Dhru Purohit Show - Doing THIS Simple Thing Will Improve Your Blood Sugar and Focus with Dhru Purohit

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and BiOptimizers. ​​Want to know a simple way to improve your insulin sensitivity, fasting insulin, and HbA1c that you can start doing today? Sit for one hour less per day—just one hour less! This is something anyone can do. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but according to a recent study, reducing sedentary time by just one hour per day can have remarkable benefits for your metabolic health. Our modern-day sedentary lifestyle puts us at risk for blood sugar imbalances, weight gain, and chronic disease. But the good news is that you don’t need to do hardcore workouts or hit the gym for hours on end to get the benefits of movement. Breaking up the time you spend sitting with simple movement throughout the day can be enough to make a significant impact on your metabolic lab markers. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru shares the findings from a recent study that our friend Chris Kresser brought to his attention. He also gives us practical tips on how to easily incorporate more movement into your daily life. Also mentioned in this episode: -Try This: A Study Shows How a Little Movement Can Make a Big Difference for Your Metabolic Health  -Try This: Walk Your Way into Optimal Physical and Mental Health -Walking More Will Radically Improve Your Health, Here's How!  -A Practice to Feel Refreshed, Revived, and Refocused  -A Super-Simple Hack to Optimize Your Blood Sugar This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and BiOptimizers. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. It contains 7 different forms of magnesium, which all have different functions in the body. There isn't anything else like it on the market. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off, just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru with code DHRU10. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. Today we're going to be talking about something so freaking crazy simple that you couldn't even imagine that it could have that much of a difference on your health. And it actually does. What are we talking about here? We're talking about what the heck happens when you sit for one less hour per day. That's it. Just one less hour a day. So if you normally sit, let's say six hours a day, totally. sitting time in the office chair, on the couch, in the car. What happens if you just sit for five hours instead of six hours? That's simple. You can do that. I can do that. Anybody can do that. And the thing is, why would you be interested in sitting for just one less hour a day? I'll tell you why. If you care about your metabolic health, you want to improve your insulin sensitivity, which, by the way, many doctors on my podcast previously have come on and said, if there was one test they would have. If they could only order one test, and obviously they can't,

it's just a game, kind of like a hypothetical that we play sometimes, to put priority on things. If there was one test that they could order, that test would be fasting insulin, because it's one of the greatest indicators of someone's overall metabolic health. It's not the complete picture, but it's one of the strongest indicators. So if you care about improving your insulin, insulin sensitivity, which means improving your fasting insulin number and getting it to be lower.

If you want to improve your hemoglobin A1C, which, by the way, a lot of people know that term, hemoglobin A1C, it's not just important for people who are diabetic or prediabetes. It's important for everyone. A higher hemoglobin A1C score is linked to a whole host of issues that people face. So if you want to improve all those markers, this is why you want to care about this topic. And I'm going to go into a study that recently came across my desk from a friend of mine, Chris Cressor, check them out in the show notes. And the study was published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. And that study is titled, Effects of Reduced Sedentary Time on Cardiometabolic

Health in Adults with Metabolic Syndrome, a three-month randomized controlled trial. Now, before we get into the findings and why it's so important, I think that we can all agree that our modern sedentary lifestyle is kind of nuts. We've never sat more as a species. And that sedentary lifestyle puts us at risk for blood sugar imbalances, weight gain, chronic disease, and just a general feeling of being stuck, stuck in life, actually feeling stuck. Like we can't make progress on the things that we care about. But this is the big butt. The good news is that we don't always need,

I'm a huge fan of high-intensity workouts, I'm a huge fan of like big interventions, but oftentimes when people are just thinking about how to get started, they need simple, practical things that they can do today, especially, no matter how fit you are, there's times where everybody finds himself in a rut. And when you're in a rut and you're out of your routine and you've fallen off the bandwagon, so to speak, which by the way happens to all of us, right?

We have to get back on with simple tiny habits. And it's these simple tiny habits that make a difference in our life over a long period of time. So even though it seems crazy that just sitting one hour less a day could make that much of a difference in our health, it's a fantastic tiny habit, especially if there's anybody here that it feels like. You know, I set the intention of working out more this year and I'm still not making that progress. Okay, that's fine. Don't worry about that. Let's start small. Let's start small.

How about just sitting one hour less a day? I'm going to talk about what that means and what that looks like. But first, let's go into the big picture. Why this is so important is that sitting less can improve our metabolic health. And if you've been a fan of this podcast, you know I'm going to pull from an article for my dear friend Casey Means one of the founders at levels, the continuous glucose monitor company, a couple highlights on metabolism and metabolic health, just as a refresher for anybody who's listening.

Here's why metabolism as a topic is important for everyone to understand. So metabolism is the set of cellular mechanisms that produce energy from our food and environment to power every process in the human body. metabolic health is a term that's used to describe how well we generate and process energy in the body. If you have poor metabolic health, you're not good at processing energy in the body. Glucose is a primary precursor for energy in the body and needs to be tightly regulated for metabolism to work effectively. When we have a lot of sugar or refined carbohydrates in our diet without a lot of good healthy fat, fiber, and protein, our glucose can get out of whack, and that can lead to poor metabolism.

A couple of the things about metabolic health. Metabolic health can be improved by consistently making choices that keep glucose levels in a stable and healthy range, which is why we're talking about this study. Participants in this study in the Journal of Science and Medicine and Sport saw an improvement in their glucose. We're going to talk about that in a second. A couple more things about metabolic health. Poor metabolic health is associated with worse brain function, energy, memory, mood,

skin health, fertility, and risk of chronic disease. As a country, the United States, our metabolic health is extremely poor, with 88% of the American population displaying, and increasingly the world population, at least one sign of metabolic dysfunction. metabolic dysfunction underlines every chronic disease that's out there. This is why we care about this topic of improving our metabolism, and our metabolism is connected to how often we sit. This is why breaking up, here's the punchline, breaking up the time you spend sitting with simple movements throughout the day can be enough to make.

a small but significant impact on your metabolic lab markers. And on today's podcast, I'm sharing the findings from this recent study. Again, shout out to my friend Chris Cressor, who brought it to my attention. And I'm also going to give you some practical tips on how to easily incorporate more movement into your daily life. You know, the thing is that you know that movement is good for you. I know that movement is good for me. But sometimes I need to hear it again.

Sometimes I need to listen to a podcast or see an Instagram clip or whatever from somebody that I resonate with to get me excited, especially when I feel like I've gotten a little bit off a track. And I don't know about you, but sometimes when I get off track, I beat myself up and I think I have to make up for my lack of progress in some area of my life. And I've definitely struggled with that with movement over the years with some intense series of workouts and it's got to be exactly this and I've got to do it the right way. and today's episode is not just championing sitting less, but it's also championing forgiving yourself, not beating yourself up if you feel like you haven't made progress and not just movement, but any area of your life. And realizing that today, starting right now,

this moment, actually, we can set the intention with tiny steps towards something that we want to make progress on. I've experimented with every eating approach in the bowl, book. I'm talking about raw foodist, vegan, vegetarian, meat eater, you name it, I've tried it. And the truth is, at first, I felt pretty good on all of them until I didn't. The common denominator for all these diets is the fact that they're all made up of mostly whole foods and free from processed foods, which will do anybody good. But after some time has passed, I still didn't feel like I was thriving. I was dealing with some lingering gut issues, endotoxemia, and acne

breakouts. Through a bunch of trial and error, I found that following one specific eating style wasn't the answer for me. And maybe it hasn't been the answer for you either. In my personal opinion, I think technology can be a critical part of the solution in helping us figure out what foods are best suited for our own unique genetic makeup. That's why I was super excited when I heard about Inside Tracker. Inside Tracker helps take the guesswork out of living optimally and creates a nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle plan that's personalized. That's the key word personalized for you based on your blood work, DNA, and personal preferences. InsideTrackers, cutting-edge technology gives you science-backed recommendations for positive changes to your daily habits.

With their app, you can track your progress every day, and they even have an amazing support team to help you with all your questions. InsideTracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. It even tests your cortisol levels to help you better manage stress, and you have the option to see how your inner age compares to your chronological age. InsideTracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. And now you can even connect InsideTracker to your Apple Watch to unlock deeper, more personalized insights into your health. With real-time exercise, resting heart rate, and even sleep data synced with your InsideTracker plan, you can truly wear your health right on your sleep. Right now, InsideTracker is offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com slash DHRU.

That's true. InsideTracker.com slash DHRU to get your 20% discount code and try it for yourself. That's InsideTracker.com backslash DHRU for 20% off. This episode is brought to you by Buy Optimizers Magnesium Breakthrough. If I had a top 10 list, which I do actually, my friends, text me all the time. What supplements should I be taking? What is on my top 10 list? One of those that would be absolutely on that list is magnesium. This super mineral is needed for over 600 enzyme reactions in your body, which means that when you don't have enough of it, that's 600 different things that are

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Dr. Neil Patel, who I first heard about magnesium breakthrough from. Magnesium breakthrough can help reduce cortisol and stress, and it promotes deeper relaxation and sleep and helps with even things like anxiety. I have so many friends reaching out to me saying that they've felt so much better and relaxed after they incorporated a high-quality magnesium supplement into their diet like magnesium breakthrough. And the makers of this magnesium bi-optimizers are great because all their products are soy-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, non-GMO, free of chemicals and fillers and made with all natural ingredients. Right now, bioptimizers is offering my community 10% off of their magnesium breakthrough supplement, which is on my top 10 list, and any other bi-optimizers products.

Just head over to mag breakthrough.com slash drew and use the code drew 10. That's M-A-G-B-R-E-A-K-T-R-O-U-G-H-R-U-G-H-Mag breakthrough. com slash D-H-R-U with the code Drew D-H-R-U 10. Tiny steps towards something that we want to make progress on. And yes, we're talking about movement, but no, we're talking about anything in your life. anything in your life that you want to make progress on that you feel stuck on, let's take a tiny step in that direction. That tiny step will lead to another step.

We'll lead to another step. And we'll build momentum in the right direction. And that's really the key. How do we incorporate and build momentum in the right direction? And a big part of that is actually self-love and self-compassion. Don't beat yourself up when you fall off track. Don't beat yourself up. when you feel like it's been a tough week.

Or that it's been challenging because you had to give a lot of attention to your family or your business is struggling a little bit and you're not sure what to do. We don't feel inspired in your job and you feel a little bit more lazy this week. Okay, great. That happened. That's reality. You're doing the best that you know how. Let's not beat ourselves up and let's take a step in the right direction.

All right. That's my motivational speech for today. And really the context of today's episode is so much more than just not sitting. Let it be an analogy for the rest of things in your life that you want to make progress on. All right, enough about that. Enough of my little Tony Robbins motivational moment. Let's talk about the study and break it down. All right.

A little bit about the study design. Researchers in Finland studied 63 middle-aged adults with metabolic syndrome, who sat for at least 10 hours per day, which is pretty typical. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups. The first group continued their sedentary lifestyle, while the second group was instructed to reduce their sedentary time, their total time sitting by just one hour per day for three months. One hour per day.

Anybody can do it. I can do it. You can do it. We can all sit one hour less per day. Now, the goal of study was to see if breaking up long periods of sitting with standing, and light movement, light walking, could have a positive impact on blood sugar and metabolic health markers. Okay, let's talk about the results. So here's the results of the study. At the end of three months, the intervention group reduced their daily sitting time by 50 minutes, not quite the

goal of one hour, but very close. And shortening the duration of time spent sitting by 50 minutes a day, was enough to significantly improve insulin sensitivity, fasting insulin, and hemoglobin A1C levels, all tied to improving our overall metabolic health. This coincided with lower triglycerides and better markers of liver health as well too. Now, here's what this means, and yes, this study is small, it's one study. We don't want to hype it up to be something bigger than it needs to be, but we want to give it attention because it's far too often that we don't have enough of these little studies that end up coming up. And, you know, some people may look at this and say, well, duh, you know,

sitting less, of course. But then other people look at it and say, wow, I knew that. But the fact that they actually did a study on it and prove that it works is the reminder that I needed. So if you were in the first camp, if you were like, duh, I already knew that. Okay, great. Maybe this is not an area of your life that you struggle with and maybe you are doing it. Now, if you do know that sitting less is important and walking more and moving more is important and you're not doing it, okay, fine. Sometimes in areas of our life that we don't feel like we're fully the expert in or we haven't fully incorporated into our rhythm and our habits, we need external reminders. We need somebody to talk about the obvious things that are there and maybe with a little bit of proof.

So here's what this study means and a little bit of context around it. So these results are consistent with the growing body of evidence that shows that less time spent sitting is beneficial for a metabolic health. What I love most about this study is that it provides a minimum viable dose for measurable improvements, which goes to show you that you don't need to do anything crumably. crazy to get results to start. Now, I say to start because we do know from friends of this podcast from different people that have been on, we just recently had on Dr. Walter Longo, Dr. Gabriel Lyon, a friend of mine, and even though they have difference of opinions on protein and other things

like that, they both were talking about how important it is to do some sort of rigorous activity or movement. So yes, if we want to improve our skeletal muscle, okay, for sure. you know, lifting weights, some resistance type of training or bands, even if the idea of lifting weights seems very foreign to you, or it's like, what? That's what bodybuilders do. Even using things like bands, workout bands that you can get on Amazon and you can look up as a app that's out there that's free that has a bunch of workouts on there. And I think the paid membership is like $9.99 a month. It's called TB12. It's a whole series of band workouts developed by Tom Brady, who's a friend of my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman. And I really love his system. And

that's kind of the band workout that I do at home when I can't make it into the gym. So yes, you don't need to do anything crazy to get started, right? And you can still see improvements that are there. And as you graduate up and sitting less for you is easy. And you're like, wow, I want more, which is how health should feel. You should crave to want more because being healthy feels good. Find that type of thing for you that feels good. So yes, you don't need to do anything crazy to get started. And still, you don't need to do anything crazy to achieve results,

but you may have to graduate a little bit higher over a period of time, but the hardest part for people is just getting started. So this study shows practitioners how they can do a better job. Many doctors that are out there that are trying to support their patients who are at risk for cardiometabolic disease. They'll often say lose weight and exercise more. Well, something like just sit one hour less a day and giving that as a measurable goal to a lot of people

could be a good way of creating a tiny habit for their patients. And by meeting people with where they're at and helping them set small, specific goals, instead of giving super vague advice that I mentioned earlier, eat less and exercise more, physicians, practitioners all around the world can help build their confidence in their patients. And by the way, it's not just the doctor-to-patient relationship.

If you have parents, you know, I have parents who are getting older, my dad's in his 70s, my mom is in her late 60s, and giving them advice of just sitting one hour less a day or walking a set amount, a small attainable, measurable goal is a great way for them because they never had a history of working out and lifting weights. My dad played sports, but my mom, it's very new to her. So giving her these small, actionable things is a great way to help her get started. And as we saw in the study, small burst of movements add up over time and they have the power to make significant impact

on our metabolic health. So how can we incorporate this? What are the practical ways that we can actually incorporate this into our life. So this was taken from a newsletter that I wrote that came out just this week. It's part of my Try This newsletter, which by the way, you can sign up for free. Anybody can. And every week, my team and I will deliver a step-by-step action-packed email that includes at least one or two things that you can try. That's why it's called Try This to help you take your help to the next level. You can sign up for free. Just go to my website, my personal website, Drew, D-H-R-U, Perro-H-I-T-com, link inside of the show notes, and click on the tab that says try this and you can sign up so that you can every week

get these newsletters when they first come out. So here's some things that you can try that I wrote about today. All right. So here are five examples of what you can do to break up sedentary time throughout the day, especially if you work from home or at a job where you're at a desk or a computer all day and I'm definitely in that category. Number one, you can stand or walk around while you're on a phone call. That is my go-to. I love to pace when I'm on the phone, especially in our world of meeting culture, and we try to do a good job of that in our company and try not to have too many

meetings, but still nonetheless, the beautiful thing is because people are all working remotely and we're not all necessarily in the office. We need to have more meetings to just keep everybody on track with different projects that we're working on. So great. That's beautiful that we can work remotely and do those things. But how much time are we spending meetings instead of sitting down? I like to pace and walk around my house or take a walk around the block when I can get a chance to. Number two, you can walk around your house or office between meetings, even just doing a couple

laps around your house or the external perimeter. It could be inside, could be outside, just doing a couple laps. If you're in office, just walking outside, you know, grabbing a coffee, doing something, just pacing a little bit in between meetings. One hack that's there for anybody who's a professional is that often friends of mine, we haven't done this yet in our team, but I have a lot of friends who do this, they'll say that meetings cannot be scheduled for an hour. Meetings can be scheduled for 50 minutes so that everybody gets a little 10-minute break

to do some push-ups, some squats, some walking, little bathroom break, whatever it is. So schedule meetings for 50 minutes so that you have 10 minutes or so to adjust, do a little meditation, walk, whatever you feel like doing. Number three, you can do squats while you're waiting for a meeting to start. Often when we make movement such a high bar in our lives, we forget to take advantage of those small moments where we can move all the time. Just like you're listening to this podcast right now. If you're not driving, you can incorporate a little bit of movement. You can be doing some squats. You can be doing a couple of push-ups. You could be pacing or walking. Those things are all helpful ways to just quickly, like kids. Kids play all the time and they love

throwing in movement. They don't need to wait to get to a gym to move. They can move all the time and we can take advantage of that, especially as we age. Number four, you can take breaks to clean, which includes like sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, or even tidying up. Those things are also part of sitting less. Number five, you can take breaks or do chores like folding laundry, doing dishes, running errands. Usually around 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, when my brain starts to be a little bit filled up from the day's activities and meetings. That's my go-to time to run errands that I need to run. And I'll often walk to the places that I need to run errands.

and it feels really good to be able to do that. And sometimes, by the way, doubling down on what we already know can be one of the simplest and most effective ways to get moving. For me, that's going for a short 10-minute walk. That's my go-to. I have a little lap in the neighborhood that I live in in Los Angeles. And I know that door to door from my office lapping all around the block right back to my office at home, it takes me 10 minutes. And I will do that walk even sometimes when I'm feeling

a little bit sluggish, when I'm feeling like I need perspective. And walking is one of those things that helps you get perspective. It's huge for me in my life. It's whenever I'm stuck with the problem and especially I've been sitting for a long time, walking. And we've done a whole newsletter. And we did a podcast episode on this topic too, how walking more will radically improve. your health and your life. I went into all the reasons and all the benefits that are associated with walking. And yeah, I still stand by all those recommendations that are there. So that is what I wanted to cover today. And really, I wanted to be the hype person for something simple, low cost or no cost in this case, that anybody can do with also the context of, especially if

you're someone who's been beating yourself up for any aspect around movement or feeling like you're not making progress in some aspect of your life, small, simple, focused, measurable, tiny habits to take a phrase from my friend BJ Fogg, who came up with that term, tiny habits, is a powerful way to get back on track, especially when it comes to our metabolic health. You know, being sedentary for long periods of time is, it's dangerous. to our health and increases our risk for chronic disease. And it impacts our mood and our focus. But we all have the power to change that.

And it doesn't have to be by doing anything too extreme to start off. Just getting up and moving throughout the day, whether that be walking, standing or playing with your dog or kids or whatever, these tiny movements can make a big impact on your metabolic health over time. I am the official hype person for improving your metabolic help through simple things. And I hope you can add this simple thing to your toolbox. If you want to check out the study, it's inside of the show notes as well. And sign up for my newsletter.

Try this at Drew Perot, D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T. And lastly, if you're not subscribed to this podcast, wherever you're listening to it, Spotify, Apple, hit the subscribe button. And I've not really asked for this in a long time. If you enjoy these Monday episodes in particular, leave a review. Leave a review so other people can see the value that you get from this podcast. That would mean the world. All right, Drew Prod, signing off.

I'll see you again next week.