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Dr. Alex Clark helps Derek and Reed understand the importance of context in effecting change. He uses heart health as an example, which hits close to the Hudson family. Exercise and eat right, everyone!
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
And we're back to another podcast episode of Essential Dynamics, the one place where you can find philosophy mixed in with, well, everything. I'm Reed McColm, your quite good looking host with my good friend, and the reason we're doing this is who came up with the philosophy of central dynamics himself, Mr. Derek Hudson. How are you today, Derek?
Derek:Reed, I'm fantastic but I don't know enough about philosophy to be sure that essential dynamics is a philosophy. I see. So it's a framework, it's a way of looking at things.
Reed:Okay, perspective then.
Derek:Yeah, sure, sure. You know, and one of the reasons that I'm a little bit nervous about labeling anything is we're here with doctor Alex Clark. And Wow. Doctor Clark is an esteemed academic who also, among his other areas of study, studies academics. And and I'm very much not academic.
Derek:I'm very much a pragmatist, sort of off the cuff kind of guy. And so we're gonna get some academic rigor in our conversation today. I'm so I'm excited about it, and and happy to have Alex here.
Reed:Well, glad
Derek:to be here.
Derek:Doctor Clark, is it? Is Alex okay?
Alex:No. Please, Alex.
Derek:Okay. Excellent.
Alex:Really appreciate the invite, Derek, and and really excited also to have read and and thought a lot about your framework that you're using. And, also, yeah, you're right, bigging me up quite a lot there as well, which I really appreciate too. And, yeah, really, I guess, you know, around what we do is we grapple with complexity in the real world where there's real outcomes but also real people and real challenges as well.
Reed:So do you work at the University of Alberta? I'm not clear on I'm sorry. I'm just meeting you, and I think you're also a good looking guy, so you should be doing something important.
Alex:Yeah. So that's why the story I tell myself anyway. So I've been at the University of Alberta for eighteen years. I am not from Canada. You may detect that.
Alex:Or indeed Alberta. I came from the West Of Scotland.
Reed:Actually Scotland. That's Scotland. Oh,
Derek:Scotland. Was medicine hat, but
Alex:yeah. No. Came over from Scotland on a little plane eighteen years ago with my 20 old son who is now 20 years, my wife, and we we have a a daughter who is Canadian by birth as well. So we we've been here and seen Alberta and Canada grow and develop, and so I've found our life in in a wonderful country called Canada.
Reed:That's wonderful. We're glad you're here. So what is it you do in research, I'd like to know?
Alex:Yeah. So I broadly support health research across our campus, across basically the entire campus from the bench to the bedside, if you like, from the basic science to the animals, the fish, and the mice, all the way through to the clinical trials, the quality to research, the social science, humanities. So it's super, super diverse. And, of course, the people are super diverse as well, in terms of career stages from your graduate students, just getting into the academic research through to your postdocs who are thinking maybe of working in the industry or academia to, of course, your faculty, who teach, and they do research. One of the great things about, the university and also the province, we are one of maybe two or three jurisdictions in the world that have two world class universities within our province.
Alex:So the intellectual visibility and the grounding that gives us to bring talent and keep talent, I think, is really strong. Many of us at the moment are challenged by, you know, recessions and worrying about the future, but, knowledge is gonna be the pathway out of that. I think, we've got a strong sense of that. And so it's a real asset to have the two universities, as well, of course, the University of Lethbridge, as research intensive within the province.
Derek:So, Alex, our listeners are are diverse, in different ways than than your academic community. We have a we have an audience that doesn't necessarily all spend time in the lab or reading research papers. I'm really interested in your work on coronary heart disease. That's a thing in my family. And I saw you do a presentation where you talked about how to use qualitative research to get people to do things that are good for their health.
Derek:And over the like, the last few episodes, we were talking a little bit about how to help, kids progress in school, how to work with employees, how do you align employee interests with the interests of the company. In a bunch of different ways, it's how do we get people to do things that either are good for them or good for the organization that they work in. Alex, what have you learned about how do you get people to do things?
Alex:Yeah. Well, of course, great question, Derek. Of course, it's complex in the sense of, you know, different people exposed to the same situation or the same program, the same health service are gonna react in different ways. And that's because it's always a little bit context specific. Best example I can give you about this, those people in your life that you talked about, your daughters and your grandchildren, did you ever try to tickle them when they
Derek:Oh, yeah.
Alex:Yeah. How did that go? Did they enjoy that?
Derek:Well, you figure out when it works. Initially, they don't like it.
Alex:Yeah. So, you know, you can take the same intervention. It works for one person in your life, and it doesn't work for another person. You you might have a a young kid, a son or a daughter very close to you who you tickle, and they find that really funny, and they really enjoy that. And then you think, well, I'm gonna replicate that intervention on the bus going to work with someone I don't know.
Alex:And then, of course, you're gonna go to jail, have a very different outcome because what works in one setting, in one context through your wiggling fingers is gonna have a very different effect in a different context. So the power of the ability to affect change is not inherently in the program or strategy or the intervention, such as the tickle. It's always moderated by context, and it's moderated by, the social meaning, and the specifics, of the recipient of the intervention. And in science, generally, we have this challenge to do with the reproducibility of findings, the degree to which findings from one setting are replicated in another. And historically, we used to believe, kinda like the tickle, if it worked in one setting, well, it's destined to work in another.
Alex:So then we do the science, we do the subsequent research, and we find out it actually has very, very different effects and often doesn't work as well or doesn't even work at all. So, you know, really uncoupling that notion that an intervention is destined to lead to a certain output, and that is this issue called complexity. It's this issue that it's not about what intervention works. It's about what works for whom, when, and why, and developing different kind of responsive interventions for different settings that are gonna work. So to come back to your question, what's gonna work in terms of heart health very much depends on the context.
Alex:What could work in Scotland, for example, where I'm from, where, there's a more a culture of coronary heart disease in terms of being super prevalent amongst your fifties and sixties and 70 year old people, May not work as well in Canada, where coronary heart disease tends to happen a little bit later in life. And, also, it's got to do with the social norms that exist in your setting around physical activity. So, for example, it's been interesting, you know, coming to Canada as a a younger person, my twenties, and seeing the different approaches to physical activity here versus in The UK, particularly around gender. So it's really unusual for female, for for young women in secondary school age, high school age, and The UK and Scotland in particular to be engaged in physical activity. You're talking about, you know, 10% sometimes, and it goes down over, you know, as as the women reach their twenties and thirties.
Alex:And chances are those women will not be physically active again until they develop chronic disease in their sixties or seventies. Now why why does that happen? Well, it's because notions of femininity often conflict with sweating and playing sport and the kinds of things that are associated with sport. Being feminine is associated with, you know, certain other things and not seem to be conducive with that. And so the participation rates and organized physical activity anywhere in The UK amongst young women tend to be fairly low.
Alex:Then you come to Canada, and you see the difference here where lots of young women play soccer or football as I would call it. You just don't see that in anywhere near the same degree back in The UK because it's not seem to be as normal. So just that that kind of sense of cultural norms, what's normal and what's not normal, which is then reflected in, you know, what's organized versus not organized and what what choices people make. They can be so, so different based on context.
Derek:I did not know that.
Alex:I assume interesting.
Derek:I I assume that the increase that I've seen over my lifetime of participation of young women in physical activity was a global trend of, I don't know, equal access to good stuff. You know, it's it's interesting though, my I'm I'm gonna get it right, Jade. I have three daughters, one son. My son played organized sports. My daughters basically didn't.
Derek:But they walked to school. We got them camping and hiking. They now all do yoga. And they, you know, they're they're pretty normal for Canadian, you know, women in their twenties and thirties now. And I just it just kinda blows my mind that that wouldn't be that there would be such a gender difference in other in other places.
Alex:So does does vary from country to country. I don't think it's as much in Canada, but it's interesting you even say that, you know, your kids walk into school, and you certainly see a trend in children all over, I think, North America and also other countries beyond that where there's perceptions of risk that that kids don't walk to school. They get driven because it's perceived not to be safe, partly because there's so many cars, of course, driving to school, so it becomes a little bit self fulfilling. But, again, you know, just the way our brains are wired to assess risk, sometimes we downplay some risks falsely, and we upplay other risks, based on our own cognitive biases. But, yeah, the more you can integrate physical activity, kind of sometimes in the small things in life and I read one piece of research this week that suggested if you were intensely active and you you're all gonna like this for four seconds, periodically during the day, you can achieve fairly amazing physiological benefits that we usually equate with four seconds with being physically active for thirty minutes.
Alex:So you're saying four seconds? Yeah.
Reed:I'm finally convinced that's my limit.
Derek:Reid, this is your exercise program.
Reed:This is my exercise program. You know, I have to say that I consider exercise an enormous conspiracy because there is no exercise in heaven. I'm not sure if you knew that. But I get up every morning, I go to the bathroom, I then come out of the bathroom and dress, and then I go into the kitchen. That's a lot of walking.
Alex:Well, if you just put four seconds of of brisk, you know, you've got to be really high intensity, go to the max that you can go to.
Reed:I just I just mentioned that. Yeah. I I that's really that's amazing. Amazing. Now I do have a question here.
Reed:I wanna know how you two met.
Derek:We met for the first time on a task force.
Reed:Oh.
Derek:Which sounds super cool. But
Reed:a task force is also those people in orange jumpsuits that pick up trash on the side of the road. I believe that's a task force as well. Felt more like you're 18 you go back in the Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. So Tech Edmonton, may rest in peace, because it well, actually, it's got a week left. No. A day's left in its formal existence. It was a joint venture partnership between Edmonton Economic Development and the University of Alberta.
Derek:And a couple years ago, Alex represented the University of Alberta and I represented economic development in Edmonton. And we tried to consider what the future of tech Edmonton might be. And I I just I just gotta tell you that from the first moment, I thought, man, this Alex is a really smart guy even though he does have a PhD.
Alex:That's right. Even though academic, I know.
Derek:Yeah. Alex, if we can go back to the cardiac thing. So I had had a heart attack in my early forties, and I didn't have the kind of lifestyle pattern that you might expect, a heart attack victim to have, although I had the family history, you know, all the way down.
Reed:It didn't help that he was six fifty pounds at the time. None of us were surprised.
Derek:Yeah, so in actual fact it was December, but I'd run five ks the day before.
Alex:Yeah.
Derek:And I was taking my statins and eating a low fat diet. So when I when I was in heart cardiac rehab and they were educating my class, the class of December 2002, on how we were gonna now live our lives, I was younger than everybody. Yeah. And I remember one conversation in nutrition class when someone said, you mean I can't eat bacon and eggs every morning for breakfast? So, you know, all this stuff is very personal.
Derek:Yeah. These very personal lifestyle changes that seem very, very hard. What have you seen, you know, where have you seen initiatives where people kind of grab on and they do make some of those harder changes? Because I think it's probably more broadly applicable and other things that we might consider. Although although I I understand that you just taught taught me that context is really important.
Alex:So Yeah. Sure. But, I mean, I think there's some really positive messages in the notion around heart health, heart health can be everybody's business. Whether you are 10 years old to a hundred years old, and the science is there as well, literally, if you start engaging in heart health behaviors, almost straight away, you're talking days, your heart physiologically starts to benefit from it. And and, also, I would say your mental health.
Alex:Now unlike and we live in a very medicalized world where, you know, you can take a pill for everything. Unlike every single pill, there's virtually though there are no side effects around, particularly, the physical activity side of things. And as we were saying earlier on, you don't have to do that much to experience a difference. And and somebody who's not physically active, it's not about running marathons. It's about getting out of breath a little bit every day and making that more regular, moving.
Alex:It's about being consciously less sedentary. They talk about, you know, the 96% sedentary lifestyle whereby if you are physically active for that 4% of your day, you can experience physiological benefits. And there are health services traditionally called cardiac rehabilitation. I think you mentioned that, Denik, and also secondary prevention clinics and health services. And these days, apps that you can use that will help you and support you to know a little bit more, but also to integrate these recommendations for physical activity, for diets.
Alex:And it's not about necessarily stopping eating the bacon and eggs in the morning. It could be about having that once a week, and that's okay. And then for the rest of the time, thinking about a diet that has more fruit, more vegetables, more pulses, less processed food. It really is about making lots of small changes, but we know if you can do that. The benefits physiologically are almost right away.
Alex:The benefits for life quality also increase in terms of your mental health. And you can experience a life, and and this really speaks to you, Derek, where you can have decades ahead of you of good life quality, and your risk of coronary heart disease goes down significantly. I'll give you an example here. Someone who smokes and has a heart attack, if they stop smoking, they'll have the equivalent risk of a nonsmoker in about three years. Now they still are relatively high risk of another heart attack because they've had one, but they can make a massive impact by stopping smoking.
Alex:And so you when you have that sense of real benefit and really taking care of your heart, I I think you can, based on the science, really experience a better life, adding life to years and years to life. Really, really important. Your heart's an amazing thing, and I would say as well. And and and it's good to reflect that this heart that we all have in our in our body, that started to beat three weeks after you were conceived. And that, by definition, is gonna keep on beating till virtually the moment you die.
Alex:Hundred thousand times every day. 35,000,000 times every year. 2,000 gallons of blood. Your heart can live outside of your body for about four hours if it's cold. Amazing organ.
Alex:So we have this amazing thing. What can we do every day to take better care of it? And that's really what my work is about.
Derek:That's fantastic. Reid, what are thinking?
Reed:I was just thinking that Derek has genetic concerns thathow would you put it, Derek? That sort of suggested heart disease in your family? How do prevent it in your siblings and your children, who are now adults? They must be aware of that propensity toward heart disease.
Derek:So, I'll give you the quick version, my father had angina in his 50s and he got checked out and ultimately had a quadruple bypass. He never had a heart attack. At 57, my mom died of a heart attack and my dad then when he was six my mom was 58, my dad was 67 when we had a stroke. So I was under care when my dad you know, when it was first detected. My mom insisted that at least my brother and I went and got unchecked.
Derek:My sisters have turned out not to be too bad. My brother's had a heart attack now as well. He was in his fifties. He's younger than me, so it took him longer. So the girls seem to be okay.
Derek:They're being checked out. But my son, who's just turning 27, Yeah. He he's now being monitored for cholesterol and he's on the low fat diet and the whole thing. He can beat this
Reed:if He probably will.
Derek:He's a defiant three things. Watches what he eats, gets exercise and then continues to get checked. And at some point maybe he goes on meds but you know that doesn't have to happen. And because of the family history we are all aware And you know, mom's been on him. Now he's got a wife that'll help as well.
Derek:And you know, I think the other thing is that my dad had bypass surgery. I got a stent. And we're getting better and better at these therapies that are less invasive, significantly less invasive. And what's the future going hold up? So if twenty years from now someone has a heart attack in their forties, they're probably gonna be fine.
Derek:Mean, like my experience, you think about it, I had a heart attack, I called 911, The ambulance came in six minutes and forty five seconds. I know that from my cell phone bill. Wow. Know, twenty years before that, you know, you didn't have that intervention possible. What's what's available in the future?
Alex:Yeah. That's really, really good point you make there, Derek, because something like sixty five percent of people having heart attacks, they they don't reach for help quick enough. They can delay two hours to five hours, and these are dead people's tales. If if you think something like that's happening to you and you think, oh, you you know, I'll wear off or or I'll call the family doctor and get an appointment next week, This is the most significant period. So, definitely, the advice is always if you think you're having a heart attack, chest pain, a shortness of breath down your arm, so, so important.
Alex:Call 991 quickly, and that's gonna increase. The biggest chance of your survival is getting to hospital as quick as possible, getting some clot busting drugs beyond your age. That's the biggest factor that's gonna determine to survive. But you have that split second decision. Think now what would where things would be if you hadn't made that decision to seek help.
Alex:If you put that masculine pride that many of us have first, thought, no. I'm gonna I'm gonna thrive this out. This is not the way you want to go. So I think you live in testimony, Derek. Great health lesson there.
Alex:Call for help. Get checked out. And and it literally is about life and death.
Derek:So we don't talk a lot about faith in this show, but it's an underlying part of my life, for sure. And I would just say that the divine intervention in this case might have been that it hurt really bad.
Alex:Yep. But but, you know, I did my research with people, and they would describe when they're having a heart attack. It's like a pain they could not even imagine. They could not even comprehend that they could feel this sore. But, nevertheless, what's really interesting is when you talk about people who do go to hospital versus those who don't when they're having their symptoms, so often people downplay it.
Alex:And, also, it's important to recognize that not everyone's symptoms are the same. So, for example, more and more now we know that women experience different symptoms when they're having a heart attack as men, and they'll often think without that absence of really crushing central chest pain, it can be a heart attack. That's a big misconception. Thirty percent of heart attacks, brace yourself here, have no symptoms at all. Oh, kidding.
Alex:No.
Derek:Reed, you're having having one right now. I am, and I
Reed:I hope I survive it. But I hope I survive long enough to see Doctor. Clark return to us at some future point and talk more about this. I think we barely scratched the surface, but that's pretty close to the time we have.
Derek:So Reed, as as we wind up, I just wanna ask Alex one question, and if if it takes too long, we'll do round two. And that is, with you with the way you approach the world, Alex, what is it about Essential Dynamics that I should be looking at to tune up? Where's where's the gaps?
Alex:Yeah. Great question. I I think always bringing context in is the most important thing. That just as we talked about today, remember the example of the tickle? What works in one setting is not necessarily gonna work in another.
Alex:How can you take essential dynamics adapt it to different people in different settings and get the benefit of that wonderful set of framework guidance so that you can continue to achieve great outcomes but recognizing you're gonna have to do that perhaps in different ways for different contexts.
Derek:Hey. That's that's great. So I'm just gonna do a plug for Essential Dynamics as we wrap up. We talk about the quest. And what what Alex gave us today was another example of a way to think about your quest.
Derek:And that is that you can add years to your life and life to your years. Life's a journey, let's make it a meaningful one and hey, why not a long one if we're going to enjoy the journey. So Alex, I didn't expect to spend all the time on cardiac. I'm feeling good. I went for a walk this morning.
Derek:I go for a walk every morning, except for when I ride my bikes. A lot of times I do both. Feel feeling good about that and I hope that everyone does does everything they need to do to get that physical activity up. Because if life's life's a journey, you might as well be walking or moving forward somehow. So, Reid, you can shut me up now, but, Alex, man, thanks very much.
Reed:Alex, if they have if our listeners have questions and want to get in touch with you, do you have a a website or something that we you could recommend?
Alex:Sure. The best way to reach me is to send me an email, alex.clark,noe,@ualberto.ca, or you can go to the website, which is happyacademic.com.
Reed:Happy academic. I'll remember that because there are none.
Derek:I know of one and Alex actually has a partner so that's two.
Reed:Okay, there you go. Well Derek, where can people find you?
Derek:Derekhudson.ca is the best place and you've found us already if you're listening to the podcast so
Reed:there we go.
Derek:Like and subscribe and share, please.
Reed:Yes, please do. And my thanks to Doctor. Alex Clark for joining us today. I look forward to seeing you again in the future. For Derek Hudson, for Bring Griffiths in the studio, I'm Reed McColm.
Reed:Consider your quest.