How to Live Longer and Stronger: Bill Gifford on Outlive, Peter Attia, and Healthspan Habits

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, professional athletes all over the world. This show is for people who refuse to settle, people who are driven, people who want to grow, who know that there's so much more to learn and want to learn from the world's best. Each week I bring you insights from a special guest who's at the top of their game with whether they're in Formula one, whether they're a billionaire, whether they've started a company from scratch and take it to the top. I bring them to you so that you can rewire your mindset, take action and lead a life of purpose. Let's get started. Bill Gifford and Dr. Peter Attia wrote the book Outlive. If you're interested in longevity, today is the episode for you. I sit down and chat at length about health span and living longer and healthier with Bill Gifford. Bill, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, it's a joy to have you. I mean, you are the world leader when it comes to longevity. You and Dr. Peter Attia put together this incredible book Outlive. I've seen it on so many airport tables. I've seen it in clients backdrop of their bookshelves. I've seen it in every bookstore I've been in, in New Zealand, Australia, the uk. I mean it's just incredible. You've sold over a million copies and it's changing lives.

Yeah. And that's really the most gratifying thing. You know, seeing it in the airport obviously is great, but when I hear from people that they've changed a habit or they've changed some part of their life, or they've completely changed their life because of the book and they're on a better trajectory, I just love hearing that.

Yeah, me too. And I think just, you know, you being so deeply researched what you say you've actually done the due diligence to make sure that it matches up with how it can impact a human's health span and lifespan. So I guess to get the ball rolling very, very tactically across all the research that you've done, what are the top two daily habits that consistently show up in people who live longer and stronger lives?

Right. I think the most obvious one is exercise. But I'm going to go a little deeper and say movement. So you don't have to go to the gym every single day, but you do need to move in some way, shape or form. So walking, right. On the most basic level, walking up hills, walking upstairs.

Running, you know, doing some sort of endurance, longer, you know, longer duration, movement. But. But even just getting up and down from your desk and walking up and down the stairs in your house and moving around has an effect that they've done. They've done studies where they put accelerometers on people and they found that the people who are fidgeting actually do better than the people who are still and sedentary. And we all know, right, we know people who, they don't move, and then there's people who do move, and the people who move do better. So that's number one. Right.

That's amazing.

It's not just exercise movement. And then I think the second one, I would have to say, and this is hard for me because I'm. I'm not a great sleeper. But sleep, I think, is. Is pretty clearly the second sort of linchpin to living a long, healthy life. And also, you know, we all know when you sleep, sleep well at night, you're a better person the next day, Right?

Yeah.

You're happier, you're not grumpy, you get along with your family, you perform better at work. But also, weirdly, and this was a surprise, it affects your metabolic health.

So even a crappy night of sleep can sort of nudge you down the road to insulin resistance.

Wow.

Yeah. And that was a surprise.

That's mind blowing. Yeah. And if you look at both of those movement and sleep, I mean, common sense is not always common practice. Right. But if we look at movement. So I live on a hill, it's on a crater rim of an old volcano. I'm up and down the hill most days with the dogs. So there's basic movement going on. But when you talk about walking, people are like, it's not exercise. But when we get up to, say, 10, 12, 15,000 steps a day, I certainly think there's some benefits. But do you see any numbers in terms of what people should Be hitting is tracking our steps and all that stuff.

Good or bad or everybody's different, right? So, you know, my mom is 83 and she, you know, we just, I just visited her at her home and we busted out a mile and a half, two mile walk around the neighborhood. So I was, that was awesome. But you know, not everybody can do that when they're 80 or whatever or when they're 50. So everybody's different. And I think putting a flat, you know, I'm against, we're sort of against these sort of blanket recommendations. One size fits all things. Like for some people.

10,000 steps might be amazing. For the people running in the Boston Marathon yesterday, that's like, you know, that's like Breakfast, right?

Yeah.

100%. And in terms of the sleep side of it, you know, what does good sleep look like? How do we know when we're getting better sleep? Are there certain things we can do to improve it?

I mean it's how you feel when you wake up, right? But then sleep is really a mystery. You know, you wish that, that you could just take a pill or switch that like, you know, like on, on my, on your computer, you just shut it down, right, for the night and boop, you're, you're just in blissful sleep fill. But it doesn't work that way. And it's a complex mix of, you know, did you get activity during the day that's even related to it, how tired you are? Related to, right. What's your schedule? Are you in a different time zone? Did you just have an argument with your partner? Did you just watch a stressful news broadcast before you went to bed? Are you thinking about what you have to do the next day? Are you thinking about some difficult conversation you have to have or some difficult conversation you had? So it's a whole bunch of things for me. Often it's. It is lying awake thinking about, you know, some writing project I've got going or.

Because I forget things for something I forgot to do and should have done and that I need to do the next day. Some, you know, all those kinds of things.

But, but really it comes down to like getting yourself good and tired right by whenever you go to bed. And one thing I found lately is going to bed earlier actually helps a bit.

Interesting.

Feel better. I give myself a bigger window of opportunity to sleep and I feel better. Then I have like little rituals around.

You know, make a cup of tea at night and somehow that I think it's the warmth of the tea warms up your body, then as your body cools down, there's some research that suggests that helps put you to sleep. So taking a hot bath or taking a sauna and then cooling off, and that sort of helps you get into sleep mode.

Interesting. That's amazing. And I'd love to look at that from your research, the bookends of the day, the starting the day and ending the day. There are people that have wrote books and courses on morning routines and evening routines. And you said a moment ago that often it's everyone's different and everyone maybe operates. Some people are night owls, some people are morning larks. But from your research, are there specific rituals like you've just mentioned, mentioned that could be helpful for people to have a better sleep and then also to start their day better?

Sure. I mean, starting with, you know, I mean, I know you're. I think I've got this right. You're a no alcohol person, but.

That's right.

A lot of people are. And I, you know, I love a glass of wine. Sometimes I love two glasses of wine, sometimes I like three glasses of wine. So for me, it's like, let's just chop out that, that last glass of wine, for example, you know, you don't need it. And then you do sleep better and you feel better the next day. So, boom, you know, action, reward.

Again, activity is key. Like 30 minutes, I think is kind of like a good minimum. So I notice I sleep better even if I have a 30 minute peloton ride. You know, during the day, I sleep better.

Reading helps. You can read a long, long, boring book about longevity.

We've got it right here, folks.

And it's five pages.

It's not boring at all. It's fascinating. But yeah, I like the humility.

Yes. You know, it's funny, when I was.

Writing the book with Peter, and especially the sleep chapter gave me a really hard time because I was reading about all the terrible things that happened to you if you don't sleep well. Even increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. Right. But also emotional dysregulation and poor performance at work. So I'd be lying there at night thinking about all this stuff, like, oh my gosh, I'm not sleeping and I'm gonna not be able to write tomorrow and I'm gonna have Alzheimer's disease in 10 years. It was terrible. So which brings me to my point, which is, and, and this is counterintuitive, you know, because everybody's got their aura ring, right? And their, their sleep tracker on their whatever on their device. Like don't obsess about it, right. So I had to, I had to break up with my aura ring. Eventually they gave me some useful information. But eventually I, I was getting like anxious about my score. I did the same, didn't work for me. So. And you feel like you're being watched, right? And monitored. So, you know, so don't be anxious about not sleeping well enough eventually, you know, it, it's self correcting to a certain extent. You know how like if you flew, you know, if you fly to the States, right. If you fly transatlantic or whatever and you don't get enough sleep the next night, you'll sleep better.

Of course.

And that's one way they treat insomnia is like the sleep restriction. They, they don't let people sleep and then they get really tired and then they have a great night of sleep. Then like, okay, that's what a good night of sleep looks like.

So we can create this by movement and you're talking about 30 minutes. So is there any minimum 30 minutes? Okay, so 30 to 90 minutes would be great. And do you think there's any benefit to like pacing? So someone might go for a 10,000 step walk? Let's keep it basic on the walking front. Is it better to spread it out throughout the day in terms of your movement rather than one, just one hit and done?

You know, I like to have at least one sort of main course of movement in the day and that could be as, you know, a longer walk. I have dogs.

Right.

So a longer walk with the dogs can, can count. But that, that's a real baseline minimum. Yeah. To me I feel better with like a 30 to 45 minute session of sort of consistent activity in some way.

I love it. And if we keep into the morning side of things, you know, meditation, journaling, reading, cold therapy, movement, drinking, certain things. Is there anything in there, ritual wise that you do or that you've seen? Actually this can be conducive to a really good day.

You know, everybody talks about journaling in the morning, which I think maybe has its value. But what about journaling at night? You know, you can offload all those things you have rattling around in your head, your ideas for the next day. I do this in a sort of, you know, listy way. I just write down some sentences.

About things that I'm going to try and tackle the next day, you know, in writing. So maybe try journaling at night and you kind of unburden yourself and then you can kind of, kind of go to sleep with a clear, a clear A clearer head.

I love it.

Back to the morning.

You know, get out of the house, you know, get up, get out of the house, see the sun.

Move around. I'm not a big morning exerciser, just. I think I'm more of a night owl. Maybe not just not a morning person, but getting out of the house, moving around, you know, talk to some people, which I do on the dog walk again.

That gets me going. And that little bit of exercise kind of.

This is not scientific, but I feel like.

Clears out the cobwebs physically and mentally to get me, get me started. And sometimes I listen to a podcast, you know, or an audiobook or whatever.

Yeah, I love it. And you just do. Easing your way into the day, waking up, connecting with nature, connecting with people. So then that you're ready to step into the day.

Yeah, yeah, love it.

And in terms of, you know, nutrition. So nutrition obviously plays a big part in our health and longevity.

So.

So plant based meats, you know, we've mentioned alcohol or is there anything in the morning that you go, yep, I like to start with this. Or I intermittent fast. Any rituals on that front?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlund.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Anything but pancakes.

Or like a baked thing. And you know, I love pancakes and I love maple syrup. But when I eat that for breakfast, which happens, you know, every two months, I'll break down. I just feel like absolute crap by about 11 in the morning. So for me it's got to be.

It's probably eggs five days a week and then. Or it might be like some, you know, full fat Greek yogurt with some fruit and maybe some granola, you know, but not the sugary granola like the nut granola. Yeah, yeah, the. So kind of four days of eggs and three days of, of the.

Of that. And you know, I'm, I, I get hungry, so I'm not a good. Faster. Um, it's interesting as. Okay, we can talk about fasting. Maybe later.

Yeah, definitely.

Um, but yeah, I need to eat something in the morning. I need to have a solid cup of coffee or two. And I. I feel like coffee is underrated as a. As a. As a longevity. Longevity drug.

Why is that? Tell me more about that.

Well, you know, they used to think.

The coffee was unhealthy, you know, back in the day. But then they figured out that the people were sipping a cup of coffee in one hand and they had a cigarette in the other hand or they're eating some crappy breakfast. And so it turns out, you know, coffee is actually pretty well associated with living a longer and healthier life. I think it's beneficial for the liver.

Yeah, it's kind of like a liver. A little bit of a liver stimulant.

Interesting. And when we look at coffee, so obviously we've got instant, we've got, you know, brew, we've got espresso. Caffeinated. Non caffeinated for you. What. What is it in the morning that you reach for?

Oh, I'm straight. I'm straight up drip. You know, we have a Chemex. And I, I feel like. I feel like that gets you a pretty good. You know, I love the taste of it. Like, I love the taste of wine. But coffee has a better effect.

Yeah, you know, it. I sometimes I mix it up. Funny story.

As we were about. Peter and I were about a year.

About a year and a half into the book. I'm starting to think, well, end is in sight. I think we've got this pretty well under control. We just have to do a few more chapters on exercise, nutrition, sleep. You know, that'll be easy.

So Christmas time rolls around and this really nice espresso machine shows up at my door from Peter.

I was like, that's a nice gift, considering we're almost done. And it was like, oh, okay, we're not done. And so what had happened was we had come up with a conception of the book that was. It was going to be very sciency, very much the sort of middle chapters, which are about the chronic diseases, about the science of ag.

About sort of changing the orientation of medicine to think more about the long term. All those sort of big ideas and big meaty subjects. Okay. The tactical stuff will only be like 5%. You know, we'll just have a little bit of this and that on how to eat right, how to exercise. And it turns out that once we dove into those subjects.

You know.

They were so rich and so Complicated. And there was just so much there that, that, that, you know, we needed to kind of, kind of dive into and explain for people that they ended up being like, you know, close to half the book.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's mind blowing.

Got a lot of mileage out of that espresso machine.

I bet you did. And it's interesting, like, when I look at the book, the reason I picked it up in the first instance was that I do want to live a longer life. I have dreams of maybe meeting a grandchild if I'm lucky. My kid's only eight, so who knows if he wants kids or not. But I would love to be a granddad one day. I need to be healthy, I need to be cognitively present. And I know I can't control everything in regards to those things, but there's a lot that I can influence. And this book to me seemed to be like a master key system for that. So longer is great, but healthspan we talked about at the start. So what's health span and lifespan for someone going, what's the difference? How do we just define that for them?

Well, they overlap, but technically sort of lifespan is obviously how long you live. And a lot of the public health types sort of use that as a proxy for the health of a population, life expectancy, but it's really not because we all know that there's a certain point at which.

You'Re sort of no longer healthy. Right. As you age. And we've all seen parents and grandparents enter that period of life. So there's something called health span. And again, technically, health span is how long you stay free of disease, chronic disease and disability. Right. And so in the States, you know, we don't do so well on these things, but it's probably about 66 right now, and average and life expectancy is like 79, 80. So 14 years.

A long time.

Yeah. And then, but then Peter and I were thinking about it and talking to some other people in the field, and we think that the two dimensional definition of health span is really not sufficient. So it, and we really want to give a sense of like, like are, are you not just free of disease and disability, but are you thriving? Right. Are you capable.

And are you content? So there's kind of three dimensions and there's probably more.

Dimensions to these dimensions, but it's physical function, right?

Cognitive function. Right. Cognitive health, you know, you remember things or do you have executive function? Are you sharp? Um, and then the third part is sort of, you can call it emotional health, mental health. It's not really mental health. It's more like.

Are you content? Right. Do you have a purpose?

Do you look forward to the day? When you wake up in the morning, do you have a, like as you talk about, do you have a priority for the day? Do you have something to do that's meaningful to you?

And so I think that's an important dimension of healthspan as well.

100%. And I love that there's those three dimensions to consider because as a younger human, I was always told cardio is everything. You know, running, getting to the treadmill, that's what will give you a long, healthy life. And I'm thinking, I know a lot of runners that are in their 70s and they can't walk like their knees are shot, their hips are bad, they're back. So I don't know if that's the answer. And so I'm hearing more and more often, I'd love to ask you about it with your research, but I'm hearing more often that muscle building, lean muscle mass is a really big factor in living a longer and stronger life.

Yeah. So here's the way to think about it. You know, the cardio stuff is important.

That helps you live to 80. Say that lives you, helps you live a longer life than somebody who doesn't do that stuff. But the strength stuff helps you survive being 80. And too many of us neglect that.

And too many people kind of, they just kind of keep doing the same thing. They keep, whatever, they keep running and just running. And you know, running has a, has a, has a, has a limit to it. Running is great when you're younger. Right. But not everybody can run into their 50s and maybe not everybody should. Right. So find some lower impact thing to do. But at the same time you have to be doing. And this is hard for me because I'm, I'm one of those endurance nerds.

Find some way to, to, to build resistance into, into your routine. Right. So I'm here in my office here, hold on.

These little like push up handles, I love it. So they go on the ground and you grab them, you do a push up.

I love it.

After a call or whatever, I'll just crank out like 10 push ups, whatever. 15, just a few, you know, just like get charged up.

Yeah.

You know, things like that. But the strength stuff helps you survive old age. And I'm trying to tell this to my mom and she doesn't listen to me. So, you know, it's hard, it's hard to get people to do, you know.

Yeah. Of course. And I think that when I think about muscle mass, and that's a physical thing that helped me physically in my 80s and 90s. But is there a cognitive component too, in terms of when we build muscle mass, can it help prevent any of those neurological disorders?

Totally. And this is one of the kind of amazing little connections that, that we discovered while writing this book, you know, post Espresso Machine.

But we found some study that, that they, they measured like muscle strength and they charted it against risk of dementia and cognitive decline. And they found a really, really strong inverse relationship. So the people with the more muscle mass, more lean muscle mass, and you don't have to be muscle bound, you just have to have like some strength. Right. The people with the strength, with a little more muscle mass had a far lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. So it was like, it was like a drug that delayed Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline. It was incredible.

That's mind blowing. How has that impacted your personal relationship with strength training?

You know, I, I, I, I try to do it like, you know, the good news is, you know, you don't have to do it like every day.

Right.

You can do it like twice a week and still get good results. Because, you know, the, the biggest gain with a lot of these things, especially around exercise, but also nutrition go is, is, is in going from doing nothing, just doing a little bit. So that start, that first step is the thing that gives you like the biggest step gain. And then once you get into it, it's a little bit of like diminishing returns. You still get a return, but it's not as dramatic as that. Going from zero days to one day.

Interesting. So it can be actually quite a manageable step for someone to commit to that and make a difference.

Totally. Yep.

Amazing. I love it.

I've done it myself.

Yeah, yeah.

Just making that commitment to just one day. Okay. And then. Okay, it feels good. I'm going to go back.

I love that. That's amazing. And in your research, you know, I, I'm all about optimizing, trying to optimize my health. And so I find someone in the States to work with. He was like an advisor, used to work for the U.S. defense Force for the Navy SEALs. And he was optimizing their health and understanding the science behind it. So we started working together and he says, james, go and do these bloods. Here's a panel of bloods. Go do them. And I'm obviously here in New Zealand, so I go to my doctor, my doctor rolls their eyes and goes, are you kidding? I'm not sending you for those bloods. Like, what do you mean? You're fine, you're healthy. I'll send you for a total blood count. I'll send you for, I don't know, one other thing. I says, well, I want to do them all. Well, I'm not doing it. You figure it out yourself. So I went to a blood bank. You can actually, here in New Zealand you can get them all done. You don't need a doctor's permission to do it.

You just pay for here too. Yeah, brilliant.

I think it's important that we can. So all these markers started coming up mostly healthy, but there was a couple that were a bit unusual. Then I found a lump in my left pec not long after this. And so we started realizing there's potentially some issues here. So about two years later and a lot of trips to specialists, I had to go to the States for an mri because in New Zealand currently they won't let you self elect to get a full body mri. They just won't let you do it. There's nowhere to do it. So I had to fly to la, do a pre nouveau look at the body.

Yeah.

And all I want to do, bill, is actually prevent ill health. I want to prevent decline. But in New Zealand that's not a priority. It's once you're sick, we'll look after you and try and help you.

Yeah, totally.

Is it the same in the States in terms of there's much more focus on the after you're sick rather than the prevention?

Yeah, it's, you know, we, we talked about this was actually the big, kind of the big idea of the book. Not that you should be doing push ups every day, but it's really that. And you know, Peter had been a disillusioned doctor who had left medicine and then went back to it eventually. But you know, his goal, I think he would like to change the way medicine is practiced. I mean, it's a grand goal and he probably wouldn't admit to it, but I think that's what he really wants. And the reason is, you know, our medical system is great for fixing whatever's wrong with you, like right now. So if you go out and break your arm or you get a cut or you get an infectious disease, we can fix that. Right? Your doc can fix that. Bada bing, bada boom. Right? And you're done. But that's a short term problem. That's a now problem. It's less good at dealing with the future. Whatever the future might bring. So whatever that lump might be in five years. Right. Or whatever the state, you know, whatever you know, is lurking in your, in your, your blood markers, whatever that leads to down the road, they're not as concerned about that. And it, it's, it's, it's in, you know, it's in attitudes like what you just described. Right. There's an anti test attitude like, oh, we're not going to do a 500 test. Right. We're going to let you maybe get cancer and you'll need a hundred thousand dollar operation.

Yeah.

It makes no sense. Right. But there's still leery. There's this cautiousness about doing the mri and MRI comes with some risks, right? Of course. Right. And CT scans. Right. Any test comes with a little bit of risk, but there's definitely a bias against, against doing preventive testing. So like a DEXA scan, you know, you can't get that till you're 65, but people are at, you know, it's good to know, like your body comp, your body composition. Right. Muscle mass, fat mass. Like people your age, people my age, we need to know that. And you know, for women, you know, I'm in my 50s.

Are you at risk of a fracture? I'd rather find that out from a DEXA scan than by breaking a bone.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. And so for the people that are listening right now going, actually, I want to join the club of preventing future ill health. What are some basic stepping stones that they could take today or this month to start moving towards looking at their.

Overall health.

As far as evaluating or as far as like.

Yeah, evaluating where they're at. Yeah.

I mean, a DEXA scan is a good, is a good one. You know, getting like a basic fitness assessment. If you haven't done that, I think is, is, is a good place to start.

Getting a handle on your, your, your metabolism, I think is a really important step. So how well does your, does your body handle glucose? Right. Or carbohydrates or the food you eat? Does your blood sugar go shooting up and stay up for a while or does it go up and then come back down like it's supposed to, you know, so what does your sort of glucose, blood glucose profile look like? And you can go to the drugstore, I think you can do that down there. But get a glucose monitor, it's like 30 bucks. And do like some quick glucose tests like after, after you eat, like when you wake up in the morning, you know, Amazing. Do it after you Eat. Do it an hour after you eat. Do doing two hours after you eat and then see how it's like coming down.

And if it doesn't combine an issue.

Or take your test, your A1C. Right. Which is another diabetes related metric of, you know, blood glycation of red blood cells technically.

And see where that is, you know, is it. You might not be in the diabetes range, but if you're anywhere close, right. If you're, the point is if you're anywhere, anywhere close to that, that, that threshold of diabetes, like you really need to pay attention to your diet, your movement and your sleep and get yourself on a different, different path.

Yeah. I mean those are simple things we can do very quickly at very low cost.

Yeah.

That's amazing. I love it. And this idea of metabolism, I guess as we age our metabolism changes and there's certain things we can do to influence our metabolism. Is that right?

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Again, movement, right. Is a big one. Maybe changing, changing up your diet if, you know, if, if you're someone who tends to have bigger bumps up in, in that blood glucose, you know, maybe going away from, you know, white foods. Right. Processed type foods, um, you know, stuff with a lot of sugar in it, you know, kind of basic stuff like that.

Yeah.

Well, I'm going to get onto that this week. I want to, I want to, I want to learn more. I've never done that before, so that'll be very interesting.

The, you talked about cold plunging earlier. I, I, I think maybe before we got on start, started recording. But I mean that, that's one thing that, that, you know, cold plunging actually does. It does kind of, kind of ramp up your metabolism.

Okay.

Nicely.

And so cold plunge sounds terrible for most people that are listening right now. They're not bad, right?

Yeah, terrible.

You hit it.

Yeah, I love it.

Do you do it regularly?

Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah. I did one like a week ago in New York. Yeah.

With a sauna.

So I like it with a sauna. So you get good and hot in the sauna and then you kind of like, you know, equilibrate in the, in the cold plunge. So then it's good. And I'll always jump into some, you know, cold body of water. I jumped into the, the, the harbor at Liverpool a couple weeks ago.

Freezing.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

And still taking too long.

I bet you didn't. What's the benefit, what's the, what's the cold therapy in terms of metabolism and any other things? What, what does cold do to our bodies?

So cold Is not great if you are like lifting weights and building strength, if you just did a strength workout. Because that's going to like, blunt a lot of the, the gains in muscle.

Okay.

And in endurance. So that's sort of the caveat around cold plunging. It's, it's, you know, it kind of constricts, right. Your circulation, it's not, you know, so like, physically it's not, not the greatest thing as far as like muscle and like, for athletes necessarily. You know the guy who came up with Rice, right? Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Yep. That was like from the 70s. A few years ago he sort of recanted the ice part.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. Cause he says actually, like, the ice part is, is bad because it blocks the inflammation that you need to create a healing response.

Hmm.

That's for athletes. But co plunging does have, I think, great benefits for like your mental state, your alertness.

I think your mood, you know, and again, not everybody is always in the mood for it. Right. It's not a one size fits all. So if you've had a stressful day and you're already kind of like on the edge, maybe don't do it. But if you've got the, like feel like you've got the reserve to handle it, if you're up for it, you know, it can be good. And I say that as somebody who intensely dislikes cold water. I still feel kind of good after I get out of the thing.

That's amazing. And you're not doing it daily, you're doing it just regularly, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because some people get fanatic about it. Like, if you're not doing it every day, it doesn't count. And I like that you've got a more of a balanced approach to that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, maybe one day I'll have one in my. In, in my yard, next to the sauna.

Jump in and out. So do you sauna regularly?

I do, but again, I don't have one because, you know, it's a big, it's a big investment. But yeah, I do, like whenever, whenever possible. In fact, my next book project is around this heat and cold.

Thing and how heat affects health and how athletes use heat training to kind of like get an edge. Especially with climate change and the Olympics being hotter and hotter. Of course.

LA coming up. I've got a few friends heading up to LA to try and retain their gold medals from Paris. Yeah, bring it on. Yeah, I'll tell them they need to buy your book.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What sports?

So one's High jumper.

Slalom, kayaking.

Oh, awesome. Yeah.

Another's a shot putter.

Great.

Yeah. And then some tennis. Tennis and golfers as well.

Okay. The Kiwis are coming for us.

Yeah, they're coming to get you.

Awesome.

It's good fun. So this heat and cold, it does fascinate me. So many years ago, I came across Wim Hof's work on breath work, and he's the iceman, obviously. And so I went to a place in rural New Zealand that had hot sauna and then cold plunge. And I'll be honest with you, Bill, like, I don't swear a lot, but when I got into that cold plunge, I couldn't not swear. From the hot to the cold. I just, it was my reaction. I couldn't swear. Yeah, I got used to it, though. So what have you learned so far? I know you're only in, maybe in the, the throes of riding it, but what are you coming up with now that you're understanding? Wow, I didn't understand heat and cold did that.

So from the athlete side, I was always somebody who hated exercising in the heat and biking or anything in hot weather. I just loathed it. And I've learned that, that you can really, if you can kind of get over that dislike, like I dislike the cold plunge, you can really harness heat training as almost like a force multiplier. Right. So, you know, I live in Utah, so it can be, you know, it can be 35, 40 degrees on a summer day. And you know, so now I have no qualms about going out on a bike ride. Maybe not 40, but 35, kind of no problem.

Interesting.

Yeah, I have a little temperature, body temperature monitor that I use to make sure things aren't getting out of hand. But it really, like, it sort of enhances the effect of, of training, any training you, you do. And then as you become adapted to the heat, you also become a better athlete.

So don't shy away from that. Like lean into it.

Lean into it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a hard thing. Hard thing to learn. And then, you know, using sauna, you know, a lot of people think of that as like a human type physical protocol. Right. You're just doing it for the physical effects. And I found that those are like a distant third. Right. It has a, you can almost say a spiritual, but maybe say a psychological.

Benefit. I just feel much more.

Calm, even healed after a good sauna session. And again mediated with the cold plunge. So you can go back into the sauna and you know, Go back and forth. Then also, like. Like, you know, social. It's a big, you know, science. Scientists have done studies of where they sort of heat people up, and they're looking into the effect of heat on depression. Right. And there's some interesting literature there. But one thing that they've found is that when you warm people up like that, they get chatty, they start talking. And so now there are these, like, social saunas that have popped up. Where I was in one in New York.

A week and a half ago, a place called Othership, this big sauna. It's like 60 people. So I was in there in a morning class. Bunch of New Yorkers, and everybody's talking to each other.

Amazing.

We're, like, sharing personal stories.

I was like, wow, that's so special. And when you say a classic that hasn't really arrived in New Zealand or Australia yet, but which it will, so what does that look like? Is that for an extended period, you're in the sauna, then you all go cold plunge, and you come back.

Yeah. And so there's somebody who's sort of like, guiding it. And there's different versions of this. There's one, I went to one in Tampa also down in Florida. But, you know, you're in this hot sauna, you're sweating your. Sweating your bums off. Right. You're in your bathing suit with a bunch of other people, and then you just kind of get a discussion going, and there's something about. It's like semi dark and you're sweating and your defenses are down and you're not wearing a lot of clothes and nobody cares who you are or, you know, how nice your shoes are or whatever. It's an equalizer. And then something about the heat, I think, brings things out in people.

I love that.

Lowers inhibitions, I think, is what. What's. What it's about.

I love that part of the angle of the research because, yeah, Huberman is very strong that, you know, sauna does this from a physiological standpoint. But I love that you're seeing. Actually, there's other very even more important things, like the spiritual element, the connective community element. And, yeah, there is the physical, but we shouldn't be just doing it for that.

Yeah, it's all three.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, I love it. I'm a convert.

So the person that's about to go to the sauna now, they've just listened to this podcast. They're on their way to give it a crack. Do you have a certain length of time that you commit to or do you build up to that time and build your endurance stamina?

You know, again, I'm, I'm not big on one. Blanket recommendations, like, if it's your first time, stay until you feel too hot and maybe a little longer, you know, so it's, it's as long as you feel at. At this place in New York, it was a 25 minute first session. You know, it wasn't overly hot, but it was pretty hot. And you know, you can, you can depending on how high you sit. Right. You can, you can sort of regulate so you can drop down to a lower bench. It's not hot at all. Or sit up at the top. It's quite hot. So, you know, listen to your body and not some podcaster.

Yeah, fair. 100%. Yeah. Because I think, I mean, I've geeked out on a lot of Huberman Labs podcast. Some of the stuff I've learned has been phenomenal.

Yeah.

But I think you're right. It's like we can listen to experts all day long, but at the end of the day, your body is just a great indicator of what to do and what not to do.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, huberman talks about 30 minutes, you know, which, which is, that's a pretty. It's a pretty solidly long session. You know, work up to it.

You know, I get to 15 minutes and I don't do sauna often, but when I'm traveling for work and the hotel has a sauna, I'm in there and 15 minutes and I'm like, God, I got to get out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if the idea of jumping in a cold lake sounds fantastic, that. Okay, time to go do that.

Yeah, a hundred percent. I love it. And I guess for the person that don't have a cold plunge, is a cold shower equally as powerful?

Yeah, yeah. You know, less pleasant?

Yeah, very much so.

You know, the secret of the cold plunge I found is like, you just gotta, like, you can't, you can't screw around, right. You gotta just dunk your ass in the water like, as fast as possible. You can't just like, inch into it. And with a, with a cold shower, it can be hard to like, it can be hard to, like, yank the lever over. You've got to do it. But there, there was the one. You know, most of the studies around cold plunging are small and not very good, honestly. But there was one big one that they did in the Netherlands. They've followed 3,000 people and they got them to like or they got some of them to, to end their shower on like 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds of cold. Okay. So that's a really big study. And you know, what did they find? The biggest effect that they found was that the people who ended on the cold, they missed less work.

Interesting.

They missed like a third less work days.

That's huge.

Yeah. Yeah, that's really big.

God, every employer should be encouraging that.

Yeah. And then a huge, like most of them, the study was 30 days. Most of them continued with the cold after. The researchers were like, no, okay, you can stop. They're like, no, we're going to keep doing it.

Interesting.

So they kept doing it. So there's something about it that I think it's like an adrenaline thing. It's kind of, it's kind of addictive.

Yeah. I think there's a dopamine connection there for sure. Yeah, 100%. And in terms of. I'm just going to lift the book up for those that are watching online. So I live by Dr. Peter Attia and Bill Gifford. Amazing book. The game changing book. Look, is there anything in there about stress, the impact of stress on our longevity and our health span?

Yeah, not, not enough actually, in my opinion. Like, I feel like, you know, the book has been out for two years and you know, I'm kind of thinking about, like, what would we do differently? And I think having. Paying more attention to.

To the effect of stress on our health. You know, in my own life, you know, my, my, my partner had a very stressful job right. During the period when I was busy writing the book. And then kind of at the end of it, she ended up with, know, a case of breast cancer.

Wow.

Right. That we both think was completely related to.

Being in that stressful situation for, for several, you know, several years.

Yeah.

So I think more attention needs to be paid to that. You know, a lot of people pay lip service to, to stress. You know, it's hard to, it looks different for everybody obviously and it's hard to figure out how to, how to address that. I mean, the one reason I started going to sauna, A, we had a freezing cold winter. And two, stress was a big reason.

Yeah.

So finding a way to manage stress. You know, we have a really powerful chapter in Outlive, the last chapter of the book, which is about, it's really about mental health, but it's really about some challenges that Peter went through that were partly related to stress.

And with stress mitigation, I guess that's personal and it's for everyone. It's different. So some it's exercise will mitigate it. It could be mindfulness for you. It's hot therapy. Any other modalities that you and Peter have came across that are very helpful to de. Stress?

I mean we're very different.

Very different people. I. When we started working together.

I was. He was very.

Sort of optimized and very sort of.

I know, rigid about stuff like, like his, his sort of physical. His workout, his habits as a. I think you need to add some fun to this. Right. You know, you need to have more fun. So like he went skiing, tried that. But I think he's the thing he settled on that he seems to like is rucking.

Yeah, yeah. Carrying heavy stuff and.

Yeah, yeah. So it's like a walk again, back to walking, but you're carrying some weight and so that's his idea of fun. He's. He's that. That's his way of having one way of having fun. Relieving stress, getting out of the house, you know, all that kind of stuff. For me, you know, I like.

I like yoga, certain types of yoga.

And in fact I, you know, I. I live in Utah so I do a lot of. I ski a lot. You know, I ride a mountain bike a lot. Those are fairly intense, you know, scary pursuits.

Yeah.

And leaves you with a lot of tightness. So I like a good sort of restorative yoga class. Right. To kind of balance that out. That also helps deal with stress. Right.

Of course, yeah. Downregulates that whole nervous system. And I guess before we wrap up again, I just want to mention. Everyone please go and buy a copy of Outlive. It is a chunky book. And you can see in there I've got all my little notes that I've made. It's a brilliant book and I think that all of us need to have the know how. How to manage our health, span our lifespan. This is the answer to it. And if you don't like reading, get the audio version. So I'll put the link in the show notes for everyone to go and get that. I'll also put any other links bill for them to get in touch with you. Do you have a website that you'd like us to pop in there?

My website, it's a little dysfunctional. I did write a previous book about longevity. This is how Peter and I got together. It's called Spring Chicken.

Okay, awesome.

Stay young forever or Die trying.

I need to get a copy of that today. I'll put a link.

I actually have it right here. I don't know if it's coming up.

That's an epic cover.

It is an epic cover. I love that they both have epic covers.

Oh, I agree 100%. I'll put that in the show notes as well. 100% of the time.

What's interesting. So that book, Spring Chicken, came out 10 years ago. It has a lot of the same stuff that we've been talking about. Exercise, nutrition, cold water.

All that kind of stuff. Healthspan, centenarians.

But back then it was sort of like a niche subject, health and longevity. And now it's become this kind of overwhelming global movement.

Yeah.

Obsession. Like, I've done talks around the world about this book, and people are just on fire. And I. I'm. I'm not sure I quite understand why.

I think it's our need for survival. Our need to want to stay here on this planet longer and see, you know, like, me for me, great grandkids. Grandkids, yeah.

Yeah.

The fear also. There's a lot of fear, like the fear of ill health, the fear of losing our mental marbles.

Yeah.

So I think that this is a real timely book for both your book and the one that you co authored with Dr. Peter Attia. We need it.

I feel like Covid really drove a lot of those things home.

100%. No, I have to fully agree with that.

And, Bill, one last question. I'd like to ask you to consider just us to move forward many, many years into the future. We're going to pretend that we're 40, 50 years ahead. And you're highly aware that it's your last day on earth. Someone very young that you love dearly comes into the room and says, bill, how do I lead my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

I think it comes down to.

Having some kind of physical practice that keeps your body, but also your mind.

In good working order.

I just get, you know, I just kind of accidentally. I was never a great athlete, but I kind of accidentally got into.

A mode where exercise became part of my life. I kind of. I raced bikes. I wasn't very good, but that was a part of my life for a while. Skiing was part of my life for a while. And a lot of the successful people that I'm meeting now, you know, the people in their 50s, 60s, they have something like that. It could be tennis. Right. Could be riding the bike. It could be, you know, could be even running or. Or some. It. They have some kind of, like, physical practice that adds structure and discipline.

To their lives. Like, I learned a Tremendous amount. Just training to be a mediocre bike racer. I learned a huge amount, though, about that. Helped me in my work. Like, it, like, I couldn't have written outlive if I hadn't been an extremely slow bike racer in my 20s and 30s. Does that make sense?

100%. You learned the discipline, you learned the structure.

Yeah, yeah. So you almost have to, like.

And this is a line we use in the book, but think of yourself as like an athlete of life, right?

So that means you're exercising with. You're. You're not just exercising to stay in shape like you have a goal. Right.

So sign up for something that's going to push you and make you adopt the hat. Those habits, that discipline, that kind of like that, that drivenness for a goal.

Right. I love that. That's seriously powerful. And again, just, I think that for people to be able to adopt that we can all do what you've just said. We can all find that, we can all commit to that, and if we don't like it, we can try something new. But actually having a physical ritual that grounds us in discipline, connection, community.

Yeah, yeah. I think that is extremely powerful. Way beyond any. It'll, you know, it'll benefit your physical health and your health span, of course, but I. I feel like it. It also gives you, like, the ability to stick to it. Just stick to something and.

Yeah, yeah, that commitment.

Achieve your goals. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, I get it. And Bill, just before we wrap up as well, you mentioned you do speak around the world, so if anyone's listening right now, that goes. Hey, we've got a conference coming up. We'd like you to come speak. Are you open to that?

Oh, totally. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Awesome. I'm findable on LinkedIn and Twitter. We will put both pictures of me skiing. Those are on Instagram.

I love it. I'll put all of your social handles in the show notes so people can go and follow you. They can stay tuned for that new book coming out. And as I say, the existing books that you have already written, there'll be links in there for everyone to get those too. This episode was for people that are interested in healthspan and a longer, stronger life. Bill, you're a world leader at what you do, so I just want to say a heartfelt thanks for taking the time to share your wisdom.

Thanks for having me on. It's really a pleasure to talk to you.

Thanks for tuning in to lead on purpose. If you find this episode valuable, please share it with one person. That you think might benefit from it. And if you're serious about leveling up, please make sure you're subscribed to the show and continue to lead your life on purpose.