees, Not just you won't sleep well, but there's tons of data on that, that the environment, especially the temperature, is one of the most predictive of how well you sleep, how deep you'll sleep, how, how long you'll sleep. If it's warm, you're not gonna be able to get quality sleep. So cool, dark. I mean, if you are sensitive to noise, wear earplugs or use some kind of an artificial white noise maker if, if that's helpful to you. But I would say routine plus the sleep environment. Is the most critical.

You know, we haven't talked a ton about strength, and that's usually what people talk a lot about as you grow older. Like, they'll talk about, oh, it's so important for heavy lifting so that you don't lose muscle. What's your take on, you know, muscle loss and aging?

Yeah, and that's so important. I think this is a big miss of all of Western medicine, if you will, is that the assumption is that as you age, Everybody gets what they call sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is the gradual loss of muscle, and it's accepted in basically every medical space that that just happens to everyone as they age, which is total BS. Reject that if your doctor tells you that, or or whatever the case may be. It is not. It is. It is not something that has to happen. Yes, it is common. Right? Just like I shared earlier, it's common that a lot of us in the developed world are overweight. Is it normal? Is it healthy? Is it good? Absolutely not. But it's common. And so sarcopenia, sadly, is very common. That's muscle loss as you age, but it does not have to happen. But the studies show that after age 30, a significant amount of muscle loss, usually about 1% per year, is happening in all adults across the I would say the developed world, say North America, Europe, all the developed world, we're losing muscle at the rate of 1% per year unless we proactively decide to not only preserve and maintain it, but build it. And, I would say that literally muscle could be considered the organ of longevity because as you shared at the very beginning, you want to be able to carry your groceries, you want to be able to get up out of a chair, off the toilet for crying out loud, or on an airplane to reach up and grab your suitcase from the overhead bin without requiring help. You wanna be doing all that as long as you live. Like, all of us wanna be independent. Well, the way to do that is not more cardio. And cardio's not bad. I love cardio. I do cardio basically 6 to 7 days a week, but I, I really focus on my resistance training or weightlifting, strength training, whatever you wanna call it, pumping iron. I focus on that. That's the one that actually gets a spot in my calendar. Because I don't want to forget it. I'm naturally a busy kind of high-energy guy. I'm always moving, so I'm getting plenty of cardio, whatever it may be— surfing, biking, skiing, snowboarding, whatever it is, climbing. But I'm not necessarily getting the weight training, or nowadays we like to call it resistance training, right? We got to call it new to make people excited about it. It's like we've been doing this for, you know, a long time, millennia really. When you're talking about our ancestors, they were carrying heavy rocks to build shelter. They were carrying an animal that they, they just hunted, whatever. They were carrying heavy stuff all the time. And we forget that presently because we don't schedule it. Everybody thinks about cardio as far as exercise and movement. We've been talking about that since the '40s and '50s, but nobody ever talked about weight training really until recently. The last decade, it's starting to get some space in, in health and wellness. And it's literally the, I think, most critical thing as you age to not only maintain your muscle mass, But to build it. And what that means is I would say minimum 2 days a week. You got to put it in your calendar. If you just have time for 2 days a week, do 2 days a week. And what you do is you have to do the whole body. So it's going to be a longer workout. I have some ideas that could help folks, but you could do a 45-minute workout twice a week and you could separate it. I would give about 2 days in between. So 2 rest days, because that's when your body actually builds muscle is on the rest day. It's not on the day in the gym, right? You're tearing it apart on that day, but it builds it on the rest day. So you gotta have time in between. And if you did 2 total body workouts, let's say they took about 45 minutes each and you separated 'em by 2 days, you could accomplish, I would say, the minimum in just that hour and a half timeframe.

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No. Yeah, that's it. It's one of the biggest and most powerful stimulus to be able to not only maintain your bone, but actually strengthen your bone, is that basically stimulus of the resistance, whether it be your own body weight that you're doing an air squat, or you're doing a squat with weights, or you're carrying like the farmer's carry, or you have kettlebells in each hand and you're walking with them. Additional weight, and it can be just your body weight. I do bodyweight stuff all the time. That is what will actually strengthen and build your bone. It's, it's great for the muscles. The muscles are key, critical, and crucial for both, I would say, longevity and metabolism. People want to know how to speed up their metabolism, just get more muscle. You'll literally burn calories while you sleep, and you can lose weight while you sleep. But the addition of that weight component, the lifting part where you're stressing not only the muscles, but also the bones. It sends a stimulus to what's called the osteoblast, which is the cell in the bone that creates new bone. You actually can create new bone. And, and like you shared appropriately, as you age, one of the biggest factors that can lead to an earlier premature death is if you have a fall, you fall and break a hip. The, the data shows within 6 months, 70 to 80% of older adults will be dead after a hip fracture. Like, it's crazy. It's like, what in the world? And we got, you know, great technology. We can give 'em artificial hips. Like, we can do all these surgeries. But, but what happens is they are in bed for long periods of time, right? They can catch a pneumonia. They're not expanding their lungs appropriately because they're in bed. They're not being able to be active. Like, injury, like you said, a fall can literally end your life in your older years, and it can do so fairly readily. And it can be prevented not only with strengthening the bones, But if you're doing these movement exercises that I can, I can talk about where you're basically having balance incorporated with that, like if you go to Japan, man, at 5:00 AM every day, I was just in Japan this year, everybody's out doing tai chi, you know, in the dark as the sun's coming up. And it's like there's 80-year-olds, there's 90-year-olds. I mean, even often centenarians over 100 doing this every single day. They're working on their balance and their movement. And so when you combine balance and movement plus strength, And then, you have some, say, cardio mixed in there. That's the trifecta for a healthy movement pattern. It's amazing and it's not that hard.

Something the Asians do as well, the Asian culture that is super impressive and makes me question like, well, what movements? Because we talk about very traditional movements like walking, but they squat. They squat. You'll see 80-year-olds squatting. You know, most Americans can't do that at that age. And so I, it makes me wonder like, well, maybe we should be doing more of these ancestral kind of movements because squatting, you think about what it activates when you do that, keeps your hip flexors open, keeps you flexible, your knees aren't all crusty, right? Like just that movement alone could be life-changing for people.

100%. The squat, that's how you get up off the toilet, man. I mean, and I can't, it's silly to, I mean, to me it's silly, but this is, but what, What I've done for over 20 years is that my initial training was as an ER doctor. And, if I were to put on paper how many of the falls occurred in the bathroom getting up and down from the toilet, it would be over 80%. It's crazy. That is such an important maneuver to be able to squat down and then be able to get back up on your own so you don't fall and break your hip. I would absolutely agree with you, James, the Asians that do the squatting routinely. We need to learn from them. They also, they're super mobile. They can sit Indian style on a flat hard floor. And most of us, I know most of my friends in their 50s, they can't even do that anymore. And it's like, dude, what happened? You got to have some mobility here. Do a squat once in a while, do some kind of a hinge movement, whether that be a deadlift or something else, just a whole body hinge movement. And then you do some push movements, some pull movements, and then work on your core and throw a carry in there. Those are literally the 6 foundational movements that I think We could really benefit from that most of us are forgetting.

So I'm sure the people listening or watching are probably thinking like, this is all well and good, but you've just filled my day. You know what I mean? Like, like, is this actually doable? So what is like the simplest forms of what a week would look like if they were incorporating these principles you're talking about?

The first thing I would do besides walk after every meal, that's like, that'll be a game changer for everybody. But the second thing I would do is look at what your average day looks like. Do you work at a desk, for example? If so, could you consider trying a standing desk? And if you don't have a standing desk, I got one of these cool ones that have a button where the thing can raise and lower 2.5 feet, and that's cool. But I also, in other places where I visit or if I'm traveling, I literally will put a box or my suitcase on the desk and I'll make it a standing desk. Like, it's not hard. You just have to do something different. So, I would say, Just look at your movement pattern. And what most people don't think about is, let's say you have an 8-hour workday. So the studies show that about every, depending on which study you read, 49 to 50-some-odd minutes, your body greatly benefits from movement. So break up your workday into, I just do 1-hour blocks. Like after an hour, my clock goes off and it tells me, okay, time for your movement. And so if I'm at my desk, I typically will have weights at the base of my desk and I can pick those up and do a couple weight things, Or I'll just do like a 2 or 3-minute plank. I'll do some air squats. Like, if you do, let's say, 3 minutes, which is the average length of any song out there, like, put on your favorite pumpy, whatever that song is for you. If it's AC/DC, if it's, you know, something pop or country or gospel or any of these things that kind of get you in a good mood, play your favorite song once an hour. You know, you can change the song throughout the day if you want, but move your body during that 3 minutes. Every single hour throughout the day. And I promise you, you won't even notice. I mean, that would be over 30 minutes right there. It'd be 36 minutes over a 12-hour timeframe, right, of movement. In addition to your 30 minutes you got walking, that's 60 minutes of movement every day that you didn't even notice that you could do because you do 3 minutes at a time, the length of one song that you're listening to, breaking up each hour of work. I would challenge folks— that's what I challenge myself to do, and most days I'm pretty good. I'm not perfect, but I do have the alarm set on my phone that reminds me every hour. It's not just the time to stand up thing that beeps on your watch. It's literally like, you gotta get in your 3 minutes of movement right now. And I'm like, okay, done. I'm gonna do that. I'll just drop down and do a 3-minute plank, check it off the list. You know?

Well, you know, something we haven't even mentioned, but that is definitely worth mentioning, is that this also, all this movement, all this exercise also is a natural Upper, right? It makes you feel better. And and I don't know about you, but when I don't have movement, I actually I actually kind of dip down into a low-grade depression. I I just find that I naturally do, maybe because I'm I'm not loving modern life. I don't know, or whatever it is. I love my family and all that, but sometimes just the way life is set up, it it I think it naturally is a little depressing because we're so locked into these four walls. These cars, all these you know all this very unnatural environments, but the movement just literally is like makes me feel completely better. Like yeah, always.

It's amazing. I mean endorphins and keflins. There's natural pain modulators that that are similar very similar to narcotics that that come out of your own body when you do movement. Like there's so many benefits well beyond the Endorphins and kelpins and all of that. But for mental health, there's actually lots of data now, more even every year that's coming up, which states exactly what you said. There's actually stronger evidence now showing the power of movement exercise for mental health conditions that it's more powerful than any mental health drug, or at least as powerful. Like, it's amazing. Like, you just start moving, you'll— I mean, it's noticeable. And then if you can add the movement in nature, if you can get outside for a minute, have the fresh air, some natural sunlight. That's something we haven't even talked about, but I was just reading last month, there's now, which is super cool, there's tons of circadian biologists out there, but they're studying how sunlight not only does cool stuff like gives you extra vitamin D, which makes you withstand infection and illness and, and helps you with so many things with your immune system and decreasing cancer and all these other things. Sunlight is amazing, but Actually, it does way more than that. It literally increases your nitric oxide if you're out in the sun. And nitric oxide, as many know, it's improving your blood circulation and so many things that come through that. There's, oh my gosh, some really exciting work being done currently on sunlight and how one of the things, like you mentioned, James, when you're in your car, you're in your office, you're indoors so much, you're not benefiting from that natural gift that can do so many things beyond just the vitamin D that we think about. It elevates your mood. It actually affects the pathways like the nitric oxide pathway. It increases your circulation. I mean, there's so many great, great things. And yeah, I could talk forever about just the power of just being outdoors, getting a little sun every single day. So helpful. Also for your sleep, one of the most helpful.

Isn't it funny though that it's like science is having to tell us and remind us like, oh yeah, the things that nature, God provided are what you should be doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny, we have to lean on the science, but now for those of us that like to have that, like, it's proven, it's hard to refute. But yeah, it's the things that you would naturally predict. You know, just think about how we used to live a few thousand years ago. We got plenty of sunlight, plenty of movement. We ate only natural things, right? There was no ingredients list. You know, it's all those kinds of things. But you're right, it is kind of cool to have the science though too.

Yeah. You touched on this early on, but how important is community, people that you surround yourself with? Because, you know, there's that quote of, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Are we?

Yeah. So that quote, it's an interesting quote for me. That would just be my family. I spend more time, you know, there's 8 of us and currently my older kids are home from college and stuff like that. And there's all 8 of us under one roof and I spend the most time with them. Which I love. I mean, it's enjoyable, it's amazing. And I think actually this is one of those things. So if you look at all the work that's been done on the so-called blue zones, right? There's, you know, all these folks, yes, they're eating more natural single ingredient foods. Yes, they're moving their bodies more. Most of them are either farmers or shepherds. You know, they're getting plenty of movement. They're not getting all of the same Toxic inputs that many of us are through through the additives to our food and things like that. But the other thing that they don't talk about enough, which I really feel like they should, is the community piece. I I really think it could be considered the forgotten longevity drug because ancestrally we always moved in tribes, right? Like for the most part, we were tribal people, and that helped, right? Because you had to have somebody you know being the the vigilant who stayed up and made sure that the lions and tigers didn't attack you at night because they're nocturnal, and then you take turns and whatever. But You needed to be, you needed to be in a tribe to survive. And, and nowadays we forget that being with other humans in that community, whether it be in your family, in your friends group, people that share like-minded things you like to hang out with, like you said, the average of 5 to 7 people you spend time with, like that is literally, I think, one of the easiest, simplest, and most powerful longevity drugs out there. And this is, if you look at every one of those blue zones, Community and family is paramount. They often have 2 to 3, sometimes 4 generations of family living all in the same compound or home, if you will. They don't shoo their elders out to a care home. They keep the elders with them and they incorporate them into their everyday activities. I mean, I just went to Japan this year and gosh, it seems like there's a lot of old people in Japan, but they're all out and doing stuff. Like they're literally out, like you shared, doing their squatting, tai chi, things like that. And they're incorporated into that family unit. They don't push them out. And that sense of community, the belonging, I mean, we've all been, I think lately bombarded with the hormone oxytocin, which is kind of like the cuddle hormone that everybody talks about now that's been around for millennia, obviously. But this is that connection hormone that happens when humans get together or when you hang out with your favorite canine or feline friend. You know, I, we just got a cat this year and I didn't even know that I would ever like cats. And I love snuggling with this little guy. Like, I used to make fun of people with cats, but like, I freaking love this cat that we have. And it's like, that gets my oxytocin going. Cuddling with my, my kids on the couch if we hang out, you know, in the evening together that way. Like, it, it's the juice that, that literally is not talked about enough. And Sadly, there's now data. Here you go, right? Data again that has to remind us of the very simple things like the power and importance of community, because the flip side of that in our modern world is, is so prevalent and prominent, and that's loneliness, isolation. And that leads to so many health conditions, not just mental health, but everything else because of people's loneliness, separation, isolation. And we all got a great dose of this during COVID We got to see how how powerful in a negative way that that can be. And so getting back to community, to having that belonging, to have the purpose to help, whether it be our family or friends or belonging to an organization that, that you like their goals and their mission. And, and it just gives you another reason to be excited about tomorrow, right? To spend time with those you care about and to have that like-minded purpose and, and goals and so on. I, I couldn't stress it enough. And I think this is not stressed enough when they talk about Blue Zones. Everybody always hears about, oh, they eat this kind of food, it's this diet, It's that, it's this movement pattern. And they don't focus enough on the community, but every one of those blue zones, the community piece, I would venture to say, is the most powerful.

I feel like you are more qualified than others to answer this question. So, I want to make sure to get this in before we end today's episode. So, a lot of parents, they say, oh, I'll take care of myself later. Because they're putting everyone else first, right? So what would you say to that parent who keeps postponing their own health because everyone else does come first?

Just give yourself some grace. All of us as parents have that, um, where we put our kids first. We wanna make sure they're taken care of. For me, that looked like working 100 hours per week for decades, and I did that. And I, and what sacrifice? I still spent every waking moment I could with my kids, but that That the sleep part dropped out. And I kind of shared about that. I didn't start paying attention to sleep until this most recent decade. And I would say that number one, give yourself some grace. We as parents, we naturally want to put our kids first. But here's the thing, like the guy I shared about at the outset that was, I think, 48 years old that had that massive heart attack, and he just wanted to make it to his daughter's wedding, which was happening in a couple of months. He wasn't talking about like when she had kids and Being around for the grandkids. He just wanted to make it to the wedding. So what I would say to you, the biggest service you could give your kids is to give some time to your own personal health and wellbeing, because you will then be able to not only be around for your kids for much, much longer, but you'll actually have more to give. You'll have more energy, you'll have more vibrancy. The other thing that's not often talked about, which now Once again, we actually have data about is that families that do these kinds of health-promoting things together, like making a meal together with actual real ingredients, that move their bodies together, they take family walks or do family sports or these kinds of things, they literally can affect generations of health. I'm sure everybody here has heard of the epigenetic factors, which is basically everything that we have control over. It's all of above the genome stuff. So this isn't stuff you inherit from mom and dad, but actually those factors and the behaviors and the lifestyle pieces that you do and that you share with your kids can literally be passed on to their kids. Like, there's powerful evidence of that. So think about that for a moment. Think about how powerful that would be if your kids see that you respect yourself enough, you respect your body enough, that you're gonna go to the gym or Have some time slated in your schedule every single day. For me, it's mostly activity-based. I don't go to a standard gym that often. I have a home gym. But when they see that you have that as a priority in your life, not only will they respect that, but they'll want to implement the same thing. They'll want to emulate and follow your example. Example is always more powerful than words. And especially parents, we, we learn that over and over and over. It's like, It's not the do as I say. It's like just watch what I do, and they will learn, and they'll pass it on. And they're always watching, always watching.

After everything you've covered, what is it you want people to leave this conversation with about aging and and their future of their body? What do you want people to believe?

Well, number one, that it's possible. It's possible. It doesn't matter where you are today, where you're starting from. It's so powerful. The changes that you can see occur in your health and wellbeing and energy in a pretty short amount of time. If you just kind of implement a couple of these things that we talked about today, whether it be the movement after meals or getting a good night's sleep every single night, or connecting with friends, family, or your pets, like these things are so powerful and they will actually start to move the needle pretty quickly because It's compounding, right? I mean, Warren Buffett said one of the—I think he called it the eighth wonder of the world—is basically compound interest. Well, I would say with respect to health, it's the compounding of these simple daily behaviors when repeated day after day will be so powerful. And and this is not to say that we have to abandon you know our modern medicine and technology that gives us amazing things like trauma surgery and. Antibiotics and advanced diagnostic tests and all that. It's not to reject that. It's just to be intentionally aware of the things that we can control, the daily inputs that we give our biology, like the movement, the sleep, the nutrition, for example. Like, we have control over that, and it is much more powerful than most of us think.

Last final question. I ask this to everyone. If you could wave a magic wand, bring back one ancestral practice, What would that be and why?

I'm kind of on this recent kick of the, uh, weight training, strength training, resistance training, whatever you want to call that. And ancestrally, as I shared earlier, we did that every day. We carried heavy things. And if there's one thing I could gift to everything, uh, every, every human out there, it would be the gift of doing— well, I would just give them increased muscle mass. I mean, it would be, it would be getting that back from our ancestors, doing those daily patterns. Whether it be carrying heavy things or doing air squats, like I mentioned, every hour, you know, for 3 minutes during your favorite song. The muscle is the organ of longevity. It's more powerful. Like, I wouldn't say, you know, I wish everybody's cholesterol could be a certain number. I wish your hormones could be balanced. Like, this one thing, it's so simple, but it can help balance your hormones. It can decrease your inflammation. And that is your muscle. Your muscle is powerful. Your muscle has the ability to secrete hormones. It has the ability to change so many things. But it is a use it or lose it kind of thing. Sarcopenia will happen if you don't use your muscle. So my my remembrance would be to do the resistance training, weight training, pumping iron. Do the muscle building work that that each and every one of us can do even without weights, like doing an air squat or a plank. But incorporating that into your daily movement, and you'll you'll find that can literally change everything. It can change your how you feel. You get the dopamine rush. It's it. It feels great to be strong. It feels great to be able to pick things up and help somebody if they need help carrying something. Like, it's, it's one of the most powerful things, and our ancestors couldn't have lived one day without it. So, I don't think we should either.

Nice. Yeah. Well, we're gonna put in the show notes all the different ways people can get in touch with you, follow you, work with you, correct? They can do— can they do that from afar?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They can do that from afar.

I love that we're basically, we're changing the question. So it's no longer, how do I avoid aging? It's more about what kind of body am I building for the decades ahead? And I love that reframe. And I'm grateful for you sharing all the ancestral ways and modern techniques that we can focus on to reach those, that 100-year age of surfing. So, So thank you again for your time, and thank you everyone for joining us. As always, be and stay curious. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.