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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, everyone. Good morning. Welcome back to the one day at a time podcast. Now, today's theme of podcast is about heart health. I spoke about some of these studies before.
Speaker 1:We're gonna round it up into a nice weekly review now. And there's a few things I covered today. And I think it's important because some goals are physical. I wanna look good and all this stuff. Okay.
Speaker 1:Great. But when we're not motivated, if we're reminded of, well, if we just did this, it's going to reduce our chance of dying and reduce our chance of cardiovascular disease and all I thought was this. Few of these are few of that. And I think the important news is overall from the research is that we don't actually have to do that much to get the benefits from exercise for our heart health. Okay?
Speaker 1:So the first thing is that the American Association Heart Association had a seven point list before about heart health. And use the seven. Eat better. Be more active. Quit tobacco, manage weight, control cholesterol, manage blood sugar, manage blood pressure.
Speaker 1:But Columbia University researchers are like, No mate, what's going on here? You're missing something big. And they said, What are we missing? He said, Sleep, you nutters. Where's sleep on this list?
Speaker 1:Right, so then they've no other day so there's eight. But the reason why there's sleeps in this list because there was research on it, 1,900 people, average age sixty nine, fifty four percent were female, and it basically showed right up, you know, if your it's like sleep duration, sleep efficiency, daytime sleepiness, sleep disorders, predicted future heart disease, okay? So, we need better sleep and we know if we don't have decent sleep, you actually eat more calories the next day. You actually exercise less. You have more intense cravings for sweet or high calorie foods.
Speaker 1:Right? So sleep is such a big part of the picture. I don't want to go on and on about it because you know you need to sleep better. We all need to sleep better. But here's how I see it.
Speaker 1:So for example, if you can't eat better today and you've just gone over your calories, you're going, okay, I can't eat better. Have you got your steps in and done some activity? If you haven't done that, then at least you fall back on a decent night's sleep. And that's when you say, do know what? Today hasn't gone to plan for me today.
Speaker 1:I haven't done everything I need to do. That's fine. But I'm going to make sure I go to bed on time tonight. I'm to put my phone on my room or put it away. Okay?
Speaker 1:I'm going to blackout blinds maybe, some white noise if it helps, you know, good sleep hygiene. Just make sure you relax, maybe read a book until you sleep. Just get that done at least. Okay? So we fall back on sleep as a core, right?
Speaker 1:And I think it's important that we have that and we move forward with what we should do for our heart health in terms of exercise. Now, the first thing I want to cover is that there used to be a separation between strength training and cardio. Strength training doesn't do what cardio does and vice versa. But actually now research is saying strength training does just as much as cardio even for your heart. Okay, so strength training in short improves your blood pressure, diabetes risk, mood, body composition, blood sugar control, inflammation, sleep, quality of life, everything.
Speaker 1:Because strength training is something we should be doing. And we don't actually have to do much, okay? So twice weekly sessions involving two sets, okay? Two sets for eight to 10 exercises. That's all you've got to do.
Speaker 1:And you know, you can do this either full body. So you can do eight to 10 exercises full body. So you can do bicep curls, tricep extensions, shoulder presses, you know, dumbbell shrugs, squats, lunges, you know, glute raises, any of these things. You just do two sets, okay? And it might take you twenty minutes to do this and you do that twice a week and happy days, you've kind of hit the core, you've kind of hit the base minimum.
Speaker 1:And a lot of PTs and stuff from one program is in because they think, oh, that's not enough. It's too easy. But that's what they're missing. They're missing the crucial path. The too easy, okay?
Speaker 1:Whilst it might be too easy for someone who's used to training five times a week, it might not be super easy for people that don't train at all. And we gotta remember, the gym penetration rate of people going twice a week is about twenty 5%. Not much and maybe from those figures even less. So most people walking on this planet do not train in the gym and they don't train consistently. So when we're trying to get more people to exercise, and some of you listening have got exercise routines, but some of you might have, like, what you'd call fallen off the wagon, you just need to understand.
Speaker 1:I can do two workouts from home per week, eight to 10 exercises in just two sets, right? And I don't have to go hard I just need to go decent amount of weight and I'll just do it and that's enough I swear down because the priest the research is saying it clearly now, this is not just one study showing, it's a multiple, okay? So strength training does increase your heart rate sometimes, not loads but more than brisk walking I would say. It just helps with feeling stronger, improves your metabolic rate in a sense as well, not massively but it can increase in more muscle but you don't want to pit cardio and strength against each other, okay? That's not what I'm doing here.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying here is if you're going do strength training, you can do two times a week, full body, eight to 10 exercises. Now this week in the Turtle Octagon Challenge, we're going to be doing some of these workouts so you can see what they're like in real life. And the important thing before we move on to the next part is that if you did just cardio, you reduce your, all cause mortality by eighteen to twenty nine percent. Okay? So your chance of dying drops by eighteen to twenty nine percent if you did cardio or strength training.
Speaker 1:But if you did both, so you can do two strength training and one or two cardio, the the benefits nearly doubled to forty to forty six percent reduction in all cause mortality. Think about that for a second. If you're saying to me, Scott, when you look back at your life and hopefully you live a long healthy life and you're 82, but maybe you didn't live healthy. Like you're 82 and you really struggled at all. Can be less than 67 years old or whatever.
Speaker 1:And all I had to do was two workouts a week, fifteen minutes each, eight to 10 exercises of strength, half home, right, which I could do in replacement of my doom scrolling on TikTok, for example, and some cardiovascular as well, whether it's running, whether it's martial arts, whether it's on the bike, at low intensity. That's all I would have had to do over the last, you know, three decades of my life for me to be in a vastly different position to where I am now, where it could be the difference between living another ten, fifteen years or not. And that's the truth of it. You know, that is the truth of it. Like my father, unfortunately, passed away a year ago and his health wasn't great.
Speaker 1:He was a smoker for many, many years. He didn't do any fitness. He was a bus driver. So he's just sitting down all the time. You know, you wonder how long would have he lived if twenty years ago he took these things seriously?
Speaker 1:Or twenty years ago he had someone in his ear like me right now saying to him, hey, mate, you've just got to do this. You've got to please take it seriously. I promise you, you're gonna want to ignore it because you feel okay right now. I don't wanna scare you all but you know times will time is going to go on and you have to do something about it. You have to do something about it now.
Speaker 1:You have to start making action and it's not much. You don't have to do much. That's the brilliant news here. Like this, I'm not saying you gotta do loads here. If I was saying you gotta work on six days a week, you gotta do seven days a week, you gotta eat a really extreme diet, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:You go, yeah, I can't do it. I'd rather die. You know, I'd rather die younger at a younger age. So, that's that part of it, right? It's important and we're to do that this week.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure we get it right and you're going to know exactly the workouts you can do. We're going to go through them and you're going to understand them and you're to know what the cardio is and you're to go, do you know what? If all else if I'm feeling a bit confused because I want be workouts wise, blah, blah, blah, I'm gonna fall back to this at least. And then you know the benefits it's gonna bring you. Okay?
Speaker 1:And the last bit is like, my strength training is a lifesaver essentially. So there was a research done on strength training, right? And look at the benefits it brings, okay? Preventing falls, strength training improves mobility in elderly people, okay? So lowers the risk of debilitating stumbles, it helps you stay sharp, it actually reduces cognitive decline, it sharpens the mind for sure, it helps people in surviving cancer, so seniors with higher amount of lean mass are more likely to survive a battle against cancer with fewer surgical and treatment related complications, and they're also less likely to have a recurrence.
Speaker 1:Again, important here, it's not going to stop you getting cancer if you're going get cancer, but again with any illness or cancer, if you are in a better physical condition, you've got more of a chance of surviving. It doesn't guarantee everything, so please don't take this out of context, but it can help. It preserves metabolic health as well, okay? Shows in, resistance training showed an old adults helps this. It's happy to stay alive.
Speaker 1:Research shows adults who work out once or twice a week for a total of sixty to one hundred and twenty minutes have a lower risk of death from any calls. Okay, it's phenomenal stuff here. Phenomenal stuff here. It slows the aging process down. If you can maintain strength, okay, and here's the kicker as well, and this is what we're gonna touch upon this week in the training.
Speaker 1:You can maintain strength and lean mass with as little as 30% of your one rep max as long as you're willing to go to slight fatigue. Like I'm sorry slight failure fatigue it's kind of hard to describe but like going to where you can't do another rep with good form. So you might push and you go do you know what? Oh yeah that's it. You know it doesn't have to be the absolute failure where you're like screaming and you're it's not that.
Speaker 1:It's just okay, I did have a good form. Maybe my form is slightly changing now. I'm going to stop. Okay? So, it's not it's not to failure.
Speaker 1:And what do I mean by one rep max, okay? The one rep max is what weight can I do? The maximum amount of weight I can do for an exercise for one rep and that's all I can do. So for example, if I'm thinking of a bench press and I'm pushing weight, I can only do one rep. I'm squeezing the one rep done.
Speaker 1:There's no more, I've got no more energy left. That is me done. All that so say now that's a 100 KGs. My one rep max is 100 KGs. Okay?
Speaker 1:I only have to do 30% of that, which is 30 KGs, and I gotta do it with good form, but I gotta go all the way until my form starts dipping. And, you know, this is going to be roughly in the 20 to 30 rep range. Okay, and workout tomorrow. Workout today, sorry. I'm recording this the day before.
Speaker 1:So, workout tomorrow, guys, will be the low intensity workout by Jaw which will focus on this stuff. So, you're going to do lighter weight, higher reps, and there's a benefit to this for older people as well that this type of workouts improves cellular turnover. So, that what I mean is it gets rid of older muscle cells and replace them with newer ones. So that's good for you. It's going improve your muscular endurance.
Speaker 1:So the researchers say here, to put it another way, when you induce a high level of muscular fatigue by doing lots of reps, you can get an older person's muscle tissues to behave like a younger person's. Muscular endurance. So, you know, you don't even need heavy reps, heavy weight. You can just do lighter weight for more reps with good form. Okay?
Speaker 1:And we're gonna cover it. So the good news is overall, I'm gonna finish on this, is that we're in a good position here, guys. All of us are in a good position here to reduce our all cause mortality, reduce our cardiovascular risk with a program that is manageable for us, and you have to believe in this and the science, but your mind will tell you there's no way doing that little is gonna help me. I'm used to five, six workers. I'm used to reading magazines doing extreme stuff.
Speaker 1:There's no way. We look at the cool things, and I will bash on them all the time. It's your energy intake, okay, which we measure our energy intake through calories, protein intake, our step count is a good indicator of activity, and if you can, you add in a few workouts a week in this realm, and if you want to progress further from there, happy days, but if you just start with our core and you build on our core and you have that core as a base for six to eight months, okay, to the rest of the year, you're gonna notice phenomenal changes. Okay? And it's not loads to do, which is a great news.
Speaker 1:So hopefully this motivates you today to kind of hit some. So think about what your one big thing is today, your OBT. One thing I'm gonna do today, some of you will say, do you know what, Scott? I'm gonna make sure my calorie intake is in good order, my protein intake is in good order, I'm gonna hit my step count, and I'm gonna do a workout. But some of you might say, do you know what?
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna make sure I have a good night's sleep tonight. That's one of the cornerstones I've been ignoring for weeks and months, and I'm feeling sleep deprived. And that's why I'm struggling with my calorie intake because I'm always eating late at night because I'm sleep deprived. So you're gonna not drink caffeine after or coffee after 11AM, and you're gonna have an early night sleep. Okay?
Speaker 1:That might be your one big thing. So, you know, focus today and focus this week on the things that matter, and I'll be back tomorrow with another podcast on these topics. So have a good day. Speak to you soon.