36. Lessons Learned: Catharine Arnston, Jason Ferruggia & Tracy Duhs

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Before I introduce this week's guests, a quick story time brought to you by LocumStory.com. Today we'll be reading One Job, Two Job. One Job, Two Jobs, Red Blood Blob, No Job. Elective Doc, Emergency Doc, Summon Overstock, Summon Out of Stock. This doc is too abused, this doc is utter used. This doc can't get sick, say, let's try a brand new trick. For all the docs about to cry, here's an idea you can try. Look into Locum Tennis Assignment, a really great option you might find it. Don't forget Locum's pays much better, and you can find assignments in any type of weather. With all this new info, track up in your thinker, go to financialresency.com, slash LocumStory, and use your mouse to thinker. It's here you'll find the unbiased answers you're after, so you can decide if Locum Tennis is your next chapter. Alright guys, welcome back to another lessons learned with my buddy, Darsha. In this episode, we revisit our discussion with Catherine Onstern when we talk about all things algae, but today we focus primarily on spirulina, since the evidence is best suited for that one. We also revisit our amazing conversation with Tracy Dew regarding water, or safety, quality, and provide some actual tips that you might find valuable. Last but certainly not least, we discuss the key takeaways from the one and only Chintan Faruja, chatting about exercise, longevity, durability, with a little philosophy sprinkled in there for you. So some of these topics may be considered quote unquote novel, certainly not something a lot of people know about myself included. So I spent a good deal of time examining some of the evidence, and we share that with you today. So buckle up and enjoy. Alright everyone, back with another episode here, another lessons learned. This time we'll be going over Catherine Onstern, Jason Faruja, and Tracy Dews. So three very different episodes for us, each highlighting a new topic. So before we get there, though, any updates, man, with your personal life, anything with the wellness that you're doing, it's getting cold, and I don't like it. That's pretty much, that's pretty much it, you know, I hate it actually. You know, interestingly, this is not what we're talking about, but I remember, I think recently I saw Dr. Andrew Huberman talk about one way to build cold resilience is to cold exposure. I don't know if you saw that on Instagram. I haven't listened to that show. I think he brought somebody out and it's like cold, and it's dresser and all that kind of stuff. I got to check that out. And I was like, oh man, maybe I should start doing this. I just don't want to take cold showers and stuff. I just don't want to. Yeah, it's hard. They're tough, man, and it's like how you should do them. And then once you fall off the wagon a little bit, it's so hard to get back on. But you really adapt quick to it, you know, want to be cold showers and cold showers. Just cold showers. Yeah, you just do cold showers, especially like after the sauna definitely didn't, because I don't want to be sweating for like, after my words go to work. Oh, really? So now this might be a new question, but what about going from extreme hot environments to extremely cold environments? What do you know about that? Like, is that good, bad? Good. From what I've heard. I know like Joe Rogan, Mike Muscle, they all do that cold exposure, straight to heat exposure them back in. So apparently in Finland, like the proper way to do saunas is you're in there for 15 minutes. You go in, take a cold shower for like five minutes, and then go back into the sauna. You repeat that like four or five times. And I don't know what biochemistry is behind exactly what happens, but it's supposed to be amazing for you. Actually, when I was in Tulum before our massage, they would do like a one hour pre session where we went to a steam room, cold shower, sauna, cold plunge, and then hot plunge. And then we did like our massages. Yeah. So it's intense. Yeah, and you feel zen. It's amazing. Yeah. Well, as Monty Williams, the coach for the sons said, everything you want is on the other side of hard. So nothing good comes easier, right? That's right. That's right. Like it. And to it. So, you know, starting off, our first guest of this new series was Catherine Arnsond, CEO of Energy Bits, high energy person. You could see her passion coming through the screen because unfortunately, we're still doing these and for the foreseeable future through the interwebs. And, you know, what about your main takeaways? What got you excited? You know, what do you think? Yeah, I think, you know, I've always heard of algae, always heard of spirulina, right? I think, you know, the craze probably happened about 10 years ago, talking about super foods and people putting their smoothies. But never truly understood what about spirulina was great for you, right? Like a lot of people just use it because of just hopping on bandwagon, like, oh, spirulina, I got to put on my smoothie. It must be good. So it was cool to really understand and delve deep into spirulina and corella and understand algae. I think what was interesting to me was that in Japan and in Asia, this is like a staple for them, she was saying, right? This is something that, you know, just like rice, they use it and they're diet constantly. But here, we treat it as a super food. We treat it as something that's like an additional benefit. Whereas over there, it's not really a super food, it's just the food for them. Just the food, yeah. Yeah. So that, that to me was super interesting to at least think about. Yeah. I, I do wonder, never have been that far east and I do have some friends, maybe I should have asked them about it, at least like how in their diet are they cooking and stuff like that. No, we did talk a lot about it and her company is building it into, as she says, efficient nutrition and then these little tablets, which we did have the opportunity to try out. Again, I think first performance, what we've emphasized over and over is that, you know, we're trying to get most of our, most of our nutrients and, you know, micronutrients and everything that all the benefits from food sources. And so I did try to look up to see where one might be able to get algae, food sources, and find any easy sources to be able to acquire that. Most of the stuff was coming in powder forms, as you mentioned, a lot of the greens, supplements and whatnot. And so, you know, if anybody has any thoughts into how they're incorporating algae into their diet, I'd be curious about that, I'd love to hear about it. I don't know, do you know anybody who actually eats it over here? I don't. I just know like, yes, like greens, like all these companies will put it in there, right? Like, partly green blend or something, or people buy it, I guess, like powder form, like you said, and then put it in school these, but I don't know anyone to kind of routinely cooking with it. Besides, like seaweed, I would assume, you know, things like that, like Japanese cuisine, but yeah. So I think taking a step back, just kind of recapping for those who didn't get an opportunity to listen. I mean, I highly encourage you to go check that out, but ultimately in a nutshell, so you have the two main micro algae that we talked about, right? The most evidence that she talked about, I think she mentioned somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 studies. I don't really sure if that's true or not, but I didn't go and sit through all the literature, but there is actually a tremendous amount of evidence supporting boats, or not supporting shouldn't necessarily say that, looking at evaluating spirulina and clarella. And both of these are micro algae. So spirulina, which actually has much more data behind it is the non-taxic blue green algae that she talked about used as a vegan source of protein for vegans also using a great source of omega-3 fatty acids. We talked about non-fish, you know, who are getting the omega-3 fatty acids in the krill and all the sardines and the where they're getting it from. This is the main source. The big hype that she actually touched on, FICO-sina bilin, which is about, makes up 1%, and this compound, it basically mimics the body's bilirubin compound and inhibits the enzyme complex of NADPH. And it's through this mechanism that it provides the potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits. So this is where the claims for a lot of the immune-modulating properties come into play as well. There are other benefits that literature actually looks at, and I think the most robust data is looking at actually the basic components of a lipid profile, henceforth, that's not the proper word. And therefore, cardiovascular benefit. So actually, you know, there is, like if you, for those, again, if you go to examine.com and you actually look at type in spirulina, you'll see that there is robust data actually looking at lipid profile, but cardiovascular benefits, and a couple of other metabolic maladies as well. There's some meaningful effects on overall liver health and potentially minimized anything that I talked about. So, you know, for me, I was curious, and I wanted to actually dive into a little bit, again, both of us subscribe to examine, so we do get some of the study summaries, and if you want to dive deeper into that, I'll highly recommend you guys go check it out. Yeah, I thought, you know, what else was interesting is what's the minimum effective dose, right? That's what nobody does with spirulina and algae, like, sure, I think we, it's safe to say it's beneficial, but how much you have to take in order for it to be beneficial to see these effects. And I think, you know, Katherine also said there needs to be more research on this, and that's what she's kind of hoping for as well with her company is diving even deeper and get this research kind of done, so we can truly see exactly how much we need. Yeah. So the one question I did ask her in terms of grams, right, because I think that makes a little bit easier, especially if you're getting it from food sources. So looking at the literature, it's a, it's a wide range for spirulina, particularly it's anywhere from like one gram to eight grams of spirulina that you're getting to get some of these benefits. Again, that's a huge range, but there's some studies actually looking at it up to 16 grams, you know, up to 16 weeks studies and stuff, kind of stuff. Actually there was, there was a, when I was reviewing the literature on this, there was a meta-analysis, systematic re-meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice. And this was actually October of 2021. The main author is Fatima Nani, and basically in this meta-analysis, they look at nine randomized control trials, they have upwards of 400 participants. And again, the dose range from one to eight grams and the supplementation period was between one to 16 weeks. What they were looking at is, hey, what are the benefits of spirulina on, again, antioxidant biomarkers and all these people? The issue was the populations in these RCTs were extremely heterogeneous, right? So you had people healthy subjects all the way to extremly obese subjects, it's a little harder to kind of figure out what your patient population is and what it's the U.S. for. But ultimately, what they found was spirulina had a net positive effect on antioxidant profile. They also dove into specific antioxidants they looked for. For the purpose of the discussion, I won't dive into it, but we'll link it. So folks want to look at on the flip side, though. There was another same journal, same month, published, October 2021, main author, Sejad Mareli. And this one, they wanted to look at effects of spirulina on ulcerative colitis. So again, Katherine talked a lot about different things. We're talking about cancer therapies, she touched on some viral illnesses, some are hot right now as everybody knows. And so in this study, because of the proposed antioxidant benefits, they were like, well, how can this help with ulcerative colitis symptoms? So this was an eight-week randomized control trials at 73 adults. And they wanted to assess, well, they actually recruited folks with mild to moderate symptoms, right? Now, what they found was that the outcomes they assessed were, you know, diets, they diet sleep quality, mental health fatigue status, quality of life, basically a lot of the quality of life metrics that were fascinated by and we ultimately care about. And what they found was the net positive effect on sleep, stress, quality of life, all that good stuff. So it looks great. Here's the problem. They ultimately, when you go back and dive a little bit deeper, you see that if you look at the pre-registered primary versus secondary outcomes, the author has actually switched them up. So this is a classic example of, and this is why it's important, right? When we talk about cherry picking data as a big problem with data, but also when you move the goal post after you find out outcomes, because you're trying to manipulate the data to make it look better, the study had that. And this is actually what, there's a huge reason that the folks who actually produce, I should say knowledge, talk about, hey, this is why it's so important to pre-register your outcome variables. And then you can't move it after the fact if they don't look good, because I think when they, the pre-registered ones that were different. So I think she mentioned two words that are important is bad science is really important. And even though they might be, quote, unquote, a hundred thousand studies for it, you know, there doesn't mean that that's strong evidence. So I just want that to be cautioned for people, oh, man, there's a lot of evidence, it must be good. That's not necessarily true. Yeah, the Atlantic, I think I say the art, have you seen that article from the Atlantic? Which one? So there's a great paper that was just written in the Atlantic by an investor, an investor, investor, get-tory, is that a word, journalist, journalist, kind of. Yeah, like, yeah, looking at research. It was different than the guy on the P.D. You did, you did. Yeah, you sent me that. But yeah, so most like research is just terrible, like almost like most of it. It was just really, really, really bad. The amount of lies, the amount of what peer reviewed actually even means. A lot of it, you just have to take with the great assault. And, you know, in the Atlantic article, they were looking at Ibermectin and the two, I think, out of the 11 that showed, like, oh, Ibermectin really helps with COVID, which they're just falsified, completely falsified. And so it was interesting. And you know, his main takeaway was like, look, any paper that comes out, there's no one really doing, like, investigation, it actually taking a deep dive and looking at how it was done, how were the numbers written, like you said, the goalposts are moved, you know? So I think, yeah, it's important just to take any paper with the grain of salt, because you have no idea, really. Well, so there are some folks, right? I think that that Barardi podcast, I feel like, I forget what those people are called, that their job is to go evaluate data. And they're like, these data policemen, and they don't be paid to do this. Right. As I was just about to say, yeah, I forget a really good podcast on this actually is Peter, Tia, he had John Ionidis, the Stanford professor on that, we'll hopefully found it, and we'll link in the show notes, but that's a good read for people who actually are interested. But I mean, this just kind of, this kind of raises the question, right? This is so difficult for the average folk who are not trained in looking at this. I mean, you and I went to medical school, and we still, we don't, even in medical school, we don't get taught how to, this is something that you got interested in. But, yeah, I mean, this is a problem, it really is, and the hope is that, you know, people will do their due diligence. I mean, that's, I think if there's anything that we can suggest, we're kind of going a little under tangent here, but it isn't important is that if there is something that you are interested in, even, well, one, understand what your bias is, right? So if you're, if you're a vegan or you're nothing wrong with that for whatever the reason is, but you're like, oh, yeah, spiraling is great for you. Look, here are all the reasons why it's great. Well, first, look at actually the good and the bad for it. Try to find the bad, actually. Dr. John Bardy, again, talking about him. He does something to, you know, counter, found the opposite for his biases. So what he does, he's been using this technique called Googling the opposite. He literally Googled the opposite of like something like that and trying to find the, the ways to disprove that and then come up with like, overall thing. I think that's one thing to do. If nothing else, if you do that, then you might have a broader picture of whatever belief that you might have, whether or not spiraling a works or Clarelo works or whatnot. But anyways, this, this shouldn't lessen to a scientific discussion more than to. Yeah. So I guess to sum it up, I highly recommend people listening to the full episode to gain a better understanding of kind of what the research out there shows for spiraling and Clarelo. And if you do choose to buy any of this, obviously you can go to energy bits, use our code met redefine, you'll get a discount. But make sure if you do buy spiraling or Clarelo elsewhere, it's, you know, nontoxic coming from a good source because that is also a big issue out there that Dr. Wild talks about actually in terms of algae. So yeah. I will say in terms of Clarelo, the other things that, again, some of the things I do wish that on that podcast, we, there were a lot of claims made and I wish some of them were truly supportive by evidence in terms of papers and good evidence. Yeah. Well, the other, the doses that I talked about, the data is not as robust for Clarelo. But the, the effect of dose, the therapeutic effect seems to be a little bit higher. So six to 10 grams daily dose. If that's what you're looking for, again, if that's what you're looking for. But overall, there's much less evidence to support this than there is for spiraling. So something is just to keep in the back of your mind. If that's something you're interested in. Cool. All right. Let's go on to the next episode then. So this one was with Jay Fruja, who you know well. Yeah. Actually, before we, before we switch topics here, the one thing that really, I think the, the quote that stuck with me for a long time, again, just feeding into our own biases is, when we, when she was talking about algae being an adaptogen, something she said was, you know, sickness doesn't show up at your doorstep, like a UPS package, right? It grows quietly inside you for years and symptoms may not manifest to later. I think it was something to that effect. And I think that was such a powerful thing for people to appreciate. Yeah. She had a personal story for it, right? Her sister and cancer and was cancer-free now, good for them, hopefully, that stays the case. But I think that's something extremely important for everybody to remember, particularly when we're talking about these pre-symptomatic illnesses that there's no detection for, right? Not in modern contemporary medicine that we have today. There's some suggestions that people have and lots of folks in different spaces of quote unquote alternative health will talk about different things. But something that we really want to remember is that this is why it's so important to be mindful when you're in your 20s, rather than when you're 50s. Because like Kelly Starrett said, it's much easier to spend five minutes preventing, you know, like doing a little bit of self-care, self-love, five minutes today, or you're going to spend 30 minutes in 20 years from now doing treatment type stuff. And the same goes for metabolic illnesses. Like, you know, if you spent a little bit of time watching your nutrition, exercise, activity, stuff like that, you're going to save a lot of dollars 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now. It's been time for a little goes long way, yeah? Yes, sir. Sorry. Go for it. No, I'll get it. So we're on Jay. So you've known Jay now. For some time, right? Do you work for him? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jay's, I mean, what is there to say about this guy, man? Relenteness is the word that he tattoos on his arm and you can see that. I mean, his energy, his passion, again, dude, all the folks this time around, right? I mean, the high energy folks coming in and get you fired up afterwards. And I just love talking to him and learning from him, I've looked up to him for a long time. Good, dude. So you tell me, what were your memories? Yeah. So for me, inspiring kind of stuff, man, I mean, he's 47, he's absolutely jacked, changed, right? So I think you said, like, his goal was to have a six pack and, you know, like have the shredded abs and stuff. And so he kind of transformed his body, but I'm doing that at 47, right? And changing the way that you've probably done something for a while and adapting to a new lifestyle or whatever might be, it's pretty cool, right? And I mean, he started, he said like at the age of 12, you know, getting into fitness and stuff. So I just think the biggest thing I took away from that is, like you said, just doing a little bit, almost like five minutes, starting in a little bit every day and then keeping up with that. Staying consistent will get you the results. And he's all about keeping it simple, you know, like he's saying, if you're doing a 20-minute warmup, something's wrong, you don't need to be doing that. So what I took away from that, too, is like in my own training program now, I'm probably instead of going straight to the compound lifts, I'll probably throw in a little bit of those single reign, you know, just those quickly, I'll do leg extensions, you know, maybe a little bit before I go and do the deadlifts. Like a nice, nice, nice prior to. That's, yes, more nicely. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. What you're talking about is the sequencing thing, right? That's a tactic that he has been using for a long time. And you know, it's interesting about this, man, you know, when folks are in their teens and 20s and early on, and I think this, it's the case for, you know, folks who are not in the coaching, start the conditioning field, certainly because I mean, you're not trained and you're not educated next to that science and physiology and just like the dynamics of how the human body functions and for longevity, particularly, right, or durability. But even even the young strengthening condition coaches, myself included, I was guilty of this. You come in and maybe it's because we all, most folks are actually involved in athletics themselves. And so they have that mentality. I want to be explosive. They want to be strong. They want to be resilient in that sense and their performance goals. And then people beat their bodies up, which is much what Jay did, it's unfortunate what I've done, guilty of that myself. And then in the latter years, it'll be like, okay, let's focus on longevity. And so he had to make a drastic transition in his training methodologies. And so sequencing is kind of what you're talking about is, allows him to kind of have a ramp up session. And then he talked a lot about execution and mastery, right? So he doesn't go high reps and I'm not talking high reps like 20 reps. We're talking like 15 reps and thing. Yeah, he said six to eight is where he keeps it. No more than eight. That's where he personally keeps it. I think though, what I will say again for everybody, it's a little bit different, right? I also, what we didn't ask about is that isn't necessarily made that he stays in like super, you know, high load and low reps as well. Like I don't think he's hanging out in the two, three rep ranges right from a CNS, right? Stand up point. That's extremely taxing on your system, right? And so that's that's potential for injury as well. So I think that maybe he didn't see this, but knowing his work and following him for a long time, I know that he probably likes to say in that sweet spot of five date reps. He that doesn't mean he doesn't break it, but that's that's kind of what it's approach was. Yeah, absolutely. And he even said, right, like you're going more than eight at least for him. You lose that focus and that's where that injury starts to happen, right? And I think that's where most people get injured is that when they're on the squat and they don't really think about engaging the glutes and flaring out the, you know, the knees a little bit or whatever they boom, they compensate, use their back, blow it out or something. And it, you know, stab a finger and you can get that injury. So, right. Yeah. So you're not distracted while you're training. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be dialed in, you know, anecdotally, what I found that at least from a personal standpoint, particularly because I'm doing a lot of supersetting, right? Or not necessarily like back and chest or something like that, but, but even when I'm doing fillers and stuff like that is, if your heart rates up high, right, if you're going from one excess to another, like if you're doing, if I'm doing deadlift and, and the lat pull down simultaneously, that's not a tendency, but supersetting back and forth. Then then my heart is jacked up and when your heart rates up, you're breathing heavy and you're trying to move some heavy weight, like, and then it's going to be really hard to get 8, 9, 10 reps. So something to keep in the back of your mind, not necessarily suggesting that everybody swap up your training regimen if what you're doing is working for you. Then that's awesome. But if it's not, maybe something to consider. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Anything else? I think for me, I'll say keeping it simple, I think was the key that I learned from him, right? When we talk about influencing change and behavior, you know, obviously we as a species, I think, can be weak a lot of times. It's tough for us to get motivated, it's tough for us to, I think we understand that success is at the doorstep. It's just hard for us to put in the work to get there. And so it's really key, right? He talks about nutrition and weights, and you have to dial in, right? But again, keeping it simple for him, he made a recent post about three simple things to get in better shape. One was eating less calories, two was lifting for muscle and then three getting enough deep sleep. And it works. That's what I did in the last two months, you know, that's what I realized is trying to keep it simple. Basically. Yeah, I think the general philosophy is just trying to extract as much wisdom, which was what we were trying to do, right? And we're trying to get a hot pot. We have limited time with him. Hopefully someday he'll come back and we can dive deeper into any one of the topics that we talked about a lot. One of the things that stuck with me that he talked about, I think towards the end of it, when he mentioned that how today he learned so much more from a loss. I think he gave a quick example of how he lost, maybe I think it was business related. He had a big loss and he touched himself, man, I love this. And I think that one of the key attributes to people who are at his stage, folks like future guests coming up that we have, you know, when they have a setback, they're perspective on is how do I get better from this, right? How can I prevent this from happening? It kind of reminds me of this Nelson Mandela, who I think it says, I never lose. I either win or I learn, I love that. I love that. And I think that that's kind of the perspective that he had, which is, which is awesome. You know, I think so many people are kind of like when they have a failure or a setback, they're just like, oh man, this is, well, it's not so good. I just wrapped up this book, which I cannot recommend it enough, think again by Adam Grant. And towards the end, at actual tips, he's talking about, you know, it's better to evaluate your outcomes based on your processes than your results. And you know, he says that if you have a good outcome based off of bad process, that's just luck. Right. Right. But if you have a bad outcome based off of a great process, that's a smart experiment. Mm-hmm. I like that. I love that, man. So, but I think, like you said, everybody's so goal oriented in today's days, we're not process oriented, just treated that way. Looking at the outcome. Absolutely. Cool. So yeah, overall, I think this was just the episode full of wisdom. I think people will gain a lot of it in terms of just understanding longevity, mastering execution. And also, he talks at the end a little bit about building a successful brand and how he did that. So, a lot of wisdom overall. I do have one specific or two quick things to mention in terms of longevity walking. When we asked him about cardiovascular, say one of the things in his training specifically, he talked about is rarely now he does cardio. If you guys follow his or get his newsletter, he's kind of stopped that for himself. And when I asked him specifically, you know, hey, when we're looking at durability in your 70s and 80s, he said just walking, walking is the best thing. And so, again, there's an opportunity cost for everything. So I just started playing tennis and I'm like, well, I don't know if I want to do tennis and train three days a week and also do zone two and swimming and just get distracted. And it's like, okay, well, where am I going to get my benefit for health, right? And so if you look at it, the evidence for just simple walking is incredible. So, two quick studies that come to mind looking at literature, there is this one actually is just published in JAMA, very, very awesome journal right September 2021. And they basically look at daily steps and all cause mortality. And the first author is Amanda pollution. And the idea is again, there are no national guidelines for physical activity looking at step counts as a public health target, right, due to limited evidence. And so in this one, they wanted to demonstrate the association between step volume and clinical outcomes, long term outcomes. So they had a little over 2,000 participants in this prospective cohort study. They gave these participants an excellent accelerometer between the years of 2005 to 2006. And basically for seven consecutive days, they had to wear, they included everybody who had at least had it on for 10 hours a day for a minimum of three days. All the participants they had, they grouped them in three groups. So, or the step count was classified in three things. So you had a low step count less than 7,000 steps per day, a moderate step count, seven or 10,000 and then high greater than 10,000. And the main outcome was all cause mortality. They followed after like up to 11 years, they followed these people. What they found was the moderate and high step group volume groups had a significantly lower risk of mortality than the low group, right? But interestingly, taking more than 10,000 step wasn't associated with further reduction of mortality risk. Gotcha. So, what this tells me is, hey, like there is that sweet spot. So you know, taking away obviously the limitations of observational studies and correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation and the confounding stuff which they tried to control for, the minimum effective dose for those if you're trying to think about how many steps you're getting seems to be around 7,000 steps per day in that range of seven to 10. So I thought that was pretty cool. And that's the one change that I've made. I'm wearing my Apple watch at all times. I know you got your hoop on because you give you stepstata. I'm sure it does, right? Yeah. It's just strange. Yeah. There's no steps. At least that's them now. I'm sure they might include it later on. I don't know. That's shocking to me. That's actually shocking to me. Yeah. I don't always have my iPhone on me. But at least the watch gives me a sense. So I do like that. The problem with the watch though is if I'm not taking steps and I'm just moving my hand, I think because it counts as that. So it's kind of false. Yeah. So I got a shoot for like 11,000. Sure. But this was an amen. So again, there's a lot of literature. Looking at that, here's another quick one real quick. Another study published this year in February 2021. They looked at Daily Step Count and post-prandile fat metabolism. Right. First author is Burton and Medicine and Science Support Exercise. So very good journal again from ACSM. And the concept behind it was that there is something called exercise resistance. Right. So we know that exercise can improve a lot of metabolic parameters, right. Particularly following a meal. But they can be negated if you're not active when you're not doing exercise. So in this study, they basically, it was randomized control tiles in this review. It was tiny. They had like 10 part spins and they basically had three, five day interventions. And they had a control activity group, two days of less steps. I'm just going to cut to the chase. Basically, like the control activity was 10,000 steps per day. And what they found was that the normal group that actually did more activity versus the low and limited groups, the normal groups saw increased post-prandile triglycerides, right. Or excuse me, low and limited groups saw increases in post-prandile triglycerides. But the normal group did. And the total body fight oxidation was lower in the less active group. So what did that tell us? I think that a lot of times, people were like, what did that tell us? I think that a lot of times people think that, you know, there's this the active couch potato, right. This concept of the act. Like, hey, I get my hour a gym a day and a train. But if you're not active throughout the rest of the day, you're going to have reductions in your body fight oxidation and long-term health when we're looking at metabolic markers. So it gives, it supports the concept of neat. Have you ever heard that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for those folks who don't know, it's, you know, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You know, you're not just walking to your car to go to work and stuff like that. Try to incorporate more activity through the day. And what that might mean is just when you get to the gym, not trying to find the closest spot to the door, just park a little further away, right. Get a couple of exercises and that kind of stuff. Something that's super important. Because, you know, one could convince themselves that they're being super healthy and getting doing exercise. And they're like, well, why am I not losing weight and stuff like that? And if you've exercised a lot and then the rest of react to throughout the day has gone down, you know, at least some of the literature supports that maybe that's going to be much more challenging if you're not meeting your BMI and vet law schools. Like that's key, man. And like one of the things I've started doing now is like after I have a meal, maybe at work, I'll like try to do like a 10 minute walk outside if I can after like eating. You know, and obviously there's more benefits to that that maybe we'll talk about in a later episode. But that way at least I'm getting some steps in, bringing the glucose down a little bit in the spikes. But so yeah, it's just an easy way to have it stack. I don't know. I love that. That's that's a word we're going to talk about that very soon actually. But no, there's actually evidence of poor thing too. And actually in cultures, I would say the Eastern cultures, that's the thing, right? You eat and you walk, right? And we know that, but even the far east. Yeah. You get your steps immediately after, but yeah, more for future. So cool. And tennis. I like it, man. Let me know if you need lessons. You know what I do need? I do any recommendations for a racket. Got you tennis shoes. Got you. Got you. Yeah, man. Interestingly, for the whoop, the highest category for strain has been tennis amongst all members. So it's a great, uh, great activity to have to get your strain up. So love it. I love it. Cool. All right. On to our third episode here. So all the good energies were here, all the good vibes with Tracy Dews. Awesome, awesome person talking about water and hydration. So I came in a little bit knowing, um, some of the stuff that she was talking about. How about you? Um, this was, I was, this is truly beginners mind for me, right? Coming in and, and not having, I mean, look, what's crazy about it is water, right? It's like, um, it, one of the most foundational things that you can have, um, without it, you can't survive and, and something you take for granted. And so, but there were a lot of interesting things that we talked about in terms of, um, things that we didn't appreciate, right? I mean, she talked about the, the natural state of water, waxing and waning. And we still don't have a clear understanding of what that means and how to go about that. But something that she emphasized quite a bit were the, the various minerals, um, that are contained, however stripped and, and there are other compounds that might be added back. Some of them looked, listen, we talked about this. They're, they're necessary, right? I mean, the development of the modern world, largely hinged on at least adding some of these back, right? We're, today we, we can live into our, our 50s even, and, and beyond because we're not getting these parasitic illnesses. So, um, I think my, my favorite thing that we talked about is kind of how she characterizes their good, better, and best practices, or you might have said that actually. Um, I really like that. I know that this was, uh, maybe, like, if we're using the quote unquote 80 20 rule, this might be in the back 20% of it depend, um, for some people, it might be more than the 20%. Um, but I do think it's important when we're talking about quote unquote optimization, um, and just how can you be healthier? Something to pay attention to for sure. Um, but yeah, that's kind of what I took away. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, water, something you put in your body every single day. Right. And we don't think twice about it when we probably should, you know, after listening to this episode about quality. And, I mean, we can taste any direction. I think the biggest thing too was when I, the reason I got into water was one, I listened to Tracy on a podcast, and then I've seen episode two of Down to Earth on Netflix. We're Zach Efron and, uh, Darren Orin go to Europe and, you know, see Europe's practices with water and how it's way better than what we do here in the US. Um, so that's what really got me, that's why I bought a burky water filter. So that's how I kind of went from good to better. Um, so, you know, just learning about which waters are good for you, even like water bottles, right? The plastic and she even mentioned some of them. And if you follow Tracy on her Instagram, she's always posting pictures about which water bottles to kind of get, um, if you're in need. Um, but yeah, I think so. What else got me into it? I looked up my zip code on the EWG website to see one of the cabinets. And that should scare me. You'd see like all these chemicals. And of course, they're, you know, in parts per billion. But you start to think about, man, you know, you're drinking water every day. The stuff does it accumulate in my body, you know, and if there's an easy fix, why not use it, right? So spending that two, three, four hundred bucks, um, one time getting a nice water filter and these contaminants can get filtered out is what really got me going. Yeah. I think that is important. Um, but at the same time, again, we talked to her about this. We asked her, we don't want people to freak out because I think this isn't at the point where like, you know, if it was going to be toxic to your health immediately, but you're right. Well, we don't know as the cumulative dose after many, many, many, many years, right? Um, this is what I didn't actually do. I didn't look at the evidence behind this. There's data to support that. I wonder if there is EWG again, awesome source. They've got actually a tap water database. And you plug in your zip codes just like you did. They actually also have some water filter guides and stuff like that. I know that you have the key that I'm kind of looking into as well. But that's not inexpensive. I mean, we're talking a minimum of one 5200, which again, it's not a tiny amount, depending on what your situation is. Um, so according to the G, they've got, they've got some type to work with. There's the picture filters are sufficient. It's better than nothing. Those could be up to 15, 20 bucks. Maybe you can swing that. Um, there's some other cool sources too, though you can just simply Google your city, your town. And there has your city ordinance has to print like a PDF or something and you can find that. Um, the, there's a website that I came across, um, at least where we live, the department of environmental protection. They have data for your city and susceptibility to contamination. And unfortunately, they don't give you the actual contamination. So, but it's just data that you can potentially look at. And then I think if you use that a conjunction with EWG, maybe you can be a bit more informed about what you're putting in your body, as you said. There's another resource I came across called tapsafe.org. We'll link all this. Um, and they also evaluate the safety and quality of your drinking water. Um, unfortunately, the, the two places that I live in, uh, the data is not conclusive. It's like not enough data to make it. You know what I mean? So maybe some of the bigger cities they might have that. Um, so there's a lot out there. There's a lot out there that people can kind of check it out. Um, but I do want to caution people. Please don't freak out. Yeah. You will not dot. I mean, I shouldn't say that. I don't know what's going to happen, but you probably will be okay. Um, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely, definitely, uh, peak my curiosity. Let's say that. Absolutely. And it's funny, man. I told a lot of people, oh, we're having a podcast episode of water. And they're like, oh, would you talk about? I was like, you know, like just all this stuff, but also kind of H 302, right? And people are like, what the, what the hell are you talking about, man? Like this kind of sounds like bogus. What is this? I'm like, well, actually, there's a whole laboratory doing research on this. The polyclab at University of Washington, I believe. Um, and it's interesting. So there's H2O, obviously, that people know is water. But apparently in nature, water is a little bit more alive. And it likes to flow in, in a spiral shape, so it gets more text. And the reason does that it, quote unquote, contains more information. Now, what that information means or is, is basically frequencies, right? And so it basically kind of talks about the like electrical orbit that we learn in chemistry, like the negative two, negative one, all the different positions, um, of those, of those electrons. And so I found it pretty fascinating to kind of see, hey, what's this? Where's this research? What's the outcome going to happen? So there's currently doing research on it. Um, and that's kind of how you take your water practice to the best. You can buy a vortexing machine that will filter your water and kind of, just put it in a vortex shape and spiral bound into your glass. So you're drinking more alive water or easy water is what it's called. Now, what's the range for those types of devices? What do they look like? Yeah, so you can get like a handheld one. Um, that's probably, I would say like $50 to $100. It's a lot smaller. Um, there's one that's like $1,000 though that you can get where the water goes on to like a gold, like a gold crystal. And once it hits that crystal, it crystallizes and forms that crystalline structure, along with being vortex and that thing's like $1,000. Um, but that's probably like the best little help there. So they've range. Yeah, anywhere from like 50. Yeah. That's a big range. The handheld device. I don't know how much you know about it. I'll look it up. Is it like a one time use? Like it's eight ounces that you you'll kind of do it that way or is it? How does that work? So you, it's just like a steel kind of handheld device. Just hold it. You put the water through it and then it'll just vortex out so you can, you can use it all time. It's not one time. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of cool stuff, right? And that's. And I don't think that we actually do a deeper into the science. I think I do recommend people if you are interested in this stuff to check out her podcast. You get, she brings some brilliant guests on and they're really getting the nitty gritty. Um, we try to avoid getting into the weeds. Honestly, I did because I would have looked extremely foolish. I'm not going to lie about that. I don't worry. A little chemistry. Um, but something that, again, uh, peaked my interest was she talked about, um, hydrogen water, uh, something that she uses routinely in her practice and, and I wanted to go go look this up. Just a quick search on PubMed or just simple Google. Um, there's a good amount of evidence looking into that and, and again, into some pretty stringent journals. So not to be dismissed. Again, um, so just going to talk about a quick review article that I found. This was in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Uh, the primary author was Haro Yamamoto, um, published in July of this year, 2021. Um, and so in this one, they basically looked at, um, you know, hydrogen water as a novel therapeutic for treating pre-symptomatic diseases. So what does that mean? Well, there's this concept in Chinese medicine called, oh, man, I'm nervous. Maybe you. And what it basically means is pre-symptomatic diseases. So as Catherine Arnston said, right, we've got these silent killers in our body. It doesn't show immediately prime shipping on your door, right? It's, you've got things that are lingering for years and years and years, and then they become symptomatic and sometimes irreversible, unfortunately. Um, and what we believe is that a lot of these chronic illnesses that are affecting cause of comorbidities and mortality in today's day and age are the root cause on this chronic medication, right? For instance, cardiovascular disease, again, um, diabetes, perhaps cancer, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer's, um, some, some strokes that because of atherosclerosis. And so they looked at, hey, how can hydrogen water be a therapeutic agent against chronic inflammation? So really cool article and really deep dive deep in. So I want you to probably, you know, whenever you're best time to read this kind of stuff is, get your coffee and check it out. We'll link it. Uh, but in a nutshell, what they talk about in the mechanisms is that H2, uh, it plays a role as a selective scavenger for hydroxyl radicals and they can prevent a host of pathogenesis and reduce reactive oxygen species. Um, a cool thing about H2 is, right? It's permeable throughout the body, throughout the bloodstream, throughout the cells. So it can travel all around the body freely and inhibit the oxidative stresses by limiting oxygen in various cells. And so that's why I can, it can work on a host of things, whereas a lot of our pharmacological agents are very selective, right? You have blood pressure, you can work on the endothelial, you can work on the kidneys and stuff like that, whereas H2 can kind of spread out through the thing. So I thought that was, that was really awesome. And again, there are also other papers looking specifically at, uh, at, you know, one variable like, for instance, and there was another study in oncretarget I saw that looking at maybe some type of liver cancers, um, but it's definitely like looking at cancer specifically. But this one was just a general review article talking about mechanisms, which for me, I always like to start is how does something work before like looking at the applications and whatnot? Um, I thought that was cool, man. Super awesome. I got to look more into it though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you heard the episode where Tracy brings on that, uh, PhD researcher, um, from Europe. Talk about everything about hydrogen. Oh, yeah. She doesn't have the person to do. Yeah. Oh, everything about hydrogen. Yeah. I'll put it in there too. Yep. Cool. Anything else? No. I think, I think we've heard people out with our, a bit of philosophy and a lot of science. There's like a bunch of papers. Um, but yeah, hopefully people will, uh, you know, enjoy it. And like I mentioned, if you, my request for anybody listening is if you have found a good algae resource or something that you find or, you know, let us know, uh, I'm curious. And, um, yeah. Love to hear that. Cool. Awesome. Thanks for tuning in everyone. If you want to take a deeper dive into the topics that we talked about today, then make sure to check out the show notes where we posted articles as well as the research papers for you all to check out. As always, please take 10 seconds of your time and leave us a review or break this podcast. It helps us out greatly so that more people can find our podcast and listen to the great info that we have to provide. And for doctors, the story has changed. Visit financialresidency.com forward slash locom story to see if a locom tenons assignment is right for you. It's here you'll find the unbiased answers you are after. So you can decide if locom tenons is your next chapter. And as always our disclaimer, everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the presence of medicine and we are not providing medical advice. No physician patient relationship is formed and anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician regarding any specific health-related issues. And we will see you next week with another awesome episode. Have a great one.