Something You Should Know - How to Make Work a Little More Fun & The Science of Staying Young

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Generally, women seem to have a better, more sensitive sense of touch than men do. Yet, it isn’t gender that really determines that. This episode begins with an explanation of why some people’s sense of touch is better than others and why most (but not all) of them are women. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091215173017.htm When your work is fun and enjoyable, you do better work. It doesn’t have to be totally fun – even making it a little more fun can pay big dividends according to Ali Abdaal. Ali is one of the most followed productivity experts and he is author of the book Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You (https://amzn.to/47AZajf). If you’ve always thought that success and productivity only come from discipline and hard work, I think you will find this conversation to be liberating.  Here is the link to Ali’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@aliabdaal Much of what determines how long you live and how healthy you remain as you get older – is pretty well known and is not that difficult to do if you make it a priority. That’s according to Michael Greger, MD, who is a founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and author of the book, How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier As You Get Older (https://amzn.to/3tCR1g2). Listen as he reveals some of the simple ways you can live long and stay healthy and active from now all the way through your golden years. A lot of people say they feel stuck – stuck in their job or marriage or in some other way they just feel stuck in life. Interestingly, this is a fairly new phenomenon. Listen as I explain why there is so much stuckness in the world and what you can do to get unstuck. Source: Anneli Rufus author of the book Stuck (https://amzn.to/47ftboo) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! PrizePicks is a skill-based, real-money Daily Fantasy Sports game that's super easy to play. Go to https://prizepicks.com/sysk and use code sysk for a first deposit match up to $100 Zocdoc is a FREE app and website where you can search and compare highly-rated, in-network doctors near you AND instantly book appointments with them online. Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Dell Technologies and Intel are pushing what technology can do, so great ideas can happen! Find out how to bring your ideas to life at https://Dell.com/WelcomeToNow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, who has a better sense of touch, men or women? Then, how to feel better about the work you do. Because when you do, you do better work. There are a bunch of different studies they've done where they find that when they prime people to feel good about the work or the tasks that they're about to undertake those

people perform way better on the task and they think more creatively and their psychology and physiology reflects that they're even less stressed also why so many people today feel stuck in life and how to get unstuck. Plus, proven ways to live longer and healthier. The top five things you can do to net the largest lifespan gains. Number one is eat more legumes, beans and chickpeas, that kind of thing. Second is eating more whole grains. Third, eating more nuts.

Fourth is eating less meat. Then five is cutting down on sugary beverages like soda. All this today on Something You Should Know. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance

Event. Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now, in-store, or online at BestBuy.ca. Exclusions apply. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts.

And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. And now that you're most likely getting back to your normal post-holiday routine, I want to remind you that we continued over the holidays, we continued to publish our regular schedule of three episodes a week, every week. So maybe with all the holiday busyness,

you might have missed a few episodes. And so I invite you to go back and take a look and give a listen to what you missed. There were some really good episodes over the last few weeks. And remember, you can follow us and listen to us on Spotify. First up today, you know, scientists have known for a long time that some people have a better sense of touch than others. But no one was really sure why until recently. And the answer seems to have to do with finger size.

The smaller your fingers, the better your sense of touch. Women have always been thought to have a better sense of touch than men, but according to a study from Canada, gender has nothing to do with it. It's because women generally have smaller fingers than men do. More specifically, it has to do with the size of the fingertips. So a man with small fingertips would have a better sense of touch than a woman with larger fingertips. Although it's a little complicated, in a nutshell, the touch receptors are more tightly packed together in smaller fingertips, making the finger more sensitive to whatever it touches.

And that is something you should know. If you want to be successful at work, one would think the best way to do that would be to make sure that the work you're doing is something you love doing, because it seems easier to stay on task and really excel at something if you enjoy what you do. Of course, it doesn't always go that way for a lot of folks who work. For many people, work is work. It's not always fun. That's why they call it work. However, what if it didn't have to be that way? What if you could approach work differently so that doing what you do actually felt good? That's what Ali Abdaal is here to explain. Ali is a doctor and one of the

world's most followed productivity experts. He's author of a book called Feel Good Productivity, How to Do More of What Matters to You. Hi, Ali, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you so much for having me. So before we get deep into it, what is the short answer to the question, what is feel good productivity? In broad sweeping strokes, feel good productivity

is the idea that if we want to be more productive, we should find a way to make our work feel good. And if we can do that, if we can experience positive emotions and feel good energy in our work, it makes us more productive, more creative, less stressed. And it also gives us more energy to give to our work. Yes, but to also, but also to every other important area of our life. So that sounds great, but how do you know it to be true? I know it to be true based on, firstly, my personal experience.

I worked as a doctor for a while, built a business on the side, built a huge YouTube channel. And the one secret to my productivity in medical school and beyond was always finding a way to make the process enjoyable and fun. And secondly, I know it to be true because in doing the research for my YouTube videos where I've been talking about this for years, I dove into the scientific research around positive psychology. There's an amazing theory called the broaden and build theory. And there are a bunch of different studies they've done in the field of psychology where they find that when they prime people to feel good about the work or the task that they're about to undertake,

those people perform way better on the task and they think more creatively and their psychology and physiology reflects that they're even less stressed. So all of this combined means that feel good productivity is a very evidence based and science backed approach to work and to life. Well, that certainly makes sense and sounds right. But I'm sure people listening would be thinking, well, but there are a lot of things that I have to do that I don't particularly love doing. Yeah, I think that's the biggest objection that I often get to the idea. People think that feel good productivity means that, oh, so I guess you only do the things that feel good. And that's not really what the philosophy is. The philosophy is whatever you are doing,

there are ways that you can find to make it feel good, to make it feel just a little bit better. However grim the thing might be, however unfortunate it might be, however much you might hate filling out forms or doing that thing that you don't like doing, if you really asked yourself, what would I have to do to make this a little bit more fun, a little bit more enjoyable, you could probably come up with a bunch of different reasons, a bunch of different methods,

a bunch of different ways to make the thing just that little bit more enjoyable. And you'll find that if you do, you'll be happier, but you'll also be more productive. So give me an example, if you can, of something that isn't quite so wonderful and how you would go about making it a little more enjoyable. Yeah, so I'll give you an example. When I was working full time as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service, one of the things we often had to do was write these really long and really boring discharge letters, essentially summarizing a patient's admission to hospital and like trawling through the notes. Sometimes these were handwritten notes because it's old school and we didn't

have computer systems in a lot of these hospitals. So trying to, paging through these handwritten notes, sweltering in the heat of a doctor's office where they don't, they can't afford air conditioning because it's a publicly funded healthcare system and air conditioning is a luxury. And having to do this for hours and hours and hours on end, just typing these fairly boring discharge letters up. The way that most of my colleagues and me initially, the way we approach those is to think, okay, it's not the most fun thing in the world, but I've just got to do it. But the way that I found to approach it is that if I asked myself that question of what could I do to make this a little bit more fun, there were two things that I did.

Number one, I took, I got a bowl out of the kitchen and put my phone in it and just started playing some background music because music makes most things a little bit more fun. I would play instrumental tracks from the Lord of the Rings movie series, and that would make it feel like I'm on this adventure while I'm writing these discharge letters. But another thing I would do to make it a little bit more fun is I would find a way to inject a little bit of humor into these discharge letters. And these are technically legal documentation. It's medical paperwork. But there's no law to say that you can't try and get a smile from the doctor on the other end who's reading it or the patient who's reading it. So I drop in little comments being like, hey, it was a delight looking

after Mr. Jones, and we hope that he'll finally be reunited with his cat when he gets home. You know, just like little phrases like that, based on what I knew from the patient, what I picked up in the notes. And most doctors don't add personality to their letters. Most people don't add personality to their PowerPoint presentations or to their talks. But doing that adds a little bit of a challenge. And finding a way to add challenge is another way to make whatever you're doing, even if it's a bit boring, seem just that little bit more enjoyable. I love that example. And I also find that part of the whole thing about not liking to do something isn't necessarily the doing. It's the dreading doing. It's the anticipation of having to do something isn't necessarily the doing. It's the dreading doing.

It's the anticipation of having to do something. And that if you just start doing it, some of that, I hate this, goes away. Yeah, absolutely. I did a really cool interview with a guy called Professor Tim Pitchell, who spent his life studying the field of procrastination. This guy literally spent four decades doing life studying the field of procrastination. This guy literally spent four decades doing research into what makes people procrastinate. And his whole thesis when I interviewed him was, look, procrastination is not a problem with doing the task. It's a problem with starting the task. And if you can just get started, you'll find that

the inertia often keeps you going. And so there are a bunch of techniques I found. Like one really useful thing that I used to do back when I had a desk. You know, these days I'm traveling around the world, so I don't really have a fixed setup. But I used to have a five-minute hourglass on my desk at all times. And whenever I would find myself like feeling,

oh, I don't want to get started with this thing, I would just turn the hourglass over. And that would be a cue for my brain to be like, I'm just doing this thing for five minutes. And usually I do it for five minutes and then blitz way beyond the five minutes because now I'm in the flow of it. I'm having fun. It's great. But that hourglass, just that little recognition that sometimes all it takes is to just start something for five minutes for us to get going or beat that procrastination or get over that anticipatory hurdle of starting something and the fact that you're doing something I think has some magic to it that you know action breeds content that

just starting to do something makes you feel better about the thing you're doing oh god absolutely yeah we we have this weird narrative in society. A lot of people feel that you need motivation in order to take action. Like, I need to feel like doing the thing before I do the thing. It's not that motivation leads to action. It's that action breeds motivation. If you get started and take action with doing something, you are far more likely to then be motivated to continue doing that thing. Whereas if you wait for motivation or wait until you feel like it to do something, you're going to be waiting probably quite a long time.

Well, and at the end of the day, if the day is a day where you didn't do what you were supposed to do, you feel like crap. And if today is the day where you actually did and you get to the end of the day, you feel pretty good about yourself because you did something. You know, one of the big things that helps work feel more meaningful or intrinsically motivating is the feeling of progress. When we feel as if we are making progress with a thing, that is profoundly intrinsically motivating. Intrinsic motivation, which a lot of your listeners might be familiar with, is this idea that where you're motivated to do something for the sake of the

thing itself, rather than for the reward you get on the other end. So instead of I'm doing my work for the money, it's I'm doing my work because I enjoy it. And the more we can feel a sense of progress in our work, whether it's we've gotten to the end of the day and we've tackled that big task, or if you're a writer and you're like tracking your word count, the more we can tap into that sense of progress, the more we drive intrinsic motivation as well. And so I think, I sense that most people have a sense that this is true, that they know this, but still don't do it. So what keeps people from just naturally not procrastinating or just naturally putting off what they know has to be done when they know they'll feel better when it's done? Yeah, it's the same thing that stops people from going to the gym and doing a workout, even though they know that doing the workout

is going to make them feel better. Getting that task done is going to make them feel better, but there's something that stops them from starting. One of the main things, the first blocker is what I call it, is the blocker of uncertainty. Uncertainty is a big blocker, because if you're a little bit uncertain about what you actually need to do, it becomes very hard to get started.

So for example, if I know that, oh, I should probably go to the gym and work out, but I don't have a workout plan. I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get there. I don't know what weights I'm doing. I don't know what exercises I'm doing. Now for me to go to the gym, there's a lot of friction. I have to do all of this work in my brain to figure out what I'm actually doing. And so the more that friction increases, the less likely it is that I'm actually going to go to the gym. Whereas if I just took a minute to make a bit of a plan to just keep in mind, like, what am I actually trying to do here? Let me find a workout plan on the Internet. Let me just decide to go on the Apple Health app on my phone and just do whatever workout it tells me to do. Let me put on a YouTube video of a workout thing. Solving the uncertainty problem often helps people to

deal with procrastination. Once we've solved the uncertainty problem, we've got fear and inertia as well, which I'm very happy to go into. But I think uncertainty is the first big blocker that stops a lot of people. So certainly procrastination is a big thing, but it's not the only thing that holds people back. So what else? What else holds us back? So I'm going to use the example of starting a YouTube channel here because I coach people in this and often I get people who are in their 30s, they're really successful at work, and they know they want to do this thing on the side as a bit of a passion project. They know they want to start a YouTube channel, giving parenting tips or sharing what they know to help them kind of generate more leads for their business. The problem is that they're very successful in one domain of life. You know, they're good parents, they're really good at their job. But now when it comes to this new thing, where they feel like a beginner again, that is really painful. It's a feeling of like, oh my goodness, I'm going to do

this thing. And I might look like a fool and I might look like an idiot and my coworkers might judge me and I'm not going to be very good at the thing. And this is what makes it easier for kids to start doing stuff like this because they don't, they're not so attached to an identity of themselves as being successful. And so a lot of the coaching that we take our students through is helping them get over the hurdle of attachment to the identity of a successful businesswoman or a successful businessman and recognizing that, hey, when you're trying something new, it's totally okay to be a beginner at it. It's totally okay to suck at it a few times. And most of us didn't come out of the womb knowing how to drive. We learned how to drive

through trial and error, through being not very good initially. And over time through practice, we got better. And the thing that I try and encourage people is that look, it's totally okay to be a beginner. There's a concept in Zen Buddhism called Shoshin, which translates to beginner's mind, which is the idea that whatever you're doing, try and approach as if you're a beginner, where you can always learn more things, bit of a growth mindset. And I find that when people can go into that mode, where they accept that actually being a beginner is totally fine. That's another thing that helps them actually finally take action. Even though previously they might have been held back by some sort of ego attachment to the idea of success. My guest is Ali Abdaal. He's a medical doctor and author of the book,

Feel Good Productivity, how to Do More of What Matters to You. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world.

Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So, Ali, as I think about what you said a moment ago about not liking that feeling of feeling like a beginner, of like you don't know what you're doing, like you like to do things well, I think that stops a lot of people from trying things just to avoid that uncomfortable feeling. I suspect it's the same for you.

I'd be curious to hear, like, your podcast is absolutely phenomenal. But I imagine you didn't do podcasting when you were in your teens. So it's probably something that you were bad at initially, and then you got pretty good at it over time. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I was in radio for many years. And so it's not a huge leap, but it's a bigger leap than I think people it was a bigger leap than I thought it was. Yeah, I think with anything that we do, there's always that that hurdle that we have to get over. And then most people who stick with that hurdle long enough. You know, one thing

I like to say is the rule of 100. Do the thing 100 times. And I promise your life will change if you just do the thing 100 times. I can't guarantee how much money you'll make. I can't guarantee, you know, whether you'll have financial success from it. I can guarantee that you'll learn skills. You'll change the way you feel about yourself. And so if someone's thinking of starting a podcast or a YouTube channel or making sales calls or starting a business, think about how you can get started and how you can just do the thing 100 times because often that is what it takes to get

good. And then, you know, your life will change in many ways that you can't predict right now. That is a great idea because anybody can do that. Anybody can break down anything into do it 100 times. And yeah, it might be a stretch, but it's not that big a stretch and anybody can do something a hundred times. What else? What other suggestions do you have that might motivate people to try something, to do something? The other one that I think about all the time is, I like putting numbers on things. I call this the 10-10-10 rule, which is whenever I'm finding myself holding myself back from something or feeling bad about something that's happened that's gone a bit negatively, I ask myself, will this matter in 10 minutes? Will this

matter in 10 weeks? Will this matter in 10 years? And this was the thing, one of the things that really helped me get over the hurdle of starting making videos initially. This was the thing that helped me get over the hurdle of writing my first book. I was really worried that like, oh, what if it gets bad reviews? What if people don't like it? And then I thought in 10 years, will anyone care? In 10 weeks, will anyone care? Probably not. So that's okay. I can do the thing that I know will light me up. That's going to help improve my life, and not worry so much about what other people will think. Yeah, that's great advice.

And I want to talk about not just doing the things that you want to do, but doing the things that you find hard to do. We touched on it a little bit earlier, but I think that's the struggle is doing things that you have to do without the dread and the procrastination and all that. One of my core, core ideas that I think about a lot is, you know, we don't struggle with motivational discipline when it comes to watching Netflix or listening to our favorite podcast or spending time with our friends. We don't struggle with those things because those things are inherently enjoyable. We enjoy doing those things.

And so what I would love for people to take away is when you're next struggling with something, when you next feel like, oh, I'm struggling with procrastination, or I feel like I want to be more productive at this thing, just ask yourself, what is something you can do to make the thing just 10% more enjoyable? How would you make it a little bit more fun? And usually trying to find a way to approach it in the spirit of play, or trying to find a way to feel a little bit more power in the situation, play and power, or trying to find a way to get people into the process. Those are the three P's, play, power, and people. I call them

the three energizers. They make any work, however dull otherwise, be way more enjoyable and way more energizing, which means you'll just naturally be more productive at the thing. But even better, you'll be more productive at the thing, but you'll also realize that your life is just happier because you are getting more energy and enjoyment out of this task that you have to do. So I would say people should remember the three Ps, play, power, and people as the things that make any work way more energizing. And do you have any sense as to why we just don't do that? Why we don't make things more playful and fun, if in fact that would make them easier and more fun to do, why we don't do it? Yeah, I think there's two things going on.

I think one thing is that we've been sold this narrative that work has to be hard and that productivity equals grind. I think there's a lot of people that talk about discipline and grit and willpower and you just got to grind it out and you just got to work harder. And we've been sold that narrative. A bit of a counter to that narrative was the whole work smart, not hard. And so people are like, okay, well, I guess I can work smarter. But what I'm saying is that, yeah, sure. Think about how you can work hard. Think about how you can work smart, but also think about how you can enjoy the process. Because generally you do your best work when you are enjoying the process. We've all had that feeling of the flow state

where the time goes by and we don't even notice the clock and we're like, whoa, it's been three hours already. I was enjoying that so much. That's just not a default way that we think because I think the narratives around productivity tend not to be based around how do you make it fun? They tend to be based on how do you work harder or how do you work smarter? I think that's one thing. And I think another is that it's really hard to think in that way because the mind is a survival machine. Like our brain, you know, our amygdala, these different parts of the brain, it's so attuned

to look out for the negative because that's what helped us when we were in our caveman ancestor days where, you know, looking out for negatives means that you're keeping an eye on danger and you're seeing what your social status and hierarchy is within the group. And are people going to ostracize you? Because if you get ostracized, then you're going to get killed by a lion or something. So we're so, we're literally evolved to find the negative in everything because that's what helped us survive. But that strategy that helped us survive is no longer that helpful in the modern world where we're not going to be mauled by a lion. We don't really have to

worry about the threat of ostracization from the group. But the brain that we have has not yet caught up with that reality. And so it does take quite a lot of effort for us to put ourselves into these patterns of thinking that encourages us to find the fun in what we're doing. And one way, one specific way that someone can do right now, I used to do this back when I had a desk. Underneath my monitor, I had a post-it note. And on that post-it note, I had the phrase written, what would this look like if it were fun? And whenever I'd be doing my work, I would just, in my peripheral vision, I'd be seeing that post-it note. And sometimes I'd read it. And I

think to myself, what would this look like if it were fun? And usually I find that whatever I'm doing, whether it's filling out forms or dealing with a tax return or writing something for my book or whatever the thing might be, just asking that question, what would this look like if it were fun? Would that post-it note reminder would completely transform the way I approached it. And I would put a smile on my face. I would show up to that meeting with more warmth, more charisma, more energy.

And I would feel better about myself, but I would also perform better. And everyone knows that to be true because when you're doing something that's fun, that you enjoy, you feel better about doing it and you do it better. This has been great. I've been talking with Ali Abdaal.

He is a doctor and one of the world's most followed productivity experts. He has a great YouTube channel and he is author of a book called Feel Good Productivity, How to Do More of What Matters to You. There's a link to the book and to his YouTube channel in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Ali. I really, really enjoyed our time together. Oh, perfect. Fantastic.

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and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly

about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last few decades, as the population has gotten older, there has been a lot of talk about fighting the aging process. Not just in terms of physical appearance, trying to look younger, but actually slowing down how your body ages. And yes, ultimately in the fight against aging, we all do lose the battle one day.

But there is some exciting new science and research about how to not only live longer, but to live healthier and with fewer physical problems as you get older. Here to discuss this is Michael Greger. He is a medical doctor, a founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a frequent guest on TV and on podcasts, and he is author of a book called How Not to Age, The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older. Hi, Michael. Thank you so much for having me. Glad to be here. So what is your message here?

Isn't it mostly just live a healthy life, diet, exercise, that kind of thing? Or is there more to it than that? Look, the good news is we have tremendous power over our health, destiny, and longevity. The vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with a healthy enough diet and lifestyle. And one need not make drastic changes. It's not all or nothing. Even basic common sense lifestyle factors can mean living a decade longer, not smoking, not being obese, regular exercise, more fruits and vegetables. And look, it's never too late. It's never too late to stop smoking, to move more,

to start eating healthier. We really do have the power here. And then I think we'll get you about 80% there. And yes, if you're interested in the last little bit to really optimize things, I've got hundreds of pages of info for people. But I don't want people to lose sight of really some of the basic foundational things about how to eat and live healthfully. And so how do we eat and live healthfully? You say that the changes don't have to be drastic. Well, I guess it depends on where, you know, if you're eating Twinkies and drinking a pint of whiskey every day, then maybe it does have to be drastic. But what is a healthy diet? What are you striving for here? Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter what you eat on

your birthdays, holidays, special occasions, keep your whiskey Twinkies to a minimum. But yeah, based on more than 100 dietary surveys in the blue zones, these are areas of kind of exceptional longevity around the world, we should try to center our diets around whole plant foods. So basically minimizing these ultra-processed foods, meat, dairy, eggs, salt, sugar, while maximizing fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, beans, split peas, chickpeas, lentils, nuts and seeds, mushrooms, herbs and spices. Basically, real food that grows out of the ground. These are our healthiest choices. And why do you think, because much of what you've said and much of the advice that you often hear, people have heard a million times before, it seems to me anyway, you can disagree, but it seems that people kind of get it. They know what they should be eating.

They see the fruits and vegetables in the grocery store. They know people buy those and that they eat them and that's probably good for them. But people choose often to not. Oh, and it's for good reason. It's because the food industry has found a way to dig into our natural biological urges. You know, when we evolved, we, you know, we evolved in the context of scarcity. And so we evolved. So those that didn't have this drive for calorie-dense foods never made it to pass along their genes.

That's why we have this craving for salt. There wasn't, you know, KFC and salt shakers out in the savannah. We have to get along their genes. That's why we have this craving for salt. There wasn't KFC and salt shakers out in the Savannah. We have to get salt from somewhere. So we want those concentrated calorie sources, the sugar, the honey, the bone marrow. And so then now the food industry says, oh, you want salt? Oh, I'll give you salt. You want sugar? You want fatty foods. And so, you know, being overweight is a normal, natural reaction to an abnormal, unnatural situation of, you know, drowning in this sea of excess calories, being bombarded day and night by advertisements for fast food and candy and processed food. And so it's really about fighting against these natural urges. Same thing with being

sedentary, right? We want to preserve energy, right? If we evolve in a context of famine, the more we can conserve our energy, the better. So no wonder we want to lie on the couch. So it's a matter of really kind of bucking these drives that are trying to be taken advantage of by profiteers in the food space. And do you think, or not do you think, but is it your experience and you can prove that there are people who are able to overcome that? Like, for example, I mean, I like to exercise.

I feel bad if I don't. But I didn't used to, but I do now. But now that I'm there, I'm there. And so it isn't the struggle that I think a lot of people think it will always be. And the same with diet. I mean, yeah, I like birthday cake and brownies and ice cream, but I also like really healthy food, too. I don't just tolerate it. I actually like it. So it is possible. I'm so glad you brought that up.

It really is getting over that hump. Most of the really critical research in this area happened in the area of salt reduction. So you take people, put them on a low-salt diet, and everything tastes like cardboard. And they're like, there's no way I want to live. I don't care if I live longer. I don't want to derive any pleasure from life living like this. But then something amazing happens over the subsequent few weeks. You start people out, you know, have people salt soup to taste. And then a few weeks later on a low salt diet, that same salt, the same amount of salt, the same salt concentration that you found the best is actually too salty. You actually prefer lower salt soup. So then you end up in

this kind of best of both worlds scenario where it tastes great and you get to enjoy a longer, healthier life. But it's in that transition period that so few people are able to make it over to. Same thing happens with sugar, where we've so numbed our palate with these hyper-sweet, hyper-fatty, hyper-salty foods that the ripest peach in the world would taste sour after a bowl of Froot Loops. But cut out the Froot Loops, and all of a sudden, normal, natural foods start tasting good. But cut out the for loops and all of a sudden normal natural food start tasting good and people I mean people you think you're crazy but give it a few weeks and all of a sudden you know, when people, you know, my coworkers see me, you know, just eating like a microwave sweet potato with a little cinnamon on top or something, they look at me like I'm some aesthetic monk or something like, oh, I wish I could eat like that,

you know, but it's like, no, no, you don't understand. It's actually really good. It actually tastes good to me. It wouldn't have before when I was, you know, living off, you know, God knows what, but now once your taste buds change once your palate changes then you can really end up in the best both world same thing with exercise right when you first start exercising ah you know it's it's it's a it's you have to really push yourself white knuckle it to get over that boat then once you start particularly once you start experiencing the benefits then you know then you know it gives that sustaining quality that you don't know at the beginning.

So I 100% agree with you. You really got to get over it. And it really can just take a few weeks. But you don't know how good you're going to feel until you give it a try. The kind of changes that you're talking about seem to require people to really make some sort of dedicated effort that you can't just cut back and just have one scoop of ice cream instead of two and think you're doing something that it really takes a commitment. And, and I know when I, when I did this several years ago, decided to, to become more healthy, I treated it like a hobby and, I was determined to make it work.

And I think, don't you think it takes that kind of determination? And it becomes part of your identity. Like once you start identifying as like a healthy person, right, you're like, I'm not the kind of person that would just, you know, sit there and just, you know, eat a pint of ice cream. And so, you know, you can certainly, you know, sit there and just, you know, eat a pint of ice cream. And so, you know, you can certainly, you know, it doesn't matter what you eat on the birthday, holiday, special occasions. And so on those times, you can really savor whatever kind of, you know, really rich foods are out there. But the rest of the time on a day-to-day basis, you know, you really want to

support your body, to support whatever goals you have in life. And, you know, there's nothing, you know, without health, you know, what is there? There is a, just kind of the sense I feel, and I have it too, that there is a bit of a gamble, that life is a bit of a gamble. The old, you could be hit by a bus tomorrow, that, you know, do what you want, live your life, do what you want, because you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And I think people, I don't know if that's just a rationalization before the next, you know, slurpee or what, but I think people have embodied that, that it doesn't really matter when your number's up, your number's up. Yeah. Well, so of course, you look both ways.

That's the, you know, there are things we can do to decrease our risk of both getting hit by a bus and getting hit by the bus that is chronic disease. And, you know, it's like, look, there are certainly no guarantees in life, right? But the reason that we buckle our seatbelt is not because it's going to guarantee we're not going to die in a car crash, but that there's just good data suggesting that people who wear the seatbelts have a lower risk of dying in a car crash. And so the same thing with smoking, lung cancer, same thing with all these kind of lifestyle diseases. There's no guarantees you could still end up, you know, being unfortunate in a variety of ways, genetically or otherwise. But, you know, we take these simple common sense steps to

decrease our risk because we, you know, we want to live long, healthy lives and enjoy the time that we have. I'd like to get you to talk about inflammation because, you know, people hear about how horrible inflammation is, but I don't think anybody really understands it very well I don't and so I'd love to understand it better and how big a threat is it inflammation evolved just to take a step way back right it evolved to be beneficial when we we get a splinter in our finger and our finger gets red and warm, painful, swollen, that's inflammation. That's your body's natural reaction to tissue damage or irritation. And the purpose of which is to trigger the healing process, not a disease process. And so your body's reaction to a splinter is an example of what's called acute inflammation,

localized, temporary, direct response to infection or injury, focused on resolving the problem. Okay, the issue when people talk about inflammation is this chronic inflammation, also called metabolic inflammation, which is a systemic inflammatory response, persistent, nonspecific, and appears to perpetuate disease. This is kind of low-grade smoldering quality. And unfortunately, this chronic low-grade inflammation tends to worsen with age and actually plays an active role, not just kind of a passive role, but an active role in the

aging process. So a single measurement of an inflammatory marker like IL-6 or CRP can predict physical and cognitive performance as well as remaining lifespan in elderly individuals. But the good news is, is that this excess inflammation can be extinguished through changes in diet. There's actually something called a dietary inflammatory index where they just measured hundreds of foods and they just had people eat a food and they measured the levels of these inflammatory markers in the next subsequent few hours. And some foods are pro-inflammatory, where inflammatory markers go up. Some are anti-inflammatory, where they go down. Some just have no effect. And so then you can score all these different foods. And then with each

having a different score, you can make this index. And so you can see if your diet overall is anti-inflammatory or overall is pro-inflammatory. And so we have kind of remarkable control on a daily basis over kind of the level of inflammation in our body. And so it's about avoiding the pro-inflammatory food components such as saturated fat and sodium, tropical oils like palm kernel oil, coconut oil, palm oil, cutting down on salt, and even lots of foods that are anti-inflammatory, which are the berries, greens, salt-free tomato products, oats, flax seeds turmeric ginger garlic cinnamon cocoa powder it's a whole long list um and the these foods tend to be high in fiber high in what are called anthocyanin pigments these like the pigments in berries and red cabbage um and also um salicylic acid rich foods which is kind of like the component the anti-inflammatory component of aspirin

originally made from willow bark but actually found throughout the plant kingdom, concentrated in certain spices like cumin that can have these anti-inflammatory effects in the body. So when it comes to diet, there are lots of diets. There's the Mediterranean diet and the Blue Zones diet, and there's a vegetarian diet. So what is a good diet, or do they all work, and maybe they all have a lot in common? And is it more about the foods you eat, or is it more about the foods you cut out? Oh, fantastic question. It's really both. In terms of anti-aging foods, there's the global burden of disease. That was the largest systemic analysis of risk factors in history.

According to the top five things you can do to net the largest lifespan gains would be in the order of importance. Number one is eat more legumes. The most important thing we can do is eat more, you know, like beans and chickpeas, that kind of thing. Then second is eating more whole grains. Third, eating more nuts. And Then second is eating more whole grains. Third, eating more nuts. And then fourth is eating less meat. And then five is cutting down on sugary beverages like soda. So the top three are actually foods you're not giving up, but foods that you are missing from your diet. And it's only the last two where it's things that you're kind of getting

too much of. So I guess you could argue that it's really more about crowding out these less healthy options with these healthy foods that have proactive longevity benefits. But as a general guideline, is there a diet you should follow, the Mediterranean diet? You've mentioned the Blue Zone diet as a diet that seems to help people live longer. Well, I mean, that's what works. The Blue Zones diet, I mean, there's over 150 dietary surveys in these areas where they have, you know, the highest per capita, you know, centenarians, for example, those live to be 100. And so that really shows that this out in the real world, it's not just kind of theoretical where, you know, in a lab you can do, you can measure, you can randomize people to different diets.

So these short term changes, which you assume would then, you know, you know, kind of cash out in terms of disease. You can do these observational studies where you follow literally hundreds of thousands of people over time and you can correlate, you know, different diets with different diseases. But it's also nice to just, well, let's just see what has actually worked, you know, different diets with different diseases. But it's also nice to just, well, let's just see what has actually worked, you know, over the decades. And so you can go to these areas and you can see, oh, well, it looks like the same dietary factors that they all share in common that leads to this health and longevity are the same dietary factors that in the short-term interventional trials have been found to be beneficial and the same that in these big cohort studies that have shown to be beneficial or detrimental. So there's this kind of remarkable consistency over the last few decades from these

various different avenues of research to really the core tenants of healthy eating, like eat more fruits and vegetables. There's this nutritional backlash in the, you know, in the media. Of course it loves clickbait. You know, you don't, no one's going to click on an article that says broccoli is good for you. They're going to click on, you know, coffee's good for you. Coffee's bad for you. Coffee's good for you. You know? And so we, people are left just where the food industry wants them throwing their hands up in the air and eating whatever crap's put in front of them. But there's really remarkable consistency. If you actually look at the science as to the core tenets of healthy eating, healthy living. And so the confusion is really at the behest of the food industry that wants people to muddy the waters, but the truth is much more simple.

And let me get you to talk about sleep, because we've talked about diet and exercise. We hear a lot about sleep. Is the science there that that will help you live longer if you sleep more? You know, it actually isn't, which actually surprised me. So the relationship between sleep and longevity is actually uncertain. The recommendations for adults age 65 and older, seven to eight hours is recommended, but the evidence upon that, which is based, it's very difficult to randomize people to different amounts of sleep for prolonged periods of time to really prove cause and effect. But there certainly are benefits, for example, for immunity. So we do have interventional trials where you take people getting different amounts of sleep, so less than five hours versus seven hours or more, and you drip the cold virus into their noses, you actually get five times the risk of coming down

with a cold in the sleep-deprived group. Everyone was infected, 100% infection rate. They literally had the virus in their nose, but most of the people who got enough sleep didn't even know it. They didn't even experience any symptoms because their body were able to trounce the virus before it was causing any symptoms. So it's things like that, which suggest that the importance of sleep, however, because death from pneumonia is lower down on the list of leading killers, it doesn't appear to affect overall all-cause mortality or longevity, but it does have important benefits such as immune function, so I don't want to minimize it. Boy, that's pretty remarkable that you can drip the cold virus into somebody's nose and just the amount of sleep will seem to have an effect on whether they get it or they don't.

And so most of the people, it didn't come down with the cold that we're getting enough sleep. I mean, it's absolutely remarkable. Now the question is, it's unethical to do more serious viruses like influenza or something. And so just because it works against the common cold doesn't necessarily mean it works against, you know, the pneumococcus, pneumonia. That's what really kills people. But it certainly gives you, you know, a reason to get enough sleep. Well, what I like about your advice is it's not magic. Most of this we've heard versions of before. It's really a matter of just making the commitment and doing it.

I've been speaking with Michael Greger. He is a medical doctor and author of the book, How Not to Age, The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Michael. Absolutely. Thanks. Keep up the show notes. Thanks, Michael. Absolutely. Thanks. Keep up the good work.

Some research indicates that more people today than ever before feel stuck. Stuck in their job, stuck in their marriage, or stuck in some aspect of life. And in many cases, that feeling of being stuck is actually a luxury of living in the 21st century. Not so long ago, people didn't have time to sit around and feel stuck. They were too busy trying to survive. Today, we have so many options that we often feel like we're missing out on some of those options because we're stuck living the life we're living. According to Anelli Rufus, author of a book called Stuck, if you're feeling stuck, it's important to understand that it's because of choices you've made.

And the best way to get unstuck is to do something different, anything, even if you fail at that, because making new choices is the only way you will get out of that feeling of being stuck and more feeling like you're in control of your life. And that's kind of what New Year's resolutions are all about. And that is something you should know. We publish new episodes every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. And if you follow us on Spotify, you'll be notified when there's a new episode.

And you can listen right then and there. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemson, Emily Blunt,

Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.