The Wellness Scoop - Habits to live to 100, Blue Zones and cold showers with Dan Buettner

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

I’m joined by National Geographic explorer, longevity expert and author, Dan Buettner. Dan’s work centres on reverse-engineering the lifestyles of individuals living in the Blue Zones, the regions in the world with the greatest number of centenarians, and specifically, how these individuals eat, move, live, and interact with others to live long and healthy lives.   We discuss: How to eat to live to 100 Why deliciousness is the key to eating well for life Shaping your food environment for health and happiness Exercise habits for longevity The impact of community on your wellbeing How to reduce stress and why it matters for longevity   Each week I unpack a wellness trend with GP Gemma Newman. This week on Fact or Fad we’re looking at cold showers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, hi there! I'm Norma, the unofficial mayor of the Town of Destiny. Speaking of, FanDuel's Kick of Destiny 3 is happening live Super Bowl Sunday. You should watch. It's gonna be a hoot! While you're at it, download FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on touchdowns, turnovers, heck, even total kicker points, don't you know? Anywho, enjoy your podcast or whatnot. Please play responsibly. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsontario.ca.

Wellness. What on earth does it mean? And why would we need to unpack it? With over 58 million hashtags on Instagram, the topic has really never been more prominent. But, and there is a but here, three in five of us feel that wellness is incredibly confusing. We want to feel healthier, we want to feel happier, but we have no idea what's clickbait and what's genuinely health enhancing. Who's an expert and who's peddling absolute nonsense and look I am right here with you on this at times I've also found this world really hard to navigate. So welcome to Wellness Unpacked our new podcast hosted by me Ella Mills author entrepreneur and founder of Deliciously Ella. This series aims to do just as it states,

unpack the world of wellness with expert guests. These guests will be sharing with me and with you their three pieces of advice for a better life, to feel healthier and happier. This is a show and a conversation that's about progress it is not about perfection it's about helping you make small simple sustainable changes and within that I'm going to be testing out a different wellness trend every single week intermittent fasting celery juice, collagen, ketogenic diets, CBD, you name it, I'll try it. I'll then unpick the trend separating fact from fad with my friend and NHS GP Dr Gemma Newman and together we'll be equipping you with the tools that can genuinely make a difference to your life and well-being and equally helping you potentially put to one side the trends that may make a difference to your life and well-being and equally helping you potentially put to one side

the trends that may make a little bit less difference. So are you ready for episode five? I am very excited for our guest this week. I have been following his work for a very, very long time and been dying to hear a bit more about it from him. So we have got author and explorer Dan Buechner with us. You might have also come across Dan's work. He's very, very famous for his work on the blue zones. Dan and his team discovered five places in the world dubbed blue zone hotspots. And these are the places where people live the longest, healthiest lives. These Blue Zone hotspots range from Ikaria in Greece to Okinawa in Japan. And what Dan discovered is that whilst they are thousands of miles apart,

they all share certain lifestyle habits and we could learn a lot from that. Dan's three pieces of advice are therefore based on his research from these hotspots. And the big question is, can we all adapt these habits and live to 102? Let's find out. Well, Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am delighted, delighted to meet you in semi-person, Ella. I know. Well, look, I've been a big fan of yours for a while and I did find out today we've got a lot of fans in the office as well of your work. Someone just said to me, he transformed my relationship with legumes.

The bean matchmaker, yes. I know, I know. Who could have made chickpeas that sexy? So look, Dan, I would love to kick off with the question that we ask all our guests to start with, just to get to know a little bit more about you and your outlook on health and well-being. Could you let our listeners know what wellness means to you? Well, I'm a big fan of measuring. So it's living free of chronic disease until you're in your mid-90s,

which is what the average human machine should offer all of us. And also being able to wake up every morning and think of your life as a whole and would ask, how satisfied are you with your life? Be able to say you're at eight, nine or 10. I like that. So I've got to ask you on that, actually, just to pick up. You said that success in your wellbeing is getting into your nineties without any chronic conditions. Now, obviously we'll dive into this as we get into your work and what you've seen with the blue zones. But before we do that, could you let us know how normal is it now in the Western world to get to your nineties without chronic conditions? Because as far as I understand, that is no longer the norm. It's rare, rare, fewer than 10% are getting to 90s without chronic disease. And as you know,

the vast majority, probably 80 to 85% of chronic disease is driven by what we eat. And so there's a very easy fix. Well, on paper, it's an easy fix to eliminating most of chronic disease and also maximizing the capacity of our bodies. But the other question is, how do we actually put it to work? It's extraordinary. Less than 10%. That really is quite thought provoking. And it leads me on so brilliantly to one of your three pieces of advice for our listeners for a better life, which is eat to live to 100. I am sure everybody listening is thinking, how on earth do I do that? How do I be part of this magic 10%? Well, as you know, my work involved finding the statistically longest lived people in the world, so-called blue zones. And once you find these places, these are places where people

are actually making it to age 90, in some cases, a hundred at the highest rates in the world. So they've achieved the outcomes, the health outcomes we want. And then most of my work with National Geographic has been to reverse engineer what they've done. And so look back on their entire lives. And we did a meta-analysis of their diets. So that's sort of an averaging of dietary surveys done in all five blue zones over the last 80 years. And we see overwhelmingly they're eating a whole plant-based diet, whole food plant-based. They're mostly eating greens, whole grains, tubers like sweet potatoes and even regular potatoes, nuts and beans. If you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's probably worth about four extra years

of life expectancy. They do eat some meat, but very little. And we don't know if they live a long time because of their small meat consumption or in spite of it, but meat is not an important part of their diet. And so it's pretty clear what we can eat to maximize our well-being. Again, the big question is how do we actually do it for long enough not to acquire a chronic disease? And so within that, just to push it a bit further, so it's predominantly plant-based, but I presume also it is the opposite of the current standard ultra-processed approach as well, because obviously we've seen a massive rise in vegan food with all our meat alternatives, which potentially aren't probably part of this plant-based solution that you're looking at.

Well, we don't see meat alternatives in the blue zones. And I mean, there's some evidence to suggest that a processed vegan diet is the least healthy diet. And by the way, I'm plant-based. So there's a vast difference between a processed vegan diet and a whole food plant-based diet or a whole food vegan diet, whole food vegan diet being the healthiest diet on earth, I believe, and I can back it up. You know, but we tend to villainize companies for serving up this food. But, you know, until about 1970, there weren't enough calories to go around to feed people. And it was this innovation in taking these three or four crops, soybean, wheat, corn, even sugar beets. And first of all, getting very good at growing a lot of them and then coming up with the distribution chain to get them into places where they can be manufactured into food.

And it was actually a pretty good idea at the beginning because it got us enough calories to survive. What happened in the 1970s or so, food science came on online and started taking these foods and, you know, sort of making them into Frankenstein foods. And we didn't, we didn't realize actually until very recently, the last decade or so, maybe 15 years, that these foods were hurting us. And now we're just trying to catch up. And I think, you know, industry, we like to bash a lot, but there are a lot of foods. And I think several foods that you're helping promote and bring into consciousness that take these healthy inputs, innovate to make them actually taste delicious.

At the end of the day, and I've written several books on this, the most important ingredient of any longevity diet in the world is deliciousness. Because I could tell you broccoli or fermented tofu or turmeric are the healthiest foods in the world. But if you don't like them, you may muscle your way through a few weeks or months of eating these foods, but you'll never do it for long enough to avoid getting heart disease, cancer, diabetes. So it's so crucial to take foods and make them delicious and make them appealing to the current palate. And that's really the challenge at hand. Oh, a hundred percent. Honestly, there is nothing in the world that i resonate with more deeply than that because i think it's so easy to say eat a whole food plant-based diet exercise you know

move your body sleep more but actually doing all these things in practice is a completely different kettle of fish and i think it's there is no ironic isn't it there is no way to change your diet unless you want to do it and to want to do it you've got to be excited about it and it's no good just to offer people steamed broccoli all day I couldn't agree with that it's kind of the absolute premise of all of my work but I wondered if you said you said there Dan that a plant-based diet has been proven to be the healthiest in the world I know people listening will be really curious about that. I wondered if you could unpack that a bit further for us. I want to answer that in two ways. First of all, the Adventist Health Study, the longest lived Americans have followed four dietary patterns, meat eaters, abalacto vegetarians, which are people who eat eggs,

cheese and plant based, 100% vegan and pescatarian. And the longest-lived people of those two categories, indisputably, this is following 103,000 people for 30 years. So this is gold standard epidemiology. It's very clear the longest-livers within statistical margins of error are both the pescatarians, so vegans who eat a little bit of fish, and vegans. And not only that, by the way, an average person who is about five foot, eight inches tall, or I guess I don't know how many centimeters that is, but sort of an average-sized person weighs, a vegan weighs about eight kilograms less than their meat-eating counterpart. So you can forget everything else. Forget about

supplements, superfoods, weighing your calories, figuring out how much protein, how much fat. People are eating a vegan diet, weighing eight kilograms less than their meat-eating counterpart. That's pretty simple for me. We know that over the past 40 years, the number of obese people in our countries has about tripled, gone from 15 to about 40%. That's not because people now have less discipline or less individual responsibility or less educated. In fact, I'd say they're more educated, but yet we keep getting fat. Is that because there's some flaw in their human nature? No, it's because our food environment changed. These people in blue zones who remain thin their entire life and fit and sharp until their mid-90s, it's not because they have some revelation or they're enlightened

about how they eat or they can stick to a plan better than we can. They simply live in an environment where the healthy choice, i.e. whole food, plant-based, largely peasant, inexpensive peasant food is the cheapest, most accessible. And they, you know, they have time-honored traditions that show them how to make these simple inputs taste absolutely delicious. And I'm a big believer that we need to stop guilting people or stop telling people they don't have enough education or they need to somehow muster the next 40 years of discipline to get on a food plan and start thinking about helping shaping people's environments. You can do that at a individual level. I wrote a book called The Blue Zones Challenge that shows individuals scientific ways and how to set up your kitchen and the rest of your house so you'll be unconsciously nudged into better eating habits. grocery stores, schools, and public policies to make whole food plant-based cheaper and more accessible and to diminish the access and the marketing of junk food. And that's what's getting

us sick. Anybody who's listening to us right now, Ella, if you're overweight and unhealthy, it's probably not your fault. In fact, there's a 90% chance it's not your fault in fact there's a 90 chance it's not your fault uh it's the fault of our food environment and we're a little bit like frogs being hurled into lukewarm water and have the temperature raised by one degrees you know every six months or so and all of a sudden we're you know a lethal uh environment that'll kill us if we don't jump out or change the environment. I really second that. I was so struck when I changed my diet about how hard it was. You're going against the grain all day, every day. And obviously after, as you do that for a longer period of time, it gets a lot easier because your habits become more deeply ingrained and you start

to feel the benefits more, But it's an incredibly challenging experience. But it really makes me feel, and I've felt this for a while now, and especially as health and wellness and all these trends emerge and take shape, that we're really, really overcomplicating the way that we eat. Kind of on the one hand, as you're saying, we have this very industrialized, ultra-processed, highly unhealthy approach to health. But almost as our response to that, we feel we've had to go so far the other way. As you said, like everyone needs a plan and they need to commit to this wearable device to measure X, Y or Z. You know, I'll never forget the last time I was in the States just before the pandemic at a big health show, kind of quote unquote, and seeing ketogenic pop tarts with live cultures. And I was like, there's nothing alive in there. It's a pop tart.

What a scam. That's what I mean. And obviously this show is called Wellness Unpacked. It's trying to unpack, to me, what in some ways has become the madness of this industry, which is that we've lost the ability to eat simply, to celebrate carrots and lentils and chickpeas. And instead, we feel like we're kind of either on one end of the continuum, which is this ultra processed kind of view of our very capitalist world, which is inherently pretty unhealthy. Or we're over here and we're doing a ketogenic diet or, you know, we're going on one extreme to the other. And it's basically feels like it was becoming impossible and so unnecessarily complicated.

Yeah, we really are. And we're, you know, every day about 330 marketing messages rinse over our psyche. You know, we get online, we drive down the road, we see a billboard, you know, even while we're going to the bathroom, we see them and they're constantly reinforcing. The food that makes the most money is the highly processed stuff that takes cheap inputs like corn, soybeans, wheat, and sugar, and, you know, turns it into a Pop-Tart. And at least in America, we heavily subsidize these cheap inputs. And therefore, we have this cheap junk food, the, you know, broccoli or spinach. These are expensive foods. But there's a but here. I hear all the time when I go into these American cities, mom saying, well, I can't afford to eat healthy. I can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. I don't

know if you guys have Whole Foods over there, but, you know, these organic groceries, I can't afford to eat healthy. I can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. I don't know if you guys have Whole Foods over there, but these organic groceries, I can't afford. And they're right. But the reality is the food of longevity is the cheapest food in the grocery store. It's beans. Show me somebody who can't afford to buy a half a kilo of chickpeas, of lentils, of pinto beans, and then grains like whole wheat or even corn or rice or a whole wheat pasta. When you mix a grain with the bean, you get all 19 amino acids, which is to say a whole protein, and you're about 90% the way there. So you take beans and rice, which is

delicious, and maybe you add some seasoning to it, or you take a sardinia minestrone, which is essentially, uh, you know, beans and a little bit of pasta with some, um, carrots and onions, which aren't X and a can of tomato and some spices. Um, it's within economic reach of everybody listening to this right now to, to eat healthily at every meal for under a euro a meal, just by knowing what to eat and then learning a few simple recipes on how to make them taste delicious. No, I think that's, I think that is an important, no, it is, yeah, it's important advice because some of the, yeah, more processed food can become quite costly. And I guess what you were saying there in about setting your home up for success effectively leads us on very nicely to your second piece of advice, the importance of shaping your environment for your health and your happiness. I wondered if

you could unpack that a little bit for us. Sure. So when we think of the influences that drive our eating behaviors, the vast majority of them are unconscious. According to Cornell Food Lab, we make about 220 food decisions a day. Am I going to salt my food? Am I going to put ketchup on it? Am I going to put mustard? Am I going to have a second helping? Am I going to have a beer or a Coke or a glass of water? Only about 10% of those decisions are conscious. Most of them are just pure habit. So what the Blue Zone Challenge does is it shows people how to set up their kitchen with evidence-based ways so you mindlessly make slightly better behaviors.

And a few things we know work is most of us will bring some junk food into our homes. Everybody should be able to treat themselves once in a while. But there's a vast difference of whether or not you keep that junk out on your counter or put it in an out-of-the-way place, either a drawer low down or in a pantry around the corner or up high. You know, I say most people are on what I call a seafood diet. We eat the food we see. For example, toasters. Interesting research found that if you have a toaster on your counter, after about two years, you weigh about six pounds more than your neighbor who took the toaster off of their counter because

a toaster prompts us to put something in it and most of what we put into toasters aren't all that healthy ketogenic pop tarts for example so taking that toaster off works really well what also works really well is you go out and buy the most expensive most beautiful fruit bowl you can afford and put it in the center of your kitchen and keep it stocked with the fruit that you like. There are some fruits that are slightly healthier than other fruits. But if the easiest access food in your kitchen is fruit, that's what you're going to eat a lot more than you would if, for example, you put chips on your counter with a clip on them, which is the worst thing you can do. No, it makes a huge amount of sense. I have to say I do that. I now do an online food shop every Sunday so that when I open the fridge after a long day, I know it's fully stocked.

I've got lots of veg in there and it makes me so much more likely to make a genuinely very nourishing meal. When my fridge is empty, I go to toast. First person to hold my hands up to that. So Dan, I'd love to think a little bit more about that total ecosystem. Obviously, what you eat is so important. But as you said, that environment is so important. How do factors such as our friends, our social relationships impact on that, both on our total well-being, but also on our food habits. Yeah. So our friends have a huge and measurable impact on what we eat. If your three best friends are obese and unhealthy, there's 150% better chance you'll be overweight. So who you surround yourself with has a vast impact. I'm a big fan of having at least one or two vegans or vegetarians in your

immediate social network. And I would further argue that is the most powerful, lasting thing you could do to impact your health. Diets, as we know, fail for almost all the people, almost all the time. The best diets ever measured only work for 3% of the people who get on them after two years. So it's a Sisyphean treadmill. We get on after the holidays and everybody's off them, you know, usually by about mid-February. But friends tend to be long-term adventures. You know, if you take them in and you think you're best friends, I'll bet you on average, they've been your best friend for at least five years, if not longer. So making that effort to make a few new friends. Why a vegan and vegetarian? Because they like to eat delicious food

and they know where to go out to eat. They know that if you come over to their house, they're going to be cooking you good vegan or vegetarian food. When they go over to your house, you better learn how to make it for them. So therefore you're making it for yourself. And it provides this constant and powerful nudge to learn and to eat plant-based food. And it sounds almost trite. It sounds easy. A damn butler can't make any money off of you for going and making a vegan or vegetarian friend.

But I can show you a amount of research to show that it will work for the long-term. That's your social environment. But I think it's exactly that point, isn't it, that we were saying earlier that we just need to simplify things a little bit. It's not about big gadgets and big plans. It's about simple eating more chickpeas, sharing those with friends. And as you said, of course, you're going to be influenced by the people around you. If the people around you are going for a walk in their lunch break and making a healthy lunch and talking about a recipe they might make for dinner, that's going to wash over you, isn't it? I think just

being aware of the fact that those building blocks have such a huge impact is key. But I wondered if looking at that ecosystem, if we've got our diet, we've got the people around us influencing us, what else exists in that ecosystem for you? Is managing stress a big part of that? Yes. So who you hang out with, by the way, is if your friends are worried or lonely, that is measurably contagious, even if they're unhappy. So part of managing stress is the right friends. And part of that managing stress is spending time with those friends. Loneliness is as bad for you as a smoking habit. And part of the reason is the existential stress of facing life on your own without a feel of support for yourself. So

yes, having friends is a huge strategy for managing stress. What also works, a lesson from the Blue Zones, taking a nap. Cortisol levels go down measurably when we take a 20-minute nap every day. People look at that as slothdom, but actually we know people take a nap, not only wake up with lower levels of cortisol, their chance of heart disease goes down by about a third if they're doing it five days a week. Some other things we learned in Blue Zones, the Okinawans have a practice of ancestor veneration. They take a little time every day to remember where they came from. They're not just a point by themselves in time, but they're part of a continuum. And they have a strong belief that their ancestors are looking over them.

Religion works at reducing stress, believe it or not. I'm not a big religious person myself, but I know the data that shows that people who go to church, temple, or mosque at least four times a month are living four to 14 years longer than those who don't. Part of that for sure is on their Sabbath day, they're showing up and putting all their worry and stress of everyday living aside for a few hours and focusing on, they're usually quiet and they're focusing on a higher power, whatever their definition of that is. So we know that works. And also I'm a fan of happy hour, which isn't a hard sell for people. But, you know, a drink or

two a day also lowers cortisol levels. Cortisol is the stress hormone, but you tend to do it with friends and friends are great stress relievers. So, you know, those are some tried and true blue zone ways to reduce stress. Just have a bit more joy and community in your life, it seems to me, is a simple cut through. Simple, but also not a chore. It's not this sort of positive psychology assignment to write in your happiness journal or appreciation journal or remember to uh savor something um if you have to remember to do something or requires a discipline it is not going to work it'll work for the short run but happy hour being with friends uh taking naps you kind of get tired mid-afternoon.

These are things that are easy to do and also map to lower stress, longer lives, and measurably higher levels of happiness, which is to say subjective well-being. What I absolutely love about everything so far, and I'm sure other people will have seen this in your work, is that, as I said earlier, I think so often the wellness, the health space feels so complicated. And I think everything you're doing and what you're seeing from these centenarians is what we can learn from them is it's actually the polar opposite. It's simplifying it massively and it's slowing down and just being a bit more present and enjoying what's around you as opposed to, as you said, going on all these complicated plans and fads and things that last five days and then you feel like you

have no willpower and you kind of go back on a cycle. And that sentiment, I think, leads us really nicely onto your third piece of advice, which I think in a way is quite, I'm a massive fan of it, but it might surprise people, which is that exercise doesn't work. Could you explain what you mean by that? You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N.com. Okay, so I say that disruptively and I say it in the macro. So if you look,

our governments have been promoting exercise for about 80 years. And in the meantime, the rate of obesity and the number of chronic disease has probably quadrupled and diabetes and heart disease is up seven or fold or so. So we keep, you know, beating the same dead horse and it's not working. So fewer than 15% of Americans get the minimum recommended amount of exercise, which isn't all that much. It's about 30 minutes of walking a day. So you look at these blue zones where nobody exercises and they're making it to 95. There are no gyms. There are no CrossFit.

There's no yoga studios. There's no Pilates. There's no late night ads for ab masters. But yet they're all fit and making it into the mid 90s. So why not pay attention to what they're doing? What are they doing? Well, they live in a community where every time they go to work or friend's house or out to eat, it occasions a walk. They have gardens out back. They don't have mechanized conveniences to do all of their work. They're still doing, you know, yard work by hand.

They're lifting their own garage doors. Yes, they do drive in blue zones, by the way. They're kneading their own bread by hand or grinding corn by hand. So my team calculates that they're nudged into movement every 20 minutes or so, as opposed to the folly of thinking we can sit at our desk or on the couch for eight hours a day and then go to the gym and work it off. That's not how we evolved as species. So the key, Ella, is to think not so much about exercise, but thinking about how to set up your environment so you're unconsciously nudged into movement fairly constantly. And that's the approach we take in Blue Zones. And so what would the example be for that? So far, listeners might be on their commute.

They maybe have a job where they're stuck at a desk for long periods of time. How do we marry what you're seeing there with a kind of more conventional Western lifestyle? Yeah. So actually, there's a very good study done in London that showed that people who commute on the train have about 19% lower rate of cardiovascular disease and mortality than people who drive their cars. So simply learning how to take public transportation to work and you guys have a better opportunity for that than we do in America.

I've been in London. There's a wonderful public transportation system. A garden, as I pointed out, is a wonderful nudge. I know you only have one garden growing seasons a year, but you plant it in the spring. And just about every day it needs to be weeded or watered or harvested. And that occasions low intensity, stress reducing, range of motion, physical activity. Finding a walking buddy, someone who says, you know, we're going to walk together for the next three months every day. And you set up this nudge because if you're not out waiting for that friend, they're texting you or knocking on your door.

So setting that up. And by the way, a simple walk gives you about 90% of the physical activity benefits of training for a marathon. Walking is vastly under-celebrated as a strategy for health. Further, moving to a walkable neighborhood, going from, say, the suburbs to more of an inner city situation probably raises your physical activity level about 50% unconsciously. Because when you're going to get a cup of coffee, picking up some groceries, seeing a friend, it almost always occasions a walk. So you have to ask yourself, what's important to me? And if health is important to me, there are a few clear ways to re-engineer your ecosystem or move

into a better ecosystem that is going to unconsciously pile on good years of life. And what do you do personally, if you don't mind me asking? I do something every day, physical, but I make sure I like it. So yesterday I rode my bicycle. The day before I went, I go to the gym with a friend and we basically talk. It's not a hard workout. I stand up paddle surf. I've become a pickleball fanatic. Do you know what pickleball is, Ella? I don't. It just made me laugh because we call our kids pickles when they're naughty. I really say they're such pickles. So what is it? It's sort of the bastard child of tennis and ping pong. It's played on a court about half the size of a tennis court and they use a wiffle ball and a paddle,

but it's the fastest growing sport in America right now. And it's very social. People of all ages can do it. And it's fun because at the end of the day, if you're not enjoying it, you're not going to do it. So the key is to find something you love to do or find a half a dozen things you love to do and do them every day and make sure they're things that you're looking forward to doing rather than yet yet another chore which i'm afraid that's what most exercise is to people these days oh i totally agree honestly like when i was changing my lifestyle i remember seeing people online and they love to do HIIT workouts for example and i tried them i genuinely and i'm sorry, because it's fine if you love them,

but I genuinely felt it was hell on earth. Like someone shouting at me to do a burpee and paying to be there was like, honestly, I just, you know, I couldn't fathom it. And, you know, you'd go once and then you would go back three weeks later. I mean, it's totally redundant in terms of health benefit. And I just think that's a very reassuring message for people listening, which is that it sounds to me that you would get infinitely more health benefit from going on a 45 minute walk and talking with your friend because that would lower your stress levels as well. You'd have that sense of companionship, which we know is so important for healthy longevity. And as you said, you're getting 90% of the benefit of a marathon,

but you'll want to go and do it the next day because you probably love it. Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. And Dan, if you were going to just summarize all your learnings from the Blue Zones in a sentence or two that people could kind of take away and embed in their lives every day. How would you summarize that? If you want to be healthier or happier, don't try to change your behavior, change your environment. That's very, very sensible. Well, look, Dan, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure

to speak to you and so appreciate your insights into everything. I think simplifying the world of wellness is everything that everybody needs. So thank you so, so much. You're welcome. And if anybody has any follow-up questions, it's very easy to direct message me at Dan Buechner. I answer all my questions personally. So thank you.

Thank you so, so much. That's absolutely brilliant. I think what Dan really, really reminded me of, and it's something I'm incredibly passionate about and I think it's just so important to get out there into the world, is that health and well-being is actually about very, very simple, sustainable building blocks. It's not about weird and wacky trends, superfood powders, it's carrots, it's broccoli, it's lentils, it's time with friends,

it's just gently moving our bodies. And I think the world of wellness has become so complicated in the last 10 years and I think we probably all collectively get a lot from just reminding ourselves of that and it feels a bit ironic in lots of ways to go from simplicity to fact or fad but that's where we're going it is time for fact or fad so every week Dr Gemma Newman and I put to the test all kinds of wellness trends, those things you might have seen going viral on Instagram or TikTok, maybe a celebrity is endorsing it and Gemma and I are going to find out if these trends have basis in fact or are they fads and our fact or fad for this week is one that I think has been incredibly popular this year and it's cold water showers. As I did allude to last week I was a little nervous about this one. I'm not a massive

fan of cold water but there are so many people who swear by it. The Wim Hof method has gone absolutely viral so I obviously had to try it. So what are the supposed health benefits of getting freezing cold every single day? How can cold water help us? Well, apparently showering with very cold water can boost our immune system, make our body more resistant to stress, and even make our hair and skin appear healthier. Here is what Dan had to say on cold water. There's good research to show that it actually does amp up your immune system. So probably not a bad idea. But along with exercise, you know, it's one of those things people will do when they're excited about it for a few weeks or a few months, but it's not a pleasant thing.

And I'll bet dollars to dimes that it won't last more than a few months for the vast majority of people who start out today. So is it a't last more than a few months for the vast majority of people who start out today. So is it a fact? Is it a fad? Should we all get freezing cold every single day? Let's find out what Dr. Newman thinks. I feel like I say this every single time, Gemma, but I'm very excited about this topic. So I've looked up my hashtags. Yeah. How many? One million for cold water, but it's a bit misleading because if you then do hashtag Wim Hof or hashtag Wim Hof method or cold exposure or Arctic shower or all the different iterations of effectively the same thing, each one has hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Right. So I think if we total up the conversation,

we're at several million hashtags on the topic. And it is something you obviously see a lot at the moment. The Wim Hof documentary is obviously massive. Joe Wicks is always showing off his ice bath on Instagram. That did pique my interest in the concept, I have to say. So it does feel quite topical. What are your thoughts on cold water showers and cold water therapy yeah i think it's really interesting there is some data to show that it could maybe help with things like weight loss because the cold water can temporarily sort of ratchet up your metabolism there was a study that found cold water immersion at 14 degrees increased your metabolism by 350% in the short term, I should say. So if that was your only method of losing weight, that's not going to

work. But there are also studies to show that it may impact your immune system, may be beneficial for your immune function, may be beneficial for your immune health. There was a large trial in the Netherlands, actually, where they got people to have cold showers. And what they found was that it led to a 29% reduction in people calling in sick for work in that particular trial. And it was actually quite a big trial, which is fascinating. They got over 3000 people, and they split them into four four groups and they asked them to have a warm shower every day. But one group was asked to end it with 30 seconds of cold water. The other group was asked to end it with 60 seconds of cold water. The other one was asked to end it with 90 seconds of cold water. And there was a control group that just had their enjoyable warm shower. And what was found

was that after a three-month follow-up period the groups that had cold water showers had a 29 reduction in self-reported sick leave interestingly though the duration of the cold water did not affect the sick leave wow i'm a bit flabbergasted over here and also relieved yeah because um i wouldn't say i'm loving them. No. But that's interesting, therefore. So you can just have your lovely, calm, warm shower and just turn the dial for a relatively short amount of time and reap the same benefits. Apparently, according to this study, yes, you can.

And, you know, there are, as I mentioned, potential benefits to your circulation and metabolism. But if you hate cold water showers and it really is something that you find hugely unpleasant, you don't have to do it. It's not going to be like a make or break for your health by any stretch. And am I right in thinking there are some initial studies looking at an improvement in people's mental health from cold water swimming, cold water therapy? I think it would be really interesting to have more data on this for mental health and the mechanisms as to why it might be beneficial. What we do know is

that when you're exposed to cold water, it does have this sympathetic nervous system effect where you have this fight or flight response, your noradrenaline levels go up, and then this is what's likely to increase your heart rate and your blood pressure when you're immersed in cold water and then compensating after that the blood rushes to the peripheries it may have some effect on brain function I'd love to see more but anecdotally people say that they feel fantastic you know if they've been you know wild water swimming in the cold they feel great for the rest of the day it seems to really boost mood but we don't really have as much data as I'd like. I'm not sure how much experimenting you've ever

done with this I have to say I'm not enjoying cold water showers I've done three and I haven't done finished the week yet I have to admit it I am because I so enjoy my showers such a moment of kind of mindfulness and calm and as I turn the dial down I just feel like I'm maybe doing things I don't need to do I don't feel I don't feel very different after doing it interestingly but when I've gone proper cold water swimming I've done it a few times in Scotland um I did it with the Happy Pair over in Ireland, which I know you've done as well. And I felt really fundamentally different all day afterwards, really alive, really awake, really, really, really energised. Yeah, I think I find that fascinating. So personally, I am not too bothered by cold water. I think maybe because in my shower, it doesn't actually get that cold. So I do do a little cold water blast at the end, but it's never freezing. So

I feel like it doesn't really make too much of a difference for my day. But when I've been cold water swimming in the wild, I've really loved it, but I haven't done it for prolonged periods of time. I don't think that's necessary. But yeah, it's interesting how it affects you. I think maybe for me, I don't know if it's interesting how it affects you I think maybe for me I don't know if it's just my general sort of whether it's my metabolism or just the way I work but I don't seem to find it too difficult I quite I really enjoy going into the cold water but not everybody does and I think you know there are potential risks if you have heart disease for example you don't want to shock your heart and body too much by suddenly immersing yourself in freezing cold water. It could induce an arrhythmia or another problem.

So there are risks associated for those who are more vulnerable. But yeah, I think if you enjoy it, why not? And with that, though, if you don't enjoy it and you do enjoy a nice warm shower and staying dry on dry land, if we think that potentially what we're seeing in terms of the data is that it's really beneficial potentially for your immune system in particular, what could you be doing instead? What are the alternatives? Well, I think, you know, we talked about why cold water might be helpful for generally improving your circulation. You know, the body will be increasing blood flow to warm your core and protect vital organs when you immerse yourself. And then when the cold

water stops, the body has to warm itself up. So there's an increase in blood flow to the surface of the skin. So, you know, some scientists do think that could improve circulation, but actually you could also just, you know, go for a 10 minute. And that in itself will have a great effect at getting your blood pumping around your body. And then when it comes to things like your immune health, there are loads of ways you can help support your immune system using a healthy diet, making sure that you have a decent amount of sleep, making sure that you control the stresses in your life, moving your body. Generally, like I said, the 10-minute walk exercise is fantastic for helping your body to regulate your immune function eating gut healthy foods to support your gut and your microbiome that is great

for modulating your immune function as well and so you don't need to have a cold shower in order to support your immune system. I feel like I'm the least exciting person that could exist in the wellness industry because I'm quite fixated at the moment on the fact that true kind of wellness and well-being is about, as you said, 10-minute walk, five-minute mindfulness session, eating some more carrots and a couple of lentils. And that these can all be fascinating and interesting and potentially beneficial add-ons. But actually, we need to shift our focus on a kind of day-to-day basis on doing those simple building blocks. Exactly and I think it's for someone who's just struggling to get by day-to-day it's going to be more important to eat foods that nourish them and get a good night's sleep than it

is to worry about where they're going to get their next cold water immersion. But would we therefore say fact or fad? Oh I think I think fact but no no way is it essential that's a really nice summary of it actually fact if you feel the benefits there definitely is early data to show why that might be the case but equally healthy diet movement sleep can give you similar benefits yeah much more so they're the essentials that's the the end of the show. Huge thank you for being here with me, for coming on this journey, for learning with me every single week. I hope you're continuing to take lots from it and improve your own health and maybe the health of those around you as well. As always, I am desperate to hear from you. Community is everything. So do get in touch

either on email, podcast at deliciouslyella.com or on social media at deliciouslyella do you have a trend you want us to try is there someone you want me to interview do you have a piece of feedback I really want to hear from you and do just remember though if you're going to make any big changes please do consult your GP next week we're going to be joined by a clinical psychologist. Sam Akbar was so enlightening I genuinely feel bad that we will have to wait a week to listen to her. And of course as always we'll be having our Fact or Fat where Dr Gemma and I look at what's going on in the wellness industry. So I will see you then, thank you for listening and massive thank you to Curly Media,

our partners in producing this show. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.