Why Exercise Intensity Matters for Longevity | CrossFit for Health 2024

if you're below normal V2 Max and you go just to normal you're getting about a 2.1 increase in life expectancy if you go below below normal to high normal which is about where half the population lies then you're getting a almost threeyear increase in life expectancy and then if you go to like more of an elite level so you're getting into like above the upper limit that's a fiveyear increase in life expectancy compared to where you were when you were below normal and so lactate is fueling that your brain function during exercise but it's also

increasing things like norepinephrine which is involved in focus and attention serotonin and there have been studies showing that even 10 minutes of a high-intensity interval training workout can um improve cognition improve mood I mean it's just really easy to get those improvements in just a short amount of time by like you know just getting after it pretty hard hi CrossFit um yeah so today we're going to be talking about how to maximize your health span and I'm going to focus on three really important lifestyle behaviors we're going to talk about exercise we're going to talk

about the the strength of resistance training and the power of deliberate heat exposure that's my disclosure so um focusing on exercise it's going to be really uh vigorous exercise we're going to talk about the importance of vigorous intensity exercise going like 80% max heart rate or more we're going to talk about the brain benefits we're going to talk about cardiovascular benefits um cancer a little bit extra exercise snacks then we're going to get into some muscle biology a little bit uh the importance of protein resistance training and then into deliberate heat exposure and sauna and

how that can synergize with both exercise and also with resistance trrain so let's start with the vigorous exercise so cardiorespiratory Fitness is probably one of the most important biomarkers that we can measure via V2 Max so maximal oxygen uptake during maximal exercise that really indicates are Fitness levels right but it also is a probably one of the most important indicators of longevity and there's been studies that have shown probably the most important I would say the maximal benefits you get from improving your cardiorespiratory Fitness go from if you're below normal and you go anywhere above

that so if you're below normal V2 Max and you go just to normal you're getting about a 2.1 increase in life expectancy if you go below below normal to high normal noral which is about where half the population lies then you're getting a almost three-year increase in life expectancy and then if you go to like more of an elite level so you're getting into like above the upper limit that's a five-year increase in life expectancy compared to where you were when you were below normal um and about each unit increase in your V2 Max is

associated with a 45-day increase in life expectancy and there was a really important study published in J Journal this was like in 2018 and there's now been a couple of papers since then but I really liked this study because it really sort of showed that there wasn't an upper limit on the the longevity benefit of improving your V2 Max and so people that were in the elite group of VO2 max so this is we're talking like the top 2.1% those people had a 80% lower all cause mortality compared to people that were in the lower

20% or so V2 max if you were not the elite but like just you still were really fit you had a high V2 Max you had great cardiorespiratory Fitness you still had a 20% increase in um Al cause mortality compared to the elite athletes like the people that had the really good V2 Max so there seemed to really be a benefit at every level but what was so interesting about this study was that people in that low fitness group they had a low VO2 max their risk of Death and All cause mortality was similar to

having diseases like type 2 diabetes cardiovascular disease it was similar to smoking I mean these things that everyone focuses on these disease states that everyone focuses on and we know they're bad they we know they decrease life quality they decrease lifespan but what people don't focus on is how not having not being physically fit not having a good cardiorespiratory Fitness is almost like having one of those diseases and I really think that puts it into to perspective how important V2 Max is for longevity so how do you improve your V2 Max how do you improve

your cardiorespiratory Fitness well aerobic exercise is definitely one of the best ways to do that what type of aerobic exercise I think it's pretty clear that high-intensity interval training is one of the best ways to improve your B Max and particularly when you do longer intervals yes you can improve your your cardiio respitory Fitness with any type of uh aerobic exercise particularly if you're starting from being sedentary and then going up right but there was a really important study that was published a large large population of people that showed people that are doing Moder intensity

sort of zone two like training you know this is the kind of exercise that is more enjoyable you can go for a run and you can still have somewhat of a conversation you're breathy um those people are doing two and a half hours per week they're meeting the guidelines and yet they couldn't improve their V2 Max about 40% of those people so you're talking like half the population here until they added in some high-intensity interval training and once they like once they added in some high-intensity interval training they were able to improve their v2x and

so I really think that again this highlights the importance of really trying to get your heart rate up to you know at least 80% max heart rate or more um the question is well what kind of Protocols are best for improving BO2 Max I mention longer intervals I think probably you know so Dr Martin gabala does a lot of This research at MC Master University in Ontario Canada and he has talked about you know one minute being sort of like probably the the bare like the minimal effective dose for improving V2 Max like at least

getting in one doing some one minute intervals and repeating that four or five times but I would I think one of the most evidencebased protocols if you look in the literature out there for improving cardiorespiratory Fitness is the Norwegian 4x4 protocol and this is where you do four minutes of the most in you maintain the intensity that you can for that entire 4 minutes so you don't want to like go out all out in the first minute do you want to be able to like pace yourself it's four minutes of you know high intensity exercise

followed by 3 minutes of recovery and you do that four times so it's a pretty brutal workout but it's the Norwegian 4x4 and it's one of the best ways to improve cardiorespiratory Fitness as measured by BO2 max if you are interested in measuring your V2 Max the best way to do it obviously would be directly to measure it go to a lab that measures the O2 max if you don't have access to one of those you don't want to pay or whatever um there's there's a good evidence-based way of estimating BO2 Max and that's really

the 12-minute run test or walk test depending on your Fitness level and essentially all you need is a wearable device that tracks your distance and you run you need a flat surface because uh anything hilly will obviously you won't run as far because it's more challenging so you need like a flat surface like a track field and you run for 12 minutes and you past yourself you want to you you want to go hard but you want to be able to like do it the entire time um and then there's an equation you can look

up 12 minute run test equation V2 Max and it's you know the distance and this whole equation will give you a really good estimate of your V2 Max for anyone that's interested in sort of seeing how they training affects their their V2 Max but I think one of the most convincing studies that I've seen for vigorous intensity exercise has to do with structural changes in the Aging heart so as we age our heart undergo structural changes it gets smaller in size and it gets stiffer and this translates to functional um you know deficiencies like Exercise

capacity goes down but also it increases the risk for cardiovascular disease a lot of different changes start to happen in the cardiovascular system when that occurs and so um there was a study done at UT Southwest in Dallas by Ben lavine's group where they took 50 year olds that were they were disease free but they were sedentary right so they didn't have type two diabetes or cardiovascular disease but they weren't physically active and they put them on one or two two different exercise protocols one that was the control group which was more like a stretching

a little bit of a body weight um training it wasn't high intensity they weren't really getting the heart rate up a little more like yoga is type of workout and the other group did that but they also had a high intensity like vigorous exercise workout program and this was a 2-year intervention um study and so the first six months was like a progressive building up their their their endurance and um once they got to the six-month part U Mark uh most of these people were doing about four to five hours a week of training and

a good portion of that time was spent in what's called maximal um your maximal state exercise state where they they were doing like 20 30 minutes a day of maximal intensity exercise not maximal intensity but um steady state so they were able to basically maintain the maximum amount of intensity they could for 20 or 30 minutes so it was it was vigorous they were going 75 80% Max Max heart rate um they also did the Norwegian 4x4 protocol once a week and after those two years the structural changes in their heart reverted back almost 20

years so this their hearts got like more malleable and they got larger and it was like looking at a 30-year-old heart and these were 50-year olds and so I mean to me it was just so astounding that you could get structural changes in the heart essentially is reversing the Aging Heart by just about 20 years from doing this vigorous intensity exercise protocol in 50y olds that were sedentary and there's also drug size blood pressure improvements in um with blood pressure with vigorous intensity exercise so so there's been a variety of randomized control trials and meta

analysis of these trials that have found people that work out and do more vigorous intensity exercise 3 to four days a week about 20 to 60 Minutes of vigorous intensity exercise can improve their blood pressure similar to medications like anti anti-hypertensive medications and blood pressure is not high blood pressure is not just um a risk factor for cardiovascular disease it's now been established that it's one of the most important early risk factors for dementia and Alzheimer's disease so the fact that you can comparably get these improvements in blood pressure um like you would get with

a pharmaceutical drug is also I think extremely encouraging right so I want to shift gears just for a minute and get into um some of the brain benefits I think probably one of the most convincing reasons to get your heart rate up high when I say High I mean 75 80% max heart rate to do that is from B brain benefits and that largely has to do with something called lactate which probably many of you are familiar with so when you force your muscles to work so hard that they they you can't get oxygen to

them fast enough to make energy they're they have to adapt right and they use glucose as energy without the mitochondria which is generally how you're making energy and as a byproduct of that you're make you're you're turning out lactate which was thought to be this sort of metabolic byproduct um it turns out it's much more than that and so lactate gets into circulation and it's taken up by other tissues including the muscle the brain the heart liver and it's used as energy in those tissues so it's a very energetically favorable source of energy it's actually

easier to make energy from lactate than from glucose so it takes less energy to make energy from lactate than glucose but also it acts as a signaling molecule it's a way for your mus your muscles to communicate with other parts of your body um because you know when you're exercising it is stress on the body and so adaptations happen right when you're when you're working your muscles hard you can you know increase muscle hypertrophy um these adaptations happen cardiovascular improvements you're getting increases in stroke volume cardiorespiratory Fitness improvements well the brain also works really hard

during exercise and so lactate is communicating with the brain um and there's many benefits to having lactate going into the brain and one of those is that it signals to the brain to make something called brain Drive neurotrophy factor or bdnf and what this is is a growth factor that is involved increasing new neurons inside the hippocampus um and other regions in the brain but mostly the hippocampus which is important for learning and memory um and there's been intervention studies showing that aerobic exercise after you know older adults that do it for two years increased

their hip cample volume by like 2% so um it increases neurogenesis but it also is important for neuroplasticity um this is this is the the way your brain adapts and um is able to adapt to the changing environment and still function it plays a big role in um depression people that are depressed have a very uh lowlevel of neuroplasticity and so they're they have a hard time adapting to the changing environment and that causes depressive symptoms so brain Drive neur toopics lactate also signals to the brain to make neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and serotonin these Studies

have been done in humans um lactate again made from muscles when you're forcing your muscles to work hard when you're going high intensity crosses over the bloodb brain barrier and your brain is working hard during exercise and so lactate is fueling that your brain function during exercise but it's also increasing things like norepinephrine which is involved in focus and attention serotonin and there have been studies showing that even 10 minutes of a high intensity interval training workout can um improve cognition improve mood I mean it's just really easy to get those improvements in just a

short amount of time by like you know just getting after it pretty hard some of the protocols that have shown improvements in U maximizing B bdnf um really are intensity and duration dependent so the harder you go 80% max heart rate for 30 to 40 minutes is one of the most robust ways there's also another really good protocol so this would be 6 minutes of high-intensity imal training where you do about 40c allout intervals separated by some recover y periods that also has been shown to pretty robustly increase brain Drive neurotrophic Factor as well so

I just want to spend just a second talking about some of the anti- metastic effects of a vigorous intensity exercise most of us here know that exercise is one of the best things you can do to prevent cancer but also as an adjunct cancer treatment many different ways that's occurring but one interesting way that most people don't know about is through the shearing forces of your blood just blood flow so just getting that blood flow flow to go faster by exercising by getting that exercise um kills what are called circulating tumor cells um these are

these are tumor cells that have escaped a primary site of the tumor get into circulation and they go and you know try to travel to other tissues and take Camp there and you know metastasize well circulating tumor cells are very sensitive to the mechanical forces the sheering forces of blood flow and they can't they can't handle the stress like our normal cells can and they die um and so I think that's a really interesting way to think about it because it's so it's like oh yeah I need to get my blood flow up I need

to I need to get my heart rate going and my blood flow up and that is something that has an antimetastatic effect and there's studies that have shown um you know obviously aerobic exercise and the higher the intensity the exercise uh it can reduce the amount of circulating tumor cells in people with cancer like colon cancer circulating tumor cells in people with cancer uh is a it's it's an indicator of bad outcome so they have about four times higher higher U mortality risk than people without them and uh people that engage in aerobic exercise have

improved outcomes they have better uh reduction in disease recurrence and also in mortality so I want to shift gears for a minute and talk about exercise snacks so we're going to talk about improving metabolic Health but also longevity and exercise snacks it's kind of a broader term but it really can refer to either a deliberate sort of type of exercise that do for one minute 2 minutes 3 minutes and this is anything from burpees to squats um you can do high knees you can do you know there's a variety of different things that you can

do to to get your heart rate up really high in a short period of time and um we're talking SE at least 75% max heart rate and there's studies showing that it real there's a real metabolic benefit to even doing a minute or two of of this exercise snack type of exercise and that again comes down to lactate lactate you know mus you're forcing your muscles to work really hard lactate gets into circulation gets taken back up by the muscle and it causes glucose Transporters to come up to the muscle and sort of open the

Gat so that glucose can come in and um you know so this really improves blood glucose levels and there's been a lot of studies looking at this particularly in people with type two diabetes doing exercise snacks around meal time so anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour before after a meal can really dramatically decrease the post prandial glucose response and and improve blood glucose levels now sure that's important for people that are metabolically disregulated people with type two diabetes but like who doesn't want to improve their postprandial glucose response I mean that's part of what

makes you feel sleepy and you reduces mental Clarity after a meal so doing timing these exercise snacks around meals is a great is a great and sort of easy way to improve your blood glucose levels as well and it's prettyy easy to do um the other way it improves metabolic health is these exercise snacks when you're doing a high-intensity you know interval training sort of thing even one or two minutes but mostly when you're going higher than that like 10 minutes 20 minutes uh it's a very potent stimulus to increase the number of mitochondria in

your muscle tissue again it's an adaptation you are forcing your muscles to work so hard that they can't use their mitochondria because they again oxygen can't get there fast enough and so they're forced to make energy another way but your muscle is smart it's like oh I need to like adapt so that the next time I'm working hard I can use my mitochondria and the way it adapts is by making new mitochondria it's called mitochondrial biogenesis and high-intensity interval training is one of the best ways to increase mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle again lactate plays

a role in that because lactate is that signaling molecule increases a protein called pgc1 Alpha that regulates mitochondrial biogenesis exercise snacks have also been associated with improved longevity so there's another type of exercise snack that's a little bit more of taking advantage of like everyday situations it's called Vig vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity and um these these types of exercises are like let's say you you work on the F fourth floor of a you know some office building so rather than just walking up the stairs every day which is better than taking the elevator you sprint

or let's say you you know walk to your office well rather than just walking you interval walk or you sprint there you you do some sort of interval where you're getting your heart rate up so there have been multiple studies showing that doing one to two minutes a vigorous intensity exercise so people these large studies people are wearing weable devices and so um researchers are getting their data their heart rate data and and able to measure something and identify people that are getting their heart rate up right um and so people that do one to

two minutes of vigorous intensity exercise a day um sorry three times a day had about a 40% reduction in all cause mortality so that's dying from all like non-accidental causes of death and a 50% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality which is like the number one killer in most developed Nations so this is again just one to two minutes three times a day where you just you're you're doing those exercise snacks it adds up it's beneficial um and and clearly it's making an effect on in people's lives and and these are these benefits were also found

in people that identified themselves as non-exercisers in other words they don't like go to the gym they're not you know they're not they're not taking time to like deliberately engage in a sort of exercise routine and they still have these benefits so how do you implement you know exercise snacks in your day why would you want to well there's there's there's evidence out there that just being sedentary so like right now we're all sedentary you're sitting well you guys are I'm not yeah you're sitting you're sitting in your your chair you've been in here for

about what an hour or so um that is sedentary time when you're s sitting at your desk at your computer for 6 hours or whatever fill in the blank time even though you're going to go to the gym later or maybe you went earlier that time that you're sitting is sedentary and being sedentary is an independent risk factor for cancer um so there is reason to kind of break up your sedentary time with exercise snacks and again these would be like a deliberate sort of thing that you can do so I think all you need

to do is some high KNE right no um yeah so finding something that you're going to do consistently that's that's really important right I'm talking a lot about vigorous exercise but it needs to be something that you're going to do consistently whatever it is n region 4x4 if it's if that's your saying I definitely like you're you're you're amazing um so you know the the thing is to really just measure your heart rate right that's that's the easiest thing uh make it make it consistent do something you like all right we're going to we're going

to shift gears just for a minute and talk a little bit about muscle preservation this energy of protein intake lifting resistance training and heat exposure Peak muscle mass happens around between the ages of 20 and 30 and then after that you know so as you start to get in your 40s and 50s you lose about 8% of muscle mass per decade once you get into your 70s 15% of muscle mass per decade so most people by the time they're 70 or 80 years old only have about 60 to 80% of the muscle mass they had

when they were 30 skeletal muscle is it is a reservoir for amino acids um so like we store you know we store glucose as glycogen in our liver and our muscle we store fat as triglycerides we don't really have a good way that we store amino acids but we need amino acids every day amino acids make up proteins and proteins are doing everything in our body from making neurotransmitters to making a heartbeat you know everything so um unfortunately if you don't get those amino acids from protein you're going to pull from that amazing Reservoir your

muscle your skeletal muscle and so you really need to be constantly giving yourself protein to not do that and so the question is well how much protein do you need to give yourself to not do that and that's a pretty contentious I would say um question that people have you know differing answers on so the recommended daily allowance the RDA was this is set by these communities and there's lots of things involved in that but to simplify um about you know 40 years ago this RDA was set and it was set to be 0.8 grams

of protein per kilogram body weight and that was thought to be the amount that you needed to take in every day to not to minimize um the amino acid losses from muscle right to replace all your amino acids to be able to to enough protein right well turns out so studies that have been done by experts like Dr Stuart Phillips at McMaster University uh and others have shown so the the way that that RDA was 40 years ago uh set was it was flawed um in terms of like the techniques that they used they're called

nitrogen balance studies they underestimated the amino acid losses and so here we are 40 years later scientists have more sensitive tools we have a lot more at our disposal and they're saying no actually we redid these studies and we found it's more like 1.2 Gams of protein per kilogram of body weight as the bare minimum to just basically be able to uh not be pulling amino acids from our muscle right um and then that number goes up if you're physically active um it goes up to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight and then there's

a you know the elite level you can go up even further than that but um I think the the bottom line here is that the RDA is too low and there's a lot of scientific consensus in in terms of um you know people that are experts in that field that are saying no we need to we need to boost that up and another problem with that is that the RDA 40 years ago they did these nitrogen balance studies in young adults not older adults and we know that older adults again this is data from Stu

Philips lab um he's a real leader in this field uh that older adults experience something called anabolic resistance so their skeletal muscle is not as sensitive to amino acids to make so uh to to increase skeletal muscle protein synthesis so um you know he's done studies where he's found that actually older adults you can they can um prevent their atrophy by taking in 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram body weight versus the RDA which is 0.8 so all the more reason to increase that you know that RDA to 1.2 gram per kilogram body weight you

know obviously the less muscle mass you lose the less frail you're going to be and those Studies have also been done more muscle mass less frail less likely to you know fall and break something fracture risk and all that so important to imp improve and increase that um RDA just as a quick as side because we're talking about anabolic resistance I just want to bring omega-3 in there so Chris mcclory he's at Queens University uh trained with Stu Phillips and when he was training with do he found that high dose omega-3 so anywhere between four

to 5 gr could basically blunt the disuse atrophy that occurs by like 50% and this was in this was in younger adults not in older adults but it's just really it so there's been some some subsequent studies since then this is really a growing field it's really in its infancy but Chris and some other people believe that partly what's happening is Omega-3s are sensitizing skeletal muscle to amino acids so this is independent of its anti-inflammatory effects uh and and that's also it's important to note here that the studies that they're doing they preload people with

high dose Omega-3 for about one month because it takes about one month for Omega-3s to accumulate in cell membranes including in cell your your skeletal muscle cell membranes so that I think is also really an interesting thing it's a growing field like I said there have been meta analyses looking at muscle mass and older adults taking Omega-3 supplements and and if the doses are high enough so at least 2 gram so there are meta analysis of multiple randomized control trials there is an improvement in muscle mass and also in some there's some functional improvements as

well but had the dose had to be at least two grams for doses less than that it there was really no effect again you'll find conflicting data in the literature so it really depends on the protocol that's used so we're talking about muscle mass but strength actually Fades faster with age reductions in muscle strength can can happen so in men they start to lose 3 to 4% in strength you know as they get older women are about 2.5 to 3% and this can lead to functional issues slow walking you start to lose Independence you get

increased you know fracture risk Frailty and then all those things sort of add up to a you know higher risk of death so resistance training is one of the best ways to not only increase muscle mass but also muscle strength and there have been a lot of meta analysis of studies so there's 21 different randomized controlled trials that were that were an analyzed and they found that older adults that engaged in resistance training one to three times a week for about 8 to 18 weeks could recover strength that was basically lost over years of just

being inactive so in other words just doing you know eight weeks of resistance training one one to three days right one to three days they could recover losses in strength like from years of being inactive and sedentary and and strength is a lot easier for older adults to get the to get those gains um they still can get gains in muscle mass as well but but the the strength is something that's very encouraging as well because you know the the functional decline is is something that's very important and so if they can gain those strength

get those strength gains back it's also going to improve their quality of life and also um reduce their mortality risk so how much do you have to lift um well this is also very encouraging for older adults again Stu Phillips pioneered these studies first an untrained individuals where he showed that people could lift lighter weights and get the same gains in muscle mass strength as people lift lifting heavier uh as long as the volume was like enough as long as the effort was put in and there's you know they're they're basically getting fatigued um and

then Brad shenfeld went on to show this also in train people so it wasn't just a newbie effect and now it's I think becoming a little bit more clear that you don't have to lift heaving to get gains in muscle mass and muscle strength you can lift lighter but as long as you're putting in that effort and still get improvements in muscle mass and strength and I think that has a lot of relevance for a broader population of people not just people that are really you know the elite sort of bodybuilder type we're talking our

parents right um our grandparents you know maybe people like that don't really know how to do resistance training and don't want to injure themselves so I I think this has a lot of um application and it's a really important thing to point out okay for the last part of my talk I just want to talk about deliberate heat exposure and how we're just going to focus on a couple parts of this um we're going to talk about how I can c ize with what we've been talking about today cardiorespiratory Fitness muscle mass so engaging in

deliberate heat exposure from something like a sauna or even hot tub hot bath there's a lot of physiological um adaptations and effects that happen that are very similar to aerobic exercise and those things are like increased heart rate you're getting increased plasma volume you're getting increased stroke volume you are getting hot your core body temperature is elevating so uh you sweat to kind of cool yourself down there's a lot of similarities between deliberate heat exposure from the sauna and more like moderate intensity exercise I would say uh your your heart rate can go up to

about 120 beats per minute some people can get it up a little bit higher ESP if they go in right after a workout but there's been head-to-head comparisons of moderate intensity exercise and sauna use and it's really like the the Studies have shown they're pretty comparable so like when you're doing the activity heart rate goes up uh your blood pressure goes up while you're doing the activity but then after the activity whether it's exercise or sauna you're getting blood pressure improvements your resting heart rate is improved and so and these things are comparable so really

in some way I would say doing engaging in deliberate heat exposure from the sauna is mimicking moderate intensity robic exercise and there have been and observational studies and some intervention studies we'll talk about in a second but observational studies looking at people that are and this is in Finland where saunas are pretty ubiquitous and most people are using them um so people in Finland that have sauna are using sauna and they exercise have a better cardiorespiratory Fitness than people that exercise alone we're talking about you know same volume of exercise and these people the ones

that do that but also sauna had had a better cardiorespiratory Fitness than people that only engaged in exercise and then there's been intervention Studies by Dr Yari linan that have shown so he's taken um he's taken untrained people and put them on an exercise protocol it was a stationary bike and then he he had two groups one that justed the stationary bike with passive recovery and the other ones that did the stationary bike but then they went right into the sauna for 15 minutes and and they looked at a variety of parameters one of them

being V2 Max so what he found was that those people that did the the ex size bike and the sauna had a better V2 Max than the ones that only did the exercise bike and to me that makes sense because again it's almost like extending the workout you're you're you're extending it just a little bit more um there were also better improvements in blood pressure and other lipid parameters as well in the group that also added a sauna plus the the exercise so I think there's benefits to deliberate heat exposure for people that are Physically

Active but also you know people that are not people that are disabled people that can't get on a bike people that can't go for a run people that can't do a burpee they can get into a sauna and get somewhat of that cardiovascular benefit and there's all sorts of observational data out there looking at people that use the sauna um four to seven times a week they have a 50% lower cardiovascular mortality 40% lower all cause mortality and it it goes on and on so I think there's there's a lot of uh utility there for

people that really just can't go and and work out as well so another really important adaptation that happens when you're engaging in deliberate heat exposure for something like the sauna also a hot bath is the increase in something called heat chock proteins and these are pro this is an Adaptive response so as you're elevating your core body temperature you're getting hotter these heat Chu proteins are activated and they are the main role that they the main function they serve is to prevent proteins from aggregating and forming plaques in your cardiovascular system in your brain um

in fact there's been multiple uh you know animal studies showing that If You Give a Mouse you know like a amalo beta plaque sort of what we we get with humans in Alzheimer's disease and you express the heat shog proteins make them highly Express that uh they don't get the Alerus like symptoms and it helps with the plaque uh Aggregates and stuff so heat heat shock proteins play an important role in preventing protein aggregation they have somewhat of an antioxidant effect they're also very important for slowing muscle attri uh and this is again has to

do with a variety of mechanisms there's been a lot of animal studies on this but there's now been some human data where people you know there's intervention trials where they're you know engage they basically immobilize one of their limbs for a period of weeks and then did some local heat exposure and the local heat exposure prevented the disused atrophy by like 40% so um you know I think that's a very relative again a very relevant um weighed for people that are injured or again people that are older and they're experiencing a lot of muscle atrophy

as well but there was also a very recent study and this is small so it needs to be repeated but people that were engaging in resistance training either just alone or then went into the sauna right after the resistance training they had greater gains in muscle mass if they went to sauna right after the resistance training compared to resistance training well they actually it was biomarkers of it so they didn't directly measure of muscle mass with bom markers but but anyways I think it's an encouraging and promising area that of course I'm excited about I'm

glad people are out there researching um but it's another possib possibility for um a Synergy between resistance training between like vigorous intensity exercise your exercise program and then engaging in deliberate heat exposure as well so what are the parameters in a lot of these studies well a lot of the parameters um in many of these studies are coming out of Finland the temperature is about 174 degrees Fahrenheit and the duration spent in the sauna is about 20 minutes and that's important because people that spent less than 20 minutes like let's say they were in there

for 11 minutes they didn't have the robust effects uh so it really is a a temperature dependent duration dependent but also frequency so how many times a week you know people are getting in the sauna for anything to occur two times a week was like the minimum effective dose so if people did something twice a week it was more beneficial than once a week but people that did four times a week four to seven was really the the most robust effects so if you you're looking for the most robust effect the minimum time would be

four times a week you know compared to to one time a week um the humidity is usually around 10 to 20% and the question a lot of people ask is what about you know what kind of SAA what if you don't have a 175 degree sauna what if you have an infrared sauna that goes up to 145 like is that can you get comparable effects um again temperature duration dependent right so you're not you're not going to get the same effect in 20 minutes in 145 degre sauna in terms of the heart rate and the

cardiovascular adaptations as you're as you're going to get an 180 degree Fahrenheit SAA right so uh you might have to stay in there twice as long you might have to stay in there 45 minutes to an hour to start to get your heart rate up again you can wear some kind of heart you know wearable heart rate measure uh device where you're looking at your heart rate and you can feel it like when it starts to go up sometimes it'll take a long time in an infrared SAA there are studies out there that have compared

regular hot saas to infrared in terms of cardiovascular benefits and if the same volume of time is spent in there you're not going to get as as robow us of an effect on blood pressure improvements as you would with a regular sauna so again you might have to spend more time in there as well hot baths have also been shown to increase some of these biomarkers like heat Shack proteins that sauna has and I really think that's a really a good um you know the fact that it's able to increase some of the same biomarkers

to me signals that maybe hot baths or any sort of modality that's really increasing your heart rate that's making you hot is something that's going to be beneficial as well so I do think that people that don't have access to a sauna could do a hot bath get one of those little uh pool devices that measure temperature put on your bath and keep it up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and being there for 20 minutes because that's what the Studies have shown 20 minutes at 104 shoulders submerged all the way down so that's it for today

uh three powerful habits that I think will help delay the aging process that will improve health span we have vigorous intensity exercise find a way to make it frequent do those exercise snacks they're so easy incorporate resistance training protein intake thinking about that protein intake is a lot of work and then Del engaging in deliberate heat exposure whichever way you like I prefer to do it after a workout but I also like to do it at night as well so um that's that's that's what I have for you today I hope you guys enjoyed it

and thank you so much okay we're going to take some questions for um Ron if any has one there are lots of hands up woohoo thank you um I had a question about the Omega-3s you mentioned a minimum of two optimal four to five is that total Omega-3s or is that specific DHA or what Omega-3s yes so um the question is like what type of Omega-3 was involved and then disuse atrophy study coming out of Dr Chris MC glor's Lab at um Queens University uh so it was the marine forms of Omega-3 so it was

EP PA and DHA I don't know off the top of my head the ratio but they were pretty similarish um if I were to interject my own thoughts here I think a large part of it has to do with DHA which is what's mostly accumulating in the cell membranes a lot more than EPA is the EPA is a little bit accumulating there but DHA is heavily accumulating in many different cell membranes including an skeletal muscle so I and I've talked to Chris about this I was like I really going hard on DHA is something you

might want to consider in the future because it's you know it's it seems as though the importance of the you know preventing the dissu atrophy by via sensitizing skeletal muscle to amino acids from whatever way it's doing it Chris thinks mitochondrial ways and possibly transport it's not known um that that basically uh you know getting getting that high dose and again it needs to it takes about four weeks for the DHA to accumulate in the skeletal muscle so it's not it's not like the anti-inflammatory effect of which is like instant right so it's a little

bit different um I took away your do like a lot of your researches like more is better and I understand that there's also some research around um cardiovascular injury from like endurance athletes and intense intense sport I'm just curious if you have seen any of that or or offer any kind of cautionary around around those kinds of conclusions that's a great question um and I'm going to defer to some of the experts on that where like Dr Ben LaVine um I think he as far as i' I've heard from him is yes like when you

get to this like elite elite athlete endurance athlete level I mean there some of the increased risks to to do with like coronary calcification whatever the you know the increased risks of that outcome are are actually even lower even if the C coronary calcification is a little bit higher do you know what I mean so it's like their card their risk of cardiovascular death is still lower um than people are normal like you know committed exercisers so uh but yeah I'd say that's that's not my area of expertise but that's kind of the takeaway that

I've gotten so far from experts we have one one a question about the uh finish saunas versus the infrared saunas um is the mechanism that uh they're providing benefit uh just because of the the temperature and the increased heart rate um is that what makes finish better than infrared and then corollary to that um you mentioned like 174° is being a temperature um what if it's like 20000 or 220 ises that make it better or worse or is 174 kind of a sweet spot those are great questions all right so um to First address the

the mechanisms and is is the beneficial effect of deliberate heat exposure that I've talked about today uh due to the increased heart rate you know the the the mimicking of I would say Moder intensity EX exercise I think a lot of it comes down to that the the improvements in cardiov in respiratory Fitness and cardiovascular improvements um also the heat shock proteins as well so um the heat proteins are playing a role in the muscle they're playing a role in the immune system and they're also playing a role in the brain so people that use

finish saas four to seven times a week at those temperature you know parameters that I mentioned have about a 66% reduction dementia risk um alhe disase risk so yeah I do think there is it really does come down to elevating the core body temperature and getting that heart rate up and and and being being physically uncomfortable like you are when you're exercising um infrared saunas do work a little bit different they're they're moving molecules in your body and uh heating you up a different way there is evidence coming out of Dr Ashley Mason's Lab at

UCSF um who I've been collaborating with showing that a very rigorous infrared sauna protocol it's like a heat bed where your head out and these people are they're they're use it's using infrared um you know heat to into a feverish state so they're getting to like 101.3 Fahrenheit they're getting a fever like so it's it's getting them hot um but they're in there for like you know in some cases over an hour 50 minutes over an hour and it's a very intense protocol that most people doing infrared Z aren't doing so I do think there

is a rule for infrared SAA but again it's like you just like getting getting to that point where you're getting the heart rate up and getting all those those benefits it takes a lot longer um and then the other question is well what about is more better um so here here I'll give you my take and I'll tell you about one study um I think that when it comes to the we're stressing our body um this kind of goes back to this this lady's question as well I mean heat stress is a stress right I

mean hypothermia is a real thing like you can get damage from too much heat so um it's important to keep in mind that there's always like a window of you're you're you're engaging in this this kind of stressful activity like physical activity or Del deliberate heat exposure to have this you know response um it's it's an adaptation is some people call it a hormetic response um to you know have the anti-inflammatory benefits the antioxidant benefits all the adaptations that happen but when you make that stress too high then it's hard to counter that stress with

our adaptations right so um when you're going in 200 degree Fahrenheits on or 25 or whatever it is very hot and there are studies anal studies and stuff like when you get too hot you can actually permeabilize the the bloodb brain barrier um and so I know it's like there's this go hard and there always this push like and if you're that kind of person you like well I give him my all um there's there's one study this was not out of Y Dr Yari linin lab it was another study I can't remember if it

was Poland uh might have still been Finland was Finland or Poland but um they were looking at a variety of temperatures and dementia risk in Alzheimer risk um and people that use the sauna and it was it repeated what Dr L had found so people that used the sauna frequently uh had a much lower risk of Dementia in Alzheimer's disease but only if they weren't getting in a a sauna that was over 200 degrees Fahrenheit if they were getting in a sauna that was over 200 degrees Fahrenheit they were actually having the opposite effect and

I don't talk about that a lot because it's not really understood why and I don't want to like people to get scared but I do think it kind of highlights the role of like why do you need to go in a 25° like have you it's it's so hot you know and your brain is in there like so I I don't think that going in a 200 degree Fahrenheit zaa is the way you have to do it I think you can get in 180 185 if you really want to go 190 yeah like but maybe

stop before it gets to 200 degre fhe so to say 174 is well yeah so the question is was is 174 degree Fahrenheit The Sweet Spot that is the average temperature that people in those studies were using and um I I typ Ally do around 175 180 and I do I do put water on the rocks to make Steam which makes it hotter and I usually do it after workout so I'm already hot I'm already I already have my my heart rate elevated so um yeah I mean doing doing 30 minutes at 175 degrees Fahrenheit

is nice I think it's safer for the brain think I mean you're getting a lot of the benefits Studies have shown that 30 minutes at 163 degrees fahren increases heat chock proteins by 50% over Baseline so I don't know that you have to go to 200° and I don't know that you should um to be honest perfect thank you so much thank you