LS 35 - Changing Your Miserable Life is the Way to Better Health with David Madow

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com.

Welcome to the Longevity Show, Informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field, along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a long, happier life. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. David Maddow to the show. He is an expert on longevity, also by trade, a dentist originally. So he is a doctor. He is the founder of a website called Slice youe Age. And he's got a lot of great recipes for anti aging, for staying young and just living a healthier, happier life. David, welcome. How are you?

Hey, thanks for having me, Jason. I am doing fantastic.

Good. The pleasure is all mine. I always like to give listeners a sense of geography. Where are you located?

Right now I'm in beautiful Reisterstown, Maryland, which, if your listeners don't know exactly where that is, that happens to be a suburb about a little bit north, about 20 miles north of Baltimore or so. And I'm looking out, I'm looking out of my studio window in here and I have beautiful fields. I'm in a real rural area here. So I just, I'm just loving every second of it.

Right. Good stuff. That alone may be one thing that can help people slice their age, is to be in a good environment and a good setting. But, you know, what are some of the core practices that you recommend to people who want to slice their age?

Well, let me tell you, Jason, number one thing is to have good genetics.

Don't get much control over that one.

We can't control that one. So, you know, it's funny, many people would think I'm going to go with the first thing he's going to say is, you know, eat well and exercise and if you do all that, you're going to be able to live long and have a really healthy life. But I'm going to not say that exactly. I think the most important thing that anybody can do in their life or in their lives, to live long, live happily, live healthily, is to really be happy in your life and live your life exactly the way you want to live your life, not the way other people try to dictate, but the way you want to live your life in your heart. I want to tell you, if you're doing that you're already so far ahead. It's incredible. Then, believe it or not, a lot of the other things just start to fall in place. You're totally happy with your life. Chances are you're going to be eating right and you're going to be exercising right. You're going to be doing the right things. But if you're not happy, if you're miserable in your life, in your relationships, in your job, then the other thing is, generally do not fall into place. Things just kind of spiral downhill.

Yeah, well, there's definitely a psychosomatic component to everything, you know, psyche, the mind and soma, the body. One impacts the other for sure. But it's interesting to me, David, that you started out with what I'm going to call sort of a soft techni. If you will. That's not hard science. You know, it's. I think it's. It's very true and valid, but, you know, again, it's. It's kind of a soft part of it. You know, the. The psychological part of our. Our being is, I'd say, a soft science to some extent. You know, it's so important. I mean, any tips on being happier? I mean, certainly being happier is. Is good. And I think a lot of that does stem from feeling that one is in control of their life and their destiny to some extent. So a lot of that starts with job, you know, getting in or out of the right career, in or out of the right relationship, those kinds of things. But what are your thoughts?

Well, it's a great question, and you pretty much nailed it right there. I mean, I tell my listeners on Slice youe Age, first and foremost, you really need to be happy in your job. You know, you're going to your job, most likely you're going there every day, something you're doing, and you've got to be happy with it. So if you're not, if you're. If you're miserable, if you're going to a job, if you're commuting and you're one of these. In one of these modes, like, oh, I hate Mondays. Finally, Wednesday's here, it's hump day. Thank God it's Friday now it's the weekend, and you're living your life like that. And every week you can't wait till the weekend. You can't wait till your vacations come around, because that's really when you're kind of happy. But going to work, you're miserable, and in the workplace, you're miserable. Then here's what I Tell my listeners, you have to either fix it, which means somehow figure out how to, like, your job, maybe change something, I don't know. But you've got to fix it somehow, or you've got to get out of it and find another line of work, find another job. And the same thing with relationships, Jason. I don't know how many people I've spoken to over the past several years, I should say many years, actually, that are, like, in these relationships, and they're miserable, they're just not happy. And you can see it in their faces. You can see it. I guarantee, if I got to see their medical records, I could tell from that they're just not happy in these relationships. But what they say is, well, you know, I'll stay in it till the kids get older, or things are not that bad. He's really not that bad of a guy, or not that bad of a woman. And they just. They're complacent, they stay in it. A lot of times they enable the spouse or the boyfriend or the girlfriend, and they're just. They're kind of afraid to see what's on the other side. They're afraid to take any kind of risk. And they're thinking, well, if I get out of this relationship, whatever is out there might be worse, so I'm going to stay in this.

You know, David, what you're reminding me of when you're saying this is, of course, what Tim Ferriss calls the deferred life plan. Right, the deferred life plan. You know, putting your life off for someday in the future. What Dennis Waitley wrote a great poem about called Someday I'll. Like Someday I will. And it's interesting what you said about if you could see the medical records, you could tell. Do you want to expand on that one a little bit?

Well, let's face it, stress and unhappiness. I'm not a real stats guy. I can't give you actual statistics and things like that, but I know for sure just from what I've studied over many, many years. And, yeah, I'm a medical guy going through dental school. We did everything. The med students and I had a lot of training there. And so I know this stuff, and I am positive. And it's documented out there that stress and things like unhappiness cause things like obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes. There's no cancer, there's no heart disease. There's no question about this. So that's why I was kind of kidding. But not really. If I could somehow get in and See these medical records, I guarantee people that are miserable and unhappy and stressed out in their lives and their workplace and their relationships, they're going to have the high blood pressure, they're going to have maybe cholesterol problems or things building up like that, they're going to be at risk for disease where people that are really living a peaceful, happy life doing things that they want to do every single day. I'm not saying we're immune to that, but we're much less prone to things like that.

Right? Yeah, good points. And I think it's important to distinguish the good stress and the bad stress. A totally stressed, less life is death always has stresses. And I think they call that the good stress, you stress. And it's good to have that, but not to have the negative kind of stress that just wears on us. And a lot of that comes, I think, from not doing what we know we need to do. And it ties back into your prior points about, you know, getting out of that job, just over broke job or getting out of that relationship that's just going nowhere and you know, doing something more fulfilling. And it also reminded me when you were saying that about that old poem, you know, I bargained with life for a penny and life would pay no more. And you know, it doesn't have to be money we're talking about. It could be, you know, you bargain for the certain job, the certain relationship, the certain whatever. People are just afraid of what's on the other side. Like you said, they don't want to. They don't want to. You know, it's like the devil, you know, is better than the devil, you don't know. Right? I mean, how can people overcome that, you know, to just get out and take a risk and do something and try something new.

Well, okay, so it's funny you asked that. I just recently. So one of the things I have with a couple times a week I get into my car and do what I call my driving video series and I hook a GoPro up to my dashboard, to my windshield and I just video myself giving somebody advice, giving my followers away for about five minutes. And the latest one I did, I was going down to visit my son in law, my daughter and my grandson. I'm a grandfather now. I'm 59 and a half years old. I'm a grandfather. And it kind of hit home because I'm thinking like, you know, it seems like it was just such a short time ago, I was 20, 25 and now here I find myself going to visit my grandson in Florida. So I was telling my listeners, listen, life goes by so quickly. You have to do what you want to do in life. If there's something that you want to do, take a chance, don't procrastinate, don't put it off. Do what you want to do. Take some risks out there. And I said to my listeners that, look, if I hadn't taken risks in my life, if I hadn't done certain things, I wouldn't be right here in my car making this video telling you how to do things, because who knows what I be doing? But I wouldn't be doing it. I guarantee it. So my advice would be to. Yeah, you know, even if there's a chance of failing, I can't even tell you how many times I've failed at things. But it doesn't matter. I look at failing as just like kind of a test, and something doesn't work, that's fine, you move on to the next thing. But if you never try things, if you never try to get out of that relationship, if you never try to get out of that job or change the job or change something around, you're going to be just stuck in a rut for the rest of your life, and you're going to be going down and visiting your grandson, and you're going to be saying, where did my life go? My life is horrible. This. I'm. And I don't want. I don't want anybody to feel like that.

I remember one of my prior employees several years ago, he was always recommending that I get married. And he was divorced. And I asked him about his very long marriage for, you know, three decades maybe. And he said, you cannot believe the type of boredom I went through sitting at dinners with boring couples because we had to see them or in laws or this type of stuff. And I'm like, gee, you're not exactly a ringing endorsement for this whole institution. I just. I just thought that was such an irony. You know, it's funny.

It's funny that you mentioned that story because, okay, I was married. I'm on my second marriage now, which, by the way, I love every single day. I'm having just such a great time. You could probably tell it my voice. But I was married for 23 years originally. I got married young, and I didn't. Look, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew in my heart that something wasn't right. And it took me 23 years to. I shouldn't say that because the first many years were not that bad. But let's say it took a long time for me to have the guts to say something's not right. I've got to change my life because I don't want to be 70 years old doing exactly what you just described, Jason. Going out with the wrong people, sitting in the wrong situations. That was me. That was. I so identify with that when you said that. Amazing. So people have to realize if you're. And I think everybody knows it in their heart. That's what I tell people. You know, in your heart if something's right or not. And if you, if you feel that, that if you feel that little feeling, then chances are something's not right and you got to fix it.

Yeah, good, good points. Well, hey, David, let's switch gears. We really kind of went down the path here of some interesting discussion on, you know, again, what I'll call the soft science, happiness psychology things. But, you know, let's talk about other things that we can do. And they all are tied together, of course, you know, wherever you want to go with this, whether it be diet or exercise or, you know, action steps like that, or particular exercise techniques and so forth.

Well, let's see, we could talk about all that. I need the next 24 hours with you to talk about all that. But so I know the time is kind of limited, so let's talk about some of the things that I think are, you know, and I don't want to say the most important because there's so many things that are very, very important. But let's talk about eating first for a little bit. Unfortunately, 50% of the USA, and I know your show probably goes all over the world, but since we're in the US right now, we'll talk about the US because most first world countries are pretty similar. 50% of us are overweight, 33% are actually clinically obese.

I mean, those statistics are just mind boggling. It is unbelievable that we live in a world where obesity is the problem, not famine. That's just amazing.

It really is. It's really sad on so many levels. It's sad, it's scary. But so we're a nation of people that are just that are overeating. And it's not just overeating, but it's eating the wrong foods where it's funny. When I was younger and yeah, I just told you how old I was. I remember when fast food restaurants were just becoming popular and I kind of said to myself, must have been really interested in health even back in those days, because I kind of Said to myself, what's going to happen if these restaurants, McDonald's and Burger King and things like that become really, really popular? And in the future everybody's eating at these restaurants every day. Well, guess what? I think the future might be here. And I think there's so many people that almost every day are either going through the drive through line at McDonald's or eating fast food. And we're eating processed foods and we're drinking so much soda and sugary things and desserts, baked desserts. And so, Jason, we've become a nation of just really, really overwe. And that leads to, of course, like I said before, the same thing that stress leads you to. Diabetes, heart disease, stroke, you name it. So I'm going to say that we need to really focus on our eating. I'll just keep it really simple. I won't get into any kind of scientific studies or anything like that. But it makes so much sense if we just eat whole foods, not processed foods, not sugary foods, not salty foods, not foods with high fructose corn syrup. They call that the devil's spit.

Oh gosh. Watch the documentary King Corn Doctor.

I haven't seen that, but I gotta see that. But if we just use some common sense and just eat natural foods, things that don't have chemicals in them, things that are not highly processed, and if we cut our portions down, you know, when you go to a restaurant, they usually give you at least twice as much food as you need to eat. So in the past, what I've always done, I get my meal at the restaurant, I'll cut it in half, I'll just divide it in half and ask for a to go box right away so I won't be tempted to eat that whole thing. It's ridiculous. I also tell people that when they're home, when they're eating food at home, instead of one of those large 8 to 12 inch size dinner plates, put your food on a much smaller plate, like a salad sized plate. And even if you fill up that plate and eat that, you're not going to be eating the huge massive portions that you would on such a large plate. And don't be tempted to go back for seconds and thirds. That's what's doing it.

Yeah. You know, I want to just share an observation that I've made. This is just anecdotal, of course, but it really only takes about one or two meal cycles to get in the habit of eating less, you know, because what happens is your stomach shrinks and you, you don't have as much area to fill, you know, and, and I, I always notice if I eat a big dinner, you know, I get up in the morning and it's like, oh, my big stomach is empty. I've got to have a big breakfast, which, by the way, I love, and endorse large breakfast. I think that's the meal of the day. Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper is my philosophy. And I, you know, I think that's a very good one. So I'm not saying that that's bad per se, but just noticing how the stomach shrinks, if you eat a smaller lunch, you're just not going to want a giant dinner. You know, it's just the way the body works. I mean, is that scientifically true or is that just some funny perception I have?

I think it really is true, Jason. And to take it to the next level, what I've been doing myself and teaching, I've been. Instead of eating three real meals a day, I've been eating about six meals a day. And they're small.

It's not like the European way.

Exactly. So we kind of like grazing a good part of the day. And I never overdo it, but it really, really works. I've been at the same weight for many years, and it absolutely works. So there is scientific basis to that? Absolutely there is.

Yeah. Good. Good stuff. Okay, so what else?

Well, let's talk about. We talked about food. Let's talk about exercise. For a many of my listeners and followers and friends and people that I talk to, one of the most common things. Look, we're all busy these days, and people talk about going to the gym, and people talk about things like, I work so hard, I have no time to exercise. Jason, you've heard this a million times.

Oh, of course. I've not only heard it, I've said it. Guilty.

So I actually recommend not necessarily joining a gym. Now, that's not to say if somebody goes to a gym, I'm not saying cancel your membership and never go to a gym. No, no, I'm not saying that at all. But for the people that don't have a lot of time, there's so many things you can do for exercise that do not require getting in your car or taking a bus or however, whatever type of transportation you have to get to a gym, you don't have to do that, and you don't have to pay all the money, the monthly expense to go to a gym. There's so many things. Get out and walk one of My favorite exercises, and I swear I think this is the most powerful exercise around. And Jason, I'm a marathon runner, so I believe in running, but I'm not going to telli don't tell my listeners to get out there and run marathons because I'm not even so sure how great it is for you. The absolute best workout you can do, I call it my Magic four, means if you can walk four miles a day or even if you can't do it every single day, but if you can get out there several times per week and actually walk four full miles, it is incredible exercise.

Now that's basically an hour, one hour walk. Yeah, okay, that's right.

Or maybe a little more. Now, I don't have scientific evidence, but I've worked with this for so many years and here's what I found. I found that when, you know, we get out and walk a mile or two miles, it's great. There's no question about it and it's healthy. But there's something about when I reach the level of getting out and walking four miles every day or every other or as many times I could during the week, there's something about that distance. That's when I started noticing changes in my body, losing weight, looking better in the mirror, there's feeling better. It's something about, that's why I call it the Magic four. And if there's, if your listeners can do anything, I'm going to recommend trying their best to get out and do the four.

Okay, the Magic four. You know what's going to be interesting is as we see technology increase and this whole movement called the quantified self movement of these measurement devices like the Fitbit, like the fuel band, like the iWatch that's coming out. So we hear and you know, all of these things to help measure and track our progress and help keep us on track. But it was pretty scary to me that I was using the Fitbit for a while and I wouldn't, I'd have a day of almost no exercise. And then I would see this thing pop up in my email, you know, congratulations, you walked 10,000 steps today. And I thought, thought, really? I've been mostly just walking around my big house. That's about it. And you know, I took the dog for a spin around the block twice. Do you know how long 10,000 steps is? I've never bothered to try and calculate that. Is that a mile? It can't be. Or four miles or, you know, I have no idea.

You know, I'm not positive I was talking to somebody the other day and he had a Fitbit or a pedometer or something and he was talking about the 10,000 steps.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the point I was making, thinking that was too easy, you know, that was, that was like no exercise, you know, it seemed like.

But, you know, I'm not so convinced that, and I know what you're saying and I'm, but I'm not so convinced that doing the 10,000 steps, like by walking in the house and up and down steps, it's, it's, it's, I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm, I'm not so convinced. It's fantastic exercise. It's, it's kind of low level. Taking the dog out for a walk, you're stopping a lot. So, you know, it's funny. I've got the only tech device and I'm a tech guy. I love tech for working out. The only real tech device I have, and I'm holding it right in my hand right here is a Garmin GPS watch. I use it for my running. But other than that, I don't have a Fitbit. I don't have any of that other stuff because, you know, somebody, I think I just get out and do this stuff. Whether that's right or wrong, it works for me. So I'm not saying that somebody that's going to get a Fitbit is going to be more fit than somebody else. I just, I don't know if it works that way.

Yeah, I'm just pointing it out. It's just interesting to see what's happening with all this technology, the quantified self type stuff. And by the way, I looked it up for our listeners while you were speaking and 10,000 steps, unbelievably to me, they say it's five miles. I can't imagine.

Wow, isn't that incredible? So you actually did five miles by having your fib on it and just doing things like walking around the house, walking the dog, five miles.

You know what? I think it's rough, but I did.

Hear that from, I was talking to a few days ago. I did hear it, but I didn't want to say it on the show because I wasn't 100% sure. But that's what he said also. So it might, it could be true.

You know, and it might be a conspiracy. You know, I don't know if you've noticed because of the obesity epidemic, what's going on with clothing, maybe you've noticed this, but I call it size inflation, which is really deflation. In other words, you know, I'll take women's sizes for example. The size, size four is not the old size four. Okay. You know, they've, the designers have tried to make their consumers feel better about themselves by changing the sizes. And I've definitely noticed that a medium sized shirt is bigger than it used to be. Unless it's one of those tailored cut shirts.

Oh yeah, it's funny, I didn't know that. But one thing I have noticed is that when I was a kid they never had like 2xl, 3xl, 4, 5xl, never existed. Now they're, they're kind of normal, they're in all the stores. So yeah, size inflation, it's a shame. But another thing I recommend, just real quickly, any way you can get exercise in. I will never take an elevator or an escalator. I will never, if I'm going up one or two floors in a building, I'll never take an elevator. You will never find me standing on an escalator unless somebody's blocking my way. I will always be walking or running up an escalator. I park my car, car way far away in a parking lot. So I, not only does it help the car with, you know, you don't get dings on it anymore, but you get exercise walking to the building. So I found like all these little things I do all during the day and yeah, I guess if I had a Fitbit on those things would really be accumulating like crazy.

Yeah, very interesting. So what do you think about supplementation? You know, are you in, into any of the supplementation options out there?

Very few I really believe. And you'll hear this, you'll hear a lot of different opinions from a lot of different docs. I have recently become vegan. So I'm eating like, I'm really careful with what I'm eating. I'm eating a plant based whole food diet. So I am eating so many plants and so many, so much great healthy food that comes from the earth every single day. I do take, I'll tell you what I take. I take a multivitamin supplement. I'm eating like flaxseed oil during the day, things like that. But as far as like true, true supplements, other than the multi, the one multi, I'm really not because I really believe that I'm getting all my nutrients. I'm eating organic natural foods all day long and I believe that's the way we were designed to eat.

Yeah, good points. So definitely more plant based Foods. I tried a vegetarian diet many years ago and got off of it. So I'm back to being an omnivore. But that's a whole nother topic, you know. But I definitely agree. Of course, you know, most people do not eat enough plant products. They don't eat enough leafy greens and they eat too much meat. So that's an easy one.

It's funny, I've always eaten healthy, but I've become a vegan not that long ago. And it's so funny. Jason, within the past several weeks, if I run into somebody that I haven't seen for a while, I don't mean I haven't seen them in five years. I mean, I haven't seen them in like three months. I've been getting the same comment from so many people. Dave, what have you done differently? You look, you look really good. I mean, you look thin, your skin looks great. Something looks different about you. And I tell them about my. I swear there is no question in my mind changing the diet to what I've changed it to the plant based whole foods diet. It's done some amazing things for my body. It's incredible.

Fantastic. Good, good to hear. Hey, before you go, tell the listeners a little bit about your first book, Impress the World with youh Body and Seven Days. I mean, that sounds like a big claim.

It's a big claim. And when you get down to it, when you look at the book, it's kind of what I refer to. In seven days, I've broken the book down into seven chapters. See, I don't know if you can tell from talking to me today. I just like to make things really simple. I don't even count calories during the day. I just try to simplify my life. And so I wrote this book into seven chapters. And each chapter, each of the days is something that we really need to be doing in our lives. The first one just starts out with an affirmation. I give an affirmation and you've got to decide that you want to make a change. And then it goes on chapters two through seven. And if somebody reads that and they take that to heart and do what I recommend doing, it's not difficult. If they do all the seven days, their lives will change, meaning they'll be healthier, they'll look better, they won't weigh as much, they'll be an ideal wait, their lives will change and they will hopefully live a lot longer and hopefully, hopefully disease free.

Excellent. Well, David, give out your website and tell people where they can find out more.

Yeah, sure. My website is sliceyourage.com and if you go there, I've got all kinds of great things. I've gotactually I've got a report, free report that talks about 12 baby steps. All you have to do these 12 baby steps to get in the best shape of your life. And I've got a podcast, I've got a blog. I've got all kinds of cool things. Everything's free there. I don't charge for anything whatsoever. So yeah, head on over to sliceyourage.com and we can hang out together. And I appreciate that opportunity to let your listeners know about that.

Jason, Fantastic. Well, David Maddow, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jason thanks so much for having me.

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. Exclusively.