How Technology Can Keep You Weak & Age You Faster | Dr. Andy Galpin on Health Theory

I'm not an advocate of people who are in very low energy expenditure consuming a bunch of unnecessary carbohydrate. I'm never going to be a proponent of that. Um, but do I think most people should be consuming at least a piece of of fresh whole fruit a day? Probably. Um, for the most part. And that's where we can get our variety. I don't think the fact that apples used to be this big and now they're this big is like death changing things. Like this is not These are not a real issue for people who are generally physically active. But if you can't then understand your own physiology to a level where you can fix that without needing more technology you're going to fail. That's the short game. And I want you to play the long game. And that's I think the message that I like to continue is the more and more we are learning about physiology. Yeah, there are some people got a good draw and made bad choices. Some people got a really really tough draw. Okay. What are you going to do about it? You still have an option. You still can have some control. But you have to make that choice. Hey everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Dr. Andy Galpin. He's both the creator of the Biomedical and Molecular Exercise Physiology Laboratory at CSU Fullerton, as well as their director of sports performance. He's also a former competitive weightlifter and the co-author of Unplugged: Evolve From Technology to Upgrade Your Fitness, Performance, and Consciousness. And consciousness was the part that really surprised me about the book, but I actually found it super interesting. What are you guys calling consciousness exactly and how do we upgrade it? That's a really good question. That was actually was a play on words. And so there's there's the classic definition of uh, a philosophical what is a conscious being or what is it not. Uh, but really the play we wanted to get at with with having consciousness in the title is are you simply being aware? Uh, the biggest issue we wrote the book for was to try to help people understand with technology now we're having a battle of of exchanging our own physiology. In other words, we're losing our own conscious awareness of what's happening with ourselves. This is really like, do you even are you even aware of the fact that you're losing awareness? And that's what people are really aren't even understanding because with some of the training technology and help technologies, there's pros and cons. It's not an anti-tech book. Um but it is Oh, by the way, this has been slowly being taken away from you. And you weren't even aware of that. That's all I want to restore. And so, I don't want people to not use these devices. I just want you to use them consciously. And that's really what we meant by that. So, how do people begin to develop that awareness? You talk about in the book um thirst and you're like, there's a now an app for that, which is pretty ridiculous. You know, we've had millions of years to hone this ability to know when to drink and know when to eat. Um so, how do we become more aware of these sayings and how do we develop the intuition um and the instincts that you guys talk about? Well, several things. Number one, that right there. Simply trying to be aware. Paying attention to consuming, paying whether it's food, whether it's water, whether it's your physical feeling, whether it's your exercise. Maybe when you go to exercise and you go to train, don't be on your [ __ ] phone the whole time. Why? Because that thing that you're feeling in between your set, you should be feeling, but you're not because you're now adding external stimuli. So, then when we ask questions or or when your trainer or your coach or the person you're consulting with is trying to ask you questions about how that feel. Or what did you how what went on in that rep? How did that thing go? You don't have any time to downgrade and process what's actually happening think about what's going to go on next because you're too you're spending too much time stepping out of your own brain and your own physiology and going to the external stimuli. Thirst, same thing. Like, are you really thinking about how thirsty you are or hungry you are? Um this is one of the reasons why I like fasting in different aspects simply because if I then take you and take some of these stimuli away and then I ask you, well, did you notice what that felt like when you got hungry? Like, was it really hunger? You think your blood crashed your blood sugar really crashed because you didn't have a meal in 30 minutes? Or do you think that you just simply got behaviorally because you weren't paying attention and you got behaviorally ready to eat there and it didn't happen now all of a sudden you're thrown off your thing. So, the first thing would be simply becoming aware of what's happening and the easiest way to do that is to decrease the amount of external stimuli coming in. And just being with your own self as much as possible. And then number two, this is when we can bring in technologies and we can start putting objective and subjective measures behind your progress, your performance, whatever thing that it is that you're interested in. Um but those things need to be in order. The final step would then be to go back away from the technology and see if you can now understand the signal that your body told you. So, let me give you an example. Say you're having a hard time controlling your blood glucose. Or you at least felt like that. You felt, man, I'm getting these crashes up and down all day. I think it's my blood glucose. Okay, fine. Number one step number one would be that awareness. Good. You felt the sensations that your body's telling you. That's a start. Step number two, now let's deploy some technology. Let's measure your blood glucose constantly. Okay, fantastic. Step number three would then be say, hey, I am noticing actually based on my data, based on what I'm feeling, when I do these types of behaviors, um eating wise or whatever else, caffeine, stimulants, this is when I have my problems. But don't stop there. The final step is then to say, okay, come back now. Can I remove that technology and match the same feeling and fix it? You should be able to then identify when you don't have your continuous glucose monitor on to go, hey, you know what? I'm feeling right now that I'm starting to get irritable or I'm doing this. I need to fix my lifestyle again. I need to go back and I know this is a problem when I'm not sleeping. I know this this is an issue I get when I didn't have enough water today. Or I had a poor choice in food. But if you can't then understand your own physiology to a level where you can fix that without needing more technology, you're going to fail. That's the short game. And I want you to play the long game. It's really an interesting concept. You talk a lot about blocking and tackling. Like if people dive into your world, they're going to hear that not those words, but you can talk about getting back to the basics, doing the simple things. Um paint me that lifestyle. What is the lifestyle of blocking and tackling? So clearly we have being aware, like really stopping, listening to your body, figuring out where you're at. Um that to me is is the interesting part about wearing a continuous glucose monitor is to develop the awareness so that if you didn't have it that you know where you're at. But getting that the developing the awareness to associate, I feel this way and it's in this broader context. I think people aren't diving into that. Um so what is that blocking and tackling? What is that sort of getting back to basics lifestyle look like so that people can, you know, step into a life that feels awesome, which I assume is sort of the point for you to to put people in a state where they feel great. Yeah, I don't have a prescription to give you for that. And I don't think there should be one. Meaning a one size fits all. Yeah, or meaning like here's the this is how your day should be set up. Here are the routines you should have. Here are the things you should do and not do. Um not only will I not give you that, but I don't think that should exist. I don't think we should strive for that. So how do people titrate their own lives? Like how do they find what makes what works for them? So a a a handful things. Number one, again, paying attention to begin with. What are the problems you're having? Um are we sure that those are problems? And then we can question this assumption. So I think a second ago you said something like okay, I've got my glucose monitor continually going. And I notice that association when I do this behavior and my blood glucose goes that away. Well, I would actually question that assumption right there. Why are you letting something like a blood glucose measure control then how you behave? Can I answer that question? Absolutely. So, the reason that I do it is largely because I want to have a health span that's extraordinarily long. So, I have a base assumption and I'm super open. So, if this base assumption is wrong, let me know. But, my base assumption is that within a range, if I can keep my glucose on the lower end, I'm in all pegs sort of ideal for where I feel good and where I think has optimal longevity. And like you, I'm not dogmatic, so I'm super open to being changed. So, just trying to do things that I think aren't going to [ __ ] me up. That's why I wear it. So, because I'm constantly testing foods. So, for instance, um sweet potato, how does it affect me? Do Japanese sweet potatoes affect me differently than otherwise? Is it different if I air fry it versus eat them raw? Like, I want to to not just trust like how I feel, but to see like is there an impact um between my average glucose level and say my HA1C levels? Like, that kind of stuff. That's where I'm headed with it. Totally fine. Here's the point. You have a thesis. You have a hypothesis, rather, right? So, you have something that you think is going on. Then we can deploy this technology to help get this information there. But, we also have to step back originally to say, "Okay, all this is under the foundation that you're assuming having a very tightly controlled blood glucose is what's needed for the long-term benefit there, right? Well, what happens if that's not the case? We have huge problems, right? Now, in this particular case, it's probably not an issue. Uh but, with other technologies, they can be. And or with anything like this, any aspect of our life, if we come back to the original base assumption, let's assume that that's actually wrong. How much of that did it you let influence your life? How much did you let the fact that you woke up and your heart your HRV score maybe it middle today or poor. Mhm. We actually have good evidence on this now that often times that can lead people into having a poor day. And so what I don't want to happen is, for example, you check a food and all of a sudden you see a little bit of elevation in your blood glucose beyond what you like. I don't want you then to say, "Oh my god, okay, because of that I'm now going to have a mood swing today." All right, you're onto something super [ __ ] important. So, um now let me ask it a different way. So, you deal in the world of deep [ __ ] nuance. Um but you also said that you If somebody bumps into you in the grocery store and says, "Hey, what do I do?" You're like, "Uh just [ __ ] avoid sugar and carbs and then you'll be fine." Even though you know that that's sort of [ __ ] but it's like it gives them an easy answer that's probably for a lot of people correct. What do you deploy in your own life? Because I live in real paranoia of like, "Do I supplement vitamin D?" Like Yeah. Is that stupid? Like are we going to find out in five years? What the [ __ ] I remember I used to go ham telling people you need to be all over fish oil. And then stuff starts coming out that maybe it's not that. Yeah. So, I'm constantly hesitant to go too hard in any direction, but are there things in your life that you sort of go, "I'm pretty sure this is advantageous." So, I I like that question a lot. I think it's very, very clear at this point in movement. Um we need to have a combination of movement, so um there's physical activity, what I'll call it, right? So, just are you burning enough calories throughout the day? And and we all understand now with the change in technologies how that's changed human behavior, right? If you look at the industrial revolution, if you look at the technology revolution, the robotics revolution that's sort of beginning we're kind of in right now. Um the basal amount of physical activity a human would go through for basically our entire existence as a species is crashing to an end in a very, very short amount of time relative to evolution, right? So, that needs to be replaced. And this is when you see things like a walking treadmill or people that are just trying to do more movement, right? That's one. We also need to put back in things where uh heart rate gets extremely elevated. We need to put things back in that are non-binary movements. So, yeah, okay, that's great. You moved up and down controlled. That's fantastic. That's a piece, but we need to have other exchanges of movements, I think. Things like martial arts and grappling are fantastic way to get this non-controlled um non-specific movement in, which is very, very important uh I would argue in on overall uh physical health. We need to do something that challenges our ability to sustain output over time. Um if you want to call this cardio, you can. I would never call it that. But, can you sustain an elevated in work a decent elevated in work for an hour? Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you call that cardio? Well, because cardio just refers to heart, right? And so, most people would say it's anything that elevates your heart rate, right? Well, that's anything. Anything that's above your one beat above your resting isn't technically cardio. So, it's non-specific. It doesn't tell me anything. Cardio could be lifting weights. Cardio could be going for a walk. Typically, people think cardio or aerobic are things that we do for our heart health or for fat loss. And then we think, okay, anaerobic things or resistance exercise or strength training are things that we do if we want to like big and buff and or for an athlete. And that gets people doing two types of exercise. I do cardio or I lift weights. 1,000% I fall into that category. That's the [ __ ] problem. That's why I hate those labels because we now have people living on these two extremes, which are good things for you. But, what about all the [ __ ] [ __ ] in between? And I hate that message of, okay, either I jog for an hour or I go lift weights. Like, that's it? You don't do anything else? How much variety do you do in your workout? Do you get into amount. Because you're doing martial arts or do you really, like, I do BJJ on Monday, I'm playing basketball on Tuesday, it's soccer Wednesday, I'm swimming Thursday. Like, how do you in your own life mix it up? Um so, I don't think about the outcome like that. I think about what's a physiological system that needs to be challenged and then do that. And how do you define what needs to be challenged? Like do you have a goal in mind where you're like, "I want to accomplish this." And is that goal So like uh to to give you an example, my primary driver is longevity with an element of performance. So I want to live for a very, very long time. I would not want to be just like alive but hating my life. So yeah. Well, let's look at what actually predicts longevity and a wellness span as you said, not necessarily lifespan. And these are two very, very different things. Um primary as we understand it now, the things that predict that are things like your VO2 max. This is the most amount of oxygen you can bring in utilize. First, you have to bring in oxygen. Okay, so let's look at the mechanics of how you breathe. Let's look at the fatigue of the respiratory muscles. Let's look at how you exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. Then the oxygen has to be put in the blood. Let's look at how well your capillaries function. Let's look at your uh the the ability of your arteries and veins to to to expand and contract. Are they pliable? Are they rigid? Let's move through there. Then that oxygen has to get put into muscle. Those are via capillaries. Now, let's look at your muscle's ability to extract oxygen and take it up. Okay, then the muscle has to put oxygen into the mitochondria. How's that ability? Do you have a lot of mitochondria? Do you have few? Do they function well? Do they not? Then that has to ask you cause uh help you go through some sort of metabolic process that helps you utilize oxygen to make energy. Is that functioning well? Then from there, the muscle has to contract all the way back up. Then that goes back up to the heart. So you trace every single step and you figure out where is it in this chain that your VO2 max is being limited by? It may be just your heart. It may be a breathing mechanics issue. It may be a muscle issue. It could be an enzymatic issue, which means it could be a diet issue. Could be a sleep issue because uh say hormonally you're you're off whack. So that's what I mean when I I don't think of the outcome like cardio versus strength. I think, "Okay, what am I trying to get to? What's physiologically the problem area?" And then address that. Uh the other pieces for longevity are muscle mass. Having a ton of muscle mass um and having a bunch of strength is really really really critical to longevity, especially wellness span. Within that in my world, there are different types of muscle fibers. So, there's fast-twitch muscle fibers that produce force and strength. And there are uh slow-twitch muscle fibers that that help you resist fatigue. Well, what's pretty evident is the fast-twitch muscle fibers are the ones that you lose with aging. And the only way to keep those things alive are to do high-force contractions. You can't keep those alive any other way. And so, you start saying things like that, and I start saying, "Well, how much heavy strength training are you doing?" So, yeah, you can continue to hack all your mitochondria all you want. You're going to be weak as [ __ ] That's going to be a problem. Cuz you can't move yourself. So, think about it this way. Why is it somebody that gets gets out of breath walking upstairs as they get older? It's not because their mitochondria suck. It's not because they can't produce energy, cuz that's not an energy-demanding activity. It's because they got weak. So, yeah, your heart rate sucks, and your resting heart rate gets up, and you're out of breath, and your VO2, all this stuff goes down, and blah blah blah. You're looking at the wrong thing. You have to look at what's caused the issue. Which is not the symptom, right? Which is my heart rate is high, or my blood glucose is high, whatever. By the way, do you know do you know what actually regulates blood glucose the most? Do tell. The fast-twitch muscle fibers. Interesting. If I'm trying to train specifically the fast-twitch fibers, do I need to concentrate on doing a certain type of exercise? No. It's not the exercise per se. So, remember, an exercise is simply an external stress. It's fake. It's something we're using to cause an internal stimulus. If you want to turn on the fast-twitch muscle fibers in your hamstrings and your glutes and your quads, I don't care if you want to do a a hex bar deadlift, if you want to do some squat, if you want to do a leg press machine, it doesn't matter. It's just simply what you're using to help your muscles contract. In fact, there's other non-lifting things you could possibly do. Single leg squat perhaps, with no weight at all, depending on how strong you are, or maybe some stairs. Different things you can do. The point is you need to be challenging the muscle's ability to contract really hard. Um I mean, if we go back to what we were saying a go, like, not only are the faster muscle fibers the bigger ones, but they're the ones that are better at using glucose as a fuel. Um slow twitch muscle fibers are better at using fat as a fuel. So, if you're having a hard time regulating that glucose, also happens to happen very commonly in people who don't strength train. Maybe it's not just the fact that your liver doesn't handle the glucose well, or you've got a gut microbiome problem. Those are all possibilities. It also could be the fact that you don't strength train. Those fibers are dormant and or gone. And what we know very clearly is the plasticity within the muscle, in other words, its ability to change its composition, changes really rapidly. So, if you haven't strength trained or done anything heavy in weeks, decades, then I would say, "Okay, then we need to put you in a situation in which you're doing something that challenges the muscle, um and as many of them." I don't want you to go to the gym and be like, "Okay, I do these three exercises." Because you're probably not challenging all the muscle in enough of a variety, and that's not sustainable over time. Right? So, we want We want variation, but there's a difference between variation in our training and randomization. It's interesting. Randomization is not a good idea. There's no plan, there's no purpose. Okay. Right? We want variation, so which which means I want to do different exercises in in different ways, but there needs to be a plan or purpose. There needs to be some sort of progression or some sort of logic behind behind why we do it as opposed to, "I'm going to do this exercise today." Why? Cuz that machine is open. Right. Fantastic. Okay, like sometimes that happens. Um but we need skill. Just If we applied that to any other aspect of our life, you'd be like, "Well, that's crazy." Same thing with your training. So, we need to have someone that can help you or yourself um choose these things in a very specific progression and um variation path, so that we're getting to where we want to get to. Uh that helps us avoid the overtraining issues, and it helps us continually progressively overload, which is one of the things that we have to do to challenge the muscles. It can has to be progressively overloaded. But you can't just simply say, "Okay, I'll just add 5 lb to the same movement every time." How long does that last? Not very, right? So, for you to for your wellness question, that's what I would say is Okay, are we doing enough of that? Um for the VO2 max piece, we'd have to figure out where exactly your problem is, but it's typically in the same two areas. Your ability to sustain work over time, uh elevated work. So, this is not like, can you go for a 4-hour hike? Um but I'm talking more like uh an elevated heart rate at say 80%. How long can you go? 20 minutes? 25? 30? 40? And the other one would be the opposite of a shorter, extremely high um physical challenge. So, something like interval training. But really, really, really difficult. So, if you piece that together, that looks like a little bit of strength training, a little bit of interval, and a little bit of the steady state movement. So, we would play in all of those areas in in a progressive fashion in a planned um order, such that we get all those challenges. If you do that, you'd be about as bulletproof physically as as you could possibly be. Now, what about some of the getting back to nature stuff? Like, should people be thinking about forest bathing? Should they be thinking about sunlight, sleep? Like, so people want to get fancy, they want to get into the like deep nuance, but Yeah, yeah, yeah. instead, like, hey, the reason your team is losing is cuz you don't [ __ ] block and tackle. So, like, take care of the really basic stuff first. Um I've heard you talk about sleep. It's like profound effects on testosterone, things like that. And I thought, wow, this it's actually really true. Like, you understand the nuance so much, it's so tempting to want to just pick a topic and go [ __ ] a thousand miles deep and I know you can do it. But, the reality is your answer to people is always you said even when you're dealing with elite athletes, you're like, "I first look at like the most basic [ __ ] cuz they're all over the map." I have a couple of athletes that I've worked with that I we have to do advanced blood testing things on. The vast majority it's not. The vast majority it is it is not even blocking and tackling. It's you didn't even show up to the stadium on the right day. Right. Like, you're not even in the [ __ ] building yet. So, with the blocking and tackling it's okay, are you consistently bad with your sleep or did you just go through a couple of nights of sleep deprivation, which I'm actually a fan of? Interesting. You actively do sleep deprivation. Uh yesterday I was up at 1:30 in the morning, right? After like a very short window of sleep or you were still up until No, no, no. Like, I woke up at 1:30 in the morning, my day started. Wow, okay. And moved on. Um And did you set an alarm? Absolutely. Interesting. don't think there's any magic to those numbers. What is magic for sleep is consistency for the most part. Um what I don't want people to be is slightly consistently under slept. Okay. It's a good tip. That's that's a problem, right? So, if you're constant or you're just extreme variation, right? So, it's like, "Yeah, I slept 4 hours last night and I slept 11 tonight." Like, that is a recipe for disaster. So, for me it is very planned. Okay, I'm going to go through short periods of sleep deprivation and then I'm going to pay that back by going through a solid 2 and 1/2 or 3 weeks of no less than 10 a night. Like, these massive recovery phases we go through and then you kind of reset a little bit, go back. So, I wouldn't recommend I think in the book we go through some sleep challenges. Uh thirst challenges, same thing. Hunger challenges. Uh physical activity challenges, performance, like all of them. So, I'm just taking the same thing that everyone would do with their health uh with their food and say, "Well, why not extend this to everything else?" The problem is people will do these short sleep challenges, but then they won't pay it back. Right? So, if you go through short periods, say of fasting, you need to pay it back with feeding, right? If you go through a period and this happens to me occasionally, and I'm sure many people that you associate with where workload just gets out of control. I'm good with that. I'm actually good with people like going absolutely nuts with the work for short periods of time. The difference is that has to then be paid back immediately. Mhm. Right? We We have to pay back the exercise with recovery. We've got to pay back the sleep deprivation. If somebody If I'm working with somebody and having a hard time getting to sleep or it's like, "Yeah, I struggle. I'm up kind of on and off." One of the things I will do is let's go through some short-term sleep deprivation. Interesting. They're constantly sleep deprived. So, let's make it terrible for a couple of days. Is the goal that they would then, as long as they're scheduling it, that they would be able to sleep longer when they do sleep? This is doing a couple of things. Number one, it kind of just feels like a reset. Because the next night when they go to bed and say they go to bed at 11:00, by the time 11:00 comes, there's no question. Like they're absolutely ready to go. And we just broke that pathway. We're out. Now, I wouldn't do this right before a competition or anywhere close for the athletes I work with. This is something like, let's come back and do a reset afterwards and see if we can figure some things out. Number two, um it helps them realize how terrible they feel. Cuz now I exacerbated the problem. So, okay, sleep's a problem. Let's go as worst as we possibly can. Now, now how you feel, right? And then I don't have to convince them anymore that they're okay on 6 hours. But again, this Here's the difference. What I'm saying right now is planned variation. Mhm. Not randomization. Randomization is a problem with training, with food, with sleep. Um you need to have the resiliency to be able to handle I think in in general normal person life. Um so, like right now, my my sleep is um Um, the resiliency is being tested quite often cuz I have a child I have a baby. Uh, but so in my mind it's like, "Okay, when those things happen and it's unplanned and it's not within my control, I know I can handle it." Why? Because I did the sleep deprivation stuff voluntarily. And I was fine. I executed. Mhm. How important is the mind in all this? Well, it's the whole thing, right? So, physiologically what's it doing? Probably not much. Uh, what are they doing? Resetting how they approach something? That's That's what we're getting at. Yeah, I heard you talking one time about the some of the MMA fighters that you were working with and some of the weird things that you did with them and you were like, "Oh, that may have just worked on their confidence, but I don't care because that's so powerful." Yeah. That's interesting. You always back off in talks like, "Ah, I'm not a psychologist." But you actually have some pretty interesting insights into it. I'm not a psychologist. I don't have any training in those areas. And I I don't know if what I do is backed by science. All I can simply say is, "Look, what what what what we call in science evidence-based practice." And this is what we hope people are always living by. Um, a third of that evidence-based science is science, right? What's the data show? A third of that is what you've experienced and the other third of that is what other people in the field, experts you can glean from. When I have an athlete come to me and we're working together, say nutrition, I know what the research says, but I also know that there's never been a research study ever published on a 35-year-old, 130-lb Mexican pro MMA fighter. So, like there there's no science on her. So, I okay, I'm going to take my best as I can with the the data, but then I'm going to take my personal experience and I'm going to take her personal background experience. And then when she comes to me and says, "Here Here's what I have to do. Here's what I want to do. Here's the things I've done in the past." I'm running this calculation in my head that says, "Okay, she's terrified of carbohydrates. All right. If I push back on this right now, what's going to happen? I don't know, right? And so I'm running that calculation going, "Maybe, you know what? It's not worth the fight right now. How is it that I can put them in the best situation to succeed while getting them closer to the evidence-based practice. That's all I'm really trying to do is as I'm trying to cut off the the terrible ideas, get them closer to get them um doing better things, but this is a process. And any of the athletes I've been fortunate enough to work with our plans evolve over time. And after two or three fight camps, then I start getting them in a position where I understand uh what their actual body does, understand what they're simply not willing to not do or do. And then it's like, "Okay, well, you're going to choose to do that. Let me see if I can help you do that better." How do you approach mindset in your own life? So, for instance, you have a baby, which is very interesting to hear how you address that. Yeah. Um do you have rules around mindset? Like things that you uh demand of yourself or anything like that? I don't know if I'd call them rules. I grew up in a logging kind of country town. My father, my grandfather, my mom, my every basically kid I grew up with, uh there was tons of reasons to lose, but there was never because someone outworked you. Like, that just wasn't possible. And uh responsibility was a a huge thing when I grew up. That was just the mentality a lot of the kids that I grew up with would have to go take care of the animals before work. Or they had uh jobs feeding horses or whatever. And then they'd do that and then you'd go to school. And then we'd go to football practice. We would lift like and then we'd do our homework, etc. So, um like I don't know anything different. I would love to say that I have this mental strength or something, but like to me, when something goes wrong, if uh a study doesn't go well or an athlete doesn't perform, I don't know anything besides "Okay, Andy, you [ __ ] up. Like, we can do this better. This is This is great." And And personally, I like that cuz then I'm like, "Yes." It's when things go wrong you don't know why. That's when I'm like, "Oh." What do you do in those moments? You just you make sure there isn't something you can't find. Like you go back and you look, right? Was there something that I over missed? What could I have done different? Uh with MMA it's hard because win-loss is not a good metric. Right? Sometimes I did a great job and it was perfect and the athlete turned this way and they got kicked. Or they fought somebody better than them. That's just That's just happens, right? That's part of why I love doing it. It's cuz you don't know. There's just way too many variables. So we got to figure it out. Um And so walk me through that process. So the people watching right now, they're almost certainly not professional MMA fighters anyway, but they're living their life. They have a baby. And so there are real challenges that they're facing. They're not sure what they should be looking at. They They're They're buying into awareness. So they get that. They're already doing that. They're trying to think through I did this and I had this kind of thing. They're certainly if they're watching my channel, they're hyper-aware of mindset. Um but like even myself, so you talk about um maybe spikes in glucose are problematic. I actually that that really um hit me and that's making me rethink what I should be doing. Um so that's super interesting. Heart rate variability with heart rate want What I'd say is I don't want people to be fragile. Okay, I love that, but define what you mean by that. What would fragility look like? And then what's the thing you want them to be? Not handling any unplanned stress. If you can't handle an unplanned stress in any aspect of your life and a little bit of stress causes a big problem, that to me is fragile. let's say that they are fragile. What do they do? So challenge that directly. Challenge the assumption. Um so is the fragileness coming from the fact that you anticipated or had a larger response than was necessary. Um in the world of MMA we would call this did you Did you go for the faint? Right? So someone threw a jab at you and you jumped 3 ft to the left. You should have just moved an inch. Right? Okay. Or was it the fact that you needed to move 6 ft. Right? Cuz someone threw a head kick. So, this is a problem, right? You And this is just spending time with yourself. Right? Did I move unnecessarily too far? In other words, did I exaggerate my response? Did I freak out? Did I Should I have not responded like that? Or if I actually responded appropriately, why did I have such a big response? That's probably cuz I haven't challenged that Metabolic flexibility is a very easy one here. So, I believe that unless you have an extremely abnormal disease situation, you should be able to handle, say, a bolus of carbohydrate. If you aren't, it's probably cuz you're not challenging that system. Uh and just to give me some numbers, where would you say I'm I'm no longer handling it? Like if I'm spiking over 200? If I'm spiking over 110? No, you couldn't put a number behind that because physiology is too different. So, you might feel at 150 how I feel at 200. So, is it a feeling? Like, "Oh, I feel light-headed." Or It would be a feeling and a number, and I would say we want to use them both in conjecture. Okay. Right? Which is say, like, "Okay, and I noticed I was at 200, and I also felt like this." And I can't tell you one of them is more important than the other one. Um physiology is just just too different for us to say that. So, I would use both. Um use whatever ones you want to come out there, but if you, say for example, had 25 g of carbohydrate, and you felt like you got sluggish, and you felt your stomach cramp, that's a problem. Like, that's not a lot of carbohydrate in a single Let's say it was even a a fast elevating glucose. Okay. So, you then want to have one of two options. You change your entire lifestyle around such that you never ever come in contact with a carbohydrate, or you work on challenging that. Let's go for like an allergy. So, with my kid right now, we're dosing her with peanut butter. Oh, this is [ __ ] interesting. We're going to get hate mail for this. I love it already. So, how Walk me through the protocol. So, And And And preemptive, right? You have no reason to believe she Yeah, she. You have no reason to believe she is allergic, you just want to make sure that we get some early exposure. Exactly. Okay, so how do we start doing that? You start very small. Mhm. You dose, you wait, come back, and those dosages start going up up up up up. That's all it is. So, initially, it was literally taking a little bit of safe peanut butter, and it's like touching it on her cheek. Okay, great. Come back. Watch for a few hours, any hives, anything? Did she get a runny nose? Couple days later, uh probably two, three days later, come back, same thing. Okay, do that for a week or something. And now, get some on her tongue. Move forward. Did she get colicky? Did she have anythings like that? Okay, no, fantastic. Now, you start feeding her smaller amounts. It's just simple. Like, this is basic sixth grade science. Start, respond. Like, don't give them like, "Okay, change this variable, this variable, that variable." You change one variable at a time. You be very, very, very slow and patient. It's the same thing when you work out, it's the same thing with your food. Like, it's it's any part of your life, it's the same [ __ ] system. Little bit of change, patience, change one variable at a time, track, measure accordingly. Be objective, be subjective, use it all, and go over time. What are the protocols? This is so interesting, a scientist with a baby. I've never had this conversation before. What Do you have any other protocols that you're doing, whether it's allergy or otherwise? Yeah, I mean, we do that basically with everything. So, we expose her to as many things as we possibly can. Give me some examples. So, the sun. Like, we put her directly out in the sun. Mhm. Um we don't do it uh now she's 10 months, so she gets a little more sun exposure. But, I'm not going to lather her up and cover her in uh full head-to-toe gear and or uh sun blocking cream every time she goes to see the sun. But, the first time we took her out in the sun, it was like, "Okay, sun. Okay, out." Right? I mean, you're talking uh when they're little, you got less than a minute. Right. Something like that. And that slowly goes up over time. Any other food the same way. I expose her unfortunate uh I'm able to harvest my own animal meat. So we exposed her to all kinds of different animal meats. raise animals? Do you hunt? Okay. I hunt. And you use the meat? Yeah. I mean like last year I came back with probably 280 lbs, 300 lbs. That's a lot. And um what is uh let's call it a week average, what's your ratio of meat of any kind including fish and vegetables? I typically have I'll put it this way, meat at just every feeding if you will and uh I don't know if I'd ever miss a feeding without vegetable either. And I know it's going to be different for everybody but I'm trying to introduce more vegetable variety into my life so I'm I'm asking directly for myself. Yeah. Give me like some of your top ones that maybe you're like I eat your kale, bok choy, collard greens, asparagus. Like I think I get the typical ones but basically I eat green [ __ ] Yeah. Like what else? I'm trying to avoid peppers right now cuz I have a suspicion that uh lectins hurt my joints. So what are some like non-nightshady things that I can get some color in? Yeah. Well, um the easier play would be to go to fruit. Interesting. loads of color there. of vegetables though as being the same as fruit? I think of fruit as being edge I I think it's nature's candy. That's the real just direct [ __ ] statement. Well, I would directly totally [ __ ] disagree. I knew that was coming. Um okay, so do you do you think of fruits vegetables or do you think of fruits and vegetables? Separate. Okay. Absolutely. But Put it this way, so for example, myself or when I work with an athlete basically vegetables don't count towards towards the allotment of calories or carbohydrates. Okay. Even something like carrots? No, because this is I'm glad you put this up. I I just had a super fiery post about this on Instagram a couple of weeks ago. Uh carrots have been [ __ ] bastardized. People need to like no offense. None taken. But people need to [ __ ] read. People constantly talk about how much sugar is in carb or in carrots and it's actually super low in sugar. It's just a high percentage of it. It is very very high in glycemic index but it is tremendously low in glycemic load and those differences are critically important. So glycemic index is a basic basically people think about this is how quickly will a carbohydrate or glucose get from a food into your blood sugar, right? And it's pretty high in carrots especially if you cut them small and cook them. Right? And you've you've broken down a many of the cell walls. You're going to be able to get macronutrients out pretty quickly, right? The difference though being the the glycemic load takes into account how much actual sugar is actually in the food and that's tremendously low for the carrot. So to get a noticeable uh large response in your blood glucose from carrots, you would have to consume a boatload of carrot. So that's the major problem. I mean just look at the calories. So a giant carrot has virtually no calories. It's tiny. So how can there be a lot of carbohydrate, a lot of sugar in something that also doesn't have any calories? It's really really difficult. So um you start talking other root vegetables. Now those things can be a little more dense but carrots are really again assuming you're eating them say raw. And a giant whole carrot, it's really pretty manageable. I would be very shocked if you ate a carrot and had a any noticeable change in blood glucose. If you do, I would say you're very very very intolerant to carbohydrate. And to me, I would say that's a problem unless you're very specifically say 6 months deep into doing a very particular keto protocol or something like that which is which is cool, right? In that case, you have intentionally going back to conscious. You're consciously trying to do something over here for whatever reason. I'm totally cool with that. But if the goal is just to sort of be living and a carrot raises your blood glucose noticeably and you're having problems constantly throughout the day. I get you're probably getting a big blood glucose spike from protein, too. Um which is going to be a huge issue, right? So it's like what do you You want to really put yourself in a situation where all you can eat all day is like avocado? I don't think that's something we should strive to is I guess the way I'd say it. So do some people need to do that? I would grant you that. Probably not where we should be steering the ship for most people, though. I think that's a problem. All right. So getting back to fruit. So Yeah. vegetables don't count, even carrots. Do your [ __ ] reading on it. Uh fruits. Where do we go with fruits? Are there fruits that you think are um maybe better God, I try to avoid words I know you're going to hate, but No, um well, better is always dependent upon context, right? Mhm. So what do you mean by better? What's the goal? What's the purpose? trying to get um color variety because of its implications in micronutrients. I'm trying to get more micronutrients into my system to hedge uh against overdoing any one thing because my obsession is longevity and wellness. Fair enough. But I would still simply say like how are you using that carbohydrate within the day? So for example I I joke about this all the time, but a spike in blood glucose is almost always associated as negative when in fact this is the most important good thing post exercise. So I would come back and say if you have a food that you know spikes your blood glucose, it doesn't mean it's a bad food. Right. This is a food now that we need to understand when to use and when not use. Like for example if you're trying to recover from a very difficult workout and you have multiple workouts or you're going to train again the next day or you want to optimize your recovery. This is a time to deploy, say a fruit. Or to something that's going to maybe spike your blood glucose cuz that's not a bad thing, remember? That system needs to be challenged. So, your ability to handle a bump in blood glucose, I would argue should be challenged occasionally. I would certainly argue should not be challenged repeatedly or constantly. Like we call this diabetes, right? Or the net result's going to be you begin to become insulin sensitive versus resistant, right? But that doesn't mean we should avoid anything at all costs because if you avoid it at all costs, what's going to happen to that ability? It's going to go away. That That system needs to be challenged a little bit. How much, how often you should challenge it, I think comes down to the person though. Um what are you doing exercise-wise? If you're training a lot using fast-twitch muscle fibers, then that's going to be handled very well and very well processed. If not, you don't. So, for example, if I'm traveling or have say three or four days of basically uncontrolled work, I'm probably not going to be choosing very many high glycemic responding high gly- glycemic load foods. Don't need it, right? But if I'm going to be training a lot or I'm stable, which is what I try to do often, then I'm going to use those to my advantage to enhance recovery, particularly for an athlete or um even myself. You need to actually pay attention to the research and pay attention to the fact that people talk about, for example, fructose and the fact that it's processed in the liver. And that's a problem. It can be if you're over-consuming just like anything else. But the fact that when you burn muscle glycogen, you start eventually using blood glucose. You refuel your blood glucose from the liver. So, if you train really, really hard, you see a depletion in liver glycogen. Fruit is then therefore the best way to replenish that because it's going to go directly there. That's the pro- That's the point of it. So, we use this to our advantage. People, for whatever reason, like to give berries like a like Okay, that's the okay one. But like, [ __ ] don't eat watermelon. Super high in sugar. Go look. Like go look at the actual numbers in a watermelon. Go look actually, watermelon's pretty high in satiety. So, it makes you feel pretty full. Uh and almost entirely water. It's very low in sugar. So, like people just think those things because they're like, "Oh, it's super sweet." And it is. Sweetness index versus total amount of load of sugar and the amount of watermelon that people actually will consume on a normal basis, it's different. And and so, I'm not an advocate of people who are in very low energy expenditure consuming a bunch of unnecessary carbohydrate. I'm never going to be a proponent of that. Um but do I think most people should be consuming at least a piece of of fresh whole fruit a day? Probably. Um for the most part. And that's where we can get our variety. I I don't think the fact that apples used to be this big and now they're this big is like death changing things. Like this is not These are not a real issue for people who are generally physically active. Um if that's the case, then eat half the apple. Make it just do it in slices. Like there there are ways we can get around these things without without um getting us there. So, for you personally, I would say um I would start playing with different fruits and see how much of those things act as especially if you have the glucose monitor on. Um let's see. Um there's also ways you can mitigate that, too. So, for example, uh if you consume that fruit with fiber or if you consume with protein, you'll I almost guarantee you'll blunt your glucose response. Um so, those are things I would say play with if you're interested. Um do I think you can live a full, fulfilled, happy life with little fruit? Yeah. Totally. I I don't think you have to get anything really in. So, I'm not like a I'm not sponsored by the national fruit organization or something like that. I I I just I just don't like when people get too far to one extreme. Yeah, I I actually lived my life there for a long time captain phobia of most everything, quite honestly. Certainly carbohydrates. Even uh went pretty hard against fat for years and years and years. Uh only to suffer massive consequences because of it. So, now it's like I really am trying to one hedge my bet with variety, which just seems like a a pretty natural response. I think we have a number of unexplored areas of food. Mhm. And when you bring up variety, like my mind right now is really interested in things like mushrooms. Uh things like sea-based food. Interesting. Why on both of those? Yeah, so because I don't think we've spent enough time thinking about them. That is 100% why. I think we spent all of our time thinking about where do we get our fruits and vegetables and meat. And then our our producible grains, um root vegetables, things like that. And and that's all really good. But if you look at if you question that general assumption, you start stepping back and you think, "Okay, like if we start looking at all the possible foods, why is it we've decided these are our only foods?" Okay, then what other stuff are we not consuming that's right there in front of us? And my guess is that if we spent more time on mushrooms, we'd start feeling like, "Oh, maybe this is the way to get some of this variety of fi- there's a whole host of things that we're probably not getting um in other places there. Well, let's look at the ocean, too. Same thing. Like let's let's look at some of the stuff that maybe other cultures have used for a long time, but we don't use in our culture or that we simply are not at mass scale. Mhm. I love the scientific non-dogmatic approach. Tell people where they can find you and engage with that approach more frequently. Yeah, um social media's the easiest way. So, um @DrAndyGalpin. There, um I am a bit different where I I take basically as much as my my undergraduate and graduate curriculum and I put it up on my YouTube page. Nice. So, my goal is to literally put my entire exercise physiology, nutrition, strength conditioning, all my classes up on that YouTube page. So, that's up there and I think it's just Andy Galpin on YouTube. Um that's on my website as well, same name. But I think uh the way that I put it together, you're not going to find in an exercise physiology textbook or a strength conditioning textbook, but it's all up there for free. And you can check that stuff out. Cool, man. I love it. All right. If you were going to have people make one change to their lifestyle, could be anything, um that would have the biggest impact on their health, what would you have them do? I would have to say accept responsibility. Whoa. Didn't see that one coming. Yeah, I mean I think that's going to give you the foundation for any of the change. Right, so it may not be your fault, but you have options. And that's, I think, the message that I like to continue is the more and more we are learning about physiology. Yeah, there are some people got a good draw and made bad choices. Some people got a really, really tough draw. Okay. What are you going to do about it? You still have an option. You still can have some control. But you have to make that choice. And to me, that's empowering. So, um take more responsibility for the things, um whether you're getting your health, your longevity goals, any of that, the more you can put on yourself, I think, the better we're going to be. And I dig that. Dr. Andy Galpin, everybody. Thank you so much, man. Guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.