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Pushing The Limits

"Pushing the Limits" - hosted by ex-professional ultra endurance athlete, author, genetics practitioner and longevity expert, Lisa Tamati, is all about human optimization, longevity, high performance and being the very best that you can be. Lisa Interviews world leading doctors, scientists, elite athletes, coaches at the cutting edge of the longevity, anti-aging and performance world. www.lisatamati.com
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Now displaying: March, 2021
Mar 25, 2021

We're often told not to care too much about what other people think of us. However, understanding how others perceive us can play to our advantage. Sometimes we fail to see our own mistakes or flaws, and to overcome this, we need to develop self-awareness by looking at ourselves from a different perspective. Once we realise our flaws, we can do better and achieve high performance.

Craig Harper joins us in this episode to discuss how self-awareness can lead to high performance. He also explains the importance of external awareness or the ability to understand how others perceive us. We also talk about events that changed our life perspectives and how to live aligned with our values.

If you want to increase your self-awareness and achieve high performance, then this episode is for you.

 

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For our epigenetics health program optimising fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance for your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.

You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics.

 

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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.

 

Order My Books

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: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/

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For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.

 

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

  1. Discover what external self-awareness is and how it can help you achieve high performance.
  2. Find out why motivation alone doesn't work.
  3. Learn how to live in alignment for a healthy and meaningful life.

 

Resources

 

Episode Highlights

[03:44] About Craig

  • Craig used to be the fattest kid in school until he decided to lose weight at 14 years old.
  • Curious about fitness and nutrition, he started working in gyms. 
  • Craig eventually set up his first personal training centre in Australia.
  • At 36 years old, Craig went to university to study Exercise Science.
  • Realising the importance of understanding human behaviour, he's now taking a PhD in neuropsychology.

[08:58] External Self-Awareness

  • Being self-aware means understanding how other people perceive, process and experience you.
  • You can make better connections when you know what it's like for people to be around you.
  • Going into a situation assuming others have the same mindset can create problems.
  • Acknowledging your lack of awareness is the first step in overcoming it. 

[15:20] On High Performance

  • High performance answers the question of how you can do better. 
  • It applies to all aspects of life. 
  • For Craig, high performance means getting the most out of your potential, resources and time.
  • Listen to the full episode to get a rundown of the principles you need to achieve high performance.

[16:14] Recognising Your Programming

  • Humans have the power to recognise and change how they see the world.
  • Because we do the same things daily, we fall into living unconsciously. 
  • When our approach doesn't give us the results we want, it might be time to try something different.
  • It may be not easy, but going out of our comfort zones makes us stronger. 

[28:43] Working Around Genetic Predispositions

  • What you're born with doesn't change the fact that your choices have power.
  • Focus on things you can control and own the situation at hand.
  • Be careful that self-awareness doesn't become self-deprecation.
  • From there, focus on how you can attain high performance. 

[33:42] Reflecting on Your Relationships

  • Despite his nutrition expertise, Craig faces a constant battle to make good food choices. 
  • Reflect on your relationship with food. Is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy?
  • You can apply this to other aspects of your life as well.
  • Doing this opens the door to self-management and self-awareness. 

[37:51] Where People Get Their Sense of Self

  • We learn that self-esteem, self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. Craig's theory is that it's an inside-out process. 
  • The external and observable things don't matter as much as the things happening internally.
  • Listen to the full episode to find out how two experiences in Craig's life put his life into perspective.

[1:00:38] Motivation Alone Doesn't Work

  • A lot of people rely on their current state of motivation to get things done. 
  • What's important is how willing you are to put in the work despite the inconvenience and discomfort.

[1:02:25] Live in Alignment

  • Ask yourself if you're willing to put in the work to achieve your goals. 
  • You can live in alignment with your values by following an operating system based on them. 
  • Listen to the full episode to know the questions you need to ask yourself to create this operating system.

 

7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode

‘Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with. And this is not self-loathing; this is me just going, "Okay, so how do I do better?" And this for me is the process of high performance’.

‘Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective’.

‘Real awareness and consciousness is to first be aware of your lack of awareness’.

‘The only person that can ever really get in my way is me, you know. But also, I'm the solution to me’.

‘So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. My theory is that it is the other way around—it is an inside out journey’.

‘Of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business... or whatever. That's not bad, but it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are’.

‘I don't care what you get done when you're motivated; I care what you get done when you're not motivated because everyone's a champion when they're in the zone’.

 

About Craig

Craig Harper is one of Australia's leading presenters, writers and educators in health, high performance, resilience, self-management, leadership, corporate change, communication, stress management, addiction and personal transformation. 

Craig has been an integral part of the Australian health and fitness industry since 1982. He has worked as an Exercise Scientist, Corporate Speaker, Consultant, University Lecturer, AFL Conditioning Coach, Radio Host, TV Presenter, Writer and successful Business Owner. In 1990, Craig established Harper's Personal Training, which evolved into one of the most successful businesses of its kind. 

Craig currently hosts a successful Podcast called 'The You Project'. He is also partnering with the Neuroscience Team at Monash University, where he's completing a neuropsychology PhD. There, he studies the spectrum of human thinking and behaviour. 

Craig speaks on various radio stations around Australia weekly. He also hosted his weekly show on Melbourne radio called 'the Science of Sport' for a decade. Craig currently fills an on-air role as a presenter on a lifestyle show called 'Get a Life', airing on Foxtel. 

As an Exercise Scientist, Craig has worked with many professional athletes and teams. While still working with groups and individuals regularly, Craig delivers more than one hundred corporate presentations annually.

Want to know more about Craig and his work? Check out his website, or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin!

 

Enjoyed This Podcast?

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 that they can develop their self-awareness and achieve high performance.

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

 

Transcript Of The Podcast

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 I have Craig Harper to guest. Now, Craig is a very well-known media personality, exercise scientist, crazy fitness guru, owns some of the biggest personal training gyms in Australia, has a huge track record as a corporate speaker, motivational speaker, worked with Olympians, worked with all sorts of athletes across a number of different sports. And he's absolutely hilarious. I really enjoyed this interview, I was on Craig's show a couple of weeks ago, The You Project, you can go and check that one out as well. A great podcast. And today we sort of did a deep dive into everything around self-awareness and understanding your potential and realising your potential. And just it was a really interesting conversation with a very interesting man. He's doing a PhD in understanding the experience that people have when they meet you. So, understanding how people see you. So it's a really interesting conversation. So, I hope you enjoy that. 

Before we go over to the show, please give us a rating and review. We really appreciate any ratings and reviews that you give us. It's really hugely helpful for the show. It is a labour of love. We are about to if we haven't already, by the time this podcast goes live, developing a way that you guys can get involved as audience members of Pushing The Limits if you want to support the show. So stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, if you need help with your running or you need help with your health, then please reach out to us. You can reach us at lisatamati.com. You can check out our programmes on lisatamati.com. We have our epigenetics programme and our running programmes where we do customised run training systems, video analysis, working out a plan customised fully for you and you get a consult with me. We also do health optimisation, coaching. So if you are needing help with a really difficult health journey, then please reach out to us as well. Right, over to the show with Craig Harper. 

Lisa Tamati: Well, welcome back everybody to Pushing The Limits. Today I have an hilarious, amazing, crazy, awesome guest for you, Craig Harper. Who doesn't know Craig Harper? If you're in Australia, you definitely know who the heck Craig Harper is. If you're in New Zealand, you probably know who Craig Harper is. And if you don't, you're about to find out. Welcome to the show! Craig, how are you doing?

Craig Harper: Now I feel like I've got to live up to some kind of bloody pressure, some expectation. Nobody knows me in New Zealand. Let's start, you do and your mum. That's about it.

Lisa: Me and mum, you left quite an impression on my mum.

Craig: And my family, and relatives, and a few randoms over here, know who I am. But thank you, Lisa, for having me on. I'm really glad to be here.

Lisa: It's awesome. Now, this is gonna be a bit of a hilarious show because Craig is a bit of a character. I was on Craig's show in Australia, The You Project and it was one of the most fun podcast interviews I've had. I mean, I love getting into the science and deep with stuff, but it was really fun to just slip my hair down so to speak and rant and rave a little bit in here, but it’s fun, so today there'll be no doubt a bit of it. Craig, can you tell the ones who don't know about you? You're in Melbourne or just outside Melbourne in Hampton, Victoria in Australia. Can you tell us a little bit of your background, your crazy amazing career that you have had?

Craig: Sure. So I'll start with, well, maybe I'll go a little bit before my career because what happened before was a bit of a catalyst. So I had a pretty good childhood, all that stuff. I won't bore the listeners. But one of the things that was part of my growing up was being a fat kid, the fattest kid in my school. So that became a bit of a catalyst for me to explore getting in shape and all that stuff. So when I was 14, I lost a whole lot of weight. I was 90 something kilos, I went down to about 60 and I started training. 

Lisa: Wow.

Craig: I started running and I started doing bodyweight stuff I lost about—I literally lost a third of my body weight in 15 weeks. And it wasn't like I had a horrible childhood, it was fine. But I was called jumbo all through school. That was my name so the kids called me that, parents, teachers all that but believe it or not, it wasn't really hostile, or horrible, it was I don't know it's because I was this big, fat, pretty happy kid, right? But anyway, so, I got in shape, and that led me into a lot of curiosity, and exploration, and investigation in fitness and nutrition. And so I started working in gyms when I was 18 and had no idea what I was doing. The qualifications and the barriers to entry then were very low. So, I started working in gyms, Lisa, when I was 18, which was 1982. I'm 57 and I ended up in 1989, I think, I set up the first Personal Training Center in Australia. 

Lisa: Wow.

Craig: So, lots of other things around that. But I owned PT studios for 25 years at the biggest centre in the southern hemisphere in Brighton a few kilometres from where I'm sitting now, which was 10,000 square feet. It was bigger than lots of commercial gyms. But it was just a PT centre. Worked with elite athletes, work with the AFL over here Australian Football League with St Kilda footy club, Melbourne Vixens in the national and the Trans-Tasman League, it was then Netball League, Melbourne Phoenix, Nissan motorsport, a bunch of Olympians, blokes in prison, corporates, people with disability, normal people, abnormal people. I put me in the abnormal category. 

Lisa: Yeah, definitely.

Craig: And later on when—I didn't go to uni until I was 36 for the first time. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Craig: Did a degree in exercise science. It was hilarious because I'd already been working with elite people as a conditioning coach and a strength coach. And yeah, lots of stuff. I did radio over here for about 20 years. I started my podcast a few years ago, I did television for a few years, three years on national telly. I wrote for the Herald Sun, which is the main paper in Melbourne for a while. Lots of magazines, I've written a bunch of books. I've written seven, I've written nine books, I think seven or eight of them are published. I'm looking at the books on my table, I should probably know that number.

Lisa: Can’t even remember, there's so many.

Craig: And, like, but really the thing that I guess where we might go today, but for me was, I realised by the time I was about 19 or 20 working in gyms, I realised that how much I knew about bodies wasn't nearly as important as how much I understood human beings. And so while my understanding of anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and movement and energy systems, and progressive overload, and adaptation and recovery, and all of those things wasn't great, to be honest, like I was 20. 

Lisa: Yup.

Craig: But it was all right. And it improved over time. But what really mattered was how well I understood human behaviour. Because as you and I know, we can give someone a programme and direction and education and encouragement and support and resources, and not knowledge and awareness. But that doesn't mean they're going to go and do the work. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to create the result. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to explore their talent or their potential. And so yeah, it's been from when I was 18... 

Lisa: So you've gone in it?

Craig: Yeah, from when I was 18 till now, it's just been lots of different roles and lots of different places. And I guess the other main bit before I shut up was I realised when I was about 20, that I didn't like having a boss much. And not that... 

Lisa: We got that in common. 

Craig: In my back, my boss was a good dude. But I thought I don't want to be, like, I could do this for me. I don't need to do this for you. And so the last time I had a boss was 32 years ago. So I've been working for myself since I was 25.

Lisa: Wow, that's freaking awesome. And what an amazing career and so many books, and I know that you're actually doing a PhD at the moment. So what's your PhD? And why did you choose this sort of a subject for your PhD?

Craig: Yeah, so my PhD is in neuropsychology/neuroscience. So, I'm at Monash over here, we have a facility called Bryan Park, which is cool. There's lots of cool stuff there. That's where I'm based. And my research is in a thing called external self-awareness, which is understanding the ‘you’ experience for others. So in other words, it's your ability to be able to understand how other people perceive and process and experience ‘you'. 

Lisa: Wow, that is a fascinating subject. 

Craig: Which is, very little research on it. So I'm, I've created a scale, which is to measure this component of psychology or communication or awareness. And so I'm doing—I'm putting that through the grill at the moment, getting that validated. I’m doing two studies. The first study is being run kind of soon. But yeah, the whole research is around this thing of ‘What's it like being around me and do I know what it's like being around me'? Not from an insecurity point of view, but from an awareness point of view because when I understand, for example, the Craig experience for Lisa or for an audience or in front of all for the person I'm coaching, or the athlete I'm working with, or the drug addict, the person with addictive issues that I'm sitting with, then if I understand what it's like being around me, I can create greater and deeper connection. But one of the mistakes that a lot of leaders, and coaches, and managers, and people in positions of authority make is that they assume that people just understand what they're saying. Or they assume that people think like them. When in reality, the only person who thinks exactly like me in the world is me. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And the only person who thinks like Lisa Tamati exactly all the time, 24/7 is Lisa, right? 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: So when I go into a conversation, or a situation, or a process, or a negotiation, or an encounter with somebody, and I assume that they think like me or understand like me, or that my intention is their experience, which is rarely the case, I'm more likely to create problems and solutions. 

Lisa: Yeah. And you're not going to hit the nail on the head and actually get the results for where that person that you are wanting to get. 

Craig: Yeah, and that is...

Lisa: This is a real powerful thing because you know what I mean, just maybe as you were talking there, I was like, ‘Well, how do people perceive me?', that's an interesting thought because you just sort of go through your daily interactions with people, and you think you're a compassionate, empathetic person who gets everything in, you’re sort of picking up on different cues and so on. But then to actually think how is that person experiencing me, and I like, as a coach, as I develop as a coach, I've had problems when I'm doing one on one, and that I'm overwhelming people sometimes because I'm so passionate and so full of information. And I've had to, and I'm still learning to fit that to the person that I'm talking to. And because, for me, it's like, I've got so much information, I want to fix you and help you. And I was like, ‘Woohoo', and the person was like, ‘Heh'.

Craig: So you and I connect because we're kind of similar, right? And I love that, I love your craziness and your energy, and you're full-onness. But you and I, unless we are aware around some people, we will scare the fuck out of them. 

Lisa: Yup.

Craig: So, that's why it's important that people like—all of us really not just you and I, but that we have an awareness of what is the leisure experience for this because like, let's say, for example, you've got five athletes, and you want to inspire them and get them in the zone, motivate them, and they're all in front of you. And so you give all of them in the same moment. And let's say they're five similar athletes in a similar, if not the same sport with a similar goal—doesn't matter—but the reality is they are five different human beings, right? They've got five different belief systems and backgrounds and sets of values and prejudices and like and emotional states, and so you're not talking to the same person. But when you deliver the same message to five different humans, and you expect the same connection? We're not thinking it through. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: So and of course, you can't create optimal connection with everyone all the time. But this is just part of the, ‘What's it like? What's their experience of me like?' And again, it's not about ‘Oh, I'm insecure, and I want them to like me'. No, it's about, ‘I need to understand how they perceive and process me so that I can create connection'. And look, the other really interesting thing about psychology and the human experience, and metacognition, thinking about thinking more broadly, is that all of us think we're open-minded and objective, but none of us are. Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: So, even me who understands this and is doing a PhD in it and teaches it. Well, people go back and you objective and I go, ‘No, I wish I was in it. I'd like to say I am because it sounds fucking great, but I'm not'. And the reason that I'm not is because wherever I go, my ego, my issues, my beliefs, my values, my limitations, my biases, go with me. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And they are the window through which I view and process the world, right? 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: So, our ego wants us to say, ‘Of course, I'm objective. Of course, I'm open-minded'. But the truth is, and with some things, we will be more objective and open-minded because we don't really have a pre-existing idea about it. But on a global or a broad level, our stuff goes with us everywhere, and the beginning of, without getting too deep or philosophical, but awareness—real awareness and consciousness—is to first be aware of your lack of awareness.

Lisa: Love it. That is amazing. Yeah.

Craig: You can't overcome the thing you won't acknowledge, or you can't get good at the thing you won't do. Right? And so I have to go, 'Firstly, I'm flawed. Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with.’ And this is not self-loathing, this is me just going, ‘Okay, so how do I do better?' And this for me, this is the process of performance, high performance, whether it's at sport, at life, at recovery, at relationships, at connection—doesn't matter—high performance is high performance. For me, high performance means getting the most out of you and your potential and your resources and your time. 

Lisa: Yup.

Craig: And so the principles that work with becoming an elite athlete, most of those principles work with building a great business. 

Lisa: Yep, they grow further.

Craig: Which is why physicians follow through, get uncomfortable, do the work, show up, don't give up, ask great questions, persevere, roll up your sleeves, pay attention to your results, improvise, adapt, overcome. Like, this is not new stuff. 

Lisa: Know that it rolls off your tongue pretty damn well because you've been in this space for a long time. And a lot of us like to go into that whole, our bias and yell at the future that we see the world through the lens, which we look through. We're not aware like, we love the programming. And this is what I had done a lot of work on for myself, the programming that I got as a kid, that I downloaded into my subconscious is running the ship, basically, and I can, as an educated, hopefully, wiser woman now, go ‘Hang on a minute, that little voice that just popped up in my head and told me, ‘I'm not good enough to do that', is not me talking. That's the programme. That's the programme I downloaded when I was, I don't know, seven or eight or something. And it's a product of that conditioning.’ And I can actually go in, and then it's that to change that story. Because that, and I think a lot of us are just running on automatic, we're still playing. 

I'll give you an example. So when my mum was a kid, she was up on stage and doing a speech at school when she froze, right? And she got laughed off the stage. And kids can be nasty. And so forever in a day, she was like, ‘I will not ever speak in public again'. Because she'd had this experience as a what, a seven or eight-year-old. And she was telling me the story as a 40-something, 50-something year-old. 'No, I'm not ever getting up in a public space because', and I'm like, 'But that's just—you are not that seven or eight year old now. And you can have a choice to make that changes', and she couldn't make that change until she had the aneurysm. And then she forgot all those memories, some of those memories were gone, and that inhibition was gone. And now she'll get up and talk on stage in front of like 500 doctors.

Craig: That's amazing. I love it. And what you just articulated beautifully. The core of a lot of what I do, which is recognising your programming and where does my stories, or my stories finish? And where do I start? 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: So, you think about it, from everyone listening to this from when we could reason anything, or process any data around us or understand anything from when we—I don't know, two, three months, really probably earlier but until listening to this podcast right now, all of us have been trained, and taught, and told, and programmed, and conditioned. And then, now here we are. And it's being aware of that and me to everyone is like, ‘Well, my beliefs', like think about when did you choose your beliefs? 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Pretty much never. They’re just there, and they’re there as a byproduct of your journey. Now that's okay, that's not bad or good. That's normal. Well, the next question is, are all of your beliefs, do they serve you? Well, the answer is no. Do any of them sabotage you? Well, a shitload! Okay, so let's put them under the microscope. So you know that word that I used before metacognition is, in a nutshell, thinking about thinking where and this is where we go, hang on. Let's just step out of the groundhog-dayness of our existence which you also spoke of, like, and let's go hang on. Because what we do, on a level we live consciously that is I've got to think about where I'm driving, and I've got to figure out what I'm giving the kids for dinner or what I'm getting, what time I'm training or, but really, on a real fundamental macro level. We live largely unconsciously... 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: ...because we kind of do the same shit the same way... 

Lisa: Everyday.

Craig: ...same conversations, even you and I know. Like, I've been training in the gym since I was 14, that's 43 years, I watch people go to the gym who always do the same fucking workout. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: Same rep, the same set, same treadmill, same speed, same inclines, same boxing, same everything, same intensity, same workload, same machines. And then they say, why isn't my body changing? Well because it doesn't need to. 

Lisa: No. Given the status quo, you don’t.

Craig: Because you're stimulating it the same way. 

Lisa: I was working in that for years.

Craig: And we can expand that to life. Whereas we, kind of, I was talking to a lady yesterday about this, and she was telling me about a conversation she has with her son who's got some issues, who's 17. And I will be really honest, ‘How many times have you had a version of that conversation with him?’ She goes, ‘1,000'. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Craig: I go, ‘And how's that going?’ Now, that might be an exaggeration. But the bottom line is, but nonetheless, despite the fact that it didn't work the first 999 times, she's doing it again. 

Lisa: She’ll keep doing it. 

Craig: So it's about, and again, it's not about beating ourselves up, it's about gamble, whatever I'm doing, whether or not it's with this relationship, or this training programme, or this habit, or behaviour, or this business, whatever I'm doing isn't working. So let's have a new conversation or no conversation, or let's try a different protocol, or let's change the way I sleep. 

Lisa: Isn't that like the circuitry in the brain, when you do something for the first time that’s really hard. Because you're creating a new connection in the brain. And therefore, we go into these old routines and habits, even though we don't want to be doing them anymore, but the groove and the brain is so well-worn, that path is so—those synapses of connected or whatever they do in there, and that path is so well-worn, that it's the path of least resistance for our lazy brains, and our subconscious to do what it does all the time. So, when you're driving a car home, and you can have a conversation and be singing a song, and thinking about what you're cooking for dinner, and then you get to halfway into town, and you realise, ‘Hell, I can't even remember driving there', but you were doing it, and you were doing it safely. Because it was all on that subconscious, automated level. When you were first driving the car, it was a mission. And it was like, ‘Oh my god, I got to change the gears and steer and keep an eye on,' and it was all like overwhelmed, but then it got easier and easier and easier. And then with our rituals and habits that we develop, we make these well-worn grooves, don't we? And then we just follow the same old, same old even though it's not getting the results that we want. And when we try and step out of our comfort zone and start doing a new habit and developing a new way, there's a lot of resistance in the brain for the first few weeks, isn't there? Until you get that groove going. And then it gets easier and easier and easier once you've done it 100 times. Is that what you're sort of saying here?

Craig: Yeah. I mean, that's perfect. I mean, you nailed it. Look, the thing is that everything that we do for the first time, for most of us, nearly everything, unless we've done something very similar before, but it's hard. 

Lisa: Very.

Craig: So I always say everyone starts as a white belt. In the dojo, you start as a white belt. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: When as an ultramarathon, if I went, Lisa, which I wouldn't, but if I went, ‘I'm gonna run an ultramarathon'. Well, if I started training today, metaphorically, today, I'm a white belt. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: I'm a black belt at other stuff. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: I'm a green belt. I'm a yellow belt. Depends what I'm doing. Depends what—I'm not bad at talking to audiences that's... I should be pretty good at it. I've done it a million times. But take me to yoga, and I'll hide in the corner because I'm as flexible as a fucking ceramic tile. I’m a white belt. Right? I bet, put me in the gym lifting weights, I go okay, right? And so, again, this is all just about awareness, and development, and ownership. And, but the thing too, is that you're right, everything is very—we do create not only neural grooves, patterns, but also behavioural, and emotional, and cognitive grooves too, where we’re very comfortable in this space. And one of the challenges for us, it's like, it's a dichotomy. Because if everyone listening to this could somehow be involved and put up a show of hands, and we said, ‘All right, everyone. How many of you want to change something about your life or your outcomes or your situation or your body? Or your operating system or your current life experience?’ Nearly everyone's going to put up their hand. 

Lisa: Yes.

Craig: For something, right? Something. Then if you said, all right, ‘Now, at the same time, be brutally honest with yourself, how many of you like being comfortable?’, everyone's gonna put up their hand. So the problem is, on the one hand, we say I want to be strong, and resilient, and amazing, and produce great results, and do great shit, and grow, and develop my potential and fucking kill it, and but I don't want to get uncomfortable. Well, good luck, princess, that isn't working. It doesn't work.

Lisa: The world’s a bitch really, isn't it? I mean, like it is the way it works. You need resistance.

Craig: How can you get strong without working against resistance? 

Lisa: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Yes.

Lisa: This is just the… in my boxing gym, there was a saying on the wall, ‘Strength comes from struggle', and it's just like, ‘Oh damn, that's so right'. Like it's not what we always want. And I wish sometimes that the world was made another way. But we constantly need to be pushing up against what hurts, what is uncomfortable, it's painful just from a biology point of view being in the thermonuclear range, being nice and comfortably warm and cozy is really bad for us. And for you in that all the time, we need to go into an ice bath or cold water or go surfing or something and get cold, we need to be hot, go into a sauna. And when you do these things outside of those comfort zones, we need to lift weights in order to build stronger muscles, we need to do fasting in order to have autophagy, we need—all of these things are those stuff that is outside of pleasant. And you better get used to that idea. It's not because I want to be, like, masochistic in my approach to life. But it's just the way that the world works. If you sit on your ass being comfortable eating chips all day watching Netflix, you're not going to get the results that you're looking for.

Craig: That's right. And also there's this—because we only live in the moment. And because we are, and I'm generalising, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are not what I'm about to describe. But because many of us are very instant gratification based. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Right? It's like, the story is I'll eat this, I'll do this, I'll avoid that. But I'll start tomorrow, or I'll start Monday, or I'll start January 1. And that goes on for 15 years, right? 

Lisa: Yep. We’ve all done it.

Craig: And now I've backed myself into an emotional, and a psychological, and physiological corner that's hard to get out of because now, I'm 49. And my body's kind of fucked. And I've got high blood pressure. And I've got all these issues because I've been avoiding, and denying, and delaying, and lying to myself for a long time. Again, this is not everyone, so please don't get offended. 

Lisa: And It's not a judgment. It's just the way it goes.

Craig: No, because, I mean, this is what happens. Like, we live in this world where you can't say the truth. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And I'm not talking about being insensitive or moral judgments on people. But the thing is, it's like, when I talk about being fat, I talk about myself because then no one could get injured, insulted... 

Lisa: Insulted, yup.

Craig: ...or offended, right. So when I was fat, I wasn't thick-set, or full-figured or voluptuous or stocky? I was fucking fat. Right? 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And, but I was fat because of my choices and behaviours. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: Now, there are lots of variables around that. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: But at some stage, we have to say, and again, there are people with genetics that make stuff difficult... 

Lisa: Absolutely.

Craig: ...for medical conditions and all that we fully acknowledge that, but at some stage, we need to go, ‘Alright, well, I'm making decisions and doing things which are actually destroying me'. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: ‘They're actually hurting me'. And this is just about ownership and awareness and my, like, the biggest challenge in my life is me, the biggest problem in my life is me. Like, the only person that can ever really get in my way is me. But also, I'm the solution to me.

Lisa: I think it's a willingness to work on it. And like, I've looked into addictions and things quite a lot too, because I know that I have an addictive personality trait. I have genetics that are predisposed to that, and I do everything obsessively. So whether that's running for like a billion kilometres, or whether that's running five companies, or whether that's whatever I'm doing, I'm doing like an extreme version of that because it's just, like, I have that type of personality and it is genetics. And I find that that's one of the study of genetics for me, it's so interesting, there's a lot of predisposition in there. However, that does not negate the fact that I can still make choices, and I can turn the ship around. And I need to be aware of those predispositions, just like mum's got some predispositions towards cardiovascular disease and putting on weight very easily. That's just a fact of life for her, and it's not pleasant. And compared to other genetic types, it's a bit of a disadvantage. However, it is a fact. And therefore, she can still make the right choices for her body. 

And this is why I like working in the genetic space is really, really powerful because then I can say, well, it's not my fault that my genes are like this, but they are what they are, and we can remove some of the judgment on ourselves because I think when we—if we're judging ourselves all the time, that's not helpful either, because that stuff we’re like, ‘Oh, well, I'm just useless. And then I'm never gonna do anything,’ rather than empowering and say, ‘Well, it is what it is, the genes that I've been given are these, the environment that I've exposed to is this, the advertising and all that sort of stuff that's coming at us with McDonald's on every street corner and all of that sort of stuff, I can't influence there. What I can influence is I can educate myself and I can start to make better choices from my particular body and start taking ownership of that process and not just going, well, it's not my fault that I'm bigger boned.’ You may be bigger-boned or bigger, have genetics that are all about conservation. Then you need to be doubly careful. And put in the education, and the time, and the work, and I think it's about taking ownership and not judging yourself by getting on with the job. Like I know, like, I know my own personal and—what did you say to me the first time I met you? Something that was real self-aware anyway, without self-deprecating, and it was self-aware? I can't remember what it was that you said, it is a man who knows his own weakness and is working on it. And I think that's really key. Like, I know what I'm shit at and...

Craig: And that’s not self-loathing, that's self-awareness. And here's the thing, we're all about learning and growing. And I love my life, and I'm aware that I've got some skills and gifts. I'm also aware that I've got lots of flaws and shit I need to work on. And for some people, that's part of just the journey for other people, they are in a bit of a groundhog day. I always say if you're in a bit of a groundhog day, but you're happy then stay there. Because don't change because this is how I—don't be like me, for God's sake be like you. But if being like you, if your normal operating system equals anxiety, and sleeplessness and a bit of depression, and a bit of disconnection, and I'm not talking purely about mental health, I'm just talking about that state that we all get in, which is a bit like, ‘Fuck, I don't love my life, this wasn't where I thought I would be.’ 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: Then maybe start to work consciously on and acknowledge, there's some things that you can't change, some you can, and literally what you were talking about a minute ago, which is literally, ‘Okay, so there's what I've got, which is I've got these genetics, I've got 24 hours in a day. I'm 57. I've got this, these are the things I have, then there's what I do with it all.’ So I'm an endomorph. I walk past a doughnut, my ass gets bigger. That's my body type, right? So I need to go, ‘Alright, well with these, or with this disposition, how do I manage optimally with 24 hours in a day without them using the least?’ 

Lisa: You’ve done a lot by the little sea, Craig.

Craig: How do I manage my 24 hours optimally? 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: How do I? It's like, I eat two meals a day. I don't recommend anyone else does that. 

Lisa: For even the most, it’s great.

Craig: But for me, I don't…

Lisa: For an endomorph, that’s great.

Craig: I’m an 85-kilo dude with a bit of muscle. I don't need much food. Like, I would love to eat all the fucking food because I love food. What happens when I eat what I want versus what I need is I get fat. So I differentiate between: what does my body need to be lean, strong, functional, healthy versus what does Craig the fucking ex-fat kid want to inhale? 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Because, and the other thing too. And this is probably a bit irrelevant. Maybe relevant, though, for a lot of people. Like I would say, of the people that I've worked with closer over the years, which is thousands and thousands. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: I would say most people, including me, have a relationship with food that’s somewhere on the scale between a little bit disordered and an eating disorder, right? 

Lisa: Yup.

Craig: And a little bit not always... 

Lisa: I’ll cook my end up then. It’s always an issue.

Craig: At the other end of the scale, I'm a fucking lunatic around food, right? Now, you're educated, I'm educated, but I tell people all the time. So if I was an addict, and by the way, I've never drank, never smoked, never done drugs. But if I have started drugs or alcohol, I would have probably... 

Lisa: Done it well.

Craig: ...a drunk and used for Australia, right? I probably would have been a champion because I'm like you. I'm addictive. Now my addiction is food. So you know people think, ‘But you're educated. But you're this, you're that.’ It doesn't matter. Like, I need to manage myself.

Lisa: Still won’t hit pie.

Craig: Yeah, I need to manage myself around food.

Lisa: Yeah, daily. 

Craig: Because if I open the cheesecake door, get out of the fucking way.

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Right? 

Lisa: I hear you. 

Craig: If I open certain doors that derails me, so I need to know. And this is the same with everybody. And it's like, we all have a relationship with food. Okay. Is yours good or bad? healthy or unhealthy? Don't overthink it, just be real. We all have a relationship with our body. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with exercise, activity movement. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with money. We all have a relationship with our ego. It's like, this is opening the door on self-awareness and self-management law to a new level.

Lisa: Yeah, love it. Yeah, and this is going to be a fascinating PhD. I really—I can't wait to find out more about it. And I think just having that self-awareness, like I will freely say like, I've struggled with my body image, and who I am, and am I acceptable, and I was always trying to be the skinny little modern girl when I was young, and gymnast, and as a kid, and so struggled immensely with body image issues. And people will look at me now and they go, ‘Oh, whatever, you're lean and you're fit obviously and you don't ever—you wouldn't understand.’ Oh, you have no idea how much I understand. And there's still a constant daily battle: even though I'm educated, even though I know exactly what I should be and shouldn't be doing, I don't always succeed against my —that in a sort of drive that sometimes when you get out of balance, and this is why for me like keeping myself, when I say imbalance, I mean like keeping my neurotransmitters under wraps like in a nice, ordered fashion because I have a tendency to dopamine and adrenaline being my dominant hormones, right? 

So I'm just like, go, go, go! Do your absolute blow, take a jump and risk, don't think about it, do go and then burn out, crash bang! And so I need to, I need to have constant movement, I need to do the meditation thing regularly. Like before this podcast, I took five minutes to get my brain back into this space because I wanted to do a good interview. And I wasn't going to do that in this stressed-out body, I'd been doing too much admin work for 10 hours. So, I know how to manage those things. And it's the management on an everyday basis that I think and having those tools in your toolkit so that you know how to pull it up, I can feel my adrenaline going, I can feel the anger rising, I better go for a sprint out to the letterbox and back. Whatever it takes. Does it resonate with you?

Craig: Yeah, 100%. What's interesting is I've been around—I worked, one of the things I didn't mention, I worked at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for three years just as their kind of, what’s my title? Buddy health something, manager something, but I would only work there one day a week with them, but work with lots of addicts and alcoholics, and also athletes and all those things. But the thing is, especially with athletes, athletes tend to get their sense of self and their identity from their performances. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: And not all, but a lot, and which is why I've known many athletes who got retired earlier than I thought.

Lisa: Broke down.

Craig: And well, they went into straightaway, most of them a depression or form of depression. And so this is a really interesting thing to just talk about briefly is—from a happiness and a wellness and a cognitive function, and a mental health, emotional health point of view, is to think about where you get your identity and sense of self from. Now, one of the challenges for us is, we live in a culture which is very much externally focused. 

Lisa: Totally.

Craig: So who you are, Lisa, who you are is what you have, and what you own, and what you wear, and what you look like, and what people think of you, and your brand, and your performance, and your outcome. All things, your shit. And I grew up in that because I was an insecure, fucking fat kid who became an insecure, muscle-y bloke. And then I woke up one day, I was 30. And I was huge, and I had muscles on my eyelids and veins everywhere. And all I was was just a bigger, more insecure version of what I used to be. Because I was still a fuckwit just in a bigger body, right? Because I wasn't dealing with the issues. Because my problem wasn't my biceps or deltoids and being my problem is, I'm mentally and emotionally bankrupt, and perhaps spiritually depending on your belief system. And so, we get taught from an early age that who you are essentially is about all things external. So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. 

My theory is that it is the other way around. It is an inside-out journey. It is, it's differentiating between who I am and my stuff, and recognising that everything that I have and own, and earn, and do, and my profile, and my podcast, and my results, and my brand, and my house, and my biceps, and all those physical, external observable things don't matter nearly as much from a mental and emotional health point of view as what is happening internally. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: So, and I'll shut up after this. 

Lisa: No, that’s brilliant.

Craig: But this is cool not because I'm sharing it, just this idea is cool, is that is the duality of the human experience. And what that means is that we live in two worlds. So where we do life is in this physical external place of situation, circumstance, environment, traffic lights, other humans, government, COVID, weather, runners, running, sport, all that external stuff, which is not bad. It's awesome, but that's where we do life. But where we do our living, where we do living is that inner space of feelings and ideas and creativity and passion and fear, and depression and anxiety and hope and joy, and overthinking and self doubt and self-loathing, and excitement and creativity.

Lisa: Wow.

Craig: It's trying to understand—because you and I know, at least a few people, maybe many who from the outside looking in their life is fucking amazing.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: It's the Hollywood life. 

Lisa: It’s so nearly like that.

Craig: It's a life on the outside of shiny. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: But I've coached many of those people, trained them, worked with them, set with them. And not all, of course, some are great. But there are many people who from the outside looking in, you would go, they're really successful. That would be the label that we use in our culture. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Why are they successful? Oh, look at all of their stuff. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: All of that stuff. Those outcomes, that house and that equals that money, that equals success. But when you sit in, you talk to that person, you go, ‘Oh, this successful person doesn't sleep much, this person needs to medicate to sleep, and also for anxiety, and also for depression. And also they hate themselves, and also they feel disconnected, and also they're lonely.’ And, or if not all of that, some of that, if not all the time, some of the time, and you got all the outside and the inside don’t match. 

Lisa: Don’t unlatch. Yeah. 

Craig: And so it's going. And by the way, of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business and writing five books and being an awesome runner, or whatever, building an empire. That's not bad. But it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are.

Lisa: Yeah, and spending time on the inside, and being okay with who you are. Because I often ask myself this question. What if it was all taken away from me again and I've lost—I went through my 30s, lost everything, hit start back from scratch. We've been there, done that. I've had to go through the wringer a couple of times. If everything was taken off me, my house, my achievements, my business, which could happen tomorrow, who am I? And would I be able to get back up again? And I reckon I would, because I've got tools to rebuild. And I know that resilience is the most important thing. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Lisa: The question I ask myself sometimes, so, is it whether, like, I lost my father this year, last year, sorry, six months ago, so that knocked the crap out of me... 

Craig: 100%.

Lisa: ...out of my resilience because that was like, up until that point, it didn't matter. If I lost my job, my car, my career, and anything else, but my family were safe, and they were all alive, then that's all I needed. And then when the chief gets taken out, the cornerstone who'd been a rock, my mum was too, but that was a cornerstone, then it didn't, it was a bit of an existential bloody crisis for me because I was like, ‘And now, life is never going to be the same again.’ And that resilience, I really had to dig deep to stand back up again. And I think, so grief is one of those things. So I asked myself constantly, and one of the reasons I drive myself so hard is to protect my family, and to look after them, make sure I don't miss anything. And this one of the things I study so hard for. Just sharing a personal story there to sort of get people to understand, ‘If you lost everything, could you get back up? What would it take to break you?’ That nearly broke me, to be brutally honest.

Craig: Well, I say to people who are in a bit of a—and thanks for sharing that, and sorry about your dad. God bless him. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Like, I say to people, ‘Okay, let's forget all the fucking KPIs and the deck and success mantras and all right, that's good.’ I can stand in front of people and motivate, and inspire, and make them laugh, and tell stories. And that's all good. But I go, ‘I've got three words for you one question three words. And the three words and the one question are, what really matters?’ Now, what really matters is not your fucking tally. It's not your bank balance. It's not your biceps. It's not your hair colour. It's not your fucking lippy, or it's in my case, it's not your abs or and none of those things of themselves are bad. But I've been really lucky that I've worked with people who are in a really bad way, people in prison who got themselves there, of course, but then probably more impact for me was people with really bad injuries. 

Lisa: That’s amazing.

Craig: I work with a bloke at the moment, a mate of mine who got blown up in an accident. I trained him three days a week, and he was literally given zero chance of living like, or having any function similar to your mum. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Craig: And he started. He was in, like your mum, he was in a coma. I started, they said he'd be a quadriplegic. If he—firstly, they said he wouldn't live, and he lived in our luck out, mesmerised how that happened. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: Got through the operations, he got blown up by gas bottles, which were in the back of his unit while he was driving. 

Lisa: Oh my god.

Craig: That blew the car apart, that blew the roof off, they shattered windows for 800 meters in the houses. And he was given zero chance of living. And he was in a coma for a long time. And I'll go in and talk to him. And when he obviously was not awakened, all the stuff that you did, and I just say to him, that I don't know, like, that'd be gone. I don't know. Like, I don’t be guessing. I don't know, I might just get well enough to get out of here. And I'll start training him. I started training him in a wheelchair, with a broomstick. And so and the broomstick literally weighed, I don't know, maybe 100 grams. And so I would put the broomstick in his hands. And I would pull his hands away. So his arm’s away from his body. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: And I'd say now try and pull that towards you. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: And that's where we started. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: With a 100-gram broomstick. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Now it's three and a bit years later, I've trained him for three and a bit years. 

Lisa: Wow.

Craig: He is now walking with sticks. He drives himself to the gym. His brain function is fucking amazing. 

Lisa: Oh my god.

Craig: He’s still in constant pain. And he's got a lot of issues. But the bottom line is the dude who they went, you will never ever walk, you will never talk. 

Lisa: You’ll never survive.

Craig: They'll never be any—you'll never have any function, right? 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: So my two big perspective givers. That's one and the other one is—so... 

Lisa: What a dude.

Craig: What’s that?

Lisa: What a legend.

Craig: Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. So about 14 months ago, I was at the gym and I was training with my training partner, who's like me and he’s all buffed. He's in good shape. He’s fit. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, him and I are very similar. Anyway, one of the stupid things that he does is he takes I don't want to get in trouble. But he takes pre-workout, doesn't do drug. Don't do anything. I don't know. But anyway, he took a pre-workout. We're training and he's doing a set of chins. And he did 30 chins, Lisa, and he held his breath for the whole time because that's what he does. He thinks he gets more reps when he holds his breath. By the way, folks, not a great plan. Holds his breath for 30 reps.

Lisa: He’s training his chemoreceptors. This for sure.

Craig: Yeah, comes down, falls on his face on the floor. And I think he's having a seizure. 

Lisa: Oh.

Craig: And it had an instant cardiac arrest. 

Lisa: Oh my god. 

Craig: So, not a heart attack, a cardiac arrest. So, his heart stopped. So it took me kind of 20 seconds to realise it was that, and not... And there was—I won't describe what was going on with him. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: But as you can imagine, turning all kinds of colours...

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: ...stuff coming out of his mouth. It was messy, right? 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: So, he was dead for 17 minutes. 

Lisa: Oh, my God. 

Craig: I worked on him for 10 until the ambos got there or the paramedics and God bless him. fricking amazing. But what's interesting is in that, firstly, that 17 minutes could have been 17 days. That's how clearly I remember those minutes. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And I'm on the floor, kneeling down next to one of my best friends in the world. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: And I'm doing compressions and breathing, and I'm trying to save his life. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And it's funny how in that moment, everything comes, without even trying, to everything comes screamingly into perspective about, ‘What is bullshit?’

Lisa: Yes. 

Craig: What matters? 

Lisa: Yes. 

Craig: What fucking doesn't matter? 

Lisa: Yes. 

Craig: What I waste energy and attention on. And literally those seven, eight minutes. I mean, I think I had pretty good awareness but they really changed me. 

Lisa: Yeah. I hear you.

Craig: Nothing matters except the people I love. 

Lisa: Exactly.

Craig: I'll figure the rest out. 

Lisa: Yep. It's an amazing story. Did he survive?

Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's five-to-two here in Melbourne. 

Lisa: And he's waiting for you? 

Craig: We're training at five.

Lisa: Brilliant. Say hi for me.

Craig: He’s still an idiot. 

Lisa: He’s awesome, he's lucky he got you. 

Craig: He’s still an idiot, but at least he prays when he chins.

Lisa: Yeah, but like just the experience I went through with my dad. And I haven't done a whole podcast on it, and I tend to, because the two weeks fighting for his life in the hospital and fighting up against a system that wouldn't let me do intravenous vitamin C in that case that I was trying to because he had sepsis, and fighting with every ounce of my body and every ounce of my will, and in knowing that, and for those—it was 15 days that we were there, and they all blend into one because there was hardly any sleep happening in that time, a couple hours here and there and I'd fall over. But they changed me forever, in the fact that because I'm a fixer, I like to fix things and people.

And when we're in the fight, I’m the best person you want in your corner of the ring. If we're in a fight for your life, or not as an, like, I'm a paramedic, but if you want someone to fight for you, then I’m the biggest person to have in your corner. But when we lost that battle, man, I was broken. And to actually not to come out the other side and to have that win and to get him back and to save his life, especially knowing I had something that could have saved his life had I been able to give it to him from day one. And you said that about your friend who got blown up and you said, ‘Just get out of here, mate, no, take it from there.’ And that's what I was saying to my dad. And as he had, ‘You just get yourself—you just hang in there, dad, because I will do what I can do here, and I've got all my mates and my doctors and my scientists all lined up ready to go. As soon as I get you the hell out of this place, I will do whatever it takes to get you back.’ But I could not do anything in a critical care situation because I had no control over him, his body, what went into him. And it was a—he was on a ventilator and so on. And so that was out of my control, you know? And that's fricking devastating. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Lisa: To know that and to feel that.

Craig: How did that change you? Like, how did that change you in terms of...

Lisa: It's still an evolving process I think, Craig, and there's a burning desire in me to get that changed in our ICU for starters, to get recognition for intravenous vitamin C, which I've done like a five-part series on my podcast for status, but I'm working on other ideas and projects for that because we're talking thousands and thousands of doctors and scientists who have the proof that this helps with things like sepsis, like ADS, like pneumonia, and it's just being ignored. And it's, we’re just 20 years behind this is one of the reasons I do what I do, is because I know that the information, like going through that journey with my mum too, the information that latest in clinical studies, all of what the scientists are doing now and what's actually happening in clinical practice are just worlds apart. And with like a 20-year delay in from there to there, and the scientists are saying this, and the doctors at the cutting edge are saying this. And so things have to change. So that's changed me in a perspective because I've never been a political person. I don't want to really get—I love being in the positive world of change, and it's, do things. But I do feel myself going into this activism space in a little way because I need to get some changes happening and some systematic things and you know you're up against the big fight. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Lisa: This is a big base to take on. But I'll do what I can in my corner of the world, at least but it has changed. And all that matters to me now is my family and my friends, and then from a legacy perspective, is impacting the world massively with what I do know and the connections that I do have and bringing information like we've been hearing today and these very personal real stories to people's ears because it changes the way people have their own conversations and hence start to think.

Craig: Well, I think also, and thanks for sharing that. That's it. Somebody's got to step up, and you're stepping up and quite often the things that we need to do to live our values are not the things we want to do. 

Lisa: No, scary. 

Craig: Like, Fuck this. Yeah, I'd rather watch Netflix too. But that's not what I'm about. So it's good that you recognise that and you step into that, but I think what's encouraging about this conversation for everyone is that neither of us, well, I was gonna say, particularly special, you're quite special with what you do. But even with what you do, as an elite athlete, really, you've just put in an inordinate amount of work. Like, you've done all of the things required to become elite and to become an exception, but in many other ways, like with me, you've got issues and bullshit and flaws. And that's why I think—I'm not saying this is a great podcast by any means that or this is great conversation because that's very fucking self-indulgent. But what I mean is, I think people connect with podcasts, conversations that are just that. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Where it's not like two people who are...

Lisa: Scripted. 

Craig: ...just shooting off like experts. It's like, yeah, we're both figuring it out, too. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And by the way, I'm a dickhead too. By the way, I don't know, I've got a lot of shit wrong. Don't worry about that. It's like, I'm just having my best guess. And I always say, even as a coach, I've never changed anyone. All I've done is influenced people, but I've never done the work for them. They've always done the work. So, everyone that I've coached that succeeded, it's because they did the work. Like I didn't run the race. I didn't lift the weight. I didn't play the sport. I didn't go to the Olympics. I didn't walk out onto the arena. I didn't do anything. I'm just the guy going, ‘Fuck, come on, you can do it.’ And like, here’s a plan and here’s—it's like, I'm just the theory guy. I don't put it into—the only life that I put it into practice in is my own.

Lisa: Yeah. And that's powerful. And as a role model, too. I mean the shape that you're in and the stuff that you do, and you walk the talk, and those are the people that I want to listen to. And those are the people I want to learn from.

Craig: Well, my dad, my dad used to say to me, a couple of it, my dad's like a cranky philosopher. But he used to say to me a couple of things. This is irrelevant. The first one but it's, ‘You can't go to university and get a personality', right. Which is funny because my dad's like, ‘And university, it's overrated'. I agree, dad. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Second thing. 

Lisa: For most things.

Craig: Second thing. He used to say, ‘I wouldn't trust accountants or financial planners who weren't rich'.

Lisa: Or trainers who are overweight.

Craig: It's like, I remember him saying to me, like a friend of his disrespect Toyota, but not a friend, but a dude he knew. He was a financial planner or an accountant. And he used to drive this old beaten up Corolla, and my dad's like, ‘Why would I listen to him?’ Like, look what he drives, like, if he knew anything about making money or maximising whatever. 

Lisa: He’s got a point. He’s got a point.

Craig: So, yeah, I think the thing isn’t—when I listen to somebody like you, apart from being an elite athlete, what I know is that it's not like you've been given this gift, and you've just milked the gift. I know, you've obviously got a talent and a gift. But also what you've done is maximise everything around that from nutrition, and sleep, and supplements, and recovery, and decision making, and periodisation, and planning and prep.

Lisa: Yeah, I’ll swipe a stimulus for a long period of it.

Craig: And you've done all the work around, like, a lot of people are gifted, but don't do anything with it. Like a lot of people have got potential. 

Lisa: Huge, huge and I have no potential, I had no talent, I really didn't, and I still don't but I did hear that just persistence. And I think one of the biggest things in life is persistence. And not expecting, like, how I hit a, so I'm doing this anti-ageing supplements that I've got coming in that I'm importing into the country called NMN, amazing. I've looked into science, I know what I'm talking about. I know these things are good, right? I get a client, they’re taking the supplements for three days. And then they're like, ‘Oh, it's not working.’ Like that sort of sums up a lot of people's approach to fitness and health.

Craig: Yeah.

Lisa: And looking for the pill that does it in three days. They're looking for that one workout that's going to change them and they're going to look like it's gonna happen, instead of the fact that it's a multi-pronged approach. You have to check a whole lot of other things to get some of it to stick, and you have to keep throwing it forever, not just one. It's a constant persistence set that sees success. I mean, that was definitely with your mate that had that got blown up and with mum, it wasn't one therapy that got them there. It wasn't one therapy that got mum where she is, it was this and plus that plus this plus that. And then we went backwards here. And then we tried that, and that was a dead end. And that wasn't too good. But overall, we kept going, and at the end of the day success and then ongoing work.

Craig: 100%. Well, I always say to people, I don't care what you get done when you're motivated, I get—I care what you get done when you're not motivated, because everyone's a fucking champion when they're in the zone. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: That it's about your ability to persevere, persist, do the work. It's how effective and proactive and productive you can be when you're not inspired. Because the problem is that a lot of us rely on this state of motivation. And in this sense, I'm talking about that emotional state, excitement, arousal, I mean, there's, whenever I heard Lisa, I heard Lisa talk, and I was pumped, but the next day, I wasn't pumped, so it didn't do it. So there's this. And it's interesting because I get pigeonholed in corporate as a motivational speaker. 

Lisa: Yeah.

Craig: And one of the first things I say is that motivation doesn't work. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: And people look with dismay, but ‘Aren’t you a motivation...?’ I go, look, you might get inspired or motivated while I'm here. And if that's happens, that's cool. But what I actually care about is what you do, I care about your behaviours, your choices, and your ability to keep doing what success demands when you can't be stuffed. Because that's more important than me inspiring you for an hour or a day. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: Because everyone can get it, which is why everyone makes the, not everyone, but a lot of people start a new year's resolution with this whole story and whatever and it’s like well, January one's the day. And that's just a story: January 3 is too late and December 28 too early. Because and it all, this is all bullshit psychology. But we think that magically, it's got something to do with a day or a date. Well, now it's got everything to do with you and nothing to do with the calendar. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: Everything to do with: do you really want to do that thing? Because that thing you want to do is hard, and uncomfortable, and inconvenient, and uncertain. And it probably won't be fun, quick, easy or painless, the journey.

Lisa: And very expensive often as well along the way.

Craig: That's right. And so with all of that in mind, do you still want to do this thing? 

Lisa: Yep. 

Craig: And the answer is ‘Nah’ most of the time.

Lisa: And are you willing to put in the work? Every time you take on a project, every time you do something, it is going to set you, it's going to cost you somewhere else in your life. So you have to decide, yes, a lot of people say why aren't you doing ultras anymore because I've got other priorities. And I could be a selfish person and carry on doing the same old, same old and not be learning and developing anymore. Or I can be doing something that's actually going to benefit my family, my audience, my crew, me in another way, and it's more beneficial. ‘Oh, but don't you miss it?’ No, no, I don't. I've been there, done that. That was that time. And this is this time. And I think having that confidence to say that, took a couple of years to say that and to be okay with it. But I think that that's an important thing, too. 

Craig: Well, for me, that's maturity and growth and so, what will work for you? What worked for me when I was 30, in terms of what I was doing lifestyle work, and it was awesome. But it didn't work for me when I was 40. 

Lisa: No. 

Craig: It doesn't work. And it's not good or bad. We just change and I've—what I do now, like, for example, what works for me, which is working independently, having a recording studio at home, I've got two offices at home, upstairs I've got an office, outside I've got an office called the Zen den–internal and external–and the way that I work which is no holiday pay, no sick pay, no guarantees. I don't know how much I'm gonna make this year. I don't know what bookings I'm gonna get. Fuck all that. There's so much uncertainty. Most people would hate my life, but I fucking love it. So, it's trying to figure out what's my best operating system based on me, life values, what I love, what I want to do, be, create and bring to the world. How do I want to serve? How do I want to show up? What do I want to be, and how do I live my truth and how do I live my purpose and how do I live my values and how do I walk the talk and yeah, I'm going to stuff up and but and then based on all of that what is my operating system need to be and once we start to get—we talk about this idea a lot in self-help and whatever about living in alignment, I get asked a lot what that means. And for me, all it means is living your values. That's it: what are your values? Create an operating system that reflects those values, you're in alignment.

Lisa: Yeah. And it is like this entrepreneurs were both in that same sort of space, we're creating our own world, doing this podcast, for example. It is, you have to be pretty brave and courageous, and sometimes stupid because it's a scary road out there, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And I can't work for anybody else. So I think it's a bit of a rebellious spirit in me, and it just doesn't want to be told what to do. And so I like to run my own ship. And sometimes that ship has sunk along the way. And sometimes it's been very successful. So you just have to pitch in living. Like, I just could not live in a corporate setting. Like my dad wanted me to be an accountant. Oh, my God, I would have died as an accountant. I would have been long dead because I would have just not wanted to live with that was my life and no, no offence to accountants. Great profession, we need them. But not for me, and I had to be my own person and run my own ship. And that's hard sometimes it would be—I sometimes think, God would be hell of a lot easier to go with someone else, and the hours I have to do and the amount of work I have to do and the mistakes that I've made, and the money I've lost and the education I've had to invest in, and the years and years of development, but oh man, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Craig: Yeah, that's because, for you, it's not about money. Money is one of the things but if someone said to me, ‘Craig, you can make twice the money, but you've got to drive to work, sit in a cubicle and do ABC, you'll make double the money.’ I'd be like, not only am I not interested, I wouldn't even give that one second of consideration. Because for me, it's about my life experience. If my costs are covered, other than that, I'm good.

Lisa: Yeah. As long as when it, yeah.

Craig: Like, I live the cheapest life of all time. I literally drive a $20,000 Suzuki, I spend 23 hours a day in bare feet. I walk around with $10 shorts, I go to the gym every day. All I do is talk to people and think about the meaning of life and do my research. And my life is fucking awesome. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Craig: Like I don't need more stuff like, we tell ourselves this story about all the shit we need. You don't need it.

Lisa: Yeah, you don't need the fancy watches and the fancy clothes. 

Craig: I used to do it, I tried it. I always say to people, I tried being selfish. I gave it a really good go for a long time. It didn't work.

Lisa: And in the simple life, I mean, somebody, if you if that's what floats your boat, then cool have all that stuff. But for me it's, I've got sponsored clothes, I've got a $2,000 car, I don't care. It skips me from A to B, as long as it doesn't break down. You know what I mean? 

Craig: Yeah.

Lisa: It's not where my values lie. It's not who I am as a person. And if you are judging, you know how successful I am by the car I drive? Well, jeez, I’m not doing too well.

Craig: I mean, but exactly. But people know who you are beyond what you drive or what your own. It's like the prize is you, like, you're amazing. You're shit’s amazing. Your message, your inspiration, your energy. It is amazing. Like, you're great. And I'm not pissing in your pocket, you're great. I've told a hundred people about you, so.

Lisa: I really appreciate it.

Craig: No, you're awesome. I love it. 

Lisa: And likewise, and I think the, like, being on your show, just what was it a week or week and a half ago, like, I've just had such a response from there because you have such a big following. And you have such a big following because you do an amazing job. And you're funny. And I could learn a bit on the funny side, I think that would be helpful.

Craig: Could you work on that a bit? [1:09:04 unintelligible]

Lisa: Yeah. I’m a bit serious. I'm really too serious. I like to be cheeky.

Craig: You know what I think is that I always think, like, if I'm going to go talk to an audience, and this, and all I've got is information and data and facts. I'm not going to create a whole lot of connection. But if there's stories and a bit of humour, as well as some quality information, if you can create an emotional connection with people, then the teaching and the sharing of thoughts and ideas is much easier. And I, no, don't set out to get a laugh or but it's like I know if I sit and listen to a speaker who to me, that person he or she is engaging. I mean, but if I listen to someone who's got three PhDs and a fucking Nobel Prize, but they're boring, I'm out. It doesn't matter, I'm like, fuck, dude. Come on. I'm nodding off. It's like because you want to, I mean, ultimately, we're still emotional, social creatures. And we want to be a bit amused and entertained. 

Lisa: That’s true.

Craig: And we want to connect with the person who's in front of us.

Lisa: And that's a good teacher that can bring across the passion, and if it's through humour. If it’s through just a really engaging style, then that's fantastic. Hey, Craig, I know you got to get to another appointment. And I've really taken up a lot of your time today. But I just want to thank you, and I can't wait to do a few more things with you. I don't know what and we're in COVID, and all that sort of jazz account pops over and says, ‘Yeah, I'd love to'. But I hope we can do some more stuff together. I think what you're doing is fabulous. Your PhD sounds absolutely fascinating. And here, I'm going to go and read your books now. So we actually on that point, tell us where people can find you. Your books and all that sort of good things.

Craig: Probably just, so where to look at lots of stuff would just be craigharper.net. Where to—probably I mean, probably the easiest access just to follow my day to day stuff is Instagram, which is @whiteboardlessons.

Lisa: @whiteboardlessons. Yep.

Craig: @whiteboardlessons because I do a lot of, I write on the whiteboard.

Lisa: I shared one of them today. It was good.

Craig: I saw that, thank you. I incessantly write on whiteboards. And then I take pictures of what I write and post it which people seem to resonate with. So just Instagram, @whiteboardlessons, social media, sorry...

Lisa: And The You Podcast, The You Project.

Craig: And of course, The You Project fucking project. 

Lisa: Project 

Craig: Project. Right, the project or the project, is my podcast. So yeah, it's been great. Lisa, and I love what you do. And I think you ace in—I didn't know of you a couple of months ago, and I'm very impressed. And it's a privilege to come on your show. And it's great to meet you. And I'm looking forward to hanging out with you, one day.

Lisa: Absolutely. We’ll absolutely do that. You can teach me to do some better chin-ups because I'm not very good at them.

Craig: Well, we're definitely not going for a run. I'll give you that too.

Lisa: Oh, man. I’m not too long. I don't do so long anymore. So you'll be actually fine with me running.

Craig: All right.

Lisa: All right, matey, thank you so much for your time, and we look forward to having you on again at some stage.

Craig: Perfect. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

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.
Mar 18, 2021

We all want good health and a long life. That's why we subscribe to health fads that offer promising benefits to our bodies. But, for this same reason, we tend to neglect foundational health principles. While these are easily accessible to us, there is still so much we can learn and get from them. By going back to the basics, we can take better care of our health, prevent diseases and boost longevity.

Dr Elizabeth Yurth joins us in this episode to talk about the importance of cellular health in longevity. She gives an overview of the benefits of foundational health principles in the disease process. Dr Yurth delves deeper into fasting, autophagy and the specifics of spermidine.

If you want to know more about slowing the ageing process and boosting longevity, this episode is for you.

 

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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.

 

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Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.

 

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Order My Books

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.

 

My Jewellery Collection

For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.

 

Here are Three Reasons Why You Should Listen to the Full Episode:

  1. Find out the importance of hormone metabolisation and cell fixing in preventing and addressing diseases.
  2. Learn the importance of going back and forth between different health routines.
  3. Discover the benefits of spermidine in improving health.

 

Resources

 

Episode Highlights

[01:54] Dr Yurth’s Practise and Boulder Longevity Institute

  • Dr Yurth has been practising orthopaedic medicine for 30 years. Fifteen years into her career, she became frustrated with the band-aid solution process in orthopaedics.
  • She started looking at the way to stop this downhill decline. She did a fellowship in functional and regenerative medicine and incorporated it into her practice. 
  • However, short consultation sessions for such proved to be inefficient, so they opened the Boulder Longevity Institute.
  • They started the Human Optimization Academy to educate people about orthopaedic regenerative care.
  • Every single disease comes down to the mitochondrial level that requires systemic treatment.

[07:16] Foundational Health Principles

  • There are a lot of cool fads on taking care of your health. However, we have to start with the basic principles.
  • Metabolising the hormones is very important. A urine metabolite test determines the pathways where hormones are going.
  • Simple lab studies, including CBC and CMP, can give an estimation of longevity comparable with telomere length testing and DNA methylation.
  • Looking at albumin can predict longevity. Listen to the full episode to have an in-depth look at how albumin works!
  • You have to train people to go back to understanding these foundational principles.

[21:33] An Overview on Cellular Health

  • Every organ system comes back to cellular dysfunction. When you have damaged mitochondria, the cells are in an altered state of energy.
  • Senescent cells are cells that sit in the body without doing anything. Zombie cells become toxic to the cells around them.
  • To heal any disease, we have to clean out the bad cells. They use fasting in the disease process because it causes autophagy.
  • The biggest mistake people make is to try to have many antioxidants and NAD in the body.
  • To clear out the bad stuff, Dr Yurth and her team use rapamycin and spermidine. Tune in to the full show to know more about these cell-restoring methods!

[27:45] Fasting and Autophagy Mimetics

  • There’s a lot of questions about fasting that even experts have no answer to.
  • Autophagy is self-eating. You can have autophagy without being in ketosis.
  • One of the benefits of fasting is oxidative stress. Taking resveratrol reduces this benefit because it has a potent antioxidant.
  • You don’t want to be doing any protocol and patterns continuously. You have to go back and forth between different things.
  • A balance between mTOR and NPK keeps things in a homeostatic state.

[35:08] Muscle Building and Longevity

  • Muscle building is not the key to good health and longevity.
  • The genes that stayed in our body’s genetic evolution are those that will help us survive famines.
  • While research has shown that low IGF people live long, they don’t have good energy.
  • It's about repeatedly bringing IGF levels down and building it up. The cells need a push and pull for them to become healthier.

[38:36] All About Spermidine

  • Spermidine is present in every single living organism. It is prominent in our guts and in some food, with the richest source being wheat germ extract.
  • The major research of spermidine is its benefit in cardiovascular diseases. Myeloperoxidase is an inflammatory cardiovascular marker, of which they have seen high levels in post-COVID patients. 
  • Research has also found that spermidine can lower Lp(a).
  • Immune system support is another place where spermidine has been studied. Spermidine, along with the peptide thymosin alpha 1, can improve lymphocytes.
  • The early studies in spermidines are on hair growth. It affects the body's overall regeneration process.

[46:29] Using Spermidine

  • Starting from a low level, it takes a while for spermidine to make you feel better.
  • One of the things Dr Yurth did when she started spermidine was to monitor her heart rate variability (HRV) and her Oura ring.
  • HRV is predictive of almost every disease state.
  • Getting a higher dose of spermidine comes at a great cost. But it's putting your health at a priority.

[50:35] Why You Should Trust the Research

  • Fixing the cells at the very base level takes time.
  • Dr Yurth is part of the Seed Scientific Research and Performance along with 25 mastermind doctors. Through this, they weed out what works and what doesn’t.
  • If you want to learn more about how Dr Yurth applies her practise, listen to the full episode!
  • There are a lot of inexpensive things you can do that are effective. If it doesn’t respond, that’s the time to pull up the bigger stakes.
  • The Boulder Longevity Institute bridges the gap between research to save lives.

 

7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode

‘It is not that you run too much; you wear your knees. It's that there is a disease process going on in your body that is now making your joints wear out, and so you have to treat it systemically, or you're not going to make any progress’.

‘The cool stuff is cool, and there's a place for it in all of us. But you still got to start at the basic stuff’.

‘There's so much information in these really simple lab studies that you've gotten from your primary care doctor’.

‘I think even the functional medicine space sort of went beyond the step of looking at some very basic things that are inherent to life’.

‘You're never going to train doctors; you've got to train people’.

‘There's not really anybody who has one disease that does not have something else wrong; it's just impacted lots of times in different ways’.

‘We want to go back and forth between different things. And we want to make sure we're cycling. Any of you are staying on the same patterns all the time, that's not serving you’.

 

About Dr Elizabeth

Dr Elizabeth Yurth is the co-founder of the Medical Director of the Boulder Longevity Institute. 

She is a faculty member and a mastermind physician fellow in Seeds Scientific Research and Performance (SSRP). She specialises in Sports, Spine, and Regenerative Medicine and has double board-certification in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging/Regenerative Medicine.

She has a dual-Fellowship in Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (FAARFM) and Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (FAARM). Dr Yurth is also an active athlete and has worked with numerous sports teams at collegiate and professional levels. She does consultations with high-level athletes to optimise performance and aid recovery.

If you wish to connect with Dr Yurth, you may visit her Instagram.

 

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa

 

Full Transcript of The Podcast

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.

You’re listening to Pushing The Limits with Lisa Tamati. Fantastic to have you guys back with me again. I hope you're ready and buckled down for another great interview. I really do get some amazing people and this lady is no exception. So today I have Dr. Elizabeth Yurth, who I originally heard on the Bulletproof Radio Podcast with Dave Asprey, who I love and follow. And she is a longevity expert. But Dr. Yurth is also a medical director of the Boulder Longevity Institute, which she founded in 2006. And she's double board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation and anti-ageing and regenerative medicine. So she's a specialist in sports, spine and regenerative medicine. 

She's an orthopaedic surgeon, and she's also heavily into the whole regenerative stuff. So from stem cells to different supplements to working with the latest and technologies that are available to help us slow down the ageing process and to help people regain function. So it was a really super exciting episode and I'm going to have Dr. Elizabeth on a couple of times. She's also a faculty member of the 25 mastermind physicians fellows at the Seeds Scientific Research & Performance group, which allows you to stay abreast and teach others in the emerging cellular medicine field. She's also been an athlete herself and works with numerous sports teams and both of the collegiate and professional levels. She's a wonderful person and I'm really excited to share this interview with her. 

Before we head over to talk to Dr. Yurth, I just want to let you know about my new anti-ageing supplement. Now this has been designed and developed by Dr. Elena Seranova, who is a molecular biologist who is also coming on the podcast very shortly. And this is an NMN. It has nicotinamide mononucleotide. I recently read the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair, who's a Harvard Medical School researcher in longevity and anti-ageing. And he's been in this field for the last 30 years. And his book was an absolute mind blowing, real look into the future of what we're going to be able to do to stop ourselves ageing to slow the ageing process down. And very importantly, increase, not only our lifespan, but our health span so that we know we stay healthy for as long as possible and don't have this horrific decline into old age that most of us expect to have. 

So Dr. Sinclair in this book talks about what he takes and one of these things is an NAD precursor called nicotinamide mononucleotide. I searched all over the place for this. I couldn't get it in New Zealand when I was searching for it. And so I went and found Dr. Elena Seranova, who has developed this product and I'm now importing that into New Zealand. So if you want to find out all the science behind it, please head on head over to nmnbio.nz. That's N-M-N bio dot N - Z and all the information is on there. And you can always reach out to me lisa@lisatamati.com, if you've got questions around that. 

We've also updated our running coaching system. So the way that we are offering our online run training system is now on a complete new look. We are doing fully personalised, customised training plans for runners of all levels and abilities. So we will program you for your next goal doing a video analysis of the way you're running, improve your running form through drills and exercises. Build your plan out for you. You get a one-on-one consult time with me as well. And just really help you optimise your running performance and achieve those big goals that you've got. So head on over to runninghotcoaching.com to check that out. Right now over to the show with Dr Elizabeth Yurth in Boulder, Colorado. 

Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Today, I have Dr. Elizabeth Yurth with me from Colorado—Boulder, Colorado, and she is a longevity and anti-ageing expert. She's an orthopaedic surgeon. She's a real overachiever. And I'm just super excited to have her on because I have been diving into Dr. Yurth’s world for the last couple of weeks since I heard about her on the Bulletproof radio show. So Dr. Yurth has kindly given up an hour of her time to come and share her great knowledge. I know we're only going to skim the surface, Dr. Yurth, but it would be fantastic if we can gain some amazing insights on how the heck do we slow down this ageing process. So, Dr. Yurth, welcome to the show. 

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth: Thank you so much, Lisa. I've been actually stalking you ever since you asked me to do this. And I've been fascinated with all the things you've been doing and teaching and I love it. I love that there's people like you out there who are now getting the masses involved in this and interested in this because doctors aren't doing it and so it has to be that educate the public. And people like you are paramount to that, so thank you.

Lisa: Thank you very much. Yes, I think, yes, this is the beauty of podcasts and such things and will in the internet whenever we can go direct to the best minds on the planet, get the information direct to the consumer, cutting out all the middle people, so to speak, and really get this information out there. Because what I've found in my research in the last few years is that there is so much amazing, great science out there that has never seen the light of day and certainly not in local clinical practice being utilized. 

So Dr. Yurth, can you tell us a little bit about the Boulder Longevity centre before we get underway and what your work there is all about and your background?

Dr. Elizabeth: Sure, I'd love to. So basically, I've been in the orthopaedic medicine world for 30 years. And about 15 years ago, I actually became very frustrated because I saw people coming in and they would get injured or just have arthritis, chronic pain and we would sort of patch them a little bit and nothing ever really got better, and then something else will get hurt. And it really was just this downhill process from square one. I mean, I tore my first anterior cruciate ligament in my knee at the age of 18 and subsequently, had torn two or three more times between the two knees, had four more surgeries and then it was just a downhill decline. 

And so, we started looking at is there a way to stop this, because you don't learn it in medical school, and you don't learn in orthopaedic medicine. And when I started looking into—and this was a very early time in the whole functional medicine space, it was really early, there wasn't a lot. And so I went back to American Academy of Anti-ageing Medicine, which is really the only thing available at that time, and did a fellowship in functional medicine and regenerative medicine and tried to incorporate that into my orthopaedic practice as much as I could. But it's difficult in 10 to 15 minute appointments to do that. So we realized that you can't really do good medicine in that model, and so we opened Boulder Longevity Institute about 15 years ago now.

And I really sidelined did both practices, because what I found is that people are still looking for that insurance-based practice, and I try as much as I could to educate them there. And then some of them would transition over to here and over time for 15 years, Boulder Longevity Institute has really grown and developed, and subsequently is now my full-time practice. But we do a lot of orthopaedic regenerative care here, the targeting, taking care of people and getting them healthier in that realm. 

But much like you, our focus is very much now on education and we have a whole, what we call, Human Optimization Academy. We're trying to bring the just like you said, the research to the people. Peter Diamandis, who runs Abundance360—is very well known, you probably know him — he has a great quote where he says, ‘Researchers don't do medicine. And doctors don't do the research and learn the research and use on their patients’. And so, there's a lag of about 15 to 20 years since when something is available to us that will make us better and ever getting to us. 

Lisa: Exactly. I had the exact same conversation with another doctor, Dr. Berry Fowler and we were talking about intravenous vitamin C and I said, ‘Why is it taking so long and critical care to get this in?’ And he said ‘because it's like turning a supertanker’. He says, ‘It's just so slow’. And so people are not getting the benefit of the latest research. And for an orthopaedic surgeon to go down this anti-ageing functional medicine route is a very rare thing, or at least in my country, it would be a very rare thing.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, orthopaedics does not cross over this line at all. And ultimately, it's one of the reasons I had to leave my other practices because my partners were very much like, ‘Stop talking about medicine. That's not what we do here’. And you have to—even arthritis is a disease. It is not that you ran too much and wore out your knees. There is a disease process going on in your body that is now making your joints wear out. And so you have to systemically treat it or you're not going to make any progress.

Lisa: Oh man, people so need to hear that because it is an inflammatory process that's coming like out of the immune system. And I've heard you say a couple of times on some of your lectures, I listened to one on mitochondria. And mitochondria is sort of the basis of where a lot of other things are coming from, isn't it, and diseases are probably... 

Dr. Elizabeth: Everything. Honestly, I think what we're going to find is that every single diseases—every single disease is going to come down to mitochondrial level. In fact, I was just reading a new research article on autism and mitochondrial dysfunction, that they're actually linking this mitochondrial dysregulation in even autism. I don't think that we're going to find any disease that is not linked first to mitochondrial dysfunction, which is fascinating because mitochondria are fascinating. So it's really my passion is, is how do we repair mitochondria. But that you start looking at—you can pretty much do that. You guys go out there and Google mitochondria and any disease you can think of and you will find research to support it. 

So, in arthritis it is exactly the same, right, Lisa? You're right. It's damage to now the mitochondria and the chondrocytes. And that damage—you get these damage from chondrocytes, which then are actually spewing these reactive species that are damaging the next cell and the next cell. And simply sticking steroids in that joint is not going to help it. 

Lisa: Wow. So we want to talk a little bit today, like we talked about our foundational health—a few foundational health principles so that we can then get on to some of the cooler, more sexier stuff that I want to talk about, like things like spermidine and peptides and NAD precursors, perhaps, and all of these sort of really cool things. 

But what are you seeing in your practice—like you're seeing a lot of people who are becoming aware of their health, they're looking at everybody knows the basics about nutrition now, I think. Like, fried foods are not good for us, sugar is not good for us—the basics. But what are you seeing as missing in that foundational side of things?

Dr. Elizabeth: So I think this is the biggest thing I've seen over the past—probably a year. And as I've done more podcasts, and I've listened to more podcasts, and now you have all the bio hacker groups and the peptide group, so everybody is doing all this cool thing. So now, like, ‘Oh, I got to go do my hyperbaric and I have to go take my growth hormone, peptides’. And they come in to me, and I was just telling you about a patient I saw who literally had a worksheet, spreadsheet of all the things he was doing. And I said, ‘Well, are you taking testosterone’? And he was 56 years old, I said, ‘Are you taking testosterone’? ‘No’. And I said, ‘Have you ever looked at your nutrient pound’? ‘Nope’. 

So, what I really want to encourage your listeners is the cool stuff is cool, and there's a place for it in all of us, but you still got to start at the basic stuff. So, when we look at people we have to go through and we have to fix—so we look at all the hormones and you just did a great podcast looking at hormone metabolism, right? Because people are so scared of hormones and they’re terrified that these hormones are going to cause cancer. And we know that's not true. It's how you metabolize the hormones that's important, which has genetic and environmental. You just gave an incredible podcast with your guests the other day on that.

Lisa: With Dr. Mansoor; he's wonderful. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Right. And your epigenetic background, that the key is how these hormones are processed. So when we look at hormones, we actually do a urine metabolite test. So we know exactly where those hormones are going, and are they going down bad pathways or good pathways?

So you've got to repair all that, first, fix all the pathways, which you do, and you know your CYP genes and all that kind of stuff. How do you alter it? There's nutrients that you can use to do that. There's tons of things, exercise. So, fix all the hormones first. Men and women all need hormones. I think testosterone’s neglected in women all the time, right? They're on estrogen, progesterone, and I'm like, ‘You’re not on testosterone’? Like, ‘No’. And so even within the realm of our type of medicine, we are neglected in that realm. Right? 

Testosterone is huge for women. If you want muscle, you need testosterone. 

Lisa: I basically got good muscles.

Dr. Elizabeth:  Right, that’s right. So, you've got your testosterone on board, and it has to be not alternating into estrogen—all that has to be involved. So you've got to fix that. And then, there's so much information in these really simple lab studies that you've gotten from your primary care doctor. So, a complete blood count, a CBC, a CMP. Everybody has them, and everybody's doctor looks at and goes, ‘Yep, looks good. There's no reds in there, everything's perfect’. You can actually take that—and Dr. Levine, anti-ageing expert, did a whole algorithm that just taking some of these blood work give you very comparable estimation of longevity as doing telomere length or doing methylation. 

So, we have all these expensive tests to look at DNA methylation and telomere to look at age, and you could come up very close to the same number, simply by feeding some of these parameters, like your albumin level and your metabolic calculator that would...

Lisa: Wow! Is that available publicly, that calculator? 

Dr. Elizabeth: I'm not sure how publicly available it is. We actually have access, and we utilize that in our patients to follow it. But it's great, because these other tests are expensive. And if I want to put you on a protocol and then see if I'm making headway, how do I follow that? So, I don't think people know that, for instance, what is one of the most valuable numbers on your CBC? It’s actually the size of your cells, the mean cell volume, and the rest of distribution? 

Lisa: Yes, I'm just studying cell distribution.

Dr. Elizabeth: Isn’t that fascinating? 

Lisa: We are completely unaware. 

Dr. Elizabeth: And have any of your listeners have had the doctor ever mentioned what their MCV is? Or their RDW is? And those are very, very important. So is albumin. So albumin alone, which is not just dietary. There's a great study that you could predict who is going to get out of the hospital alive based on their albumin levels. And so simply looking at things like that. So if your albumin levels are low, maybe it's because you're not eating enough protein, but that doesn't—it tends to be something else wrong.

Lisa: Liver not doing something.

 Dr. Elizabeth: Definitely. And sometimes that's the need for more beta carotene. Sometimes it's need for more copper. Copper has to help carry the albumin and copper deficiencies are super low. Nobody measures copper. So, you can look at a low albumin and try putting somebody on a little copper, it’s quite GHK copper as a peptide, I might get to the fancy stuff. Using copper as a peptide is an amazing peptide. It's very longevity promoting because copper is super vital to our health. And so sometimes just putting people on two milligrams of copper can markedly improve their health. 

Lisa: But isn’t there copper’s also a toxicity problem? Isn't that quite a lot of people have high copper levels? 

Dr. Elizabeth: Less than you think. So it's gotten a lot of market to that, right? It has to be that zinc copper balance has to be imbalanced. So that's one of the things. But actually, copper toxicity is pretty easy to tell. When people become copper—toxic on copper, you'll see the lunula, the fingernails start turning, a little discoloured, a little bluish in colour. So it is a little harder to get toxic in copper than people think. I use it a lot for wound healing in my patients. So, it really helps with wound healing. It's why it's in all skin, expensive skin creams, copper peptides are because it's so good for collagen function, it’s so good for wounds. So I think we may scare people a little bit from copper. But it actually has some value.

And a lot of times, it's not so much that you have too much coppers, you don't have enough zinc and that balance is not there. It has to be balanced between zinc and copper. So those are simple things that you can actually look at and measure. And you can—I don't have to do it on everybody. 

So I see somebody who has a low albumin, I might say, ‘Hmm, we better look at your zinc and copper level’. So we take the CBC and CMP. And how about simply creatinine? If your creatinine is above point eight, that is not good for longevity. So, why is that? 

Well, maybe you're eating way too much protein, right? We will erase any high protein diets, super high protein, the kidneys can only process so much protein and your kidneys depend on your genetics, maybe less. So that's all things I think you have to go back when you talk about foundational health. 

I spend literally 30 minutes going through a CBC and a CMP with people. They’re so valuable, and those are $12 tests. Not these big, fancy, expensive tests, they don't cost $500 or $600. And by the end of that test, I can give them, this is what your biological age, your pheno age, this is where we really need to target and start with them some very basic, inexpensive things. 

Lisa: Crikey dex, that's amazing. I didn't know we can get to that. I mean, I've only been studying blood chemistry for a couple of months and like it's a big topic isn't it? 

Dr. Elizabeth: It has some really cool value to it that you can actually look at. Some ranges that—we have all gone from the normal range, right? All your listeners now know this the normal range, there's an optimal stage. Within that optimal range, right, there's one number above that you'll see you start to see a change in ageing. The curve on your projected longevity, you look at  albumin levels, and you look at the curve on your projected longevity. If your albumin levels are less than 4.6, your projected longevity is five to 10 years less than somebody who's above 4.6.

Lisa: Crikey. No one's ever told me any of these things and I’ve been studying blood chemistry and from functional doctors, like that's all news to me.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I think that that's the problem. I think even the functional medicine space sort of went beyond the step of looking at some very, very basic things that are inherent to life. And now start focusing, ‘Oh, let's look at hormones, right? Let's look at the gut microbiome’. All super important, but all going to be messed up, if the other stuffs messed up, right? 

Lisa: You’re basically not in the right place.

Dr. Elizabeth: And so I—that's where I get a little frustrated. So now we're targeting back to that whole cellular health, it all comes back down to the cell, fix the cell. As the cell gets fixed, the mitochondria get fixed, everything else falls. So once you've refined that now, we can look at gut microbiomes, if the person is not doing well. We can look at things like micronutrient profiles, and I love micronutrient profiles because I don't know if how much vitamin D you need or how much vitamin B12 you need. Micronutrient profiles, particularly one that gives me intracellular and serum levels, as you know genetics plays a huge role in your micronutrients. 

Lisa: Yes, vitamin D, for example. I mean, I know I have bad vitamin D genetics, so I need to supplement with vitamin D. Right? 

Dr. Elizabeth: And B12, you've got the SUV people of B12. I’m one of those who need a lot of B12. It's all very genetically based. So, you can predict it from genetics. But then are you accomplishing your goal? I think you need some…

Lisa: Measurements. And this is where the combination of what I'm—like the combination of doing your genes and finding out your innate pathways and what they do, and then seeing actually where you are, getting that snapshot of ‘Okay, we are actually in their hormones and stuff’. And it's quite complicated. 

And this is the problem is that you go to your local doctor, at least here where I live, and none of this is offered. And none of this is—and so you left as a lay person trying to work this stuff out yourself. And that's quite frustrating and quite difficult.

Dr. Elizabeth: It's hard. And it gets caught up again, in the glitz and glamour. I'm going to be attracted to my podcast that's talking all about the coolest, newest thing, it's just our nature is to want the coolest, newest thing. And we just talked about that. We want that cool new thing, because that is on the forefront. And we use those cool new things to help fix the basics. But you still got to know where you are in that standing, and that's really now become, I think, one of my frustrations as I'm seeing more and more people walk in my door, who are doing everything they’re thinking of. 

And so we are trying to teach people this. We're trying to teach people how do you interpret your own blood work? How do you look at every one of those parameters and say, ‘What should my albumin be? Okay, it's too high, it's too low. What can I do to fix that’? Whereas, if my MCV is, mean cell volume. If your mean cell volume, and you look at your own. As we age, I look at my 19 year old son, he has a mean cell volume of 83. If I look at your average person who's in their 50s, and 60s, who's our age, it's going to be 97, 98. So the higher that number goes, the more your stem cells are wearing out, the more your bone marrow is wearing out, the more that whatever you're doing isn't working. 

So we can use those things, like you can use your infrared, you can do all those great things. Me, I infrared, I cryo, I do all that. But I will tell you some very basic stuff that sometimes has been the things that made changes in those numbers. I want people to know, that's them that, honestly, is why we decided you're never going to train doctors, you've got to train people. But we've also got to get people back to understanding that you've got to sort of learn these things and kind of a fashion of can learn this, learn this, learn this. When I understand everything about how hyperbaric oxygen improves my cell function, have I really learned how to just look at the cell at that molecular level from looking at basic labs? And that's what we're trying to teach people. Start there, and then we give them tools. 

Lisa: Fantastic. So people can join Dr Yurth, and get us some of this education. And I've started delving into it and I can't wait to see what else comes along because I mean, this sort of stuff, I'm like already going, ‘Oh my god, I didn't know that’. So I've learned something today already as well. And I'm very definitely guilty of going after the shiny object and love it.

Dr. Elizabeth: It’s human nature. That’s human nature. 

Lisa: Yes. And so people can go to the Boulder Longevity website and I'll put the links in the show notes and there is a Human Optimization Academy, join up for that and it's actually free at the moment, isn't it, Dr. Yurth? 

Dr. Elizabeth: Right. Right now, it's free. And we'll start putting together—so right before COVID hit, we actually had an in-person course. We're actually going to teach how to look at your own CBC and CMP. And COVID hit, and it all sort of fell apart. But we'll be putting that back into sort of a virtual course with people so you can actually get your bloods run. We will walk you through. So, here's how to interpret every one of those little numbers you see on there because I will tell you, every one of those little numbers is important. Everybody just looks at it as a piece of paper, and there's no red marks highs or lows, they sort of discard it. And we'll show you how to look at that and give huge value. 

And just from those simple things, you can now say, ‘Maybe I better get a micronutrient panel’, or at least test a copper or zinc or a B12, or D based on some of those numbers that you see being off. And then take the tool, now fix the basics. ‘That's not working? Okay, now, maybe I need to add this, this, this’.

Lisa: And then now we can get fancy. Well sign me up for that course because I need it. And I'm already up on some of it, but I wasn't that familiar with some of the things you've just said. So like, that's just like, well.

Okay, so we're looking at foundational stuff. Now let's go and look at cellular health, per se, because it all comes down to the cell. The more I look into things, the more everything seems to be about mitochondria in the cell, and what they're doing. and when we're made up of what? 10 trillion cells or something ridiculous. So cellular health, can you give us a bit of a view—it's a big topic, isn't it? But where should we start?

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, well, I'm going to start with first kind of explaining what that means. So, functional medicines, we went from a disease-focused medicine, right? And then we all got very savvy—well, not the doctors—but the rest of the world who got very savvy said, ‘Oh, this isn't working. It's making somebody money, but it's not working to make anybody happy’.  So we went to a functional medicine part. Let's look at organ systems and let's start. So then we went to the organ system, let's look at the adrenal glands and let's look at the liver in this and let's now fix the organ system that's dysfunctional. we got to fix the thyroid, we got to fix the endocrine organs and we have to do all that. 

And then now, and this is really super recent, we're realizing that every organ system comes back to a cellular dysfunction. And there's not really anybody who has one disease that is not have something else wrong. It's just impacted lots of times in different ways. So if I have osteoarthritis. So if you have osteoarthritis, your risk of dementia is about fivefold higher. So why is that? Right? Osteoarthritis... because I ran 800 miles a day. But that's not the case, I have patients who run 800 miles and they're fine. 

Lisa: Oh, I'm fine. Like, my joints are fine, and I haven't got any osteo.

Dr. Elizabeth: And then you have people who are like, ‘Oh, yes, I just wore myself out because I ran too much’. No, not the case. So, there's something wrong. So now we have to go back and look at what is wrong in the cell. So if you think about what power, what is the cell all about? It is the mitochondria. Mitochondria, what gives the cell energy, right? And so as we start getting damaged to our mitochondria with time and life and environment and genetics, and we start getting damage at the mitochondrial level. So, now have these damaged mitochondria. And now we start getting these cells that are in this altered state of energy. And that's when you start getting that senescent cell—cells that are basically sitting there…

Dr. Elizabeth: They’re zombie cells. 

Lisa: And there's zombie cells, right? And they're producing these reactive oxygen species. And that's why they're called zombie cells, it's because the things that are being spewed out, are now toxic to the cells around them and then toxic to those cells. And so, it truly is like a zombie takeover. 

So that's where we look at when we're going back to a cell level. First thing we have to do to try and heal any disease is clean out the bad cells. Clean up the zombie cells. That’s why fasting has been utilized for years in every disease process because we know that fasting causes autophagy, causes bad cells to go away, and now we can rebuild. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is that if I start throwing a lot of rebuilding things into my network, tons of NAD and I'm trying to always be in this state where I've got a lot of antioxidants going. I'm throwing a lot of NAD and well then, I'm actually contributing to that cell senescent state. I've got to get rid of that first. 

Clear out the bad stuff and do that periodically. And we use things like rapamycin, you can use it for fasting. And most recently what my go-to has been this spermidine for that talk. And I fell in love with spermidine a few years ago, actually and couldn't get it here in the US. That basically—it came onto my radar because there it worked at a very sort of primal level. Every single organism has spermidine. Anything that every organism has, is vital to life. And so we know that—and then all these studies that show that well, if you have higher level spermidine, you live longer, so.

And it was only available in—I don't know if you guys could get it—but it was available in Europe. 

Lisa: I’ve just got my first order on its way. But I had to get it via Colorado, and I've actually being in contact with the guys in Austria. So, working on that one, I'm getting it down here.

Dr. Elizabeth: We couldn't get it. And like six months or so ago, we finally could get it here in the US. And it works as an autophagy inducing agent. It basically tells the cells to get rid of the bad stuff, it helps to restore the good parts of the cell. And really, at a baseline level is probably the one supplement that I know of, and probably the only one I know of, that is going to be actually balancing cell health continuously.

Lisa: So it's homeostasis as opposed to...

Dr. Elizabeth:  The homeostatic state. Right. 

Lisa: So like, just to backtrack a little bit there because we covered a heck of a lot of ground in a very short time there. So, fasting, I mean, we've heard, like fasting and intermittent fasting and longer fasts are very, very good for us and all that. While a lot of us don't want to do it because it's not very nice... I do intermittent fasting, but I must admit, I don't enjoy it. And I certainly—when it comes to doing longer fasts, I struggle. So I'm always like, fasting mimetics, how can I get some fasting mimetics going? Because like you say, if I'm going to put in the antioxidants, the precursors, which I do as well, which are very important piece of the puzzle, but just that is not enough. So, this is like we've looked at in the past, like resveratrol as being a possible fasting mimetic. And wouldn't it be great if spermidine turns out, and it looks like it is going to be another fasting mimetic that's actually even more powerful. So, I know you do a lot of fasting, you're very disciplined, unlike myself.

Dr. Elizabeth: No extra weight, I still have extra weight so fasting’s easier for me.

Lisa: But yes, it is a difficult thing to do. So intermittent fasting is probably for me is the easiest go-to because I can sort of coke for it. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Time-restricted eating. Really, yes, more doing a 16, 8, kind of thing as opposed to the longer fast. And there's a lot of questions, we don't really know, do you need to long fast? We actually don't know the answer to that. There's a lot of people who say, ‘Oh, you've got to be hit the 48 to 72 hours to really get the full autophagy phase’. There's not a lot of data that actually really says that. You may still be able to get the same benefits from doing time-restricted eating. So we don't know the answer to all these questions. 

Lisa: But so what we're targeting with fasting is autophagy. So, autophagy, just to define what autophagy is, is getting rid of the bad stuff, basically. The bad proteins that are damaged, the mitochondria, or mitophagy, in that case. And recycling the parts that we can reuse and getting rid of it. Does the body sort of lock at it when you're fasting, and you haven't got anything coming and going up, ‘I've got no fuel supply, I better start recycling the old stuff’. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. Yes, autophagy is self-eating. And so basically, the cell basically says, ‘Oh, I need to preserve. I'm going to take the good things from the cell, get rid of the bad stuff I don't need. It’s a waste of energy. Getting rid of cells that shouldn't be utilizing my energy’. So and then really by going into a ketotic state, and that's, not utilizing glucose has a huge benefit.

Lisa: So ketosis and autophagy, are they hand in hand? Are they part of the same thing? Can you have autophagy without being in ketosis, or are they very much married together?

Dr. Elizabeth: No, you can actually have autophagy without being in ketosis. And you can basically be in ketosis and not necessarily have autophagy. So that all kind of depends on the cell, the state the cells in. 

One of the problems with resveratrol as a fasting mimetic, you mentioned taking resveratrol continuously, is there's also very potent antioxidant. Remember, one of the benefits of fasting is oxidative stress. So, I want oxidative stress while I'm fasting. If I'm taking resveratrol, for instance, while I'm fasting, I'm actually not getting as much of the oxidative stress. So, it's working a little different level. That's why I like spermidine a little bit better as it doesn't have that same effect to sort of negate the oxidative stress.

Lisa: And for how long for people to get their heads around? I know because I mean, I've been struggling with this one, like the antioxidants sort of paradox. Yes, sorry, you carry on.

Dr. Elizabeth: I think the key to remember is you really don't want to be doing any protocol continuously. I was just talking to a guy and he said, ‘What do you do to look like you do’? because I have more muscle. And I said, ‘I don't do anything continuously’. There's nothing—workout, nothing continuously. My food, my eating is never continuously, my supplements are never continuously. 

And I think it's a problem as people get in these patterns where they are taking all these antioxidants continuously. I always am going through build-up, breakdown phases. So there's only a few supplements that I will continuously take. One is, I will take spermidine at a baseline level. But if I'm doing a sort of a fast autophagy phase, where I really want to do a big tie up off of everything, I want a very high dose spermidine, much higher dose than just until that time of day. 

Lisa: Because spermidine works at a level lower if you like, at the base level. So, when we're talking about antioxidants, what the job is in the cell is to basically scavenge and donate electrons to where you got oxidative stress, and reactive oxygen species and to get rid of it there. But we're actually going a step back and actually stopping the reactive oxygen species, or oxidative stress from happening in the first place. And this is why spermidine at that base level, seems to be one that you can take continuously. And it even builds up to some degree, perhaps in your body or upregulates some of the bacteria in the microbiome. And whereas, antioxidants, we want to sort of cycle in and out. It's like exercise, isn't it? Like when I go to the gym, I'm not going to have my vitamin C right next to when I go to the gym, because that's going to mitigate that cascade of effects that vitamin C has. Yes. 

So I'm doing things. I'm taking my vitamin C away from that. And so there's, none of this is good or bad, it's cycling. And I think the more I've looked into things, the body likes this push and pull. It likes a medic stress. It likes to be cold. It likes to be hot. It likes to be pleasant, but it likes to be fasted. It likes to have a good amount of food. It's this whole—because that's how we've evolved, isn't it?

Dr. Elizabeth: That's the way life for it was, yes.

Lisa: We didn't come from this neutral environment where the temperature is the same all the time. And we're sitting on comfy couches, and we're not exercising and we're not cold, or we're not hungry, and we're not hot, and we're not not anything, and we've got an abundance of everything. And therefore, if we look at our evolution, and how we've come about that sort of a push and pull seems to go right through nature.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, you're exactly right. Remember, there's that balance between mTOR and AMPK, right? We know that AMPK is breakdown. And we know that when we block mTOR, our lives are longer, but we also don't build as much muscle and we don't have as much energy. And what you do is go through phases, build up mTOR, build up AMPK, build up and do that balance, so that you keep things in a very homeostatic state. And you said exactly right, there's great benefits to being hot. You have all the, how great being cold is and doing our cold showers in our cryo and everything. But there's a study that came out recently, I think I quote it in some podcasts I was in recently, that showed that in hotter environments, bone density is much better. So why is it that? 

Lisa: Yes, I heard that. 

Dr. Elizabeth: There's some effects from the warmth on our body too. So you're exactly right. We want to go back and forth between different things and we want to make sure we're cycling. Any of you who are staying on the same patterns all the time, that's not serving you. Your body needs to have this back-and-forth balance. And you're right, that is—whenever you give the quote of well, ‘That's how cavemen lived’. You're like, ‘Well, but cavemen died in 18 whatever’. 

So how our evolution occurred, right? It's still what, what got us to survive. And it really is how our world is designed, and it's how our cells are designed.

So I think that the use of thinking about your body as ‘Okay, I'm going to go through a fast, autophagy phase, and then I'm going to build up and I’m going to build my muscles’. You can build muscle while you're in a fasted state, but it's not nearly as easy as it is when you're eating a lot of food. 

Lisa: Yes. And but we're wanting to keep everything in balance so that it doesn't get just mTOR because, if we're in a state of like, activated mTOR all the time, then we are growing, but we were possibly growing things like cancer cells and things like.

Dr. Elizabeth: And we know that mTOR activation all the time is closer to death.

Lisa: But isn’t it weird, like there's nothing simple about... 

Dr. Elizabeth: It actually, honestly, it makes very little sense to me, right? The things—the mTOR, everything's muscle building. Super high IGF all the time and it is muscle building. You would think it would be kind of pro longevity, right, and healthy, and yet, it's not. And the only way I can really—in my mind, reason that out is that if the zombie apocalypse hits, you're better designed to be able to survive without any food and without any—nothing just huddled away in your little house, right? And so maybe the evolution of our body that's for longevity, the genes have kind of stayed there are the ones that really make us survive through famine, right? And yet, that's probably not where we all want to be. We don't want to be huddled in the back of our houses not moving. 

And so yes, if you look at Valter Longo and his research on—really low IGF people live longer, they don't have cancer. Yes but they actually don't necessarily feel great. And they don't necessarily see low IGF people all the time, who are fatigued, who don't have good energy, who can't build muscle, who don't exercise. So I think that the thing here is build your IGF, bring it back down, build it up, bring it back down. So, I think that that's where we really need to look at things, as this kind of waxing and waning of everything we do. 

In our cellular medicine fellowship program, it's one of the things we're really, really focused on is that's what the cell needs, is a push and pull to it, to really help it become a healthier entity. And I think if we start doing that, we're going to start seeing that that's really where we're going to see that big focus to health and longevity occurrence. It's not going to be ‘Everybody eat this diet’. 

Lisa: No, no. And this is like, even as a coach of athletes and stuff. And I did this in my athletic career where I didn't know all this stuff. I ran long, because that's what I do, it was ultra-marathon running. And that's all I did. I didn't train at the gym. I didn't do—and I was not fit. And I was not healthy. I could run long because I've trained that specific thing, but I wasn't healthy. I was overweight. I was hormonally imbalanced. I ended up with hypothyroid. I couldn't have sat on the couch and ate chips all day and probably come out better than I did. Because I'd been doing one thing and one thing that was actually not suited to my genetics either, ideally. And so understanding all of this is not as simple as well, ‘I'll go and do the same old thing, same old and then we'll be good’.

I want to sort of flip now and go a bit of a deep dive into spermidine because I think spermidine is the one thing that, this is going right down to the base level of before. Because we want anti-ageing. I mean. We compared ages before this podcast and I mean, I won't share your age, but I was shocked. You look amazing. And I'm like, ‘I want a piece of that’. What is it that you're doing? So spermidine is a part of your—that is one of the things you do take on a pretty much a daily basis. Can you dive into the research? There’s 10 years behind the spermidine and it's only just becoming available. Guys in New Zealand, it's not here yet. I'm working on it. Give me time, I'm getting, I'm working on it.

Dr. Elizabeth: So, what we know is as we talked about spermidine is on every single living organism. So, we know it's critical to life, it's what's called a polyamine. It's what a three poly means is spermidine, spermine, and putrescine. And they all have some value. Putrescine is what's in rotting meat. You're probably not going to go eat rotting meat. But there's actually some value to putrescine in our bodies, too. Spermidine appears to have—spermidine is converted typically this into spermidine. Spermidine is innately in our gut. So, it's made by our gut bacteria but it's also in some foods. It's in some a lot of fermented foods, in wheat germ extracts. It's in some peas and mushrooms. It's in some algae. 

Probably the richest source of it is a specific type of wheat germ extract. It's apparently very difficult to extract, it's only a certain type of wheat germ that has it's difficult to extract a pure form of it. And so, there is companies that make it from algae as well. But you have to take—actually before we could get spermidine from spermidine life which is wheat germ extract, we actually bought an algae extract one. You really had to take 40 of these little green pills. I mean your hands are green, your teeth are green all the time. 40 of them, I mean, I did that because I wanted it but once we got spermidine. 

I get the question all the time about well, it's wheat germ extract. Interestingly, I've celiac patients on spermidine and even though it's not advised for celiac patients, it probably actually is perfectly safe because it's actually working on one of the pathways, that's what makes the gluten exactly unsafe those patients. So, it's probably even if you're—I'm very gluten sensitive, I don't do gluten. I have no problems in spermidine. So, it tends to be pretty well-tolerated in those people.

Lisa: Yes, but I've got a brother who’s recently examined and she said, ‘Yes, I can’.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I have two celiac patients on who've done fine. And again, the bio says not to take it if you're celiac, but I think cautiously, there is some research that supports it actually may be useful in treating some of the celiac patients. 

So basically, the study is now—there's so many studies on it. In terms of preventing almost every disease in the book, and that's where you and I come back to that whole, is mitochondria the answer to everything? Because we've seen spermidine—you can Google spermidine. I do this. I mean, Google ‘spermidine and Alzheimer’, Google ‘spermidine and cancer’, there's not a disease that we don't have a study on where you can find some connection to higher or lower levels of spermidine being better. 

Some of the major research has been on cardiovascular and its benefits and cardiovascular disease. It's one of the things we've been using when we see high inflammatory cardiovascular markers in our patients. We measure what's called myeloperoxidase, which is an inflammatory cardiovascular marker. It's interesting, we've seen it very high in our lot of our post-COVID patients. So patients who have had COVID recovered, coming for labs, we're seeing very high levels of myeloperoxidase. So, we think that's probably from some of the vascular damage that COVID seems to create in some people with certain genetics. And that’s very hard to bring it back down, and spermidine has been one of the things that's been really helpful there for us. 

So, it's also any of your patients who have a high Lp little a. Yes, so by Lipoprotein little a, you'll know is basically genetic.

Lisa: Yes. And there's not much you can do. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Nothing much you can do about it. You use high-dose niacin, but it's hard to take, the liver toxic. Spermidine actually has some research to support it in lowering Lp little a and we've seen that in our practice, it's one of the things we lower Lp little a. So the other place that's been really studied is an immune system support. So we've seen improvements in lymphocytes. So, one of the other labs that you want—when you're looking at that CBC is looking at your neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio. 

Lisa: Yes, I've just like I've got a problem with my brother at the moment, lymphocytes, neutrophils down. No, sorry, your neutrophils down, lymphocytes, high. 

Dr. Elizabeth: That's a little uncommon, that might indicate some kind of viral illness going on. Typically, what happens as we age is, we start to see the lymphocyte number go down and the neutrophil number go up. So that ratio, which should be around 1.3:1, 1:1, 1.3:1, starts climbing. If you look at the typical person our age is, 3:1. And so, it's hard to get—how do you get back lymphocyte function? You don't have thymus glands anymore. And so the two things that we've been able to utilize to really restore lymphocyte function in our patients who have ageing immune systems is spermidine. And then the other one is a peptide, thymosin alpha-1, which is a thymic peptide. 

What our thymus gland does is it takes those two lymphocytes, it tells them what to do and, and once—your best immune function is at puberty. After that, your thymus gland starts getting smaller. And by the time you're 60, you don't really have much thymus gland. And so your immune system starts going a little haywire, it doesn't know what to do. And so what we can do, because really crazy people are trying to transplant thymus glands, or eat sweetbreads, which doesn't work. They do it in France, maybe they taste good, but I don't think it replaces your thyroid function. But you can get thymic peptides. So, two of the things that the thymus gland really makes is thymosin alpha-1 and thymosin beta-4. And thymosin alpha-1 is a very immune modulating peptide, and it really helps to restore normal immune function. So, the combination of spermidine and thymosin alpha-1 and your people who have immune dysregulation, autoimmune diseases. You could start normalising the immune function. So instead of attacking self they start attacking viruses. 

Lisa: Wow. And autoimmune is just like, a huge, huge problem. I mean, it's just epidemic levels now. 

Dr. Elizabeth: It is epidemic. 

Lisa: Sorry, so this would help with that. Oh, my God. Okay. So that's another reason to take spermidine and the peptides. I mean, peptides are harder to get hold of like…

Dr. Elizabeth: It’s still harder to get hold of. Your people who are in Europe, thymosin alpha-1 is actually a drug. It's called Zadaxin. We can't get it here as a drug. We've made us a peptide but it actually is a drug. They use it in their chemotherapy patients in Europe and Asia. And so oddly, it's available as approved drug. Probably pricey.

Lisa: Most of these drugs are for some unknown reason.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes. Spermidine—someone's early studies and where it actually sort of panned out, as people went after it initially was actually hair growth. And again, if you think about, the tissues, we're talking about, like cardiac here, those are all fast-growing tissues. And that's where spermidine sort of had its nice effect and sort of that whole regeneration process. And so even in guys with thinning hair, spermidine has huge benefits. Just taking on like a milligram a day dose will start the thickening of hair. I noticed when I first started, my nails grew really fast means, I mean, super fast. And so even in those basic things, like hair growth, nail growth, spermidine has some really marked effects.

Lisa: Fantastic. We’ve got to get it here. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, it is amazing. I mean, honestly, I feel a little—whenever I see my patients now and I see something wrong. I'm like, ‘Well, spermidine, oh’.

Lisa: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And this is all to confirm because it's such a wide panacea, and it works at base level of the ageing and pathologies and things…

Dr. Elizabeth: It’s too good to be true. 

Lisa: It's too good to be true, but actually now, it makes sense. And so, it’s fantastic if we find something that is a panacea for many, many things. And also, I've got my first shipment coming from the States, and I'm super excited.

Dr. Elizabeth: One of the hard things in what we do, right, is it takes you awhile to feel better, and just starting from a low level, right. Or if you're like us, and you're at a high level, then making this little extra. And so, what I tell people to monitor, because one things I noticed was, when I started spermidine was a pretty—I don't sleep enough, I study too much. But I use my Oura ring, and I monitor my HRV. And so, I know a lot of your listeners have the Oura ring and HRV is very fluctuating. And so it's one of those things, it's very easy to see a change. 

So, if I do something like start taking spermidine, I can say no, and you can look at the trend on your Oura ring. And you can say, you can take—started spermidine here, and I had about a 15 point jump in my HRV, which I won't say what it is because it’s just from starting spermidine. So I know it's doing something at a very basic level because HRV is predictive of almost every disease state; so low HRV, you know you have a higher incidence of all Alzheimer, we know we have a higher incidence of cancer. So I know if I'm affecting my HRV, I'm positively affecting my health. 

So something really simple that you can do to say, okay, I started this here, and then look back in two weeks, go to your little trends thing and see ‘Wow, look, my trend is going this direction’.

Lisa: Wow, I can't wait to see that because yes, I mean, I haven't been able to move the needle on my HRV really.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, me neither. And mine's not good. 

Lisa: Yes, and mine isn't great either. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, the downside of sometimes what we do is we're reading all the time and staying all the time and trying to do too much and…

Lisa: Brain doesn’t turn off. 

Dr. Elizabeth: And that's not so good. 

Lisa: Adrenaline driven.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, so it is really, honestly one of the first things I did that really made a dramatic change.

Lisa: Wow, I will let you know how I go. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, let me know.

Lisa: When mine comes, whether my HRV is now turning up. 

Dr. Elizabeth: I will say sometimes you need a higher dose which gets pricey.

Lisa: And this is the problem with everything, it's the same with the deep precursors and all the stuff that's fantastic, it does cost. But you know what? I don't have money to burn but I would rather go without a fancy car, go without fancy clothes, go without cosmetics, go without all that to have supplements that work or to have biohacking technologies that work because that's my priority, it’s my health. Because what good does it do me if I have a fancy car, but I'm sick? 

Dr. Elizabeth: I know. And it is funny, I was giving this lecture and this woman came in, she asked how much this program we do cost? And she said, ‘Well maybe when I pay off my Lexus, I'll be able to do that’. And I'm like, ‘You’re really willing to spend a lot of money, a $1,000 on an iPhone and’... 

Lisa: Priorities. 

Dr. Elizabeth: …and car and we just still have to keep putting this focus on your priority, absolutely has to be this your health? And it’s so hard to convince people of that.

Lisa: And I'm constantly shocked at people who expect to like, they take a supplement and they don't see anything change for three days and then they're like, ‘It didn't work’. And I'm like, ‘You've got to be kidding’. Like you know your hair is growing, right? But do you see it growing every day? No. 

But if you keep going—and with my listeners have heard me rabbit on about my story with my mum and bringing her back from a mess of aneurysm. The reason I have been successful with her is, is not any one particular thing. I mean, yes, hyperbaric, yes, all of these things were a big part of the puzzle. But it was the fact that I keep going when there was no signs of improvement. And I keep going every single day for five years, and I still go. And that is the key is that persistence. And that just keep doing it and prioritizing this, even when you see no results. And that's a really hard sell because people want to see, how long will it take for this to kick in?

Dr. Elizabeth: I think it's one of the hardest things about our jobs is—listen, it is very hard. But this is stuff that I'm looking at a future that's 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road, I know these things—I know that they do, they've been proven. So to say they're not working for you is why in every study did they work and oddly, they don't work for you? It just doesn't make sense. It's just that if you go back to that cell level, by the time my knee is arthritic, number one, I've already lost 25% my cartilage, that process started 30 years ago. Now I've got to go and fix the cells at the very base level and then start repairing that cartilage.

Lisa: And it takes time. 

Dr. Elizabeth: A long time. Right? 

Lisa: And you didn't wake up one day with wrinkles and grey hair, it happened as a process over time. But I know that if I'm doing all these things that I'm doing, in my anti-ageing strategies that in 10 years’ time, I'm going to look better, feel better than if I don't. And that's the bottom line, or hopefully still be alive and avoid cancers. Those are my goals.

Dr. Elizabeth: You have to trust the research to some degree, right? If something's—there's not research—and that's hard cause you have to weed through a lot of research, right? And you have to say ‘That study is trash, that study’s trash’. Well, actually, ‘Here is a good study. This, this, this, here's a good thing’, and then put it all together. And I do this. There’s a fresh article, I go, ‘Here's an article that says this, this, this’. And it's not until the articles that outweigh the articles that say that the negatives by a certain amount that I even say, ‘Okay, this is a reasonable thing to do’.

Lisa: And that's where you like your spermidine, there is 10 years now because it's 10 years of full-on research and in many places and in many different diseases, where like, now that you're willing to say, ‘Yes, this stuff is actually looking really bloody good’.

And we are learning all the time, the science is changing. And I think this is what frustrates people too, is that you can go on—I do this, go into PubMed, and I do a deep dive and then you end up like, ‘Whoa’. One contradicts the other one and some of them are poorly designed. And so, that's why we need people like you who can interface that for us and go, ‘Hang on. I've distilled down into the most important things. This is what you need to know, guys’.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I'm involved with this group, it's called Seed Scientific Research & Performance among Faculty with it, and it's a group of really—we're doing a fellowship program in cellular medicine, but it's 25 mastermind doctors are kind of the group that we've been getting together and we meet quarterly. And we talk about the stuff and now you've got these brains, you have 25 brains of people who are not only reading and utilizing this stuff, and you can put it together and you can start weeding out what works, how does it work? Who doesn't work in? And that's what it takes. It takes people like that getting together and actually now meshing their minds and using their experience and all their knowledge and all their reading. 

And so this group has been phenomenal for me because it's I'm forefront leading thinkers. Because even when you go to the conferences, if you go to my orthopaedic conferences, I just learned the same old stuff. So this fore group, but actually talking amongst ourselves. 

Lisa: Such top-level people, I wish I could be a fly on the wall of such.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I mean, it's amazing stuff. And that's where we're going to make a change. And then you have to trust that we will bring that to you guys, but you got to stay tuned to people like you, Lisa, and the people who are trying to bring this to you because if you rely on medicine to do it, and your doctor to tell you it, you're going to be dead before it happens.

Lisa: That’s exactly what’s going to be. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Or feel horrible. I mean, I just lost both my parents in the past and also lost mum. They were in their 90s but my dad really kind of gave up. His arthritis has gotten so bad. He was a guy who at 80, he was climbing mountains, but at 90, he couldn't hardly walk because his arthritis was so bad. And none of us want to be that way. 

Lisa: No, and this is why we're desperate. 

Dr. Elizabeth: You've got to do this stuff now. Ideally, in your 20s.

Lisa: Yes, exactly. Oh, we've missed that boat. I’m so sorry, you lost your parents. I mean, I just lost my dad six months ago. And again, he was super fed, 81-year-old, but he smoked and I couldn't ever stop him smoking and had an aortic aneurysm. And then I was stopped in the hospital from giving him intravenous vitamin C because once again, they are way behind the eight ball in our local hospital, in our ICU unit, they'd have no idea of what vitamin C like they think it's an orange you take. And my dad died as a consequence of that. 

And I can't say for sure, but I believe in my heart that if I had been able to give him the things that I wanted to give him from day one, ozone and intravenous vitamin C, and all the other stuff that I had up my sleeve, my dad will be with us still. And that just breaks my heart. And because I know that there's these things available, and we can't get it for our people?

Dr. Elizabeth: I know, it's horrible. And then you've got the doctors—I mean, like with hormones. I put patients on hormones, their doctor takes them off the hormones. 

Lisa: Oh, my God. And you've looked at the genetic pathways, you're not doing this out of—you’ve looked at it all. Like you know the risk factors and stuff. 

And so Dr. Yurth, do you do teleconsults? Because I think after listening to this, people are going to want to make sure... 

Dr. Elizabeth: We do. In fact, I would say most of our—I'm licensed in a lot of places and we have a lot of people actually out of the country, too, Europe and Canada and Australia. And so we do almost everything now is telehealth. We have people come in because we do some procedural stuff, too. But we do tons. It's so easy now, because we can hook them up with labs that are close to them, they can get the labs, we can go through them and do these very detailed concepts. We can give you what is your biologic age, and then we can start following. You just follow that, every three months, you see, ‘Am I changing my biologic age’? We can help you look at parameters, like using the Oura ring or other devices to help look and see if what we're doing... But it does really come down to having somebody help you walk through some of the basic stuff. And once you learn some of it, there's a lot you can do on your own.

Lisa: Yes, yes. And this is why this is so exciting. So I'm sure there's going to be lots of people wanting to do that. And I know all this stuff costs, it will cost people. It costs but again, what do you want more? And what is more important to you? I would give away my house and my everything to get my dad back. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, to be healthy and live healthy. 

Lisa: And I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my mum, and I... 

Dr. Elizabeth: And there's nobody who is 60—once people get sick... I just lost one of my patients, I've been taking care for 15 years to cancer but we kept her alive for 15 years in stage four cancer. But she gave—I mean, she spent a lot of money on her cancer. The problem is, none of us think like that until we have the disease and we have to think like that ahead of that. 

Lisa: And this is where like prevention, prevention, prevention is just worth a ton of cure. Because it's just you're pushing so much that uphill, really, once you've actually got the cancer or you got the whatever. So, if we can get a—even just a simple blood test and work out a few of the basics and then later on.

Dr. Elizabeth:  And I will encourage that there is a lot of inexpensive things that you can do as well. I mean, intermittent fasting, obviously, that's really cheap. Saves you money. But the lab perspective, you can do—get a lot of information. Like I said, from a basic blood panel that cost 20 bucks, and you can get a lot of information. When you say, listen, the suspicion is this, let's try doing this and see if these parameters change. So there's a lot of actually things you can do that are on the more inexpensive realm. You have to understand them and know them. 

And then when things don't respond, that's where you do have to kind of pull up the bigger stakes and pull out the bigger guns and do things. And for those people who do have—I do think you have to look at where are you spending your money. And we have to show our change, and you guys are in a different place in the US. But medicine here is so messed up by insurance companies, basically. Now everybody expects that their health insurance is covered, and when something's not covered, well, no one pays for spermidine, so I want my health insurance to pay for something. So we're really have messed the whole game up.

Lisa: Yes. And the whole insurance. Yesh, and let's not even go there because the whole political—the mess that has been created over time is just yes. And in the States, it's really bad. And here, it's not a heck of a lot better, slightly better, perhaps, but not a lot. 

But yes, and you know what? I was listening to somebody, I can't remember who it was, and I said, Dr. Perlmutter, Dr. David Perlmutter, ‘Stop cursing the darkness and light a single candle’, or something to that effect. And I thought, that's the attitude. Instead of banging my head on the brick wall, because sometimes I do feel like that, just keep bringing this information out to the people.

Dr. Elizabeth: That's what we can do and the people, and you help more people listen. And so yes, and I do love that you've brought your stories to light and you're a real person. It's funny, most recently, when I did a five-day fast, I actually brought in two of the girls who I work with who had never fasted before. And actually, when I Instagram post, I Instagram with them in that post. And people we’re like, we love that because they were like real people. 

Lisa: Yes. ‘They’re like me’, then I want to be doing this. 

Dr. Elizabeth: Like, well, she's not human. She'd like to do all this cool stuff. But if you can bring this stuff to the real people and have them really start spreading that word, it makes a big difference.

Lisa: Oh, absolutely. So Dr. Yurth, we'll have to wrap up in a minute. And I can honestly, I really love to have you back on again, if I can impose on your time the next month or two, to do a part two, because I think we didn't go into—I would really love to dive a bit deeper into the whole mitochondria.

Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, let’s spend a whole talk just on mitochondria. 

Lisa: That would be great. 

Dr. Elizabeth: That's an amazing topic. Yes, there's just so much cancer perspective, I mean, probably going to come down to mitochondria are the basis for a lot of cancer, so.

Lisa: Yes, so the metabolic—this is something I've been studying lately is the whole bit metabolic nature of cancer, as opposed to the somatic—what's it called? I’ve forgotten the correct term, the somatic theory of cancer. Genetic mutation theory. So, I'd love to yes, maybe do an episode on that. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Yurth, where can people join you and your Human Optimization Academy, get teleconsults, get help from you if they want to?

Dr. Elizabeth: So if you just go to boulderlongevity.com, that'll lead you—there's a click for the Academy, so you can join the Academy, please do because we really are trying to get this information to people. We bridge that gap between research and actually using it so we can save lives. And just on that realm, the insulin—by insulin took 20 years and time it was discovered, think of the lives that were lost, and we have a whole lot of things in our realm that are like that. So please learn about this stuff, so that you can spread the word. 

So boulderlongevity.com, go to the Human Optimization Academy, follow me @dryurth on Instagram. So we try and keep people updated there as well a little bit, and on Facebook. So just go to Boulder Longevity. But the Boulder Longevity website will guide you along from a learning curve, sort of helps you—and we're working on kind of where do you fall into this pathway? Where should you start? Am I somebody who knows everything already? I'm going to start here versus the basics. So we're trying to go... Yes, we'll try and get it, so it's more easy—easily managed from all of your people who are watching. So they know, where do I fall into this curve? 

Lisa: And that is a lot of work. I know. I do this sort of stuff, too. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. So thank you. Thank you for being so amazing. 

Dr. Elizabeth: That’s why I charge Lisa.

Lisa: I think you're absolutely incredible. I think the passion that you bring to everything, I just love—absolutely love having guests on of your calibre that just—like I had Dr. Mansoor Mohammed last week, he’s another—must connect with him, he’s amazing. And people like yourself that just are at the cutting edge and passionate about it and actually try to disseminate the information so that nobody has to go through things that we've unfortunately both experienced with our families. So, thank you very much for your dedication to your job. 

Dr. Elizabeth: You’re welcome. 

Lisa: And I'm really looking forward to having you back on the show. 

Dr. Elizabeth: I'd love to. Thanks, Lisa.

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.

Mar 11, 2021

Athletes, especially long-distance runners, sustain a lot of injuries in their career. Their injuries mainly affect the lower extremities, like the calf or the foot. Wearing the appropriate gear and proper shoes, as well as using orthotics, can make a lot of difference. 

Dr Colin Dombroski joins us in this episode to explain the benefit of orthotics to foot health. He also talks about common running injuries and how wearing the correct shoes can prevent these.

If you are a runner and want to know more about orthotics and the science behind shoes, then this episode is for you.

 

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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

  1. Discover the benefits of orthotics and modern imaging techniques in foot health.
  2. Learn more about common running-specific injuries and ways to prevent them.
  3. Know about the brain-foot connection and the knock-on effect of footwear.

Resources

 

Episode Highlights

[03:14] Colin’s Background

  • Colin designs and manufactures custom foot orthotics. 
  • His researches revolve around general footwear, lower extremity therapy, and how these things interact to make people better.
  • Colin works on 3D printing orthotics, which shows how the foot works or moves in real-time. 
  • He works with people to get them back on their feet and do what they want to do.

[04:36] How Foot Imaging Works

  • Colin uses a 3D motion analysis lab to study the workings of the lower extremities.
  • Alternatively, he also partners with the WOBL lab to do biplanar fluoroscopy. This procedure maps out somebody’s foot in 3D space. 
  • It helps understand what is happening to the foot in real-time; it shows feet in a shoe under different circumstances. 
  • Colin looks into the best way to make an orthotic for someone.
  • Imaging helps to see what is happening in the foot when a person is barefoot, in a shoe, or using orthotics. 

[09:56] Are Orthotics Generally Good?

  • Orthotics are neither good nor bad; we cannot generalise. 
  • It may be suitable for someone with arthritis but may not be beneficial to someone with no problems. 
  • Orthotics are used as tools to help people with recovery and performance. 
  • Colin’s job is to tell people whether they need orthotics or not. 
  • When they have done their job, they’re removed.

[12:57] Rehabilitation vs Orthotics

  • In mild foot aches, over-the-counter devices can work well. 
  • Orthotics are not a first-line treatment for some conditions. 
  • Look at other things first before going down the route of orthotics. 
  • Foot strengthening is very beneficial. 
  • Do simple things that make feet work as feet. 

[16:55] Does Wearing Shoes Result in Weaker Feet?

  • Not walking for a few blocks is just as harmful as having shoes that do not fit you. 
  • Poorly fitting shoes can be bad for you. 
  • Women wearing high-heeled shoes for a long time can have a lot of foot problems later on. 
  • Colin recommends we exercise moderation when wearing heels. 

[25:15] How to Prevent Running Injuries

  • Injuries usually result in a mismatch between the style of a person’s foot and the kind of shoe they wear. 
  • Footwear should fit into your foot design so you don’t cram your toes. 
  • Some shoes may fit while you are buying them in a store, but they may end up not fitting at all or when you are already running long distances.
  • If you don’t know how the sock liner, width, toe spring, and heel drop of the shoe interact, the potential for injury is more significant. 
  • Listen to the full episode to learn more about the running injuries that Colin has encountered and how to prevent them.

[32:42] Running on Concrete vs Running on Natural Terrain

  • The natural terrain is easy to run on compared to concrete. 
  • Mitigate the force of initial contact to avoid injuries. 
  • Listen to the full episode to learn more about what type of shoe you need for different surfaces.

[34:29] On Transitioning Your Footwear

  • If you want to go barefoot, do it gradually.
  • Scientific literature has discussed the importance of transition shoes.
  • If you’re going to drop your 10- to 12-millimetre heel drop shoe to 4, you need to have a 6- to 8-millimetre transition shoe. 

[37:22] How Often Should We Change Shoes?

  • Do not let shoes sit on shelves for more than two years because the material stiffens.
  • In general, alternating shoes are good after 6800 kilometres. 
  • However, this still depends on how quickly you wear out the outsole of your shoes. 
  • Having shoes with different heel heights for different types of running would be very beneficial. 

[42:59] The Brain-Foot Connection

  • When you ignore stabilisers and prime mover muscles, you get a mismatch in balance and performance. 
  • It’s important at the lower leg holistically. 
  • Colin acknowledges that we get a different sensation if we’re barefoot versus when we have socks and shoes on.
  • However, it’s a misnomer to say that putting on footwear reduces your proprioception or sensation.
  • Your brain adjusts to the sensory input being thrown its way.

[48:39] Achilles Injuries

  • Achilles injuries result when people change the drop of their shoe or change their running style too quickly. 
  • There is a genetic predisposition for people with Achilles issues. 
  • Using things like heel lifts in footwear takes some load off the Achilles, allowing it to heal.
  • Any ankle restriction can make you use your Achilles differently. 
  • Listen to the full episode to learn about the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in looking at conditions.

 

7 Powerful Quotes

‘If someone's not getting the right kind of results, it could be that they just need to be adjusted. But then some people don't believe that they need to be adjusted. They believe your foot functions best one particular way’.

‘I think that a lot of people have lost the ability to connect with their brain and their feet and they need to get that ability back’.

‘It's not putting everything into a box of good or bad, you know, but it's looking at it holistically’.

‘We get back to my point where [we do things in] moderation. There's a time to spend time in the sand, there's a time to spend time in the trail, and there's time to get on the road’.

‘If you can get that little bit of variability where you're lengthening some days, you're shortening some days, you're doing different things and your body is used to that, then you're going to be more adaptive. But if you lock into that one pattern, it's going to be so much harder to change’.

‘You also need to have a really good understanding of the whole anatomy of the body because you have to be holistic in your approach’.

‘You know your limits better than somebody else. But I think that there's also a time when you do need to respect the knowledge that someone's gone and spent time attaining.

 

About Dr Colin Dombroski

Dr Colin Dombroski is a podiatrist and a foot specialist of 20 years; he is also an author and a researcher. He works in the world of shoes, orthotics, rehab, and range. He specialises in any feet issues, from plantar fasciitis to Achilles injuries. 

Connect with Colin through his website. You may also reach out to him through email or Facebook.

 

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa

 

Full Transcript Of The Podcast

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: You're listening to Pushing The Limits with Lisa Tamati, your host. I have a fantastic gift again for you today. Gosh, I managed to come up with some amazing people. So I have the guest Dr Colin Dombroski, who is a podiatrist and expert on everything foot. He's known as the foot specialist. He is the author of two books, Healthy Strong Feet, and The Plantar Fasciitis Plan. He's a researcher, and also has a shoe—a specialist running shoe shop. He knows everything about the cutting edge of foot health. 

So this is a topic that's really important, obviously, for all the runners listening out there. Or if you're having any sort of issues with your feet, maybe you're dealing with plantar fasciitis, maybe you have to have orthotics, or you've got arthritis, or you've got bunions, or you've got problems with your Achilles or further up the kinetic chain, then this is the episode for you because we're going to be talking about the cutting edge of science. Dr Colin is really up on the latest thing. He has all the fancy gadgets in his lab that he does. And so it's a really, really interesting conversation that I have with Dr Colin. 

Now before we go over to the show. If you are also looking for—doing a running training plan that fits your life and without having to think about how to assemble the entire plan yourself, then please come and check out what we do at Running Hot Coaching. We have a brand new package that we now offer and there's a fully customised package to you, to your goals, to your injuries, your lifestyle, anything that's holding you back, and we can customise it to you. And you'll also get full video analysis done with this package and a one-on-one consult with me in a personalised plan for your next event. Whether that be a marathon, a half marathon, ultramarathon, 10K, it doesn't really matter that's up to you. And you get 12 months of access to Running Hot Coaching’s whole resource library and all the other plans that are available on me, so it’s a super, super deal. 

You also get access to our community of over 700 runners from around the world that we get to coach nowadays and hang out with them. And also we do live events on occasion and do regular educational webinars and so on. So everything running. If you want help with it, then we would love to help you get in—make the best out of your running. Okay, so check that out at runninghotcoaching.com

Right, over to the show now with Dr Colin Dombroski. 

Lisa Tamati: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pushing The Limits. It's your host, Lisa Tamati here. And today I have Colin Dombroski with me, all the way from Ontario in Canada. So welcome to the show, Colin. Fantastic to have you.

Dr Colin Dombroski: Thanks so much for having me.

Lisa: It's really, really exciting. So I am going to be talking to you today about feet. You are the foot guy. You are known as the foot guy. Colin, can you give us a bit of a brief background, why are you known as the foot guy?

Dr Colin: Well, I mean, I'm a Canadian certified podiatrist first and foremost. So I'm trained in both the design and the manufacturer of custom foot orthotics, foot orthotics in general, footwear and lower extremity therapy care, and how those things interact to get people better. And so, we started that back in 2002. And since then, I've gone on to do PhD work in Health and Rehabilitation Science, and research and everything from the basic 3D printings of orthotics to how the foot’s actually moving in a shoe using things like a biplanar fluoroscopy and CT imaging to really understand what's actually going on, as opposed to just kind of guessing and thinking about it or looking at video without actually being able to see inside the shoe. 

And so we've seen tens of thousands of patients. We've worked with people over the last 20 years, really working to get them back up and on their feet and doing the things that they want to do to stay healthy. And for some people, it's as simple as walking around the block and for other people it's going to the Olympics in Tokyo.

Lisa: Wow, fantastic.  So you're deep into the science...

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: ...of the absolute cutting edge of what we can do now for foot issues and optimising foot health. So tell us a little bit about some of the fancy stuff that you can do, like, how that—you said there you can look into the inside a shoe or... 

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: ...rather than just looking at video. How does that work?

Dr Colin: I'll tell you on the research side, there's all kinds of fancy stuff that we were able to do. And so, right now I have an academic appointment through Western University in the School of Physical Therapy. So, I'm lucky enough to be able to do research in what I do specifically. So—and we can do that in a couple of different ways. One is that we actually have a full 3D motion analysis lab at our main business in London Ontario. So it's seven Vicon cameras, much like the way you would see motion analysis for video games or for the movies. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: Well, we use that to study how the lower extremity works in the human body. And so we can either put markers on the foot and cut windows into the shoe, so we can see how things move. That's one way to do it. The other way that we've done it is working with another lab called the wobble lab, and they have two movie x-rays, or what's called biplanar fluoroscopy. And then what we can do is have a CT of somebody's foot, we can take those bones out, we can map them in three-dimensional space. And at 17 times per second, we can move that bone model on top of the actual movie x-ray model to understand what's happening to the foot and the bones in real-time in a shoe, under different circumstances, whether that's no orthotic, orthotic, and we can compare that to their walking barefoot as well.

Lisa: That is insane Colin. I have no idea.

Dr Colin: Yes. it's a cool thing. And if you go on the website, if you go on—I think we have a fluoroscopy video up on stuff about feet. But if we don't, there's certainly one up on the research section of SoleScience, and you're able to actually watch, you can see what we're looking at through this thing. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: And it's really cool to know. And what's really interesting when we look at this stuff is that we wanted to know when we make somebody an orthotic. What's the best way to do that for someone? There's different ways that we can capture somebody's foot, whether we use a foam or a wax method or a plaster mould of somebody's foot, we wanted to know kind of based on a couple of different styles, which one might actually control the motion of their foot a bit better. And we were able to show that one was more effective than another—made a small amount with a very specific foot type. 

So, if you have a flatter foot, there are ways of making it that are more effective. But what was really interesting out of that was to look at what was actually happening with the foot when someone was just walking barefoot, when they were just walking in their shoe, or when we put an orthotic in there? Because you know if I can go on a bit of a tangent, there's lots of scary stuff on the internet these days about how, ‘Oh, you don't want to walk in shoes and orthotics because it makes you act like you're walking in a cast. And why would you want to do that'? 

Well, what's really interesting is that when we looked at someone's foot walking barefoot, and we compared that to the most supportive thing that we use, they still kept up to 96% of their original motion. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Dr Colin: So, think about that for a second, 96% or one motion. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: So, you're really at that point, if someone's keeping that much of their original range of motion, you really have to wonder, ‘What are we actually doing with these things?’ And I'm going to argue that it's more than just the shoe on someone's foot. It's more than just the device in that shoe, that there could be a lot more actually going on with these things than we fully understand even though we have the best research methods to be able to look at it. 

Lisa: That's amazing. I mean, I'm really, really interested because with orthotics, I've recently gone and got my mum an orthotic and you don't know my mum's story. But she had a massive aneurysm five years ago, has dropped foot on the right side, incredible rehabilitation journey, written a book on it. But we're not having such success with the orthotic yet. We are having success with a Dictus where it's helping lift her foot. And I've had in the past two experiences with orthotics when I've had different issues, like, I can't remember now what specifically, I think it was plantar fasciitis. And I've tried different things, admittedly a while ago, and things have obviously moved on. But I haven't had that much success. 

So I'm like, as a running coach, I should know more about the latest in science as far as orthotics go. And whether they're my initial reaction back then was, ‘Well, I don't think orthotics are really working for a lot of people’. That's been the feedback from other people as well. So obviously, the science has moved forward and it is offering new insights and you can actually see in real-time what our bones are doing. I mean, it's just absolutely mental, that's crazy and cool. So do you think—isn't it like walking around with a cast on your foot? We've got this whole barefoot craze that's been in the last few years and then we've got brands like Hoka One One coming out with really cushions. So, I think people are a little bit confused as to what they should be doing. 

Dr Colin: Yes, and rightfully so.

Lisa: Our orthotic is good. Our orthotics in general is—can we generalise when it's very specific.

Dr Colin: Nope. Not at all. We can’t generalise it all and that's the problem when it comes to this stuff is that people are trying to fit everybody into a box. And saying that either it's really good, or it's really bad. It’s either of those things? Like, to the end of the day, if you really need them, if you have rheumatoid arthritis, and you're unable to walk around the block, and I'm able to get you active again, they're really good for you. 

Lisa: Yes, absolutely.

Dr Colin: Right? But if you have no risk factors, if you have no biomechanical abnormalities, if you have no foot deformities and no other issues, then what's the benefit of wearing them at the end of the day? And so to that end of things, a lot of the time, I feel as though we're missing the middle ground. We're missing the fact that people can use these things, either as a tool to help them with recovery and performance that we can then work to wean them off, if they so choose, or if they need to be, or we use them because there's a real thing where structure dictates function and injury. 

But again, why are we looking to see whether or not people are either yes or no, off or on? It's more of a continuum. And I kind of like to look at people and the fact that over on this end of the spectrum, here, you've got people who are so gifted biomechanically that they can do anything they want to do, despite doing it wrong. They can go couch to marathon in old worn-out shoes with poor sleep with bad nutrition, and they can do it and they don't get hurt. And you've got people on the other end of the spectrum that can do everything, right, and work with the best coaches and get the best equipment and eat and sleep and everything else. But they're plagued with injury, right? 

Most people are going to be somewhere in the middle, the question though, so, which side of the spectrum do you lie more towards? And that's where I feel my job comes in, is to figure out where that is, and then how to appropriately apply these things, whether or not you actually need them. And I build a business on telling people when they don't need them. 

Lisa: That's brilliant. 

Dr Colin: And when they don't need them anymore. So, it's actually quite shocking when someone comes into my office for their ninth orthotic, and I say, ‘Well, tell me about it'. And so they—we talk about stuff, and we come to the conclusion that they just don't need them anymore. 

And they're shocked, they think that these things are like a lifelong sentence. And they're not. For some people, they are the difference between being able to be active or not. And for other people, there's simply a tool, and we use that tool appropriately, and we remove it.

Lisa: That is absolutely gold, Colin. And what a fantastic approach in, like, working with people with disabilities and stuff, I know there are definitely times when we do need them, and they're going to benefit and it is very much about the skill of the person who's fitting the orthotic and knows, obviously, what they're doing. And there’s a lot of advertising out there; rubbish sort of advertising that you see with different standard gum, pick it off the shelf type things, what's your opinion on those types of orthotics? 

Dr Colin: Well, I mean, if those—so, if something like that, like if an over the counter device works for you, for—let's say you have a mild case of metatarsalgia. Let's say you have a small ache in the front part of your foot when you're active, and you've done all the rest of the conservative therapy things. You're strong, you're flexible, everything else is ticked off, and you're still not doing well. Sometimes removing that little bit of mechanical stress can be enough that allows the tissues to heal and you can move on. Right? So in those cases, yes, they work quite well. 

But in some cases, if you have a foot type that doesn't match up with that shaped plastic that's pushing against your foot, it might not work so much. And kind of to your point where you were saying you had them for plantar fasciitis before, and they just didn't work for you, it could be a multitude of reasons why they didn't work for you. And we see that all the time. 

And if someone's not getting the right kind of results, it could be that they just need to be adjusted. But then some people don't believe that they need to be adjusted. They believe your foot functions best, one particular way. And they say, ‘Here, this is for you. This is the way it should be, get used to it'.

Lisa: And then it's the whole side of: you should be doing strengthening exercises and rolling and stretching. What's your take on the whole on that side of it? So the rehabilitation side of it as opposed to the orthotic side of the equation?

Dr Colin: Well, so my—the way that we teach about orthotics is that orthotics for some conditions are not a first line treatment unless you have significant risk factors. If you're diabetic, then yes, 100% we're making you orthotics. But for a lot of people especially let's take plantar fasciitis for instance. If you come to me and you've had plantar fasciitis only for a few weeks, there is a whole host of other therapies that you can try before you even need to think about that. Is removing the stress off the tissue, the strain off the tissue with the device and footwear appropriate? Heck yes, it is. But there are other things that you need to look at first before you even go down the route of orthotics which is actually why I wrote my first book. And it's to tell people the things that they can do at home to be able to get themselves better for four to six weeks before they have to see somebody like me to think about orthotics. 

Lisa: Okay, so what was the title of that book, Colin?

Dr Colin: Oh, it's called The Plantar Fasciitis Plan

Lisa: The Plantar Fasciitis Plan and that is available on Amazon?

Dr Colin: Yes. 

Lisa: Okay, so in New Zealand, we might struggle with Amazon, but we don't have Amazon down here, believe it or not. 

Dr Colin: I have no idea.

Lisa: We can access it, but some things can ship from over the air and some not so. But we'll put the links in the show notes for sure for those listening who are overseas and want to read that book. Okay, so you mentioned...

Dr Colin: And to speak to your last question... 

Lisa: Absolutely.

Dr Colin: ...which was, what do you think about the whole foot strengthening part of it? 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: I think it's very important, I think that a lot of people have lost the ability to connect with their brain and their feet, and they need to get that ability back, it's shocking how many people I see that can do something as simple as move their toes, or lift their arch, or do some of the simple things that they need to do to make feet work as feet. Right? And so, getting them back to that foot connection is only a positive thing. Like, the only good things are going to come out of that.

Lisa: So, is this like, is this a problem of the modern human because we've walked around in shoes. Did humans, before shoes come along, did we all have great feet? Strong powerful feet because we were barefoot from the get go? So is this a problem of the modern human but like with—I've just done a couple of episodes on breathing and the way that we are chewing is affecting our structure of our mouth and therefore we're not having such good breathing and so on. Is that similar sort of case?

Dr Colin: I really think that when you talk to a question about that, it's really hard to compare those two things because we're just not there right now. You know what I mean? So, yes, if we didn't wear clothes, and we didn't drive cars, and we didn't eat the way that we did, yes, things would be different than where they are. But like, we drive our cars to go five blocks down the street to get to Starbucks, we don't walk. So, that alone is just as deleterious as footwear that doesn't fit you properly. 

So when it comes to shoes, again, there's lots of scariness out there on the internet, talking about how these things, again, make you walk like your cast or is deforming your feet. And yes, I would agree that a poorly fit shoes that are way too tight cramming your toes, putting stress on nerves and tissues certainly can be a bad thing for you. But do I think that there's this gigantic conspiracy out there that's making the collective feet of the world less strong and everything else? No, I really don't, to that end. And again, as a recovery tool, they can be marvellous things if done correctly.

Lisa: Yes, it's a really good approach. I mean, it reminds me of my dad's feet. My dad who recently passed, unfortunately. But my dad had the most amazing, strong, powerful feet, he grew up in the first 13 years of life and not wearing shoes. Came from a very humble background with eight children, and they only had one pair of gumboots in the family. So he grew up with these incredibly powerful feet. 

By the time he was in his 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, he could walk around barefoot all day, never have any sort of problems. The state of his heels weren't the best. But muscular feet, really strong powerful feet, because he didn't wear shoes until he was older and then still like to go barefoot whenever possible, actually connected to the earth, weed garden all day, and their feet at the most jungles. So I did see it in that. Quite the effects of having that real connection to Mother Earth if you like in developing those sort of strong muscles in our feet. 

And then on the other side of the equation. I see people with diabetics or close to being pre-diabetic problems with extremely tender feet and poor circulation in the feet and their feet are just not moving well and have always been in shoes. So it's like opposite ends of the scale via. So, where was I going with this? There's a real broad range of where people are at. Another thing that I think is to consider is women in high heeled shoes, what's your take on that sort of a problem? Like, were lifting your heels up and having a shortened calf. And that's sort of a problem.

Dr Colin: Well, I mean, that for too long of a period of time just gives you a whole myriad of problems from metatarsalgia, and progressing bunion issues, and nerve problems, and chronically short Achilles because of that shortening specifically, yes. I mean, we see that all the time. I'm very much a fan of moderation when it comes to these things. 

And so for a lot of my patients, if they want to spend an evening, every now and again, where they're primarily sitting in a pair of heels, then I feel as though the trade-off for what they get out of that is okay, comparatively. Again, it's not putting everything into a box of good or bad, but it's looking at it holistically. 

Lisa: Brilliant. I think it's a really good approach.

Dr Colin: Yes, if you're a retail worker, and you're spending 10 hours a day, on your feet, heels are definitely not the thing you want to be wearing.

Lisa: Yes, you've got to sacrifice the elegance, ladies. Sometimes you help that little pushes.

Dr Colin: A little bit sometimes. And you know where I end up seeing that a lot? It’s in lawyers. A lot of my patients who are lawyers. There is definitely a culture of dress code and professionalism that comes from wearing heels. And I see a lot of injured lawyers because of that, specifically. 

Lisa: Isn't that interesting? So yes, really take heed because I do think doing that on a daily basis, yes. The odd night out in a pair of heels to look elegant is fine, but not doing it every single day, were you really shortening, I mean, just, I'm always sort of relating things back to my life. But with mum having aneurysm, being bedridden pretty much for 18 months before we could get her standing. And I didn't understand at the beginning about drop foot, I missed the boat. And by the time I realised what drop foot was, that had happened very, very quickly, that her foot was now dropped until we're still working on that right through now, to be able to lift set front of the foot up and having to use a Dictus in her case, which lifts the front of the foot up. So it happens very—it happens quicker than what you think.

Dr Colin: It can, certainly. Yes. Now the brace that your mum's using, do you mind if I asked you a quick question? Is she using an over-the-counter one or a custom one?

Lisa: So it's an over-the-counter Dictus one as I didn't know there was such a thing as a customised Dictus. So it's just a leather strap that goes around with a rubber that goes over inside these two little hooks at the bottom of the shoes that pulls the shoe up. So is there something better, Colin?

Dr Colin: Well, so, take a look for something called an Allard ToeOff AFO. And we use them a lot in clinics for patients with drop foot and they're actually designed to be to run marathons and events and they're quite robust. 

Lisa: Okay, I’ll take note of that.

Dr Colin: And it might be a great training tool too. They're very light. You should wear them under a pair of pants. A lot of people like the fact that they don't see the direct brace. 

Lisa: Yes, yes. Yes, exactly. This one's quite ugly. So, is it Allard? 

Dr Colin: A-L-L-A-R-D.

Lisa: Oh, brilliant. 

Dr Colin: So as in Allard ToeOff. 

Lisa: Allard ToeOff, I will check that out. See, this is a selfish reason why I get to talk to experts. 

Dr Colin: There we go. 

Lisa: Because you never know when it's gonna help somebody you know? It's fantastic. I'll check that one out. Yes, because that is a real problem. And there's so many—this is not a rare thing, drop foot. It's a very, very common thing with people with strokes and aneurysms and the like. 

Dr Colin: It is.

Lisa: So, there's a lot of people dealing with it so going into the rehabilitation side of things. We have a shoe that has a rocker so she's able to toe-off slightly better in that rocker and keep her center of mass moving forward. Rather than sitting really back which she was doing. So yes, so I'm always looking for the next best thing for my mum from the show. So, appreciate that.

Dr Colin: No problem. And since you're a runner and all that stuff, the Asics Metaride is my favourite carbon shoe rocker. We've got so many people who really require surgery, fusions, things like that because of osteoarthritic toes or ankles or mid feet that can get into a shoe like that. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: And for people who are that age, they're not nearly as flashy looking as some of the other carbon rockered shoes that are available.

Lisa: Yes, but who cares as long as they function properly. Okay, Asics Metaride. Okay, we'll check those one out too. Now let's jump ship and change direction a little bit and go into running specific injuries. So we did touch briefly on playing to the shortest. But what are some of the common injuries that you see? And what are some of the ways that we can prevent? And how does it have a knock-on effect? Like what happens in your feet, knocks on the kinetic chain, doesn't it?

Dr Colin: Of course. Yes. So what I take a look at, the one of the biggest things are going to be mismatches between the style of foot that somebody has and their mechanics and the kind of shoe they wind up getting into. And so there's nothing like being able to mismatch the way that your foot wants to move, and then a shoe that's going to either work completely and pushing it in the same direction. So for instance, if you're a supinator, where your foot rolls to the outside, and then you get into an anti-pronation shoe, which a lot of people are—there's actually been research to show that runners are poor judges of their own foot type. 

Lisa: Right.

Dr Colin: And if they get into that kind of footwear that makes them into more of a supinator. I can't tell you how many lateral column foot pain problems we see and perennial overuse problems and things like that. So simply mismatching your footwear to what your foot is doing can be one of them. 

Lisa: Okay. Getting on and off the shelf is not, and diagnosing yourself is probably not a good idea if you're a serious runner who wants to do some serious racing.

Dr Colin: Well, maybe it's a good idea to run your findings by someone else who can take an objective third-party look at you. And so some people think, ‘Oh, my foot is so flat, I need to get into this kind of footwear'. And that might not always be the case when it comes down to it. So the footwear component of it is so big. Making sure that it actually fits the way that your foot is designed. So if you have a particularly wide forefoot and a narrower rear foot, looking for things that actually match up with that, so that you're not cramming your toes into a pair of shoes.

Lisa: As a run coach, if I can just pipe in there that has been one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen so many athletes buy. They go into a shoe shop that does foot analysis, and they proceed them on a treadmill and so on. So they may have the right type of shoe, but they're after buying the shoe in a cold state. So i.e., they've just walked into a shop, they haven't been on their feet all day, they haven't been running for 30K's, their feet are not swollen. 

And then they go and if they do marathons, or especially ultramarathons, their feet are swelling. And especially I've seen this in women where we tend to swell tissues in my opinion, not scientifically-backed or anything but my observation is that women's feet swell more than men. And the size of the shoe is then way too small, especially in the toe box. And this often leads to pain on the top of the foot and the cutting off of circulation there. And I've seen problems with the shins and so on. 

Have you—is it a thing? Have you seen this sort of a trend as well, where they're going into the shop, and it's fitting in the shop on the day that they buy it, but when they're long-distance runners, that becomes a problem, especially when they're running under heat?

Dr Colin: 100%. Yes, I mean, fatigue is one of those things that wrecks everything. But at the end of the day, when you're not fatigued, and you're ready to take a pair of shoes, and you're trying it on, you don't know how the inside of your ankle is gonna rub against that shoe until you've spent 30, 40, 50k in it to really understand what's happening there. So the idea that something is going to ‘break in’, in quotation marks is something that I like to try to shy away from as much as I possibly can. 

The biggest issue that we see from most people is they just fit them incorrectly, right? They fit them too short. And so if things do swell, if there's movement or any of that stuff, you're going to get problems along with the feet, whether it's friction and blisters or black toenails, or what have you. The length of that, and then especially the curve of the toes, makes such a big difference. 

And so, a lot of footwear stores these days might not carry the full breadth of width available. And so for instance, New Balance comes in ladies from a 2A to a 2E and everything else in between. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: So it comes in a 2A, and a B, and a D and then a 2E. So when you have to carry four widths of shoes from a size 5 to a size 13... 

Lisa: That’s expensive. 

Dr Colin: ...including half sizes, that's expensive. And that's only for one colour. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Dr Colin: Right? So when you think about that, you understand why you might not be able to find the full breadth of width in a lot of these things. Because shoe stores will have a hard time selling through and if they can't, they can't make money and stay open. So, but if you're one of those people that are on either end of the spectrum, then you need to find a place that will cater towards those kinds of things and that understand the nuances and the differences within brands. So, I mean I've seen people go up a full size in between different models of shoes within the same brand of a company. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Dr Colin: So, for instance, the New Balance 880 and the New Balance 840 fit completely different. The sock liner is three times as thick, the width is more, the toe spring is different, the heel drop is different, all of that stuff. And if you don't know how each one of those things interact with someone, then the potential for injury is just greater. 

Lisa: Wow. And yes, I can definitely relate to that having had—I've had many different sponsorship agreements over my career. And some of the companies, a couple of them, I had to actually leave because I just could not wear their shoes and they were so different in other ones that I just absolutely loved and were able to stick with. And I've got a very wide foot. And so I have to be in a men’s shoe. But when I was doing desert races in extreme heat in Death Valley and the likes, I had shoes that were two sizes too big for me. 

Dr Colin: Wow.

Lisa: So, that's what I worked out was the sweet spot. So at that point, I wouldn't get the blisters and I wouldn't get the black toenails, and I wouldn't get the foot just swelling so much that it's boosting out the sides of the shoes and putting pressure on top of the foot and causing—and I've had it all awful shin problems by having that circulation cut off at the top of the foot. 

I remember a race I did in Germany 338 kilometres in five days. So, we're doing 70 kilometres a day. And after day one, my shoes were just way too tight. And by then the damage was done. And an old-timer, who was in the race, said to me, ‘Hey, you need to cut your socks and open your shoes right up'. And that was a piece of advice that I carried with me being from the norm because, and I ended up doing that very often. So even something like a pair of socks that is too tight around the ankle can cause shin problems. I mean, I've experienced that firsthand, and on the top of the funnel as well. So it really makes a heck of a difference, isn't it?

Dr Colin: Oh, it's so does and you know, when you're looking at the trail shoes and things like that, the choices become even more frustrating. 

Lisa: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, let’s talk trail because what trail—we weren't as humans, like, we didn't evolve to run on concrete and pads. So what's your take on how bad is it to be running on roads and concrete versus the natural terrain of a trail so to speak?

Dr Colin: Well, I mean, certainly the natural trait of a trail is going to be easier for you to run on versus concrete and asphalts and those types of things. And when we looked at the literature, and some of the research said that it's—there's been a lot of fun running research that's come out in the last 15 years. But a lot of our initial contact strategies, so whether you stride on your heel, your midfoot or your forefoot, a lot of it has to do with mitigating the force of that initial contact. And so if you're running on an incredibly hard surface, you might adapt to changing your initial contact to be able to mitigate those loads of that initial load. 

Whereas when you have a softer, spongier service to do on, you have a bit more leeway to be able to stride in a different pattern. And so for people who are rehabbing from injuries, yes, getting into something that's a little bit spongier is certainly going to be more forgiving. Now, you can take that all the way to running on the beach, and that causing some problems as well just from the increased biomechanics that that causes too. So to get back to my point where moderation. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: There's a time to spend time in the sand, and there's a time to spend time in the trail, and there's time to get on the road.

Lisa: And this trend it transition times, like when the barefoot craze hurt when my friend Chris McDougall’s book came out Born to Run and it sort of revolutionised everybody's thinking was like, ‘We gotta go barefoot because Barefoot Ted was doing it’. And we saw a lot of injuries come out of that. And no, no, no detriment on the book. It was a fantastic book. But people just went too fast, too far too fast. And we really need a transition time if we wanting to go barefoot. Would you agree with that?

Dr Colin: Oh, it's not a matter of me agreeing with it, that that's just a matter of scientific fact. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: I mean, if you want to go from—which so I do agree with it. To that end, yes. There's nothing that's going to increase your risk of getting hurt more than taking off your footwear and going for a barefoot run. If you're used to wearing a maximalist style of shoe, taking it off going barefoot for 21K, you'll be lucky if you don't come back with a stress fracture. And certainly, my practice has been a mirror of that, right? I mean, at the end of the day, I see injured runners all day every day. That's what I do. 

So, I like to joke that the greatest predictor of running injuries is running. But to that end, if you want to make these changes, I think they're great for people. And I think that they're able to make these changes in a proper informed way. And so even looking to what some of the scientific literature says they talk about a transition shoe specifically, right? If you're going to go from a regular 10 or 12 mil heel drop shoe to 4, 0, having a 6 to 8 mil transition shoe wouldn't be a bad idea. 

There's one company that will remain nameless that when they changed all their heel heights from 12 mil to 8 mil, and no one really understood what that meant. I can't tell you the number of Achilles problems and things that came into the clinic two years after that. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: Because making even that 4-millimetre change in someone who puts in 60 to 80 kilometres a week, and they're used to loading their tissues in a particular way when you all of a sudden change that with up to three times your bodyweight up to 10,000 steps, that's a huge change for your body all of a sudden.

Lisa: Wow, that is insane. Just from a very small change. And look we all—lots of people just swap different shoes ‘Oh try those ones, or this time, I'll buy those’. 

Dr Colin: Yes, exactly.

Lisa: And so is it—and this is the other thing, brands keep changing.

Dr Colin: Yes, every season.

Lisa: ‘Ugh, damn. It's something new, it was perfect. And now it's gone again, I can't get it’. 

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: So by a couple of pieces, when you do get something that's right. 

Dr Colin: 100%. But even that, don't let them sit on the shelves for more than two years.

Lisa: Oh, okay. Why is it? Do they degrade after that you sort of leave them? 

Dr Colin: Actually the materials get stiff, the longer you leave them there. And so, that pair that felt really cushy a couple years ago, they let them sit for a couple of years, they're going to be harder... 

Lisa: Oh, gosh.

Dr Colin: ...when you take them out of the box. 

Lisa: Oh, okay. 

Dr Colin: So you can't just let them sit for years on the shelf.

Lisa: And onto that note. How many kilometres? Like, how often should you be changing? I've always said between six and 800 kilometres max, what's your take on that? Is there a new science around that?

Dr Colin: Science is interesting when it comes to that. I mean, there isn't a lot of actual hard science on that. The soft science of it is to look at the bottoms of your shoes and see. If you're a heavier person, at your initial contact, and I don't mean heavy, like actually just a larger BMI. But some people, my wife is a light woman but she sounds like she's going to come through the floor, two floors down when she walks. And so she'll wear out the outsole of a shoe much faster than somebody who strikes the ground a little bit lighter. And so if you look at the bottoms of your footwear and let's say you're only 400K into a pair of shoes, but there's an angle now where the lugs are totally sheared off one side, that shoe was now forcing you to walk that way. And it's not helping your biomechanics at all. 

And so yes, I think as it—as a general rule, 6 to 800 kilometres is okay. But if you're not, if you're training on consecutive days, and if you're training in one pair of shoes, you're going to break down the EVA material much faster because that material needs about 36 hours to rebound fully, before it's ready to go again. But if you're training 24 hours, you're going to break down your shoe much faster.

Lisa: Wow, that's a good point. I knew that. And I'd forgotten that fact. Thanks for reminding me of that because yes, alternating shoes on different days is something that I used to say, and I’ve forgotten completely about that one. So, that's a really good point. So, having a couple of pairs of shoes on the go, is a really, really good idea.

Dr Colin: Yes, 100%. And to that end too we were talking about, with transition shoes, and whatnot, having them even a different heel heights for different types of running would also be great. I mean, so while you're doing a fartlek training, or tempo run, or a long day might be different than what your ratio is, or the all day everyday shoe. And so that little bit of variability, I think, is a really positive thing. 

When you get locked into one movement pattern all the time, then your body comes to predict that. And if you can get that little bit of variability where you're lengthening some days, you're shortening some days, you're doing different things, and your body is used to that, then you're going to be more adaptive. But if you lock into that one pattern, it's going to be so much harder to change.

Lisa: That seems to be the thing for everything in biology column. It seems to be a push and pull in a variety. You don't want to starve for too long, you don't want to eat too much for too long, you don't want to be too cold or in a thermoneutral zone for too long, you want—the body wants variety change. Not the same diet every day, not the same everything every day, and just by varying things up, we're giving our body a chance to get what it needs, and to have that variation—that push and pull that biology in all levels that I've been looking at seems to be cycling things. Cycling diet, cycling supplements, cycling shoes, cycling, changing in variety keeps the body guessing and keeps it changing, and keeps it so it doesn't go, ‘I've got this. And it's a piece of cake'. 

Actually, I thought it just popped in my head. What do you think of Kipchoge shoes? The sub-two-hour marathon, the Nike shoes.

Dr Colin: Oh, yes. Yes, I mean, wow, there—this is a fun time to be alive for nerds like myself. So yes, I mean, there's some really cool stuff that Nike’s doing in some of their footwear. And they're—I mean, one of the leaders. But I mean, everyone now is coming out with a carbon plated shoe, and really aggressive rockers, and a lot of this stuff from a performance standpoint. And it'll be interesting to see how it's controlled and how it's covered. And to what lengths can we go to be able to increase the performance of humans? We developed things like oxygen deprivation to be able to increase your red blood cell counts, to be able to increase your performance. Changes in footwear like this are not that dissimilar from that. It's just a question of, how much can we use them? And how does it work with you? 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: Yes, and what's gonna be legal. 

Lisa: And at the moment, it is, isn't it? Like it's... 

Dr Colin: It is. 

Lisa: Yes. And I had a friend, who's a holistic movement coach, I had on the show, actually, a few weeks ago talking about feet as well, the health of feet. And he said, ‘I didn't want to like those Kipchoge shoes', but I— because he's very much into barefoot when possible and developing strength in the feet. He said, ‘But I put’... 

Dr Colin: Well, that certainly is the opposite. 

Lisa: He said, ‘I have to admit, I run a hell of a lot faster when I'm soaked’.

Dr Colin: Sure. Yes. But that comes back to the point of moderation, right? Is that there's a time for that shoe, just like there's a time to be barefoot. And it's using it in the appropriate fashion.

Lisa: Wow, that's brilliant. And okay, let's talk about the knock-on effect of how the feet which have and you know this 100 times better than me, there's just a ton of nerves, a ton of bones as most complex structure that we have, the proprioception, and the connection between the brain is just so important that we actually have that neurofeedback from our feet. So, what sort of a fix do—what sort of things can we expect to have happen on a good side from proprioception when we're doing lots of activity? And we're doing lots of different movement types and varieties of training? And how does it help our brain? The brain-foot connection, I think, is what I'm trying to ask you here.

Dr Colin: Well, I mean, anything that's going to make you more aware of what your foot’s doing in space is, again, only going to be a positive both from a balance and a performance perspective. It's striking to me that I can see some people perform incredible feats of athleticism, but then can't balance on one foot to do a pistol squat. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: Do you know what I mean? 

Lisa: Yes.

Dr Colin: Because they just don't have control over their ankle. And so when people think of their feet, that's one thing. But I mean, the actual foot itself, though, those deep intrinsic layers of muscles are more stabilisers than they are prime movers, right? The prime movers are going to be higher up in the leg, and the tendons of those larger muscles in the leg support the ankle, right? They're the ones that are tibialis posterior, and the perennials and the things that actually wrap around the ankle. So it's a matter of looking at the lower leg holistically, not just the foot itself. 

Yes, those little foot muscles are important. But I think oftentimes, some of the higher stuff up is overlooked as well as the actual prime movers and the actual real good stabilizers that way because those things are going to fatigue out relatively fast, and then you're left with the larger muscles to be able to do some of those things. But when you're not paying attention to one of those two, then you're going to get a mismatch in balance and performance. And so it's a matter of being able to look at more. It's about being able to use your abductor hallucis appropriately, being able to use all of those intrinsics to raise up your arch a bit and reduce some strain in your plantar fascia. 

I would never go as far as saying you're going to change the structure of your foot by making your foot muscles strong, but certainly, you're going to get a better grip on the ground and you're going to be able to use your feet like feet and not just like a meat slab that hit the ground to be able to get to the next step.

Lisa: Yes, is it a bit like if I was to go around with gloves all day, and I wouldn't have the dexterity that I would need to do typing and learn to play an instrument or anything like that. Is that what's happening with our shoes, when we’re in shoes all day, every day, we're just taking away that connection to the brain and the brain's ability to be able to make those subtle adjustments with those little tiny muscles doing their thing?

Dr Colin: You can look at it two different ways, right? Because one might say that yes, if you're barefoot and you know you've got skin on the ground, you are going to get a different sensation than if you have sock and then something else between you and the ground. Right? There's just different feedback when it comes to it. 

But to say that putting footwear on reduces your proprioception, or your sensation completely, is a bit of a misnomer. Because if you have something that's, let's say, a little bit squishier, and your foot’s moving around a bit more, well, that's also a signal to your brain too in terms of where to fire muscles, and how to fire muscles and using those muscles on top of it. So, I think we can go in both directions. And again, there is a time when it's going to be appropriate. And there's a time when you want to be barefoot and getting that sensory input in just a different fashion to say—because, at the end of the day, I just don't think it's realistic in the society that we live in that we're not going to be out of it completely. 

Lisa: We don’t want to come from class, and you know...

Dr Colin: And so yes. So it's a matter of figuring out how to do that, in a fashion that's most appropriate, given the circumstances that you find yourself in.

Lisa: A bit of a left-field question and a bit of a non-scientific well, oh well, there's probably stuff coming out now. What's your take on having though the connection to Mother Earth and grounding? And that type of thing, and being in the dirt, so to speak, and having the actual contact with the earth? Is there anything to that side of things? Or is it just no scientific data really around that?

Dr Colin: There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, at the end of the day, and from a data and a science standpoint, I'm the first one to tell you that I'm not 100% up on that.

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: But I was listening to another podcast. It was Ben Greenfield recently. 

Lisa: Yes, I like him.

Dr Colin: Who was talking about some of—yes, yes, yes, same—as some of the science around that specifically. And I believe that there might be some science that has come out, I just haven't read it to be able to be up on it to be 100% honest with you.

Lisa: Yes. I mean, I've heard various things and even like getting your hands on the dirt and gardening and how much of a good effect that can have on your body and your mind and your mood and things like that.

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: And I mean, we are in science starting to actually see why is it important to go out and have early morning sunlight and circadian rhythms and all of these sorts of things... 

Dr Colin: True, true.

Lisa: ...and connection to the ground and the effects of the medicine, and I don't think we're there yet with all the science. But my take is—on that is yes, go out and spend 10 minutes a day with your hands and the dirt and connect with the ground. And if nothing, the being in nature is definitely going to calm you down and make you feel better. 

Dr Colin: 100%.

Lisa: Yes, so that's already, I think—okay, so just looking at some most common running injuries before we sort of wrap up the call. If we can look at like plantar fasciitis and perhaps Achilles and calf muscle injuries and perhaps knees. It's a picture you will cover in a few minutes, isn't it? If we want, the second podcast, Dr Colin.

Dr Colin: Yes. We can do a podcast on each one of those actually.

Lisa: Well, actually, I think I will be getting you on because your knowledge is next level.

Dr Colin: Thank you.

Lisa: So let's talk a little bit about say Achilles. 

Dr Colin: Sure.

Lisa: It's one of—it's a very common problem. 

Dr Colin: It is. Yes, yes, it really, really is. And Achilles is a difficult one. Again, depending on where things are at and what we know, whether it's insertional, or midportion, there are definitely are two different protocols when it comes to it. So, from the physio side whether you do eccentric loading, which is raising up on two feet, lowering down on one or whether you're doing a different kind of strengthening programme that really is sort of the physio side of that end of it, where I tend to come in on that and where I tend to see a lot of Achilles injuries are people who wind up changing the drop of their shoe too quickly. And so they're used to running in something that's either too low or too high and then make it an abrupt sudden change, or they change their running style too quickly. 

So, it's very common to see people who go—who are heel strikers who want to try forefoot running for the first time and if they do it improperly when you load the ground with your heel, I mean, yes, we know that if you overstride braking forces and everything else are really bad for you and smashing your heel into the ground might not be ideal for everybody. 

But if you're running on your forefoot, you're striking, your initial contact is with your forefoot, then you touch your heel. Then you push off your forefoot again, right? So, one is heel midfoot toe, one is forefoot heel, forefoot. So, to that end, you're going through a much larger cycle of Achilles loading. And so for some people, especially who—if gene, you were talking about genetics earlier, we know that there is a genetic predisposition for some people, or Achilles issues specifically if you're one of those people, then that can certainly be a bad thing if you do it too quickly. 

And so to that end, we talked about the very first thing we do is deload the Achilles. So using things like heel shoe, heel lifts, and footwear, to be able to, for a short period of time, take some of that load off the Achilles, allow it to heal and then gradually reloaded it as they've been working with their physio to be able to gain back strength and mobility and everything else. The one thing that I like to look at everybody who comes to my clinic because I think it's so incredibly important, is their ability to move their ankle appropriately because their calf musculature is flexible enough. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Dr Colin: And I'll get into trouble there because some people say, ‘It's not coming from your calf, it's coming from your hip'. It can be coming from your hip certainly if you have things that are changing your pelvic tilt, and it's lengthening your hamstring, and it's doing that, and then you're getting the effect of change that comes with it, it's a matter of just looking at it to understand where that change is coming from. But any ankle restriction in your range of motion can make you use your Achilles in a different way, the simplest way for your body to compensate for that is to out-toe and pronate more, well, you're going to get a rotational stress on your Achilles, for some people that's just going to be too much combined with the kind of running programme that they're doing. And so one thing to think about for sure.

Lisa: Wow, this is like, you're a foot specialist, but you also need to have a really good understanding of the whole anatomy of the body really, don't you? Because you have to be a holistic in your approach because, and then this is one of the issues that I have with the medical world in general, now speaking is that they’re so siloed. If you've got a lung problem, you go to the lung specialist, or the pulmonary, if you've got a heart and then the ear, nose and throat are separate, and yet it's to do with your lungs, like, we need to have a holistic ‘Look At It systems’ in the body or the—not even systems, but the entire body, so everybody has to have it. 

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: And it's difficult because you have to have a specialised education in feet, you can't be an expert in feet and an expert in hips. 

Dr Colin: Yes. 

Lisa: But you do need a general education to be able to understand: what the roles of the other therapists or doctors or whatever it is in order to have a good understanding. And I think that holistic approach were possible, into sort of disciplinary communication, is really, really important. Would you agree with it?

Dr Colin: Oh, that's the only way that I work is multi-disciplinary. And so if there's one specialist that thinks that they can fix everything, then that usually makes me want to run away screaming. And because there's just isn't enough flexibility in your thinking to understand that, maybe what you're doing won't be enough for somebody. And again, can't tell you the number of people that come in to say, ‘I've seen my ex-specialists who said, there's nothing else that can be done. We get them back running within six weeks'. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: You know what I mean? It's only because we were flexible enough in our thinking to be able to say, ‘Yes, we're gonna change this little thing over here. That might be the thing that's going to get you back to what you want to be doing'. So, it’s so...

Lisa: I could go in a rant on that, really. I could go on a rant about the amount of times that people have been told, ‘You can never run again'. I was told I would never run when I broke my back when I was a young lady. And that were wrong, 70,000 kilometres later. 

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: If I'd lifted up to so-called experts who, with my mother who had a massive brain aneurysm five years ago and who said that initial, ‘You’ll never have any quality of life again’. She's got massive brain damage. They were wrong. I spent five years rehabilitating her, but they were wrong, and she's completely normal again. So, it's not just accepting—what I think is important to realise is the limitations of your knowledge and saying, ‘Hey, I don't know, I'm at the end of my abilities'. You might have to look somewhere else, or outside the square, or try something else to talk, to so and so. 

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: And that's fine. That's good if we get there but not blanket saying, ‘Well, you can never run again because you've got a knee injury.’ The amount of times, amount of runners who have come on doctors said I should never run again because I've got some slight knee problems, and I was like, ‘Really?’

Dr Colin: Yes, no, I agree. So, a case in point in my own life, I have congenital arthritis. That's so bad. I had my first hip reconstruction at 17. 

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Colin: That left me with a four-centimetre leg length discrepancy. So I've got some real orthopaedic problems. And was racing mountain bikes at almost the pro-level in Canada in downhill at the time, and wanted to pursue that. And I was told, ‘Never ride a bike again', this kind of stuff. And I'll be doing a half Ironman in Muskoka in July... 

Lisa: Wow. I love it. 

Dr Colin: ...25 years later. 

Lisa: Exactly. 

Dr Colin: So, yes. At the end of the day... 

Lisa: And if we keep founding way round the problem. Yes.

Dr Colin: Yes, I mean, you know your limits better than somebody else. But I think that there's also a time when you do need to respect the knowledge that someone's done and spent time attaining. But if they'll put aside all of your own expectations and things, then they're not doing you a good service. 

Lisa: No, no. And sometimes they're wrong, and they're just not up—what I'm also saying, and we're getting off on a tangent here, but it is a—if your life is different there's definitely a 20-year lag between what's actually the latest in science and what's actually happening in clinical practice. 

Dr Colin: Yes, true.

Lisa: And not so much in the area like you have, but saying things like critical care and things like this, it's just so far behind the eight ball because there's so many hoops that they have to jump through in order to get anything changed, that the science can be saying, ‘Hey, this is what you need to be doing'. And they'll be like, ‘Yes, we need another 20 years before we got adopted'.

Dr Colin: Yes, knowledge translation is difficult. 

Lisa: Yes, it just seems to be this huge lag, and in some areas of medicine but I've gotten completely off-topic. But I love talking with people that are on the cutting edge of stuff, and I find your knowledge is absolutely next level. 

Colin, I think we're gonna have to get you back because we didn't even get to plantar fasciitis and hips and knees, and all the rest of it and...

Dr Colin: I'd love to. 

Lisa: Yes, what you're doing... So, before we wrap it up, where can people find out your books and obviously, you've said on Amazon, but give us your websites, and where people can follow you on Instagram and all that sort of good stuff.

Dr Colin: So we're just starting to build out a website called stuffaboutfeet.com. So that's probably the best place to get me right now. You'll be able to see some of the books that are on there, other podcasts that I've done, you'll watch some videos, and then that's going to be built up just more and more and moreover the coming weeks and months. 

And through that site, you'll be able to get to me whether it's a personal email or you want to get on the socials or what have you. And so I've been kind of locked away in both the research lab and the clinic office for too many years. And now we're going to get me a bit more online and doing a few more of these things.

Lisa: Yes, and you're so talented at this interviewing and stuff. So it's really easy to be able to share your knowledge and to get it out there. And then you can have much more of a massive impact worldwide rather than just locally, which is fantastic. You know that we can do that now with technology. So I love getting world-leading people on the show and sharing the amazing insights. And you definitely right up there, Colin. So thank you very, very much for sharing your insights today. So stuffaboutfeet.com, was that right? Was that correct? And that you've been listening to Colin Dombrowski. 

Colin, any last words that you would like to share with people out there?

Dr Colin: You know, I really hope at the end of the day that you use your knowledge, the best to be able to get out there and do the things that you want to do. And don't put yourself in a box, really understand that you're capable of the things that you think that you are, it's just a matter of figuring out how to do them appropriately. 

Lisa: Yes. And getting the right people with the right info. 

Dr Colin: Yes.

Lisa: And we've just done that, haven't we? Brilliant. Thank you so much, Colin.

Dr Colin: Thank you.

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.

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