Prevent Disease Using Biofeedback, with Dr. Torkil Færø

Until I started tracking, I would never even start thinking about how I feel at 9 o' clock in the morning that that would have anything to do with what I was eating, you know, 12 hours before. It would not even cross my mind to think about that.

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Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We have Dr. Torkel Ferro today. He is a GP, which is a general practitioner physician, an emergency physician, documentary filmmaker, author of the Pulse, the revolutionary new way to balance stress, optimize health and live longer. He's had over 26 years as a freelance doctor and learned that many of the causes of our diseases is most often found in the stressors our lifestyles place on our bodies. So using wearables, he's found a way to track and regulate his nervous system and physiology. So we're going to dive into that today because we know you have stress and we know that it takes a toll on you because we see you in our daily lives too. So we're going to dive in. So welcome. Torka, we're so happy you're.

Thank you both of you, great to be here.

So let's talk about. Well, first of all, do you want. You showed a cool little.

Show us your vendor.

It's ample of what. So can you identify and walk us through what those are and what are the different.

So yeah, on my left wrist I have a Garmin watch which are the best tools, I must say best and also the cheapest and most accessible ones. If you want to micromanage your stress levels 24, 7 or to be able to see the stress levels 24, 7, you don't have to look at it all the time. That would be the Garmin watches and they get their algorithms from the Finnish company firstbeat which is an experienced company in physiological measurements. And on the other wrist I have the Samsung watch which has recently been upping their game. It seems really good. And they also have a Samsung Galaxy ring that you can use in combination. I also have the Oura ring which is probably the most experienced of the rings. And I have a Norwegian because there's so many, so many gadgets now coming up and there's Norwegian ring Also inspiring. That also seems to be good. So there are so many choices so that a person can choose whether they want to have like an OURA ring, which is not so intrusive, gets you a morning report, your readiness for the day, you get a score for your sleep, and you get your heart rate variability. And you can have the Garmin watch if you really want to find out. Okay. My main problem of stress is between one and three o' clock when I'm in a meeting with a certain colleague that I'm not particularly, you know, not don't like very much. Problem is that your heart rate may go up for good or bad reasons. So when this colleague, you may be in love with him or her or be annoyed by the person, so your heart rate will rise anyhow. But you have to do that detective work because these devices, they have artificial intelligence, but they don't have the human intelligence. So you know what is going on inside your life. So you shouldn't make these devices take full control of your life. Of course not. But they will tell you something about what's going on that you are not equipped to know. And you have to combine your intelligence with the artificial intelligence and the algorithms and then take your decisions.

Right. I mean, I think we've also talked about hermetic stress at many different points. And so you can know, is this stress that's causing you to grow or is this stress that's just pounding away at your resilience? And people know, you know, if you slow down enough, you know, whether this is healthy stress or unhealthy stress. So.

And when did you want to show your device while we're at it?

So, so I wear the Whoop. I used to wear the Fitbit and I've been wearing the Whoop for, oh, four years, I think. And I'm, I love it. I mean, I, I use it. I mean, I know how I feel, but I'm also interested in understanding is how I feel matching up with what's on paper, you know, so, yeah, I.

Also use the Woop band. So now I'm waiting for the, the number five, and I don't have space on my arms for that one. And I've used it for four years myself. And it's a brilliant choice also. And also what is good about it is that it doesn't have a screen. So if you don't want to be able to see your heart rate, you know, at any time, then it's a good choice.

Also, what about the Apple Watch? And you don't Wear it. Is that just because you don't have wrist space or.

I've, I've, I've been wearing it, but it, it doesn't seem to be as good as the other choices. So it's been more erratic. Erratic. I think in, in the. What, what I can see, although if you really need to have an Apple watch, then the app is called athletic. The combination between athlete and analytic. I think it's the best one over those. But, but I think the ones I wear now, they, they have a different standard. So probably, you know, maybe in half a year Apple will be having some improvements because it's so much happening here. And the good thing is that now there's money in preventative health care. They make money on giving us tools to keep us healthy and not just waiting until we get sick and then have pills and procedures and everything that, you know, of course, everything about. So, so I think I'm optimistic that this can help us to take charge of our own health and put our health, the control literally in our own hands so we can avoid getting sick. Because what I see in the doctor's office is that people who didn't have to get these diseases with a good lifestyle, which is the subject of my book the Pulse Cure, is not only that it's this technology, but also it's the best tips on how to live a good lifestyle, you know, when it comes to sleep and stress and movement and nutrition and alcohol and a host of other stuff. So because the people I see in my office here that I give pills, because here I do what is expected of me, I'm not going into the lives of these people and turning everything upside down. I pretty much listen and look and observe and get information. But I know that you didn't have to sit in this chair next to me here if you follow the advice in the Pulse Cure.

So I want to kind of do two. Two sides. So one is how do we best use this technology? We all know we shouldn't drink before bed or hopefully, you know, alcohol messes up sleep. But we can actually see it if we track it. Meditation. So first, how do we best use the technology? And then the next, the other side I want to talk about is I know a friend that has used the technology, I think to the roing and something else. But he was getting so stressed that he was the stressed about is stressed that he was getting stressed and they were showing something that he wasn't sleeping. And as soon as he took off the technology, he slept. So how do we walk that line?

Yeah, for some people, and I would say that percentage would be maybe 5, 10%. You know, like all good medicine, there's some side effects. And for some people it may not be the right choice and they may be too obsessed about it, but often that would be, they would be obsessed about other things and they would be worried about other things that is hard to take control of. So it would just be a, symptoms of a modus operandi or how they work. So you would rather find a way to do this right and then you could transfer the knowledge of that into the other areas of your life, is what I think. So you should really take it just as a, as a help, as an aid, just like you do in your car. You watch the dashboard, you know the speed is okay, you know, you would not, the police officer will not take your license and give you a huge fine. And you know that, okay, there's so much gas left, I need to fill gas soon and plan that. And you would see that if your oil lamp starts flashing or something is wrong, you will get the signal. And this is the same thing. And in my experience, 90% of people treat these devices just like the dashboard in their car, with the same attention. And you're not obsessed with it in your car. And there's no reason to be obsessed with this here in real life as well. But of course, many people will find that their stress level is way too high and they may be stressed by that, but it's just reality. You just get a reality check that if you continue with this lifestyle, you will be sick, or at least you increase your chances of getting sick for any of the modern day diseases. So you could hope for the best and put the watch away, but it will not solve the problem. It's like if you get a fever and you as a doctor would say, okay, just throw away the thermometer and everything is right. Of course it's not. So you have to know that you can tolerate this reality check and that you can do something about it. And of course, if you don't know what to do, then it's stressful. When I started out six years ago with an ECG based monitor, I was expecting as doctors, we were taught in medical school that it's either rest and digest or fight, flight or freeze. And I was never in fight, flight and freeze. So I would expect when I started measuring my system to only see the parasympathetic mode. I'm never stressed in that way, but I could see that, wow, there's stress all over here. And I spent maybe two years all by myself because everybody thought I was weird watching my pulse in this way, detangling this and understanding, okay, what stresses me. And I could see that what stresses me is not the mental side. It's food, it's alcohol that I thought was relaxing me. It's a nicotine that I used to use. It's certain food stuff like chili or mustard or something that creates the stress in me. And you know, being on Instagram, I like 32,000 followers, so I get insight into so many other people's systems. And we're all individual, so it will show you how you react to certain things or don't react to certain things. While we as doctors, we're used to large studies where we get presented with an average that has no significance for an individual. So here you get individualized results that are actionable so that you can experiment and see, okay, well if I don't do this, then what happens? And for most people, you know, there's somebody will get too stressed by it. But most people will think of it as a gamification of their health. They think it's fun, interesting, they're, they're curious because this is like a discovery, you know, into your own system that most people find really interesting and amazing.

I mean, I will say for myself, I struggled. I have been tracking and disturbed by my oxygen sats for the last, what, nine months, maybe more. And I've been watching and trying to understand like what causes them to go lower, what causes them to go normal. And what I finally pinpointed, torquel, this has taken me nine months of watching and correlating, is that if I do cardio, and it doesn't have to be ridiculous, we're not talking like short of breath and dripping sweat. We're talking like a half hour walk at a 20 minute mile. So it's really not crazy. But if I do cardio four times a week, my oxygen sats are perfect. If I don't do cardio enough, I clearly see my oxygen start to drift down. And it took me months to figure it out, but it really did serve as a way of going, oh, it's not optional, right? That walk is not optional. That walk is actually keeping my lungs and my heart healthy in a way that I didn't think about it. I just thought like, oh, you should exercise, right? Everyone should exercise. So it's been fascinating to untangle that. And I untangled it about a month and a half ago and I'm really like, now it changes Behavior because it distresses me to see my stats go low. Right. So now I'm like tracking every day.

Yeah, yeah. What you can measure, you can manage. So it makes it so much easier. And yeah, I found out so many interesting things about my own body that of course I was eating like chili for me is horrible. Just like drinking alcohol. And of course I've been eating chili all my life. And until I started tracking, I would never even start thinking about how I feel at 9 o' clock in the morning that that would have anything to do with what I was eating, you know, 12 hours before. It would not even cross my mind to think about that. When once you start seeing that, wow, there's a difference in my stress levels throughout the night this day. And it wasn't yesterday then, then you start, you know, considering and looking at your, your diet and other things. So you would like most people of course would find out that alcohol is terrible. It's the worst thing you can do according to whoop. That's the worst stressor of all. And I as a doctor used to have two glasses of wine to wind down in the evening. You know, that's a word that I thought it was the best thing and it was the worst thing. So it kind of tells you how hard it is to find these things out. And also late meals. So I need to stop eating anything maybe three or four hours before I go to bed. So a lot of people find this out too. And also hard exercise. I used to take, you know, 100 push ups and then go to bed. Terrible choice, you know. And then when I could see the readings, okay, I'll do it at 6 o' clock instead of at 11 o'. Clock. And I used to think that if I'm really, really tired, I've been working really hard until I go to bed and then just crash in bed. That's a good night's sleep. But you really find out that that is not a good night's sleep. That you need to spend the last one or two hours of the evening to wind down slowly, dim the lights, do something easy like reading a book or whatever relaxes me. And that night will be more restful and there will be more recovery taking place on such a night.

Can you talk about what are concrete steps people can take to sleep better? Because everybody needs to sleep better.

A very concrete step is because now as I work here in the north or Norway, there's suddenly different surroundings. So. And I can see that the bedroom that I'm sleeping in has white walls. Which means that if it's just a tiny piece of, you know, light coming through, the whole room lights up. And in my room at home, me and my wife is totally dark. It's dark. You know, wallpaper is dark. You know, everything is dark inside. So that, because that is really important that your bedroom is as dark as possible because any light will disturb the melatonin. That can help you both fall asleep, but also regulates, you know, a lot of processes while you are asleep. So get your room as dark as possible, preferably so that you can't see a hand in front of you in the night.

Hold on. I think we need to pause. Torka, we need to pause there because you remember we got into this when I got the room darkening shades. I was like, we gotta pull it all the way down. And Ed's like, but I like to see the light in the morning. I'm like, not at five in the morning. Nobody should be.

I like five in the morning.

He likes five. I think five is a sleeping time and he thinks five is a get up time. So. So he used to leave the shade open by like this much and, and it was bright in our.

But guess who won?

Yeah, of course we need to sleep. Yeah, you need to sleep. Yeah.

Did you know, did you know you were doing therapy, by the way, during this?

Yeah, so I found out that I, you know, that's a very concrete thing. And you need to have your room cool. I'm not sure about Fahrenheit, but you need to have your room quite cool. So that a warm blanket is not necessarily the best thing for your recovery. It may be comfortable, but you would be able to see on your watch or your ring that the colder or at the certain sweet spot in the, in the temperature is better for your recovery. Which is probably something to say with a, with a, with the way we evolutionary come from, you know, from Africa. It would still be cold at night in the, you know, in the altitudes.

Is there a difference between what men and women need in terms of temperature?

It seems so. So I know that eight sleep is very popular in the States where you can regulate your temperature and you can find different temperature probably for it would probably be individual also. So there would probably be some differences between men and women, but I don't think it's that big. So in celsius is between 15 and 18. I think that would be around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I think there's somewhere around that plus or minus quite much cooler than most people have. Or that I used to have before I was, I could see this on my watch. And then as I said, you need to wind down the last hour or two in the evening. You need to dim down the lights, maybe have some blue blocking glasses in the summer, or if it's too much light inside, and do some activities that you can see on your watch or that you know will calm you down. So which would be for me is reading. For other people it could be watching tv. So it isn't necessarily so that watching TV is bad for you. For some it's good, for some others it's not. So you'll find out what helps you to find your sleep. And you should have seven to eight hours of restorative sleep during the night. So not only sleep, but it's restorative and you would be able to see in the night. Maybe you have sleep apnea, for example. So many people have that and they don't know it. And you would be able to see that this stresses your body. The stress would be high even in the night. And of course, avoid late night meals. Three or four hours before you go to bed, stop eating.

These are all pretty achievable steps. You're not saying go climb Mount Everest, you're saying eat earlier, don't do a hard workout before bed, avoid alcohol, move gently, do things that are restorative. And it sounds like prioritize restorative, which is the hardest part.

Yeah, and you should also. Maybe the most important thing is to have sleep consistency so that you go to bed and wake up at more or less the same time every night. And the difference could be quite huge when it comes to sleep. Because, you know, me, as a doctor, I've been earlier, I used to work in a lot of nighttime, evening shifts, morning shifts, you know, to twist and the day around the whole time. And of course, I knew it was terrible and I knew it was very uncomfortable working, you know, 5 o', clock, 5am but that it was carcinogenic, that you could get really sick from doing that. You know, we didn't know as Doctors, I think, 15 years ago. And now we know, according to Matthew Walker, you know, the guru on sleep who wrote the why Do We Sleep? Book. In that book, he refers to research that shows that if you sleep less than 6 hours compared to more than 7 hours, you double your risk for cancer. So it's a huge effect getting enough sleep. And when you have enough sleep, you wake up in the morning feeling refreshed. And it's easier to do better choices throughout the day if you Wake up and you're already behind. You know, you don't feel refreshed, you're, you're tired already that I used to be. Then you have the chocolate, then you skip the exercise. Then you take the easy choice because you don't, you cannot muster the energy to do the good choice. So it all starts with sleep. So the post cure, I call it an expedition in the post cure because changing your life is hard, you know, even with these tools. So you have to brace yourself for some real effort and you start, you know, with sleep and you have the different stages of the expedition and then you go on to movement and stress regulation and to nutrition. It's for the hardest thing for, for, for at least for me and many people to, to learn how to take good choices and of course staying away from ultra processed food and particularly the food that is addictive. The ones that you find, you know, at the end of this, of the supermarket, you know, when you're tired after making all the choices, that's the food that you really don't want. And when you can see the result on your wearables, it's so much easier to take the good choice when you, when you know what you will expect to, to see the day after. So when you were, you know, lying in the sofa watching Netflix and having some snacks, you would think that you're relaxing but your heart rate will respond to the stress of the food that you're eating. For so many people, I mean we've heard a lot.

So let me recap. So alcohol's bad for you. I call it the devil. Alcohol's the devil. Bad for you means don't forget the sugar.

Devil.

Sugar's the other devil. Eating late is not helpful for rest and restoration.

And one thing I will say is if you do eat late or in general, walking or doing mild exercise helps really reduce that. If you do have to eat late. Going for a walk, 10 minute walk. Are you talking about like 10, 15 minutes walk?

Yeah, yeah. Short walk. Short, short easy walk. Yeah, that's right.

Got it. Okay. I mean this has been fascinating. I, I, I love my woo. I mean I use it all the time. He always thinks I'm nuts. But I think this whole thing is fascinating. So I think people are going to want to find you. Where can they? And we'll put all of this in the show notes. So where can people find out more about you?

Yeah, I'm on Instagram, Dr. Torco, Dr. Torko and my book the Post Cure is on Amazon on everywhere. It's also an audible, an audiobook and an ebook. So it's easy if people want to listen to a book rather than read it. So and I also have a website called thepulsecure.com and there you can see I have a lecture there, a video lecture where I show how to use the Garmin washes. And you can see the Pulse cure is like a one hour lecture or so that explains you everything.

Okay, awesome.

Awesome. It's been fascinating.

I mean, it's amazing. So thank you. Thank you for being here and for the listeners. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We hope this was valuable for you and that it makes a difference for you in managing your health. So thank you.

Thank you for having me.

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