The Pomp Podcast - 315: Scientist P.D. Mangan On Using Diet & Exercise To Fight Aging

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

PD Mangan is a 65 year-old author and scientist focused on using pharmacology, biochemistry, and microbiology to better understand how diet and exercise can be used for anti-aging and longevity. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of lean muscle mass, the science behind caloric restriction, why he is a proponent of high intensity resistance training, and the difference between lifespan and healthspan.  You can read more of PD's work here: https://roguehealthandfitness.com/ =============================== Blockset by BRD is your hosted blockchain infrastructure. Blockset enables enterprises and developers around the globe to deliver high-quality blockchain-based applications in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Using the services provided by Blockset, businesses can build professional custody solutions, accurate and near real-time portfolio management solutions, auditing platforms, commercial block explorers, and much more: https://www.blockset.com ===============================  Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. ===============================  Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. P.D. Mangan is a 65-year-old author and scientist focused on using pharmacology, biochemistry, and microbiology to better understand how diet and exercise can be used for anti-aging and longevity. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of lean muscle mass, the science behind caloric restriction, why he is a proponent of high-intensity resistance training, and the difference between lifespan and healthspan. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. But before we get into the episode, I want to talk about our sponsors. The first is Blockset by BRD.

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on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with PD. I hope you guys enjoy it. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. Super excited to have PD on the podcast here. I was telling him

beforehand that he gets to spend all of his time worrying about things that actually matter in the world, like health, diet, and anti-aging. So thanks so much for doing this, man. uh thanks anthony it's my pleasure for sure so for those that don't know you maybe let's just start with uh with your background kind of where did you grow up and then what did you do through school uh before you um you start really creating content on the internet uh so yeah so um i have a background i my education is in microbiology and biochemistry uh i study pharmacology as well and as you know I was pointing out to you this is you know I'm not a research scientist or anything like that but it is my field so let me give you a little bit of other background I've

been interested in health and fitness for a long time and you know I basically followed conventional wisdom for a long time, but then when I found myself with an illness, this has already been a couple of decades ago, and I couldn't get better, my interest definitely deepened because I had to try to figure out how to take care of myself, how to heal myself, how to improve, because doctors couldn't do it. They were getting nowhere. And I, I saw a number of them. So, uh, you know, so I jumped in and, and, uh, you know, I definitely made progress. I had definitely figured a few things out. And, uh, so I started writing about it and, uh, after I had written about it, I thought, well, what do I do now? I guess I'll keep writing and,

in keep researching and and so on so uh i did that and i've written several books and then you know got on twitter and and that's basically you know fast forward today here i am yeah and so you uh you obviously are incredibly humble you've written uh i think six books at this point um you've got a a fairly popular uh blog in rogue health and fitness um and the part to me that uh initially caught my attention was i saw you tweeting a bunch of of stuff that I thought was interesting. Uh, and when I clicked through to the website, there's these, uh, photos of you and one is from 2008. And, uh, the way I would describe it for those that are just listening is essentially you look like kind of your standard, uh, computer program,

right? You've got basically kind of a button down college shirt on some khakis and, uh, you know, overly skinny, um, but by no means, uh, kind of out of shape, but more of, uh, just like never been around a weight room before. And then you fast forward to 2017. And you're like, wait a minute, the guy in 2017 looks like he's in way better shape, and actually younger than the guy in 2008. And I think that's kind of, you know, a great just visual example of the work that you've done around, hey, this stuff's actually really, really important as you get older. And that's where you've kind of hung your hat right right it it is very important um yeah my starting point as you mentioned was definitely you know not not quite where most people are starting from these

days you know but i mean i was i was on the underweight side uh and and that was when i was ill as well so um you know one of the things i figured out was that resistance training aka weightlifting was one of the best things I could do. And I got very much into it, put on a lot of muscle right away, basically in the first year after I started it and started eating differently as well. So my reading and studies have convinced me that resistance training is just a very important thing for everyone to do whether they're men or women young or old we lose muscle as we age this is a really underappreciated fact that that it's even it's even detectable when someone is in their 30s and then this accelerates over the years

and it's such that by by the time someone is 80 years old they can have lost half the muscle mass that they had when they were young if they don't do something about it and of course most people aren't doing anything about it so uh yeah that's a condition known as sarcopenia it's massive loss of muscle mass and then a lot of people uh overlay a pretty high amount of body fat over that and that's that's just a health disaster i think that um this is this is the muscle part is that is underappreciated and and everything about that is underappreciated you know in why why do people get sicker as they get older and to my mind this is you know right there is the crux of the matter as far as why they do metabolic dysfunction from losing muscle excess body fat of course the wrong

kinds of foods enter into it and on and on but you know you know right there i tweeted something just just this morning i was you know thinking about this i i tweeted that that um all chronic disease is just a manifestation of a single cause and okay that's that that's a huge generality i realize, but I think this is something that, um, it is not appreciated very much that, that metabolic dysfunction that comes from being out of shape and eating the wrong kind of food. This is what underlies virtually everything that people go to the doctor for the, you know, the crime diseases, uh, uh, that are seen in the developed world. Um, you know, as opposed to the acute things that are, that are more common elsewhere. Um, so yeah, that's, that's a big,

um, big idea that, that I think, um, you know, is one of my main themes that you, you have to, you have to, um, have good metabolic function to avoid chronic disease. Yeah. And, and part of, um, what I think is so interesting about your work is, uh, you literally named the blog Rogue Health and Fitness, right? You're going rogue from kind of the standard ideas around what to eat, how to exercise and things like that. And so I thought maybe what we could do is let's start on the diet side, right? Most people are taught kind of a low fat, high carb type diet. And they basically eat, you know, what they consider to be that food pyramid. You obviously have a different view of the world. So maybe kind of talk about the work you've done and why you've arrived at something that's different or kind of rogue to those traditional recommendations.

okay great um so i think that a lot of this a lot of the way people eat um and you know how they're recommended to eat and so on it flows from one one single idea and that idea is a wrong idea and and it's basically the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease this this goes back, uh, to, uh, you know, the forties and fifties and, and the nutritionist Ancel Keys and the cholesterol idea and so on. And, and they hit on the idea that, um, saturated fat was killing people. Um, it was, it was, uh, a huge problem at the time. Um, heart disease, uh, it's still a big problem, but it's mostly much older people now at the time they were looking at a lot of middle-aged men dropping dead of heart attacks and so on. Um, so they hit on this idea and in

retrospect, it, you know, looking at, looking at what we know now in the research, it seems wholly mistaken. Um, nevertheless, by the late 1970s, the U S government had latched onto it and put out official dietary recommendations that we should avoid eating a lot of saturated fat, that we should eat a lot of whole grains, that fruits and vegetables were uniquely healthy, and so on and so forth. And that is the basis for how most people are eating now. Now, let me back up a little. As far as saturated fat goes, there have been several meta-analyses, which are basically reviews of studies done in the last decade that have shown that intake of dietary saturated fat is not related to coronary heart disease. Um, so, um, I come from a perspective of, of thinking, why do, why does the Western world,

the modern Western world suffer from these diseases like heart disease and cancer and Alzheimer's diabetes, uh, and so on. And, and why have these all increased in recent years? Um, And why do some other societies not have them, essentially? You know, for example, there is an island in the South Pacific, the Catawans, the island of Catawba, where these people live, and they have no chronic disease whatsoever, as far as they found, you know, people have gone there and investigate them. And, and that despite the fact that 75% of the men smoke cigarettes. So, you know, I mean, I'm not, you know, not saying that cigarettes are benign by any means,

but I'm just saying, I'm pointing out this fact, why do these people have seemingly no chronic disease? If, if you go back in time, why did these, even, even in the Western world, why were these diseases so scarce and why are they common now? Well, my main conclusion is that chronic diseases are, as someone has said, they might be better termed the diseases of processed food. So in the late 19th century, there were technologies developed, for example, that were able to make white flour um there was there was little to no white flour before that but then they you know with with the industrial revolution and these gigantic milling machines they were

able to make white flour and everybody started using it um sugar has been around a little bit longer but it became a lot cheaper um and so as it became cheaper and cheaper people started using more of it. A couple hundred years ago in the U.S., you know, per capita consumption was like five pounds a year or something like that, whereas it's, you know, in the range of 150 pounds now. And then one other invention that happened in the late 19th century was they figured out how to extract oils from seeds um so uh they this started out actually as a way to try to make cotton seeds which were a waste product profitable to get something out of them and they did and ultimately they made crisco um the the last the co on that last part of crisco stands

for cottonseed oil. And they apply this to a number, you know, of different oils. So now, for example, soybean oil is the most common oil and, you know, corn oil, canola oil, you know, et cetera, all these oils. So you put those all together and you've got modern food. And you put them you put them together in a certain way in certain combinations and you've got modern ultra-processed food that people eat huge amounts of so in the united states um approximately 60 of calories in the average diet comes from these ultra-processed foods so that's a huge amount so So what I'm talking about specifically are the kind of foods that come in boxes and bags that are brightly labeled, have brand names that are found in the middle aisles of the

supermarket, and that's what most people eat. So that is what has caused our modern epidemic of crime disease, in my estimation. now we've had even um you know a lot of this goes back to the invention of agriculture right so so before agriculture everyone was a hunter-gatherer everyone ate meat um and whatever whatever wild uh vegetation they could gather um and as far as we know they suffered from none of these chronic diseases that we have now. Then when agriculture was invented, people started eating lots of grains, and they started suffering from a lot of chronic diseases. For example, a really good example of this is that before agriculture, the average man was

something like five foot nine inches tall. After agriculture, they were five foot three. and there was all kinds of uh you know with and with the same you know proportionate uh decrease in women and you know they found in skeletals skeletal remains that have been studied and so on chronic diseases osteoarthritis so on and so forth infectious diseases also also became very prominent at any rate we lived like that for a long time um in in recent years say the 19th century people started getting much taller again due to better nutrition um but then we took a second hit we took this industrial food hit um that i was just talking about starting around 1900 say um heart disease started right rising as it as an epidemic

basically. In 1900, there was essentially zero heart disease. Famous cardiologist, Paul Dudley White, who was the most famous cardiologist of mid-century said that when he was training in the early years of the century, nobody ever talked about coronary artery disease because nobody had it. They didn't know it existed. And then people started having heart attacks and so on till by the mid, mid 20th century, um, you, you had huge, you know, huge numbers of heart attacks and so on heart disease epidemic. So then, you know, fast forward to a couple of decades ago, and then we had these dietary guidelines after they decided that saturated fat was bad. Um, And then the obesity epidemic started going right about that time.

Is that a coincidence? I don't think so. There are other factors, I believe, but the fact that people were told to eat less meat and animal products and eat more carbohydrates, I believe, very much contributed to it. um so there we are there there's there's the food element and that's that that is my explanation of why this has happened and so what it really sounds like um because it's super interesting like one is there's a direct correlation between bad food get other problems right it's kind of a very general way to look at that and then the question and really where the debate lies is like well what's bad food and what's not bad food. I think your general kind of conclusion sounds like real food is good. Anything that's not real is worse, right? Not to say that it's bad.

It's just when given the choice between two separate types of meals, if one is made with real food that doesn't come with the oils and the process, process, all that kind of stuff, versus the stuff that does that real food will in almost every way be better for you. Is that correct? That, that is correct. Now there's, you know, there's endless debate in like in my corner of Twitter, for example, about, you know, what constitutes the best diet? What, what should be, what should human beings really be eating optimally and so on and so forth. But I think as you just put it, that is a very fundamental divide there. Um, so like, for example, um, you have, you have the vegans. So now vegans, um, I mean, I, I don't have a lot of sympathy

for veganism. Um, nevertheless, you know, they will point out, well, you know, a whole food plant-based diet, um, makes people healthier. And there's, you know, a fair amount of evidence that yeah, it does. Um, and in my view, the reason for that is because they've stopped eating processed garbage. So when you talk about a whole food plant-based diet, it's not the plant-based, It's the whole food that makes the difference. So, you know, you could also formulate different diets, but if you're talking about using these ultra processed foods, these, you know, garbage foods, then, you know, those are going to be bad. So like I say, there's a lot of debate about what constitutes the optimal or the best, and I have my own opinions on that. But yes, what you just mentioned, real whole food versus ultra processed food is just a fundamental base there. yeah it's almost like look uh whether you want to go vegan paleo whatever else diet that everyone is you know kind of debating everyone pretty much agrees eating processed food is bad right and so

if you can if you can stop doing that as step one for most people listening to this like you're headed in the right direction and then everything else is kind of optimizing from there right right And I think that, you know, that a lot of the people, a lot of the vegans, for example, who proselytize for their diet, for lack of a better word, they don't really quite understand that. they they you know and even let's let's get back from the vegans let's even talk about mainstream health authorities the kind of stuff that you'll uh there'll be an article in new york times so and so says this and this they don't seem to realize the difference either they they don't seem to get for the most part that that you know these ultra processed foods are causing the problem. The, for example, the oils that I mentioned, so I refer to them as

seed oils. They're more commonly known as vegetable oils, but they're not made out of vegetables. They're made out of this mass industrial process from seeds. In any case, they're still widely recommended by health authorities that, you know, we should be using them and so on and so forth. So a lot of that just goes, they just don't get it, unfortunately. Yeah. And what do you eat on a daily basis? So processed food is bad. How do you come out on this in terms of what solution you found for yourself? And I should have caveated at the beginning. I'm 32 years old. You are not 32. You frankly look like you're in your mid-40s. but how old are you i'm 65. i i i just got on medicare a couple months ago

you would be the poster boy for uh moving the medicare age up because you do not look like you're 65 years old um so what are you eating on a day-to-day basis uh so i guess uh you could probably characterize it uh as low carb and very meat based so um i eat meat and eggs um basically a lot of them and i eat non-starchy vegetables um and i drink coffee and tea and some red wine And I think, uh, a little bit of dairy. So, you know, some no sugar yogurt, that is some cheese, that sort of thing that about covers it for the most part, uh, unless I'm cheating or something. Got it. And then, um, I I'm really interested and we'll get to some of the anti-aging stuff in a little bit, but part of, uh, the diet is, uh, when you eat, right. And so the two things that,

is really interesting to me. And I cheated a little bit because I spent a lot of time looking at like David Sinclair's work around longevity and all of this. But one of the key pieces is caloric restriction, right? And so there's kind of two ways to do it. Either one, literally eat less, which can be very difficult for a lot of people, especially in today's society, or this idea of intermittent fasting, which has, you know, frankly, appeared to explode in popularity. And I think that you do the intermittent fasting as well. I do. So intermittent fasting is just going, yeah, like you said, it's exploded in popularity. So I don't know how much of an explanation people need. But yes, it's just a practice of going without food for some length

of time. And there are a number of intermittent fasting regimens. I mean, you know, tons of different ones, almost as many as, you know, the number of people who practice it, right? So 16-8 is a very common one, and that's what I usually do. So that just means nothing to eat after the evening meal, then sleep time counts as well, and then not having anything to eat in the morning until approximately 16 hours after the evening meal the night before. So you mentioned caloric restriction. So yeah, this is interesting from an anti-aging point of view because many decades ago, scientists working with lab animals found out that if you fed animals less, they lived longer and they had less disease and so on. And the idea that all diseases are inhibited means that

aging itself is inhibited. So, um, caloric restriction has, has, you know, turned out to be the most robust, um, most reproducible, um, life extension, uh, intervention that scientists have found. Um, so like you say, caloric restriction is very difficult to do. and in my view is not really necessary. So there are people who practice caloric restriction. There's a calorie restriction society that, you know, with I think several thousand members who do this or weigh their food very carefully every day and all this, and they're all very lean and so on. But there's an easier way and intermittent fasting appears to be just as effective as caloric restriction for life extension, but without really actual caloric restriction.

I mean, you know, for example, myself and other people who practice intermittent fasting were of normal weight, right? We're not, you know, super skinny or something like that. So, you know, presumably I and those other people are eating, you know, a normal amount of calories. So, What it appears to be is it's a hormetic stress. That gets into another topic, but it's a stress, much like exercise is a stress, that results in the organism becoming healthier. Yes, intermittent fasting, I practice it. Many people do.

Um, it, it also appears to be pretty effective for weight loss from, from when combined with a decent diet, because people simply have difficulty eating as much during the time when they're eating, you know, that, that they skipped before. So, um, yes, intermittent fasting. Um, I, I do it and a lot of people do it very, very healthy practice. What is the target number of calories that like the caloric restriction community, what do they normally try to target? Is there some kind of either one set number or two, some math that they do? Well, you know, as far as the people doing it, I honestly am not sure.

But in the laboratory, when they've studied animals, they found that basically, the more restriction, the longer they live. I mean, they've taken anywhere from 10 to 50% of fewer calories for these animals. And the more restriction, the longer they seem to live. Yeah, that's absolutely crazy. And then in terms of kind of the diet, right? So the takeaways really for me are eat less processed food. I think maybe Sinclair talked about this in one of his books too, is this idea of when you eat is almost more important than what you eat in some circumstances, right? So kind of this caloric restriction or intermittent fasting, but then you overlay exercise on it, right? And I think that most people, if I said to them, hey, you are tasked with losing 10 pounds, they would immediately, one, think of exercise, right? They wouldn't think of diet, which obviously is kind of a false way of thinking about it. But two is the type of exercise. They would say, well, I'm going to go run, right? And I'm going to go run as far as I can for as long as I can and hope to God that I lose

weight. Obviously, you have a very different view of the world. So maybe kind of help me understand why you, again, kind of go rogue from the traditional exercise advice. Right. Very interesting question. This is another topic where people have it just all the wrong way around. So, yes, you know, if you told somebody they had to lose 10 pounds, they think about exercise. So that's the common idea. I'm going to go burn it off.

And there are a number of things wrong with that. idea. First of all, the evidence is, is very poor. So, you know, as you can imagine, there've been a lot of studies of this sort of thing, you know, where they take a group of people and want them to lose weight. So one group will exercise and one, one won't and so on. And if it's not coupled with diet, it is almost completely ineffective. It just doesn't work exercise alone. And there, there are, there are reasons for that. Good reasons for that. One is that you don't burn as much energy exercising as most people think. Right. I mean, you can go have a pretty solid aerobic workout in the gym and, you know, you might, you know, for 30, 40 minutes or something

like that, you might end up burning 300 calories, you know, and then you go to Starbucks afterwards, get a Frappuccino, which is 400 calories. Well, that, you know, that's all shot. And, and that leads to a corollary, which is that exercise makes you hungry. So, um, people exercise more thinking they're burning all off, but then they just get hungrier and they eat more and so on. In fact, it's really interesting. There were doctors in the 19th century that said that if you want to lose weight, stop exercising. And if you want to gain weight exercise, so, you know, completely different point of view. So my point of view, as far as exercise and weight loss is that you're not, you don't exercise to, uh, to, to burn fat or burn calories or whatever. So that,

you know, diet is just supremely important in weight loss. So, you know, if you want to lose weight, you know, using the Pareto rule, it's, you know, it's 80 to 90% of it is going to be your diet. However, exercise resistance training is important. So one big problem with conventional reducing diets um so you know low calorie diet which is you know the most common thing portion control all this sort of thing is that if good measures aren't taken a lot of the weight loss is muscle and um that you know anywhere from a quarter up to half of weight loss can be muscle And that is something that you really want to avoid at all costs. When people talk about, I want to lose weight, it's fat they want to lose, not muscle, not the rest of their body weight, right?

So resistance training is important, in my view, when people are wanting to lose weight because it helps them build in and retain their muscle. yeah and part of this is um you know again it all goes back to science which is if you have two people who weighed the exact same so let's say you have a you know 180 pound man one has a lean muscle mass and the other does not even though they weigh the same amount um from like a pound standpoint their bodies are actually in very different states right that the lean muscle mass kind of more actively burns the calories versus not having that. And that's really what it sounds like a lot of the work that you've done is to drive people to not be as scared of, of kind of developing that lean muscle mass, but actually seeking it out, right? And trying to put your

body in a position where the muscles themselves are burning the fat or burning the calories. And therefore the diet plus that lean muscle mass really does the work for you. Right. The example you gave of two men each weighing 180 pounds, but with different body composition is a good one because they do not have the same health risks at all. The health risks that are associated with being overweight or obese are due to body fat and they're not due to muscle. So, you know, this, this is one of the, um, drawbacks of the most commonly used measure, um, uh, body mass index. Um, so it's a, it's an idea, you know, it's a good idea to normalize, uh, body weight for how tall you are and, and, and so on. But the fact is, is, you know, there are,

you know, athletes mainly, and some other people who, you know, are clinically overweight or even obese, but it's all muscle. And, and they don't have the health risks. Conversely, there are people who are normal weight, there's a phenomenon called normal weight obesity. And they have a very high level of body fat, even though they are a normal weight, and they have the exact same health risks as somebody who is obese. So yeah, it's all driven by body fat. The more muscle and less body fat you have within limits, of course, but you know, speaking very generally, the healthier you are, the more it's not just, it's not even just a matter of the muscle burning the calories to keep you at a normal weight. It's also a matter of your

metabolism is functioning properly so that you don't have these high risks of all the chronic diseases that are so rampant in our society. Type 2 diabetes has just risen, you know, tremendously, like something like 8 to 10 fold just in the last several decades. so those those of us who talk about this topic i think are very well aware of this but i think this is this uh one fact is not very well appreciated by most people who don't take a deep look at it and that is that type 2 diabetes is just the end result of a long chain of events that that lead ultimately to type two diabetes. So somebody becomes a diabetic when their blood sugar is

no longer under control and it rises. But all the events that lead to that are happening in the vast majority of people in the United States today. There was a recent study that showed that 88% of of american adults had some kind of metabolic dysfunction and only 12 were were clinically metabolically healthy so what that means is that all those people that 88 they're they're traveling traveling that road to type 2 diabetes that's the road you want to stay off and by having good body composition, which is a high, relatively high level of muscle, low level of body fat for both men and women, you stay off that road. Yeah. One of the interesting things I saw, um, you talk about, uh, I think it was in a, uh, article that you wrote was the, uh, difference in using like

a body mass index, uh, as a measurement for health versus literally just measuring somebody's waistline. Right. And so maybe kind of talk about the, the kind of the difference there. And, and most people hear that they kind of like well that's really simplistic but uh but but you you know you may basically the argument like hey literally measuring the waistline could be a better way to to measure health right right and and it is um so body mass index um you know like i was just saying it doesn't take into account the proportions of muscle and body fat that somebody has. So a very simple measure, and this has been studied a lot is, and I want to, let me back up just a little bit. I just want to say a lot of people make this point about that I just made

about, okay, they're all the, you know, there are these athletes that, you know, that have high body mass index, but they're in good health and so on. And yeah, you know, sure, I agree. However, that just does not apply to most people. BMI is actually more likely to underestimate health risk because of this phenomenon of normal weight obesity, right? So people have high body fat and they look, according to BMI, they look normal when in fact they have high health risk. In any any case, yeah, waist size is actually better. So, uh, if somebody is, uh, their, their waist size should be one half or less of their height. And that is a better measure of metabolic, uh, and chronic disease risk, um, than body mass index. So if somebody is six feet, six feet tall,

they should have a 36 inch or less waist size to be healthy yeah it's pretty crazy how uh you know once you start to wrap your head around this stuff it's simple to understand what the benchmarks are and kind of where where to fall the hard work is in uh is really disciplined um one of the things that uh i know a lot of people so i was in the military played football in college uh and there was always kind of weird sayings that at the time seemed a little crazy but but as you learn more may not be so crazy so i literally would have a friend who would always say uh uh i always will be able to run a sub seven minute mile and i used to give him shit and say like you know why and he said you ever seen a fat person who can run sub seven minutes right okay like you know like there's

some truth to that i guess um and then uh many of those people both from the military and from uh from playing football have now gone on to do a lot of this like high intensity training. So whether it's CrossFit or other types of exercises, they have elements of strength training, but they also have kind of a cardiovascular element to them as well, packed into, you know, somewhat short 30 to 45 minute type workout. What's kind of your take on that? And how does that fit into kind of the, um, the exercise type, uh, routines that, uh, that you think work best for people. Yeah, that, that's, that's interesting. So, um, high intensity training is, you know, is a, is a relatively recent phenomenon as far as it has been studied by exercise physiologists and so on.

And the results have been remarkable in, in the lab studies they've done on this. I mean, for example one one study they they had they had people riding on a stationary bicycle so they would go all out for um 30 seconds i believe it was and then have a you know then then they would cycle leisurely for a few minutes and then do it again so for a total of three all-out bouts on the exercise cycle meanwhile they had a group um on also on an exercise bicycle doing steady you know what what we would see like what you would typically see when you walk into a gym people pedaling on their cycle so steady state aerobic exercise for 45 minutes so these these groups each did three sessions a week and in just a few weeks the people that were literally only working

out, I don't know what it came to, six minutes a week or something, got just as fit as the people who spent 45 minutes a day riding their exercise bicycles. So by ramping up the intensity of the exercise, you decrease the need for duration and for frequency. So yeah, high intensity exercise is great how that fits into my philosophy of exercise is high intensity resistance training so that's that's the form i practice and that i advocate and um there are a lot of uh you know mistaken ideas about it but um because it doesn't necessarily people hear this word high intensity And they think, oh my God, you know, it's, you know, I'm, I'm not going to do that. Um, and it does, but it does not necessarily involve what most people think of as heavy

weights. Um, and it doesn't involve moving quickly either. In fact, quite the opposite is slow movements, generally speaking, but it involves basically, um, doing a set until momentary muscular failure, which means until you cannot do another rep. So this turns out to be a very good cardiovascular exercise as well, because it's a form of high intensity training. That's what I do. That's what I advocate. And so like, let's take a simple exercise like the bench press, right? Walk me through kind of how much weight, right? So 50%, 100% of somebody's kind of one rep max. And then what does that look like from a number of reps

that they normally would be able to do, right? So if somebody came to you and said, hey, I'm going to go bench press today. How do I do the high intensity resistance training? Like, what does that look like? Right. So as far as the weight goes, if somebody is moving to a high intensity way of training,

the choice of a weight is going to be a little bit of trial and error at first as compared to say what they do on a one repetition max lift. um in in general the first uh couple of reps should be relatively easy you should be able to always move in good form you should always be able to control the weight without heaving or jerking the weight around um now bench presses is perhaps not the best example of what i want to illustrate here. And, and the reason for that is because in a bench press, you have the possibility of a barbell with weights getting stuck on your chest and you don't want that to

happen. So, uh, you know, I always tell people that, um, being free of injury is the most important thing you can do as far as any form of exercise. That's just the most important aspect of it. So if somebody wanted to do a bench press to momentary muscular failure, they should either have a spotter or a chest press machine would probably be better for the average person. So they're going to move that weight in, you know, slowly and in good form and do it until they can no longer do another repetition. Now, in terms of reps, repetitions are not the goal. Repetitions are a way of keeping count. So the number of repetitions that anyone can do is going to vary between, you know, the person who's doing it, how much weight they choose, and so on.

What you want to look at is time under tension and going to momentary muscular failure. So a fairly wide range of time under tension is totally effective for building muscle and for getting fit. So I usually tell people, you know, 30 to 60 seconds, maybe a little more of time under tension is about where you want to be. Reps are a method of keeping count, not your goal, and always go to momentary muscular failure. For sure. One of the things, and it's been years since I looked at this, so you'll have to excuse me if I misspeak here, but there was a gentleman who I want to say was in Arizona. He was playing college football, I think maybe even went to the NFL. I do not think it was Pat Tillman, but it could have been him. There was somebody. And basically what they were doing is they were training with somebody who the entire thought process was that time under tension didn't have to only be arrived at through repetition, right? So if I wanted to, uh, for example, um, put my, uh, pectoral muscles through time under tension, I could do that simply by going down into a pushup position, kind of at the, at

the most tension, uh, point and just holding it. And then I can hold it for 60 seconds, come out of it. And I would get the same, if not more benefit than the person who sat down and did, you know, 10 or 15 reps at whatever the weight was. And I always thought that was interesting because to a lay person like me who has no scientific background other than what Google provides, it makes sense, right? But it was just very interesting because, again, that was a different view of the world but seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. So just interested on your thoughts there and if that has any validity or maybe has been disproven at this point. No, it's absolutely correct.

um so what you're interested in is the the muscle doing metabolic work um and so this actually leads to an interesting point of you know what what is the purpose of lifting weights so if you if you ask the average person the average guy in the gym you know what what you're supposed to do in the weight room he says well it's to pick up a weight and to move it in a certain way and move it you know, and move it back again. And I think that's, that's an incorrect answer. The answer is you're supposed to load your muscle, your load, your muscles with tension and work your muscles with this tension until you, you get to momentary muscular failure in order to, um, put the proper stress on your muscles that will make them stronger and make them grow. Um, so as far as

what you're talking about, um, this, you know, being stationary, certainly you can go down into a pushup position. And as long as you're not locked out at the top, but if you're just halfway there, you are certainly putting your muscles under tension. You stay there, you are exercising them and you can provide the stimulus for your muscles to get stronger by doing that. Yeah, it's super interesting. And then I guess, you know, there's the diet and exercise component that we've talked about. But ultimately, a lot of this feeds into the anti-aging kind of talk tracker or thought process. And to me, anti-aging has kind of two components, right? The average person simply wants to have a healthier life, right? So they think, hey, the average person

dies around 77 years old, give or take. That's when I'm going to die. You know, based on the data, I want to be as healthy and happy as I can be for my 77 years here on earth. And, you know, see you guys later. There is another group that basically says if 77 is the average, I want to live to, you know, 150 and kind of they actually want to extend life. Diet and exercise plays into both of those categories of longevity correct right sure um yeah so i i'm sorry do you did you want to complete that what you were saying or yeah well just like how do you think about let's let's take the first bucket first right so like hey i want to be healthier for the time i am allotted here uh diet and exercise feeding into that is basically what you focused on right right so

So yes, this is a very interesting question. So I think most people think about this in the wrong way. So the idea of anti-aging or life extension, most people, the really most common reaction is people think that means they're going to spend an extra decade in a nursing home. And that is absolutely not what we're talking about here. So there are a couple of concepts. Well, there's a concept that I think is helpful in thinking about that, and that is healthspan. So people talk about lifespan. You want to have a good health span, too, right? The typical way that people live now is that somewhere in middle age, they develop some health problems, and they gradually go downhill for a long time, for decades, until finally they get to the end of the road. Ideally, you would want, I mean, we know we're all going to get to the end of the road someday, but ideally you want to be as healthy as possible while you're doing it so that any diseases that come along, they only come along at the end of life. And that pattern is, in fact, what you see in a lot of very long-lived people. They're quite healthy until 100 or something like that, and then they come down with something and then that's it. So the other thing is that

this is related to the first point is that anti-aging or life extension, it is necessarily about more years of healthy life, which even if it isn't a longer life, it necessarily means a healthy life. Most chronic diseases occur in older age from middle age on up. And that indicates that they're all closely related to aging. So if you can postpone aging, you, you, you postpone all the diseases of aging. That, that, that's, that's what it amounts to. It's not about more years in a nursing home. It's about extending years of healthy lifespan. And would it be fair to say that if you had to choose one or the other health or a diet versus exercise, for most people, the simplest thing that would have the biggest impact is actually the diet side rather than the

exercise side? Or do you feel like it is you have to have both? Well, you know, if forced to choose, I, I would agree with that, that diet is the most important thing. And, um, there are a couple of reasons. One is that, um, the amount of a fairly small amount of exercise has large benefits. So, you know, you don't have to be, um, an athlete or do all kinds of stuff to have, get large benefits just just as opposed to being sedentary um you know of course what i advocate is people do optimal exercise and that's what i try to do with my resistance training and so on um but but the fact is that you you can get these large benefits from a small amount of exercise on the other hand there there's an expression that people often use in my neck of the woods

is you can't outrun a bad diet. And so, I mean, there are cases of athletes who have become diabetic because they're eating the wrong diet, you know, really high carb. So, you know, back in the day when I used to do a lot of running, I mean, all the running magazines are telling you eat all these carbs all the time, all the time. And, you know, I did that and people have done that and they they have become diabetic despite a very high level of exercise so um for those reasons yeah i i would come down on diet as being the most important thing for most people i think it was von miller uh a denver broncos an nfl player a couple years ago uh he sat out of practice right in the media of course you know hey you're like the star player uh why are you sitting out

of practice and uh and he very kind of uh embarrassingly went in front of the cameras and he said something to the effect of uh i had um mozzarella sticks yesterday and and the uh quote he used was that's like putting regular gas in a ferrari right it just it's just gonna screw it up and so he was basically saying look you know i felt sick because i eat so healthy i'm such this like you know elite athlete and then I ate some shitty food and next thing you know like literally I missed practice the next day and you know look that's not gonna happen to everyone every single time whatever but it was just very very kind of uh illuminating I think when I heard him say that I said look the guy's super in tune with his body and obviously it had an impact for an NFL player

to miss a practice simply because of something he ate you know the day before the night before absolutely i mean those guys uh need need to be careful with what they eat and i think most of them are um i've you know read a lot about uh tom brady and his diet and he's very very careful about it so um yeah it it's very important even even at a high level of exercise you you know there are some exceptions and maybe, you know, for, for short periods of time, like, uh, the, uh, the swimmer whose name escapes me at the moment, the, the Olympic medalist who was supposedly eating 12,000 calories a day. Um, and, and so, you know, maybe you can get away with that for a short time period of time, but you know, this, this phenomenon is real about not being able to

outrun a bad diet. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Before we go to wrap up, where can people find out more about you and your work? Where do you want to send them? Sure. So thanks. My website is called roguehealthandfitness.com. And I'm very active on Twitter. My handle is Mangan. That's my last name, Mangan150. And that's where they can find me. Awesome. I end each episode with the same two questions, and then you'll get to ask me a question to end the episode. But the first one is, what is the most important book you've ever read? That's a good question. I could say that a book that had a big impact on me was Thoreau by, um, uh, Walden by Thoreau, excuse me. Um, I read that many times when I was young and, um, it impressed upon me the idea of living life,

that life was to be lived. I love that. I thought, uh, I see in the background, the Bitcoin billionaires book. I thought you were going to throw that out there. Well, that's current reading for sure. Yeah. Ben Mesrick, the author has been on the podcast and he did a fantastic job with that one. But the book Walden, what exactly is it? Is it a fiction book? Is it a nonfiction? It is nonfiction. It was written in 1843, I believe. And And Henry David Thoreau is the author, and he went out to live in a cabin on a lake in Walden Pond in Massachusetts, and he just wrote about spending a year there. And it's very philosophical, and there are a number of quotes from the book that you probably find familiar, like, the mass of men lead lives in quiet desperation. Uh, there's another one about, uh, marching to a different drummer. So these, these come from that

book. Um, it's about living life as you see fit about another quote coming to the, uh, you don't want to come to the end of your life and find out that you have not really lived. That is a very, very true statement for sure. Uh, we, we spent a lot of time talking about humans and the last question i ask is a more fun one uh about aliens believer or non-believer non-believer wow okay why why a non-believer um because um the evidence shows uh the the evidence points to the idea that human beings may be unique in the universe as far as intelligent life goes so um there may very well and probably is some form of life elsewhere but as far as intelligent life um there i would ask the question that uh enrico fermi asked where are they

i mean if fair question there there are billions of galaxies and vast space and and it's all been in existence for billions of years why haven't we heard from anybody why isn't there any sign of anything i i think that is the most compelling anti-alien argument that there is i've had you know, hundreds of people at this point, I've asked this question to on the podcast and, uh, uh, I'd say 95% of people believe, and they basically sum it up to like, it would be ignorant for us to not believe in the world is so vast and, you know, they kind of all that. Uh, but there's only one answer that I ever hear on the anti, uh, belief side that makes sense to me. And it's that, which is hey they're not real until we find them right or they find us right right uh they're they're

they're just uh you know you couple that with some theoretical thinking about uh the the odds of intelligent life evolving and so on and the fact that that we don't have any evidence for that and there ought to be abundant evidence one would think um so uh so at the moment i'm i'm in the negative camp i love it i love it what uh what's the one question you have for me to uh to wrap this up um i am curious about uh your your work day you seem to be incredibly hard working, you put out your letter five days a week, you do regular podcasts, I think maybe five, five a week or so. How the hell do you do it? Yeah, I, um, I have this, uh, a weird framework. Somebody asked me this recently. So, uh, I have an advantage in that I took some time to think

about it. And what I told them was I've really compartmentalized my day. And there's a certain rhythm to it. And I know myself well enough. I take the letter I write every morning. The day that I stopped writing that, it's over. Like the streak's broken, I'll be done, right? And so I just know every day I got to write something. And no matter what happens, I got to write it. And then I'll worry about tomorrow. If tomorrow's going to be the day I stop. Right. And then on the video on the podcast stuff, like I get to learn from people who have spent, like, you know, take yourself, for example, you spent a bunch of time thinking about things that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about. I probably should spend more time. And so you helped me just kind of cheat a

little bit in that you downloaded all your information to me. Right. And it just so happens that uh we recorded it and a bunch of other people are going to listen so i think that it's um it's all really around uh learning and and i generally uh enjoy doing that and and so it's kind of like i would spend my time doing this even if no one was reading it or or listening um at the same time uh you who is it a jocko wilmick i think has a thing like discipline equals freedom right and it's this idea of just, I know every day, here's how my day is split up. I know exactly how to kind of allocate that time. People who are close to me will tell you, I will get a little annoyed if I feel like it's off, right? So if all of a sudden I realize, hey, I don't have the letter

written by a certain time, I know I'm behind. And then it's like, I better speed this up before everything else gets set off. And so when you kind of get in a rhythm and have some sort of process and and uh have some discipline around it uh it's comes second nature right so like i literally don't even i don't even know what i would do in the morning if i didn't write the letter right because i've just been doing it for so long that it's just like a well duh of course i do that um but at the same time uh i have had friends who um i've got one who actually works for uh works with a gentleman who writes a very popular uh email every day he's got five people working on it. And I asked him, what the hell do you guys all do? Right. I like, like literally if I had

five people, I don't even know what I would have them do. They would all sit there and watch me write pretty much. Right. Like that would be kind of weird. So I do think that it, um, it's like anything, right. If you enjoy doing it, it's not even work. It's just like, I'm excited to have the conversations or, um, or to write the stuff. And, and, uh, you know, every once in a while I get reminded like that's not normal. But you know, there's things that you do every single day that, that I'm like, wow, that's not normal, but to you is a second nature and something you enjoy. Right. That, that, that's, that's great to, to your explanation is great. I, I really admire what you do. And we, we are in a stance, you and I are in a sense in the same space and that we're

both online this is all you know relatively new i mean i up until a year ago i was working my day job um you know as well as doing all this other stuff now i'm doing this exclusively so i really like to see uh how somebody like yourself goes about it it it's similar to what i do although you sound like more disciplined than I am. And, and yeah. Yeah. Well, what I would say too, is I think the tools have changed, right? You know, so if you just take literally everything from emails to podcasts, all this kind of stuff, like there was a day and age, one of the things that really surprised me, but it was very kind of cool to hear was Joe Rogan recently had Tom green the uh canadian comedian um who was you know a bunch of movies and stuff back in the day

uh come on his podcast and the reason why he did that was that tom green used to have a show like literally like a tv station basically out of his house and joe rogan went on uh as a guest in like 2007 and there was a clip that went viral uh recently from that day that that they recorded and joe rogan's like a little kid in a candy store he's like looking around and he's like oh my god dude this is awesome like oh my god you turned your house into you know a video set and light bulb goes off yeah and you've got a server and like and you just see the wheels were spinning and so he credits tom green and two or three other people with really pushing him down the path of creating what eventually became um the podcast he runs and so when tom green came back uh recently

had this whole conversation where he was literally buying servers and putting them in his house and every six months it seemed like there was new technology and his was outdated and he had to have a whole staff and he basically was running a television production studio right and then youtube was born and now you and i can record a video and put it on youtube right and like like we're spoiled compared to just 15 years ago what somebody would have to do and so i do think that like the technology kind of advancement that that evolution cycle uh has put us at a time and place in the world where like we can do this pretty effortlessly in terms of like we can just focus on the content and we don't have to worry about a lot of the infrastructure because there's

so many solutions you know everything from amazon as a marketplace to shopify to um you know email providers, all kinds of stuff. Absolutely. I feel incredibly fortunate to, you know, be able to take advantage of it. I mean, there was, I think I was 43 the first time I went on the internet. I mean, it wasn't around, you know. So, you know, now I get a laptop and I go online and there you go. It doesn't require a lot else. It's fantastic. I love that. I could not imagine having never been right so i'm 32 have never been on the internet and then go another 10 years and that's the first time you get on the internet like the idea that i can use this thing to get access to information to people to all these different things had to be just a wild

experience yeah it was it was very wild for me i mean i i i used to i remember going on and thinking wow like there's a webcam in the antarctic oh my god you know that is incredible and i can see what's going on there right now you know you know little did i know what was to come but um you know before that uh you know to get information you had to go to a library which i did of course uh but but now i mean you know the world is the world is out there at your fingertips. And as far as the business aspect of it goes, I mean, you know, yeah, it's great. I mean, I, I, I think you mentioned Joe Rogan. I mean, what he's done is just astounding to me. And, um, you know, you're, you're perhaps on your way to Rogan-dom there, you know,

with what you're doing. I think that's great. And, um, so I'm always interested in seeing it, really admire what you're doing. Awesome, man. Well, I am just as much of a fan of your work as well. So I think people will really enjoy this. And as you keep going, we'll have to do it again in the future. Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. All right, guys, thanks for listening to that episode. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did. My goal is to educate as many people with these conversations as possible. So please go subscribe on your favorite podcast channel, leave a five-star rating, and a review. These things really help the podcast get higher up on the popularity charts, which ultimately brings more people to learn. Also, don't forget

you can go to YouTube to watch each conversation in video format as well. Just search my name, Anthony Pompliano, on YouTube, and you'll find our channel with hundreds of awesome and informative videos. Thanks again for listening to this one, and I'll see you for the next one.