Stop Wasting Your Gym Sweat (40 Minutes of This Wins Every Time) | Will Harlow : 1466

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Stop Wasting Your Gym Sweat (40 Minutes of This Wins Every Time)"

The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey | Guest: Will Harlow | Episode 1466 | May 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively and practical episode, Dave Asprey (“the Father of Biohacking”) welcomes UK-based physical therapist and YouTube educator Will Harlow for a deep-dive into fitness, longevity, and especially how people over 50 can get the most from their exercise routines without wasting time—or risking injury. They challenge common exercise dogma, discuss systemic healthcare issues both in the US and UK, and deliver a science-based blueprint for stronger, healthier aging. The centerpiece: Will’s “3-2-1” method, which promises big gains with only 40 minutes per week.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Problems With Conventional Fitness Advice for Aging Adults

• Busting Myths About Walking & Steps
  • Will: “Walking is great, but on its own, it's not enough.” (00:00)
  • The 10,000-step target was invented as a marketing ploy by Japanese pedometer makers, not based on science. Real longevity benefits plateau around 7,000 steps. (00:02, 69:40, 70:21)
• Over-Emphasis on Cardio
  • Dave: “If you're over 50, going for a long run is one of the dumbest things you could ever do.” (00:10, 24:44)
  • Will: Cardio alone doesn’t maintain mobility, strength, or bone density; chronic cardio may actually worsen bone and muscle health, and raise stress hormones. (24:06–24:35)
• Healthcare Failures
  • Both see modern health systems as reactive, not proactive—mainstream medicine is slow to embrace resistance training and typically just blames issues on age rather than treatable lifestyle factors. (02:40–04:42)

2. The Case for Resistance Training

• Why Strength is Crucial After 50
  • Will: “One of my big messages is to get people over 50 interested in resistance training… It’s very safe. Is effective whatever your age is.” (05:02)
  • Three essential compound movements for beginners:
    1. Goblet Squat: For quads, glutes, core; functional for daily activities (e.g. sitting/standing). (09:18)
    2. Farmer’s Carry: Trains grip (a marker of longevity and overall strength), posture, and full body. (10:21)
    3. Romanian Deadlift: For hamstrings, glutes, and especially lower back stability. Learning hip hinge over waist bend is critical to prevent injury. (11:00)
• Starting at Any Age
  • Resistance training can be done at home, with simple equipment or even just bodyweight or household objects. Progress comes from gradually increasing intensity or complexity (progressive overload). (08:42, 26:03)

3. The 3-2-1 Training Protocol

• The “3-2-1” Method (26:03–26:50)
  • 3 exercises (from the essential movements)
  • 2 times per week
  • 1 variable progressed per session (e.g. reps, weight, form)
  • Total time: 40 minutes per week for maximum effect

4. “Exercise Snacks” and Balance Training

• Exercise Snacks: Brief, frequent movement bursts (30–60 seconds), e.g. balance on one leg while brushing teeth. Major balance improvements and reduced fall risk proven in studies (Life trial: 31% balance improvement in 12 weeks, one less fall per year). (15:44–17:07)
  • “50% of people over 50 will fall every year.” — Will (17:08)
  • These small, daily “snacks” are powerful for balance, confidence, and joint health. (31:12–31:37)

5. Overtraining and Recovery

• Less Is More
  • Many strive to do too much, equating suffering with virtue. Overtraining is common, especially as energy and recovery ability decline with age.
  • Early signs: plateaued progress, then loss of motivation, then physical symptoms (aches, poor sleep, mood issues). (29:19–30:13)
  • The need for adequate recovery is emphasized; resistance training should not be daily for most over 50. Fill non-strength days with exercise snacks and joint mobility. (30:39–32:16)

6. Protein, Nutrition, and Supplementation

• Protein Needs Change With Age
  • “We call this anabolic resistance…in older adults, it's 40 grams [per meal] for maximal muscle protein synthesis.” (33:49, 35:41)
  • The government’s updated higher protein recommendations for older adults are applauded. 1g per lb of body weight daily is ideal for many. (36:20–36:28)
• Supplements & Micronutrients
  • As stomach acid and digestive efficiency decline, digestive enzymes and betaine HCl can assist protein absorption for muscle building. (37:46)
  • Minerals (esp. magnesium and vitamin D + K2), hydration, and salt are foundational for recovery, energy, bone, and muscle health. (53:01–54:26)
• The Dangers of Under-nutrition
  • Over-50s, especially women, often undereat protein and fat, relying on “healthy” low-calorie, plant-based meals, leading to chronic anxiety, weakness, and “cortisol belly.” (44:19–44:44)
  • “You cannot be sustainably healthy if you're running like that all the time.” — Will (44:26)

7. Functional Movement, Gait, and Injury Prevention

• Walking can be problematic if mechanics are poor: Seek out a movement specialist (physio/PT) if you have persistent pain. Small issues in the foot can lead to cascading problems up the body. (58:04–61:14)
• YouTube & Book Resources: Will’s channel and book Independence for Life are recommended for step-by-step guidance. (62:54)
• Empowerment through knowledge: Many feel “broken” or overwhelmed, but addressing the lead domino (often strength or hydration) is transformational. (65:55–66:14)

8. Bonus Insights & Memorable Moments

• Biohacking vs. Optimization: US culture seeks to expand capability and longevity, while UK culture tends to settle for “optimization” (not always proactively). (20:42–21:46)
• VO2 Max & Fitness Tech: Watch/wearable VO2 max numbers are “vanity metrics” and unreliable as markers of health, especially for those over 50. Heart rate variability and readiness scores are more useful for tracking recovery. (67:20–69:16)
• Protein Politics & Pop Culture: “Protein is not political. No, it shouldn’t be.” (35:12)
• The dark secret of Popeye: He wasn’t strong from spinach, but from P53—military methamphetamine! (55:56–57:05) – an unexpected (and amusing) factoid from Dave.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Walking is great, but on its own, it's not enough.”
  — Will Harlow (00:00)

• “If you're over 50, going for a long run is one of the dumbest things you could ever do.”
  — Dave Asprey (00:10, 24:44)

• “We know a lot of the effects of aging now are optional… a lot of it's lifestyle-based.”
  — Will Harlow (03:14)

• “One of my big messages is to try and get people over 50 interested in resistance training… It’s so rare to find a doctor that prescribes that to a patient.”
  — Will Harlow (05:02)

• “Three, two, one approach…grand total of 40 minutes a week.”
  — Will Harlow (26:03)

• “Exercise snacks…within 12 weeks the older people had improved their balance scores by 31%.”
  — Will Harlow (16:25–16:54)

• “If you do too much [cardio], you actually decrease your bone density and your muscle mass.”
  — Will Harlow (00:06, 24:36)

• "Anabolic resistance: Your body becomes more resistant to using the stimuli that trigger muscle protein synthesis as we age."
  — Will Harlow (33:49)

• “Protein is not political. No, it shouldn’t be.”
  — Dave and Will (35:12–35:15)

• “50% of people over 50 will fall every year.”
  — Will Harlow (17:08)

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Practical Action Steps for Listeners (Especially 50+)

For Fitness & Longevity:

• Focus on resistance training (even just bodyweight or home-based) with compound movements: goblet squat, farmer’s carry, Romanian deadlift.
• Use Will’s “3-2-1” method: 3 exercises, 2x/week, progress 1 variable per session—total 40 min/week.
• Incorporate daily “exercise snacks,” especially for balance (stand on one leg brushing teeth, eye-tracking drills for vestibular health).
• Prioritize adequate daily protein (40g per meal for those 50+), and consider digestive aids if needed.
• Supplement with core minerals (magnesium, zinc), vitamin D & K2, and maintain proper hydration with electrolytes.
• Get movement assessed if you have gait or joint pain; address mechanics early rather than ignoring discomfort.

For Mindset & Health Navigation:

• Reject “it’s just aging” as an excuse—many declines are optional with simple but targeted lifestyle tweaks.
• Don’t accept “one size fits all” fitness rules. Start with gradual, science-backed interventions and adjust based on results.
• Beware of overtraining—allow recovery, focus on effectiveness, not martyrdom.
• Seek information and community: Will Harlow’s Independence for Life and YouTube channel are practical, stepwise resources.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–05:30: Walking, steps, and the flaws in conventional advice
• 09:08–11:00: The three essential movements for 50+ (goblet squat, farmer's carry, Romanian deadlift)
• 15:44–17:07: Balance, exercise snacks, fall prevention
• 24:35–26:50: The problem with cardio; the 3-2-1 method explained
• 33:49–36:35: Protein needs for aging; government recommendations and practical tips
• 44:19–46:07: Why low protein/low calorie diets cause problems, especially anxiety and low energy
• 58:04–61:14: Importance of mechanics, movement assessment, and simple fixes
• 67:20–69:16: Why fitness trackers' advanced metrics are mostly a gimmick

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Resources Mentioned

• Will Harlow’s YouTube Channel: Search “Will Harlow”
• Book: Independence for Life by Will Harlow

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For anyone seeking a vibrant, capable, and independent life after 50, this episode delivers no-BS, science-backed, actionable steps you can take immediately—without hours in the gym or expensive gear. As Dave Asprey sums up: “You want to be that man or woman who's 70, and the doctors are looking at your bone density on an X ray going, what planet are you from? That's the goal.”

Transcript

[Will Harlow]

Walking is great, but on its own, it's not enough.

[Dave Asprey]

Japanese pedometer companies, they made up 10,000 steps.

[Will Harlow]

If you do too much, you actually decrease your bone density and your muscle mass.

[Dave Asprey]

If you're over 50, going for a long run is one of the dumbest things you could ever do.

[Will Harlow]

The longevity data is actually interesting when it comes to step. So 7,000 steps is the number I landed on as well from my research, which blows people's minds because they think I need to spend five hours a week in the gym to get any result. You do not guide to give some people something called the

[Dave Asprey]

you're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

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[Dave Asprey]

GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. SC Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this podcast is supported by GoFundMe. You built a million and a half followers by telling people over 50 to do the opposite of what their doctor says. What'd you tell them?

[Will Harlow]

It's a great question. And sometimes I ask myself the same question, like, how did this happen? To be honest, I think the modern healthcare system is pretty broken.

[Dave Asprey]

But what gave it away?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. Well, I see the same patterns at home as you talk about on your podcast here. So we're very reactive as a healthcare system. We wait for people to break before we try and fix them. And to me, that's just bonkers because we know that if you can proactively prevent something from happening, it's probably going to cost you about 10% of the cost of fixing it. And it's also probably about 10% of the effort.

[Dave Asprey]

Right, Right.

[Will Harlow]

The other thing that we massively get wrong is we just blame everything on age. We say, oh, it's just because of your age that you're slowing down. Or this happens to everyone. You're 65. What do you expect? My patients come in and they've heard all of these things from their doctors before they come and see me. But we know that that's just not true. Like, a lot of these effects of aging now we know are optional. They're not things that just happen to everyone regardless of what we do. A lot of it's lifestyle based.

[Dave Asprey]

You know what age stands for?

[Will Harlow]

Go for it.

[Dave Asprey]

A good excuse. I just made that up. That's kind of cool.

[Will Harlow]

I love that. Age. Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But it's what you're saying. Oh, it's just aging.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

It'd be really awkward if the doctor just looked you and said, it's because I don't know how to do my job. Yeah. Now, if you're a doctor listening and I just triggered you, you should get a therapist because you shouldn't let me trigger you. Seriously. But. But more seriously, there are a ton of longevity doctors. I'm now a partner in a longevity medical practice called Unlimited Life. And we're seeing people just make radical transformations in six months. It's crazy. And most of them are over 50, but not all.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And I look at what people are getting even at, like, really big mainstream clinics that cost a lot of money or even worse. You know, your local. Your local doctor who just cares greatly.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But is inhibited by insurance companies and just isn't trained in even how to read labs for longevity. Yeah. Is there hope?

[Will Harlow]

I think there is hope. And I do see the tide turning. I think one of the biggest problems is that we're often stuck in this mentality that when someone's getting older, the best thing to do is to just tell them to be active. Now, if you just go out and walk more, you'll be healthy, and walking is great. I'm not knocking it, but on its own, it's not enough.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

And I think that. I mean, one of my big messages is to try and get people over 50 interested in resistance training, this strengthening activity that has got so much evidence behind it, but it's so rare to find a doctor that prescribes that to a patient. And I think one of the reasons for that is possibly fear that, oh, this person might go and get injured. But the evidence doesn't line up with that. It's actually very safe. Is something that if you do it correctly, it's got a very low risk of injury, no matter your age. And it's effective whatever your age is.

[Dave Asprey]

Which country is less fit, the US or Britain?

[Will Harlow]

I think we're probably on a par, but for different reasons. Ooh.

[Dave Asprey]

Why?

[Will Harlow]

I think that the US is developing more quickly in terms of the science and people's uptake of it. And I love coming over here. This is one of my favorite countries in the world to visit because it's like seeing the future for Britain, but 10 years ahead. Yeah. Whatever happens here.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

100. So you guys are cutting edge here.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

And I know you're right at the. The bleeding edge of it. Back home, the attitude is not the same. It's like, oh, I'll wait for everyone else to try it first and then I'll jump in after. So we're very slow on the uptake. Now, I do know that in the US the obesity problem's bigger than in the uk, so maybe that's one place where we are leading you.

[Dave Asprey]

It's because you don't have as much crap in your food. But if you're 10 years behind the US in Britain.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Not follow our food policy.

[Will Harlow]

Well, that's scary because, you know, obesity rates in the. In the UK are rising as well.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

But I think if we can get a bit more proactive in terms of adopting some of these new things coming out back home, that would do us really proud.

[Dave Asprey]

Which country has the worst medical system, Britain or the U.S. i think they're

[Will Harlow]

both flawed in different ways. Now, I don't know the US system details very thoroughly. I know that you guys pay a lot for your health care, and I know that sometimes the incentives aren't aligned with the patient sometimes.

[Dave Asprey]

That was a very British polite thing to say.

[Will Harlow]

Well, I've been raised in Britain my whole life, so that is my default. So just listening to how the, the medical appointments here are run.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

It seems a lot of it is done to extract profit over and above doing what's in the best interest of the patient. Now, in the uk, the problem is actually reversed sometimes. So the primary goal in the nhs, as far as I can see, is cost cutting. So tests are not run on people because they want to cut costs, or services are not offered to people because they want to cut costs. Because we have a free healthcare system in inverted commas. Of course it's not free because we pay for our taxes, but their incentives are to save money, not to make money.

[Dave Asprey]

Got it. And I spent many years in Canada, I'm a dual citizen, which is more like the British system. And it's easiest they figured out to cut costs, make sure that no one has a doctor and seems to work great. Yeah. So good news is it's not really your doctor's job to get you fit or tell you to be fit, other than maybe making sure you have thyroid and testosterone hormones, which are helpful to be fit over 50.

[Will Harlow]

Sure.

[Dave Asprey]

You're saying you want people over 50 to do resistance training? Yeah. A lot of them haven't done it ever.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Right. How do they get started?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. So it's very intimidating for people when they hear, just go and start resistance training because the first thing that pops into your head is, you know, Gold's Gym, Muscle beach, these huge guys that have been doing it for years. How am I, as a 75 year old lady going to go in there and start picking up weights? It just doesn't seem realistic. But this is a misconception because resistance training doesn't even need to involve a gym at all. You can do it from the comfort of your own home with stuff you have lying around the house. And it can be totally free. You don't have to join a gym or pay any money to do it.

[Dave Asprey]

Do you mean like doing iron push ups?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, I mean, that would be more advanced, but sometimes I get people starting off with things as simple as stands. Toasters would work, but just body weight is fine to begin with and then you scale up over time. But little things lying around the house. Resistance bands work really well. Just holding a bag filled up with books to add to your body weight. All of these things count the three

[Dave Asprey]

most important movements to start with if you're over 50.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. So definitely would be compound Movements. So I like to tell people to prioritize compound movements.

[Dave Asprey]

In every three, there's 100 compound movements. Give me the three most important.

[Will Harlow]

So I would give you the goblet squat.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

I love the goblet squat for the people I treat.

[Dave Asprey]

What is that?

[Will Harlow]

So it's holding a dumbbell or a heavyweight. You can use a bag of books into your chest like this, and then squatting down as far as you can, holding for a second, then coming back up. Now, if you find that too difficult, you can put a chair behind you and turn it into a goblet sit to stand. The reason I like it so much is because it strengthens your quads and your glutes, among other, like, core muscles as well. And it's so functional. We do that movement every day. We do it when we get up and off the toilet. We do it when we get in and out of a car. We do it when we get off and off the sofa. So it really does train those independence muscles, as I call them. So super functional. Very safe because you've got the weight in front of you, which helps with balance. You don't have to have the shoulder mobility to put a weight on your back. So I prefer that for my age group. The second one I would give would be a farmer's carry. Now, I love a farmer's carry for multiple reasons. One reason is because it trains your grip, and we know that grip declines with age. Now, grip on its own is a great biomarker of overall strength.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

But grip itself is very important, because if you don't have grip, you can't open jars, you can't lift heavy things. And the farmers carry just simulates carrying something heavy. And we all need to do that for real life. You might be pushing a wheelbarrow. Carrying heavy shopping, super important. Also trains your posture.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

And it gives you stronger glutes, quads, core back, everything.

[Dave Asprey]

I like to train my grip so that I can choke my insurance company.

[Will Harlow]

Nice. I love that.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, that's two.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

We got goblet squats.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And we've got the farmer's carry.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Which really going shopping at the grocery store and at the end, carrying the bags out. That would do it. What's the third one?

[Will Harlow]

I would go here for the Romanian deadlift.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

Okay. And the reason I love the Romanian deadlift is for a few reasons. So first, what this is is holding onto two weights. You rest them on your thighs, and then you push your hips back and slide them down your legs while keeping your Back straight.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

Okay. It trains your hamstrings, it trains your glutes, it trains your lower back and obviously a grip as well because you're

[Dave Asprey]

holding something just spinning at the waist. Your knees.

[Will Harlow]

Are you bending at that? Yeah. You're bending at the hips, not the waist.

[Dave Asprey]

Got it.

[Will Harlow]

So your waist stays straight, your back stays straight. Your hips is a hinge.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. Now, the reason Most people over 50 know the difference between bending at their hips and their waist.

[Will Harlow]

No.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. Do you want to show us?

[Will Harlow]

I can show. One of the things that can go wrong later in life, which I'm sure we can talk about, is osteoporosis.

[Dave Asprey]

Correct.

[Will Harlow]

And many people are told of osteoporosis that they shouldn't round their spine, especially if it's quite severe. And we know that that can actually be really good advice because it can put the vertebrae under pressure. Do you need an alternative way to lift?

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

And that is this hinge. So a rounded spine looks like this. So that's bending at the waist. Bending at the hips is like this. So the back stays straight. The hinging is happening here. And you're keeping your back.

[Dave Asprey]

For me, I've always had, you know, I've had the ability at least since I started doing yoga years ago. I can put an ankle behind my head.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But I started getting some stiffness in one of my hips. It's like a post surgical inflammatory thing. And I'm like, this sucks. So how to get in my hip? And this is what I learned. I want you to tell me if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

[Will Harlow]

Go for it.

[Dave Asprey]

So you stand up and you could bend and stick your backside out. If you take an elbow and you put it in your hip, when you bend over, it really makes you hinge at the hip. Since most people are used to doing this, just getting that in there kind of forces the issue. So you learn the movement.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. Makes sense.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, I like that. It probably made it feel a bit better as well when you bent forward when that hip was sore, because you're putting that mechanical pressure on it too.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. And then I figured out a whole bunch of inflammatory pathways tied into my genetics. And like, oh, that's why I'm getting fibrosis.

[Will Harlow]

What works for you, can I ask,

[Dave Asprey]

in terms of supplements?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. For the hip thing. Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

It was a combination of shockwave therapy, just to remodel the tissues.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. We like shockwave.

[Dave Asprey]

And there's something called NLRP3, which is part of the inflammasome that we have. And the number one thing was egcg, which is green tea extract, and something called luteolin. And these specifically block those pathways. And one of the things in my longevity book that happens when you're over 50 is that your tissues start becoming more sticky, like more fibrotic. And there's a dehydration component to it, but there's also just a inflammating part to it. So if you can block the inflammaging and make sure you're well hydrated, and then. Or maybe at the same time, do the movements so that the tissues that might be kind of, like, sticky, it works better. Because when you're young, you have this nice glide in your fascia, and then it starts getting kind of wrinkly and dehydrated and cruddy and inflamed. And then you got this, like, not

[Will Harlow]

made of rubber and magic anymore. Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But it'll fix. If you're hydrated, well nourished, have your minerals and your cofactors, it'll actually become smooth again.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. I think the hydration aspect is massively underrated as well for improving how supple the joints are, because one of the first places our body will draw water from if we're dehydrated is the joints and the discs in the spine as well.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

So I often tell people first thing in the morning, you know, have that glass of water, even if you feel like having a tea or coffee, that helps with getting that morning stiffness.

[Dave Asprey]

It does. And if you add some salt to it or some electrolytes, the difference is profound. Yeah. I found that for people over 50, we have one group with high blood pressure, which, strangely, if you're deficient in salt for long periods of time, you become insulin resistant. It's not the only cause of insulin resistance, but it's a contributor. And insulin resistance drives high blood pressure. But the doctor tells you it was just the salt. No, it's not that easy.

[Will Harlow]

It's way more complex.

[Dave Asprey]

So if you're high blood pressure, exercise is good. But there's another meaningful group of people over 50, and they're low blood pressure.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, we see them all the time.

[Dave Asprey]

You do. Okay. And partly they're on blood pressure meds, which is dumb. Or they just don't have enough salt and enough water. And for that population, including perfectly fit, healthy people.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

They do a forward fold, they get really dizzy, and they feel dumb afterwards. Right. Because there's no blood in the brain. What do you do for that?

[Will Harlow]

So first of All. It's a massive problem. So we see people with this low blood pressure all the time. And when you get dizzy all the time, you start to lose your confidence. So those people, we find that their worlds shrink very fast because they're not going out. They lose their social connection.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

And their strength declines as a result as well. So it's a compounding problem. Now, as a physio, I don't normally address the blood pressure problem directly. I would usually refer that on. But the balance component is something we work on all the time, and we've got some really effective protocols for that. And the best thing we do for that, if you don't mind me saying, is balance. Exercise snacks. Have you heard of this? So this is. It's not a new thing. It's been around for a while, but it's newly backed by some pretty compelling evidence. And an exercise snap is a short burst of exercise, usually 30 to 60 seconds long, that you do in otherwise dead time.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

So when you're brushing your teeth or you're waiting for the kettle to boil, like voting. We could count that in there as well. You just. You pick one.

[Dave Asprey]

Dark.

[Will Harlow]

I'm sorry, we're just as bad at home. You pick one thing to work on. So in this instance, it would be a balance. You might stand on one leg for 30 seconds, or you might pretend you're walking a tightrope for 30 seconds. And they did this study on this called the Life trial, and they found that within 12 weeks of doing this, the older people who did it had improved their balance scores by 31%.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow.

[Will Harlow]

Without doing anything else.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow.

[Will Harlow]

Now, 31% can sound academic, but in this trial, they found that that equated to, on average, one less fall per year per person.

[Dave Asprey]

How often are these old people falling?

[Will Harlow]

Well, 50% of people over 50 will fall every year.

[Dave Asprey]

That's nuts.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, 50.

[Dave Asprey]

So the calendar thinks I'm over 50. I identify as being about 35.

[Will Harlow]

What did the cells say? Is that what?

[Dave Asprey]

Well, it depends. Yeah, it depends on which report you want to look at. You could cherry pick like some people in the field do, so I'll do that.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

So my. My pulse wave velocity, which is a measure of flexibility of blood vessels, says I'm 24.

[Will Harlow]

That's so interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

But by the way, that's real and at the same time, total bs.

[Will Harlow]

Okay.

[Dave Asprey]

Because there's hundreds of different ways of measuring, but grip strength, walk speed. Yeah, 95th percentile. You know, I'm younger, but we actually don't have science to be as precise as we like.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, nice.

[Dave Asprey]

And about nine to ten years younger on a DNA methylation depending on.

[Will Harlow]

That's brilliant.

[Dave Asprey]

Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Well, I've talked about nicotine a lot on this channel and when people ask me what I personally use lately, it's alp. What I like about it is that it's tobacco free, it's got food safe ingredients and it uses high purity nicotine. The pouches are moist and the experience is very different and comfortable and consistent compared to a dry pouch. And there are different strengths depending on your preference. No smoke, no spit, no mess, and it fits cleanly into my routine. In fact, I could be using it right now. If you're curious, try it for yourself. For ages 21 and over, only use code DAVE for 10% [e-mail] or comment nicotine below and I'll send you the link. And listen to the many episodes I've done about why I use nicotine. You might be surprised. One of the things that makes me really happy is when supplements kick pharmaceuticals ass. And I've got something for you. It's called C15 from a company called Fatty 15. And it's more effective than metformin or rapamycin. In fact, scientists are calling this newly discovered essential fat the longevity nutrient because it's the first essential fat to be discovered in the last 90 years. C15 is unlike anything else out there because it's a true geroprotector, meaning it actually slows biological aging in studies. How does that work? By strengthening your cell membranes by 80%, activating AMPK and MTOR, which you've read about in my books. That means less inflammation and a reduction of oxidative stress by 45%. Scientists have found over 36 clinically relevant health benefits from fatty 15. Public estimates are that one in three people have low C15 levels in their bodies. And if you don't have enough C15, you have fragile cells and you age more quickly. Fatty 15 supports your cells better than omega 3s or fish oil with three times more benefits for your cells. I use both. In clinical studies, 72% of fatty 15 users reported deeper sleep, better mood, healthier joints and better energy improvement in 16 weeks. It's a pretty incredible story and it's real. Better yet, they're giving you 15% off their 90 day subscription starter kit. Just go to fatty15.com Dave, how old are you?

[Will Harlow]

34 now.

[Dave Asprey]

Just 34.

[Will Harlow]

Okay.

[Dave Asprey]

S, what's your Biological age.

[Will Harlow]

I have absolutely no idea. Oh, right. I'd love to get it tested.

[Dave Asprey]

You totally should. It'll cost you, you know, whatever, £400 or something.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And then you can just tell everyone, I'm 28.

[Will Harlow]

I love that. But this is what I'm saying. We're so far behind back home.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

Like, this is just not a thing. And when I come here, the first thing I noticed while I was here was how many wellness clinics and IV clinics and stuff like that are popping up here. We've just got none of that at home. So we are so far behind. But I feel like if we ride this longevity wave back home, we can really catch up.

[Dave Asprey]

I think one of the things limiting just is the belief in the UK of we only have so much we have to do, like health optimization. And in the us we got over that and we say, we don't want to optimize this shrinking asset, we want to expand it. So of course we want to allocate our time and energy. Right. But we want more life and more energy than we were supposed to have. So there's this expansionist philosophy, like a flourishing of humanity that's involved in biohacking, but optimization is like, well, we have a small pie and we have to take this slice. For this part, I've seen huge uptake of. Of the idea of biohacking.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

In. In the uk and my books do very well over there because I think. Because people are saying, well, you know, it's okay. Finally. Even though might not be quite as polite.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

I spent a lot of time working in the UK and Cambridge. I said, it's like, it might not be quite as polite, but I would like to be better.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

I don't want to just be enough.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And that's the difference between optimizing and biohacking.

[Will Harlow]

Well, that's what we need to encourage. Yeah. Is people to. To actually want more and say, I actually deserve more than this. And this is one of the things I see in. In the practice is people who've been told, it's just your age, Nothing we can do. Just get on with it. And they've said, actually, no, I don't want to accept that.

[Dave Asprey]

There you go. That's.

[Will Harlow]

I want to do something about it.

[Dave Asprey]

Biohacking, that's longevity medicine. And it's. It's so beautiful.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, it is.

[Dave Asprey]

You see someone who's 70, and I have a couple of clients doing that now, and they're like, you know what? I've been successful all My life, I worked really hard. I've got, you know, five farms and, and why, why am I not. And they're literally at 71 guy, 74 years old. Like I'm going to add 20 years to my life. Like good years.

[Will Harlow]

Enough that.

[Dave Asprey]

And he's all in on it. And he's doing the exercise and getting the labs and taking the supplements. And most of these are not known by a normal doctor. And that's no dig. I go to the doctor, I break my arm or a snake bites me. I'm at the ER and I'm grateful for what they can do.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And, but if I'm looking to reverse my age, you don't go to the er. Like it's a different school of thought.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. They're so constrained by the system as well. Like I don't know what it's like here, but back home the GPs have got 10 minutes per patient and in that time they have to go and get them from the waiting room, welcome them, discover what's wrong, prescribe something and then write up all the notes. That's really not that they're, they're not bad, they're not bad at their job, it's just the system's not set up properly.

[Dave Asprey]

In fact, most physicians who work in big systems like that, who I'm friends with, they're angry and sad because they genuinely, like I went to school for more than a decade. I just want to help people. I know I could if, if only they would let me. And the they is government policy and insurance companies and in the US these large companies running the hospitals. So if you want to live a long time, you find a doctor who doesn't take insurance. In the US they might say, well I'll give you a code, you can call your insurance company. I don't talk to insurance companies because I'm a healer.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

An insurance company will take up 20 or 40 hours a week of the doctor's time if they can, just to make sure the doctor doesn't ask for hard things.

[Will Harlow]

Scandalous, isn't it?

[Dave Asprey]

It's disgusting. Some doctors, in fact most of them, if you see them in the US will say, oh, you should exercise. But most people think, oh, I guess I should go jogging. Yeah. And what happens if a 65 year old woman takes up jogging?

[Will Harlow]

Well, I don't like discouraging exercise and there is nothing wrong with, with jogging, to be clear, the, the dose is the poison, let's say. Okay, okay, so some degree of zone 2 type cardio, low level cardio is pretty good. We know it increases VO2 max. However, on its own, it's just not enough. It doesn't do anything for mobility. It doesn't do anything for strength. It doesn't do anything for muscle mass. It doesn't do very much for bone density.

[Dave Asprey]

Raises your stress hormones.

[Will Harlow]

It does indeed. And as I said, the dose is the poison. And if you do too much, actually decrease your bone density and your muscle mass.

[Dave Asprey]

In fact, I'm going to change my recommendations. I am now in support of jogging for 30 seconds or less. I'm all over that.

[Will Harlow]

Nice. I like that. Minimum effective dose they call that, especially if you're.

[Dave Asprey]

If you're older, it's hard on the joints and the benefits are very low. But if you're over 50, you've seen your entire life, you know, Jane Fonda and that Born to Run guy. And you associate just cranking out the miles with somehow being morally good and with being healthy. People who do chronic cardio have less effective cardiovascular systems. Their ejection fraction goes down, people. And by ejection fraction is how much blood can one pump of the heart move? People who lift weights, the way you're talking about, they can move more blood, which is a sign of a healthier system. So I would just say straight up, if you're over 50, going for a long run is one of the dumbest things you could ever do. You're gonna spend an hour on it, you're gonna get negative benefits overall, but it's better than sitting on a couch. So there's levels of dumb. If you have an hour to improve yourself, you might wanna do some reheat, which is gonna take you five minutes and give you six times more results.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And the rest of the time, do some of the movements that you're talking about, like, literally the body weight, the goblet, squats. Because there's science behind it.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, so much science. And it takes less time. Like, I like to give some people something called the three, two, one approach when they're just trying to get into resistance training, which blows people's minds because they think I need to spend five hours a week in the gym to get any results. You do not. Now, the three, two, one approach takes a grand total of 40 minutes a week. Right. Pick three exercises. Let's put four up. There's three. You can choose the ones that I spoke about before. You're going to do them twice a week, and each time you do it, you're going to try and progress one variable. Okay. So the Variable might be one extra rep or it might be a tiny little bit of extra weight or you could slow the movement down and try and improve the technique. Now that satisfies the progressive part of progressive resistance training, which is how we actually improve.

[Dave Asprey]

It's really simple. Does swearing less each time count as improving a variable?

[Will Harlow]

I'm afraid not. We can have that as the extra variable there as well. But not, not the three, two, one, I'm afraid.

[Dave Asprey]

And now some people get really mad about advice like that. I wrote Smarter, Not Harder. There's a book before this one. Here's all the things that get you results of exercise in way less time. And people are like, well, you're lazy. Like, well, no, you're stupid. Because why would you want to spend more time than you have to to get this result? And they're like, because suffering is good. Oh, you are definitely a puritan who came to the US or something.

[Will Harlow]

It's a very British attitude.

[Dave Asprey]

That's a fair point. But if you decide you're going to suffer, like maybe by meditating and all the extra time you have, that's also a form of suffering until you learn how to do it or maybe hang out with your in laws. Like there's, there's lots of ways to suffer or just eating British food. I mean all of them.

[Will Harlow]

That counts. 100 counts. We don't have any good British food. Like all of our good food is from other cultures.

[Dave Asprey]

But now eating in London is great.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. But because some great restaurants.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. Because it's all sorts of things.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

I'm mostly just joking. I'm like half British genetically, so I'm allowed, I think. But what I do think is going to happen is that people are going to realize I want to get better. I am willing to do anything, but I don't have to burn an hour a day.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And one of the, the meanest things that you can do to yourself, you can convince yourself to enjoy things that you hate. And it's, it's like the worst. On the us we call it like a mind fucking. There's probably a more polite way. What's the British term for mindfuck? Like lollipop. You guys have the best words.

[Will Harlow]

The politest way to say it. I don't know, I have to think about that.

[Dave Asprey]

Like cracker, no, biscuit, whatever. I don't know. I love all the words and I don't know them. And I've never used bollocks correctly in a sentence, but I've tried many times.

[Will Harlow]

Nice. It'll get there. So it takes practice.

[Dave Asprey]

It does.

[Will Harlow]

What I'll say is, you were saying how people can convince themselves to enjoy things. They. Right.

[Dave Asprey]

And so whether they enjoy the three, two, one workout. Yeah, you probably can. But it's easy to say, well, because more exercise is morally good, I will do even more. Yeah. So. And I know a few people like this, like, oh, I cannot relax unless I do an hour of cardio and weights every day. And they're so overtrained and they're like shaking and they're tired and they can't sleep.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And I just. If you're over 50, that's. That's not the longevity strategy. So don't convince yourself that you love suffering.

[Will Harlow]

Well, over training, certainly. And as you get older, it's much easier to overtrain. And the symptoms, I'm sure you all know, are not that obvious all the time.

[Dave Asprey]

What are the symptoms of overtraining?

[Will Harlow]

So the classic symptoms are things like illness, loss of desire to train, not recovering more aches and pains. But before those things happen, you just get a plateauing of results.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

So that's actually the first symptom. These other symptoms that you'll read if you type it into Google, they come later. That's when you're. You've been over training for a very long time, but the first symptom is just a plateau. Probably the second symptom that comes is this lack of desire to train. And I wonder if some of that comes from not seeing any progress anymore.

[Dave Asprey]

I don't think it's cognitive. And the lack of a desire to train is because you just don't have dopamine and cortisol because you're blown out

[Will Harlow]

your catecholamines, it's certainly a factor. And we get hormonal changes as well for overtrained. You know, testosterone drops, things like that.

[Dave Asprey]

Libido goes down. And in women, they actually feel at first if they're still cycling. If they're over 50, they're probably not still on their cycle. But thinning of hair. Right. Waking up, just no libido or moodiness. Like what? I thought exercise was good for me. No, only the right dose is good for it. Water is good for you, but you can drown.

[Will Harlow]

Good point.

[Dave Asprey]

That's the thing. Most people over 50 statistically are just not moving much at all.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And that's terrible. And my experience is that a lot of the rest of them saying, I am fully in and then they're way over moving. So to be in the middle, you just gave the full list of. Here's the things that tell you that you're overdoing it. Our habits are good. Right. So your three, two, one thing is three times a week. Right.

[Will Harlow]

Twice a week. Oh, twice a week.

[Dave Asprey]

So three minutes twice a week. So most people are saying, if I have a habit every morning to work out, I'll be good. I've never found that effective. Because you overtrain.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

What should they fill their other five days of the week with after they've done? 3 to 1? Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

So I like to think in the old 80, 20 principle when it comes to exercise, and I think that that 3, 2, 1 method gives you that 80% of the results. It does. Now the other things that people can do, and this is where the daily habit comes in. So the exercise snacks we spoke about, best done daily. So make that your habit. And the, the more you do that just for those 30 to 60 second intervals, the quicker the balance will improve.

[Dave Asprey]

And you have a bunch of those on your, on your website.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, there's tons of them. And it doesn't have to be balanced to be clear. You can do mini squats. You can even do like goblet squats or the Romanian deadlifts as exercise snacks too, just depending on what you want to improve. The other thing that works daily is getting those joints moving, particularly if you've got a sticky area. So I know when you had your hip problem, probably you were working on that daily, weren't you, Dave?

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, yeah.

[Will Harlow]

So that's how you improve a sticky joint or an arthritic problem that just doesn't seem to want to get better. Five minutes a day working on that joint, that will work wonders as well. So that's where the habits can come in. Resistance training does not need to be every day. You need those days off in between for the body to fully recover.

[Dave Asprey]

I just appreciate you saying that. It's the time off and the little snacks like that. I think most effective one I've ever seen was my former wife. Every time she would blend butter into her. Well now Danger Coffee, she would just do squats. 30 seconds of squats while blending. You don't lose any time. It's not hard, hard. And then the changes if you do that daily are cool. And my daughter, who's about to turn 19, she installed an app on her phone that makes her do a push up or two before she can look at Instagram.

[Will Harlow]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Dave Asprey]

And the camera actually watches you to make sure you did it. Or maybe it's the accelerometer I've never seen it. I don't know the name of it, but man, I'm proud of her for that. Of her own accord. I want to make sure I don't get addicted. Plus I should do some push ups. Great. But those are the same thing. Exercise, snacks. You just did a little thing.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. My wife does 10 squats every night and she's got amazing squatting form. She can literally like sit right back onto her heels.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow.

[Will Harlow]

The reason she can do that is because she does it every night.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

And she's been doing it for years and it's like rain or shine. No matter how she feels, no matter what time we get home, even if it's like 2, 3am, we've had a busy day, she'll do her 10 squats.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow. And doesn't affect her sleep, like exercising right before bed?

[Will Harlow]

No, because they're like slow squats. She'll sit in the squat for a minute. So it's not like high intensity. Yeah. So it's more designed for mobility rather than strength.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. Yeah. Slow Scotts would be great. I was thinking if I did like 10 fast classes like this.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Blood pressure. Yeah. There's something else that happens when people hit their late 40s, early 50s around protein utilization. Can you talk about that?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. So we call this anabolic resistance. And basically what it means is your body becomes more resistant to using the stimuli that trigger muscle protein synthesis as we age. Now, there are two major stimuli to build and maintain muscle mass. You've got resistance training, moving the body against force, and you've got protein. Now, if we're talking about the protein aspect, your muscle tissue becomes less sensitive to using those amino acids to rebuild or maintain with age. Now, it doesn't mean that it stops working, it just means a higher stimulus is needed to get the same results. And we can see this quite clearly in the research now. And it's one of the things I was most happy to see when the government increased their protein recommendations.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, in the U.S. yeah.

[Will Harlow]

I thought that was a positive move.

[Dave Asprey]

I'm friends with the guys who did that and we talked about it before it was published. This is the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

And it was such a big jump as well. But it was such a positive step in the right direction. From the literature I've seen.

[Dave Asprey]

I can't believe anyone's mad about that. And some people are, but I just think it's reactive and maybe those people aren't exercising. So there's no blood in their brains

[Will Harlow]

is that could be that. I know things get really radically politicized over here, which is. It's just a shame because it's health. Right.

[Dave Asprey]

Protein is not political.

[Will Harlow]

No, it shouldn't be.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, it shouldn't be.

[Will Harlow]

But to go back to this anabolic resistance thing with protein, the research shows that in younger people you can get maximal muscle protein synthesis with about 20 grams of protein per meal in 60

[Dave Asprey]

grams a day, maximum. Really?

[Will Harlow]

No, no per meal. So 20 grams at a time, if that makes sense.

[Dave Asprey]

But that's only 60 per day if you eat three meals.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. So this is why we need to have more throughout the day.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, got it.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. Yeah. But in, in older adults, it's 40 grams achieves maximal muscle protein synthesis. So it can still happen. You just need more in one go, if that makes sense. It.

[Dave Asprey]

It does make sense. And I teach everyone. You eat the steak first.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Right. And then if you want some veggies or carbs, have them after that.

[Will Harlow]

Sure.

[Dave Asprey]

And what we used to teach people in the US because of, well, bad science and self loathing was eat all of the calorie free, unpleasant vegetables first and then eat a little bit of protein because meat might be bad. And it's just a recipe for frailty when you get old.

[Will Harlow]

We scared people from. From protein. Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And I do 1 gram per pound or 2.2 grams per kilo of animal protein religiously every day.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And I said, I'm 53 and I. I do exercise 20 minutes a week. I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's working.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, you're smashing it.

[Dave Asprey]

Especially because I was 50 heavier than I am now.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And so I, you know, people who are new to the show probably are like, oh, my God, you weighed 300 pounds. Everyone else is like, Dave, you said that 100 times. It's for the newbies, guys.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And having a family who's all obese. Right. For multiple generations and being like the only one steak matters. I just, I have to say that. And yeah, also not having toxins and all. There's one other aspect to it that I'd like to add into the conversation. So there's what you eat and then there's what you absorb. You can go to a boots in the UK, you can go anywhere in the US and buy digestive enzymes and you can buy Betaine HCl, which is basically stomach acid. As you age, your stomach acid goes down. You can't break down protein without stomach acid and enzymes. So if you're saying all Right. I'm going to get some protein powder, I'm going to get some extra beef or whatever and you eat it. It's not going to get in. So you take these with it, which allows you to make full availability happen. When full availability of that protein happens, you hit that threshold and then your muscles can put on more muscle. So it's putting your mouth is step one.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Getting it into the cells is step two. And that's the hack.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, yeah. Gut health is so, so important.

[Dave Asprey]

What's your take on carbs and exercise for people over 50?

[Will Harlow]

To be honest, I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't have strong feelings for or against. One of the things you touched on earlier that we didn't really cover is energy levels.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

And this is so important. And one of the big reasons that the people I speak to aren't exercising is because they feel like their energy levels are too low and they just can't get that, you know, that, that oomph to get up and off the couch. Now sometimes, as you know, that can be linked to diet.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. It's lack of coffee.

[Will Harlow]

Right. For me, definitely. But for others, I think it's probably more diet. So I like to tell people to prioritize foods that give you that long sustained energy boost. Yep. Now we know that's different for different people.

[Dave Asprey]

Like porridge. It was a joke. I was gonna say.

[Will Harlow]

I was trying to work out if you're being serious or not. That's.

[Dave Asprey]

That was the worst food.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. But you know this. The, the higher fat diets tend to give you sustained energy for a bit longer. Carbs can give you a boost and then a crash. But I think it's, it's different for different people. So people need to just be a little bit more in tuned with how they feel after they eat each meal and just check in and go. How did I actually feel for the two hours after that lunch?

[Dave Asprey]

Huge. Just huge advice.

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[Dave Asprey]

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[Will Harlow]

Right.

[Dave Asprey]

Actually urine with oxalate crystals in it. So how are you going to feel at three in the afternoon if you turned off your hunger by putting low energy food in your body. So I look at two, even four hours later. If you think about food within two hours of eating, you didn't eat enough protein or enough fat and you probably ate too many veggies that just didn't sustain you. People love to say vegetables are high nutrient density. The way they calculate nutrient density is they pretend like calories are bad. So if it has lots of nutrients and no calories, somehow it's more good for you. The problem is if you're over 50, you gotta have enough energy. And I see a lot of, especially women over 50 who are on a 200 calorie smoothie for breakfast and they're working out as best they can and they're completely anxious all the time. And you just tell them it's okay to have yogurt. Yeah, it's okay to have eggs. And within a week all their anxiety goes away because they finally got nourished. Yeah, right. And you, you want to try and put on muscle and stay lean as you age. If you're anxious all the time because you just don't have enough fuel. Yeah, it's impossible that forms because Cortisol goes up in men and women, that forms cortisol Belly.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Like in the front.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And if it's. That's everywhere else, that's not cortisol. So I just, I feel like it's mean spirited.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, definitely. And of course, salt blunts the muscle protein synthesis as well. So you can, you know, you cannot be sustainably healthy if you're running like that all the time.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

You're running off minimal calories, minimal protein, you've got no energy and you're still trying to hit it hard. It's just a recipe for disaster.

[Dave Asprey]

Another question for you, kind of unrelated. So if you're. They're going to eat something good for breakfast. Vestibular activity for listeners, the vestibular system is the one that kind of tells you, is your head crooked? Is your body crooked? How do you maintain balance? How common are vestibular disorders in people over 50?

[Will Harlow]

So common.

[Dave Asprey]

Like half of them.

[Will Harlow]

I'm not sure about half. I would say probably 15 to 20% of the people we see have had or are currently suffering with vestibular problems. And quite often vestibular problems can be things like tinnitus. So anyone who's had the ringing in the ears, sometimes that can affect balance. It can also be a labyrinthitis. So like an infection inside the ear. Sometimes people describe that as, it feels like I'm on a ship and I can't get off and things are just swinging all over the place. But basically anything that affects your orientation and your balance, you could categorize as vestibular. And people think that, oh, these vestibular problems, we're just powerless to treat them. They're just something that happens with age. But we can train the vestibular system and we train that through some of the balance tasks that you can do very, very simply at home. It helps to almost like recalibrate those sensors so that your body's more aware of where your head is in space. And you can control your body through motion as well. So it takes time, but these things can be improved with practice.

[Dave Asprey]

What is one vestibular exercise that people could do at home that you can demo?

[Will Harlow]

They're quite funny, actually. So I can do one from sitting.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

So one of the favorite ones I give to people is actually eye tracking. So you want to sit with your head completely still, have your finger out in front of you, keep your head still and just track that finger with your eyes as you move it. And the simple version is to just move it along the horizon like this. But you can also do up and down, kind of like an undulating pattern like this. And once you've practiced that for a bit, you can practice keeping your eyes locked on the finger and then turning your head as well. So it's kind of doing the opposite.

[Dave Asprey]

Yep.

[Will Harlow]

And all of these things are very basic ways to just get that vestibular system working. Another one I like to give people, which is a bit more advanced, is a sit. To stand with their eyes closed.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

Because then it looks so easy. It's actually quite difficult. And people are often afraid to do

[Dave Asprey]

it because they are worried on the floor or something. And then stand up without opening your eyes.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, that would be a more advanced version, but I would do it from a chair. We're just getting started there.

[Dave Asprey]

People are afraid to do that with their eyes closed.

[Will Harlow]

Definitely because it feels like you've lost the coordination if you've got a vestibular problem.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow.

[Will Harlow]

So this is how much it can affect people. It's not just, oh, I feel a bit dizzy. It's. My confidence is completely gone.

[Dave Asprey]

My mom had that after post brain surgery.

[Will Harlow]

How did it affect her?

[Dave Asprey]

I mean, she was terrified of leaning sideways.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Because they did a lot of work on her brain and. And yeah. So she was. She used a walker because she would just fall over. But I always thought, you know, you could train that. But she had to want to train it.

[Will Harlow]

You have to have the knowledge as well and someone to tell you what to do and to say, no, that's safe. You keep going with it, even if it feels funny.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

Because sometimes people can feel a bit sick when they're doing it as well. Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

You get that motion sickness, basically. I've had vestibular problems in the past. Oh, yeah?

[Will Harlow]

What caused yours? Just come out of the blue or.

[Dave Asprey]

You know, I think I've probably had them since I was young. It could have been a. Just getting a smack to the head. I've had a few of those, you know, brain bleeds and all, but just looking back, I think it. It's been probably since birth or early childhood. They go pretty commonly with the whole autism side of things. And I don't actually meet the clinical criteria for autism anymore, but there's certainly some biological imprints from that.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Who the heck knows? But I did a bunch of eye training movements, and strangely, there's something called infant reflexes that you've probably come across.

[Will Harlow]

I've not heard of this.

[Dave Asprey]

So when you're young, there's like a startle reflex and there's A crawling thing that you know how to do. And a lot of adults, even pro athletes, some of the guys I work with are into that. There's tests you can do for these things and like, oh, my God, you still have that reflex you're supposed to lose at six months.

[Will Harlow]

Interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

And it controls some of your vestibular system.

[Will Harlow]

I've not come across this. Oh, yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

You'll dive deep on it. You'll find some of your vestibular people are just doing what they're supposed to do at six months and they're 65 years old.

[Will Harlow]

No way.

[Dave Asprey]

And for me, I had a lot of that stuff because I learned to read at 18 months. So I was like reading as a kid instead of moving. That was bad. So my kids learned how to move first. Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

Flip the order there. Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. And the. Yeah. For people listening, you think you're in charge of your body, but you're not. Like, there's, there's. Right now there's some part of my body making a decision about how to dilate this blood vessel.

[Will Harlow]

Right.

[Dave Asprey]

I'm not consciously doing that.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And so we have this appearance of control. But if you want to catch a baseball. Right.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

You don't actually, with your thinking mind. Oh. Like, let me do like an equation. You just. The hand kind of knows where it is and it does its thing.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. If you think how complicated that movement is and how many systems have to interact, it's incredible.

[Dave Asprey]

So what's going on? It's kind of like AI. You're like, well, I'm controlling AI. I tell her what to do. But what's going on in there? You don't know your body is a black box. Yeah, it's a black box. Well said. So it doesn't mean you can't train the black box. And that's really what the movement exercises you're talking about are, especially on vestibular.

[Will Harlow]

Definitely.

[Dave Asprey]

And if you can get the muscle you're talking about from your three to one program, and then you can get the vestibular activity from these movement snacks you're talking about.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

I'm pretty sure that you're not going to fall down. And if you do, you're not going to break a hip.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. We know how dangerous the. The hip fractures are for lifespan. I'm sure you've seen the data that 30% of people who fall and fracture their hip will be dead within a year.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, it's.

[Will Harlow]

It's terrifying.

[Dave Asprey]

It really is. And so that means hardening your system is a Big deal.

[Will Harlow]

And

[Dave Asprey]

I had surgery where they had to cut the bone in my foot in half about three or four years ago. And this was from an old, old yoga injury that didn't heal right.

[Will Harlow]

From yoga? Yeah. What did you do?

[Dave Asprey]

Crow pose, kicking back to plank.

[Will Harlow]

Okay.

[Dave Asprey]

That's a pretty advanced move. You're kind of on just your hands and your legs are up in the air. And then I kicked back and I just stubbed my toe really hard. And the joint just never quite healed, no matter what I did to it.

[Will Harlow]

It was in the big toe joint.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. Okay. Nasty place to fracture.

[Dave Asprey]

It started, like, calcifying.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

So I couldn't bend it, so I went. I did a whole episode about this a while ago. I went down to Beverly Hills. Dr. Ali Sadre, who just mostly works on models who want to wear high heels or professional athletes.

[Will Harlow]

Nice.

[Dave Asprey]

And I'm older than his average patient, and I'm awake for it because I'm that kind of guy who's like, I want to watch.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And so it was numb, but the bonesaw goes in. It's like. And I'm feeling like it's getting hot. And he looks at the nurse and goes, is this guy human? I'm having a hard time getting through the bone. And he had to, I think, change the saw on his bone saw to get all the way through the bottom of my foot.

[Will Harlow]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dave Asprey]

And afterwards, Dave, I operated on someone half your age.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And their bones cut like butter. And I couldn't get through your bones. What are you doing? I do not exercise a lot.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But I do take all the stuff I write about my books. But I take minerals 101, which I make vitamin D. And the reason I'm calling this out, vitamin K2, which is part of the vitamin D formula, makes sure that the calcium goes into your bones, into your tissues. So if you're listening to this over 50 anywhere on Earth, vitamin D, you need it, but you must take it with at least vitamin K and ideally vitamin D. Just all four of those things. If you do that and you take the movement snacks, you do the three to one program from your book, you're going to get way more results. And you want to be that man or woman who's 70, and the doctors are looking at your bone density on an X ray going, what planet are you from? That's the goal. I optimized my bone density. I gave up 30% of it so I could have a healthy liver. No, no, no. We're not optimizing we're just like becoming really, really powerful.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And wise. Because if you're old and you have energy, you can have wisdom and maybe then you could tell it to someone young who wants to hear it, and that might make the world a better place.

[Will Harlow]

It's one of the benefits of age, right?

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

Is the accrual of wisdom as you

[Dave Asprey]

age, wisdom or suffering, whatever you want

[Will Harlow]

to call it, it's the same thing, Right.

[Dave Asprey]

Unfortunately, that is the case.

[Will Harlow]

Now, can I just ask you about where does magnesium fit into that? Do you have any opinions on that for bone?

[Dave Asprey]

Magnesium is one of the major components of bone. There's about 17 minerals in bone.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

So a lot of people are saying, well, take calcium and it turns out you need some calcium. But if you take calcium without vitamin D, a K2, well, then the calcium goes into your tissues and you get bone spurs. And it's actually not good.

[Will Harlow]

It can actually be quite risky.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. So you want a ratio of 2 to 1 calcium to magnesium. You're getting enough calcium. If you eat dairy, there's a lot in there. You don't eat dairy. You may be deficient, but Almost everyone, like 80% are magnesium deficient.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

So there's all these companies with very fancy forms of magnesium. I make one called Magnesium 101. It's in my subgrade brand and it's the most effective, most absorbed form that fills all the pathways. It's called magnesium glycinate. And too much of it will soften your stools. And let's face it, if you're over 50, that's probably not a problem for half the listeners. But if you take too much, you'll know. But a couple capsules of that and it's going to go into the very lowest foundational level where magnesium enters the cells and then it can move up from there. Yeah. And all of the other forms are much less absorbable, like 20% or 30% absorbable. So you can take less pills if you use the magnesium one. One kind. You got to do it. It's for relaxation, for sleep and for thousands of processes.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And in fact, for anyone who's exercising over 50, like, there's all kinds of Sexy Protein Gainer 5000 and, you know, Tongkat Ali and all, all these things. Testo Boost 200 and all those things. But unless you have your minerals and your vitamin D, all this stuff is a waste of money. And these are boring supplements. I make them because they're the most foundational, they're not expensive, they're not Like a massive profit center. Athletic greens or whatever. It's not that. It's literally you need these. Because if you do a farmer's carry for the first time and your body says, this is great, let's form muscle and bone. Yeah, just give me some zinc. And you have no zinc.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

You sent the signal by exercising. You ate the protein to have the raw materials, but you didn't have the zinc. And the body's like, I guess I can't do it.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. It's a great analogy. I like to think of it as, like, sending the builders to the building site without any materials to work with. You can send as many men as you like, but if they don't have bricks, they're not going to build anything.

[Dave Asprey]

Right. And protein is definitely the brick. The mortar is minerals.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. Nice. Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And I think as we talk, as we talk more just over the next few years in the world about there's foods that are supposed to work. Yeah. Like these ultra processed things. They don't. But then these plants are supposed to work. Spinach provably pulls minerals, including zinc and calcium out of your tissues. It doesn't put them in. But people still think because of Popeye. That is good. Is Popeye a thing in the.

[Will Harlow]

Oh, it's massive.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Do you know this is dark? Do you want to hear the real story of Popeye?

[Will Harlow]

Go for it.

[Dave Asprey]

Every time he opens a can of spinach, on the bottom, it P53.

[Will Harlow]

Right.

[Dave Asprey]

P53 is the US military designation for inhaled methamphetamine that was released in 1942 for our trips to fight.

[Will Harlow]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dave Asprey]

The guy who made Popeye died of meth addiction and is dark. When you inhale meth, one eye squints up and you have three minutes of super strength, just like Popeye. And when you inject meth, which they also allowed soldiers to do, olive oil was the carrier. So the real story of Popeye is that olive oil was his dealer. He was inhaling it all the time. And Brutus was actually his friend trying to stop him from being an addict.

[Will Harlow]

And yet we think something new today.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. And all of veganism is based on that kind of spinach, I guess.

[Will Harlow]

Wow. Yeah. I did not know that.

[Dave Asprey]

This is real. You can verify it all. I was like, this is so shocking of all these people eating spinach for mussels. It was meth. It was meth the whole time.

[Will Harlow]

And to be clear, meth is not a longevity drug, right?

[Dave Asprey]

Well, micro. No, it's not. Don't do that. So what are the biggest mistakes, aside from meth that you see people over 50 making? Obviously not doing anything. But when people are starting to do something, what are you going to do wrong?

[Will Harlow]

Well, we've touched on a couple of them already. So this excessive cardio thing is a big one. And like you say, it's a cultural thing, isn't it? Because the 80s and 90s it was like, go and do your, your high intensity running and aerobics classes and all of this and this is all you need. And now we know that's not true. So that's one. Another one is just thinking that being active and walking and tending the garden is enough to cover your strength and your bone density is not. You need something else. Say those are probably the biggest ones. But I don't like to discourage people from doing things that they're doing. So the walking and the aerobics, like, if that's what you love, then do it. It's just, I'm saying add in a couple of extra things to cover those bases.

[Dave Asprey]

I think walking might actually be bad for people over 50.

[Will Harlow]

How so?

[Dave Asprey]

Seeing the look of confusion and fear was worth. I'm kidding. Here's why. If you are wearing crappy shoes or you don't know how to walk and you've been walking that way for a long period of time, you are going to wear out your knees and hips. It is not going to end well if you decide you're going to walk, you know, 10 kilometers a day unless you pay attention to your gait.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And you pay attention to your shoes. So what do you think about.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, let me break that down. Right, so what you're talking about here is a problem with someone's Mechanics. Yes, I 100% agree that faulty mechanics are a problem for the joints.

[Dave Asprey]

And by the way, walking is good

[Will Harlow]

for you and we should do everything we can to fix those faulty mechanics. Now walking is a low impact activity. It has quite low stress on the joints. And what you're saying is partially true, that if you have bad mechanics and you walk lots and lots and lots, you might cause some joint problems. But I think the benefits of that walking far outweighs that.

[Dave Asprey]

You are actually correct. If you just lay on your back because you have bad mechanics, you got a problem. Yeah. I have seen people take up walking and it's amazing. They're. I used to be duck footed. So they're duck footed, they're shuffling, one knee is locking, one hip is higher than the other, and then instead of learning it they say, well, it just kind of hurts. And I know from experience and just working with a lot of clients, if you have mechanical issues and you start putting a lot of load on something, especially for years, if your right ankle is screwed up and you never fix it, your left hip will break. Twenty years later, it won't actually break, but it'll become inflamed. You'll get arthritic. And that's going to be why you need a new left hip, because you never fixed your right ankle. Right. And if your left hip is off, your right shoulder is going to be off, because fascial chains move up through the body. Right.

[Will Harlow]

100%.

[Dave Asprey]

So I would just say if you're in that over 50 thing and it hurts to walk, you should actually seek out a functional movement specialist.

[Will Harlow]

100% agree.

[Dave Asprey]

They're going to teach you a different way to do this. And I've done this a couple of times in my life because I didn't know how to work walk. And the difference in my posture, in the way my hips felt, my knees, it was like turning on a light bulb.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

I don't know what percentage of people out there ever. 50, but I see a lot of them in the mall. And they're not aware that they're moving in a way that's maybe not good for them.

[Will Harlow]

No. And they're not aware because maybe the pain is not there yet or they've got pain somewhere else and they don't associate it with that movement.

[Dave Asprey]

Correct.

[Will Harlow]

But we all have these funny, faulty movement patterns, and we're not usually aware of them until they become either really obvious or there's pain somewhere. But the key thing here with what you said, Dave, is that these don't go away on their own. They get worse.

[Dave Asprey]

But you can control them.

[Will Harlow]

But you can control them. You just need to be doing the right things. And because there's so many different movement problems, that's why it pays to sometimes see a specialist who can unpick these things. I met with Gary Brecher a couple of days ago. He was telling me exactly the same story you had there. He had a bad foot, then it moved up to his ankle, then his knee, then his hip, and then across to the other shoulder. Right. The exact same path to. And you discussed. And so many people are going through this right now, but they don't realize it started down there in the foot.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

So the earlier you fix it, the less chance it has of traveling up and around the body to these different joints.

[Dave Asprey]

I'm blessed I can pretty much call anyone I want in the health and fitness industry and I can say, you know, I want to come in and let's meet. And they're going to take the meeting and like, thank you. If you're one of the many people who've said yes to that. But the average man or woman over 50 saying, all right, something's wrong with my ankle. I go to my doctor and he says, here's Nadville or ibuprofen.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And who do you call? Like, what do you Google in order to find this? If you even still Google?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. I mean, from a bias point of view, a physical therapist or physiotherapist is a movement specialist.

[Dave Asprey]

Do you need a doctor's note to do that?

[Will Harlow]

No.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. So you can call a PT and say, this hurts. Help me walk.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. And I would say that from my own experience and from speaking to people in the US you want to probably take that same approach that you take with doctors. Ask for someone who's not necessarily through your insurance, is someone who's willing to actually give you the time, the full consultation. Oh, yeah. To pick apart what's happening in your body, not just rush you through in a 20 minute appointment.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Will Harlow]

So that's vital. Now, if you don't have the money to invest in seeing someone like that, a great place to start is just with the resistance training that we spoke about before. Because just strengthening up some of the key muscles in the body can fix these movement problems.

[Dave Asprey]

Yes.

[Will Harlow]

Even if you haven't had an assessment. Okay. And I've had many people who've followed my YouTube videos or been through my online program and they said I've got stronger, but the key benefit here is my knee pain has gone away or my hip pain's gone away, or I don't have back pain anymore. And that was the thing that they didn't sign up for, but they got it as an added benefit. So just getting stronger can help to reduce many of these things.

[Dave Asprey]

And for people who can't click the link, what's the name of your YouTube? What's your new book?

[Will Harlow]

So the YouTube is just search Will Harlow and it will come up. We've got almost 1.7 million on there now, which is crazy to think about. The new book is called Independence for Life. And I wrote this book for two people, the same two people I kept seeing coming into the clinic. So the first person was in a bit of a state. So like we spoke about before, maybe they started off with some knee pain. Now it's spread to the hip and the back. They've lost muscle mass, they've lost mobility, they've lost confidence. Their doctors told them there's nothing that can be done. You've just got to accept it. They know deep down that that's not true and they want to take that control. So I wrote this book to give those people the same strategies I use in my in person clinic that they can use at home. And then the second type of person I wrote it for was the person probably similar to yourself, Dave, maybe a few years before, who is already doing all the things very on top of the research. They're reading everything, they're watching the YouTube videos, they're listening to the podcasts. But it's become quite overwhelming. One expert's telling them to do one thing, the next one says, don't do that, that's going to make you worse. And they don't really know what's true and what's false anymore. So I wrote this book for them to cut through the noise, to give them the minimum effective dose that's actually going to make a difference so that they can again take back control of the health.

[Dave Asprey]

It's so cool because everyone is trying to the best of their ability and, and sometimes we beat ourselves up and say, oh, I'm lazy, I should do this, or none of that's real. You had more energy. You do it. So you have an energy problem or you just have a knowledge problem.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

So know what to do.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. Or a strategy problem. You've got too much of this knowledge and you don't know how to put it in. Step by step.

[Dave Asprey]

Correct. And so I, I appreciate you recording all those videos and just showing people how to do it. And I did try something. I was, I was working on my gate with a local friend who's a professional on this shout out to Yadi. So I was like, well, I'm just gonna turn on my camera and I'm going to point Claude at me and say, you know, here's me walking. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. I was kind of surprised.

[Will Harlow]

In a good way.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, absolutely. It said, you're leaning this way and you're doing this and it was correct. It doesn't mean that I'm going to trust it to tell me what to do. But if you're wondering, do I have a gate problem? You probably could just have AI tell you. So then you can find a PT or you can find a functional movement person who may or may not be a PT, but just everyone has a laundry list of 200 things wrong with you. Right. And if you say, oh, no, I'm overwhelmed. I have to do all this. No, you don't. Just pick the top five most important for your goals.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Just do those. And gait and functional movement and muscle mass should be in the top five. Unless you have no pain in your body and you have adequate muscle mass, in which case ignore those and look at your brain or whatever you care about.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But that whole. Oh, no, everything's falling apart. No, it's not. Everything's been falling apart since the moment you were conceived. Don't worry about it.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. And when people feel like that, sometimes it's just one thing that's like the lead domino.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Will Harlow]

And then everything else feels worse. So I would say the most common one that I find in people is they've lost their strength, usually in their legs. And then from there, the balance is gone, the mobility is gone, the knee pain started. Fix the strength, these other things start to improve.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. I would say most common in my world is either sleep or hydration, which directly leads to strength. Right. And there's probably someone else out there would say, well, it's not sleep, it's sunshine. Because I also recommend morning sunshine. So, you know, it's foundational mitochondrial strength and neurological strength, which feeds the muscles.

[Will Harlow]

Definitely.

[Dave Asprey]

But some people, the problem is in the muscle and in the protein. Some people it's in the brain. Some people it's in the bedroom.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Just don't know.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Your new book, Independence for Life, just hit the shelves. Check out Independence for Life, which is Will's new book. It is really Good. You mentioned VO2 Max. And aside from the Epstein island association In biohacking with VO2 Max, it turns out that a lot of the math behind VO2 max that some in the. Or we'll say some formula in the longevity movement, have really just been all over. It's computed VO2 max, not actual VO2 max, and it may be wrong for highly fit people. Do you think the VO2 max calculators that are on watches and rings and things like that are accurate enough for people over 50?

[Will Harlow]

To be honest with you, I don't think I would use those as a biomarker of health. The ones that you find from the watches. Right, exactly. Now, VO2 max is an interesting thing because we used to think that just doing lots of aerobic activity was the way to boost your VO2 mass. And it is one way to increase it. We know that.

[Dave Asprey]

Not very much, though.

[Will Harlow]

Well, and we also know that VO2max is associated with longevity.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Will Harlow]

But doing lots of aerobic exercise is not the only way to increase it. And I would argue is probably the least efficient way way to do so. Correct where we align now, just doing your resistance training massively increases VO2 max. But alongside that, you get the benefits in strength, muscle mass, balance, bone density, which you don't get from the cardio. So VO2 max is important. Yes. Don't worry about what, what your watch says. I would say the only real accurate way to measure it is in a lab.

[Dave Asprey]

Correct.

[Will Harlow]

And focus on the resistance training instead because it covers those bases.

[Dave Asprey]

You nailed it. And if you were to do an hour of aerobics a day or an hour of jogging five days a week for two months, you'll improve VO2 max by 2%. If you were to do the five minute program that said, upgrade labs three times a week, there's no sweating and the entire time that you're under strain is 40 seconds. So the amount of time you brush your teeth every week, 12% improvement in VO2 material.

[Will Harlow]

It's insane.

[Dave Asprey]

VO2 Max matters. But the metrics used in even a lot of the studies quoted by some of the people, it's not real VO2 max. It's kind of a guess, but for this audience, for people who are not already highly fit, I would look at heart rate variability in the morning or your morning readiness score. That matters. But the VO2 Max is kind of like a vanity metric that isn't that useful unless you're breathing through a mask in a sealed suit. It's a lot of work. No one wants to do a real VO2 max test.

[Will Harlow]

And it's like body battery on these watches. It doesn't mean anything really. Yeah, it's just some random algorithm they've put together.

[Dave Asprey]

I have a confession to make. The first company to get heart rate from the wrist, I was a CTO and co founder of that company. This is like 15 years ago. Intel bottom. And shut him down. I was called Asus. I did a lot of work on this and a lot of work with the marketing side of the house. And yeah, these numbers are made up 10,000 steps a day. You know where that came from, right?

[Will Harlow]

Yeah, it was a Japanese researcher, wasn't it, in the 60s?

[Dave Asprey]

Not a researcher, a Japanese company selling the first pedometer to track steps. They made up 10,000 steps. And they're saying, well, you know, if we tell people that's good, then they'll buy our little thing to track it and to this day you still have all these people going 10,000 steps a day. And like, if you're going to be a fitness influencer, you should probably do your research on that because when they really did the math, the real number is maybe 7,000. Yeah, but of course that's for an average population and for you it might be 3,000 and for you it might be 10,000. Or you could just look at your other metrics and try some stuff and see what optimizes your system. And then once you've optimized your system, you say, I don't want to optimize it, I want to make it better. And then you do that.

[Will Harlow]

Yeah. The longevity data is actually interesting when it comes to steps. So 7,000 steps is the number I landed on as well from my research. And basically the way I landed on it is that seems to be the point where the improvements in longevity start to tail off and plateau out. Now you do get some additional improvements for more steps, but it's a huge law of diminishing returns. So 10,000 slightly better than 7,000, but obviously much more effort, much more time. So 7,000 is the goal I tell people to shoot for. But the biggest gains come from going from like 2000 to 4000. If you can get someone who's hardly doing anything to go up to doing 4,000. There's, there's some really compelling data on all cause mortality just from that small boost.

[Dave Asprey]

I love that. I could support it all day long. Now I'm going to try to translate this into British English. Does shagging count as exercise?

[Will Harlow]

It does.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, yes.

[Will Harlow]

Moderate to heavy exercise. I would say it doesn't count towards your 3, 2, 1. But it might replace the jogging.

[Dave Asprey]

Well said. Thank you for coming on the show and for making the trip out, Dawson.

[Will Harlow]

Thank you, I really appreciate it.

[Dave Asprey]

See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

[Podcast Disclaimer Narrator]

A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services related to referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.