Have you ever felt that you are not doing enough and not achieving enough? It may be easier to look at our current situation and feel sorry about ourselves but rest assured that everything is part of the process. Growth means doing things one step at a time and taking ownership of our situation and life.
In this episode, Geoffrey Woo interviews Lisa about her experiences with ultramarathons and the importance of mindset during these difficult races. Lisa also talks about how all her experiences created a character that never backed down, even when her mother almost died from an aneurysm. Developing strength meant that she needed to pick herself up from failures and disappointments time and time again.
If you want to know more about building strength and resilience, tune in to the podcast episode!
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
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My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
“And so no matter what you're going through in life, try to think of it as well, this is going to be a part of something that I'm meant to be learning and I can turn this around.”/
“When I decided I want something, I just do it until I get good at it, even if I'm hopeless at it at the start.”
“None of us have to be limited anymore. Certainly not this day and age by one profession.”
“It's all a matter of the motivation. It's how bad do you want this thing.”
(My mother) “poured my focus back into the here and the now, instead of projecting into the future, which was overwhelming and terrifying. And that's how we broke it down step by step.”
“If I hadn't had the belief that the human body and mind are capable of far more than what the average person thinks it is, then I would have listened to the naysayers and I would have given up.”
“We've got to do better. And we've got to respect our elders. They're the ones who made us who we are.”
Geoffrey Woo is the Co-founder and Executive Chair of Health Via Modern Nutrition, or H.V.M.N. With the core mission of redefining human performance and longevity, the company offers quality nootropics to the market. The company is guided by rigorous research and development based on science, coupled with label transparency and evidence grading.
Geoffrey is also the host of the H.V.M.N. Podcast, where he regularly interviews experts on health, nutrition, biohacking, and entrepreneurship. With over 100 episodes, you are sure to learn about optimizing your health! Tune in to the podcast!
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To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Intro: Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week.
Now today I have something a little bit different than my usual format. I've actually used a interview that I did on the H.V.M.N. podcast with the amazing Geoffrey Wu. He has an incredible podcast and company that I'd love you to check out as well. I'll put all the links in the show notes. And he did this interview with me and I told my story and a little bit of my background. And particularly we went into the story behind the Libyan desert, which was an illegal crossing that I did across the Libyan desert, a long, long time ago, beginning of my career. And I thought it would be quite interesting to share this little backstory with you. And also, you know, we go into a deep discussion around high performance and being the best that you can be.
So I hope you enjoy this interview. something a little bit different than having my usual guests which will be back to next week. I do have coming up in the next few weeks, some fantastic guests. I have James Nestor who is the author of Breath, which is an incredible book, all about the art of breathing. And you would be amazed at the science behind optimizing your health and everything with breathing.
And then I also have Patrick McKeown who is also the author of The Oxygen Advantage, again, all about nasal breathing [0:01:43]and the particular breathing techniques and just absolutely incredible. Both New York Times bestselling books, top authors, top experts in this field. So, I hope you make sure you tune into that.
Also coming up on the show in the next few weeks. I have Dr. Brian Walsh, who is one of my teachers and incredible, incredible — a super brain of a man — who's going to be talking to us about detoxing. So those are a few episodes coming up in the next few weeks. So make sure you do stay tuned.
Now before I go over to the interview, I just want to remind you, now Christmas is coming up. If you haven't got your Christmas presents, check out my jewellery collection online, it's called The Fears Collection and it's all about inspiring and motivating people with while you're wearing some blink, while you’re wearing something that's pretty cool. So sports jewellery, it's hardwearing, it's the sort of things you can dress down or dress up with. And I hope you enjoy that collection. You can find it in my shop on lisatamati.com.
Also, on that note with Christmas coming up, got to remind you to go and grab one of my books, either Running Hot, which was my first book, Running To Extremes, which was my second. Both of those chronicling all my adventures around the world. And my third book, which has just come out this year, Relentless, telling the story of bringing my mum back after her massive aneurysm and all the brain damage that she had and being told that there was no way forward. It's an empowering, inspiring story — a love story. And it's a story that is really — a book that it's actually, I'm getting feedback all the time from people telling me how much it's changed their lives, their approach to taking ownership over their own health and not just leaving it up to everyone else. So, I hope you enjoy it.
Now head over to the show in just a moment. But if you could also do a rating and review for the podcasts I really, really appreciate that. And I say it every week. But I do really appreciate getting any reviews. And if you've got any questions, please reach out to us. You can reach me on lisa@lisatamati.com. We're also taking on a few clients at the moment on a one-on-one which we don't usually do just because of the sheer volume of work that we have. But I am taking on a very few people. If you've got to have health journey that you want help with, you want someone to help navigate some tricky waters that you're going through, or challenge, or if you're setting yourself up for a mess of big sporting challenge, obviously, mindset or anything like that, then please reach out to me. I do enjoy working one on one with just a handful of people at a time because it does take a lot of resources. So, if you're interested in that reach out to me at lisa@lisatamati.com.
And now over to the show with the interview with Geoffrey Wu.
Announcer: Coming up in this episode
Lisa: Our little boy Joseph suddenly came early and he only survived for two hours and he died. And this was like heartbreaking. Our last chance basically, to hold your baby and to watch him struggle and die and that was like the worst thing I've ever been through.
And even in this horrifying situation, if you like, there were moments of joy, moments of blessings and the blessings that our little boy brought to us. It took me a few weeks. when I now think on my little boy, I think, what he left behind, like the changes he created in me, the changes he created in my husband, our surrogate parents — were extremely close now — to our surrogate parent family, to their children. My husband is a firefighter, and he's now become an officer, which he wouldn't do before. Because he was like, “Ah, I'm too shy, and too, whatever.” And now he's like, “No, my little boy didn't get to live, I'm [0:05:48]going to live full bore, I’ve suffered.” So little Joseph bought blessings in a way that we couldn't see at the time. And I don't wish that on anyone. And I certainly don't want to go through that again. But it could either break you or you can try to find something in there that has meaning for you, and a reason for you.
And so, no matter what you're going through in life, try to think of it as “Well, this is going to be a part of something that I'm meant to be learning and I can turn this around.” And that's I think your job when you're on this earth is to try and have these lessons and become stronger and better and not let it break you.
Announcer: Welcome to the H.V.M.N podcast, what we do with our bodies today becomes the foundation of who we are tomorrow. This is Health Via Modern Nutrition.
Geoffrey Wu: Hey, everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the H.V.M.N. podcast. And this is going to be an especially fun one because my guest today is Lisa Tamati. I had a wonderful conversation on her podcast. So, for today, we're going to flip the script, flip the table and have Lisa share her experience.
In a lot of my conversations over the last few years now, when you really talk to World Class specialists in one specific domain, they oftentimes touch and become generalist experts across a multitude of domains. I think that's just the world that we live in. To be really, truly world class. One can't just be in that one specific tunnel. One really gets the best practice from a number of domains. I think Lisa really encapsulates that for me. So Lisa, great to have on the H.V.M.N. podcast.
Lisa: I’m so stoked to be here. Geoffrey, it was wonderful to have you on my show. And yeah, now the flip-the-script is going to be exciting. I can't wait to do a deep dive.
Geoffrey: Yeah. One area that you have a tremendous amount of experience and I have a little bit of a taste of is ultramarathons, long distance running. I think that seems to be your initial entry point into high performance, human physiology. Love to hear your background story of how you got into it, competing Badwater, some of the most prestigious well-known ultramarathon races. What was your journey into this specific field?
Lisa: Yeah, thanks, Geoff. So I've been doing ultramarathons now for over 25 years, and I've had, in that time, the chance to sort of run and compete and train over 70,000 Ks in that time. So that’s three times around the equator, if you add it all up.
I've done mostly desert so I've done a couple of thousand kilometres in the Sahara Desert from the Moroccan Sahara, a couple of times to the Tunisian, Arabian Desert, the Libyan desert, Niger, Jordan, also the Gobi desert in China, Death Valley in the USA, a couple of times, in different parts of the outback of Australia, which is closer to home. And I've also at one stage ran right through New Zealand, doing 52 marathons in 42 days, raising money for charity. So that was another a really amazing mission.
But the funny thing about my story is that I'm a so what from average, as far as talent goes. I don't have any special genetic abilities. No Dean Karnazes or David Goggins, or anything like that, as far as ability and speed go. But what I did have was really, really super strong mindset. And when I decide I want something, I just do it until I get good at it, even if I'm hopeless at it at the start. And certainly, I was asthmatic as a child, so I was in and out of hospital, I had a very poor lung capacity. Very poor v02 max. So I wasn't really made or built for this type of thing, but I never let that stop me doing anything, really.
Geoffrey: Yeah, so what kicked it off? When I talked to a lot of folks that end up being, just long careers in endurance sport, oftentimes, it's realizing that in middle school that they were really get the 5k compared to the other middle schoolers?
Did you have a story like that where you ended up running and you realize, “Hey, I'm pretty good at this. Everyone else is tired, I'm pretty good.”
Lisa: That was absolutely bloody, hopeless setup. To be honest, Geoff. What happened is I was really into sport, I was a gymnast as a kid. I was good at gymnastics. And so, I did that from the ages of 5 up to about 15. And I was on sort of track to be a national sort of gymnast.
But then when I went through puberty, I grew up too tall, and I grew up very muscular and athletically built. And I just didn't have it. Once I went through puberty, I knew I just wasn't going to make it.
And so that was a real blow to me because that was all I'd done. And I've grown up in a family, where the expectations were really, really high. And I was expected to represent my country and I was expected to be the best at everything that I did. I had amazingly loving, amazing mum and dad, but my dad was also very hard on us. And that, I think having that early childhood — being pushed into that really strict discipline that gymnastics requires, was, in some ways, a really good learning curve and other ways it was quite damaging.
So as a young woman — so from 13 to 15, before I started, stopped, gymnastic — I really struggled with my body image. And I was the heaviest, biggest girl in the group, if you like and, and was always constantly ridiculed for that. And so they that started a path of self-loathing, and very low self-esteem.
And when I failed at gymnastics, I thought, “Well, that said, I'm never going to represent New Zealand.” But I sort of had that dream in back of my mind the whole time. And then in my early 20s, I met an Austrian guy who was cycling through our country here and had an accident on our mountain, got hit by an avalanche. And my mum, being the sort of mum she was, she always picking up strays and bringing them home and looking after them, as mums do. And she bought this young gentleman home, and we fell in love and doing lots of adventure stuff around the world. So we cycled around 25 different countries, climb mountains, quiet, did all that sort of adventurous stuff. And that sort of opened my eyes to the world of travel because I've never been outside my country prior to that — into the world of adventure and to what I was capable of. But it was also at the same time, a very abusive relationship. And once again, I was never good enough. I was never what I was supposed to be. It was it could never live up to the expectations. I wasn't fast enough, strong enough, good enough. I was accused of having bad genes.
And this sort of culminated. I did a crossing of the Libyan desert, an expedition with a partner and two other guys, this was a really extreme illegal crossing of the Libyan desert. And we only had like two litres of water a day because that's all we could carry on our backs with this distance of 250 kilometres that we had planned. And no one had been through — no Europeans have been through this part of the desert at this stage. There were no maps. We managed to get some pilot maps of US military don't ask how. And we started off on this crossing and two litres of water a day, and 40 plus degree temperatures with 35 kilo backpacks. It was a recipe for extremely on the limits.
Geoffrey: That’s a serious rock. Yeah, that’s a serious rock. Wow.
Lisa: Yeah, especially when I was like 58, 59 kilos at the time. So, it was more than like, now, nearly two thirds of my body weight. And this ended up being not only physically really demanding, but the boyfriend ended up leaving me in the middle of the desert on day four.
Yeah. So that you can imagine you have your relationship breakups. We've all been there and done that, but to do that in the middle of the Libyan desert, in the middle of this crossing. And the reason was, we were all suffering and very irritable, as you can imagine, when you can't, you got no water. And so, timbers were short, and he wanted to move faster. And we were doing a book on the expedition. So, photographing it, and he was a perfectionist, and wanted to set up all these photos and wanted me to help.
And the leader of the expedition said, “Look, we got to keep moving. So, you can take your pictures, but you got to keep up with us.” And so he wanted me to help with that. And I physically was just unable to run around, do anything extra other than put one foot in front of the other. And so that went down like a ton of bricks. And after a couple of days of frosty temperatures in between us, he said, “That's it, I'm leaving, I'm heading off over the sand dunes. And you can stay with the other two guys.” And that's it, the relationship’s over.
So that was a real deep turning point. And it sounds quite funny now, but it wasn't at the time, I can assure you, and we're in desperate straits by this time. The dehydration is so, so bad. I don't know where the heat is going to survive, whether we're going to survive, what's going to happen. And in that moment, I really learned I had to compartmentalize things in my brain. So I had to be able to function despite the emotional turmoil that I was going through. And that was a really good lesson to learn so that you can actually still function and do what you have to do to survive to get out and not fall to pieces. And of course, I owed it to the other two guys, too, who are like, “Oh, my God, we've got a hysterical woman here. Now, what do we do now?”
Geoffrey: This story deserves more attention. I mean, just from the emotional capacity, obviously, a breakup with a long-term partners of emotion is a massive emotional turmoil. And then it sounds like there was questions of even surviving. So-
Lisa: Yes, there was.
Geoffrey: – at the time, did you think that everyone could have died? How serious? I mean, it sounds like it was pretty serious. But did you have regrets or thoughts racing through your mind? Were you like, “Hey, like, why did I do this? Am I going to die in the desert? I'm stupid.” Can you walk us through that kind of a thought process there?
Lisa: The thirst was just unbelievable, like the suffering that goes on when you don't have enough water is really, really horrific. So your mouth swells, your lung, your tongue swells, you just got no saliva, so you can’t eat, obviously. And we were covering around 45 kilometres a day, or we were trying to so that we would have enough to get out. So we had a schedule that we had to keep. And we were trying to avoid going in the very hot hours of the day, but there was often no shade, so you just like sort of put your backpack up and try and hide under it.
So it was extreme, as far as would we survive, and it was a military bad area as well. So leaving the Oasis was really dangerous and getting out from outside the military camp and then disappearing into the desert without being followed. And by the same token getting back. And so you had all that sort of stuff going on as well. If you've been caught in this area, you would have been in deep, deep trouble, shall we say?
So, there was there was all sort of elements to it. And then, when the partner left, I had to just stop thinking about whether he would survive or not. I knew that he was extremely strong and strongly fed, but all it takes is one twisted ankle. And you're gone, there was no there's no one to come and rescue you. There's no one to help. There was no outside help at all. And there was no water on route. So there wasn't much chance of survival of anything went wrong. Now as with the other two guys, and the leader of the expedition was a survival expert from Yugoslavia and he was amazing. All I had to do was really follow him and do what he said. And that's what we did.
On day five. I had real we had a sand storm hit and just as the evening broke, and it came in so suddenly. Because I was doing most of my drinking the water in the night-time and because that's when your cells could take it up. If you if you drank during the day, it would just evaporate out of your body really quickly. So, we were trying to drink the bulk of our supply for the day in the evening. And I'd also been squirreling away part of that two litres a day. So I was actually only getting a litre and a half and because I was so scared of running out so that I had more left in the backpack than I was meant to have and on this particular night, the same storm came in, and I didn't get to drink my water because it we just got an hour sleeping bags and just hunkered down and we basically got buried by the same storm. You couldn't do anything for the next five or six hours while this pass through.
And then at about three in the morning, we got up again and we got going really quickly and I only had a small drink and then I got underway. And finally, by now I was not really feeling the thirst anymore and was walking in the early hours of this morning and I just kept passing out and my body was starting to shut down. But Elvis was on such a mission to get to the certain point that we he'd see on the map. So, then he would know where we were exactly and that we would survive that he was just on a mission, he wouldn't stop to let me get water out of the backpack. And they keep pulling me back on my feet. I'd go along for another 20 minutes, and then I pass out again, they’d put me back up again, I'd walk along again, the pass out again. This happened like five or six times, until we got to this place where we could see this — it’s called the barbecue depression.
So you were up on this table top, landscape, and then you're looking down. And so, then he knew where we were. And by now I was hallucinating. So, the, the rocks were becoming monsters. And I didn't even know to ask for a break. If that makes sense. All I was doing was functioning by putting one foot in front of the other, and I couldn't think straight, my vision was closing in, hallucinations, and so on.
Geoffrey: What kept you going? I mean, it sounds like — was it just reptilian survival instinct, just one foot after another? Was there something higher? Or like, “I'm not going to die today?” Where were you in this state? It just sounds like you are so —
Lisa: So close
Geoffrey: — baseline functioning, right? It was just like you're essentially just baseline survival function at this point?
Lisa: Yeah, at this point, there was no higher thinking at all. There was just, I'd been doing this for days, just following the footsteps of the guy in front of me. And that was what I was mesmerised on, this little white flicker of his shoes in front of my eyes. And that's all I focused on doing because just could not think any higher thoughts. When you run out of glucose and when you run out of water, your brain function is it's like being completely out of it.
So I was just doing everything I could just to stay upright and keep moving forward and not thinking and not being intelligent. You're unable in this case to make clear decisions or anything like that or to say, “Look, hey, I need to stop and get some water guys.” And you're on the sort of mission, and you're just going, and it's just pure survival that keeps you putting one foot in front of the other. And then once we got to this place, he helped me down these cliffs and we got to the bottom and he said, “Right, I want you to get out your water and you're going to drink and we're going to sit here for the extra hours. And you're going to slowly drink your whole day supply because your body's starting to shut down. And he said to me, “Look, he'd been in the desert a lot.” He said “I've known of people who have died in the desert with 20 litres of water and next to them because they've been squirreling it away for so long.” He said it's better in your tummy than in the backpack. In other words, I hadn't been having enough just to keep surviving and you can actually die next to a whole big ton of water because you're squirreling it away for too long. And then your body shuts down, and then you're gone, can’t go too far.
So the upshot of this adventure was anyway, we did get out, we did survive, obviously. I had some major kidney damage and health problems after this. The boyfriend also got out and there was a lot of undoing of misty relationship stuff, as you can imagine, in the aftermath. But that was a time in my life where I went and never again, when I let myself be controlled by anybody else. Never again, am I not controlling my own destiny.
And it took me two years to do anything again because my body was just wrecked and emotionally, I was wrecked. But then one day I was reading this magazine. And it was about the Marathon des Sables, which is a very famous ultramarathon in Morocco. And I was reading the statistics and comparing it to what I've been through the Libyan desert. So we've done 250 Ks, we'd had 35 kilo backpacks, two litres of water a day, right? And Marathon des Sables is touted as, that time, as the toughest race on Earth — 240 kilometres, 9 litres of water a day, doctors, journalists, airplanes, helicopters support—
Geoffrey: You’re like, “This sounds easy. This sounds like a luxury clamp glamping.”
Lisa: [laughs] Luxury cruise.
Geoffrey: Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah. So, you had to carry everything in your back, as far as the food goes, but that was like, between 9 and 12 kilos. And I thought, “Hang on a minute. I reckon I could do this.” And so, I hadn't even run a marathon but I signed up for this 240 k event. And that was the first time I'd done something on my own. As girl on her own now, it was really important to me to prove to myself that I wasn't useless.
And I went and I did this race, and I just absolutely loved it. I did really, really well. I didn't win anything but I was in the top 10 woman and I just had an absolute ball. I was surrounded by people who were positive and encouraging and empowering, and there was 700 people in this race and the whole camp moves every day. It was like a huge military operation. It was just mind blowing.
And then after that experience, I started to get my self-confidence back that had been on the ground for the last two years. And I became addicted to that experience if you like because I was like, “Ugh. Give me more of this, this is awesome.” And I was good at something for change. I was told I was doing really well, and the other people were so uplifting, that then I became like addicted to ultramarathon. So, then I just signed up for every race I could possibly find, interested in one after the other, and sort of worked it out as I went. And so long story short, that's how I got into ultramarathon running.
Geoffrey: Now I understand why he put mindset as first year as well, the ultramarathon. I mean, it sounds like almost from your perspective, your mindset and that emotional and cognitive resilience to go through when you were 13 and 15. As an adolescent, athlete towards some of these survival trips. Would you say that's accurate? You almost see yourself like a mental ninja or a mental resilience expert ahead of being an endurance athlete at this point?
Lisa: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Certainly, it's become that over the even the last 20 years, especially. Whereas like I've said, I never hadn't had a lot of talent. But I realized I had I did have really good mental strength when it came to certain areas, especially in sport, I had a mindset that I could just go and I would go to the point of killing myself, nearly, which also became a problem on occasion, because you just wouldn't pull out when you should pull out. And now I'm a lot wiser and don't advise people to do that. And now we coached, you know, hundreds of athletes around the world, and we try to get them to pull out way before that point.
You know what the greatest benefit of doing all these ultramarathons and pushing your body to the limits like this is that it teaches you mental toughness, it teaches you resilience, it teaches you that failure is a part of the game as well. That if we only go through life being scared of failure, we're never going to take risks, we're never going to push the envelope, we're never going to find out what we truly capable of. And if there's one thing I've learned through this whole journey, it's that failure is a part of pushing to the limits. When you're going to that sort of level, even in business or in whatever it is in life, you are going to have failures and that is part of it. And you have to get over that and you have to learn resilience.
And I think resilience is a word that is totally underutilized in our society. And something we should be teaching all our kids about the resilience to be able to get up when you're knocked down. The resilience to be able to believe that you can still achieve them when things are stacked against you or when people are telling you no and it's impossible. That’s the thing that has helped me most, running from A to B and some artificial human made race, if you like, or climbing a mountain or doing any of these things, it's a conduit to learning who the hell you are.
Geoffrey: Yeah, it's an artificial construct. It's like a game to actually bring out that resilience at that person, that character, that integrity. This is something I've been thinking a lot about, I'm glad you're bringing this up. For the specific resilience, where do you think that resilience came from? Do you believe — I mean, this might be like a nature versus nurture question — do you think that there's some sort of genetic disposition that predisposes certain people towards having this kind of emotional and cognitive resilience? But also part of that is that sounds like through your childhood, through your environment, through your upbringing, you had pretty early, shall I say, traumatic or formational experiences as you're competing that probably gave you some sort of either a trauma that you healed really well from, or gave you a lot of experience that people never actually face with like a happy normal childhood or whatever you want to call it. Do you think those were powerful formational experiences that led you down that path?
How do you think about it, when you coaching clients coaching different folks? Obviously, you realize that some people just seem tougher than others, right? Like you hear like, yeah, I think your story is reminds me a lot of David Goggins’s story who was a former Navy SEAL, ultra-endurance athlete, had a lot of trauma through his childhood. How do you synthesize your personal experience as well as the experiences that you've called and pulled through your coaching and your journeys around the world?
Lisa: Yeah, that's a really good question in and yes, like David's stories are incredible and his childhood — terrible, obviously. And it's what who made him who he is, a lot of it.
I actually think there's a combination of nature and nurture. So I'm right into epi genetics and we use a system called Ph360, which is looking at different types of people and different health types. And I am what they call a crusader, which is someone who's always going to be dopamine driven and on a mission, tendency towards addictive behaviour, whether that's running stupid distances or eating too much chocolate. Same sort of thing. And so this, I think — and my brothers often say to me, “Why are you always on a mission? Why are you trying to conquer the world all the time in everything that you do? Why can't you just sit back and relax and have a day at the beach like we do?” And I say, “It's like asking a table not to be flat, this is who I am, this is my makeup, this is the way I made, and I can't do anything much about that.”
So I do think that a big part of the drive and the determination is genetically predisposition. Like mum said, even as a three-year-old, I would be off, diving into the pool when I couldn't swim, or I just had no fear, I would be doing stupid stuff. As a kid without any sort of idea of what the heck I'm doing. And that is always been characteristic of my nature to just jump into things and work it out on the way.
So I think there is a big portion of genetics. And by the same token, I think the combination of that with some very harsh experiences. And these are experiences, too like, don't get me wrong, the self-esteem, the lack of confidence in after that relationship, there were massive depression, suicide attempts. There’s a lot of staff that are not going into the details have to come out the other end, if you know what I mean.
So it wasn't like you're just like, wow, the super resilient person who just gets back up again. It certainly wasn't in that young years, when I didn't have the toolkit, either to be able to cope with the emotions that I'm feeling. And when you're younger, you've got a whole lot of hormones and stuff going around, and very dramatic, as you know, with all teenagers are all dramatic. I was probably super dramatic.
So, there was a lot of stuff and this is a process. And I'm old now, it's very easy for me now look back at the journey. I'm 51 going on 18, I still think I’m a teenager. Looking back over that time and going, actually, I can see the progression, I can see how I developed I can see the highs and the lows, and it all makes sort of a sense now, if you like. And we don't always have that benefit of hindsight when you're in the middle of it, all you know is that you're depressed and you don't want to be here anymore.
But if you can actually look at things from a longer term perspective and go, “This might be a part of making me who I am.” And now every situation that I get into that really blows me to pieces or is really hard or tragic, and I've been through quite a lot in my life, I now look at it and the first thing I try to think is where is the learning here? Where is the silver lining? What is it that I'm meant to be learning from this experience? And how can I turn this into a positive?
And it doesn't always come to me quickly. I mean, last year, we had a situation with my husband and I've been trying to have a baby for four years. We've lost one when I was 46 in a miscarriage. And then I had a surrogate mum, and we were over the moon, we thought we were finally going to have a baby. And six months into it. Our little boy, Joseph, suddenly came early, and he only survived for two hours and he died. And this was like, heartbreaking. Our last chance, basically, to hold your baby and to watch him struggle and die. And it was it was it was like the worst thing I've ever been through.
And even in this horrifying situation, if you like there were there were moments of joy, moments of blessings and the blessings that a little boy brought to us. It took me a few weeks. But when I when I now think on my little boy, I think what he left behind, like the changes he created in me, the changes he created in my husband, our surrogate parents — we’re extremely close now to our surrogate parent family, to their children. My husband is a firefighter and he's now become an officer which he wouldn't do before because he was like “Ah too shy and too whatever.” And now he's like, “No, my little boy didn't get to live, I'm [0:35:06] going to live full bore, I’ve suffered.
So little Joseph bought blessings in a way that we couldn't see at the time. And I don't wish that on anyone. And I certainly don't want to go through that again. But it could either break you or you can try to find something in there that has meaning for you and a reason for you. And so no matter what you're going through in life, try to think of it as “Well, this is going to be a part of something that I'm meant to be learning and I can turn this around.” And that's I think your job, when you're on this earth is to try and have these lessons and become stronger and better and not let it break you.
Geoffrey: Yeah, well, I think that's an incredible framework that you've really, I think, internalized and really test it to the limits, right? How do you turn every single injection, eruption, happenstance that occurs in one's life? And how do you take the positive from that, and it sounds like you've been able to really internalize it so well, that you're really testing the bounds of, of human experience there.
Lisa: I think, and also, I mean, we've gone pretty deep, and it's pretty emotional in this topic. To lighten things up a little bit. I mean, I've had the most crazy adventures and most fun, running things like Death Valley in the US, which is a really well known race that you probably know about. And our friend, David Goggins has done Dean Karnazes and in doing those events, where it's just been absolute highlights of my life to have those achievements.
So by the same token that you have these horrible things such happened to you, and you have to get through them, then you have these amazing experiences that were obviously challenging and hard and the discipline and all that sort of stuff that you learn along the way. But these are also life changing moments where you've achieved something, like Death Valley was a dream for 15 years of mine before I actually got there and got a slot in that race and had enough money to go.
And the boyfriend that left me in the Libyan desert, he'd cycled through Death Valley in the middle of summer. And so, he was always like, “A year, I cycled through Death Valley.” And so in the back of my mind, I was like, “One day, I'm going to run through these valleys” like —
Geoffrey: I’m going to show him
Lisa: — later [laughs] I’m going to show him, and I did. I did. I ran through it twice, I've done it twice and it was a crazy — that was another life changing event for me because it opened up the world I ended up doing a lot of documentaries after that books and so on.
So, there's been some amazing things, and this is the beauty of life. We don't have to be stuck in a box. We have the ability to reinvent ourselves. I mean, you Geoffrey are a prime example of somebody — Stanford University, computer scientists, now you're just creating a new you in a new world and a new direction that actually is what you want to do now. And none of us have to be limited anymore and I certainly not this day and age by one profession. Like, I write what I do, it's everything from podcasting, to filmmaking, to book writing, to coaching, to mental toughness courses to everything. And none of that is a contradiction.
Geoffrey: Yeah. I want to step back and just maybe turn us into more of a culture commentary because I feel like a lot of modern society and culture is, at least I sense, there's a lot of its form of anaesthesia, just numbing, kind of an existential angst of why, what is one's purpose? And then I think there's also a big stream of living vicariously through others, right? People aren't doing the Death Valley run themselves, they're watching you, Lisa, doing that Death Valley run — are watching and living through other people.
Lisa: And that is a hallmark of our time, really. With all the movies and social media. It's very easy just to sit on the couch and think, “Wow, I've just been to all over the place.”
Geoffrey: Right, and I think it's a little bit of both because I think a lot of people have this, they live vicariously through others, which gives us that excitement, but it's also the anaesthesia for the day to day, boredom or anx of not being satisfied with what they're doing. I mean, do you sense that with the broader cultural context of our times?
Lisa: I think there's a real massive disconnect nowadays from the way human beings used to be — so out in nature all day, digging the fields, hunting deer, building their houses, doing whatever, pushing the limits exploring. We don't have to do any of that anymore because we live in a world where it's all that's all done for us. And yet we live in the stressful times of computers and technology and crazy jobs and a lot of confinement. And we're going from one box of in their house to another box in the car to another box at work, in an office. And all of us as disconnected us from our true roots in our ancestral way of being and this is at odds with our DNA, I think, and the way our bodies are meant to function.
And so I think this is causing a disconnect, especially with young people who don't know that they have to get outside and get in the sunshine and get their vitamin D on their skin and get away from those damn computers and video games and all that sort of stuff. And so, when that happens, we have all sorts of problems come up, hormone dysregulation, circadian rhythms are stuffed up, woman with their cycles are stuffed up. We disconnected from nature. And I think the more that we can get outside, get back to some very basics that the human body needs.
So I run my businesses, I'm 24/7 sort of thing around, going for it all the time, but I make sure every day I get time to train in nature push my body out in the physically outdoors, and connect with the see the forest, the mountains, wherever I can. And even if I've only got 10 minutes to sit in the city park, I know that it's important for my soul to be able to connect with nature. And that's important on a hormone level, it's important on a personality level, and all of these areas that are just being neglected now.
And we can sit at home and be entertained 24/7 on our devices. And this is a huge danger, I think for the human race because we shouldn't be living in the matrix. We need to be out there actually experiencing it ourselves, getting in the water, going for runs, walking in the park, whatever it is, and interacting with other human beings on a eye-to-eye level. I mean, we luckily have this technology, and I can connect with you, which I never would have been able to do in the past.
But by the same token, it's important that I go today, and I see my family and I look them in the eye and I have that social interaction with them. And all of these things are missing from many people's lives. So there's the element of loneliness, there's the element of all these dysregulation that's going on in our bodies and our circadian rhythms, and hormones, and so on.
This all leads down a track of very often depression, being dissatisfied in life. And then maybe you're in a job that you feel trapped in or you don't have a job. You don't know what you want to be. We have to create our own framework and our own destiny, and we have the power. We live in a time where we can actually — through this amazing technology — access so many things that we never could have before. There is no reason for any single person to not be doing something on a mission, creating their own business, doing something on the side to get them out of the job that they don't like, whatever.
But it's up to you and your mindset to understand, there is no white knight in shining armour coming to save you. You have to make things happen. And you just do that, obviously. You just decided I'm into the keto and the intermittent fasting, right, and I don't know the whole story, obviously, I'm going to go and make this happen. Then you start a new business and you started the business and sold it at 23, you know, like I didn't know which way was up at 23. To be honest.
Geoffrey: I think if you look at just how every single story, every single interesting, whether it's historical figure, everyone started from somewhere and someone decided to do something, and it compounded and grew and you learn over time, right? And I think one interesting, maybe first step, to inspire people to build that mental toughness, at least for my experience was doing some of these longer runs.
I remember the first time some of my colleagues at H.V.M.N. who are marathoners and triathletes, they kind of just challenged me casually do a half marathon. And never was a good endurance runner and the notion of running for an hour was just seemed like very intimidating. And I imagine for most people that are casual athletes, casual folks that go the gym, running a mile on a treadmill is like a pretty solid day, warm up or pretty solid effort. But I think what I took out of that experience and having done a couple ultramarathons was that going back to your point, I think is more interesting for me as a mental challenge than a aerobic bout. It just being in your own head for a couple hours for three hours, four hours, five hours, not listening to music. That's almost a forced meditation, in some perspective.
Lisa: It is. It is.
Geoffrey: And I think, especially in our day and age, you never are really alone without your devices for a 2, 3,4 or five hours. I think that's an interesting little small entry point into tapping into that notion of resilience and self-actualization.
So, I'm curious to get your thoughts on that route, but also just going back to the notion of creating one's own destiny. And I think just from a historical perspective, you look at all the great historical figures — from a Steve Jobs to Genghis Khan — everyone was some child with some interesting upbringing and they figured out some things went well, they made some mistakes. But I think the thing is, I did they didn't really stop right, I think your story is definitely a story of not stopping.
Lisa: Yeah, congratulations for stepping up to those challenges and doing those runs. Because the thing is, when it's the same as when, like, someone might look at you and go, “Wow, what a brain and he's super intelligent, and I could never do that.” And I bet you just when I'm just going to take this one step at a time, or start my degree or do this paper or do in suddenly you will start to expand, doesn't it? And you're capable, and then you find out, “Holy heck, pretty amazing what I've achieved.”
And it's the same thing with running, you start off and we coach 700 athletes now, and I've coached thousands over the years. And I've taken people from running from one lamppost up to running hundred miles. So, I know that process. And you start with people, you don't talk to them like “One day, you're going to run 100 milers”, you start with them like, “We just got to get to that lamppost down there and I'm going to teach you the way to run and the way to breathe.” And a lot of people don't even know how to breathe, and then they suddenly realize, “Oh, heck, I actually can run for half an hour, I thought that would be impossible.” And once you have those initial successes, you get the breathing correctly, you get and taking smaller steps, for starters, you teach them a few technique things, and then they get that there's that those first initial wins. And that's where you start. And then within weeks, you can have them running the first 5K, often. If they're healthy, normal people, they just don't know how to run. And all of a sudden, now the horizon is lifted to that level. And then you repeat that process up to 10 Ks up to 20KS and then they run into a brick wall, and they don't know how to get from a half marathon to a marathon. And then you show them the way through that and they may have a couple of failures on the way where they run out of glycogen. And you deal with these things as they happen.
And then all of a sudden, they're signing up for the first ultra, and then the world's open to them, then they understand that this is just one foot in front of the other, having a good coach, having good structure, not burning yourself out, doing things in the right order, getting your recovery, doing all of that sort of good stuff. And then all of a sudden, the horizons are lifted. And this is a beautiful thing when you cross the finish line or something like Death Valley, it is a moment that is a combination of in that case, 15 years’ worth of work to get there. And you've stood on the shoulders of all your teammates, you've learned so much about who you are along the way. It's not just about that journey, and then you're capable in your life, there is nothing that is going to hold you back. There is no limitations into what you can do.
But you also have to realize you have to be willing to pay the price for all of those things. You have to be willing to go to the [0:48:44]anx degree, you have to be willing when you did those runs, I bet there was times where you're in a lot of pain and your suffering and your body's screaming at you why, Geoff, just sit down? Why are you doing this? Who are you trying to impress here?
Geoffrey: Yeah, I remember that. One of the first half marathons is like it was on the team lunch, I think on a Wednesday and then, my former colleague Brianna, who wrote for Great Britain and converted to doing Iron Mans was like, “Hey, you should do a half marathon this week.” And I'm like — just like running around the Embarcadero in San Francisco — I'm like, it's like mile like seven and like, “Why am I doing this? Like my feet start hurting?” It's just like by herself, everyone, all the tourists are just like confused like, why this person's like running like these back and forth along the Embarcadero. Maybe I don't want to be overly conceited but I feel like at a certain point, like humans were just designed to be able to run 5, 10 miles. And I feel like in a more healthful society should be almost table stakes to be able to just blast out 10 miles on a dime, right? Like, I think I would love to live in a society where that just tables where you would expect people to be able to walk across the street? Any healthy person should be able to run a few miles.
Lisa: Yeah, I mean, obviously you've got disabilities or whatever, it's different. But if you're just a normal, healthy human being, then yes. There’s a book go by my friend, Chris McDougall, Born to Run. And that's all about the fact that humans are born to run and we had a TV series along this line that we tried to get off the ground, we got the pilots down, and we looked at, in historal stories of long distance running in different cultures all around the world, from the mountain [50:37] to monks to the Kalahari Bushmen to the Navajo Indians to the Maori in New Zealand, all of these ancestral people covered huge distances on foot. Whether that was running walking, but they were moving pedestrian, that's fit what we are. We’re made, were born for the stuff. We're probably not born to do 100 miles, [0:50:57]veins, to be honest, like I think we do those things because we want to find out where the limits are, but we all made to be doing 10 to 20Ks a day. I truly believe that that's what our bodies.
I often get asked, “What are you be wearing at your joints?” My joints are fine, and I've run 70,000 Ks, and I don't have knee troubles, and where the problems come is when you don't do your strength training, when you don't do your mobility work. So, in the past that would have been working in the garden and stretching and lifting and all of those things that we often just run and then we come sit at a computer. And that's a bit of a dangerous combination.
Geoffrey: Yeah, I think the argument that running is bad for your joints is definitely a misconception, right? Like, when you actually have looked at studies, that's basically an untrained person going from zero to 10 miles, and it's like, yeah, you don't expect someone that's untrained to be able to become like a computer programmer without – some probably some ego damage, not necessary physical damage, or you go from not being able to bench press 200 pounds is expecting someone to just lift a lot of heavy weights.
Lisa: Yeah. And that is actually a bit of a danger. Like I see people going on — I'm an ambassador for a race next month, my husband's running it as well. It's an 80 K, and I'm watching some of the people who have signed up in in the Stryver[52:19] accounts and then not training and I'm like, “Oh, shoot, we're going to have carnage.” Because you need to prepare your body. Like going out and running a half marathon because you're a fit young man, and you do other stuff, you can get away with it. But that's not what like if you were to extrapolate that and go “Well, next week, I'm going to run a marathon”, well, then we'll start running into trouble because you do need a structure and build up and periodization and all those other good things, too. Because your ligament, like your cardiovascular system will do it — no worries, your ligaments and your tendons will not.
Geoffrey: Like it's not used to the pounding.
One thing that I wanted to ask about, it’s actually, I'm curious in terms of talking to folks who have done incredible endurance feats is the mindset during the bout, and I think you reflected upon it just a little bit earlier, where in the moment, there's oftentimes we're in pain, you want to stop, you want to quit. I remember a conversation with Pete Jacobs, who was an Ironman World champ, talking about trying to harken back to a notion of gratitude of love and trying to pull up that emotion as he's trying to finish some of these longer races. I'm interested in some of your mental tricks as you're doing Badwater your, your hundred miles in, it's really hot.
Lisa: You're sick and dying [laughs]
Geoffrey: I mean, autopilot survival mode. Yeah. Are you trying to recall a happy moments? Or are you more of like a David Goggins, where you trying to recall like painful hate hateful moments? Are you a Zen monk? What are your tricks?
Lisa: I've got a few tricks, definitely, and it's a bit of all of the above. The gratitude one, he's a bit of man, I find it quite hard, and at one I'm definitely a bit more David Goggins style. [laughs].
As far as, especially in my early days when I was trying to prove something and wanting to be loved and accepted basically and being okay. And so a lot of the motivation here was to prove that I could and that I was strong and that I was not useless. And that's a really — I don't care even if it's a negative motivating factor, if you like it some negative rather than the gratitude one — but it's a powerful one because you will pull out all the stops. You can hear that person's voice in your head going “You're useless.” And you're like, might be breaking down and you might be in hell pain you're going you but I cannot let that I cannot let them win, I cannot give up. And that can be a powerful force.
Now later on in my career, it became more things like doing things for a charity and especially during things for a particular person who had a disability or something, that would get me going. Because I'd be like, “Well hang on”, I've run for kids with cancer and things like that. Then you start to pull on other things, like, “I'm so grateful, I don't have cancer and get over yourself, because these kids are dying of cancer and going through chemo and all of this, and they're putting a brave face on. Get your shit together”, basically. And so you put things into perspective.
One of the couple of the other tricks I use is, if I was really in a desperate situation in a race, I'd say to myself, things like, “Okay, you've just crashed in a plane in the middle of the jungle, or the desert, or wherever you are. And you've got to run 200Ks to save your mother because she needs help. And she's stuck in that plane. Now, you're exhausted, and are you going to quit? When your mother's life depends on it? Or are you going to find the power to run another step?” And the answer was always, “I would not give up I would fight, I would find another way to take another step.” And therefore, you can do it. It's all a matter of the motivation. It's all a matter of how bad do you want this thing. And if somebody, one of your loved ones life depended on it, you can bet your bottom dollar that you would run that 200 K or that hundred mile or whatever it is, you wouldn't give up. You’d die trying, wouldn’t you?
And that when you can pull those resources out of yourself and fight through, there’s this constant battle. So when I'm running along, I'm often got this battle, what I call them, the lion and the snake and you've got the lion who's going “Come on, you can do it, you're so strong, and you're amazing, and you've got this.” And all the positive people that have been in your life represent that line, and then you've got the snake on the other side going “You’re useless, you’re never going to make this. What are you thinking? You couldn't do this, sit down, no one's going to care.” All of this sort of baggage things going on in your mind. And as the day wears on, and the nights or the days wear on, this battle gets bigger and louder and stronger. And this snake tends to get more and more control and you're just hanging on for dear life trying to not let that snake bite you.
Like when I ran through New Zealand and I had 2250 Ks ahead of me. And I've been busy, so busy with the logistics of it, I hadn't actually thought about running what it takes to run 500 Ks a week. And I got to the start line, and then all of a sudden it's set on me like an elephant and I had a panic attack. And my mum was — and this is like five minutes before I meant to start I've got all the media, I've got the crews, I've got everything right, been planning this for four months, raising money for charities, etc. And I just had a meltdown, I went over to my mum, and I'm bawling and I can't breathe and I'm having a panic attack and I go, “Mum, I can't. I can't. 2200, I can't do it and cry my eyes out.” And she like, mum’s puts them in a bear hug and she says, “Stop, stop, stop stop. I want you to think about getting to that power pole up there. That's all you have to do right now. You don't have to run 2250 Ks, you have to run to that power pole. And then we're going to get through the first half an hour. And then we're going to get to lunchtime, and then we'll see.” And by doing that she pull my focus back into the here and the now instead of projecting into the future, which was overwhelming and terrifying. And that's how we broke it down step-by-step. And there were many times along that journey with a pain was just so intense, and my body was breaking down, and I just could hardly even got to a point at one stage where I couldn't even walk without sticks. And I had to let alone run.
I managed to just keep moving forward. And all of a sudden, after two weeks, my body hit the absolute rock bottom and then it started to actually improve again, it was like — and I've heard other ultramarathoners like Charlie Engle and Raisa have crossed the Sahara. Say, it gets worse, worse, worse, worse, worse. And then you hit the rock bottom and it's almost like your body goes “Well, she hasn't quit. So we better get our shit together. We better get organized here because she's keeping going anyway, we're throwing everything at her and she's still going.” And then I actually got better and better as the whole time went on and got stronger. And by the end of that race, well that run was actually stronger than when had been in the first two weeks, which was really bizarre to understand.
Yes, these are these are some of the tricks like you know, association and disassociation, like taking yourself off to your happy place. I often go swimming with whales in my head, someplace, it's completely away from what I'm dreaming. And then if I have a crew which is some races you do, they’d be telling these stories and trying to keep my mind occupied so that I just keep out of my own body. And then other times I'll be in my body and checking in with it and saying, am I drinking enough? Have I had my electrolytes? Have I had my whatever — enough food? So, you're doing all that checklist stuff going through your head.
So, it's a combination of all these things to keep fighting through the hard moments, don't for a minute believe that you get to the Zen state of flow, and you stay there, and that's it. And you're just amazing. There are people that do. And like the guys that run the self-transcendence race, 3100 miles from New York City. That's what they're aiming for this zen state of transcending their body, I've never got there. I tried and I would have, are there moments of it, or even a couple of hours of it, we know completely in this flow state where I can even feel my body, it's like a camera, like, my eyes are like a camera, and I'm just floating through the air. But those times the short loads done fortunately for me because I haven't cracked the code. I haven't probably meditated enough to get there. But it is probably there and it's probably doable.
Geoffrey: Definitely an interesting spiritual, I think, concept I think I've tapped into very rarely as well, or just everything just feels easy. And it's like, wow, I could just do this forever. And if you can hold that, that seems like it would be a magical if you want to get tapped into that consistently.
One of the things I thought was interesting was this notion of just breaking down decomposing a large problem to smaller and smaller bits. And I think this is an adage, or a maxim that I think everyone has heard about, through teachers or stories. I think one thing that I've found through people that really live well-live lives is that you have such visceral experience, pain, scar tissue that anchors that adage to a real experience. And I think that when I step back and think about all the different — whether that's Zen Cohen, or these books with all these best practices and best tips — they're very curt, nice little encapsulated sentences, but they're really almost raisins, or all the juice behind those simple statements of “Hey, break down the marathon into just running to the next lamppost.” But someone who's never done that is like, “Oh, of course, that makes sense. I get it.” But they actually don't get it. And it sounds like you've collected so many of these adages with just truly a broad spectrum of life experiences both very, very positive, and some that are quite sad and quite unfortunate.
A kind of opening up, I mean, are there other kind of interesting adages that you just feel like you have real a depth of understanding, because you've just lived through it?
Lisa: Yeah, and you’re so right. I mean, sometimes it's a good Instagram posts that you see with little quotes, and I've used them too, and you don't actually — it's hard to convey the actual experience. And until you've actually lived through it — and these things have a real value, like breaking things down into minor chunks and keeping your focus close to you and so on. But it is hard for someone who hasn't experienced that to actually know what the hell you're talking about until you're faced with a situation. But the more you learn about the stuff, then when you are doing your next marathon ultramarathon, Geoff, you will have more of these tools already in your head and you say “Oh, Lisa said, have a go at trying this.” And then you try it out in your own body and you realize, “Hmm. This is working, I'm going to work more on this aspect of this tool.” And you do get better at things once you've actually had the experience yourself.
I did want to share one really life-changing event with your audience if I may, Geoff, just go into the story of with my mum.
Geoffrey: Please.
Lisa: Yeah, so throughout the interview, I've mentioned my mum a couple of times as being this amazing, wonderful woman and she's always supported me and all my crazy endeavours and so on, and never ever limited me in my belief of what I can do or was just an amazing woman. And she four years ago had a aneurysm which is a bleed in the brain and was rushed to hospital. We got that horrible phone call rushed up there, mum's collapsed. The ambulance driver said to the doctor, I think she's having a stroke. The doctor decided to ignore that and said “Ah, she's just having a migraine”, which was an absolute disastrous misdiagnosis, if you like. |We spent six hours in the [1:04:22] ED there, not knowing I got caught out. I didn't know what to ask for. I didn't know what was happening to her I knew she was in deep trouble in the doctor was just ignoring us. Painkillers weren't working. She was in extreme pain.
And I had a paramedic friend who crew for me on many of my races and I rang her and said, “Please can you get up here? I don't know what I don't know what to ask for. But there's something major wrong with mum.” So she came out and took one look at her and since she's having a neurological event of some sort, went and got the doctor and shook him out of his stupidity. And to get her a CT scan right now. She's having a stroke or something like that.
They took her through after six hours and had a CT scan and it came back blood right throughout the brain, aneurysm. And they didn't expect that she was going to live, it was horrific state of affairs by this time. And that experience was for me, like my mum's life's hanging in the balance. And I've been caught short not knowing what to ask for what to do and being too damn polite to push the doctors for more and it could cost of my mother her life. We had a we had another 12 hours wait for the air ambulance to come because they had to transfer her to another hospital because we live in a small town. And we didn't have the things, took 18 hours to get her into there. And in that time, and I just like, if I get a second chance to help my mum bring her back then I'll do everything in my power to to make this right.
And she had a operation, and she was in and out. She had two operations in the next couple of days. And she was in and out of a coma fighting for a life, in a critical condition, they didn't think she was going to make it. And in this time, I started to study everything about brains and aneurysms, and brain rehabilitation and everything I can possibly find on their wonderful world of the internet, Dr. Google. And I started like, I'm not going to be caught short again. And upshot of it was after three weeks, she stabilized and she was taken out of the ICU and she'd survived. But she had basically no higher function juice, she had a couple of words, but no real speech, she had no memory of who she was, what she was, or that I was her daughter, or anything like that. She had no ability to control any of your bodily functions, like massive mess of brain damage.
And after three months in the hospital, they said, “Look, she's never going to do anything again. Make her as comfortable as possible. She's 74, the brain damage is so extensive. We have to put her into a hospital level care age facility. And yeah, that’s it.” And as you might tell them quite a stubborn person, I was like, “No way am I leaving my mum in a place like that and I'm taking their home. And they said, “Look, you're not going to cope, she's 24/7, round the clock here.”
So I had a hell of a battle on my hands to get her home. And this time, I'm studying everything around, supplements for brain injury, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, sleep apnoea, all of these things that could be affecting her. And I worked out that she likely had sleep apnoea, and she was sleeping 20 hours a day anyway. The doctors ignored me again, I got an outside consultant who came in to sleep apnoea test, and it came back severe sleep apnoea. And she was knocking off her brain cells. And so we're not when we got that onto her and the CPAP machine, she started to have a little tiny bit more function. And I was like, right, what else can oxygen do?
Now I've done a lot of races or three races, sorry, at altitude in the Himalayas. And I know what it is to have oxygen deficit. And I had a situation where I'd been in one of these altitude training teams for a number of weeks, sleeping at night, and I'd been up too high at six and a half thousand meters. And I'd knocked off a lot of my brain cells and ended up with a hypoxic brain concussion myself, and ended up with infections going crazy because when your body doesn't have enough oxygen, it produces a lot a lot more bacteria and infections run wild and I was seeing this in my mum. And I'm thinking she's not getting enough oxygen despite the sleep apnoea machine and everything, what else can I do to get more oxygen? They wouldn't let me put supplemental oxygen on here. They said she didn't need it. And so I was at odds with the doctors from the get go. They were feeding her absolute crap.
Geoffrey: So I'm like, that’s basically corn syrup or something. I mean, if you look at the bags of the hospital, it's a bit of food. It's literally like corn syrup is one of the main ingredients. Kind of shocking, actually.
Lisa: It’s shopping for brain injury, actually,. [1:09:05] do you find that? No, because when you put glucose into a person who has a brain injury, it suppresses their own ketone production. And the ketones are the only things — when you have a brain injury you have a metabolic dysregulation where you can't use glucose. So, by giving someone glucose you're actually suppressing the little amount of ketones that they do have and that was all of their brain was running on and now they're giving a glucose right and Ensure and all this crappy stuff.
I didn't know that at that time. But this is why research is important. I now know that. I did start to put her on fish oils and a keto diet as soon as I couldn't get her out of hospital — high fats, good MCT oils and ketones, exogenous ketones, etc. Long story short, we were finally got her home, after a massive fight at the hospital to get her home. I had to get my brother who looks a bit like Dwayne Johnson to help me convince doctors to give us the resources we wanted which is just a caretaker in the morning and someone in the evening so to help with their personal cares and we got her home.
Then I've been studying hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And now this is a super powerful. People, go and research with hyperbaric is amazing for brain injury, also for gangrene and burns, diabetic wounds. They use this as a totally underutilized therapy. And I found out that this could help brain injury, I studied the work of Dr. Hatch in America, who has written The Oxygen Revolution, which is a book on hyperbaric. And I thought this is mum's chance, if I can get her a hyperbaric access to a hyperbaric chamber, I could maybe save her.
And of course, we didn't have one in our hometown or so I thought. And then I found a dive company that had one because they use these for dive accidents when divers get the beans and we have a port in a commercial dry facility. And so I approached these guys, and I said, “Can I use your facility? This is my situation.” They said, “Yep, sign a legal waiver. We know the power of hyperbaric and we know it's powerful. We'll give you access to it.” These are kind amazing people gave me access to this chamber.
So as soon as I got her out of the hospital, I took her down to this factory, strap her on a forklift and put her into this big hyperbaric chamber. Everyone thought I was completely nuts — excuse me — as you can imagine, this fragile delicate lady could hardly even sit. Stuck her in this chamber, we had two to three sessions over the next few weeks. After 33 treatments, she started to come back live, all I can say is that she started to wake up, she started to have words, she started to remember who I was, she started to move her arms. And she wasn't getting up and walking, but she was doing things. I could see a flicker of life in her eyes again. And I'm like, “Oh, my God, this is working.” And then they had to take the chamber off on a contract and I lost access to it.
So then I mortgaged the house and I bought a hyperbaric chamber, but I bought a mild one, Geoff. That only goes to 1.5 atmospheres, that was all I could get access to. But this is perfect for brain injury, actually. It’s almost as good, I'd say it's about 90% as good as what the big ones are for brain injury because you don't need the really low dips. For brain injury, you only need 1.5.
So anyway, I put it through another 250 sessions over the next couple of years and I still continue to put her through. As she started to come back, I had more to work with. So then, I studied Functional Neurology. I studied everything to get her balance and spatial awareness back. I studied nootropics, which you know a lot about. I studied the keto diet and keto and did physio with her.
So, I developed a protocol and a program basically an ADR program every day that I started to put it through as she started to come back. And I've tried to stay one step ahead of her therapy. Now I'm no doctor, but like you, Geoff, I just go hard out into the research and do deep dives and find the answer. When I don't have an answer, I go and I find somebody who knows the answer. And one of the selfish reasons I started my podcast was so that I can have amazing people like you and doctors and scientists on there so that I could get access to the best minds in the world for this thought.
Geoffrey: Don't give away our secret, right? Don't give away secrets. That's honestly one of the best perks of having a podcast it's you get the great meet great people. It's true.
Lisa: It is. It's the greatest reason to do a podcast. And so I would get these experts in different fields and I would learn from them and a lot of people helped me with different aspects that they were specialists in. And together we've created a miracle. My mum — now four years on — my mum is completely normal. She is reading, writing, walking, she walks a couple of kilometres a day. She goes to the gym six days a week. She has a full driver's license back, she's regained her peripheral vision even, all her reaction tests are back to pre-aneurysm levels. And this is 78 years old, Geoff. Like she's this, neuroplasticity in someone of this age is pretty unheard of.
I had one example of this and Dr. Norman Doidge’s book, the brain The Brain that Heals Itself, of Dr. Becky Rita, who was a scientist whose father had a brain injury, a massive stroke, and he had brought him back and he was in his early 60s and he had taught him. So I knew that somebody in the world had done what I needed to do, but they were like 14 years younger. So I had nobody really who could pave the way for me, but I had at least that sort of information.
And so now mum is a full driver's license, full power of attorney back over her life, full independence. We still work every single day. Unless I'm traveling for work, I'm working with her, pretty much five to six hours a day now. And we still have to keep the pedal to the metal, there’s a few things like her foot drags, and so on, on the right side, and she has a few issues. But I've got my mum back for crying out loud.
It's an amazing, miraculous story. And I was so amazed at this whole journey that I ended up writing a book and it’s called Relentless, it tells the story of bringing my mum back and the lessons that I took from the running. So there's a lot of the running stories in there. But it takes some of those lessons and how I applied it in this real-world situation. Because if I hadn't had that bit resilience, if I hadn't had the belief that the human body and mind are capable of far more than what the average person thinks it is, then I would have listened to the naysayers and I would have given up. But because I've seen crazy things like blind people running across the stairs [1:15:55], someone on crutches doing the marathon the sob lays that with multiple sclerosis, I've seen a dude run across the valley with one leg. I've seen people with hip replacements, people with broken back. And I know the power of the human spirit if they don't give into the naysayers.
And that's why I was so passionate to give back getting this book out because I wanted to share those mental insights plus all the protocols that I used for them, and, and give other people hope, who are going through whatever the difficult time is that they're going through whatever crisis.
Geoffrey: Yeah, it's an incredible turnaround and an incredible end result here. I mean, my understanding of the prognosis is that if you kind of miss diagnose an aneurysm for that length of time, it's, I mean, either deadly, or I think what it sounded like from your conversation with the doctors, they essentially were saying, “Hey, we're kind of giving up, she's going to be a kind of a vegetable, like, kind of a expectation –
Lisa: That’s exactly the words they use.
Geoffrey: And then to turn around and see that now, what, 78 she's a fully —
Lisa: Fully normal
Geoffrey: She's back. Have you gone back to the doctor? Have you tried to get like a —
Lisa: Get them to try it [laughs]
Geoffrey: have you turned this into a case study? Yeah, I think it just like — this is not even a buy in or show that, “Hey, you're wrong.” This is more of a, “Hey, this is something that a lot of people could potentially learn about to adjust a standard of care and to help improve the medical system. Right?” It's just like, what you have here is a very interesting “n equals one.”
I think the critics would say, well, it's not randomized. There's not controlled, fair enough. Fair enough. I think that's like valid critique, it's fair critique. But there's clearly some signal here. Right? There's definitely something that was anomalous in terms of the turnaround, can we actually take lessons and take protocols, and potentially get them through more of a randomized control trial to see if this replicates and across a broader population. But at least there's some signal and hope for any open minded scientist that's trying to say, “Hey, like, let's improve the current standard care.” I'm curious in terms of as you've been sharing, and working their publishing process, have you come back to the traditional standard of care practitioners, clinicians, and help them adjust potentially their standard of care?
Lisa: I've desperately tried to do that. And one of the reasons, the main reason for this book is to try to get a movement around this because everybody who's going through any sort of brain injuries is facing the same problems, whether it been on a lesser scale or like this.
And what I found is there are so many amazing doctors in the USA and unfortunately, they're in the USA. People like Dr. Hatch, I had a Doctor Kabran Chapek on my podcast two weeks ago, who I highly recommend for your show, actually, and he has written a book called Concussion Rescue. And I was reading just the chapter titles as I first got this and going, “Holy shit. This is exactly the protocol I've used.” And it's been put into a book by a doctor, thank god! And I was absolutely ecstatic to have him on the show. And he ratified all the things that I had been through, and he is desperately trying to get this information out there because this is relevant for people with dementia and Alzheimer's, just as much as it has relevance for stroke in aneurysm victims and concussion victims.
This is right across the board information for brain health. And so I have failed in the local doctor level. But I'm starting to be asked to speak at medical conferences. I've just been invited to speak at the world [1:19:39] outside mother and dementia conference. And I'm hoping that that will actually happen because I'm desperate for the doctors to understand the limitations in our system. And a lot of it is a lack of resources and it's also sort of institutionalized ways of thinking and the siloed ways of thinking.
And now there's some major Doctors like Dr. Chapek, but also like Dr. Mark Hyman, David Perlmutter — Dr. Perlmutter, and Dr. Austin Perlmutter, and they're putting these protocols together now, and they're putting them in the mainstream. I don't know if you've heard of the Broken Brain series by Dr. Mark Hyman, and Dhru Purohit, from Broken Brain, the podcast, and the work that they're doing, that type of information is starting to now permeate through. But it's so slow, as you know, even in this day and age with social media and the power or all this. I am one voice, I am one story. And the doctors who generally go “There's not it's not relevant, there's no clinical studies.” We didn't have spec scans. We weren't because we didn't have access to any of that to categorize, to see this process. So I don't have any proof except the videos that I took, my little amateur iPhone videos that I took all the way through this process. And I'll send you a little, just a two-minute clip, Geoff that you might want to put in the notes. And you'll see mum going from not being able to sit properly to mum being able to do a little 50 metre run and they can see for themselves that that transformation. And it's unfortunately very amateurish, and very, iPhone family videos. And that's all I've got is proof, the rest is just my anecdotal stories.
But I'm hoping that I can add my voice to the movement, I can add my voice to those of like Dr. Hyman and co, who are changing this world, and even what you're doing in the nootropics space. This isn't just about brain injury, but optimal brain performance in the keto space. That information is you combine a keto diet with hyperbaric and nootropics, and you got a combination for a great healing potential with brains?
Geoffrey: Yeah, I think that's what's exciting. There's clearly much more to be understood and much more science to be done. And I think this is how, if you get a look at the history of science, who knows if the Newton's story of an apple falling on his head, made him think about gravity, but it's just these observations, these interesting signals that guide us towards testing and understanding and making good hypotheses and testing them. And I think that, especially in this faceting and turnaround story, it's clearly signal here. And it's clearly, it sounds like it's being replicated across other folks who have been going through similar protocols.
And it's okay, hopefully, we can have this body of evidence that build momentum to hopefully change standard of care. And I think that's like a hold. I think, ultimately, what we all want to hear, it's not like, I don't think you have like a dogmatic reason to make something up. But just like, “Okay, this really helped my mum, other people should know about it.”And yes, if people want more evidence, and let's run the studies, people want to try something because they're desperate, here's a potential option. I think that's ultimately what I believe it's like, the world's going to bend towards truth. And if we can accelerate us, like the humanity as a whole, to get to truth faster, because it will help more people. I'm all about that.
Lisa: Exactly. And this is what the power of the day and age that we're living with these podcasts and in all the research that is now becoming available, we're starting to see the power of just people movement — this is a movement of the people to start to change the systems. And this is not to, we had a discussion on our show about some failings in the system, and we're not pointing the finger at any one particular person here.
But what I want people to take away from the story is take ownership of your own health. Research. Even if you're not science nerds, like Geoff, and I, go and find the research, do your due diligence. People spend more time buying a car and researching the car than they will for their own health. And for me, that's ridiculous. You know, instead of just taking somebody's word for it, your local doctor’s word for it, that this particular drug is going to fix all your woes, how about just looking a little bit deeper and finding out your own research and taking ownership of your own health and then implementing some good basic healthy structures to your diet, your nutrition, your exercise regimes, the things that we know work for a start.
And then we can't wait. I could not wait with mum’s situation for the clinical trials to come through. I had to weigh the risks. And I did play doctor and a lot of cases, I had to weigh the risks and make educated decisions. And a lot of it was like, “Well, what's the alternative? The alternative is she's going to die very soon.” So it was that much of a desperate situation that I was willing to take some risks to get some something back.
And I've been criticized immensely for a lot of stuff that I did and for pushing my mum so hard and putting her through a torturous regime of training. But I believe it no matter how old you are – whether your 5 or your 105 – people need challenge. They need goals, they need things to be working towards. When we make older people are treasured valued older citizens who should be treasured in our society and who often aren't, when we make them feel like your past your useful day and you're no longer useful. And we just want to make you comfortable because that's what we do as humans, but we're not going to actually treat you like as a person with a history and a story and wisdom to share. And it’s terribly patronizing and horrific.
And I come from the Maori culture in New Zealand, where our elders are very respected and loved and revered for their wisdom. And unfortunately, that's not the general society that I live in. It's within my culture, but not within the wider New Zealand culture and I believe in other places as well. We have this attitude, “Well, you use your past, you're used by dates.”And certainly when it comes to resources and medical funding, I had to fight like crazy for the resources because she was an older adult. And for me, that's we've got to do better. We've got to do better. And we've got to respect our elders. They're the ones who made us who we are and we we’re all heading there, we're all getting older. Do you want to be treated like that? Ask yourself, is that what you want for yourself? For your loved ones? Then, we've got to do better and our standard of care, I think for older people. And that's a completely different topic. I could rant on about, too.
Geoffrey: Absolutely. I think the title of the book, Relentless, very apt title. Not just in terms of the relentlessness in terms of taking care of your mum, but also just your life story, just not stopping, being relentless. And it sounds like you have a number of projects going on all the time.
So what's in store for you in 2020? For the folks follow what you're up to? Where do what are some of the upcoming projects they're really excited about in 2020 and onwards?
Lisa: Yeah, look, I’m really excited from a business perspective. So, we're doing deep dives and we teach already epigenetic testing and do that with our clients. And now we have an online run training program. So we're expanding that and growing our business, from that point of view. We're looking at a couple of Venture Capital Partners and going into the pro aging space and looking into developing programs around piecing together some of the pieces of the puzzle we already have in place with our epigenetics and DNA testing and supplements, and so on.
So we're not quite sure where these negotiations and things are going to take us. But it's really exciting times for us as a company, and we're starting to expand and grow quite fast in and it's bringing its challenges with it as well, as you would well know. And it's exciting times for me on that front. So I'm not doing any long distance running myself personally anymore because I have to look after my mum seven days a week and run these other companies. So that combination is enough for me to cope with at the moment.
And that's okay, we all have times in life where sometimes I catch myself going oh, I’m a has-been, I can't do it anymore. And then I’m like, “Pull yourself together, you've got a mission now. You're on another mission and that requires sacrifice and that sacrifices I can't go off and expeditions at the moment and do more crazy stuff.” But that's okay, I've done enough. And my body certainly said to me a few times I've had enough. So yeah, really excited for the time of the day and age that we're living in, in getting to network with people like you is just gold. It really is. I really love this sort of stuff, just it inspires me to keep going.
Geoffrey: A hundred percent. Well, I can't think of a better note to end on. So Lisa, really, again, I had a lot of fun on your podcast and equally as if not more fun, actually just listen to your story, reinvigorated, re inspired, of what we're doing what you're doing.
So thank you for taking the time. We have to get in touch in person and maybe do a little bit of a light ultramarathon together.
Lisa: Absolutely. I would love to train you out for one. Anytime you need some help and structure and coaching, reach out to us. And I hope now that we will stay connected Geoff because I really admire the work you do on this podcast. I love listening to all your interviews, it's some gold and here. And I just love being around, inspiring and inspirational people who are out there empowering other people and doing what they love.
So I think we'll stay connected for sure and I'd love to invite you to New Zealand at some stage when you want a holiday, so let me know.
Geoffrey: Alright. I'll hold you to that. All right, thank you so much.
Lisa: Thanks!
Outro H.V.M.N: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the H.V.M.N podcast. If you're interested to learn more about H.V.M.N and our offerings, visit hvmn.com/pod. Please remember to subscribe. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please give this video a like and remember to hit that bell to get notified whenever we post. We also have a dedicated Discord server which you can join by first taking a short survey and then I'll personally send you an invite to join the community. The link to that survey will be in the description along with any other relevant links, and we'll see you all next week.
Outro (Pushing the Limits): That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure
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The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
It’s typical for athletic performance to decline with age. (And, athletes may experience signs of accelerated aging caused by intense training.) If you’re worried about your declining performance, start looking at how you train and what you eat. We may not be able to reverse our chronological age, but we can guide our bodies through the ageing process.
Did you know that there are longevity strategies specifically for athletes? These strategies consider long-term performance, health, and muscle growth!
In this episode, Dr. Elena Seranova joins us to discuss how ageing can affect our bodies and our athletic performance. She shares her strategies, from supplements to lifestyle changes, that can help athletes combat the effects of ageing. If you’re overwhelmed by all of the information out there, remember: you need to build a good foundation first. Start with eating right and sleeping well; from there, you can eventually incorporate Dr. Elena’s other recommendations.
If you want to learn longevity strategies for athletes and how to improve athletic performance, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, which is all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mental performance for your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
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Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book, Relentless, chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum, Isobel, with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
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Dr. Elena Seranova is a scientist, serial entrepreneur, and business mentor. She has now founded multiple innovative biotechnological businesses. She first studied at the University of Ioannina with a major in Psychology. Dr. Elena then started a private practice before developing an interest in neuroscience.
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Her latest business is NMN Bio. Her own experiences with supplements have inspired her to expand the market to include cutting-edge anti-ageing supplements. NMN Bio reaches New Zealand, the UK, and Europe.
Dr. Elena found her passion for drug discovery and autophagy. She has endeavoured to share this with the public through her research and work as an entrepreneur.
To learn more about Dr. Elena and her work, visit NMN Bio.
Dr Cam McDonald joins us in this episode to discuss the importance of understanding your biology to personalise your health program. He talks about the role of genetics and epigenetics in determining your bodies' specific tendencies towards stress and food. We also delve into the different body types and what diets and exercises are most suitable for each one.
Tune into this episode if you want to learn more about personalising your health program based on your genetic make-up.
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics.
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you would like to work with me one-to-one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations.
My latest book Relentless chronicles my mum Isobel’s inspiring journey of defying the odds after an aneurysm left her with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘We know that everyone's different, but then when we go to actually doing the thing, we apply the average, or we apply what we think is appropriate thinking that everybody else is the same. So we have this disconnect between knowledge and action.’
‘The mind is also on a clock of its own. Essentially, if you're exercising at the wrong time, you set up the wrong kinds of hormones, then you can actually create complete stasis in your health.’
‘There’s a full continuum of where people are. This is based on not just their wants to wake up. . . it’s actually as to when a body can tolerate stress, and how that stress should be placed on them.’
‘Whether you put muscle or fat tissue on, it's actually not to do with your food or your exercise, it's got to do with the hormones that those foods and exercise stimulate.’
‘It's not a one size fits all when you hear everybody talking about intermittent fasting or doing these things—autophagy, inhibiting mTOR, and all those sorts of things.’
'The reason that their (Guardians') body is built the way it is is [because] when we go through famine as a community, their body goes into conservation. They essentially start growing, or they start slowing down their metabolism so that they can provide food for everybody else.'
‘If you put your body in the right environment, get the right foods, eat at the right times of the day, work and do your mental stuff, you'll get health and you'll get optimal performance and you'll get longevity.’
Dr Cam McDonald has spent the last decade furthering his knowledge and skills to promote health in an easy and obvious way for people in all areas of life. He’s a dietitian and exercise physiologist, with a long-standing personal passion for health, genetics and environmental influences. His goal is to support all people to live up to their full physical potential.
Dr Cam has a firm focus on people becoming more aware of themselves, their natural strengths and their optimal behaviours for their best health. He is an informed speaker who has a passion for health and the inspiration to do something about it.
Want to know more about Dr Cam’s work? Check out his website or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin. You can also reach him through email (cam.mcdonald1@gmail.com) or phone (0411380566).
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To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week. Today I have another very special guest, also a repeat offender on the show: Dr Cam McDonald, who is the CEO of ph360 in Australia. He is a exercise physiologist, as well as a nutritionist. This guy's a bit of an overachiever, as are many of my guests, It might add. And Dr Cam has spent the last decade furthering his knowledge and skills so as to promote health in a way that makes it easy and obvious for his clients. So Dr Cams blends his background as a dietitian and exercise physiologist with his long standing personal interest in health, and his passion for understanding the latest research in genetics, and environmental influence on health. Now, Dr Cam is one of my teachers, and he is a mind full of information on the way your genes and how your genes are expressing. So today we're going to be talking about all about genes, again, personalized health, how you can tailor things to your personal situation and your personal life.
Before we go over to the show, I just want to remind you, if you want to check out our Epigenetics Program, please go to lisatamati.com, hit the Work with Us button and then you'll see all of our programs. And one of those is our epigenetics health optimisation program, which is all based on your genetics. And so you can understand and learn how to optimise your potential, your health, your performance, your diet, your exercise regime, and so much more. So check that out, especially after listening to this podcast, you're gonna want to check that out. So make sure you go to lisatamati.com, hit the Work with Us button and check out our epigenetics program.
I'd also like you to check out our running program, if you are a runner out there and you haven't got a coach and you don't know where to go and you haven't got a structure. Maybe you're doing your first five K's, maybe you're just starting out, maybe doing 100 miler, I don't care, we take them all. We do customize, personalized plans, based on your needs, your lifestyle, your injuries, your goals, and make that specifically for you. We also do a full video analysis to help you improve your form. And you get a one on one consult with me. And then ongoing support with the team. So please check that out. Check out the package, runninghotcoaching.com. runninghotcoaching.com is the place to go to, there. And check out our running program. Right now over to the show with Dr Cam McDonald for a very exciting interview.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. I'm super excited to have you here with me again. Today, I have another superstar, Dr Cam McDonald, all the way from Australia. And he is one of our mentors and teachers here. He is the CEO of ph360.me. So people are listening out there, you've probably heard one or two episodes where we've talked about genetics and epigenetics and how to understand your genes. Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today. And Dr Cam is an absolute expert on this. So welcome to the show, Dr Cam.
Dr Cam McDonald: Thanks, Lisa.
Lisa: Great to have you again.
Dr Cam: It's great to be here. It's been a long time between chats, but there's been an awful lot of interaction between. It's always been great.
Lisa: Yes, so you're our repeat offender on the show. But I think it was a good couple of years ago now. So I mean, meanwhile, we've dived deep into the world of epigenetics with you and learned from you and learned a ton of stuff. Way overdue that we had this conversation and started to share a little bit of your knowledge and the amazing things that we can now do with genetics and understanding how we run.
So everything in regards to epigenetics and genetics is all about personalising everything to your specific set of genes. And this has really been a game-changer for us personally and professionally, for our athletes, for people that we're working with, in the corporate setting and everything because everything should be personalised now, shouldn't it? Should we start there? I think that's a good place. Why is personalisation key?
Dr Cam: Yes, I mean there's a number of reasons why we definitely should be personalising. But the first is that we actually have the knowledge now, that's one thing. We have an understanding of how we can actually do this. I guess for our long history, and I guess for the history of the people that are alive, the people listening to this right now, we always know innately, ‘I'm different to that person’.
But then, when we go to recommendations. And when we go to how we go about our life, whether it be the job that we're sitting in, it's like, ‘You have to do this job in this way’ or ‘You can't do that great. We'll get someone else to do this job this way’. Like you must do this job this way. You must, ‘Oh, you're going to get fit? Great? You go to this gym, and you do this boot camp. Everyone goes to this boot camp because that's what is going to be great for everyone because the latest science says this’.
And when it comes to food, it's like ‘You should definitely do this because this is what the average of everyone should do’. And so we know that everyone's different. But then when we go to actually doing the thing, we apply the average or we apply what we think is appropriate thinking that everybody else is the same. So we have this disconnect between knowledge and action.
And so why we need to? I guess what we know now is that the timing of your food, the timing of your exercise, the type of exercise or foods that you're consuming, the type of work that you're doing, the types of interactions that you're having, if you don't get that right, it creates disease. If you align your body with its environment, then your body goes into a healing and recovery state, and you get healthier. But if you misalign, and that can just be getting up at the wrong time, and we see this with shift workers all the time—the longer that they do shift work, the more likely they are to die prematurely.
And this is when you get a misalignment with the body and the environment. But the really incredible thing is now, it's not just that we all should avoid shift work, it's rather that some people are going to be better suited to it than others. And when it comes to every other domain of life, there's going to be something that is great for one person. Like a big Gatorade is going to be the best thing ever for a runner during their race for it’s in the mean of best thing ever, and I'm not attached to Gatorade as a brand.
But let's say that you have some sort of electrolyte fluid as a drink. And that's going to be fantastic for a marathon runner 30K's in versus a person who's been sitting on the couch for the last six years and has a significant waist circumference and diabetes.
Lisa: Disaster.
Dr Cam: That drink is diabolical. And so, when we start thinking about personalisation, we start thinking about, well, ‘What's going to help this person align and perform’? Because if you misalign, it creates disease. So that's another motivation.
And then I guess, as I started, we now have the understanding of how people are different, what people need to do about it, and we've got some really wonderful results on if we apply that to these individuals, they're going to get a great result for themselves. It's now the time that we can act on this innate knowledge that we've always had but do it in a very intelligent way.
Lisa: And do it in a very structured way. A great example of this is that the whole fitness industry was really run by people with a certain type of genetic combinations. And so we trained, and I belong in that group, and you belong in that particular group. We train people we like to train and how we see benefits. We see benefits from the way that we train—high-intensity workouts and getting up early and training. Well, that suits you and me, right, Dr Cam? Because we're very close on the epigenetics wheel, if you like, have similar genetic makeup. So that works for us. Whereas it doesn't work for someone on the other side, so who's more that of the endomorph type of body.
So I've used this example before, but my husband, I used to make him get up at five or six in the morning and do a CrossFit workout when he's what they call a Diplomat. And now in that terms, which means he has a different set of genetics, basically, that is not suited to getting up at that time and doing that type of workout. Both are wrong for him. From a chronobiological perspective, he should be in bed because his testosterone, his hormones are doing their thing at that time in the morning. So that was a problem.
Number two, I had him doing a type of exercise that was wrong for his body type. His ATP doesn't replace as quickly, and his cells are doing back-to-back sets just seem to map on a stress reaction. So his cortisol would be up, and then it would be up for the rest of the day. And what have I done to my poor husband? I've made him actually put on weight and not get further and feel like crap all day. So whereas for me, that same class, that same set of exercises, that same time of the day, perfect, and I'm good to go, and I'm really rearing to go. So that just gives you a little bit of an example.
So today, let's look at chronobiology because this is all about at the timings of when to do what. So can you explain what the science of chronobiology is, Dr Cam, and how it applies in this situation?
Dr Cam: Yes, absolutely. So chronobiology is how our biology interacts with time. And we know about this because we all get older—that's a chronobiological effect, is that we get older. But what's really interesting as well is that within because of the sun, and it's showing its face every day or so. It comes along at about 6 am and then leaves at about 6 pm whatever it might be. Because we've been living on this planet with this big stimulant from the sky, essentially our bodies have got adapted to things happening in a rhythm.
And so, it's just like we wake up, and then we go to bed, we wake up and then, that's a daily rhythm. We have a menstrual cycle. We have ovulation. We go through the menstrual period, and that happens on a 30-day cycle. We then have our early life. We have our middle age, and we have our later life. That's another cycle.
Even a yearly cycle as well, we have the circannual cycle. And so, we have seasons. So winter, it gets colder, and our body does different things. And so, essentially, now that we understand that we got these different patterns of time that are occurring, our body is constantly responding to cues from the outside.
And so where this work first came about was they started looking at shift workers instead of wondering why all of these people were getting so much more cardiovascular disease, diabetes. And they found that if you're waking up at night, and you're getting lots of light, and you're getting food at night as well—all of those things, tell your body, ‘Hey, you should be awake’. And so it wakes the body up.
But you've got this momentum of a cycle that's coming from generations of being exposed to the sun and sleeping at night, and all of our physiological systems are actually setting up for us to sleep at night and rest and recover and do a whole lot of things that definitely don't require doing heavy work or digesting food as much. And so we get this disruption. We get things happening and things being signalled to the body that shouldn't be signalled at that time, which creates irregularity in the hormones that flow through our body. Our cortisol, our melatonin, our testosterone levels, our adrenal levels—all of those things get shifted out of whack when we give ourselves an artificial time input. So we want to—essentially, the first and foremost, the first thing that we gauge what time it is is what amount of light we have.
Lisa: How much light, yes.
Dr Cam: Yes, and then when we get—when the sun comes up in the morning, it sets off this cascade of wakefulness. It takes us from dead asleep to awake in a very short period of time. There's a big hormonal shift that occurs to make that happen, and it maps into sunlight. And so, as we go through the day, we have this homeostatic drive of ‘The longer that I'm awake, the more I want to go to sleep’. That's a natural thing that we have. The more that you run, the more that you want to stop is another way of thinking about this one. So we have this—as the day goes on, you get more tired.
And we then also have these rhythmical changes. Essentially, it's not the homeostatic drive for tiredness, but the circadian drive of tiredness, and you'll have peaks in your day, or maybe in the afternoon, you're firing. Other people are really, really tired that they wake back up at night. Some people are really energised in the morning. We have all of these different things that are happening throughout the day as well. So to simplify all of this, our body is designed to rouse with early morning light or rears with light. We then are meant to—essentially, our body is searching for the rhythm that suits our body.
And what's really interesting, if you take light away from somebody—and I know I'm jumping all over the place, but I will bring this all together. So if you take light away from somebody. A great guy did an experiment on this way back in the day. He sat in a cave for a couple of months and with no changes in light at all, just exactly the same ambient light the whole time. And what happened was, his rhythm went to 24 and a half hours for a daily period. So what happens is, if we were to not have any sunlight input, we would run on a 24 and a half-hour cycle. And the was out of sync by a few days after a couple of months.
Lisa: After a couple of months.
Dr Cam: He actually—and he thought it was only a month that passed, it was two months that passed. His time really—oh no he thought it was three months that passed. It was only a couple months because time really slowed down. And so what we know is that inside our body, we have a rhythm.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: But that gets reset every day with the sunlight. And so, and it actually keeps us on track with the hormones that have been flowing as a result of that sunlight. So sunlight is one time giver. And if we disrupt that, it creates lots of disease in that shift work. Not only does your waist circumference get bigger the more shift work you do, all of the risks—cancer, diabetes, heart disease—increases the longer you do shift work.
Lisa: Wow. Wow.
Dr Cam: And what we see is if you disrupt a body for three days with bright light at night, they start looking like they get diabetes. Their insulin resistance changes.
Lisa: Instantly?
Dr Cam: Within a few days, you can start disrupting these cycles of hormones, which makes your body say, ‘Well, there's something wrong with this environment. Why am I awake at a time where I shouldn't be? Well, there must be something wrong. Therefore, I'm going to start conserving. I'm going to start going into a stressed state so that I can escape and protect myself’, and diabetes is just the ultimate protection—starvation protection that makes you gain weight very easily. And so, after a few days, four days, you can actually start seeing some changes in metabolism if you're out of sync with your sleep alone, then four days to correct it. So you can actually get back on track very quickly.
Now, light isn't the only time giver, there is also heat that you have in your body. Food is also a time giver. Exercise is also a time giver. And so if you eat regularly at the same time each day, your body will start falling into a rhythm of ‘I expect food’, and this is what happens when you change your diet. Some people go from six meals a day to two. Let's say they're doing some fasting or something like that. They'll be really, really hungry at the times that they were eating when they're doing six meals a day for about a week.
Then what happens is each cell in our body has its own timekeeper as well. The master clock is coming from the sunlight, and then each tissue in our body has its own timekeeper. And so our gut takes about a week to correct itself, and then it starts getting on track with the new routine, and so then, it starts setting up for the new routine. Therefore food, it gives time to the body, it actually gives the schedule. And along with that food intake comes insulin release, hormone release, all of those types of things.
But then the really important thing we need to consider is if you don't stimulate the body at the right time to get the right hormonal outflow, you start going into disease. And so, if you're eating food at the wrong time, you're stimulating these hormones just as if you were not sleeping at the right time. If you're exercising at the wrong time. Let’s some bodies are really, really well adept at tolerating stress in the morning. If you exercise, that's a stress.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Cam: You give your body that ‘Stress is coming now’. And if you do that regularly, your body's gonna say, ‘Okay, stress is coming now’. It prepares itself, and it deals with it quite well. But then if you take a night owl, and you give them that same stress in the morning, it gives them the time of stress in the morning, but their body is not set up for stress at that time of day. And so they start trying to compensate later through weight gains, like ‘I spent all of this energy at the time that I didn't want to. I wasn't set up for it, so I'm going to have to conserve my energy because something's wrong’.
Lisa: That’s what I was doing to the husband.
Dr Cam: Yes, absolutely. So what you see in a practical sense—and I'll just say one more thing as well, that the mind is also on a clock of its own. And essentially, if you're exercising at the wrong time, you set up the wrong kinds of hormones, and you can actually create complete status in your health. As in it doesn't get any better even though you're working really, really hard or can sometimes take you backwards.
And we're seeing this with some diabetes now is really high-intensity exercise in the morning, in some studies is indicating worsened blood sugar levels at the end of the day because everybody goes into survival of ‘Oh, this environment is really stressful’. So where you position things in your day…
Lisa: It’s crucial.
Dr Cam: ...sets a rhythm. But if that rhythm doesn't align with what your body needs in order to be in its best health, then it creates disease. And that disease, obviously, tracks down pathways of compensation and stress, and you end up with a body that has been getting up eating five meals per day, has been doing the early morning exercise, just like your husband.
Lisa: Yes. They’re getting nothing out of it.
Dr Cam: And because they’re putting stress out in the morning, they're giving them too much insulin response throughout the day because their bodies just not designed to get five hits of it throughout the day. Some bodies are, some bodies are.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: After 12 weeks, they've gained a kilo and got a bad knee. And they're wondering, ‘What the hell is going on’?
Lisa: And they've been a super disciplined person getting up. And I mean, just to give you a couple of examples of the set of my life because I like to put things into stories.
Dr Cam: Yes, please.
Lisa: So that people actually get the science. Six months ago I went through this terrible time with my dad, who was unfortunately dying and passed away in July. In the 16 days that we were in the hospital battling for his life, I was round the clock with him. Now my blood sugar levels went through the roof. So afterwards, I was showing like diabetic levels of blood sugars—fasting blood sugars because I was so out of whack and so stressed alongside of it. And it took me a good two to three months for me to get my body back into rhythm. So that was just 16 days of sleep deprivation, being up all night, hardly any food, in this case, was actually sharp throwing my blood sugar's up through the roof and the stress hormones that were coming out. So that's a really extreme example. And obviously, that was for a specific purpose.
And I've seen this also with ultramarathons that I've done, that I've been going for days on end. You would think that a person who was exercising 24/7, around the clock, sort of thing for not seven, but let’s say two, three days, that they would lose massive amounts of weight, and so on. And I would actually put on weight when I did ultramarathon. So I typically lose it initially, and then I would have all this weight gain. And then I would have this response. And within a month, I would be usually heavier than when I started, which was really frustrating.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: So this stuff matters, and this stuff is really, really important. And I've done podcast episodes already on circadian rhythms in regards to light and why we need to block out blue light at night time because, again, that's giving us a signal to stay awake and stopping our melatonin production.
And the example there with the cortisol, right? We want cortisol. We want these stress hormones at the right times of the day. So there is also a genetic component to this. And this is where, what we do at ph360, and what we find out in the programme that we run is looking at your specific genes in relation to circadian rhythms. Can you explain a little bit?
So why is it for my husband that if he gets up at 5 am and does that, that's not good for him? Whereas for my body type, that's not so bad?
Dr Cam: Yes, sure. So when we're talking about this, there is a genetic component, and I guess what we're going to be talking about today and what we've kind of alluded to is that there's also an epigenetic component. And so when we talk about chronotypes, and whether someone's an early bird, a night owl, or an intermediate type, or somewhere in between because there's a full continuum of where people are. This is based on not just their wants to wake up, not just that ‘I can wake up’, I'd prefer to sleep in’, or ‘I'd prefer to wake up early’. It's not necessarily that. It's actually as to when a body can tolerate stress and how that stress should be placed on them.
And in our body, at all times, there is a system of stress and then recovery, and it's that balance that we're trying to fluctuate through with our rhythms throughout the day. That's actually what the rhythms protect is that stress-to-recovery balance. So waking and then sleeping and then eat and then rest or, move, eat, rest, all of those types of things.
So, we have individuals that as they're developing in the womb, they get a heightened sensitivity to testosterone, they have a greater development of their adrenal system and their response to adrenaline, and that's due to embryological epigenetic factors. And to make that simple is that there's different tissues that are developing in the womb, obviously, that make up our body. Depending on the genes that you have and in the environment in the womb, you will give more dominance to certain tissues. And this particular person, they called the Activator in our ph360 circle. The Activators have, they develop the tissues more dominantly that are related to the muscle, the skeleton, the testosterone, and the reproductive glands, adrenal glands, kidneys. And so as they develop throughout their life, these hormones and these tissues have more dominance than the other tissues.
And so, I'll give another example just to give a comparison in a second. So if you've got a body that's more sensitive to testosterone, it also has a slightly stronger adrenal system. And Lisa is a perfect example of that, and I'm not too far from that.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And essentially, what this body does really well is that it responds to that adrenal system very powerfully. And first thing in the morning is when your adrenal system is the strongest. This is when you get the biggest glucocorticoid release that's your cortisol and your adrenalines. And essentially, it's to say, ‘Hey, you were dead asleep, and now you need to be awake’.
And because they've got tissues that are also ready for that, they even take that energy. And if they use their adrenal system at that time, it matches their strength. This is what they've grown to be strong in. And so it matches their strength to be really great at this. And so, when they use it, it aligns with what their body is looking for. And then they ride that energy all the way through to the end of the day. And this is because we've put the right body into the right environment at the right time.
However, a Diplomat, which is the opposite side of the circle, and what we see with embryological development is, on a circle, opposite sides, you'll see opposite effects. And so, instead of it being the adrenal system and the testosterone system that's really sensitive within the body, the other body, we actually see their digestive system and their neuro system being more developed and more sensitive.
And so what's happening in digestion in the morning is that it's, essentially, it's regulating where all the fluid is going to go in the body. It's finishing off these really important digestive processes, clearing out the digestion, making sure that the gut is rested and ready for new meals. And it's doing that right up until 7am.
And so this body is having to focus all of its energy on its digestive system because that's the really important system for this body. And if you then stress this body, what happens is it goes, ‘Well, I was trying to put water into the right place, I was trying to get my digestion on track, and I'm running all of a sudden’?
Lisa: You’re just taking what. Yes.
Dr Cam: ‘Like this does not match at all. I don't need adrenaline right now. This is bad news’. And so what happens is the body then goes into compensation. It says, ‘Oh, God. Well, I'm gonna have to make up for this later. I've spent all of this fluid of sweat. I've used all of this energy’. And so this body goes, ‘Well, I didn't get time to put my fluid away, so where is it? Okay, I'm going to retain fluid now’, because, and this is exactly what happened in that body.
Lisa: You’ve put on weight.
Dr Cam: You have enough cortisol at the wrong time.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: They make that retaining fluid. And this is exactly what's happening—they get the adrenal burst in the morning, but if they then run with that with some morning exercise, it becomes too much for their system. They can't then do those digestive processes. Their gut goes off, which influences their serotonin production, which makes them less happy.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: What's really interesting with this kind of crowd is that the things that we'll see is an individual wakes up, like I said before, we'll get up, and they'll do their exercise. And what they'll notice is they start getting this bit of weight around the middle.
Lisa: Around the middle.
Dr Cam: And they'll also start accumulating fluid. They'll get a halo effect from exercise of two to three hours because their stress levels actually stay a lot higher for a lot longer because they shouldn't be stressed at that time. So they get this, and stress hormones make you feel alive, and they make you feel awake. And so, for the first three hours of the day, you're going, ‘Yes, I'm an early bird. This is awesome’, and then come lunch, it crashes really, really hard. And you also become more diabetic in the afternoon, for lack of a better term, more insulin resistance.
Lisa: Insulin resistance
Dr Cam: Yes. And so, this individual has been working their guts out literally, and all they've got is more fluid retention, tightness in the afternoon, weight gain around the middle, which is the thing that they're doing exercise for.
Lisa: They’re stuck.
Dr Cam: And if they just shift that exercise later in the day when their body is ready for movement because this body likes to conserve energy in the morning, make sure everything is sorted in their body, and then they can move in the stress and all that sort of stuff in the afternoon. And if they do that, there's no cortisol rise to the same extent. They have much lower cortisol all day, which means they don't deposit fat around their stomach.
Lisa: Because cortisol is a real effect on…
Dr Cam: Huge one. And this particular body, absolutely, because it's the opposite of the Activator, the Diplomat is, they don't like their cortisol so high. They like things to be cruisy and peaceful and steady as opposed to high-intensity and… Exactly. And so, whenever you put this body into this thing at the wrong time, you end up with this adverse effect. And you start questioning yourself, it's like, ‘What the hell could I be doing better? I'm waking up, I'm getting my food in…’
Lisa: ‘I’m useless’.
Dr Cam: ‘...I’m doing the things I’m supposed to do, and then I'm crashing in the afternoon’. And all of a sudden, now they're having three or four coffees, which is just another stimulant of cortisol.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And then they worsen the effect. And so we see for this person, if they just sleep in, they actually start losing weight faster than if they exercise. And this is…
Lisa: So counterintuitive.
Dr Cam: So counterintuitive. But when you think that whether you put muscle or fat tissue on, it’s actually—not to do with your food or your exercise, it's got to do with the hormones that those foods and exercise stimulate.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: You don't grow muscle from protein alone. Because we'll see people in hospital who are malnourished, and we're feeding them lots of protein and they just burn then they lose weight. What we're trying to do is we need to modify the hormones. And if we get the right rhythm to our day—cortisol is acting, testosterone is acting at the right time, growth hormone is acting at the right time—if we were able to match our day with our hormone release that's relevant to us, then our body is able to—anytime that it gets some protein, is able to put it to work rather than burn it off in stress.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: And the same thing with exercise. If you do exercise stress at the right time, you stimulate the right growth hormones, which like in ultramarathon running, and I use this example all the time, it's just so appropriate right now. If you run for three days, are your muscles bigger by the end of the three days?
Lisa: Hell, no
Dr Cam: Exactly. They’re broken down. Exercise is a stress, and it just stimulates your body to say, ‘You need to be stronger here’. So this is where—whenever you're thinking about exercise and food, you've got to be thinking about ‘What hormones am I modulating here? And what hormones do I need right now’? And that's the information that we can have. Just two very simple examples that we provided before.
Lisa: Yes, and this is why this information in the programme that we do is so powerful because it gives you that specific information along with a ton of other things about what time to do things and when, in optimising your whole daily rhythms. But it isn't just about exercises, it is also about the food timing. So let's look at a little bit into the food timings and then also the whole neurotransmitter side of things.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: Like when am I going to get the best out of my brain? All that type of stuff as well. So from a food perspective.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: So you and I are Crusader. I'm a Crusader-Activator on the cusp there, means four to six meals a day is ideal for us or regular food. My mum's a Guardian. Opposite end of the wheel, again.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: Two to three meals a day, ideal. That doesn't mean that you and I can't do intermittent fasting. That doesn't, by the way. We can still do that and get the benefits of autophagy and stuff, but it's a shorter fast from what I worked on.
Dr Cam: That's exactly right.
Lisa: Yes
Dr Cam: Yes. And that's the perfect—I was actually going to use those two examples for that, Lisa. Spot on. So we've got Activators and Diplomats, which we’ve spoken about. Then, we got the Crusaders and the Guardians. So Crusaders are, essentially, Lisa’s a really good example, I’m a good example.
Generally slight like a soccer player—taller, leaner, slender. And one of the features of their body is that they're very neurally-driven. So as opposed to adrenaline and testosterone, as opposed to digestive, the Crusaders are very neurally-driven. Everything is about mental focus, mental drive, and creation of hormones that allow you to keep driving forward. And you see these types of people in triathlons and marathons and anything that requires that long-term high-intensity focus.
Now, with this body, not prone at all to obesity. You have to really, really really push with bad habits to get this body to a level of obesity versus the Guardian. Naturally, this is your strongest, thickest jointed, biggest muscled, and also, they have the greatest capacity to store fat. So anyone that you see at powerlifting or in shot put or in those power sports, like the world's strongest men. Oprah is a good example of a Guardian. This is a body that's just more substantial.
And so what's really interesting about these two bodies is that—and I guess the most relevant one, we can start with the Guardian because it's kind of interesting. And then we'll come back to the Crusader, which is more—the most appropriate for general healthy guidelines than any other one.
Lisa: So we run the show as far as…
Dr Cam: We have the other types.
Lisa: ...we have told everybody how to do it all wrong.
Dr Cam: Well, and what's really interesting is that our bodies—because we're unlikely to be obese just with the way our body is made up. That's not good or bad. We die from other things, by the way. We may not die from diabetes.But we might get...
Lisa: What can else haunt us?
Dr Cam: Exactly. Yes. There’s Parkinson's or something not so pleasant like that. So essentially, when we're feeding a Guardian, they've got a body, they walk past a bakery, and they smell it, and they gain weight.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: They have this ability of just accumulating mass at all times. But they have these hormones in their body, and they're more sensitive to prolactin, and they produce more insulin. And these hormones are growth hormones. They make you grow. And so, they have an abundance of these things going on. They have a slightly slower thyroid, which means that they are able to conserve weight very easily. And what's really interesting, psychologically, they're being driven to care for people. So they have the most ability to conserve energy and the most ability to nurture. So you have these big, strong protective individuals.
Now what's really interesting with the timing of food, they’re recommended to have two meals per day, breakfast and lunch and then a very, very light, if not, non-existent dinner. Now, the reason that we do that, particularly with Guardians who are feeling like they wanting to—because this is the body that's most prone to excess weight gain as well. They'll be healthy and obese, but they can also really extend out past that unhealthy obese as well.
And so, what happens overnight is your prolactin and your growth hormones, even insulin release, all of these things are greatest overnight. And the reason for that is when we're sleeping, it’s the best time for our recovery. And so all of these hormones that are associated with growth are the response to the day of spending energy. ‘I spend all this energy. I burn. I then have to recover’.
Now, what's really interesting about the Guardians is that they have like a supercharged ability to grow overnight. And both protein and carbohydrates stimulate growth in different ways, and it's modulated through—insulin is a really great growth factor. It's one of the hormones that are involved. Essentially, if Guardians have a really big protein-carbohydrate meal at night, they get all of these growth factors at a time that they're about to have their biggest growth of the day.
Lisa: Growth anyway. Yes.
Dr Cam: And this is a body that all they do is grow really well. They actually have a different rhythm that's not as catabolic, or doesn't break down as easily. In fact, it's quite anabolic by nature, it grows very easily. When they get stressed, they grow. And so what we want to do is to help this person rather than top up their blood sugar levels, rather than give them protein to feel full, it's actually—these individuals don't get that hungry that often if they're eating the right types of foods.
Essentially, what we see is if we can remove the proteins, carbohydrates, and even the fats at night and have a very light dinner and on sort of that time-restricted feeding, I say, is the way that you can think about it, but it's an early window for the day. What we do is we drop those growth hormones and the growth factors, I should say. We allow their digestive system to do a whole lot more recovery overnight. They'll wake up the next day feeling so much lighter. But we also haven't triggered off their key growth factors, which they already have plenty of anyway.And so all of a sudden, now, instead of growing excess overnight, they're able to start just recovering other systems and processes in their body.
And particularly when you're getting the breakfast and getting the lunch, you're creating stability in their system, then you're just taking away their growth stimulus at night, and they can start losing weight. And what's really fascinating about this, the studies that have shown this is if you can take people with diabetes, you give them six meals per day of 1400 calories, or you give them two meals per day of 1400 calories—breakfast and lunch. And what you see is a one-kilo weight loss for the six meals per day and a five-kilo weight loss for the two meals a day.
Lisa: Massive on the same amount of calories.
Dr Cam: Exactly the same macros, exactly the same calories, it's just that we're changing when it's coming into the body.
Lisa: So these people shouldn't be doing a morning intermittent fast. They should be doing a stop at six o'clock eating type thing.
Dr Cam: Even five.
Lisa: Even five.
Dr Cam: But really, it's about two meals. And if those two meals can be earlier, that's going to be better. And with lunch, is a time when we really tolerate foods very well. There’s a lot of systems that are really supporting us. That's actually a time when the meal can be most substantial as well. And so, this is what's really important if we're thinking about, let's say, reversing diabetes, for example. If we give someone six meals per day, it almost prevents us from doing that.
Lisa: Wow, so you just can't fix it as you’re just getting it a spot.
Dr Cam: And it is why there are so many issues with so many, the dietary protocols out there because so many of that predicated on three meals and two snacks for this body. However, for the Crusaders…
Lisa: For us.
Dr Cam: ...which is the opposite function, they are much more likely to lose weight than gain weight. Obviously, in your exception, it's different when you're running ultramarathons.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: But we're more likely to wither and lose muscle, as opposed to the Guardian that's more likely to accumulate and gain. And so what food has to do for a Crusader is provide energy so that they don't break down. Because food is that important for recovery, and we will...
Lisa: And we’re catabolic by nature.
Dr Cam: Exactly. Food is designed to provide growth to a body that would otherwise be breaking down. And so when we see the need for regular three meals and two snacks throughout the day, and dinner can actually be relatively substantial because overnight, you want this body to take advantage of the recovery. Because if they don't get enough growth, then their immune system doesn't come on, and they start getting sick, and they start breaking down. Whereas the strength of the immune system in The Guardian is so much greater because that's the time that they really ramp up their growth.
So we have this newly-driven body that we're not trying to protect it from diabetes and insulin problems because they don't often have them, particularly insulin resistance, and they have a faster thyroid function so their metabolism is burning hotter. They have all of this mental energy that is burning as well, and that requires more carbohydrates. So essentially, we provide regular meals with carbohydrates to this body, and their brain starts operating really, really well, that decreases their stress. And it's the decrease in stress that allows muscle growth, that allows our waist to reduce. And so, by having more regular food, we actually end up with better body composition for this person. But if we have more regular food for the Guardian, we actually end up with worse.
Lisa: You need to know.
Dr Cam: Whereas if you put two meals per day into the Crusader, now, all of a sudden—because they've run out of fuel because their metabolism turns it over really quickly, they have to dip into their stress hormones to stay energised. So they have to use more cortisol and adrenaline. And what do those hormones do? They break muscle down, and they put fat around your waist.
And so we have this environment for a Crusader, if they're having two meals, they're having to stress and push to stay awake. And now all of a sudden—oh, and to stay alert and on. And now, we're going to have the effects of what those hormones do, which is in that body, they’re with the muscle, and they gain body, and they gain fat around their waist.
Lisa: Wow. So they can—that’s the exact opposite. So Crusaders can be overweight, but that's usually they hold it in the middle of the body around the waist, which is the most dangerous fat—that visceral fat. And with the Guardian—so this is why like some people when they get stressed lose weight, and some people when they get stressed put on weight. And this was always like, ‘Huh? How does that work? Because I thought cortisol always put on fat’. And it does for the Crusader as well, but it puts it on around the middle, and that's because the cortisol has gone up, and you haven't had enough food.
Okay, what about—this is just because I'm off on a tangent again—but autophagy? We all hear about inhibiting mTOR, which is one of the growth pathways. And I'm always like, ‘Okay, I'm an activated Crusader’. I'm on the cusp there. So do I do intermittent fasting or not? I feel like if I'm looking for autophagy and wanting to knock off senescent cells and all of that sort of thing, how do I do that without triggering my body to go into a stress situation?
Dr Cam: Great question. And so, this is what it comes down to then, we spoke about the rhythms at the start of the day—like the daily rhythm, the monthly rhythm, the yearly rhythms. Essentially, when we're looking at the rhythms of the different bodies, a Crusader has quite a quick turnover rhythm. So whereas the Guardian has a much longer slower turnover rhythm.
And so, what I mean by that is if a Crusader does a day or two of intermittent fasting, their metabolism goes, ‘Whoa’, like really hits them because they're always on the edge of their fuel supply. And so the fast hits them a lot faster, but they're their nervous system, which is the thing that's driving stress In their body, that will be impacted quite significantly if they go without food for a period of time. It'll start driving muscle loss and demineralisation to keep the body alert.
And so, for a Crusader, it might be the one day per week that you do that thing just to give yourself a bit of a top up. For example—or to give yourself that effect of autophagy. Whereas for a Guardian, they have this ability to accumulate, and their rhythms are much slower. They can actually go for extended periods of time in that intermittent fasting. It's actually quite beneficial for them because they are more likely to build up toxins, and they're more likely to conserve over time. That state of a semi-fasted life is actually appropriate for them because their body, generally, their rhythms are slower and steadier, and they aren't affected by a lack of caloric intake or a lower caloric intake as much.
Lisa: So for us to do extended fasts as Crusader types, are we putting ourselves at risk then? If so, how do we get rid of that? Because autophagy, just for those listening who don't know what the hell autophagy is, it’s basically recycling when a body goes up, there's not enough food supply around, there's not enough nutrients because their body is sensing the nutrients that's available in our blood, and this can be low protein or low caloric intake. And then it starts to recycle old parts of cells or knock off cells that are damaged and not doing the job properly. And this is a process that we want to have, but as Crusaders, we don't want to tip ourselves into the stressed out state, where we’re actually too catabolic.
So, because there's lots of things going around about fasting and the benefits of fasting. And, again, it is appropriate for one type more than another type or at certain periods of time. So how would you optimise it for a Crusader versus a Guardian?
Dr Cam: Yes. Okay, that's good call. So essentially—probably, the thing to state here is that it's not just food that creates this level of stress or rest and recovery. If you were—let's say, for example, that you're up in some sort of retreat, where they're doing meditations a lot of the day, where you're walking in nature, where it's just very, very gentle surrounds, and there's virtually no stress on your nervous system, and you're able to completely dial out, this is as a Crusader, then you're going to be able to tolerate a much lower food intake for a longer period of time because there's less requirement that's being placed on. You have food.
But if you're in the middle of a busy week and you start fasting, your brains will go in ‘Well, I still want to get stuff done.’ And so your brain is going, ‘Let's do this’. And so in order to do that, you have to create stress hormone responses to keep your brain alive and to break muscle down, turn it into glucose that you can use in your brain for fuel.
Lisa: Oh, we don’t want that.
Dr Cam: So it definitely depends on the environment that you're in as to how long you could do this. But generally, what we say is, if a Crusader is going to be doing some sort of intermittent fasting or something like that, just doing a day per week, and on a day where you can control the amount of stuff that is going on so you're not too narrowly stressed, it's really, really good way of going.
Making sure you're meditating, deep breathing throughout the day, doing some gentle exercise, some stretching, just to really calm your nervous system. You're not having to do really big meetings and really stressful thinking sessions because you want to dial down the thing that's taking all of your energy. And for a Crusader, it's their brain.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And so if that's being used lots, then the body will commit its reserves to looking after the brain. So you have to turn that off in order to do a fast without affecting yourself too much.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: Because if prolonged, you'll start continually breaking down muscle tissue to fuel your brain, and that's not good. And you release a whole lot of calcium from your bones to provide energy in your mitochondria.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: In your little, your muscle tissue within your muscle fibres as well. You need calcium to make muscles contract and do their thing. And if you're stressed and not consuming, you'll release more of that, which is not a good thing either.
Lisa: ...osteoporosis.
Dr Cam: So this is where you will essentially know...Yes, osteoporosis is a big risk for Crusaders. So you will essentially know that if you're doing a semi-fast and you're starting to have the feeling, if you're a Crusader out there, you're having to push to have your energy. When you're using your energy and flow, it should be just this flow of energy that feels good to use when you're doing mental tasks and things like that. If you've fasted for too long, it'll now be this push. It's like, ‘I have to get myself up to do this work’. And that requires...
Lisa: You repel.
Dr Cam: Yes, yes. So if you're starting to get less motivated, and you're getting to the end of a job, and you're just exhausted, I would say you're fasted too long because your body overextending itself.
The thing about Crusaders is their bodies are quite sensitive. You'll be able to pick up on those cues a couple of days in just to see what's going on.
Lisa: That’s really important for people to understand. That again, it's not a one-size-fits-all when you hear everybody talking about intermittent fasting or doing these things on autophagy and inhibiting mTOR and all those sort of things. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach once again. It really needs to be...and just talking about the Guardians to like what we've been saying, sounds all negative. They tend to hold—and I know like my mum complains bitterly when I give her this tiny little meal at nighttime that's full of veggies, and she doesn't get a big steak like I'm eating. And that’s a pain for her at times.
However, her body—to see the advantages of being a Guardian. Like back in the caveman days, she would have survived—I would have been long gone if there was a lack of food supply. She would have carried on and survived. Her immune system is incredibly strong. She's very resilient. She was in a wheelchair for 18 months, and she still had massively strong muscles. She's not catabolic in that, but she has a struggle with her weight. And now we've seem to have cracked the code on it. Because we're doing the meals at the right times most of the time and doing it appropriate for her body, we've had this huge weight loss over a very long period of time.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: And that's the way to do it. That's what you want. You want to sort of do that in a controlled manner. And so there are good—and she's never going to get osteoporosis. Her bones aren't going to break. Mine? Quite likely.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: There's likely to have Alzheimer's even given whose particular situation. So those are some of the benefits just for those listening out there who resonate with that body type. Not to think it's all negative. And we've got an ‘Oh, gosh’, and we have an ‘Oh, good’ some things.
Dr Cam: And to add to that, survival wise, we would have these individuals who are much stronger than everybody else who has a focus on looking after everybody else. The reason that their body is built the way it is is when we go through famine as a community, their body goes into conservation, they start growing, or essentially, they start growing, or they start slowing down their metabolism so that they can provide food for everybody else. There's this internal ‘I must provide’. And so, their body actually assist with that, and it slows down its metabolism, enables it to gain more or at least stop the weight loss. And this is why, for this body, you can actually extend the fast because they have this incredible resilience.
What's interesting about this body is that when you, any kind of stress—mental stress and things like that—if they experience stress, they'll say, ‘Ah, my community mustn't be safe. If I'm stressed, I'm the most resilient and I'm the strongest. So everybody else must be almost dying. So I'm going to start slowing my metabolism down straight away’. And as a result, they're going to take advantage of those hormones that help you grow, like the insulin resistance, the lower thyroid function. They're going to take advantage of those to be stronger for the community.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: And this is a really important piece for any of your Kiwi listeners, particularly Modi and Modi populations.
Lisa: Yes. They’re dominant Guardian.
Dr Cam: They stick out and generally have got this incredible capacity for protection. They're very family-oriented, it's all about protection of the family. And that thing comes from the same thing that makes them big and strong. It also makes them much more tolerant of prolonged fast because their body is designed to be a faster.
What's really interesting is their body was meant to accumulate during great times. And then when the fast came along, they just ate. And as they fast, they get healthier. Like their blood sugar start normalising, whereas the Crusader or the Sensor, that the leanest of the bodies, when they fast, they start breaking down and heading towards disease because they just lack that ability to grow and that ability to accumulate. So the mTOR pathways, which is all about growth, they're actually very protective for Crusaders and senses. And so we don't want to spend too long without them versus a Guardian, Connectors. Some Connectors and Diplomats, they have probably an excess of growth. And so, for them, that pathway is going to be more relevant to modulate or at least you'll be able to influence it for longer with greater effect.
Lisa: And this is why we see in the Polynesian community more diabetes, more cardiovascular disease, more—and then they also have a tendency to like those particular types of foods even more. So when you see with Sensors—it’s another one that we haven't gotten to, but that’s a real ectomorph body—and Crusaders have a tendency to actually want more vegetables and things, and they can actually do with more cooked, slow-cooked meats, and things like that.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: But they have a tendency to like those sort of heavier, fattier, more sugar-rich foods when that's actually the worst thing for them. And that's why we're seeing, unfortunately, so much diabetes, so many metabolic disorders, and so on.
Dr Cam: Yes, well, those foods provide a lot of safety. By having so many calories, it's like, well, ‘If I've got enough weight on, my family is now protected’. And so there's this biological drive to eat foods that are very caloric so that you can have more mass because more mass equals more protection for my family. But if you just go and lift really, really heavy weights, your body feels heavier, your body gets the sense that it's more stable and stronger, and that can actually replace. It's a really interesting one that requirement.
Lisa: Ah, is that right?
Dr Cam: That requirement to feel it. Yes. So there's a feeling of groundedness you get from those very heavy weights, and we also know that it actually creates a bit more growth hormone, a bit more recovery overnight, but it will direct it with the right nutrients and the right exercise to muscle growth rather than fat.
Lisa: So that's why the Diplomat and the Guardian body types, these stronger, heavier body types are really good at heavy weight lifting. And even though—because I have this argument with some of the clients that we have—women who are Guardians or Diplomats, ‘I don't want to do heavy weights. I don't want to put on more muscle mass’. But that it's—again, that’s counterintuitive. So they ended up doing lots of cardio-based stuff, which has its benefits as well, but it doesn't have the quickest response as, say, heavyweight sessions will do.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: Is that right.
Dr Cam: That's exactly right. Yeah. And there's a number of things that need to go on, but essentially, this body needs to feel heavy. There needs to be white in the joints, like there's a joint receptor reflex that sends signals back up to the brain to say ‘You are heavy enough, therefore your family is safe’. And I know it's a bit of a…
Lisa: It’s wow.
Dr Cam: ...a narrative piece, but you only need to get someone doing this, you only need to get a hilltop, like a Guardian or a Diplomat, doing this type of training and understand the benefits of it. It's a very...
Lisa: Visceral thing really. You know what I’m saying.
Dr Cam: It is.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: Visceral is the perfect word.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: I was thinking soulful, but visceral is definitely...
Lisa: Visceral, yes.
Dr Cam: Yes, it resonates because they feel strong.
Lisa: It resonates with the dominant hormones.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: And then there's, yes.
Dr Cam: And they’ve got these massive muscles that are not designed to lift little weights. And their biomechanics actually improve when they start lifting a heavier weight because the whole muscle is engaged in the way that it's supposed to. So it's fascinating. The form has a function, and the form directs optimal function as well if you look at it appropriately.
Lisa: And if you put a heavy weight when on your awry, we are all likely to rip something.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: A tendon or a...
Dr Cam: Or both.
Lisa: We don't like it. Yes.
Dr Cam: Yes, that’s right.
Lisa: We're better suited to medium sort of weight. So still weight training but not the heavy, heavy stuff. And we can do sort of back-to-back sessions as opposed to or back-to-back sets. Whereas with my husband and my brother, when I’m doing training with them, I get them to do a set, have a rest, do a set, have a rest. Not a CrossFit style back-to-back type of training either.
And all of these bits of the puzzle, like getting this information helps you eliminate all the trial and error about working with your body, and so that you get the results that you want and deserve without like—because I bet there's hundreds of people sitting out there now going banging their heads against a brick wall because they've done the wrong thing for the last 20 years. And I was one of them.
Like doing ultramarathons super, super long distance for an Activator-Crusader body type. Not a good combination because I have more short-term strength than I do long-distance endurance. It doesn't mean I can never do it, but it just means that I shouldn't be doing back-to-back ultra marathons, which is what I did, and I end up paying quite a high price with my health.
Whereas for another person, that might be perfectly fine thing to do. Probably not as the extreme of stupidness that I did it because it was just really ridiculous. And so you start—if you put your body in the right environment, get the right foods, eat at the right times of the day, work and do your mental stuff, you'll get health. And you'll get optimal performance, and you'll get longevity, all as a byproduct of doing this in the right... Can we just touch on there, Dr Cam, just before we wrap up? Because I know it's time to wrap up. But the neurotransmitters for each different body type—and we can just go over this quickly, and I think we probably need to spend an hour just on that, but maybe we'll do that next time.
But just as a brief overview. So you said prolactin.That's the caring hormone for the Guardians and Nurturers. This is why these people make wonderful mothers and fathers and tribal leaders and leaders of companies even. Because they're that steady look-after-everybody type. If we go to the Diplomats, what are they? What's their dominant hormone or the hormone that sticks up against?
Dr Cam: They're searching for a balance of serotonin. Serotonin is what you get as a reward for things being pleasurable and enjoyable or calm and steady. So let's say that you go for a run, the longer you run, the more serotonin you get in saying, ‘Hey, calm down. You've done well. You've achieved’. And so when you finish exercise, the thing that's kind of keeping that calm and that pleasurable craziness that you feel after some sort of exercise, that's serotonin, or if you do a job well. And so this body— because they're searching for doing a job well, they'll take more time to consider before they do anything. Because they want to make sure they get the job done well so they get their serotonin. Because if they don't get their serotonin, they get very demotivated.
Lisa: I didn’t understand aptly...
Dr Cam: So they start ruminating, and they start thinking about things. And when people rush and they go, ‘Well, I've got to think about this again because I want to make sure I do it well’. And so they'll slow down. The best example for this is kids. You got a kid who's a bit taller, stronger kind of build, just does not do mornings well. And you say, ‘Hey, let's get out of the house right now’. And they're like, ‘Oh’, and then they go slower. And this is because they're like, ‘Well, I need to get my serotonin. I thought I was going fast. I wasn't. So I'm gonna have to rethink what I was doing’. And then they reprocess the whole game again, and then they get there eventually.
So serotonin is about pleasure, but it also moderates the speed at which people make decisions and how willing they are to take action. You've got lots of serotonin, you'll be very optimistic and so...
Lisa: I'm laughing because this is my husband, and we have this fight every day. ‘Cause I’m like, ‘Let's go to the beach and do some skimboarding or surfing or something’. And he's like, ‘Oh, you've just dropped it on me’. And I'm like, ‘What do you mean? It's not a very hard thing to run down the beach’. For heaven's, he's got to have this done and that done and this ticked off and...
Dr Cam: You’re violating the plan.
Lisa: And I’m like, ‘Ugh’.
Dr Cam: You’re ruining his ability to get serotonin. It’s a violation of his biology. That’s right.
Lisa: Oh, I have to go and apologise.
Dr Cam: But then the Activator, obviously, they're searching for adrenaline.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And so the perfect example is they want change. They want unknown, they want excitement, they want action. And so, instead of thinking about something and really planning it out, it's like, ‘How boring is that? I know exactly what's going to happen. So I need to throw something in that wasn't planned, otherwise’. And this is you see kids got this in school, where they are sitting in the class with a monitor and teacher sitting down, and all they want is move and excitement, and they sit, and they start making noise. ‘Ah! Miss!’ And they start throwing aeroplanes around the room because it gives them adrenaline, which makes their biology feel great.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And so now all of a sudden, they feel really safe because they're doing something that's exciting, that is the opposite to the serotonin drive. And this is what's really important. And the funny thing is, as the universe would have it, you see a lot of couples that may…
Lisa: They’re opposite. That makes sense.
Dr Cam: Activator-Diplomat. And they are dealing with this their whole life until they realize that it's actually in their strength to work together.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And then we have the Crusader, which is dopamine. So prolactin, the Guardian, is selflessness. It's ‘I’m going to do things for other people. I've got enough so I'm going to do for others’. Dopamine is ‘I'm going to do for me to get the outcome that I want’. And so it creates drive, focus. I've got—it's going to provide energy and make you feel great towards the mission. So as long as there's a mission, there'll be dopamine that's going through the Crusaders brain, locking into their reward centre and saying, ‘I must finish this’. And everything else just goes by the wayside—people, relationships, other jobs, all of that sort of stuff. ‘Because this is the way that we're going, this is what I'm being provided reward for. So this is the outcome that I want’.
And so this hormone makes you a little bit selfish, but you can actually—for example, Lisa is doing this podcast to influence thousands of people every month for their benefit, but she's doing it for herself. And this is the thing that we allow, we—the person who cures cancer is doing it for… Let's say it's a Crusader, they do it for themselves, but it influences positively many, many people.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: It's not to say selfish and selfless are good or bad; it's just the way that the biology must interact with the world in order to feel safe. And so we must do things for ourselves as a Crusader, but it can positively benefit many.
Lisa: Yes. You can pick missions that are gonna benefit the world. I mean, the head of ph is a good example, isn't it? Yes. So you got to meet the—but you have a huge capacity to go on a mission and achieve incredible things and incredible amounts of things because you're so driven, but you have a tendency to bust yourself in the process and burn out.
Dr Cam: Yes. That’s right.
Lisa: And that's a lot of oxidative stress if you're on the Activator side of things.
Dr Cam: Lots of inflammation. Yes, for the Crusaders, that’s for sure.
Lisa: Yes, yes.
Dr Cam: And what they need is they need to turn that off every now and again.
Lisa: That’s hard.
Dr Cam: Just like Guardians. Guardians need to do things for themselves too. They need to be selfish sometimes, and if they don't, they get sick. The same thing, Crusaders need to turn off and get off mission for a second every now and again.
Lisa: And relax. This is for all body types, it's really important to do the calming breath-holding exercises and the Pilates and the yoga and being in nature and doing those things that turn the brain off. Because otherwise we're just on, on, on, and then you tend to wind up and then crash and then wind up and then crash.
Dr Cam: That’s right. But too many of those meditative exercises and you start getting anxious that you're not getting enough done. And so it's finding that balance...
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: ...of resting the mind at the best time and chronobiologically, between 6 and 10 pm, is the time when your brain is going through its best recovery. And so if you use meditation at that time, it has more impact than it would have other times, and this is where chronobiology actually comes into the mind side of things too.
And so then we have Connectors and Sensors. So Connectors are the most social, socially inclined hilltop. They have oxytocin, which is driving their response to the environment. So oxytocin is the trust and connection hormone.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: Essentially, what they'll look to do is they'll look to create trust and connection with as many people as possible. And the way that they do that, they actually have a very powerful visual cortex, which means that when they look at somebody, they can determine their emotional state from their face.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: Then they have this ability to be a chameleon. They'll then match themselves to the person, and when you match a person's state, you create trust through commonality in resonance, essentially.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: And so they have this ability to immediately fall into trust with people, which gives them their oxytocin, which they get from that connection, which then makes them feel good, and they can keep going.
The trouble with this, though, is if you're trying to keep people happy all of the time, which is an important part of this, and you're not happy within yourself, it becomes inauthentic. And so then you end up chasing little droplets of oxytocin from lots of different strangers. Whereas what we need to do is really, really need to encourage Connectors to have very strong stable relationships like a dog and his owner. And the animal totem for help for the Connector is the puppy.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: And this is because like the strength of that primary bond, what that does is it keeps a flood of oxytocin going through their body all of the time.
Lisa: They’re not chasing it in the wrong places.
Dr Cam: Exactly. And then they can go out, and they can get their little top-ups and keep the community together, which is an incredible strength.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: It's to keep people together and keep people connected. Not everyone can do that, and they have that ability. What's really interesting, though, is if they have a bad social experience, oxytocin will get tagged with that negative emotion.
Lisa: Oh.
Dr Cam: So the next time they look to connect with somebody, it might actually be harder because they remember the bad thing that happened before. So the more positive, the more transparent, and the more best friend relationships that they can have, where they can just be themselves and be completely open and completely trusted, that allows them to constantly associate oxytocin with the great thing and great feelings, which then allows them to express themselves best as well.
Lisa: It's incredible.
Dr Cam: The impact of having very honest and non-judgmental friends is going to be really, really important for a Connector.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: Versus for a Sensor. Sensors are vasopressin dominant. Vasopressin is a—it’s like a survival mechanism. It essentially helps you hold on to everything. This is the leanest, slightest body. They have the smallest amount of muscle tissue and fat tissue. And essentially, their body is set up to ‘I need to protect myself because I don't have the capacity, the physical capacity’…
Lisa: Strength.
Dr Cam: …‘to actually look after other people. I need an environment that's nice and quiet. I need food that's nice and warm because I don't have a whole lot of insulation. I need an environment that is warm as well because I don't have much thermoregulation’, all of that sort of stuff. ‘I need just sensory dial down’.
And so when you've got a body like this, when they get stressed, the vasopressin creates fluid or tension at the kidneys, and it essentially lets you hold on to all of your good stuff. It creates essentially a little bit of jealousy. ‘I like one thing at a time’. They really like monogamy in everything like, ‘One thing at a time because I can focus on one thing at a time because that's very certain’. They like certainty because lack of certainty is risky for them because they don't have much reserve in the tank. If they're out in the wilderness, ‘I need to know exactly where my food is, because I've only got a day or two of survival in my body’, or as a Guardian, for weeks. It’s...
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: So as a result, their brain will be hyper-aware of the environment. They’ll be less trusting because they need certainty, and they'll want as much information as possible. They'll want to collect as much data as possible before they trust anything. And so Connectors will just be looking for trust all of the time everywhere with no information.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Cam: Sensors will be looking for as much data, as much certainty, as much security as possible. And then they'll say, ‘Okay, this all makes logical sense. This is not a risk to me or my body. Okay, now, I'm good to put some faith in this person’. And so they'll be excellent data gatherers. They'll really make sure that they understand people, and they'll want conversations that ask for the fifth and sixth, ‘Why?’
Lisa: Why.
Dr Cam: ‘Why do you do that? And why do you do this’? We asked a few Sensors, ‘Why is that so important to you’? And they said it's because ‘The deeper I get, I get to understand this person's intentions and as to whether they're trustworthy or not’. And so they are really investigating and collecting to do that. And it's their brain that’s asking.
Lisa: And so very sceptical by nature, so very good at analysing data, and being able to sift through lots of—so they're very neurally-focused. So you see a lot of people in this type going into, say the sciences and so very neurally-driven professions.
Dr Cam: That's right. And not quite as sceptical as Crusaders. When you've got like a bit of adrenaline and testosterone and this stuff going on, that's when you get scepticism. When we're talking about Sensors, they're actually quite open, but they will only do things that make sense. And if they've got something that works for them right now, they won't change it. And I've had clients that have got a result in the first few months, and then I see them four years later, and they're still doing the same thing, even though they have actually needed to change it.
Lisa: Yes. Doing it all.
Dr Cam: And that’s where they've credit security out of this information.
Lisa: Stuck.
Dr Cam: ‘Certainty is good. I can trust this information, therefore I'll continue with it even if my body starts not feeling great. This came from a certain place, so I'm going to trust it, and then I’ll look for other things’. So they are quite open as long as the information is provided logically, systematically, and compartmentalise one thing at a time because that's how their brain really works.
Lisa: So they need to ask a lot of why's. And of this body type, you have a lot of people that are often quite often vegan or vegetarian, which is actually not the greatest for the body types.
Is that right?
Dr Cam: No. Well, this body is, generally, they don't have the strongest digestion, they will get less hydrochloric acid production. They have a greater need for minerals and a greater need for growth. And the protein is actually quite important for them in that sense for both the minerals and the growth factors. But often, because they're very sensitive to the environment, their nervous system makes them very sensitive, they tend away from things that maybe have ethical issues, or they don't feel so great about eating this meat or whatever it is, where they get huge benefits out of doing that. And eating raw vegan, for example, can be particularly bad for this individual because they just don't have the capacity to digest all of those.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Cam: Very tough fibres. And they need a bit more help. And even if the food is very cold, and they need warmth in their body because the cold will actually reduce their stomach acid even further. So going for warm cooked vegetables would actually be a really, really great start, but then aging in some protein that can provide those minerals and that extra growth.
Lisa: And stuff.
Well, Dr Cam, this has been an absolutely mindblowing episode. I think if you haven't kind of way going, ‘Wow, I need to know what I am’, and if you do reach out to us because that's what we do.
Dr Cam, thank you very much. And you're going to be a repeat offender again on the show regularly throughout the year, covering different scientific topics around the genetic side of things and epigenetics. So thank you very much for sacrificing your time today. Really, really appreciate it. And I learn a lot every time I get to talk to you so it's been a real privilege again to have you on.
Dr Cam: It's so good to be here again, Lisa. I'm looking forward to the stuff coming in the future too.
That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
There is now emerging research about hyperbaric oxygen therapy and its ability to help with sickness and improve general health. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not a cure-all miracle, however, it can help supply our bodies with the oxygen they need to repair and heal themselves!
In this episode, Dr Jason Sonners tackle common misconceptions about oxygen and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Dr Jason discusses oxidative stress and what can make it positive or negative for our bodies. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy may not be widely used in hospitals, but the emerging research surrounding it shows incredible results. Take your health into your own hands and discover how hyperbaric oxygen therapy can improve your health!
If you want to learn more about how hyperbaric oxygen therapy works, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
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“Just like anything else, you need to know how to use [oxygen], how to operate it properly, how to keep it within a safe means and make it effective.”
“This might not sound fabulous, but [oxygen] doesn't cure anything. It just helps with so many things.”
“Not only do we have to exercise properly, but the framework of alignment, and posture, and all the pieces that predispose the body to breaking down prematurely, and where chiropractic fit the model of really trying to improve that story.”
“I can only hold my breath for a couple minutes and if I can get a little bit more oxygen, maybe I could heal a little bit faster. To some extent, it's that simple.”
“If we make really great changes, and then we decide to have children at some point, we may not have to pass down the intergenerational toxicity.”
“Every virus you've ever had, you'll always have. They live contained, so to speak, and as long as our immune system can keep things in quarantine that way, we can typically live with these viruses in our body without actually expressing.”
“Molecular hydrogen is technically not an antioxidant, but it has antioxidant-like capacity.”
Dr Jason Sonners, DC, DIBAK, DCBCN, CCWP, CHP is a certified hyperbaric practitioner and is the Clinic Director of NJ HBOT and HBOT USA. He combines hyperbaric oxygen therapy, exercise, nutrition, and detoxification programs to help support patients through a variety of conditions including autoimmune and neurological conditions, autism, allergies, cancer, and many others.
Passionate about spreading the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, Dr Jason wrote the book, Oxygen Under Pressure, and regularly uploads to the HBOT USA YouTube channel.
Learn more about Dr Jason and his work through his website, NJ HBOT Center, and Youtube.
You can also contact him through email (drjasonsonners@hbotusa.com).
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Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know the basics of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
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For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Dave Liow, an exercise physiologist and holistic movement coach, joins me in this episode to discuss feet and how to optimise foot health. We talk about some common foot conditions, and he also shares advice on selecting the right shoes and improving foot mechanics.
For runners and everyone else, don’t miss this episode and learn how you can achieve good foot health!
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
[03:29] Why Feet?
‘I’m constantly dumbfounded by how little care people have taken on their feet’.
‘The foot and the ankle are a huge player in my model and certainly one that I think having a very big impact on how people move well’.
‘Shoe choice doesn’t start and finish when you’re done running—it’s throughout the day’.
‘Be careful where you expose your feet to because it will go in you and then we'll take it into your health. There's time and place for everything’.
‘It’s not about speed and power… It’s keeping everything as best as you can in optimal performance and stopping things before they fall down the cliff and being in that preventative space’.
‘If you think you can get everything out of your diet, even if you’re eating organic, you probably can’t… So certainly, some supplementation is useful’.
‘It’s not the shoe that does the running; it’s the person that does the running. Technique and conditioning and looking after yourself and your health has much more effect than a shoe ever will’.
Having mentored many coaches and trainers in New Zealand and Australia, Dave Liow is following his passion for sport and health and love for teaching. As a health professional, exercise physiologist and the founder of the Holistic Movement Coach Programme, he is constantly striving to find ways to be healthier and move better.
You may connect with Dave on LinkedIn or Facebook. You can also visit his website or watch his YouTube videos to learn how to take better care of your feet.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to achieve good foot health.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week. So I have two guests. Dave Liow this time. Now Dave is a repeat offender on the show, and I love having him to guest. He is one of my great mentors. And I hope you're gonna get a lot out of today's session.
Today, it's all about feet or so. This is one for the runners out there for sure. But also for just optimizing your foot health and also the whole kinetic chain, your feet where you connect with the ground obviously, and it affects your whole body. So we go to a deep dive into looking after yourself in regards to your feet. For the runners out there, it's all about playing for charters and bunions and picking the right running shoes. But there's also a whole lot of need for people to just have—want to know about good foot health.
Before we head over to the show, Christmas is coming. So if you want to grab one of my books, or one of my jewellery pieces, I’ll love that. You can head over to lisatamati.com. All the things are on there. And we're gonna be having a little break over the Christmas period. Maybe one, maybe two weeks from the show. I'm not quite sure at the stage, depending on the team's requirements over that period. So I hope you do have a good time of the Christmas. If you're listening to this afterwards, I hope the New Year's starting off really well for you.
Before I go over to the show, just a reminder, I do have a couple of places left. We're nearly full on our one-on-one consultations, health optimization coaching. If you have a problem that you'd like to get help with, whether it's a high performance, whether you're a top athlete and wanting to get to the next level, whether you're wanting to work on your mindset, or maybe you've got a really complicated health challenge that you're just not getting any answers for, or you're having trouble sifting through all of the information and getting the right stuff—then please reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com. Right. Now over to the show with Dave Liow from the Holistic Movement Coach.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone. Welcome back. Today I have the amazing, the incredible, awesomest, Dave Liow on the show. Dave, welcome back, repeat offender.
Dave Liow: Hi Lisa.
Lisa: I'm super stoked to have you today.
Dave Liow: For the podcast you mean, right?
Lisa: You’re a repeat offender for the podcast. Coming back to give us more. Not an offender in any other way.
Dave is an expert that I've had on before and he's definitely one of my mentors. And he's been to—Neil, my business partner for many years. And he is a mentor to many of the coaches and top trainers in New Zealand and Australia. So that's Dave's background. And you've got a background in physiology, don’t you Dave?
Dave: Yes.
Lisa: You have a company called the Holistic Movement Coach. And will you—we're going to talk today about feet. People are like, ‘Wow, that's really interesting topic to talk about’. But it is. It's really, really exciting. Last time we had you on the show, we talked about the science of life, and that was one of the most popular episodes. So I'm really…
Dave: Great!
Lisa: …happy to have you back on and to share some more of your absolute amazing wisdom. So today we've picked feet. What are we gonna to talk about, Dave? What are we going to share about feet and what you need to be aware of?
Dave: Well feet’s one of those interesting ones. So from—as a movement professional, which is really my background. Though, being a holistic movement coach, if you just look at movement, you're gonna come unstuck pretty soon. So when I started looking at movement though, one of the things that I noticed that was one of the areas that were neglected were feet.
So we're seeing or looking at people's lumbar spines all the time and come to wideness not losing link from the top of the head. But a lot of trainers and movement professionals weren't even looking at people's feet. They had no idea what was going on, underneath those shoes of theirs.
So for those of you who might think about maybe the back, whatever. Imagine if someone was wearing a big potato sack over their whole body, and you couldn't see where the spine was at trying to train them. So trying to work with someone and get them to move well without looking at their feet is to me just crazy.
Lisa: Yes, nonsensical.
Dave: Yeah. And we've got 28 bones in the feet. So 28 bones, and we've got 55 articulations from below the knee.
Lisa: Wow.
Dave: So over a third of the bones are in the feet there. So that tells you about just how important that area is there. We have a look at the muscles that run down below the knee too. We've got 50 muscles. So added it, 276 ortho muscles, I think that's about right muscles. We have 50 below the knee so that shows you just how important there is. And it's an area that I think has been largely neglected by moving professionals.
Lisa: Yes, it makes the total amount of sense. And we are on them all day, and we just shove them in a pair of shoes. And sometimes those shoes, you know, like ladies' high-heeled shoes, and tight shoes, and badly shaped shoes and don't do a lot barefoot—going out barefoot. Let’s start there, let’s start like—what does shoes do? When we put a pair of shoes on our feet? What sort of things are we taking away from our brain? Like, I always liken it to going around with a pair of gloves on my hands all day. I'm not going to be able to paint a picture and initiate anything, am I? Because I've just taken away all my proprioception and my ability to coordinate those fine motor controls with my hands. So we get that sort of analogy but actually, we do that to our feet all the time.
Dave: And that's a wonderful analogy, Lisa. And so the representation in your brain of your body is called homunculus. So your brain has representations of all your different body parts. And some body parts are represented very, very—have a very large representation in the brain because they may have a lot of sensation and require a lot of fine movement.
So there's a huge representation in your brain of your face because if you look at the number of expressions you can do, and the articulations you can do with your tongue, your lips—there's a lot of area in the brain devoted to the face. Same with the hands as well. So you look at the fine movements you can do in your hands, isn't it? And how pink your hands are say compared to your elbow. It's incredible how much space in the brain is devoted to the hand.
Now one other is the feet. The feet have a massive representation in the brain as well. But with that, though, we know the brain is plastic. It can evolve and it will adapt to whatever environment you're putting it into. If you're walking around with that, the gloves on your hand, or in this case as one of my mentors Phillip Beach would say, ‘With sensory deprivation chambers on your feet’…
Lisa: Wow.
Dave: ‘…you will lose that representation in your brain’. And the bottom of the feet is extremely propiocept. Isn’t it? So many on that plantar fascia, that part of the foot there, is full of receptors which send information up to your brain. Giving you information about where you are, how you're interacting with the ground, and how you're moving. And without that, and by breaking that link there, there's a price to pay.
Lisa: Yes, yes. And we just willy nilly wear shoes from the day we're born, pretty much. And if we're lucky in childhood, we might have run around bare feet a little bit. But most of us have got his feet and shoes all day. So you're saying that the—what did you call it? the munculus?
Dave: Homunculus.
Lisa: Humunculus?
Dave: Homunculus.
Lisa: I never heard one before. I did, like, hear the representations. Like I don't know where I picked this up, some podcasts, some ways, something. If you have two fingers that you tape together for say a month.
Dave: Yes.
Lisa: When you untape them, you are unable to move them separately because the brain has wired them as being one unit. Another example of this is where people—they lose a limb. The brain still has the representation of that limb, even though the limbs are gone and they feel the pain of that limb. And this is like, the brain is like, ‘Hey, why? Where's my arm gone? Where's my leg gone’? or whatever.
And we're doing this to much lesser degree but when we don't need our toes and our things wiggle and wobble and do the proprioception. Okay, and we can improve our performance. Now, as runners are listening to us, let's talk about a little bit why this is important for runners to be able to sense the grounds and have good proprioception. So what are some of the advantages of having good—taking good care of our feet and maybe going bare feet a little bit.
Dave: Oh, massive. One of my buddies, one of the things he has around feet—he has a lot of background in horse training. And he says, ‘No foot, no horse’. If you have a horse which damaged his hoof, then that's pretty much the end of that horse. They can't do a lot. And for you being an ultra-runner, Lisa, I'm sure you understand when your foot goes wrong.
Lisa: Oh, yes. I'm in trouble.
Dave: Yes, you are, you're in a lot of trouble. So I'm constantly dumbfounded by how little care people have take on their feet. I work on my feet every day without fail.
Lisa: Wow.
Dave: I'm certainly not an ultra-runner. I'm not the same class as you guys. But the amount of care that I take on one of my major movement teachers… I know this time when I lift…
Lisa: So okay, what are some of the things that you would do to improve your foot mechanics and your proprioception and stuff? I mean, obviously, it's a little bit difficult with our podcasts and we can't show. I’ve got some video but…
Dave: So there's that saying, ‘use it or lose it’. If your foot’s in a sensory deprivation chamber, you're gonna lose it pretty quick. So I like my foot to be out of things as much as possible, though...
Lisa: Like right now?
Dave: Yes. Quite a surprise, no shoe. Yes, I don't really wear shoes much. I wear [10:14 unintelligible] more than other shoes. If I'm running off-road, I'll certainly—and on concrete—I’ll wear some shoes. And we'll kind of talk about the shoe design a bit later on. But whenever I can go barefoot, I will. So if I can give as much information to my feet as possible—that's going to keep them smart, but also gonna keep them strong because shoes add support. That's what they are.
Lisa: Yes.
Dave: You will not believe how much support shoes add. And you'll notice when you take them away, if you try and run barefoot, if you've been wearing sickly shoes with a lot of stability that added in there. So by going barefoot a fair amount of time, you get a very strong foot as well. So that doesn't come down to running shoes. And I guess we'll talk about running shoes in a bit.
But if you're wearing running shoes all day, even when you're not running, well, you're adding support there 24/7. I understand that some people might want more support when you're running, when you've got high forces going through your feet, but walking around and running shoes all day or highly-supportive shoes. You're basically walking around with.
Lisa: Crutches. Yes, and making yourself lazy. You're making yourself lazy. Yes.
Dave: Yes, right. So you're certainly going barefoot as much as possible. Now I do a lot of work at night to make sure that my foot’s mobile. A healthy foot is a mobile foot. So one of the things that they’ll often say is ‘the foot is not a hoof’. A hoof is rock solid and hits the ground and off the coast. So look at what you can do with your hand. Okay, you should do an awful lot with your toes as well and get them moving. So if you've lost the ability to do that, it really shows that you need to do some conditioning work on your feet and get them smarter and stronger.
Lisa: And if you don't, this is where some problems come up. If you can wiggle your toes and all that sort of stuff, you can prevent issues like yes—let's look at a couple of a common running problems that people get. Things like plantar fasciitis is a biggie, or even going up the leg a little bit. Like shin splints, and the problems in the calf, in the Achilles. Are these coming from the feet at all?
Dave: Well, they’re coming from running. And there's some sort of mechanics going on there. But think of the foot, that's your first contact with the ground. When that goes wrong, everything in the chain will [12:37 unintelligible]. And if we think about something like a marathon, you've got 30 to 50,000 impact on the ground. That's a lot of race. So something's going wrong. This repetition over and over and over again. That's gonna end up breaking you.
And we're talking about forces, which you can't—two to five times your body weight depending how you're running. Now that’s a hell of force, a hell of a repetition. If something's not working right there, you will pay the price. Will you pay that price? Well, it depends.
But if we look at running injuries, straight off the top. Probably 15% of those will be at the knee. So the knee is normally the one that pays the price. But you know, I often say this in my lectures. Knee’s a dump. I knew that they kind of extracted and they've been—they have a little bit of rotation. But you see that one too much. And they have a little bit of sideways motion, but you don’t want too much of that either. So the knees are dump. So it's not only the knees fault that the knee gets some problems. It's normally the foot and ankle, or it's normally the hip, that's normally where I'll go.
And if you're a runner and you're getting knee pain, I'd be looking at either the foot and ankle. After the foot and ankle I will be looking at their hips straight away. There's something going wrong in those areas there. So about 50% of people will get knee pain more common in females than males by a long shot. Now, we look at kind of around, kind of Achilles as well. That's another area that can get a fair bit of problems as well. That's probably around…
Lisa: That's mum, as usual. Ringing in the middle of the podcast.
Dave: Calling mum. So around 10% of people get Achilles issues. That's another really common one and that's more a male thing. So that's the case, the 40 plus male is that actually the shoe. But then you'll get your IT band and touch that, which is probably around like 5% of the injuries. [14:32 unintelligible] can be in the foot or your tibia as well. And that's probably around 5% too.
So those are the main injuries. You'll see that getting running back, but knees if I was gonna go after one injury in running, knees are normally the one that pay the price. And there's certainly a big relationship between the foot and the knee. Ginormous.
Lisa: Right. So it's not always go up. Mechanics of the knees is the actual problem is down, or above, or below.
Dave: Yes. Almost always. Unless you've had an impact at the knee? Yes, you can treat the knee and always look at knee because if people come and see you for a knee injury, if you start playing the beat straight away, they'll go, ‘Well, hang on’.
Lisa: ‘What's this going on’? But it does make sense that the kinetic chain and the linking together and trying to find out where the original problem was coming from. Not just where—because like Neil's always said to me, ‘You know, like, if you've got a problem with your ankle, it can affect your shoulder’. And I’m like, ‘How does that work’? You know?
Dave: Absolutely. Yes. Where it goes, nobody knows.
Lisa: And how do you trace it back? How do you trace up a back problem to the ankle? Or the piriformis?
Dave: If you know what it should look like and it doesn't look like what it should look like, well, what happens if you change and make it look more like it should? How does that change things? And that's normally in a nutshell the approach that I'll take. I guess that’s where you need to have a reasonable reference library of saying that, nothing more than my fair share of runners. And I'm sure you have too. I mean, if you feel someone running down the street, now you go, ‘That's not a very experienced runner’, or ‘Oh, boy, that's very experienced runner’. Well, you know that because you've seen so many runners.
So having that, I guess, experience in that database to draw from, and then understand the mechanics, and really add into it what you got. And I know what you gotta do in your Running Hot business. Well, you understand your body and you understand running technique, you can put that together and solve some wonderful problems.
Lisa: Yes, absolutely. But it is like a bit of a counterintuitive thing. I had a guy like, ‘Oh my piriformis’. Like Neil said to me the other day when he saw me, ‘Oh my God. Your bunions are getting really out of control. We got to do something about that’. And I'm like, ‘Oh, is it’? Sometimes you don't notice the things because you're just seeing them every day. You know? So let's talk about—let’s say some specific type of things that we are looking at. So let's look at bunions for that. What are bunions? And what effect can they have on the mechanics of your feet and up the body?
Dave: Yes. So bunions—the quarter bunions is up for debate. There is certainly a genetic component to it. So either your mum probably has bunions. I guess.
Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes, you're right on money.
Dave: But that there’s also a big environmental part to it as well. So bunions, when your big toe starts to go in, then you'll end up with normally some calcification around that, well, that first joint—the joint in the big toe—that's probably a better way of saying it, around there as well.
What that does too is compresses the foot. The big toe goes sideways compared to it goes to the next [18:02 unintelligible], that compresses the foot, as well. So we get a lot of compression in that foot. They cause a number of problems. In between those bones in your foot. You've got a lot of nerves that run through there. So when those toes get compressed together, those nerves can get very irritated. Next, become very, very painful.
So and probably just as a little sideline here, if you were to pop your hands just in front of you there—if you're driving a car, listen to this, it's probably not such a good idea. But try this later on, you just put your hand down and look at your hand. So notice the space between your fingers there, that you put your foot down and have a look at your foot, you should also see space between your toes as well. Spacing’s really important to allow that room for the foot to move, to breathe. And also to get those space for all those straps in your foot to go.
Lisa: And that’s with you naturally just having the foot there and not trying to spread them but just...
Dave: Just naturally you should see space between your toes.
Lisa: Oh, wow.
Dave: That you see a nice wide foot there. I love it. I love a good wide foot. Yes, so compression in those toes. And that can be a footwear choice thing too. So if you have shoes, and we've talked about toe box, that's the front part of a shoe. So we go out the toe box, this area through here. So the step front pair of shoes give a wide toe box in a shoe design that lets the foot spread out versus one that narrow and pushes the toes together.
Lisa: Gosh. I should know about that. Yes. A lot of the shows that I get, I get sponsored by some brand or whatever. And then like I couldn't wear them.
Dave: Yes, the kiwi foot. Yes, and also this is a column that does this as well.
Lisa: Yes.
Dave: And with me, I've got a nice wide foot. I will not wish you for the narrow toe. It caused me nothing but problems. So footwear choice can be one of the things they also drive a bunion.
Now the other part too is that, when you've got that big toe and that big toes moving sideways, rather than going through the foot, you will often go inside the foot and fall into it. You get more pronation than what you normally have. So we lose the arch of the foot because the way the foot’s designed to move is your desire to move through and move through the big toe.
So, when we talk about the cycle of walking and running, we even have a phase of that called toe off. Because that's a really important part with a big toe pushes off. So if your big toe is going sideways, it's going to be—when you can't go through the toe, we’ll have to go around the toe. And that will cause a lot of wear and tear that can, after a while, that will start to break that foot down.
Now that may require you to drink, unless you do some exercises. In Sydney, we have some real bunion experts and my team, some of my guys love working with bunions. And you can certainly bring that foot back if you have surgery to repair bunions. So if you don't do the work, well the same thing is going to happen again. You just go straight across and they'll end up having to cut your foot open.
Lisa: Yes, yes.
Dave: My mum had bunions. But I gave her a little exercise program, and I'm pretty sure that's on my—that may be on my YouTube channel.
Lisa: Okay, we might get the link off here.
Dave: And yes, if not, I'll put it on there. And yes, she had some exercise to do for bunions. Her bunions pain disappeared and my mum's in her 70s. So you can certainly reverse that and have her feet are straighter. I’ve had some people come back from their podiatrist and I go to say, ‘What the hell have you been doing? What have you been doing? Keep doing it. Because your toes are straightening, and your foot in better condition’.
Lisa: So you can sometimes avoid surgery. Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing.
Dave: Well, and even if you have surgery, if you don't do the follow up, you're gonna end up having it again. It’s a huge amount of work with a huge amount of things you can do to help out your bunions.
Lisa: Okay, that's really good because I have—got a very neglected bunion. I've always like, ‘Oh, it’s not causing me major troubles yet’. You know? Now I'm thinking, ‘Shoot. I need to address it’, because it's getting, like, Neil noticed that last time I was with him, it's getting worse. And I'm, ‘Oh, this is it? I thought it was the same old, same old’. Neil exclaimed no. And I've got troubles with piriformis. And I'm like, ‘I've been looking at piriformis trying in working on that’. And that could be, could be, could be, might not be, could be a knock on the feet there.
Dave: So thinking about how that could relay. If you've got that bunion here, and your foot’s falling into pronation and it’ll take the knee with it, and it will take that whole hip and will rotate in and everything will rotate in there. What stops it? Well piriformis can stop that. So if piriformis is having to make up for a foot function issue there, well, that's worth working.
If you release piriformis, and get that guy—well, now you've got nothing holding your foot together. So where's that guy next to the public often deal on the spine? That's probably where we're going next. And then it could be somewhere else too, or it could travel to the knee.
Lisa: Yes.
Dave: So, you know, we talked before about finding the source. Fixing the foot would be a really useful one. And if you're still on your feet, a fair amount, which knowing who you are, you certainly want that contact with the ground.
Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dave: Sort it out.
Lisa: Like paying attention to the little changes that are happening in your body because sometimes you think, ‘Oh, no, you know, it's all the same’. And then you don't see changes in your own body when you don't, when you see yourself every day, or your loved ones. Or sometimes you just like got your own little blind spots. Okay, so if we can dig that video out, we'll put that in the show notes for sure.
Let's talk about plantar fasciitis because this is a major problem. One of the most common running problems, especially the people who have up the distance very quickly or done some things here, what is plantar fasciitis and what can we do to deal with it one?
Dave: So the left part of fascia is a layer of fat or connective tissue that goes right along the bottom of the foot. And as I mentioned before, that has a lot of receptors on it. So it's very rich in receptors, though can get extremely painful. And typically people who have plantar fascia issues will get out of bed and they'll try to put their foot down, and take a snack, or walk, and start walking, and the whole bottom their foot will be locked up. It'll take a while for that to loosen up so they can use that foot.
More often, you'll get that around the front of the heel, so none of them pointed the heel back in towards the centre of the foot. And sometimes that'll run up in bands as well. Now, the change in volume too quickly is your number one culprit which you mentioned. And that centre area. But certainly some foot mechanics can also have an issue there as well. So the plantar fascia is—in your foot, you've got well, definition you got 50 muscles that run below their knee—all could help control that foot. Your plantar fascia is there, it winds up, and plucky when you bend your big toe. It helps wind up that panic factor to help make the foot rigid to make it to leave so you can push off it.
That's one of the—there’s sort of two main functions of a foot. The first one is to allow the foot to splat is my technical term. Hits the ground and conforms to the surface that it goes to, number one function. Second one is it becomes a rigid lever so you can repel off it. Well, that's pretty much what a foot does. If you have kind of with a narrow down.
So we've got an issue there with that timing between backing and becoming a rigid lever. And the plantar fascia is wearing it somewhere there. Now there's—we can look at the plantar fascia, and you can try and treat the plantar fascia. But there's a lot of layers of muscles and a lot of timing that happened before that plantar fascia that’s been beaten up. So there's something gone wrong with the timing of how you're going from flat to rigid lever that's causing that.
And particularly if you overload into that. So if you've increased your volume too much, that's often the last well, kilometre, or 1000 footsteps that broke the camel's back. So I want to look at what's happening with the ankle and the foot, and I'm always interested in the big toe when it comes to plantar fascia.
Lisa: Right, so that's your big lever. Point, really big toes when you push off and you get that elasticity sort of wound up.
Dave: Massively important part that big toes. The amount of bones you have in that big toe, and for those of you with bunions, or pinchy injuries in that big toe joint as well. That's a really important one to get looked at. That can have a massive effect on everything up the chain.
Lisa: Wow. Yes. And what can you do about it? Are there some exercises that you recommend? Like, you might have fascia release, you make your ball rolling, that type of thing for the actual plantar fasciitis itself, the stretching and icing, and all that jazz?
Dave: Icing can be nice, and that takes some of the pain away because it’s very painful. Having some light pressure in those areas too can help hydrate the tissues and get them healthier again. Because during—if you have some sore spots in their plantar fascia, often they won't have the hydration and the movement, because it's still layers and layers of tissue. Now, if you can get those moving better and hydrated, that will heal better.
Adding some load to it can be useful too, you just need to be careful where you are in their injury spectrum. But it actually does require some loading because the loading will help actually line up the fibres and get that strong again. But it needs to be the right type of loading starting slowly and building up. That sort of mechanics. In big toe, you'd be wanting to have a look at and also what's happening with the ankle. Check that you've got enough dorsiflexion to get into more. How much can you bring your ankle? If you've got a restriction on the ankle and a restricted big toe, your plantar fascia—well, everything in the foot but the plantar fascia, may end up wearing that one.
Lisa: Yes, yes. And there's a couple of tricks to do with the dorsiflexion that I can link to another video there that Neil's done. Where you can push that—I’ve forgotten it—talus bone. Where you pushing it back into—because sometimes there’s some sort of a line. Yes, this one, this one. Trying to find the words.
Dave: Restoring their ankle dorsiflexion will be critical. I think that the foot and ankle, I'll look at three main zones in the body. In terms of my model for looking at movement. If you get the torso moving really well, that's very important for rotation. If you're running, you get the pelvis and hips moving really well, that would be my second zone. And the third zone would be the foot and ankle. So if you can get those three zones working well, normally I take 85% of the movement issues will just disappear. Right? And so the foot and ankle are a huge player in my model, and certainly one that I see having a very big impact on how people move well or done don’t move well.
Lisa: Yes. Now, that's really good. So the torso, the pelvis, and the feet. So working on those areas in trying to get things balanced.
Dave: Yes, well, the big thing on that that's where I missed them.
Lisa: And those are the three areas—the key areas—and obviously it's the score a lot of work Dave but yes. It's everything from drills and exercises and it's what we do, what you do.
Let's look at now, for runners, talking about running shoes, and buying running shoes, and picking a shoe that's good for you and what you're doing. You were showing me some running shoes before and for people on the podcast, you can't see, but says Kipchoge ones, what do you call them? What are those shoes?
Dave: So these are Nike's Zoom Fly shoes. So for those of you who are listening to this, rather than watching it, so this is the shoe that Kipchoge wore to get his sub-2-hour marathon. And they have fibre placement, which have an awful lot of recoil. And also, it is over four centimeters of foam here, but the foam has incredible amount of recoil.
Lisa: Wow.
Dave: So the theory is these will take 4% of your running time.
Lisa: Wow, that’s messed up.
Dave: There’s actually a spreadsheet, which I got hold up to. We can actually look at your running times and calculate how much of a difference it would make to your running performance. And yes, I mean, who wouldn't pay for 4%?
Lisa: Yes.
Dave: Mostly runners, my straight line runners, will compete in these. And you'd be a magnet to, if you want to run fast on straight lines. These are extremely high and extremely unstable. If you wouldn’t run on trail with these, no way.
Lisa: Like the HokaOnes, you know, like really deep into the thing that a big sole...
Dave: No, these are high. And they're incredible amount of recoil. They do push you very much, your forefoot style. So what I’ve noticed for days, I totally didn't want to like these.
Lisa: Cause you want more people to go bare feet.
Dave: I ran in them last week. This is ridiculous.
Lisa: Ridiculously good.
Dave: The speed and ease is something else. And certainly most of my runners who run straight liner, competing in these and certainly in the meantime and now, unless athletes have sponsors, those are the shoes they are picking up. And why wouldn't you if you can—I mean getting 4% improvement in performance is there's something else, even with training. If you can get that by paying for it, why wouldn't you?
Lisa: So basically, it's elasticity that they're using. It’s the spring, it's the coil, it's the ability to bounce you off the ground, it's like being on a trampoline. So you're gonna get more force.
Dave: Right.
Lisa: Taking your foot.
Dave: Well, yes. The energy is returned a lot more efficiently. So you'll notice that there's a whole host of track records been broken lately, and then closed the marathon. And yes, the technology had a big part in playing it. I think that the next Olympics, the shoe feature extremely heavy. And a lot of a lot of other manufacturers are using this technology now. And they have a lot stricter with the technology they can use in those events now. So there's the level playing field.
Lisa: If you want to level the playing field, it's a thing—if we start having an unlevel playing field, and that's where it becomes a bit problematic.
Dave: And they're recouping broken now. And there'll be more broken with this sort of new technology coming through.
Lisa: And from a foot health perspective, are they okay, in that respect, or you just didn't want to like them?
Dave: No, it's not about—it’s sports. Sports is not about health.
Lisa: Performance is not about health. No
Dave: No.
Lisa: It should be but it depends… It’s not always the case.
Dave: That's the point, though. I mean, if you wear these around all throughout the day, why would you do that? And having four centimeters of foam between you and the ground can be put to sleep. So look, I would—if I'm wanting to do a fast run and I don't really do much of that anymore—but if I was doing a faster training run with them, with a buddy of mine who runs pretty quick, I would definitely wear these.
I'm walking all day barefoot. I'm doing full exercises throughout my day. I'm waking up my feet all the time to look after my feet in-between. So you know, this foot choice, shoe choice doesn't stand finished when you're running. It's throughout the day. And that way, you'll choose a different type of shoe. If I was wearing a shoe during the day, my normal shoe would be something that's very minimal, which allows my foot to feel the ground and do things, if I need to wear footwear.
Lisa: Yes. And sometimes you don't, you know?
Dave: Yes. And I think that's an important thing too. We've always—there's always extremes. Yes. So I'll see the odd person is taken to the extreme, and they'll go barefoot all the time. And I think you need to be careful of that too. So from a health point of view, yes. So where I live, you wouldn't run—I have run some trails barefoot but there are sharp rocks around there. But also we have snakes there which is a bit of a problem. So I've done the odd barefoot run, but it makes you pretty nervous. The other part too, is what goes on your skin, goes in you.
Lisa: Yes, me too. You talked about that on—what was it on? Something you were talking about the other day. You were talking the skin and your feet. When your lectures that I was learning from you, right? And you were saying how your daughter was barefoot, which was great, but you went to get some picture with the car.
Dave: Yes.
Lisa: And she wanted to run across the full court bare feet and you said, ‘No, put your shoes on’.
Dave: Yes. Gotta have shoes. If you go into public toilets, or you're going on a forecourt of a petrol station, if you're walking barefoot on those, those chemicals are getting into your thing.
Lisa: Yes. So also, if you're walking barefoot too, and certainly in Asia and I have an Asian background, you bringing into your house when you go in there too. So be careful where you expose your feet to, because it will go in you, and then we'll take it into your house.
Lisa: Yes.
Dave: So yes, there's time and place for everything.
Lisa: Yes, yes, that's so true. And this is where some other minimalist shoes come in. So and like, social etiquette and stuff, you don't—you can't go to the gym without some sort of footwear on. Most places will tell you off. Well, gym maybe.
Dave: My gym, we actually have a gym shoes off policy, right? If we want people to move well, we need all the sensors working well. So we want as much information from those shoes from those feet as possible. So people understand where they are on the ground. Then we have covered where people put their shoes in.
And now not everyone is trying to barefoot. And we have some people who have some structural foot issues who do require some footwear, as well tend to move well. So, if you drop a dumbbell on your foot, having a shoe isn't really going to help you. But as one of my main etiquette contains the meat.
Lisa: And most gyms prescribe that you have to have shoes on when you go to them. They do. And these social situations, you can't go to the opera with bare feet. It's not cool. And that brings me to ladies in high heels. What are we doing to our bodies when we wear…
Dave: Oh boy.
Lisa: …lovely, elegant? We look very elegant in high heels. What the hell are we doing to ourselves?
Dave: Okay, so yes, you mentioned that word kinetic chain before. And the idea there is when you change one part, it will change something else with. That's what a kinetic chain does. Okay, a closed kinetic chain. So when you add an incline to your heel, and lift yourself up there, that pushes you forward. So if you have a stiletto on or something very high, you’ll fall on your face unless you adjusted. So where will you adjust? You'll normally do that by pushing your pose forward, by arching your lower back more. So often, the problem that you'll see with high heels will be it changes up the chain.
As well as that when you're in high heels, you're effectively pointing your toes. So if you're in a flat shoe, you'd have been in your ankles. In a high heel, your toes are pointed more. So what that does is that will shorten the calf muscles. And that’s why, if you look at a woman in high heels, she has more definition in the calves because those calf muscles are shortened up. But if you're wearing high heels an awful lot there, what that will do is shorten up that calf, it may make it harder for you to bend that ankle again, which will cause you some different issues, and for those of you who are a bit more technical minded too, peroneus longus, okay, will be one of the muscles which is a part of the action which will be shortened.
The peroneus longus comes around a riff underneath the foot and a wrench into the base of that big toe. So it pulls you down into pronation so it collapses the arch. So if you've been wearing high heels an awful lot, that peroneus longus can shorten, which can end up reducing your amount of bend in your ankle and also will pull you into more pronation. Apparently, the good thing that allows you to splat, but remember we also want to make the foot rigid after that so it can repel often.
But if you end up mucking around with muscles, and changing the way they work, and certainly by placing a high heel, and you're certainly going to do that, that will do that. And it will change the way the peroneus longus works and wears out the muscles, which will change that timing, that intricate timing that we need to have in the foot.
Lisa: Wow. And so ladies, keep your high heels for special occasions and not everyday use if you can. And I mean I—working with mum and she was in the bed for a long time, bedridden. Drop foot, you know, same thing basically. But just on a horizontal because she couldn't stand so she couldn't get that dorsiflexion happening, and then I was not aware of it at the time that this was a problem when it was happening, and I caught it quite late. And then we had to have her in a boot to try and straighten that out and now she's got a rigid ankle pretty much. So she's got no dorsiflexion, therefore she can't roll over the front of your foot and off nicely. So her whole gait is more flat footed. And these things knock on very early. And then it happens quite quickly that you start to get dropped foot.
Even if you think about life, wake up in the morning and that first time the foot hits the floor, and you've got like, ‘Oh yes, stuff. Stuff on the calf muscles feeling scuffles within the Achilles. And this is a—getting onto the Achilles toe’. If you're getting that initial stiffness when you get up in the morning, there's something brewing and maybe start to look at it. Achilles is a good—that's a good indicator that so step in the morning. How are you feeling? If you're bouncing out of bed and you can get out of bed and run down the hallway and you find you've got nothing, then you probably, not too bad.
Dave: I think that's a great point here. You should wake up feeling reasonably good. I mean it’s not a margarine commercial. You shouldn't jump out of bed, ‘Hey. Hello world’. That's probably the only thing you'd be happy about if you're eating that stuff. But that's a whole other conversation.
I had a professional athlete who I was working with, and we were talking one morning and was actually helping, deciding—standing up, deciding we were gonna go with him. And he said, ‘Yes. So how things young is young? What’s your story? I didn't have a car stand up. And then I go, ‘Sharon district’. About 40 minutes later, I'm ready to move. That's normal, right? ‘No, no, that's not normal. Your body normal is not being in pain and struggling to move. That's not normal..
Lisa: Oh but it's age, Dave. That's the next thing, he’ll tell you. It’s just normal aging.
Dave: So now I think too, you know. Let’s you've got a—sorry for those of you who are in different hemispheres. But a classic car in the southern hemisphere was a Ford Cortina. Now imagine you've got a 1984 Cortina in your garage, and it's chrome. It's beautiful. And you've looked after it wonderfully. That car drives fantastically in your own town, you think this is the best car ever. But if you take a 1980 Ford Cortina, and you don't maintain it, and you just drive it hard, you won't have it here today.
Lisa: Yes.
Dave: Okay. So if you've got a classic car, it can run really well. But you need to put some extra care and maintenance into it.
Lisa: Absolutely.
Dave: That's all it is. So, but you can have a young—you can have a new sports car. You can trash it's probably gonna be a little bit better. But yes, so the older you are, the more keen you’re taking care of your classic car.
Lisa: We fit into the classic category now.
Dave: That's another spin on that too. You know, ages is one thing. But I kind of look at these young athletes, I think you're—you can you can keep up with me. You haven't got the experience I've got. Play that card. It's not there's not just physical is a lot more that goes on to it. And take a look at the outer world. And know that certainly, the more of a mental game that's required, the better it suits your experience.
Lisa: Yes, in Roman times, like, it's not about speed and power after a 100k, it sort of starts to come down to…
Dave: Yes.
Lisa: So yes, it is. It's an attitude for life. There's a number of rounds on the clock, but it's keeping everything as best as you can in optimal performance and stopping things before they fall down the cliff, and being in that preventative space. And that's what we're both all about. And that's why you’re taking good care of your joints, and your muscles, and your hydration, and all of those exercises is really, really key. Let's talk a little bit now around, what's your take, I'd like to hear just on general and for joints and cartilage and stuff? Things like sulfur, MSM, conjugated salt, and so Glucosamine, that sort of supplementation for cartilage and joints you know anything about this? If it’s a cool thing or not?
Dave: It's really cool at one of my key areas. Look, supplements are strange one. And certainly my take on that really changed over the last few years. And now if you think you can get everything out of your diet, even if you're eating organic, you probably can't. So there's certainly some supplementation useful. I'm very big on getting an evidence base on that though.
So there's this push where we've almost seen our science as lying now. We need to be able to do our supplementation, to what you want to choose. But what I found now is basically you become a victim to marketing now. So there's a fine line between the two. So I read up on what I think is useful, and what's not, and I use it on an individual basis. But I'd like to cover the basics first, and often think that we're thinking they're tasting things like curcumin. Another problem with curcumin by the way, as well some other some other supplements here when you're not even looking at the basics. So do the big rocks first.
Lisa: Yes, I'm big on those pretty you know those ABCD. Selenium, zinc, magnesium-type base. Not sexy, but very essential for genetic functions. Yes.
Dave: A decent multivitamin is probably a bloody good place to start, and then you can start fine tuning from there. Sure. I take a few other things, as well. I'm a big fan of a decent probiotic, and veering those probiotics around. I think that's really important. And I use that as a food source as a supplement. I do like my fish oils. I think there is a part to play in that.
Lisa: Yes. Those are wild.
Dave: Wild, wild, wild small fish is the way you want to go and watch out for the processing on those as well, they can get...
Lisa: Very very important to get the right fish source, you get right fish source ,and you'll be doing the opposite to what you need to kick the company out especially... In our next conversation. I know we're getting a bit off topic but probiotics, I've done quite a lot of study around the probiotics, and some of the problems of probiotics, and has domains, and causing inflammation and allergic reactions. Have you found any one in particular that you'd say, ‘Yes, that one's been really good for a lot of people’. This got a good clinical base to it?
Dave: Yes. There's a few brands that I tend to like. These…
Lisa: Deep in here without any proof on that question, but I was interested for myself because I'm looking at our probiotics.
Dave: Syntol is a brand I quite like. Syntol, S-Y-N-T-O-L iis a brand that I've used for probably the last decade. That's an industrial strength one which works really well. Also Bio-Heal is another one, which I think is a pretty decent one. And the reason I like those brands is that they don't need refrigeration. And the Syntol is more spore one so it can be a bit bitter as well.
Lisa: Yes. Because it's got to get through the digestive, the stomach, the action, into the lower. And I know like the science in this area is still a very much an evolving space. And a lot of this, I have had a couple of clients been on probiotics that you get out of off the shelf or supermarket type thing. They ended up with histamine reactions and things like that because they do have often—so if you're sensitive to histamine and you might want to check it out a little bit more, and just be toe in the water and find out. So it's a little bit hard to know because I think the jury's still out in some regards. But I think but the spore based ones…
Dave: Yes, there seems to be built in there. I feel like most fermented foods, they won't suit everyone, for sure. They served me really well. So I make my own kimchi. I make my kombucha. I make my own sauerkraut. Do some water kefir as well. I often use a little bit of fermented foods to help my gut work. And every culture and everywhere in the world has some form of fermented food. And we realize as developing communities that we need to look after our gut health needs, and we didn't have refrigeration was probably the other thing as well. Then those are very health giving. And it still exists in most cultures today, and it's certainly something that I'd recommend if it suits you to work into your diet.
Lisa: Yes, and that is where I know—working with the PH-316 epigenetics programme that we do that there are certain biotypes. And one of them that can miss to watch the amount of fermented foods because it can again—cause histamine problems in inflammation in the body—so that is a bit of a bit more a personal genetic thing too, as rather than across the board.
But to be fair, I think that's everything needs to be personalized nowadays. And we've got a lot I wouldn't say we've got an all sass but there is a lot of science around what type of thing for what person and which genes, for which foods, and I don't think it's by any means perfect yet. The science behind it, but we can get a bit of an idea on some of these things. So just because it's healthy for Dave doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be healthy for Lisa, you know? So a little bit of experiment, and I'm a big experimenter, versus showing one of my athletes into my pantry. And it looks more like a cumulus isn't well supplement shop rather than a...
And I don't take on things all the time but I'm always experimenting on my own body, and trying to optimize, and to see what sort of things are having which effect and then trying to take note of it, and keep track of it, and trying to work out. A little bit hard when you keep chucking 100 variations at things. It's not exactly a clinical study where you do one variation. But…
Dave: Eating is one.
Lisa: Eating is one. Yes, exactly. And keeping testing. But back to the whole foot scenario talking that—I mean, you and I can end up in bloody all sorts of areas. What's your take on orthotics? I wanted to ask that again. Jury's out of my mind on orthotics and I'm not sure.
Dave: That’s a real polarizing one. I'm gonna make myself unpopular with some people here, but here's my take on it. I'm not—I'm not a [51:17 unintelligible]. If you have a foot that hasn't got a structural issue, or a neurological deficit, you can work without orthotics. Okay, so orthotics add support, and they will normally block motion. Okay, that's what they're pretty much designed to do.
So normally, when they describe orthotics, they'll look at, ‘Okay, there's too much motion. We will block that motion so that the foot can do its thing’. You block motion, some way though. What we know is that motion will be taken up somewhere else. And in that closed chain, where that motion goes will often have problems.
So let's have a look, if you've got a foot that doesn't dorsiflex well, so the ankle doesn't bend well. Now what will happen is the only way you can bend their ankle now is to roll inside or to over pronate. That's the only way you can go there. But rather than go through the foot, you go around the foot now.
So what may happen is, if you have no thoughts to stop that pronation, go, ‘What's happened now’? Okay? Now you can't pronate the foot, you can't work at the ankle, what's going to go next? You may end up taking up a knee. But now you'll end up with a knee issue, when you may come in with a foot issue. You may end up with a knee issue, or it may end up going into the hip or the lumbar spine, or as far as into the neck, which is a common thing or even to the head.
I've seen from people who've had a foot issue and they get hit out when they start hitting the pavement because it goes right through the chain. And that's it ends up tearing them up. So when you enter [52:53 unintelligible], if you've got a painful foot, it can be very useful temporarily to change what's going on, or a structure or neurological deficit. Otherwise, think of a crutch.
Okay, if I break my leg, ‘Oh, I want to break around my knee without smashing my knee to smithereens. I want to break around my knee and I want to wear crutches to start with’.
Now, oh boy that feels so good having extra support in there. And I've restricted that range around my knee because it's too painful to move. But 10 years later, I wouldn't want to be still be wearing that same brace on my knee with a crutch. And I wouldn't want to go in there each year and get that brace changed a little bit and realtered.
So I look at some of your thoughts that come into me and I look at that foot and I look at your foot and I go, ‘I have no idea’. I kind of—foot mechanics is tricky stuff. But I've put a fair bit of work into it. Like I understand how feet generally work, I think. I look at that foot and I look at that person, and I think, ‘I can’t see what’s that relating to at all’. I don’t know what you’re seeing, but that's not what I see.
And there’s a few things around some of the theory of orthotics which are a little bit tricky around foot mechanics change when you have your foot on the ground versus when you—whether your foot in the air.
Lisa: Of course.
Dave: A lot of the mechanics that are put into orthotics aren't done in a closed chain, which changes the whole way the foot works. Though, there is some stuff there. I've had piles of orthotics thrown away over the year. I have products come into me and I go, ‘What?’ And I'll test them. It'll take people with them, without them, and they'll go better without them. I had some people that do need them though, because they had some neurological issues for their head structural foot issues, where their foot is broken beyond repair, where it does need some help.
And making good orthotics, definitely—for those of you who maybe have a diabetic foot or have had some issues around there. Some of the orthotics I've seen that have come and have been worked about and are amazing, though there is some there are some amazing work on orthotics. And that's probably my outtake on this one. So finding someone who's very good at that, and looking after a foot in trouble is a real skill.
Lisa: It is. I've got a friend, Lisa Whiteman, who owns a China podiatry clinics, right, throughout New Zealand, and their stuff is next level. But the science and technology that they have in order to get the right things for that. So if you're thinking of doing it, make sure you go to somebody who really knows this stuff, and not just any sort of orthotic. And test it, and try it, and see whether you're getting something through up the train, fix that. And question with the immediate, long term—I've never had any benefit out of an orthotic. And I've only got, again, one anecdotal in me.
But we're not—like dealing with someone like my mum with a neurological problem, and limited dorsiflexion. I am considering the next opportunity I get to take down to Wellington to go and see my friend and go into her clinic and get her an assist, that might be, for example, a situation where something like that could be called for, because she's lost that motion and the ankle, so we haven't got it to work with.
Dave: So we do have problems from the bottom up. So the foot can cause a problem going up, but also it can probably be going down too.
Lisa: Yes, yes.
Dave: Okay, so life exists below the knee. So certainly, it's way useful to look at a foot, but I don't fit those other areas as well, because you're gonna have a lot of problems that are caused from up the chain that go down as well.
Lisa: Yes, yes, yes.
Dave: That's where I get a little bit concerned, sometimes where people look at just the foot by itself.
Lisa: It's reductionist. Doesn't that? It's like, yes, and I mean, we can have a conversation around reduction as sort of thinking, in medicine, and in every area really is looking at single piece of the puzzle.
Dave: And that is useful. We go to put it back through, you gotta work it.
Lisa: Got to put the screw to the chain. I love the imagery. Like, you've taught me the cell blueprint recently. That is a reductionist model, it's bringing things down onto the cellular level and saying, what is the cell going, and then what is the tissue doing, and the organ doing, and the system doing. But we are going back up through the system. And looking at it from another perspective, and when you just look at a piece of the puzzle and go, ‘Right. Oh, I got such because your ankle when I wiggle it, like this isn't doing it before you have this problem’. That's a reductionist view on it. And this is why the holistic—ike you, the holistic movement coach, and where the holistic run training system, because it says about being fit, holistic, and looking at things outside of your core focus. You know, like, when a runner comes in, they want to do an ultra-marathon, and we're gonna be looking at their health.
Dave: Absolutely.
Lisa: In general, we're gonna be looking at their mindset. We're gonna be looking at their nutrition, not just if they're running the right amount of kilometres a week. It's far more complicated than that. And then holistic look at things as really—you want to be working with coaches, and doctors and health professionals that are taking a holistic—and we're possible, a personalized approach to what you're doing. And this takes time. And this takes more money. And this takes more education. And in a broader knowledge on a lot of subjects. So you're not going to find this on every street corner but I think that approach is just a much better way to look at things in general.
And that's why, like, you might need a holistic movement coach, but you're an absolute expert in so many areas. Now, it's just insane the level of knowledge that you have. And we're trying to, I'm trying to emulate that in different other areas because... And you can't be across every game thing in the whole world. Like, I had a lady yesterday that I was working with, and some of the testing that was coming out of America on mycotoxins and all that I haven't even looked at that pile of the science and something that I want to do, but it's just like—well, that's often the distant future because there's so many other pieces of the puzzle and you can't be across every damn thing.
But if you are trying to be as holistic as possible, and being able to refer out to people who you don't know what to do in that, in that sort of case, but having that broad of you. Get on the sphere on top of the specialization as a good combi day. Dave, we’ve bloody ravaged it on again for ages. I think we've covered off so pretty much. But I did want to ask you about reflexology. What's your take on reflexology before we wrap up?
Dave: I love getting it. I love doing it. So, the idea with reflexology is that—and there's lots of different types of reflexology. We often associate reflexology with the feet. But the French often use the ear as a reflexology ear and hands often— the idea is your body is represented and in smaller areas of your body, so you can access... So for instance, the kidneys or the small intestine through the fetus, there's a theory there.
And certainly this, yes, I've had some really good results on myself for reflexology. And I remember, my first experience of reflexology was, I used to be a competitive kayaker at another lifetime. And my regular massage therapist is away. And I had this, this drastic issue, I had a torn tissue, it wasn't going well, and had a bit of back pain with it. And so she put me on for another massage therapist, and I walked in there and this messed it up is the first indicator, ‘We'd start by cleansing your aura’. I’m like, ‘Lord’. And I'm probably a bit more forgiving of that now than it was back then. But now I've just spoken to do it.
And so she starts cleansing my aura and I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is an error. I'm not going to enjoy things’. Then she starts playing with my feet. And she hits this spot in my feet. I just about jump through the roof. I didn't know what was going on. She said, ‘You've done something to your upper back’. I’m like, ‘Yes’. And she worked on it, it got less and less painful. During the standing up, that is the best my back has ever felt. So certainly it worked well. Well be open.
And, you know, certainly I learned a fair bit of reflexology about that. After that I was quite impressed by the experience. And I've had some clients who really enjoyed it. There were parts which were, I guess, a little too intense to get into straightaway. I've had some really good results with sinus type stuff. The sinus points are right around the the point in your toes here that can work really well to help clear sinuses
Lisa: Really?
Dave: Oh, yes. That one worked quite nicely for me anyway. But I do think there's something in it. And, yeah, it's lovely to get, that's very relaxing, because you're looking at your feet, going through your whole body. And it's all connected.
Lisa: Also we can learn from different traditions and different Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese. There's pieces of a puzzle. And the cool thing now is that the western sciences, catching up with a lot of the other sort of stuff and bringing it in and giving you the scientific reasoning behind it.
Dave: Maybe one thing I could leave folks with is thinking about, you know, how to select a shoe. And that's often one of the questions that I'm asked, or how should I pick a shoe then? First thing I'll say is be be be careful of the marketing, shoe science. And I've put big brackets around that one, there was an ear brackets here for those of you in radioland. Yes, so when you get a shoe, that neutral is often when you get to set a minimum, which means they have very little space between you and the ground. There's a new character called maximalist, which has a maximum amount between you and the ground. But you also have one that has stability shoes, which have a bit more supporting your up. And you have what's called motion control, as well, which trying to control the foot, particularly if you are an overpronator within control, you tend to roll in a fair bit more than normal.
There's been a few good studies showing that really, it isn't the shoe that makes the difference. There's a good study done in 2010, where they basically mixed the foot to the shoe. So people who are overpronated, were given motion control shoes, people neutral feet were given neutral shoes. And people who were in between were given a stability shoe. What they found out is that neutral people did the worst in neutral shoes. The people with motion control shoes did the worst in motion control shoes. So in other words, it's not the shoe. The shoe doesn't run by itself. You don't give someone a pair of golf clubs, a set of golf clubs and say, ‘Hey, here's the best golf. You’re gonna be an awesome golfer now’.
Lisa: You're gonna be Tiger Woods next week.
Dave: Yes. It's not a shoe that does the running. It's a person that does the running. Here's a technique and conditioning and looking at yourself and your health has much more effect than a shoe ever will.
Lisa: Yes. Yes.
Dave: So normally what I would say is, I would generally say, pick a neutral shoe, would be my first piece of advice for most people. Get one that is comfortable. So there's a lot of research showing that the more comfortable your shoe is, the more efficient you are. So make sure it feels good. So I go shoe shopping with my wife and I look at the shoe. I would never wear a shoe she would, she has different temporal quality. She needs all-foot cushioning to feel comfortable that she can see issues a lot more built up and than mine.
Also get shoes that are light. For every 100 grand that you add on the shoe there's an extra 1% of you will be able to max that you need to use it with the energy cost to having heavy shoe. So go get the lightest. I'd say also get the most minimalist that you are happy with.
Lisa: And it means that you trail running and things that you'd...
Dave: Make sure you're comfortable in itself not hurting your feet and you're not dealing with bruised feet every time you go running or four feet. So, so yes, that would be my general—spectrum of color, color combos are good too.
Lisa: Very important. I think that's you know, really some good advice. And you know, and the other thing I did want to touch on is don't go all suddenly bare foot on us now like just because this episode and go suddenly, ‘Well, I'm gonna go 100% barefoot minimalist shoes’, because the transitioning is really, really important in building up the strength and the feet before you go and start running 100 Calloway in barefoot. can be fought You got to be thrown away real fast if you do this. So make sure you build up over time in transitioning.
Dave: One of the other studies that was a really interesting one. The theory is when you go barefoot as opposed to pushing more midfoot or forefoot. That’s generally the whole idea of going—that's one of the theories of going barefoot running. Well, that helps. But there was a cool study done in 214, which are called—they looked at runners and they trained them using Vivo barefoot, the toe shoes. toasters. And what they found was that half of those runners, over half of those runners didn't change from a rear foot strike. So not the shoe that runs again. Now you generally will tend to be pushed more for foot and in a minimal shoe I'd say that's generally true, but it has to be on an indoor.
So half of those runners did not become more forefoot, finally change just like that. The half of them didn’t matter what they did, they still heel strike. So in that case, you've got no cushioning. Absolutely. So it won't—again you need to learn how to forefoot run. Yes, it's a skill running just skills Who would have thought?
Lisa: You need to drills and skills and so when we say running forefoot make sure that your heel does kiss the ground. You don't want to be bouncing up and down on your like you see some fishy girls running I just saw without the heel touching the ground and on like running like a ballerina. And so…
Dave: Oh, yes, that's gonna cause you a whole different problems. Yes, certainly there's some—they’ll say go slow but also know that you know there's a skill component to it as well. So if you want to do more forefoot yes get some get some running coach and get some expertise and some technical help to help you get there if that's something you really want to go.
Lisa: Yes, drills and skills we do the video analysis and all that sort of stuff and we can help you tailor the right drills and skills for you there.
Dave you've been amazing again as usual. I'm hoping to have you on a few more times next year because we can talk for an hour I think and…
Dave: I like to see—I wonder what the next random topic we can do.
Lisa: Oh, there's just so much we can learn from your great knowledge. So Dave, where can people find you and give us—can you search out that link if you can on the bunions that'd be great again.
Dave: My mum will be happy to be a star on...
Lisa: It’s really gonna be great. I've got one of those so I need to work on those exercises.
Dave: Yes, if you do go to the Holistic Movement Coach YouTube, there are quite a few videos on there really because it's near electronic peer but I'll have the last few years anyway. So there is a reasonable amount there. H-M, H for halo, M for maverick, dash coach dot com that’s where you can find Holistic Movement Coach. If you're looking—if you have some foot problem and need your hand there. My guys are on there too, who are trained up in this stuff? They can help you at your local area if you're living in the southern hemisphere anyway.
Lisa: Yes, yes. No. Fantastic.
Dave: That would be the place to have a look there.
Lisa: Okay. That's really, really gold. Thank you so much for your time. It's very early where you are, Dave. You're getting out of bed early. And thanks very much for sharing your wisdom today.
Dave: It's been a big thank you and thanks for having me.
That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional
In this episode mental toughness coaches Lisa Tamati and Neil Wagstaff give you their best insights into how to stop fear ruling your life and how they integrate the tools and techniques into their lives.
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The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional
When faced with a medical condition, most people either pay someone else to improve their lives or develop a fatalistic or defeatist view. But you have the power to change your life and improve your health. You can reprogram your mind for a healthy body and fulfilling life.
In this episode, Dr. Bruce Lipton discusses how conscious and subconscious programs dictate our health and how you can reprogram them to your advantage. He also touches on topics including the current healthcare crisis around the world and spirituality.
If you’d like to learn about reprogramming your subconscious for your happiness and a healthy body, this episode is for you!
Our epigenetics health programme is all about aligning fitness, lifestyle, nutrition, and cognitive performance to an individual’s particular genes. To learn more, visit https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED COACHING PLANS FOR RUNNERS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, and Run Longer – Without Burnout & Injuries
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My latest book, Relentless, chronicles how my mother and I defied the odds. After an aneurysm left my mum, Isobel, with massive brain damage at age 74, the medical professionals told me there was no hope for any quality of life again. I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to her full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
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‘Here's the point, most everybody out here has been programmed by the belief that genes provide the character of our lives, that they came from our parents and they determine our traits. And if we don't like our traits, you can't change the genes.’
‘How you see the world will determine which version of protein will be created from a gene, like a wiser realm.’
‘Then epigenetics says that my consciousness is creating this. And therefore if I change my consciousness, I change my biology, change my behaviour, I can do anything with it.’
‘Consciousness is you. Your specific identity, your spiritual domain, you, here. The rest of the brain back here is called subconscious, below conscious.’
‘You weren't there for most of the programming. It started even before you were born. And it went a whole year from zero to one — you weren't there. They went from one to two who are in therapy, you're getting programmed every day.’
‘So when the TV breaks, did the broadcast stop? The answer's no. How do you know I said, we'll get another TV, plug it in, turn it on and tune it to the station back on again. And here comes apart because this is called reincarnation, you cannot die.’
‘Evolution is community coming together in harmony. And today's world is the antithesis of evolution and evolution as one separate the world and then make polarised groups charging each other go well then there's no unity.’
Dr Bruce Lipton is a renowned stem cell biologist and leader in bridging the gap between science and spirit. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and joined the Department of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine in 1973. His studies on stem cells gave rise to epigenetics.
He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and recipient of the 2009 Goi Peace Award. As a highly sought after keynote speaker and workshop presenter, he's been a guest speaker on hundreds of TV and radio shows and a keynote presenter for national and international conferences. Many people have transformed their lives by applying the principles he discusses in lectures. He is one of the leading voices of new biology.
Learn more about Dr Bruce’s work on his website.
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To pushing the limits,
Lisa
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Neil Wagstaff is an exercise scientist, coach and ultramarathon runner with over 22 years experience in the health and fitness industry. He has trained hundreds of athletes and coaches alike to the successful completion of their goals. For more info or to download our free run training ecourse go to www.runninghotcoaching.com/running-success
Training Tilt software - a complete toolkit for trainers, health and fitness professionals, coaches and nutritionists, combine your website, ecommerce needs, client communication and training plans into one easy to use platform. Find out more at www.lisatamati.co.nz/trainingtilt
The Path of an Athlete - Mindset academy. An in-depth online programme that teaches you how to develop mental toughness, resilience, leadership skills, a never quit mentality, mental wellbeing and the keys for success in anything you set your mind to.
Do you wish you had the mental toughness of an extreme athlete?
Do you seek the confidence to deal with any threat, to steer any situation or challenge to a positive outcome?
If so, you can now learn the secrets to mental toughness and to developing a never quit mindset from someone who has been there and done that and lived to tell the tale.
For more information go to www.lisatamati.co.nz/ecourse
The North Face -
Premier Outdoor equipment specialists who have been kitting out adventurers around the world for the past 50 years.
Specialists in trail running gear - Check out their full range at www.thenorthface.co.nz
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.