Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #286 BITESIZE | Why Movement Can Be Medicine | Darryl Edwards

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Have we made movement and exercise too complicated? Have we lost sight of what it really means to move our bodies? Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart.�� Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 7 of the podcast with health and movement coach Darryl Edwards.   Darryl believes movement can be medicine and, in this clip, he shares his own journey, and describes the incredible benefits he saw when he changed his mindset and his approach to movement.   Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/07 Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode seven of the podcast with health and movement coach, Daryl Edwards Edwards. Now Daryl believes movement can be medicine and in this clip he shares his own journey and describes the incredible benefits he saw when he changed his mindset and his approach to movement. I was in a very sedentary job, 16, 18 hours a day,

seven days a week, not moving. I was suffering from chronic hypertension. I was pre-diabetic. I had elevated heart disease risk. And when I asked my doctor at the time what I could do to resolve those issues, they spoke about pharmaceuticals. So statins, beta blockers for my blood pressure, supplementation because I was anemic. It was just a cocktail of meds. And the one question I asked was, one, what about the side effects? And secondly, how long

would I have to be on these meds for? And I was told pretty much the rest of your life, and there isn't much you can do about it. This is just how it is. It's based on your genes. So I was really concerned about the side effects, about the length of time that I'll have to be on these meds for. And I wanted there was another approach. And I was fortunate enough to encounter a book which spoke about going back to basics. So thinking about our ancestry, thinking about how we used to eat and move and live and how we could take some of that into the present day and I was fortunate within a few short months to basically improve my health markers so I was no longer pre-diabetic my blood pressure was normalized I was no longer anemic I was no longer suffering from some of the kind of musculoskeletal problems

low back pain knee issues and the like and that was over 15 years from some of the kind of musculoskeletal problems, low back pain, knee issues and the like. And that was over 15 years ago. Part of that transformation was my improving my attitude to physical activity. So I started off thinking about physical activity pretty much as what I was doing in my day job. So I took a very competitive environment in the office into the gym. And I thought about training like an athlete, ultra competitive, and I was very successful. The downsides were I got sick. I was getting colds every two or three months. I was getting injured on a regular basis. I started to hate

the process. Even though the results were pretty good, I was getting fitter. So the light ball moment was thinking about what I enjoyed as a kid when it came to movement, when it came to physical activity. And that was play. So I just remember, you know, long summers, you know, coming home after school, getting my homework done, going outside and playing. And most of the fond memories were around the enjoyment, the joy of movement. And of course, there may have been some competition, but the main premise of that was,

how can I and my friends just have a fantastic time? And it wasn't about exercise, in quotation marks. It wasn't about training. It was just having fun with movement. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible to hear that. I think many people listening listening probably in a similar boat in the sense that, you know, they have an idea around movement, which is in the modern world, if I want to stay fit, I need to go to a gym. Going to the gym is one approach to increase the amount of kind of movement minutes in your week. But many of us join the gym with

lots of enthusiasm. And a few weeks later, you no longer go into the gym. You no longer have that enthusiasm. We're bombarded with messages about kind of fitness inspiration. You know, get a body such as this. The full week, get your six pack abs workout plan. Most of the messages I see on social media are no pain, no gain. You know, my warmup is your workout. It's all about punishing yourself for what you ate the day before, punishing yourself for the lack of physical activity that you may have undertaken, rather than focusing on how good you're going to feel, how good it's going to make you feel, the health benefits that come out of physical activity. So again, the other light bulb moment for me was recognizing movement as being medicine.

I, for one, didn't recognize that movement or physical activity could be therapeutic. I believed it was just about burning calories. It was just about improving body composition because I was veering much more towards this message of food being medicine. And so, you know, what you eat is not just fuel, but also medicine is also therapeutic. It's, you know, feeds a gut microbiome. That's what's important. And when I started looking at the research and recognizing, oh my goodness, exercise can be anti-inflammatory. Exercise can improve the gut microbiome. Exercise can improve, you know, reduce blood pressure and can improve your mood hormones,

you know, your serotonin, dopamine. And, you know, once you recognize there's this whole body of research around exercise being medicine, then you realize just how powerful and potent it is. And when you look at the evidence being that most of us are physically inactive, even if we're not aware of that, movement has been engineered out of our environments pretty

significantly. It's been replaced with convenience. So locomotion, which used to be mandatory, is now optional. There's interesting research about the number of adults and children undertaking physical activity on a regular basis. So the baseline recommendations are 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity activity and a couple of days of resistance training a week for adults. Do you know how many people actually meet the guidelines? If you ask them the question, it's about 35%. But if they're wearing a device that actually records how much movement they're

undertaking, it's only about 5% to 8%, which is shocking for one. But secondly, makes me realize that we just aren't aware of how little movement we're undertaking on a daily basis. There are practical approaches to increasing the amount of non-sedentary time throughout your day. And that's definitely my approach. You know, I, it's very difficult for me to set up an hour, 45 minutes during my day to say, right, that's going to be my workout time today. I'm going to pop it in my diary. I'm going to get it done because life gets in the way. Absolutely. So it's better for me to actually get up in the morning, get a few minutes done, think about opportunities throughout my day.

I will do things like, I want to get the remote control. I'll bear crawl across my living room floor to pick up the remote control. I'll squat during commercial breaks. So by the end of the day, I've actually got far more than my minimum requirements for movement. But I have no idea where that time came from. It's like, oh. I think, you know, that's such a key message to people. And that's, again, the approach I take in my own life, which is particularly these days,

I struggle to find that 45 minute, one hour period where I can go to the gym, let's say, and have a workout. I'm always doing little workouts, two minutes here, two minutes there. I squat every day with the kids, bodyweight squats while we're waiting for dinner. It's like, yeah, two minutes of squats, and I do it and we have fun. I've got a five-minute kitchen workout that you can knock out some press-ups and some lunges and get an olive oil bottle and twist it to the side, all kinds of fun, inventive ways to keep being active. And I think the big problem is that we have outsourced our idea of movement to the gym. So if we

can't get to the gym, we think we can't do it. And even if we do get to the gym, we then think we're done. Oh, I've been to the gym. I've got my movement in. I don't need to worry now until my next workout. I can go back to being sedentary. And this is very, very common. So my goal and your goal is to try and simplify things for people and try and inspire them to say, you can do this. One strategy I use is every hour I will set, I have an alarm on my watch and it will just ping to say, you need to move. So whatever I'm doing, whatever I'm doing at a time, if I'm sedentary, I'll just do 60 seconds of something.

And even though I do engage in movement throughout my day, it's just another prompt. So I'm like, yeah, you know what? I can use these devices to make sure that I'm doing even more. I can have this kind of like little nudge every now and again to say,

hey, Dale, you know what? Move a little bit more. Yeah, that's great. That's a great tip, actually. Yeah. One thing I try and do at the end of each podcast is to share with the listener simple, actionable tips that they can put into practice in their own life immediately to help improve the way that they feel. Yes. So the first tip is find any opportunity you can to get more movement in. Do some exercises whilst you're watching TV during a commercial break. Engage some of your family members so it feels more like you're in this together. For me, I rolled out of bed this morning, for example.

I rolled out of bed. I started doing some crawling. I started jumping around. Fortunately, no one was there to watch me. I went to the kitchen. I had breakfast. I played some music, I started to dance. Again, no one was watching. And so I had 15, 20 minutes of movement, again, without realizing it, without taking up any more time out of my day. The only solution, in my opinion, to ensure that you can have a long-term movement practice is to find something which is fun and engaging and something that you actually receive the benefits immediately, not at the end. You know, like you have the endorphin rush after a 60-minute run.

I can't, you know, 60 minutes is a long time if you're not enjoying what you're doing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, and it will lead to failure. Ultimately, week on week, day on day, you'll be like, oh, I'm not going to do it anymore. Yeah, I'm not going to do it anymore. I haven't got enough songs on my playlist anymore.

Fitness, in order for it to be a long-term practice and something that becomes self-motivating, there has to be self-intrinsic value. So if you're engaging in something that you enjoy, if it's something that you find engaging, if it's something where you notice time just compresses, so it's like, oh my goodness, you know, half an hour has gone by, but it feels like five minutes. If you can capture that experience with movement, then you're onto a winner. So that could be dancing. It could be playing a game that you played as a kid where, you know, you throw the rules out of the window. It's like, and let's just have some fun. It's

almost like if you play tennis, for example, just having a rally, forget scoring points. Let's just see how long we can get this ball back and forth over the net for as long as we can, you know, doing really, doing funny trick shots, just being crazy with the ball. That's what you want to feel when you're engaging in this playful approach to movement. Really hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.