How Your Breath Affects The Way You Burn Fat, The Importance Of A Daily 45 Minute Walk (With Your Mouth Shut!), The Pros And Cons Of Nasal Breathing & The Five Gear Breathing System That Will Transform The Way You Handle Stress with Brian Mackenzie #547

Summary

Episode Summary: "How Your Breath Affects The Way You Burn Fat, The Importance Of A Daily 45 Minute Walk (With Your Mouth Shut!), The Pros And Cons Of Nasal Breathing & The Five Gear Breathing System That Will Transform The Way You Handle Stress" with Brian MacKenzie #547

In this enlightening episode of "Feel Better, Live More", host Dr. Rangan Chatterjee engages in a deep and transformative conversation with returning guest Brian MacKenzie, a renowned human performance specialist. Their discussion delves into the profound impact of breathing on health, stress management, and overall well-being. Below is a comprehensive summary of their key discussions, insights, and practical advice.

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1. The Central Role of Breathing in Health

[00:02] Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee introduces the topic by emphasizing the fundamental connection between breathing and various aspects of health. He states, “Your breath is intimately linked with every aspect of your health, from how you respond to stress to how efficiently your body burns fat.” Brian MacKenzie echoes this sentiment, highlighting that breathing is not just about physical performance but is central to metabolic, cognitive, and hormonal health.

2. Understanding the Stress Response Cycle

The conversation transitions into the mechanics of the stress response. Brian explains the three stages of the stress response cycle:

• Stimulus: An external trigger, such as someone cutting in front of you while driving.
• Nervous System Response: The body’s immediate reaction, like grabbing the wheel and hitting the brakes.
• Physiological Processes: The release of adrenaline and norepinephrine, leading to heightened alertness and potential aggressive behavior.

[06:32] Dr. Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee asks, “What does that mean for people?” Brian elaborates, emphasizing that while the initial stress response is hardwired, individuals have the choice in their subsequent behavior. This choice is where breathwork becomes pivotal in regulating and transforming responses to stress.

3. The Power of Choice in Response to Stress

[10:16] Dr. Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee references Viktor Frankl's philosophy, highlighting that despite the automatic physiological stress response, individuals retain the ability to choose their reactions. This aligns with Brian’s assertion that breathwork provides an intervention point where one can regulate their state and potentially confront underlying pain or trauma.

4. Practical Breathing Techniques for Stress Management

The duo discusses actionable breathing techniques to manage stress effectively:

• Controlled Nasal Breathing: Inhale and exhale through the nose at a slow, comfortable rate, prolonging the exhale slightly ([35:37]).
• Attention to Breathing: Focusing on belly movement, then chest movement, and finally the sensation of air moving through the nostrils to calm the nervous system without forcing the breath.

[36:08] Dr. Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee highlights the accessibility of these techniques, suggesting they can be seamlessly integrated into daily routines, such as a morning practice.

5. Introducing the Five Gear Breathing System

Brian introduces the Five Gear Breathing System, a dynamic model correlating breathing patterns with physical activity intensity:

• Gear 1: Slow, nasal in-and-out breaths lasting at least four seconds. Ideal for daily activities like walking.
• Gear 2: Transition phase with slightly increased breath rate ([56:17]).
• Gear 3: Nose in, mouth out – a transitional gear often skipped in favor of moving directly to Gear 4.
• Gear 4: Relaxed mouth breathing during moderate to high-intensity activities.
• Gear 5: Power mouth breathing for very high-intensity efforts like sprinting or heavy strength training.

[57:05] Brian MacKenzie:
Brian compares the gear system to a car's transmission, emphasizing that adaptive breathing aligns with the body's metabolic and stress demands.

6. Metabolic and Performance Benefits of Proper Breathing

The discussion delves into the metabolic advantages of nasal breathing, particularly in Gear 1 and 2:

• Aerobic Efficiency: Nasal breathing enhances fat oxidation, aiding in weight management.
• VO2 Max Improvement: Optimizing oxygen utilization increases cardiovascular capacity and endurance ([79:42]).

[69:06] Dr. Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee connects this to carbohydrate and fat burning, explaining that proper breathing allows for more efficient fat usage during exercise, thereby enhancing metabolic health.

7. Addressing Over-Nasal Breathing and Its Limitations

While nasal breathing offers significant benefits, Brian cautions against overemphasis:

• Gear Skipping: Over-focusing on nasal breathing can neglect the essential role of mouth breathing in high-intensity activities.
• Physiological Limitations: Proper integration of all gears ensures comprehensive respiratory efficiency and metabolic health.

[71:38] Dr. Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee recounts his personal experience, acknowledging the importance of balancing nasal and mouth breathing to achieve optimal physiological functioning.

8. Integrating the Breathing System into Daily Life

Brian provides practical advice for listeners to incorporate the Five Gear Breathing System:

• Daily Walks: Aim for a 45-minute walk with nasal breathing to build a metabolic foundation.
• Strength Training: Incorporate high-intensity exercises to develop mouth breathing capabilities.
• Consistent Practice: Regularly practice breathing techniques to enhance autonomic nervous system regulation ([86:10]).

[87:11] Brian MacKenzie:
Brian underscores the necessity of consistency in practicing these breathing techniques to reap long-term health benefits.

9. The Interplay Between Movement, Breathing, and Stress Management

The episode explores how physical activity and breathing synergistically contribute to stress management and overall well-being:

• Grounded Presence: Regular movement and intentional breathing foster a sense of presence and reduce emotional reactivity.
• Boundary Setting: Establishing clear boundaries, such as a strict end to work hours, ensures mental and physical recovery.

[51:58] Dr. Chatterjee:
Dr. Chatterjee parallels boundary setting with bedtime routines for children, emphasizing its role in signaling the nervous system to relax.

10. The Cultural Shift Towards Movement and Breath Awareness

Both hosts reflect on the cultural implications of sedentary lifestyles and the loss of natural movement and breath practices. They advocate for:

• Reconnecting with Natural Rhythms: Encouraging activities like walking, strength training, and mindful breathing to restore physiological balance.
• Reducing Digital Overstimulation: Limiting screen time and adopting practices like using red filters on devices to minimize light-induced stress.

[93:19] Brian MacKenzie:
Brian highlights the transformative power of movement and breath, citing his personal experiences and the importance of integrating these practices into daily life.

11. Conclusion and Final Advice

As the episode wraps up, Dr. Chatterjee and Brian reinforce the core message:

• Start Small: Begin with manageable breathing exercises and gradually incorporate more advanced techniques.
• Consistency is Key: Regular practice leads to significant improvements in health and stress management.
• Holistic Integration: Combine breathwork with physical activity and boundary setting for comprehensive well-being.

[106:13] Brian MacKenzie:
Brian offers a final piece of advice: “Learn to say no. Learn to say no to the things you don't want to do. And that is a very... that actually goes far deeper than just saying no to something you instantaneously know you don't want to do. It's looking at those sexy, shiny things that are of excitement and being able to slow it down enough to say no to.”

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Key Takeaways:

• Breath is Fundamental: Proper breathing techniques are essential for managing stress, improving metabolic health, and enhancing physical performance.
• Five Gear Breathing System: Understanding and applying this system can optimize breathing patterns based on activity intensity, leading to better health outcomes.
• Consistent Practice: Integrating breathwork into daily routines fosters a grounded and present state, reducing emotional reactivity and improving overall well-being.
• Holistic Approach: Combining breathing techniques with physical activity and clear boundaries creates a strong foundation for a healthier, more balanced life.

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For More Information:

• Brian MacKenzie’s Programs and Resources: Visit ShiftAdapt.com for courses, webinars, and personalized coaching.
• Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s Resources: Explore more on drchatterjee.com/podcast and follow him on social media platforms for additional insights and updates.

Remember: “When you feel better, you live more.” Embrace the power of your breath to transform your health and enhance your quality of life.

Transcript

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More. Your breath is intimately linked with every aspect of your health, from how you respond to stress to how efficiently your body burns fat. But very few of us pay enough attention to this automatic, yet transformative process. Today's returning guest is the wonderful Brian MacKenzie, founder and creative director of Shift, president of the Health and Human Performance foundation and a world renowned human performance specialist who combines breathing techniques, movement practices and stress adaptation training to enhance physical and mental performance. Brian's methods have been used by Olympic athletes, professional sports teams and military special forces. And his work has undergone rigorous scientific training at institutions including Stanford University School of Medicine and San Francisco State University. He's also the author of several books including Unbreakable Runner, Power, Speed, Endurance and Unplugged. In this fascinating conversation, which we recorded a few months back when I was in la, we explore why breathing is the remote control to the nervous system and how becoming aware of our breathing patterns can instantaneously regulate our stress response. We also discussed the pros and cons of nasal breathing. The benefits of a daily 45 minute walk whilst only breathing through your nose, the relationship between the way that you breathe and your ability to burn fat, the three stages of our stress response cycle, the five gear breathing system that matches your breathing patterns to your activity levels, the benefits of establishing healthy boundaries and the importance of being able to find joy and presence in daily activities like washing the dishes. Brian is a remarkable and quite unique individual with an enviable track record of transforming the well being and performance of a wide range of individuals. And this conversation is full of practical insights that you can utilise immediately to improve your health, performance and the overall quality of your life. A big part of what you do these days is around our breath. I've always been obsessed with root causes.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Is there anything more root cause? Right. Breathing is not just about your ability to run a fast 5k on Saturday or your ability to relax in yoga.

[Brian MacKenzie]

It's.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It is metabolic health, it's cognitive health, it's hormonal health. Like your breath is at the center of everything and therefore it's striking that so many of us don't pay attention to our breath or even know how to manipulate our breath to change our states. Right?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah. Yes. Yes. And the real thing that I feel would benefit most people is being aware of it. Right. And my understanding of really being aware of one's breathing is if you can be aware of it, you can let it happen and pay attention. And there are times, yes, you can use breathing to regulate and become more aware of what's going on. But if you are not willing to confront the pain that has you in this reactive state to stress from wherever that originates, typically childhood, and that doesn't mean you need to go relive childhood. It's like, well, oh, I was in a defensive pattern because my environment was incredibly hostile and everybody was fighting when I was young. So no wonder why I've got my dukes up all the time in anything in what I do, right? I'm really at a point where it's like, if you're just going around that shit, if you're going around that and just trying to control breathing and go about it that way, you're not going to find that route. The route will be disguised, it'll be camouflaged.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You've said, haven't you, previously, there is no amount of breathing that will change the pain you are not willing to confront. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about today is this idea that our breath is intimately linked with our nervous system and how we then view the world. So if we talk about the pain that we are not willing to confront, right, so let's say there is pain from childhood because of A, B and C. Right. That can then result in some sort of dysfunctional breathing patterns. Pain potentially, I'm guessing, as a consequence. So then if you have compensatory breathing patterns because of trauma, let's say, then it can be hard to address the pain sometimes if you're in this constantly wired state. So presumably being able to work on your breath and maybe change things a little bit can change the state of your nervous system, which might then allow you to go inwards and confront the pain.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes. What you first touched on when you, when you began, the question was, you know, we, we've gotten to a place where we're kind of just, we want, we just want to fix the problem or we want to fix how we feel. That's what I run into, is people just want to feel differently. People don't want to actually change their behavior. And what we're talking about right now is a behavioral pattern that breathing follows. And although you could, there is some school of thought that breathing is behavioral, I'm more under the impression that physiology has more to do with it.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

What does that mean for people?

[Brian MacKenzie]

So pretending that a lion walks into the room, there is a heightened arousal state, there is a sympathetic response to that, and the first stage of that is there is the stimulus, right? So we've got some sort of stimulus. Somebody cuts in front of me while I'm driving, there's a stimulus. The second part of that is the nervous system's response to that. My sensory system, which operates through communication through an electrical network that is firing things. It goes on high alert, pretending as though somebody cut in front of me. The first thing anybody does when they're driving, if they see that, is they grab the wheel and they hit the brakes, right? That is your nervous system responding, reacting to that stimulus after that. The third part of this is the physiological processes involved in that and the driving of behavior. So my sympathetic nervous system goes up. I'm releasing neurotransmitters and hormones, Adrenaline, right? Norepinephrine. These things are released real time. And so that third part of the stimulus response now becomes the first part of the stress reaction. And each of these is universal to us all. And I've got this happening, and somebody cuts in front of me and this stuff happens. So all of these chemicals and my biochemistry is changing in order to manage what it is my system is putting off. Right? So let's just go with. With adrenaline is. It's an easy one. My response to adrenaline and anything when I'm not prepared for is dukes up, per se. It's confrontation, it's personal. So then the second part of that is the recovery phase should happen. So it's like if somebody cut in front of me and I didn't actually get pissed off, I'm like, oh, whatever, like, let them go. That is a response that's like going and lifting some weights and resting between sets.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, let's just pause there, Brian, because this is really interesting, right? Our stress response is hardwired within us. Okay?

[Brian MacKenzie]

So no avoidance.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yes. If there was a lion that just came into this room now, we probably would change quite significantly in terms of how. How our being is, how we're interacting, our posture, our muscle tone, everything will change. Okay? You're driving on a road wherever you live in the world, and someone suddenly cuts in front of you, so you slam on the brakes. Okay? That's an automatic response, right? You've slammed on the brakes. Is it possible to get to a point where that doesn't even generate the physiological changes? So if you work on this enough, and we're going to go through loads of practical things in this conversation, is it that?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes, this is a great question.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

We'll have the physiological response, and then we train ourselves to not respond to the adrenaline or is it different?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Here's what's interesting. You know, so funny enough, you know, part of Andrew Huberman's research before he had his podcast at his lab, when I was involved with his lab, they were in that, they were in his VR looking at stress from everybody, from people who were, who are on anxiety medications all the way up to like Navy seals. Everybody responds to stress. Everybody responds to the stress in what capacity and how they come off that stress is the important part.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. So even if you're a calm, non reactive person, you're gonna, when the lion.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Comes in the room or somebody cuts you off, you will your body naturally reacts to it. It's the behavior that you choose to follow as a result of that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Got it. So it is what Vitor Frankl says.

[Brian MacKenzie]

This is where choice happens, right?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Is that where breath work can potentially come in for some people?

[Brian MacKenzie]

100% this is where breath work does come in. So this is where intervention comes in. When I have an emotional reaction to something that I don't like, or I don't like the way I feel, or I don't like what I said and I want to work on that, that is where the opportunity for intervention comes in. So I can take a breath, I can take several breaths, I can come down and if I can bring myself down, then I might have the opportunity to bring reality on. Did that person who cut in front of me start their day by going, I'm going to go find Brian McKenzie and I'm going to cut in front of him today and I am going to intentionally piss him off? No, that is not what happened and not at least in this world that I currently live in. Now, the old world I existed in, I might narcissistically have pulled that one off, right? But in the moment you will start to arc stories for the emotional reaction that you have to things and that's where the breathing is starting to get away from you as well. So my breathing 10 your breathing will do things in these places. It's simply responding to the activity and the change that's going on.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

These things, they're so linked physiology and psychology. Psychology and physiology.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

The thing I've really been thinking a lot about Brian, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this is I feel compared to who I was five years ago, that I interact with the world in a completely different way. Most of the time I actually feel really calm and I feel that when the stimuluses are happening, I seem to have this ability now to know that there is a space, I go, yeah, I'm not reacting to that right now. People will say, like, I've covered trauma on this podcast on many occasions with people like Gabor Mate, Dan Siegel, Bessel Van der Koe, all these kind of greats in the trauma world, right? And a lot of people will say, and I agree with that, trauma can be stored in the body with our. Certain patterns, our breathing patterns, maybe we're slightly more flexed. Whatever it might be, we have these patterns. And so there's a school of thought saying that you can't change that trauma with the mind, you do it through the body. And I believe for some people, that is the mechanism to change it, not that you can separate the body and the mind. Okay. I feel in my life a lot of it has been cognitive. So I had a conversation a few years ago with an Auschwitz survivor, Edith Eger, when she was 93. That conversation changed my life, Brian, because she was able to reframe her whole existence in Auschwitz to the point where she said to me that the greatest prison you'll ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own mind. And that's from someone who lived in the hell of Auschwitz. Right? So that really landed for me. So I would, for years practice, if I ever got emotionally triggered in the day, I perhaps couldn't do it in the moment. That evening I'd reflect and go, ah, that situation was not inherently triggering. That situation was not inherently offensive. If it was, everybody would get triggered to it. Everyone would take offence. No, no. There's something in me that is being activated by that stimulus. So if I want to change, I have to find in me, instead of putting the blame elsewhere, externally, I have to figure out what insecurity, what inadequacy, what is being triggered inside of you. And by doing that regularly, I now feel that it's become my default response. Now, at the same time, I also do work on my body. I have an amazing movement coach, I work on my breathing. I now have access to certain movement patterns that I didn't have five years ago. So I can't say what exactly it was. But I don't buy that it necessarily always has to come from the body or always from the mind. These things are connected. Does that make sense, Brian? Oh, yeah, Because, I don't know, people say, well, how come you're so calm these days? I'm like, I've done a combination of things. I've done the work. I've constantly looked inwards at my triggers. Now breath Work, I would say that's a very big term that people interpret, you know, in all kinds of different ways. Yeah, for sure. That has helped me as well. But so has cognitive reframing.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes, yes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So I don't know if you can sort of pass through that, through the lens of what you're saying now about. We encounter a stressor and our stress response goes up. So how come I can be calm?

[Brian MacKenzie]

The simplified version of, you know, how I was getting complex is it's like if I choose not to respond to somebody cutting me off, and this is just, you know, use whatever you want. Insert whatever you want. Your father saying something to you, you know, or what your. Yeah, whatever.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Whatever it is that triggers you, your.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Wife or your husband saying something to you that's popping you. Right. If you choose not to allow that to go beyond that moment, you've now learned how to adapt. You've now learned how to stay with it. And you don't have to take that personally. Right. So if I choose to let the guy cutting me off go, I now adapt, and I now am over here in the logical side of something. I'm rooted in reality. And I think what's really important here is that over here, my core values are the anchor point. For me, my core values sit with things like authenticity. It's like, just be real. Just be authentic. And you're in my world. If we meet and I'm happy to interact, and if it's not authentic, I'm out. I don't have time for that right now.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Here's a question, Brian.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

If your nervous system is constantly wired, chronically activated, and you've never learned how to switch it off or calm it down, is it even possible to know what being authentic is not in that state?

[Brian MacKenzie]

No. Because you're in the chronic stress response.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. And then if everyone's walking around in a chronic stress state, of course no one's being authentic.

[Brian MacKenzie]

This is what a lot of my clients actually. Not the professional athlete side. I mean, although on occasion, I'll get a professional athlete that's dealing with something like this. But this is more of the, you know, private. The clients that are like the executives. Right. These are the guys and gals that are functioning up here all day, all night, and then they go and train. And the way they train mimics the way they work. And they don't realize that they're in this heightened stress state. Right. And so the third part of that stress reaction. So let's just pretend I didn't let go of the guy cutting me off. I've now brought in more hormones and neurotransmitters that are now blocking an adaptive process. And now we've onboarded adrenaline again because we're now making up a story about what we're going to do to this person or they're taking advantage of me, or they're doing this to me. I'm essentially victimizing myself in some capacity. Right. And so I now go at this with a non adaptive process that if I repeat this enough and I don't let that go, I remain in what's called chronic stress that does not allow for that parasympathetic arm of my autonomic nervous system to come back online as well. And if that goes on long enough, I can have a multitude of different responses that occur with that. I can stay in a heightened stress state or I can actually retreat and then be pulled down into this more depressed nervous system state where I can't get out of bed. I can't do these.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You know, you say it's non adaptive, but could we not make the case that we're always adapting? The question is, what are we adapting to and what is our response?

[Brian MacKenzie]

So the new adaptation becomes this heightened world or whatever state that is now not allowing me to recover. It'd be the equivalent of just lifting weights. Like I go to lift weight, I just go, I go squat and I just keep squatting all day and I keep set after, set after and I'm fatigued, but I'm still going and I'm still going and I'm still going. And then I might let off the brakes that evening and decide to go home and sleep if I can, because my nervous system is now just torched and I'm hungry and I got to eat and then I'll wake up the next day and I start doing it all over again the moment I get to the gym.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah, this is such a great analogy because what you just said through the lens of you squatting is how many people are living their daily lives. Now, through the lens of what we've just been talking about, you're known for many things around the world. Many people would regard you as a expert in human performance. What does human performance mean to you?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Well, I don't think I'm an expert. I'm more of like a specialist. I'm still learning every single day about this. Performance is for me is a path towards growth. And most of what I've found, even at the elite level is that if we can unlock a lot of the mental constructs that we've built, then there's a freedom in that that allows us to really see where the limitations are in what we're doing. When I went and worked at San Quentin Prison for six months, I ran a program and I would go in every Friday and work with these guys. And I. When I first went in there, I, you know, it had occurred to me, I'm like, okay, so these guys are in prison. Most of these guys are doing, you know, 25 or more. But I do know the effect of men and men and women in prison to the outside world. So if you don't understand that, take the time to kind of understand that. Which is part of the reason why I was going into these prisons was to kind of help effect some sort of change in that or growth in that place. But the thing I thought about when I went in there was I explained to these guys, look, every year there are a group of individuals that decide they no longer want to participate in society. And so what they do is they get. They give away everything they have. And they typically will move to the mountains of Asia somewhere. They will isolate themselves with a few other people. They'll eat once or twice a day, and they'll breathe and meditate most of the day. And at the end of this, they find enlightenment. What is the difference between you and them? They committed a crime and they are stuck in a place. How do you want to do your time? Do you want to figure this out? Do you want to figure out how you're doing this? Do you want to evolve and grow towards something differently? Because there are people choosing to live the life you're living for like, punishment. And they're finding enlightenment through that process. Right? However, that's what I think about with anybody and everybody. How do you want to win? Do you want to win and be miserable? I mean, I've seen the Michael Phelps documentary and I've worked with some of the athletes that were in that documentary. And I'm like, I know what this is. It's the same thing going on out here. Just cause they're competing in a physical aspect at something doesn't mean there isn't something in that mind that's kind of.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So make it relevant for someone who's listening, Brian, who is kind of. They're not an elite sportsman, okay? They just want to live a better life, right? They don't want to be reactive all the time and chronically stressed and unable to switch off and snapping at their partner or their kids. What is the relevance of what you do that's gonna help that person.

[Brian MacKenzie]

I guide people towards a process. Tao Te Ching, Sun Tzu, Bruce Lee were very impactful for me. And there's a very famous Bruce Lee quote that I have everywhere. All goals, apart from the means, are an illusion. Becoming is a denial of being.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Why does that mean so much to you?

[Brian MacKenzie]

That gives you unlimited possibility. If I'm not invested in the process, I'm somewhere else. Look, I was doing the dishes this morning and putting away the dishes as I do most mornings when the dishes are done. If there are dishes, I go and I put them away. And I don't get upset in the slightest about the fact that I have to put them away. In fact, I found myself in joy.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Oh, man.

[Brian MacKenzie]

As I was putting away and I was reflecting on the fact that I had earned the money because I valued myself to purchase these dishes. I've been able to afford dishes for probably 30 or 40 years. Why am I thinking that? Because I'm in a place where I enjoy going and doing this thing and being invested in the process of putting these things away. How am I putting them away? I didn't just arrive at that. That became, why am I so pissed off that I'm putting away the dishes right now? Why am I pissed off I'm doing my laundry right now? This is a part of my life. This is a part of my existence. Like, what am I tied up in? Where do I think I'm going to arrive at? To where I don't want to do this? What is that point? And I really looked at that in the reality of it, and I find joy in just about every moment of my day when I'm not busy.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah, man. I cannot tell you how much I resonate with that. It's all story, right? As I mentioned to you on Monday, like, on the plane over to LA this time, I just had this clarity. When you're 30,000ft up in the air, right, you have this big picture perspective. I thought life is simply a set of experiences. And the story we put on those experiences is ultimately what determines the quality of our lives. You can wash your dishes every night and be pissed off that you have to do it, that your partner didn't do it, that they should have done it, that you, whatever story you want to make or you can change your perspective and like you have done it is possible. And the problem is, and this is why I wanted to talk to you, I don't think until you've stepped out of it and realize that you're choosing the narrative on every situation, you think you're in it, you think you're a victim to the world, that the way you feel is down to everyone around you without realizing, oh, I can change this. I was chatting to someone about purpose yesterday and I said, for me, it's less about finding my purpose. Life is more about how do I find purpose in everything I do. Yeah, so you wash the dishes and it's like, no, this is an opportunity to be mindful and present and feel the dishes. If someone had told me that 10 years ago, Brian, I would have thought, what are you talking about, mate? Like, the dishes are the dishes. But I honestly feel that doing the dishes can be the most enjoyable experience in the world if you've reframed it. So what I want to talk to you, Brian about, because we could go even deeper than we've already gone. Right? I really want to make this practical for people where possible. There is no quick fix here.

[Brian MacKenzie]

No.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I'd love to tie in breathing and how we breathe to the concepts that we've been talking about, our stress response, our nervous system. Can you sort of simplify that for someone?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Today's episode is sponsored by Boncharge, a wellness brand who have a fantastic range of products to help you sleep better, feel better and live better. From blue light glasses to red light therapy and beyond, Bon Charge make it easy for you to prioritize wellness at home. And I myself have been using many of their products for well over five years now. Without question, my new favorite product from Bon Charge, which I am pretty much using every day at the moment, is their infrared PEMF grounding mat. PEMF stands for Pulsed Electromagnetic field, which sends magnetic energy into the body which can help enhance sleep, improve focus and increase energy. I lie on it for around 30 minutes each evening and it really helps me switch off ground and relax. I also love the fact that the mat has red light and near infrared light capabilities, so I get red light therapy benefits whilst I'm lying on it. Bon Charge also have a fantastic range of red light products including a red light face mask and a sauna blanket. As an exclusive offer for my podcast listeners, they are giving you 20% off everything on their website. All you have to do is go to boncharge.comlivemore and use the coupon code LIVE MORE to save 20%. That's boncharge.comlivemore this episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Regular listeners of the podcast will have heard me mention this before, but I have Been using Airbnb for many years now for pleasure and for work. In fact, I have just booked another Airbnb to record some more episodes of this podcast. And it's not just handy for finding places to stay. Two of my closest friends from medical school recently told me that they regularly host their own places on Airbnb whenever they go away with their family. And that the extra money they make has been super helpful for things like household bills and other family expenses. Which got me thinking, when we're next away as a family and our house sits empty, perhaps we could host our own home on Airbnb and make some extra money to go towards our next holiday days out with the children or even a nice meal out as a family too. Seems like a smart thing to do. And if you have a trip coming up, you could potentially do the same. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You go through this process that I've talked about where you've got, you know, the stimulus response and then the stress reaction after that stimulus response. And we've walked through this. And as you know, like, as I've learned, if I don't like what I'm feeling, then that's where the opportunity is. Okay. Eckhart Tolle In a healthy organism, an emotion is a short lived response. Okay, I 100% agree with that. There's no baggage with that. There's no dragging an experience that happened yesterday or 50 years ago through every day of my life. There's no reason I need to do that to where I can't live in total joy. And if I'm stuck in sadness, if I'm stuck in, if I'm stuck in excitement, there's one. This is where I usually throw out to clients. I know all this other stuff sounds hard. Let's start with excitement. Let's look at the things that bring you excitement. Let's slow down there. Let's bring that down in a level to actually see it for what it really is. Because there are far too many of us that are getting very excited over really sexy, shiny things that inevitably we didn't actually want to be doing or involved in because we didn't take the time to bring it down enough to go, oh, anything that goes up comes down. Right? So, and that doesn't mean you can't get excited about things. How make it a short lived response. How do you make that happen? Well, when I get excited, I slow it down. I intentionally slow it down. So If I know I'm going into a situation. So here's. There's three ways we can go about this. If I know I'm going into a situation that could be difficult, work, home, whatever, or you're gonna go do something that you really didn't want to do. That's where breath work comes in. Stage one. I'm going to do that to bring myself down a bit to jump over and go, what is the reality of this versus the emotion of it.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I swear to a friend last week who was getting really triggered by an email from his boss.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And I said, mate, you know that that email in and off itself is not problematic, right? He showed me. But that's just a neutral email information. Yeah. You're choosing to put this story on it and amping yourself up. You don't have to. And I guess one of the things I think is most powerful about becoming aware of your breath is that deep knowledge where, you know, I can actually change the tightness of my nervous system.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Look, Casper Vandermeulen was the one who coined the. Breathing is the remote control to the nervous system. So you can toggle that nervous system if you're willing to sit in it and control it before you go into something that you know could be difficult. Now the second part of that, where this could come in is if you get good at the first process, then you can go in to an actual situation you have not planned for or didn't know was coming. And real time, regulate. Oh, I can feel that. I can feel my adrenaline coming up. I can feel my. I'm getting emotional, I'm getting angry right now. I'm getting frustrated right now. Breathe into that if you got it. But if you don't, the third part is if the reaction that you've had you didn't enjoy, now you've got an opportunity when it's over to regulate and go look at the reality of that. So in either any one of those three, reality has to come into play. You've got to be able to jump out of the story or the narrative that you're in. And breathing is the thing that can typically allow for that to happen if you're actually applying this. But you've gotta be consistent with it.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so let's talk about something practical then. You've gotta be consistent with it. So there's our ability to use our breath in the moment. Like let's say we developed and cultivated the self awareness. So oh yeah, I can feel something's happening there. Oh, okay. I'm not gonna say anything, but let me just calm it down. Let me breathe into it. Okay, but for that person who's never, ever paid attention to their breath and is kind of resonating with something going, all right, well, where do I start, Brian? Where do they start?

[Brian MacKenzie]

I think the simplest thing to do, and this is what I'll show with people if I go do a talk so that they have something to walk away with, is if you can just inhale through your nose and exhale through your nose a little bit slower each time until you find a place where you're most comfortable with the exhale. But continue to just inhale and then slowly exhale. You're gonna bring it down.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So your exhale is longer than your inhale.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah. You want to prolong the exhale just slightly. Right. Or even. Even more, as long as you're comfortable. You don't want to. You want. You don't want to do this. And to the degree that you're hitting panic switches.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, but I think that's a really good point, because one of the breathing techniques that has taken off over the past decades, which has elevated this topic of breath work in many people's consciousness, is Wim Hof.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. And yes, there's upsides and downsides for sure of that kind of breathing, But I believe that many people think that breath work has to be hard. I have to be pushing it. I have to be holding my breath. I have to go, oh, no, I can keep going. Right. And what you're saying there is that you don't need any of that necessarily. You can start off in a very comfortable way, just breathing in and breathing out for a little bit longer, but you don't have to feel uncomfortable. Is that right?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So it can feel easy.

[Brian MacKenzie]

That is controlled breathing. And then another simple thing that you can do is just sit there, shut your eyes, and pay attention to your belly moving every single time you breathe. You breathe in and out, and that's all you do for about 30 seconds or so. And after about 30 seconds, you're just. You're going to switch that over to paying attention to your chest and how your chest moves through every breath. And you'll do that for 30 seconds. Not forcing anything. Let it happen, just allowing it to happen. And then I would move people into. Now I want you to pay attention to the air moving through your nostrils. Just the air moving through your nostrils. So if you can do this without having to control your breathing, you're becoming highly focused on something, but you're calming yourself instantaneously down without having to control your breathing at all and your breathing naturally just starts to drop.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So would it be a helpful practice, let's say, as part of a morning routine, maybe after they wake up.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

For five minutes.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Doing what you just said. Make the case for someone, if you don't mind, why they should give up five minutes of their precious morning to do that. What are the potential implications later on in their life, later on that day, for example?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, simple. You're going to change what's going on metabolically real quick. So you're going to start activating things and getting more, more oxygen used up because you're changing how the chemistry happens. So you're actually regulating your nervous system.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. So let's say you don't have much time. You do five minutes of this kind of calming, grounding, breathwork practice every morning. As someone who does that or similar versions of that, I feel there's so many potential benefits. Say, I think it's a beautiful way to start your day. It's a very intentional way to start your day. Instead of reacting to the news headlines and the noise, you're just like, oh.

[Brian MacKenzie]

I'm going to start whatever noise is out there. Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I'm going to gently just bring myself into the day, for example. I think it's also in a world where so many of us are focused outwards on more information and more expertise and more opinions, which then become confusing. I think a practice like this brings you in where you're starting to pay attention to what's going on inside your body. Right. You start to understand, oh, like even I know this stuff. But even when you were going through it, I started to do it.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And I'm like, oh, wow, I'm in my head at the moment. Like I'd forgotten what was going on my body. Of course I'm talking to you.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But it was a nice reminder and I think that then put this is.

[Brian MacKenzie]

So I'll layer this stuff in for people throughout their day. Like, hey man, like as soon as you get off that call, like, boom. As soon as you're out of that meeting, boom. This is where you go. At least just do like three minutes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Am I remembering correctly? A few months ago on Instagram, I think you said something to the effect of if you have a well functioning nervous system, then you will be able to take a nap at 1pm What I understood from that post was many people say that they can't nap, they're tired but they can't nap. And I preach not everyone has the opportunity to nap because of their work pressures, et cetera, et cetera. But some people who are working from home and potentially could have the time say that they're too wired to switch off.

[Brian MacKenzie]

I mean, look, a healthy, functioning animal can take a nap at any point after a stress response. What does a lion do after it misses the kill? It goes and lies down and then takes a nap. I remember going to general quarters. So I was in the Navy, and I remember going to general quarters, which is a drill for we're going to war or something's happening. You're going to your station. And it would be held for a certain amount of time. And most of the time, it was for a prolonged amount of time. And I remember vividly, I was like, perfect, I'm gonna take a nap. And I would literally take a nap when I would go to gq, because I was gonna be stuck in this place for so long, and none of my superior officers were going to be there or anything. So they weren't going to see me. They were going to be at their general quarter station, you know, But I was going to take a nap, and I would take a nap. And then I got out of the Navy, and then I started working. I was becoming successful and all of these things. And then all of a sudden, I couldn't switch off. I couldn't take a nap. I remember all of this.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So what happened? What was the switch in you?

[Brian MacKenzie]

I just kept turning it on. I took on every opportunity I could get. I said yes to everything. I didn't learn how to say no. I didn't slow it down from the excitement of everything. And the new thing that doesn't mean to do go do new things. It's like, did I have the bandwidth and I didn't have the bandwidth? I didn't have the bandwidth because I was burning myself out all day. And then I was still trying to train, right? So I was still trying to work out and do everything I was doing at the time while working out.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And then just adding more and more things into your schedule, more training.

[Brian MacKenzie]

And then I do the physical stuff because, damn, I felt good after that. But not realizing, oh, this is gonna have compounding residual effects. The interesting thing was, is I was doing a lot of long, slow distance in the early stages of that stuff.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So I was like, you mean endurance training?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is where I started to evolve things, not just for myself, but a lot of the athletes I was working. Cause they were burnt. And so it was like, well, what could we chip down? So we started chipping things down and it was less and less and less. And it was like having some great effect. But it turns out that if you don't turn it off, if you don't have time throughout the day where you're able to shut it down. And that doesn't mean you need to take a nap. It means, can you regulate? Can you bring it down?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And that's why you're so passionate about the breath. Correct? Because the breath, once you become intimate and pay attention to your own breath.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And what's happening in your nostrils and your chest and your abdomen, like you.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Just mentioned, like, if I'm talking or if I'm speaking or if I'm going and teaching, like, man, I'm on. What am I doing right after that? Am I gonna go have multiple conversations with people? Cause I might, because people just saw me do something and so they have questions and they wanna talk to me and it's like, I'm on again. Then it's like, okay, what do I do? As soon as. After that, oh, I'm jacked up. I was working with some standup comedians and none of these guys and gals can shut off after they do a set because they're so wired from being on stage. So a lot of these guys go and play video games and stuff, or they drink and, you know, and it's like, dude, go regulate. Like, go bring yourself down.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, this is a great example. So a performer, you know, they finish, let's say, on stage at 10:30pm yeah, they're amped up. Maybe it's not as different as the person who's still working late into the evening on emails, whatever it might be. Maybe, you know, to make it really practical for people, they can't switch off. So. And I know performers who say that their bad habits come in when they're on the road. Like, how. What is a healthier way for them to. To down regulate at 11pm instead of the bottle of wine, for example, go.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Back to the green room or wherever you've got an opportunity to separate yourself from people and just take five or 10 minutes and bring it down. Regulate.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Like breathing.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Do some breathing. Do some breathing. You could even do breath hold work if you wanted to. That's going to change some things and bring it down a bit. But that is going to bring the nervous system down and it's going to allow you to actually not be in a reactive place. That's the problem Is that when we get into this heightened, heightened arousal state, you can only react in those places. If you do bring it down, you can respond. You can be like, oh, maybe I don't do that versus like, no, I'm not doing that. Yes, I am doing that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You know, the amount of patients over the years, Brian, who came in to see me with sleep issues. And of course there's a whole variety of different reasons why one may be struggling with one's sleep. Right. But so many of them. This is one of the probably unintended or maybe intended consequences of the digital world in which we now live, is that these boundaries between work and home have kind of vanished in a way that, you know, 20 years ago you left the office, there's stuff you couldn't really do at home. You had to be in the office to do it. So there would be a natural boundary. Whereas now people can work and do their emails into the evening. And one of the things I realized after a while I was telling my patients a lot is that, you know, you're struggling to switch off and see they're like literally doing work emails, firing them off and then going to bed and saying, hey, I'm struggling to sleep, okay? And I'm like, if you're doing that and you're really activated now, some people can switch it off quickly for sure. Yeah, my wife can, but many people can't. And I'm like, for me personally, I have to have, I don't have to anymore. But I chose a few years ago to go, you know what? Once it hits 7pm, that's it, I'm done. Like, that's the day done. Now everything is chill mode. It's relaxing, it's reading, it's music, it's doing some stretches, it's chatting with my wife. It's not work related. It was a choice I made. And what I used to say to these guys is like, have you got kids? Said, yeah. I said, you know, with your kids, just before they go to bed, what do you do? You don't put all the lights on full, give them a load of sugar, put the music up loud. You don't activate them, do you? No. You dim the lights, you soften your tone. You might read them a bedtime story. You're creating this kind of environment around them that is conducive to falling asleep. But as adults, we kind of think that we don't need that. I'm like, your kids need a bedtime routine. You might benefit from a similar bedtime routine to your Children, it's about what is the signal you're giving to your nervous system, isn't it?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, yeah. We create more stimulus through the unprocessed junk, whatever we're not dealing with. And it's this compensation of just trying to get as much done as we can. Because in the world we live in, it's just like, it's this barrage of information that we're all aware of. We all talk about it like we understand it. However, when you don't have boundaries, like you've talked about how you have boundaries, like 7pm Comes, you're done. Like it's done right. For me it's more like 4 or 5 o'clock. Like it's really like Soviet these days, to be fair. Yeah, well, for me it's really 4 or 5 o'clock because I. If I'll obsess, I will obsess on my work and about, you know, like, look, I tested you and I'll keep going and looking at your data and bringing it in and working on it because I'm in a space where I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that'll also be there tomorrow. And I really enjoy a lot of the other hobbies and things that I do and one of them is like cooking. So I get to go home and I get to start cooking. The way I cook isn't pre planned. It's what do we have and what can I create?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So you're changing your nervous system states.

[Brian MacKenzie]

I am boom. Going from work into now. Now I'm in the kitchen, creativity playing. And when it's a little warmer, I typically will come home. And because it gets dark later, I'll go home, grab Tiana and I'll be like, we're going to the beach and we will go body surf for like 45 minutes or an hour. But my mornings are the same way. Like, I don't actually go and sit and do breath work very often in the morning because I head out the door and I go walk for 60 to 90 minutes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah, I want to talk about this. And this is really important. So there's doing breath work whilst you're sitting down and still. And the exercise you kind of illustrated and took people through before is kind of about paying attention and just sort of starting to notice what's happening. But there's also breath work or paying attention to your breathing when you're moving. Right. So you're saying you don't tend to sit down and do that much anymore. You wake up, I know you walk for what 90 minutes minimum a day.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh. I mean, I think my average is something like 17 or 18,000 steps a day.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And this is something different from five years ago.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, God. Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Well, I mean, look, I've been walking for quite some time. It's just the level of walking because of what happens. What I really invested one in with walking is the same thing I'm invested in with cooking and, or going body surfing or even surfing for that matter. Like, I didn't even throw in if there is a big enough swell. I shut off everything, cancel appointments with, with clients, like, and anybody who's a surfer understands this. Like it's done like this. It's out.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

The thought that just jumped into my head was it's so counter to what we think life should be, which is about seriousness. And if you have a meeting or something there, you have to do it. And I understand that many people have jobs where they have to maybe, you know, you work for yourself so you have the autonomy to do that, whereas many people don't. I accept all of that, but it just makes you think about culture and actually how the playfulness, the things that truly nourish us, those are the things that everyone tries to fit in on their one week vacation or maybe on a Sunday afternoon. Do you know what I mean? It's something, it says something about culture where these things have been relegated to being only when you have time, only when you finish your emails.

[Brian MacKenzie]

This goes right back to process and what we were talking about in the beginning. My work is the same way. I'm literally having fun like a kid with what I'm doing and I'm enjoying that and I'm not losing sight of that. I feel like at this point in my life, at 50 years old, I got rid of the kid that was a tortured soul and brought back the kid that was playing. And I've taken the things that I've learned and that I'm very passionate about and I've learned to apply that to everything I'm doing. But I have set hard lines in the sand with these things.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Like what?

[Brian MacKenzie]

You don't get me when I'm surfing, you don't get me after 4pm My time is the most valuable thing I have and your time is the most valuable thing you have. And attention is finite. Where I choose to spend my time, I choose to be there and invested in it in the most creative way that I can. And that's just presence. I can't do that without presence. If I'm thinking about the next meeting I've got to go to and the deal I've got to close or whoever I've got, like, it's not going to work. It doesn't work for me like that. And then I love the job I'm at, but more importantly, I love every single person that is in my life, no matter how short that is. And then third, I feel like I'm a kid and you'll like this. I'll feel like I'm a kid in the 80s playing again. The 80s, bro. The 80s.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Pretty smartphones, bro.

[Brian MacKenzie]

The innocence and the risk taking that I was up to when I was living at that time, the craziness of it, but just the drive to explore. And that's what walking does for me. Walking in the morning reminds me of when I was a kid and I lived behind this forest and I would just go, I was out, I was gone at like 6 years old, 8 years old. I'd go walk out the back and I'd go into the forest and I'd go screw around building tree forts, all this stuff. You know how hard that is right now for people and their kids like to allow even a 10 year old or to be on their own.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Jonathan Haidt writes about this in the Anxious Generation. He's talking about the negatives of smartphones at an early age and social media at an early age. But for him, the case he makes is not only about reducing that, it's at the same time we need to increase free play, give our children independence, get them out taking risks, playing. The world is actually a lot safer for most of us than it used to be. Yet we're behaving like. I think he says something to the effect of we are under protecting kids in the online world and overprotecting them in the offline world. And I think he's, I think he's really onto something.

[Brian MacKenzie]

I don't think he's wrong. I mean, I read Johann Hari, you know, did a book, Stolen Focus. Yeah, Stolen Focus. That was a fantastic book as well. But, you know, and all of that's provided me with information that I've been able to utilize, right? Like, yeah, I'm able to take steps to understand these things. It's like I don't have a true existence on social media anymore. It's like from afar. And if I go post a video that I have to get on the app for, to post that, I actually have to go to the App store, install the app and then I delete the app after I've done that and I don't go through and start scrolling. Cause I know what's going to happen to me. I'm not immune to the things that are going on with you on there, if you're actually on there. I go through the same thing where I get caught in the infinite scroll and I'm emotionally getting triggered by things. And it's like, oh, that's interesting that's going on. And people pretend like that's not happening to them. And literally there are people I have had conversations with that think that's not affecting them. And they're full of shit. It's affecting all of us. I've watched it. I see it with myself, I see it with clients, I see it with people that I'm close to. It affects us all in a certain way. And real life. Real life is with the people you're closest to and the ability to show up in an interaction. But that doesn't mean you can't go on social media and do the thing. It's just like getting caught in that loop and going, oh, there it is. I'm out.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's interesting, you talking about the boundaries you put in place, the clear boundaries you put in place. And boundaries is something that many people struggle with.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I used to struggle with it, for sure.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And a lot of the time there's a pushback sometimes that it's selfish. But the funny thing is that I imagine, and I put it to you, like, putting in boundaries is actually one of the most selfless things you can do. Because what people don't realize on the other side of boundaries is that you then you then have something to give to the people you want to give to.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Let's talk about your gear system here. Right. Because I think it's really practical and I think it's going to be a tool that people can take away. Because we've gone pretty deep, right?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And I think you can go that deep. But having some practical activities that you can start playing around with each day, I think it helps people go to that deepness. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's easiest to hear these concepts that go, well. Yeah, Brian. Wrong. And all right for you guys, like, I don't know why you enjoy doing the dishes. What are you guys talking about? I hate doing the dishes. So let's bring in these five gear systems because I think they're useful. Everyone moves their bodies. Maybe some not as much as others. But what are they? And why do you think they're so important for People to know.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Well, we developed the breathing gear system out of discrepancy that we found in observing breathing as a dynamic through low, moderate and high intensity exercise.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So the gear systems apply to when we're moving our body.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's not about waking up and actually paying attention. No. So we park that we're now moving our bodies. Let's say we're going for a walk.

[Brian MacKenzie]

It's about exercise. Go for a walk. And this is a perfect example is if gear one cannot be used while someone is walking. We have a very big limitation which is nothing but an opportunity. Don't look at limiter as a negative. Limiter is an opportunity. So I have an immediate opportunity if I can't have somebody in gear one. And breathing gear one is simple, it's can you maintain one breath cycle in and out of your nose for greater than four seconds? So that would be like a two in, two out. Right? Two, two count in, two count out. I get that upwards to somewhere around eight seconds for walking level, maybe 10 seconds walking level effort for people. But that's a good check. Does that mean you should go on a 90 minute walk while trying to apply gear one? Absolutely not. I mean go spend like 10, 20 minutes really focusing or from time to time every few minutes checking in and applying that breathing pattern of to the effort you're at with walking.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so let me frame it my way and see if this makes sense. Okay, so walking is of course it depends whether there's an incline or it depends on the speed, but it's, you know, it's not the most intense of movement activities. Right, so you're saying you're going for a walk around your block. Gear one is the ability to maintain a nasal in breath and a nasal outbreath. So you're not opening your mouth and you want that in and out breath to be at least four seconds.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. If you cannot do that. Okay, so it could be that you can only manage 2 seconds or it could be that I can only walk around the block by opening my mouth.

[Brian MacKenzie]

That would be gear four. So we'll work through this.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so why is that a problem though? If someone can't go round the block on a flat pavement and keep their mouth shut while they're doing it. So exclusively nasal breathing, if they can't do that, why is that something they should be paying attention to?

[Brian MacKenzie]

They're not utilizing oxygen real well.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, can we think about these five breathing gear systems like a car, you know, gear one to five where you know, we Start off the car in first gear and we go to second gear and third gear and fourth gear and fifth gear is.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Is that sort of. Sort of? Because gear one would be much. You'd be in gear one should be primarily most of what you're doing throughout your day. So gear two is a transition from gear one, obviously, to where I go from that four count. And now I'm down and I'm probably more like 3, 2 to 3 seconds per. Per breath cycle.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But still nasal. In and out.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes, I'm still nasal. Right, still nasal.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So gears one and gear two are both nasal.

[Brian MacKenzie]

And what I've found. What I have found over the last few years is that gear 2 is actually pretty limited and you're probably more effective if you're only. If you're gonna be prolonged at gear two, you're actually more effective at jumping up to a gear four. So, see, I'm skipping gear three because gear three is nose in, mouth out. And that's largely a transitional gear for coming down.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And we're gonna go through this. But for people who, like, wanna learn more, it's all on your website, isn't it?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Like, you've got a lot of the.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

System that is Shift.

[Brian MacKenzie]

ShiftAdapt.com. right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So if it goes to ShiftAdapt.com, you've clearly got the five gear systems there.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, I think we have it. We have that up somewhere on that site. If not, they can go to actually my X handle. And it is pinned at the top of my profile and there is a systematic breakdown of it and where it relates and how it can work.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay.

[Brian MacKenzie]

That said, skip gear three going up. So I'm in gear two. If I'm gonna be there for more than a minute or two, I'm gonna have somebody go to gear four.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And that is what, in and out through the mouth?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, it's just relaxed mouth breathing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. So as your intensity is going up, you've moved from gear one to gear two. You're saying on the way up, jump and skip gear three. And you're now at gear four. So you've gone from nasal breathing in and out to mouth breathing in and out, but in a relaxed way. And then gear 5 is just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Nutrition can often seem really complicated. We get confused about what exact diets we should be following and which supplements we might benefit from taking. And that's one of the many reasons that I love AG1 and have been taking it for over six years. AG1 makes it simple to be the best version of you over 70 ingredients, one scoop once a day for less than a cup of coffee. It's a science driven daily health drink which supports your energy, focus and immune system. It also helps support your gut health. For example, it contains calcium which contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes and biotin to maintain your own intestinal mucous membrane. Now, the scientific team behind NG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry and I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. In fact, AG1 has gone through 53 versions as they continue to iterate in line with the latest research. And the best thing of course is that all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life. So if you want to Support your health seven mornings a week, you can start with AG1. Subscribe now and get a free bottle of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.comlivemore to unlock this exclusive offer and get started on your journey to better health today. Ever have one of those days when everything seems to go wrong and before you know it you've slipped back into those habits you're trying so hard to avoid? Like sugar, doom scrolling and wine. When it comes to making changes in our lives that actually last, most people think the solution is to try harder. But this is simply not the case. In my new book, Make Change that Lasts, I reveal how exactly you can break free from the habits that hold you back. What many of us don't realize is that our behaviors follow our beliefs. So when you change your beliefs, and my book will show you how to do that, you'll spend less time having to think about your habits because they'll happen automatically. Make Change that Lasts, the number one Sunday Times bestseller is available to buy now all over the world as a paperback ebook and as an audiobook, which I am narrating. And if you've not got your copy yet, what are you waiting for?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Heart Rate Zone junkies. People who actually understand heart rate zone. Gear four is happening somewhere between heart rate zone three and four. That is where that is occurring. Gear five is power mouth breathing, meaning I'm actually really moving air. Like this is heavy duty strength and conditioning sets. This is sprinting. At the end of sprints, if they're short or you're talking 400 meters, 800 meter efforts, you're going to hit those if you're hitting those for time, if you're hitting those for high intensity. Gear five is coming into play. Okay. Gear five is something that I realized there were a lot of problems with, not just myself that I noticed, but other people I've noticed who are not able to get that respiration rate above about 40, 45.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Okay. And we'll come to my test, but just again to make sure everyone's following along. Right. So there are these five gear systems that you've gone through. As our intensity of movement increases, we in essence move up through the gears like we would in a car. Right. Why is it important for someone to know that? So what I mean by that is, let's say someone is using Gears 4 and 5 exclusively. That is they're never nasal breathing, okay. They go for a walk around the block on a flat in perfect weather conditions and they're breathing in and out through their mouth. Okay? So they're not using 1, 2 or 3, they're straight into 4. Cause I think people need to know that to encourage them to start.

[Brian MacKenzie]

For the hundreds, if not thousands of people that I've tested or looked at the data on, currently you have a breathing related issue when exercising and you have a big opportunity in maximizing your performance and output by either. And like, look, I tested. So I tested Kawhi Leonard this morning who's an NBA player for the Clippers, and he asked this very question, well, how's this going to help my performance? And I explained to him, well, think of it like a season, right? If I can give you a tool that's going to allow you to be more efficient with your breathing, you're not losing that blood to your locomotor muscles, so you're not getting more stressed sooner, you're using energy a bit more efficiently. So game after game, if you don't change this by the time playoffs come, you're pretty tired, you're pretty exhausted, it's pretty hard versus you now have, you're now recovering faster, you've got capacity, you've got more capacity because you're using oxygen later than you were earlier.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. So there's a performance benefit, there's capacity benefit. You can go for longer before you fatigue someone. We both follow on X. Alan Cousins. My interpretation of what I've read from Alan is, you know, if you're keeping it that low heart rate, if you're walking to the mailbox, if you can keep it all nasal breathing and at A low heart rate that's going to help you burn fat. There's a metabolic benefit. And so for some people who maybe don't want performance or not, NBA players, well, many people are trying to lose fat off their bodies. Right. And there's a metabolic reason to be able to access Gears 1 and 2, isn't there? You're gonna, it's gonna help you burn fat.

[Brian MacKenzie]

We definitively understand that if you're breathing through your nose, you're more aerobic than.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You are, which means you're using up fats.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct. So think of your aerobic system is kind of like your, your, your checking account. Right. And your anaerobic systems or your savings account. If I'm constant, my mouth, my mouth open is my savings account. You're on limited time. You're incinerating carbohydrates when that mouth's open. So you're using up. That's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. But I'm on limited time. If I'm more aerobic, I'm utilizing fatty acids more, so I'm burning fat. Right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. Now I love all this. Right. So we're in a situation where, and this is how the breathwork landscape has changed over the last five or 10 years, of which I'm a prime example. Okay.

[Brian MacKenzie]

So yes, this is good.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Let's go back 10 years. A decade ago, I can't quite remember what was happening, but breathwork wasn't as popular as it is now. Right. In my own journey through this podcast, which is we go for seven years now. The first time I really dealt with nasal breathing on the show was with Patrick McKeown many years ago. I had a lovely chat with Patrick. He spoke to me about the Bolt score and the benefits of nasal breathing, and that progressed to me talking to you and all kinds of people about breath work. James Nestor then releases this blow up book, Globally Breath, and talks about the benefits of nasal breathing. Is it fair to say that that message was needed because the vast majority of people were over breathing and using their mouths more than their nose? But something has shifted where some people who get a bit obsessed, like me, take that nasal breathing message and try and do everything in our lives with nasal breathing, and then we start to have problems in something like a gear 5, which is what I think you're finding with me.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct? Yes. And I experienced the same thing. I did the same thing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But it doesn't mean nasal breathing is not important. No, no.

[Brian MacKenzie]

It's just that another way, it's a limitation for sure.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Could we say this? There was a deficiency of nasal breathing in society. The increased awareness has. Has. Has meant that less people are deficient now because they're aware of it. But the problem is, is that they've tipped it too far where they've actually now neglected mouth breathing, which is also important.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct. You will not go look at a Tour cyclist who climbs Alt d'huez or whatever climb you want to talk about, and they're punching it. Their jaw is open, and they are. And they are moving that air.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so let's talk about that then through the lens of the testing you did on me. Right. So because I think this kind of illustrates this quite well.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You were not able to get above a 42 respiration rate, and you were at tidal volume, but I'm pretty sure you could get deeper.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Let's break that down. Like, some people wonder what tidal volume is and what these terms.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Tidal volume just talks about how much air is in the lungs. Right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So are we saying that I was good at the lower gears?

[Brian MacKenzie]

You were good at the lower gears. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So. So. Because I put in the work at the lower gears.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Focused on nasal breathing.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So it looked. So you were really happy with that. Yeah.

[Brian MacKenzie]

And metabolically speaking, look like, based on you, you. You were between 0.95 and 1.0 for, like, 15 minutes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And what does that mean for people who don't know those 10?

[Brian MacKenzie]

So Rangan was at a low to moderate. Moderate, moderate, high level. He was staying under 1.0 RER, which is respiratory exchange ratio, which means once you hit 1.0, you're betting you're totally burning, burning carbohydrates.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So I was able to burn fat.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You still had some fatty acids. You were still burning some fat even.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

At relatively, you know, moderate, moderate to high intensities, which I probably wasn't doing five years ago.

[Brian MacKenzie]

A systems level of metabolic. So just. That's just looking at the metabolic now, right? Here's where. Here's where part of the assessment is different that I. That I'm doing and the endurance community understand this. I'm looking at tissue utilization of oxygen, and I'm looking at delivery of oxygen. Okay? So I'm seeing how the hemoglobin is getting delivered, the oxygen's getting delivered to the tissue, and I'm seeing how well that tissue's actually utilizing that oxygen.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay. So many of us understand that oxygen comes into our lungs, Right. And then from our lungs, it gets into our blood. You're saying there's two things to think about. Yes. You have to get the oxygen from the lungs to, let's say, your muscles. Right.

[Brian MacKenzie]

But as soon as you start working the muscles, demand goes up.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Right. So the oxygen gets to the muscles, but you're also saying that even if it gets there, it may not be being used efficiently.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Right. So this is the kind of nuance that I think many of us are not thinking about. So, okay, let's go back to my test then. What was I doing? Am I getting oxygen there and it's not being used efficiently, or am I not even getting oxygen?

[Brian MacKenzie]

You're getting oxygen there. However, you weren't utilizing the oxygen well at these places.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Why?

[Brian MacKenzie]

The mitochondria aerobic system wasn't getting enough oxygen or hadn't been for long enough, because the nose breathing is happening with everything, and you're more than likely doing it at higher efforts, which you confirmed with me. Yes, you are. So you're not actually bringing in enough oxygen to actually help that. So the system can't.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah, it's funny.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Or the tissue can't, but the system's fine.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

A few years ago, I went to Salford University in Manchester to do my lactate threshold testing, and I was right in the middle of my nasal breathing passion, and I was nasal breathing till right at the very end. And it's really interesting. These guys have done thousands of lactate threshold tests. My tests confused them because they weren't seeing what they used to. They weren't seeing the usual step changes. I don't think at that time, they'd seen someone who was nasal breathing right until the very, very final speeds. And they were gonna do some more work on me. And then Covid happened. Nothing. We didn't actually do anything. But now it's all starting to. The penny's starting to drop now, where I'm like, ah, maybe not. Maybe I was overly nasal breathing. So they couldn't even get the data they wanted to give me my training zones. Is that making sense?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Dude, I watched this exact thing with. So I have a pretty good relationship with the UFC PI and one of my clients owns the ufc. So we went over to the PI to do all of our testing there with Roman, who's the exercise lead physiologist there, and he did this exact same thing. And literally, with a minute and a half left, he decided to start mouth breathing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

That was me. That was.

[Brian MacKenzie]

That's all it lasted. He fell off a cliff immediately afterwards. And, yeah, you were struggling your ass off because you didn't have enough oxygen on board and you haven't actually developed the muscles to be able to move that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So I've developed the lower end, which is great and has metabolic benefits and performance benefits, but I've sacrificed or underdeveloped the top end.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah. It's like doing yoga with your primary breathing muscles and then asking yourself to go, you know, do powerlifting. Right. It's just. It's not. Those two very different worlds. Right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But you need both. It's not.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Oh, correct. Yes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So I was right to focus on the NASA breathing and correct that deficiency in my life.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But now it's like, hey, Rongan, you've got that one. That's okay. Keep doing that. But now we need to bring in.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah. And the series of questions that I ask based on what I see is what validates what we see. Right. And that was the questions that I had for you was like, hey, you know, are you doing any mouth breathing? You're like, oh, no, no, no, no, I don't do. Yeah, like, I'm, you know, this is what I'm doing. And I'm like, that's what I thought.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Like, okay, so let's say you're going to give me a program and I'm gonna work on certain things to do. And I guess some of that's. Well, maybe you can share. What are some of the things you would ideally have me work on?

[Brian MacKenzie]

We would, One, have you work at just above gear two. So working to, like, heart rate zone two, heart rate to heart rate zone four. We'd be doing some intervals there with mouth breathing, particularly gear four, not gear five. Gear five. We would touch. We'll touch with things like strength and conditioning. So I threw in with your program. One of the main points of the limiters was let's do some real. Let's do some strength and conditioning at least twice a week where you're getting that intensity up to where you are wanting to move air. And that may just be after you finish squatting, but it hits that and then we can gear down as a result of that. So I get up to a point to where I hit that when I'm lifting heavy, and that doesn't mean the whole workout's gear five at all. It's. We're hitting those stages. You're also doing structured cardio throughout the week at least twice a week to where we're doing some interval type work where you're working for a few minutes in gear four and then coming back into a gear one for some easier stuff and making sure. That we've got the, you know, the working gear one in there.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So the gears that I have underdeveloped over the past few years, the gear four and five. Right. In essence, you're saying now we're going to start redeveloping them. You're going to. Now you've got gear one and two going pretty well. Let's now get gears four and five going well. So I've got this real variety and depth in my system. I want to know what the benefits for me of doing that are. Like, why should I do it? I feel good. I can nasal breathe at low intensities. I'm going to do it. Brian, it's not that for the purpose of the conversation. Why should I, Why shouldn't I just keep doing what I'm doing?

[Brian MacKenzie]

You're going to most likely see an increase in VO2 max.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Could you explain to my audience what a VO2 max is?

[Brian MacKenzie]

The maximum amount of oxygen you're able to utilize in liters per kilogram a minute. So your body weight in kilograms and how many liters you're using of oxygen or can use in a minute. That's just a rough reference point of the higher that VO2 max is, the less likely it is that that's going to slip into a dangerous zone as you get older. The good news is you're probably not in any danger. The. The, the even better news is is that following what I'm going to lay out is going to most likely increase that exponentially. Meaning when you go on a walk, it's even easier. You're not using high stress energy in the places you used to.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Is it fair to say that if you can develop this five gear system with a variety of different movements and a variety of different breathing gears and heart rate intensities, you're working out your stress response system. Right. So how like given what we spend the first hour talking about, which is the way we respond to stress. The choice, or perhaps not the choice, depending on how you want to frame it. In terms of we have a stressor and we have a response to that and we can train our response, we can get more helpful responses over time. Do you think that if people develop their five gear breathing system, it would help them better manage stress in their own lives?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Across the boards? Yes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Cause it's not separate, is it? It's not. How you deal with the driver who cuts you up is actually related to how you move your body.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But I don't think people know that.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Well, your breathing is a Respondent to all of that. Breathing's playing a role in all of that. So me learning how to actually and this doesn't like I want to be very clear. I don't nor do I expect clients to go into the gym or go and do cardio every time they go and work out that they're implementing the gear system. A small portion of that training I will integrate the gear system and breathing into but not the whole thing. It's like if I've got a guy playing in the NFL or NBA, whatever, I do not want them thinking about the gears when they're playing at all. Not at all. That is part of training. And then it should transcend over into is is my client now seeing differences in how they're playing and intuitively picking up on this process as they walk as they go through that. Right. Are they as soon as a play ends, you know, an NFL or are they immediately into do they do that intuitively? Right. That's where that should happen. However, the crossover is how I'm managing my day to day stress is going to show up in my training and if I can't maintain a gear one in something I should be able to maintain a gear one in. I now know I'm probably a little more smoked than I normally am or if I had a workout I was going to do that had some sort of gear in it and that's much harder. You are now seeing a response to stress that you have a feedback loop to to understand, oh wow, this is a lot more difficult or this is much easier today I am really able to get work harder in this gear. Right. That is a very, that is a crossover point for understanding. Oh, I'm actually making some adaptations here towards expanding my potential for stress. Like I'm able to handle far more than I was prior to this. And here's the thing, if I don't use oxygen well, your physiology will catch you. We call these metabolic disorders. Like it will catch you. And that doesn't mean your breathing is the culprit here. It means yeah, your breathing's probably affected, your food's probably affected because you're making fast choices on that and you don't care about where you're getting your food from. Just hypothesizing your training is too intense or it's not intense enough. Right. Like there's, there's all these variant like look, you go look at research like there's. It comes out all the time. But variants to training is the thing that is typically the best stimulus. Not the same thing over and over and over, repeating.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah, it's so interesting, this stuff. I mean, I'm deeply fascinated, like you, about human behavior. A big part of my job for many years as a doctor has been to help patients make better lifestyle choices. And I used to think that knowledge is all the people needed. And I'm like, no, no, no. People need knowledge for sure, they need external knowledge. But what they need more than anything, I believe, these days is internal knowledge, that awareness of, why am I going to this behavior. So let's take sugar, for example, right? And I think this relates to your work and the gear systems. If you are chronically stressed and generating emotional stress by every way you interact with life, the drivers, the boss, the traffic, and you're thinking you're a victim to the world.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You did the math.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You're going to consume more sugar because you.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You're using up sugar. Your body needs sugar.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Exactly. And so you keep thinking that you need to hear another podcast on the. On the negatives of sugar. But the problem is you already know that you need to understand why do you need that sugar? What is going on upstream, that is naturally means you're going to consume that sugar. And you can apply that to alcohol or three hours scrolling social media and whatever it might be. Like, what's the upstream driver? Is it fair to say, Brian, then? Because not everyone who is listening to this right now is going to be able to come to your facility. Okay, so in terms of practical advice that may work for most people, I think a conclusion that I'm drawing is that everyone should be able to walk around their block keeping their mouth shut.

[Brian MacKenzie]

If you can't go walk for at least 45 minutes a day, you've got. My suggestion is find the time to walk for at least 45 minutes a day with your mouth shut and not on a screen, you're laying the beginnings of a metabolic foundation. The stuff Alan Cousins talks so well about, I actually believe it's more than more. So do I. Yeah, you're gonna need more than 40, but if you can get 45, that's a good start. But go get lost in that 45 minutes.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Go explore, but keep your mouth shut.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Keep your mouth shut and explore.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Well, unless someone tries that and goes, hey, Brian, I'm really struggling. Like, I'm trying to go for a walk. I have to open my mouth after.

[Brian MacKenzie]

10 minutes, take a few mouth breaths and go right back to nose breathing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So it's training. It's like you don't have the skill now, but you can develop it and cultivate it.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Take a few mouth breaths, go back to nose, go Back to gear one.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so practice nasal breathing at low intensity.

[Brian MacKenzie]

It's 80% of what you should be doing, right? So 80% of what you should be doing is really underneath that nose breathing thing. Then there's the, hey, if you can get that 45 minutes, great. Go work, Spend your day paying attention to how much you're talking, how much you're getting stressed out. Find pieces of time where you can just bring it down for a minute or five. Just, just start with a consistent habit of controlling some breathing or paying attention to your breathing through your belly, your chest, your nose, if you want, throughout your day, if you can. Then if you're going to go train, if you're going to go exercise and you really want to exercise, use your walking, the end of your walking and how you feel after walking as a basis for how hard you can train or what you can do that day. You'll know your body is going to tell you through that walk how good you feel, if you feel great and try and mix up things. Try and do some strength training. We know definitively strength training is as important as VO2 max. Having muscle tissue so that you can get up off your, off your tail is just as important as having a VO2 max, right? So maintaining strength, that doesn't mean you need to go into a powerlifting meet, doesn't mean you need to become a powerlifter. But finding complex movements and applying them, do that throughout the week, maybe at least twice, if not three or four times a week. If that's your mouth.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So you're saying the 45 minute walk, right? Or okay, whatever you can manage. You're saying have that daily walk.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yep.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

That daily walk does several things. Yes, it's training you metabolically, it's training your stress response system, but it's also helping you tune into yourself. Because if you do it every day, and this is why I like repetition, you start to feel if the practice is the same and you feel different, you know that something else is causing you to feel different, I. E. Oh, I didn't sleep well last night, or I've got a lot of stress in my life at the moment, moment, that walk felt a bit harder today than yesterday. Maybe it's the same place that you've gone. So you're starting to understand yourself better and the state of your nervous system through that daily walk.

[Brian MacKenzie]

100%. Yeah, 100%. And for 20 minutes of calm, just sitting, the brain Looks good. But the brain after 20 minutes of walking looks real good. Real good. You start to see things because of blood flow changes and metabolic changes that start to happen that aren't requiring high stress from that. And you kind of start to work through creatively a lot of the stuff that you're working, whatever you're working on, whether that's work, whether that's life, whether it's whatever. And I've found that that is the place where I can really tap in. And I, I am also very aware of like, you know what, I am definitely not lifting today. I'm still a mess and there's no reason why I'm going to put load on my back or you know, pull heavy off the ground, whatever for. I'm going to do some, probably some low level cardio later or I'm going to go swim. Right. Like, you know, or I'm just.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You're getting in tune with yourself.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah, I'm just.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You're starting to learn about yourself. It's paying attention to what's going on.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You're start, you'll start to figure out that when you don't move, when you don't walk, when you don't exercise, your body starts to take a nose dive, your stress levels go up through the roof, your HRV starts to drop, your resting heart rate starts to increase, your blood pressure starts to increase. Literally. I can watch this with, I watch this with myself. My morning lactate reading goes up. If I don't do anything the day before, right? Like if I don't do any walking, if I don't do anything the day before and I was talking and I was engaged in work or I was flying and all that, dude, the next morning I'm hot, I'm running hot. So I've got to go, you know, I don't have to. I go walk and then I'm like, I don't go crush it the next day. Like, I have clients, I manage their pro. This is what I do is I'm like, yo, you're landing in Abu Dhabi. You are not going and training hard. Yeah, yeah, I am. And I'm like, no you're not. Like, not if you want to sleep. Like, if you really want to get adjusted sooner, we're going to get light, we're going to go walk around. Then it's going to be, hey, here's this low level thing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's interesting that we, we have all this data now coming out. Well, for many years that exercise is as good as an antidepressant or better, you know, but the point I'm trying to make is that we're so used to being a sedentary society that doesn't move. We talk about all the benefits of exercise, but actually, if you flip it, it's like, if we were all moving, it's not that exercise has the benefits. It's that not moving has all these disadvantages. Same thing, but reframed.

[Brian MacKenzie]

And if you want to do this even at a higher level, get your ass outside and do it. Get exposed to the light, the morning light. Like, it's critical that you're doing this stuff. This is like how we were, how we evolved. This is how we became what we are as a result of being outside and having to go walk towards something to get it and then bring it back or however we were doing it. I mean, look, my house, when it gets dark, it gets red. The only lights that come on are red. You know, I'm ahead of this because I noticed these sensitivities I have towards the light. I really get sensitive towards light in the dark. Like, when I was driving at night, I would notice. I would just be like, God, this sucks. Because a headlight.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Light is as powerful as a drug. We just don't see it like that.

[Brian MacKenzie]

I forget the name of the book. I read one. It was great on light and sleep and, you know, light being the original toxic thing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

When you. I've got this. I think it's a. I think it's within the iPhone. You can put this, like, heavy red filter on your phone. And so I triple click in the evening, and it goes red. And then if you ever just put it back, you can feel the eye strain.

[Brian MacKenzie]

My. My phone's mostly red. Yeah. Is red mostly.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

But you don't real. We don't realize how much we're being strained and stimulated until you change it. And then you flip back. You're like, wow, this is what most people are looking at.

[Brian MacKenzie]

What's wild is I used to watch. So I'm a big entertainment guy. Like, I love movies, I love good shows, and I grew up that way. When I watch on the television now I can't watch on the TV for very long because it's so stimulating. I watch on my iPad, which I can put in red. Everything's in red. That. That light thing has a huge impact on the. You know, on the metabolic system, like how everything's functioning.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. It's so interesting. Like, thinking about our evolution and how we live, it strikes me that because we're so disconnected, from, let's say, our food supply, because we're so disconnected from how we used to live, because our lives are so overly busy and chronically stressed now. It's as if we all need education now on what diet we should be consuming, how we should be breathing, how much we should be moving. Whereas I remember last summer my family and I went to Kenya for four weeks and we went on safari. And one day we spent at a Maasai camp. And there's many things I noticed, but one of the things that struck me, hanging out and interacting with some of the Maasai that morning, was there was just a quietness, a groundedness. I was just struck by this kind of grounded presence that you don't often see in the modern world. Yeah, but a lot of people you meet in modern life now are quite there. Like I used to be in your head, you're not grounded, you're anything. Do you know what I mean? How do you think about being grounded and its relationship with the breath?

[Brian MacKenzie]

I mean, there's nothing to fix with any of us, to be clear. But when you're grounded in yourself and you're living, you know how you truly want to be living, you don't need to change. You don't need to change a whole lot because the process of which what you're doing already involves all of that. I haven't met anybody. I've yet to meet someone who is totally grounded, that is not highly physically active in some way. I have not. There is no Eastern philosophy without a physical practice. None of them. None. Why? I've looked. Why? Because they understood. It was about like monks up in isolation that I brought up with the, you know, prison before prisons, they walk every day. You've got some sort of practice. Go look at the Shaolin monks, for crying out loud. You know, you go look every philosophy you got, yoga, like, it was about movement and moving into positions, asanas and getting into position and being able to breathe in that position. Because if you can't breathe in that position, you don't own that position. That position owns you, you know? And so anyway, it's, it's. I'm. I'm very interested in people that, that are very grounded. And I'm like, I'm. I'm blessed with what I get to do and how I get to do it, but I'm more so just. I'm just playing, man. That's all I'm doing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah, I love it, Brian. Absolutely love it. A couple of loose ends in my head. I just want to Tie off before we end the conversation. We spoke before about we get oxygen to our lungs and then we have to deliver it to our tissues or our muscles, but then utilize it when it's there as well. And I think you said that with me. I'm able to get it to the tissues and muscles, but I'm perhaps not as efficient as I could be at using it there. First of all, is my recollection, correct?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Correct.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so how am I. And through me, then the people listening, if they have the same problem, how are they going to improve, you know, the usage of that oxygen at the tissues? For me, is it that high intensity? Is that.

[Brian MacKenzie]

It's not just high intensity. It's even moderate intensity and bringing on enough oxygen for the. For the tissue to use it versus limiting what you're. You're doing. Right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So I'm artificially limiting.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You are. You are controlling things too much.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Doesn't sound like me.

[Brian MacKenzie]

You have controlled things too much and not allowed the system to do his job.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So when he said let go, what it was communicating.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Let go.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Let go.

[Brian MacKenzie]

When you feel the change, we're just realigning, feeling that change.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So as I start to let go and allow myself to breathe in a whole variety of different ways at a whole variety of different intensities. So appropriate breathing for the level of movement and intensity. Are you saying that because those things start to then match up, that then means that my oxygen delivery to the tissues and the usage is also going to start to match up, Whereas now there's a discrepancy.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah. And because of that underutilization issue, that's probably, over time, created the issue with your tissue being able to use that oxygen even at lower rates. Right. So the ability to get that going again is what we want. That's what we're trying to train. But the strength training actually helps with that as well. Okay, Right. Because, look, we're looking for better mitochondrial development, and that comes in many different fashions. Walking. Yes. However, strength training. Yes. It just comes in a different way. It's just high intensity. Right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And I've heard you say, Brian, the greatest hack for your mitochondria is working on your breath.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yes. Well, yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Which again, I don't think a lot of people are thinking about and sort of tying this up to the start of the conversation. Breath is that central piece that so many of our behaviors, our emotions, our ability to form, they come off as a byproduct of our ability to, like, breathe appropriately and efficiently. Right.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yep. And I don't you know, I mean, I don't know how many people or have your issue. I've only seen it like four or five times. Granted. Every person has been very aware of the breath game for quite some time. Right?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Because I guess people like me who are really interested.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Well, anybody who read Breath typically, yeah. Was like nasal breathing's everything. And that's not on James. James wasn't saying that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Ever since I first came across Patrick McEwen, however many years ago, like I've been, oh, right, I'm going to go and walk nasal breathing. But I've probably overdone it and I get that.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Look, man, I've been staring at this down the, down the lens of a metabolic cart for quite some time and seeing the changes. And what like, I mean, the changes simply in walking with one's mouth open versus one's mouth shut were eye popping in terms of.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And make that really practical. So what in terms of your ability to burn carbs or fat.

[Brian MacKenzie]

So if I'm over breathing, which isn't what you're problem is. Right.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So that's not my problem.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Most people, most people are. Have an over breathing issue.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah.

[Brian MacKenzie]

So if I'm over breathing, I'm definitely not getting oxygen to the tissue. Right. So I'm. I'm. The sympathetic nervous system clamps down and I'm coin. I'm not going to be. I am going to be screwing up the, the dissociative curve of oxygen's utilization because I have. I'm getting rid of excess CO2. So if I over breathe and if anybody wants to, if anybody's done Wim hof they felt what over breathing feels like. That's where that high starts to kick in. But what's happening is things are clamping down. Right. And so we're limiting how oxygen gets used. And so the red blood cell can't offload as much oxygen because there's not enough CO2. Oxygen is a useless destructive molecule without CO2. And CO2 is what knocks. That helps knock that oxygen molecule out of the red blood cell to go to the cell to be used also.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Brian, just to finish off that loop as well, given what I shared with you right at the start, which is that I feel compared to last time I was here in LA with you, that I'm a different person. My nervous system sits differently. I'm calmer, I'm more present. Do you think in any way that matches my journey with breathing? That is perhaps I was over breathing like most of us, five, six years ago. And by working on the lower end and the nasal breathing, maybe neglecting the higher end, but by working on that lower end. Do you think there's any correlation between that and the fact that I'm less reactive these days?

[Brian MacKenzie]

There's direct correlation between aerobic and parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system and anaerobic.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So if so, it completely matches up.

[Brian MacKenzie]

It is direct, as I've worked on.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

This lower end direct. My parasympathetic nervous system is much better able to function.

[Brian MacKenzie]

If the lion walks in the room, your system goes, oh, we need immediate action. You think it's going to go use fatty acids for that?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It can't needs carbs for that. It needs to go to more carbohydrates.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Or it needs, you know, decrease 10 phosphate system. It needs to instantaneously, but oxygen's a part of that. When I go use tissue, it'll deplete that. We've seen that there is no one or the other. It's how quick that's going to happen.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Well, Brian, I love talking to you. I love hanging out with you. We've covered so much, We've gone into so many different areas. As we wind this down, if people want to learn more about you, they want to work with you, they want to do your online courses that you guys run. Where should people go?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Shiftadapt.com so s h I f t adapt a dash a p t dot.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Com and what's on there, what can they.

[Brian MacKenzie]

We, we, we still have a membership site and we have a lot of stuff, a lot of courses, things like that, or webinars. We've done that. We talk about a lot of this stuff. We'll be releasing a number of programs, et cetera, that'll be on a little bit higher level than that that people can go do. And then on the upper tier of all of that is actually hiring my business partner and or I to actually.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Work with you one on one.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Yeah. So Emily Hightower, who I work with, she's on the other end of the stress here where she's helping with developing tools and regulating nervous system on the day to day throughout, you know, like, hey, how are you managing this at. In the moment? Type of stuff. Like, what's your life look like? What's going on in life?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Amazing. We covered so much emotional reactivity, the power to choose our response, breath work, the different gears, the metabolic benefits of being able to access all the gears, et cetera, et cetera, to bring it all together. Like Brian, if there's someone who has followed our conversation and is still with us. And it's like, yeah, you know, there's something there for me. There's something Brian was talking about that applies to me. I haven't taken my breath seriously. I haven't taken my levels of physical activity seriously or whatever it might be. How would you help that person? They feel stuck, they feel lost, they feel unmotivated. But at the same, Brian, give me some inspiration. What is your final piece of advice? What would you say to that individual?

[Brian MacKenzie]

Learn to say no. Learn to say no to the things you don't want to do. And that is a very. That actually goes far deeper than just saying no to something you instantaneously know you don't want to do. It's looking at those sexy, shiny things that are of excitement and being able to slow it down enough to say no to. Maybe getting into a business deal or taking a job that you really don't want to take, but you think you do because you got to make the money. And maybe you could go figure that out another way or, you know, can you change some lifestyle habits? I think no is the path to freedom because you'll only be doing the things that you truly want to be doing if you learn to say no to the things you don't. And I've found that because of that, I'm surrounded by the people I want to be surrounded by. And that's it. It's simple. So if you can live the life you want, but I mean, just applying the principles of making your day a process, like literally make it a process like the dishes, right? Like I get to go drive to work. Yeah, you get to. Or yeah, I get to have a job. Or yeah, I get to drive in traffic because I get to live here. Because I get to do these things. It's very different than I have to.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah. Love it. Brian, thanks to everything you do. Thanks for the help you're giving me personally and thanks for coming back on the show. Really appreciate it.

[Brian MacKenzie]

Thanks for having me. Love you, dude.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for [e-mail] Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any appeal adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app and always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.