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If you’ve ever wondered how to *turn back the clock*, you’re going to love this podcast episode.
I sat down with Dr. Benjamin Levine — one of the world’s leading cardiovascular and sports medicine experts — and what he shared shocked even me.
He explains how vigorous exercise can actually reverse some of the effects of aging, and the type of exercise that can help prevent dementia. He also gave me the final word on persistent rumors linking statins to Alzheimer’s — and what the real research shows.
Dr. Levine also shared fascinating insights from the "Dallas Bed Rest Study", a groundbreaking project that revealed what happens to our bodies during prolonged inactivity. (Hint: it’s a powerful reminder why you should *get up and move* — even when you’re sick!)
And you won’t want to miss what he discovered about athletes who bounced back from COVID faster thanks to early movement.
This episode is packed with science, hope, and practical takeaways that will change how you think about aging and exercise.
Please LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE to support content that elevates women’s voices.
And share this episode—your network may need to hear it.
SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Ageless with Jane McGarry on:
» Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/Apple-Podcasts-Ja...
» Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/Ageless-on-Spotify
FOLLOW: Jane McGarry on:
» Twitter/X: /TheJaneMcGarry
» Instagram: /janemcgarry
» Facebook: /thejanemcgarry
I sat down with Dr. Benjamin Levine — one of the world’s leading cardiovascular and sports medicine experts — and what he shared shocked even me.
He explains how vigorous exercise can actually reverse some of the effects of aging, and the type of exercise that can help prevent dementia. He also gave me the final word on persistent rumors linking statins to Alzheimer’s — and what the real research shows.
Dr. Levine also shared fascinating insights from the "Dallas Bed Rest Study", a groundbreaking project that revealed what happens to our bodies during prolonged inactivity. (Hint: it’s a powerful reminder why you should *get up and move* — even when you’re sick!)
And you won’t want to miss what he discovered about athletes who bounced back from COVID faster thanks to early movement.
This episode is packed with science, hope, and practical takeaways that will change how you think about aging and exercise.
Please LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE to support content that elevates women’s voices.
And share this episode—your network may need to hear it.
SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Ageless with Jane McGarry on:
» Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/Apple-Podcasts-Ja...
» Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/Ageless-on-Spotify
FOLLOW: Jane McGarry on:
» Twitter/X: /TheJaneMcGarry
» Instagram: /janemcgarry
» Facebook: /thejanemcgarry
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What is Ageless with Jane McGarry?
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I sincerely invite you to be among the very first to listen, subscribe, and join this vibrant new community of women redefining what it means to be “ageless.”
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This firestorm was from people saying statins cause dementia. The incidence of Alzheimer's has gone up commensurate with the increased use of statins. Can you shed any light?
Dr. Levine:Let's say that you haven't done anything and at age 70, you have an epiphany and you say, okay, I'm gonna get myself fitter. And you start on a training program. I'm gonna give you the good news and then I'm gonna give you the bad news. And what was striking was not a single person, not one of those five guys was in worse shape after thirty years of aging than they were after three weeks of bed rest when they were in their 20s.
Jane:Welcome to Ageless with Jane McGarry, where we celebrate vibrant health, self care, timeless style, and finding purpose at every age. Because around here, age truly is just a number. Raise your hand if you wanna live as long and healthy as possible. Me. Me.
Jane:Okay. I'm gonna start with a story. When I told my personal doctor who I was having on the show today, he said, you got doctor Levine? He's impossible to get into. He is a world renowned expert, the founding director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas, renowned sports cardiologist.
Jane:He sees athletes from all over the world, consultant to the NCAA, NHL, NFL, US track and field, all those sports. He also has worked extensively with NASA. In fact, right after he finishes the show, he's gonna be doing something exciting with NASA. So without further ado, I wanna welcome to the show doctor Benjamin Levine. Doctor Levine, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us today.
Jane:We really appreciate it.
Dr. Levine:It's my pleasure, Jean. And, you know, you are a, luminary in the field here in, North Texas and in Dallas. Watched you for many years when you are, on TV, and I'm happy to do
Jane:Well, you're very kind. Hey. I wanna start with something I didn't even know about until I met you, and that's the Dallas sleep study. Just tell us about it, what it is, and what we what you learned from it.
Dr. Levine:So so it's not really a sleep study. It's a bed study.
Jane:Bed rest study.
Dr. Levine:Those are fundamentally different. Right?
Jane:My bad.
Dr. Levine:In in, probably one of the most famous studies in our field was done by my mentors, Gunnar Blumquist, Jerry Mitchell, and Bengts' whole team here in Dallas in the nineteen sixties. They took five young men, put them to bed for three weeks. When I say bed, I mean, they had to lie in bed. They couldn't get up to go to the toilet. They they were in bed the whole time for three weeks.
Jane:What did they lose during that, what seems like to us short amount of time, three weeks?
Dr. Levine:Yeah, it's amazing. I mean the process of this cardiovascularly deconditioning really begins within the first twenty four hours of bed rest. You're not doing any physical activity, you're not pumping blood against gravity, and the heart remodels, it gradually adapts. It atrophies, you lose about 1% of your heart muscle mass a week. That's pretty extraordinary.
Dr. Levine:Fact, we put people to bed for longer periods of time, five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, twelve weeks. About 1% a week, the heart just gets smaller and smaller. It's exactly the opposite that you see with endurance training. Now, it was published, it was done in the 1960s. You know, I was only 10 years old.
Dr. Levine:I had nothing to do with that study. But what was really interesting is that in the mid nineties, when I was a junior faculty member at UT Southwestern, we found those same five guys and we brought them back to Dallas. Thirty years of aging than they were after three weeks of bed rest when they were in their twenties. So three weeks of bed rest was worse for the body's ability to do physical work than thirty years of aging. And that awareness of the profound effect of bed rest deconditioning and its relationship to aging really launched a whole series of studies for me funded by NASA and NIH and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute to really try to understand what that really means.
Dr. Levine:So what does that tell you, about the importance of activity in everyday life? So what we did next was we said, okay, let's compare a group of healthy seniors with a group of healthy young people and say, how does this, what happens as you age that may recapitulate this bed rest response? And what we see is even in very healthy seniors, the heart shrinks and atrophies. That we don't see that in people who have remained highly physically active. So being very physically active, I mean, we've looked at different amounts of training, but being very physically active can prevent that cardiac remodeling, which is a hallmark of getting older.
Dr. Levine:Well, what's
Jane:so shocking, I think, to me, and probably most people, is how quickly things happen when you don't get movement, when you're not exercising. We're gonna talk about exactly what kinds of exercise are most beneficial. But I just when we say aging, the heart shrinks, what does that translate to in terms of real life for people in their, say, 75, 85? How does that compromise your life in real life?
Dr. Levine:Well, the symptoms are let me just give you an example. Let's say that you wanna take a brisk walk down your block, okay? And when you're 20 years old, you take that brisk walk. Let's say you walk at three and a half miles an hour. Let's say your heart rate then is, goes from 60 to 75 beats a minute, and your breathing goes from, let's say 12 breaths a minute to 15 breaths a minute.
Dr. Levine:Okay? Because it's a relatively small fraction of your maximal capacity. Now you're 65 or 70 and you've basically been centering your whole life. So the heart has shrunken, it's stiffened. And now you go to walk that same three and a half miles an hour, but you're pumping half as much blood.
Dr. Levine:So to do that, you've got to pump twice as many times per minute. And to do that, that's telling the body it's under stress. So now you're breathing instead of 15 times a minute, maybe it's 25 or 30 breaths a minute and maybe you're building up more lactate in your muscles and you're getting more tired and fatigued. So any given amount of work feels much harder because you've either been in bed or you've gotten older and not, paid attention or sustained your fitness.
Jane:Well, I'm gonna tell you, I'm just gonna insert this. You're making me feel pretty good because I'm think I go for an hour of cardio a day, and I'm thinking I do about three and a half to four miles in that hour. So for 69 years old, soon to be 70, I'm not doing bad. Right?
Dr. Levine:No, I think you're doing exactly right. But let me say this, do you check your heart rate? Do you have a wearable that you check your heart rate?
Jane:No, I should, I guess.
Dr. Levine:No, I'm not saying that you should. How hard does it feel? Let's say, is it mild, moderate, easy, moderate, or hard?
Jane:I'd say moderate and I wanna get to something I've incorporated since I started following you in just a minute and that's vigorous exercise. But I'd say moderate if I'm just doing a regular day.
Dr. Levine:All right, so if you're doing a regular day and you're going with a friend, can you talk to your friend? Yes. Can you sing?
Jane:I can't, I'm not, I can't carry
Dr. Levine:I'm not asking whether you can sing, Jeanine. I'm asking whether if one wanted to sing, could you sing?
Jane:It would be a little difficult.
Dr. Levine:Exactly. So that's the perfect intensity for that kind of workout. Now, if you had not been able, been doing things for a long period of time or sustained your regular physical activity, you might find that same brisk walk or if you went with a partner or a friend who had not been as active as you, you might find that not only can't they sing, but they can't talk. And you're the one who has to do all the talk. And that's sort of a practical example that it is too hard for them, that same pace that for you matches the talk test.
Dr. Levine:It's too hard for them to do even that. So
Jane:that's an
Dr. Levine:example of the difference of sustaining that physical activity over time.
Jane:Got it. Well, my objective is not to make somebody feel bad. My objective is to encourage people. So here's my question. If somebody's listening or watching, and let's say that for whatever reason you haven't exercised and you're looking, you're saying, you know, I'm hearing what he's saying, and I really want to pick this up.
Jane:Can you get there? Can you not not there as in a goal, but can you get to where if you start out slowly maybe? And what would you recommend? Do you start out slowly? And then what can can you help yourself out even if you're 65 or 75 and you haven't really done a lot in this area?
Dr. Levine:Well, that's a great question. And we spend a lot of time trying to sort that out. So let's say that you haven't done anything for much of your adult life. And at age 70, you have an epiphany and you say, okay, I'm gonna get myself fitter. And you start on a training program.
Dr. Levine:And I will say there's, I'm gonna give you the good news and then I'm gonna give you the bad news. Okay. The good news is that you can absolutely get fitter. That's important. Most of that fitness is gonna come from allowing your skeletal muscle to extract the oxygen from the blood that comes to it.
Dr. Levine:So you can absolutely get fitter and you can improve your ability to function, no question. You can also probably improve the function of the blood vessels. That is they'll relax a little bit better. The bad news is that you can't change the structure. That means that if heart and your blood vessels have stiffened and atrophied for fifty years, you can't reverse that at age 70.
Dr. Levine:It's just a little bit too late. There's some nuance to that, but the bottom line is 70 is probably a little too late to make a fundamental change in the structure of your heart and blood vessels.
Jane:That doesn't mean it's not worth doing and make That's that absolutely true.
Dr. Levine:Yes, I think that's an important message. You absolutely can get fitter. It's helpful to prevent diabetes. It's helpful to, preserve the function of your blood vessels, to control your cholesterol and things like that. No question that it's useful.
Jane:If you haven't done anything and you're 70 years old and you've decided, hey, I need to get out and do some walking or whatever, you can't physically change the structure of your heart. But the fact that you can get more blood pumping through your blood vessels, loosen those up, all those kind of things, those are gonna make your quality of life better. It's definitely worth doing. Right?
Dr. Levine:Absolutely. Is. That's right.
Jane:Okay. Now let me ask you something about the type because there's a lot of people now I mean, I see a ton of people out in the mornings and the evenings walking. Okay. And since I listened to you, I have started incorporating, I don't know what you call it, Japanese walking, intermittent walking, whatever, where I'll walk at a, like I said, a moderate pace, you know, comfortable pace for a while, and then I'll for about four four minutes three or four minutes, I'll really haul. I don't run because I have a hip replacement and I don't want to get another one.
Jane:But I really walk as hard as I can, as brisk as I can, vigorous where it's really straining me. And then I'll go back and I'll do quieter walking for a little bit, but about four times during that hour, four or five times during that hour, I really get that vigorous spurt in. How important is that?
Dr. Levine:Well, I think that's an essential part of anybody's exercise plan. What you're describing is something that is called the four by four. It's an old Norwegian ski team workout and it basically uses four minutes as hard as you can go, generally 95% of your maximum, but a good rule of thumb is at the end of those four minutes you should be ready to stop. Yeah. And then three minutes of recovery where you're going very easy.
Dr. Levine:And by the end of those three minutes, you should be able to go ready to go again. And you do that four times. And that is a very effective way of building endurance. So it's a high intensity interval effort. There are lots of different types of high intensity training.
Dr. Levine:HIIT is what people call it. Each one has a little bit of difference. I think that some of those differences are more nuanced depending on what you're if you have a competitive goal. I'm a big fan of the four by four. I think it's one of the best.
Dr. Levine:But you could do two by six, for example. If you, you know, for whatever reason, you could only go as far as you can for two minutes, followed by three minutes of recovery, do six of those instead of four by fours. That's fine too. There's a guy in Canada named Marty Gobala who feels that there's important metabolic benefits from doing even thirty seconds of all out effort. You know, so I think my own prescription for life, if you will, is to do, four to five days of some physical activity in this kind of distribution.
Dr. Levine:Pick one day a week and do something that lasts at least an hour and that's fun. So I don't care what that is. It could be, you know, taking a bike ride with your kids. It could be playing tennis. It could be going square dancing.
Dr. Levine:I don't care. But it lasts at least an hour and is fun. I think you should do one day a week of this higher intensity effort, let's call it HIIT training, and then two or three days a week of the moderate intensity activity that you described so well at the beginning of this podcast that what's called zone two training where you can talk but you can't sing. So you get a little sweat on your brow, little bit short of breath, you can still carry on a conversation and you can sustain that for at least thirty minutes. You wanna do it longer, that's great.
Dr. Levine:And then incorporate into that overall paradigm one or two days a week of strength training. And again, strength training doesn't mean you have to lift barbells, right? It can be Pilates, it could be strength yoga, it could be, you know, Tai Chi, anything that requires balance and muscle training. And that's my prescription for life that as best as I can tell from a lot of data that keeps you as vigorously healthy as you can be. It attacks the different components of exercise, to maximize blood flow, maximize heart, strength, muscle strength, and keeps you physically capable of doing the things you wanna do.
Jane:Okay. Something else that I heard you say that I think has relevance for everybody is you talked about the lessons that we took out of COVID with respect to rest after sickness and long COVID. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Levine:Sure. So one of the things we saw with COVID is that people got sick, they didn't feel well and they were quarantined for a period of time. Now some people with COVID, particularly with the early COVID strains got quite sick. And I'm not talking about those people. Those are people who we in our, we published a practice, an expert, a practice plan program with the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Dr. Levine:And those are people who have long COVID or PASC is the term, post acute sequelae of COVID, PASC CVD, cardiovascular disease. And that is that there are legions of problems that occurred particularly early on. I'm talking about the people who didn't get terribly sick, didn't need to be hospitalized, didn't need a lot of medication, were quarantined for a while, and we then found that many weeks later they still had fatigue and symptoms. But what I learned from the COVID pandemic, because I worked with the NCAA and many of our competitive athletes, we had three thousand six hundred NCAA athletes who were COVID positive. I know that because we tested them once a week, right?
Dr. Levine:It was a lot of And how many of those do you think had symptoms that lasted more than twelve weeks? The operational definition of long COVID.
Jane:Out of three thousand six hundred?
Dr. Levine:Yeah. What percent?
Jane:Three sixty, ten percent. I don't know.
Dr. Levine:And so that's okay. You're quoting numbers that have been sent around in the media, ten percent, twenty percent. In the NCAA, it was two athletes. That is zero point zero six percent. Why is that?
Dr. Levine:Mean, athletes are not magic. Yes, they're competitive, but they don't have miracle bodies. It's because I think because as soon as they finished their quarantine, they got out of bed, out of their house and started training with an athletic trainer. So avoiding the prolonged bed rest. And remember, we started this podcast by talking about the severe effects of prolonged bed rest on the human body's ability to do anything.
Dr. Levine:So avoiding that bed rest deconditioning and allowing them to get right back into some sort of training, slow, progressive, basically headed off long COVID in virtually all of those three thousand six hundred.
Jane:That's fascinating. So what is that? What's the takeaway for regular people?
Dr. Levine:Well, I think the takeaway when you get sick is okay, rest while you're sick. And then as soon as you are able, get out of bed and start I mean, I'm not saying the day you go out of bed, you should run your first marathon, right? That's like get out and take a walk around the block and then the next day, walk around the block twice and the next day, you know, add some little bit of walk a little bit faster. But depending on where you were before you got sick, get out of bed, don't lie around in bed, increase your physical activity as soon as you are able. Okay, we've got statins, dementia, and
Jane:lots more to come. We'll be right back. We love to travel. Right? I've got a surprise coming up.
Jane:In just a couple of weeks, I'm going to announce our first trip that we are going to be doing together. We're gonna be doing this trip through a travel companion of mine, the sponsor of
Dr. Levine:the
Jane:show, Sharon Carr Travel. Casey at Sharon Carr Travel is just the best, and he has an exciting adventure lined up for us. Because you are a subscriber to the podcast, you will be one of the first to be notified because there are a limited number of available reservations. I'm super excited about this, and I can't wait to tell you more about it very, very soon. I found you because I was listening to this podcast.
Jane:Now I found it fascinating talking about how vigorous exercise can maybe help prevent dementia. Talk about that, please.
Dr. Levine:Sure. So so there's lots of epidemiologic data that highly active populations have substantially reduced, rates of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I think that's not controversial. Why that is exactly is a little bit less certain. So, in other words, I can't tell you that it's not because people are well or better, healthier, and they don't have dementia that enables them to continue to be physically active.
Dr. Levine:So that's my caveat to begin with. And our team led by Doctor. Rong Zhang in the Department of Neurology at UT Southwestern has really studied this in great detail. But he started simply by taking healthy older people and putting them on a training program and doing very detailed assessments of their brain blood flow and the blood vessels going to their brain. And what they found was that indeed exercise training, like all our other studies, make people fitter.
Dr. Levine:It also improves the blood flow through the carotid arteries and improves blood flow to the brain. And maybe, maybe reduce some of these things called white matter hyperintensity, the very earliest signs of structural changes in the brain with aging that lead to cognitive impairment. And since some of those early studies, they did show perhaps some improvement in memory and different assessments of brain function. Of course, that's great for healthy people, but the real question is what about people who are maybe at the earliest stages of cognitive impairment, the MCI, mild cognitive impairment? And they did those studies too, and they found that, yes indeed, even a patient with MCI, you can make them fitter, right, and you can improve their blood flow to their brain.
Dr. Levine:Now it's hard to do studies over twenty years, right? Their studies are relatively short duration. So it was reassuring that they could improve blood flow to the brain. What was interesting is they used a control population. One did endurance training, and the control population just did yoga or stretching.
Dr. Levine:And both of the host groups actually seemed to have improvement in their cognitive function and stabilization. So it wasn't that an aerobic training was far superior to yoga balance and things like that. So I don't consider that a negative study. I consider positive that engagement, active engagement, things that improve your health are positive. They have done and are in the middle of doing a number of studies looking at physical activity and intensive blood pressure lowering.
Dr. Levine:You may, your audience may have heard or read in the newspaper about the new blood pressure guidelines and the effort by all of us in cardiovascular medicine to really treat hypertension more aggressively. And they're now looking at accumulation of this amyloid protein tau in the brain using MRI and PET scanning. It's miraculous new technology available at UT Southwestern. And they randomly assign people into intensive blood pressure lowering and physical activity and regular standard blood pressure lowering. We don't have the results of those studies yet.
Dr. Levine:They've really made a big effort to include people of diverse backgrounds, diverse ethnic backgrounds, Spanish speaking, African Americans, Caucasians of different socioeconomic groups. So if your audience is interested, email me, email Jane, she'll put you in contact with Doctor. Zhang and his team. We're actively recruiting for those trials right now.
Jane:Okay. I'll put that in the show notes. I want to touch on something else while we're talking about dementia, because I started this firestorm. I didn't know I was going to do But I started this firestorm on social media when I said that the doctor who I had seen recommended for me, because I do have plaque in my arteries, which can be seen with this Clearly scan, which sees the plaque in the arteries. And even though my cholesterol isn't that high, she said, we need to get your cholesterol down because we don't want any more accumulation.
Jane:So she recommended a small dose of statins along with healthy diet, exercise, all the above. But this firestorm was from people saying statins cause dementia. The incidence of Alzheimer's has gone up commensurate with the increased use of statins. Can you shed any light on the latest
Dr. Levine:I can say I can say with absolute confidence that statins do not increase the risk of dementia. Statins are among the most highly studied medications in all of the cardiovascular armamentarium and frankly the lower your cholesterol, the healthier your blood vessels, the less likely you are to have dementia. So focusing on your vascular health is imperative. And your audience may have heard from the American Heart Meetings that even in patients who've not had heart attacks, but people who have elevated risk from an elevated calcium or a coronary CT angiogram or have diabetes, that being very aggressive by adding drugs that really lower your cholesterol as our targets are progressively getting lower. I mean, even five years ago, I used to target under 70, and then I started targeting under 55, and now for LDL, for the bad cholesterol.
Dr. Levine:And now, frankly, in patients who have a higher risk for a variety of reasons, I'm even targeting under 40. And we have the ability to do that with modern medicine. I do think it's important to realize that the biggest bang for your buck in statins, particularly the high intensity statins, comes from low dose. I mean, 50% reduction in your LDL cholesterol from five milligrams of rosuvastatin. And, you know, if you if you double that dose, you don't get a lot more bang, 6% or so per doubling.
Dr. Levine:The rule of sixes, if you will. But you there are other drugs that are available that are more potent, and we're seeing tremendous reductions in adverse cardiovascular outcomes, heart attack, stroke and perhaps dementia as well. So I think people in your audience should come away from this knowing clearly that what you want to do is protect your blood vessels. And you protect them in the brain and you protect them in the carotid arteries and you protect them in the heart and you protect them in your periphery. Protect those blood vessels and, treat them aggressively.
Jane:We're gonna be right back with a couple of final thoughts, and I wanna ask you real quickly about sleep. We'll be right back. Just wanna mention something to you real quick here. If you just happen to be listening to this podcast today or maybe you just happen to be watching on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast because that way you'll get notifications every time a new episode drops. Also, there are gonna be lots of events coming up, like I mentioned earlier, the travel opportunity, all kinds of things that are gonna be available to subscribers first.
Jane:So please subscribe to the podcast or subscribe on YouTube. Set your notifications so you get notified whenever a new episode drops. We appreciate you. It's not possible without you. I think one of the things that I try to tell people, you know, we tend to think, well, you know, I'm okay.
Jane:I mean, my heart's okay. My muscles are okay. I'm functioning okay. I'm 65 or whatever. And I'm just kinda go along here.
Jane:Am I accurate in saying that if you don't use it, it's not just gonna stay the same. Your heart function, your muscles, all that, it's gonna decline. It's gonna atrophy. Is that right?
Dr. Levine:I think that that's essentially true, Jane. And the way I discuss this with my patients is that exercise needs to be part of your personal hygiene. You brush your teeth every day, change your clothes, take a shower, have a meal, at least one. These are things you do to nourish your body and take care of it. And exercise can't be something that you just add on at the end of the day because you have to.
Dr. Levine:You want to incorporate it into your daily life or your weekly life so that it becomes a natural part of your daily hygiene. And you wanna sustain that over the duration of your life. If something hurts, switch to a different mode, do a different type of exercise. But you need to sustain it and that's really important.
Jane:What about sleep? How important is sleep for your heart?
Dr. Levine:Sure. So, know, the sleep is important, think, not just for your heart, but for your overall well-being, right? So in our modern society with so many electric devices and ease of access for this blue light entertainment, it becomes increasingly difficult get to sleep and to sustain sleep. Particularly, older women in the perimenopausal or postmenopausal state, I mean, this is my wife's biggest problem, is getting to sleep and staying asleep. So I think that everybody, most people should know good sleep hygiene, that is try to stay away from screens within the hour or at least thirty minutes before you go to sleep.
Dr. Levine:Try to regularize your timing. One of the things that works really well is to do some mindfulness yoga thirty minutes before bedtime. That raises your melatonin levels naturally and helps you get to sleep and sustain sleep. So I think relaxation response is really important. And know, different people need different amounts of sleep so I'm not going to give you a particular number but establishing a regular routine as best as possible.
Dr. Levine:Don't panic if one day you're off your routine, that's okay. You know, we're talking the long game here. How does it develop a pattern, physical activity, healthy diet, limited amounts of alcohol, no cigarette smoking, good regular sleep, good emotional engagement with your community, with a partner, with your family, with friends. These are the ways to stay healthy, and live long and well.
Jane:When you mention diet, a lot of people ask me, what kind of diet should I be doing? I mean, my shorthand for the diet that I try to follow, I think would be a Mediterranean diet. Is heart
Dr. Levine:healthy as they say? The Mediterranean diet is probably the one that's had the most research in terms of cardiovascular health and it's also not magic. I am not one who believes in magic even though I'm a big fan of Harry Potter. But the Mediterranean diet includes limited amounts of meat, plenty of fish, some lean meats are okay, but pasta, olive oil, whole grain breads, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. You can find lots of resources online for an example of the Mediterranean diet and that's the one that probably has been most carefully studied in terms of long term cardiovascular health.
Dr. Levine:There are more intensive diets that have been touted and promoted. And for people who really oppose medication and want to manage every aspect of their life without that, if they do have elevated cholesterol and coronary disease, is evidence that a very restricted, you know, vegan type diet with low calories can do some benefit and reverse some cardiovascular disease. Most of the people who do that, it's not a very fun diet and so much of life is the joy that we get in life comes from food and life around food. And so I don't recommend it to people. If they're insistent, then I'll give them some support for it.
Dr. Levine:But I would, I tell people, look, you never know when you're going to get a car walking across the street, right? So do the things that give you joy and pleasure. Keep physically active, eat a good healthy diet, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, whole grain breads. If you have a hamburger once in a while, don't worry about it. It's not going to hurt you, one hamburger, one night pizza.
Dr. Levine:Don't worry about that. Right? It's the long game and just develop a healthy lifestyle.
Jane:I've tried the vegan thing. I cannot eat tofu at every meal. I just can't do it. I wanna wrap up with one final question, and that is just that, what what have you seen in your work that has inspired you to live the way you live? What have you seen with people in and out of your clinic, all the athletes you've worked with?
Jane:What's your takeaway for how you live your life?
Dr. Levine:Oh, you know, I think everybody's individual, Jean, you know, so I've been a competitive athlete when I was in high school and college. I've lived around the world. I've been I probably haven't missed more than two or three days a week of some physical activity in fifty years. You know, I I do live that. I incorporated it into my daily hygiene.
Dr. Levine:You know, I have 14 pieces of equipment in my house. I think my wife will kill me if I bring one more home. So, you know, I and for me, I figured out a way to engage and do it and I enjoy it and it gives me a sense of purpose and strength. I don't care so much about competition anymore. There's a lot of competition in my life, but there are others, many of my athletes, particularly masters athletes, the competition is an important goal for them.
Dr. Levine:And then I think one perhaps an important message for your audience is that you get the maximal bang for your buck of physical activity somewhere around three to five hours a week. Okay? If you do more than that, you don't necessarily get more health. But if you want to do an RMA triathlon, you got to train more than five hours a week. Right?
Dr. Levine:So there's training for performance and there's training for health. And so there are a number of diseases that are related to physical inactivity and I don't see them at all in my competitive athletes. I've never seen a competitive athlete with heart failure and a preserved ejection fraction, for example. That being said, you know, exercise is not a miracle and it won't protect you from every aspect of life, the vagaries of life. So, you'd exercise not because you're planning to live to 110, but because you wanna live well and vigorously and be able to achieve the things that you want to be able to do.
Dr. Levine:So, you know, you open the program by talking about living long. And I think lifespan is important, but health span may be even the more important. So live well and live healthy so that you can do the things that you want to do. You know, life's going to throw you curveballs. So don't blame yourself if, you know, you get breast cancer or if you have a heart attack or, you know, something happens that you didn't expect because that happens to all of us.
Dr. Levine:You just, do the best you can to live healthy.
Jane:Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with us today. We really appreciate it. Thank you.
Dr. Levine:My pleasure, Jane. You take care.
Jane:I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I had the opportunity to go tour his facilities at, the University of Texas Presbyterian Hospital facilities. It was fascinating the work they're doing there. He does a lot of work, as I said, with NASA. He really downplayed a lot of things.
Jane:But I just I I'm so glad we had the opportunity to learn from him and, just impresses on me the importance of all of us doing the very best we can at where we are in our lives. As always, none of this would be possible without you. I so appreciate you being part of this community. And if this is your first podcast or your first YouTube with me, please subscribe because you'll get notifications as to when new episodes are dropping. Also, I have some kinda cool things coming involving travel, and subscribers are gonna be, like, first on the list for all that.
Jane:So thank you for being part of ageless with Jane McGarry.