Sitting Is The Silent Killer! This Causes Sedentary Death Syndrome. The Truth About Early Ageing. Dr. Vonda Wright.

0:00Experian is your big financial friend, helping you explore credit card offers with confidence. Some cards are labeled no ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. See Experian.com for details. Applying for cards labeled no ding decline won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved. We are killing ourselves by sitting around. I see 28-year-olds, 30-year-olds, early 40-year-olds already with bone deficit. Why is this happening? When you read medical studies, our aging process means we have to become frail and decrepit. That can't be true.

0:32I mean, we have all the tools. If we do not pay attention, I think people can start dying it. Oh my God. There are 33 chronic diseases that kill us. Heart disease, stroke, that are directly impacted by the way we move, how we use our bodies. By saving mobility, I am going to save you from the ravages of chronic disease. How do you stop that? There are three main components. Number one. I am having to fight this voice in my head that's telling me, well, maybe you're slowing down a bit because you're 57. Bodies will respond to the positive stimuli we place on it no matter what our age. Nutrition, pounding your bones.

1:11There's irrefutable evidence that walking will increase your lifespan. The next thing we need to do is make sure that everybody can do that. To me, every little bit counts. Being healthy is evidence of success. I don't want to live till 110 if I'm not going to be vital and joyful. It's like the one magic pill. You've slightly blown my mind. Well, Dr. Von Der Eich, so lovely to meet you. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your medical degrees, but you actually were working in oncology first. What got you to kind of change that into the more muscular, skeletal? Yeah, my first medical jobs were as a nurse.

1:53So right after my bachelor's degree, I went back to school, became an oncology nurse. And at the time, in the United States, it was called primary nursing, meaning it was one nurse and four patients, and that's it. There were no extended helpers. It was just – and so it was an amazing time. And so I did that for about six years. And really, I'm a quick learner. I work very hard. I had gotten out of that what I was going to get out of that. So I had to make the next move. And I was only, I don't know, 26 or something. And so I decided, you know, when you change directions, you have to do the whole evaluation of what you value.

2:32I value taking care of people. I value learning and research. And going back to medical school would allow me to do both of those things. And plus, I've gotten my Chinese mother in my ear going, you should be a doctor. You should be a doctor, right? I mean, I don't know. It was the influence of that. I think now, because I have such a passion for teaching, I could have been very, very happy as a fourth grade teacher. Because fourth grade teachers teach 10-year-olds, which is this magical time in a child's life. They're old enough to learn. They're not so old. They're flipping their hair at you.

3:05But so I had to keep learning, and I had to take care of people. I went back to medical school at 28. And then in medical school, you divide out very quickly basically around the way your brain works, whether you're going down a surgical pathway or a medicine pathway. and thank God I have my farm hands that I, these hands can see and my brain can see in 3D. Right. And my hands can make it. And I think that's just how I work and all the work I did on the farm. But then you get there and you're like, oh, I'm a coming up for surgeon. What do I want to do? Well, the reason orthopedics is so amazing is we get to take care of people from the minute of their birth, some babies have orthopedic problems, to the minute of our death.

3:53We can work with athletes, which is what I do in general, athletes and active people, or we can work with people who have cancer or spine problems. So there's really not a population orthopedics does not cover. And so orthopedics, just by definition, is all of your joints, all your muscles, all your bones. And the reason it continues to be so fascinating to me, even though this is the mantra I wrote down when I started my career, is that by saving mobility, the way we move, how we use our bodies, I am going to save you from the ravages of chronic disease. Because it's like the one magic pill. I mean, you've seen that.

4:36You've seen that in the line, right? You can literally watch. I guess you've had the perfect insight into when that happens to somebody, what age. You must have just been constantly asking yourself questions. Why is it happening to people so young? I mean, what was the biggest shock, do you think, when you became an orthopedic surgeon? Were you like, why is this happening? I love that question because it has driven me. I am still as curious about this today as I was the first day I stepped out of my fellowship. and that is why do we age the way we age? Or why do I see people becoming frail and decrepit?

5:15I mean, we have all the tools. We have 605 muscles. We have 260 bones. We have this miraculous system. And yet when you read medical studies about populations of people, the picture you get is that our aging process means we have to become frail and decrepit. We start with this vitality and vigor of youth, and then we steadily decline. And I said, that can't be true for every person. What is it that's making that happen? And I think it's also fed by the fact that my own father, every day of my life, I cannot remember a day when he was not out running. He's a runner. Sometimes he'd be gone on the farm running so long.

5:58My mother and I are like, where's dad? Which route did he go today? How old are you talking? Is he still running now? Oh, yeah. He's turning 85 next year. And he's gone from being a marathon distance runner. About 10 years ago, he got a total hip. He was still doing it. And now at 85, I have to say things like to him, could you please not go nine miles today? We live in Florida. it's 600 degrees outside could you please just can we do three so but that example of being healthy vital active joyful I see in my own house healthy active healthy vital active joyful healthy active I love that healthy vital active joyful joyful yes that's what we want I mean there There are so many things I want to ask you.

6:50Then ask me. Because, well, because, you know, well, what's the life expectancy in the States? What's the kind of average life expectancy? Better news for people in the UK. Okay. Okay. 81. 81 in the UK. 81 in the UK. United States, 77.6. Lots of reasons, I think, for that. 81. So for babies born today, we can look ahead, oh, 81. Although now there is a growing, growing population of centurions, 100 years old. Super centurions, 110 years old. But on average, 81 years old. So as somebody, what was interesting for me when I hit 50, everything changed. And I went through a dark year of like, oh, my God, I'm looking towards the ends of my life.

7:43to then thinking, how am I going to make this the greatest chapter of my life? And, you know, anybody that's listening or watching, I would say you want to start prepping for this in your 30s, even your 20s. Like, it's never too early to start prepping for the rest of your life. I don't want to live till 110 if I'm not going to be vital and joyful. Yes. So what patterns are you seeing in the discrepancy between the age that people die at and the age that people start losing quality of life? I think people can start dying at 30 if we do not pay attention to this literal temple that we live in, right?

8:27So I talk sometimes about this critical decade. And when do we finally start paying attention? Well, like you, I was a little wigged out by 40. But then I had Isabella, my daughter, my youngest daughter at 40. And so I was all into young women activities like raising a baby. But I agree with you. At 50, I saw my own mortality. And I felt a little like, what? Okay. I am clearly maybe a little, if life is a bell curve and 45 is in the middle. And I felt those things you felt. I felt a little depressed about it. I mean, I didn't change anything what I was doing. but it really, for the first time, because I don't know about you, maybe I never thought I was going to age or get old or have to change.

9:24Because I've had the privilege like you, I've seen your career of being active and jumping around. And I do all those, I mean, I do Spartan races at, you know, and somebody said, Vonda Wright at her age is doing a Spartan race. And for me, my reaction was, what do you mean my age? Why wouldn't I do a Spartan race, right? Could you explain what a Spartan race is just very quickly for somebody in the UK that might not know? So you've probably seen pictures of the crazy obstacle races where you're going in the mud, you're crawling under barbed wire, you're going over eight-foot walls. There's a whole genre of obstacle races that honestly have now become an Olympic sport.

10:07Isn't that crazy? In 28, obstacle course racing is going to be an Olympic sport. Isn't that crazy? That's great. I'm 57, that 57 would be a reason not to just do what I want to do when I want to do it. I want to ask you something about that specifically, because I do think that as I'm getting older, I am having to fight this voice in my head that's telling me, well, maybe you're slowing down a bit because you're 57. I mean, how do you stop that? I think that's a matter of resilience. I think the battle is five and a half inches between our ears, right? The real battle is in our head. If we absorb the cultural narrative that we have seen from the generation before us, that we just accept at some arbitrary point in time that the light bulb goes off and that we can just cruise on into the end, I think that's what we're fighting against.

11:03But I think our generation is going to be the one that pivots it for the millennials, the 43-year-olds and our younger daughters that says, if we continue to invest in our bodies and our brains every day, like we would invest in maintaining a luxury car or any luxury thing we have, we just don't buy it and leave it to become decrepit. Why do we focus on those material things and not us as our highest evidence of success. To me, being healthy is evidence of success, not some shoes I buy with red soles, right? But it can be a psychological barrier to, oh, I'm just getting old. Let's sit in a chair.

11:48But here's the thing. Think about the way we're designed. We're designed with our most powerful muscles below our belly buttons. If we were designed to sit still in any period of our lives, we would be a mushroom. Nature is very specific. We would have a big, flat, sessile stalk with all the good stuff going on above. That is not how we're designed. We are designed to be strongest from our waist down. And it's not like when the light bulb of youth goes off that we grow a sessile stalk. No, we retain our life. So I'm just making fun of the fact that nature says we are meant to move. I really hope you're enjoying this episode.

12:29And if you can, give us a follow. I mean, the other thing I think that people find is that as we get older, leg muscles, glutes, our bottoms, our abs, these are big sets of muscles. Yes, huge. And they're much harder to build and make nice and strong. Is this the same for men and women as we age? Do we both lose muscle, when does that start happening? So some of the pillars of aging, there are 12 now, there used to be six, but one of them is the loss of lean muscle mass. It's called sarcopenia. Part of that is a decreased responsiveness to anabolic steroids, such as testosterone and estrogen. It's just a part of our aging process.

13:16But here's the deal. Our bodies will respond to the positive stimuli we place on it, no matter what our age or no matter what our beginning skill level, we begin to see in women declines in our estrogen and testosterone in our early 40s. So even if we're menopausal at 52, the hormonal changes are starting much earlier. And we begin to see the muscle and bone changes in women that early. In men, men have different responses to testosterone because of their genetics than women. So they build more bone initially. They build more muscle mass. But you do see loss of bone in men. Two million men in the United States have osteoporosis.

14:06You lose lean muscle mass starting, you know, in midlife. It's less evident for men than it is for women, but it happens in people with ovaries and without ovaries. And obviously muscles are the things that support and protect our skeleton. Would I be right in saying that? Well, I like to frame muscle and bone like this. We're hearing a lot about muscle these days, which is amazing because my lab was a muscle stem cell lab originally. So I have loved muscle since 2000, honestly, when we began studying muscle satellite cells, which are the stem cells and muscles. Muscles are amazing metabolic organs.

14:45We think of, there are three kinds of muscle. There's your heart muscle, and it has its own electrical system doing its thing. We have our smooth muscle, which is in our gut, which houses our microbiome. It digests our food. Everything else is skeletal muscle. So every move you make, whether you move your eyes or whether we're pumping iron, that is all skeletal muscle. So it is not only for locomotion, the sliding of the muscle. It's a huge metabolic organ. It helps regulate our glucose. It releases proteins called myokines that help run our body. But what we forget is that without our bones, which nobody thinks about unless we're talking about our cheekbones, without our bones, we're just a quivering mass of contracting muscle going nowhere.

15:33It is our bones that gives us structure. That's why you and I are able to sit up right now. But the way I think people think about bones is, A, not to think about them at all. Or if we do, we think of them as the strong, silent type, you know, the person standing in the back of the room surveying. You don't hear from them. But what I want people to start to understand is that bones are also a metabolic, hormonally releasing organ. And why wouldn't it be? Our bodies are so smart. We have bones from the top of our head to the end of our toes. Why wouldn't we give it a job metabolically? So this is new news.

16:14So in addition to holding you upright, being responsible for the mineral release, being a storehouse for minerals and all the building blocks of our body, we know bones do that. Did you know? Bones release a hormone called osteocalcin. This hormone, I know, this is so exciting, and people don't talk about it, and I should because I'm the orthopedic surgeon, right? Osteocalcin for men has a role where it causes the testes to release more testosterone. Bones do that. For the last decade, it's been known that there is a bone-brain axis of hormonal. I know. Hormonal control. Osteocalcin works in the brain to increase neurotransmitter release.

16:59So I just, I know. I just had a text from one of the menopause this morning, the group of doctors. Which one? Which one? Because I love the menopause. You know what? I know. Someone with a 4-4 prefix. So somebody in Great Britain, her name didn't come up, but she's like, yeah, how fascinating that people with dementia often have osteoporosis. And I didn't respond to her. I'm responding here. Well, did you know that there is a bone-brain axis where osteocalcin from the bone can help the brain produce more neurochemicals. We also know that a bone is critical for glucose regulation and satiety, meaning that osteocalcin can work with the muscle and the fat to aid in insulin sensitivity.

17:50It can go to the pancreas to help the pancreas release more insulin. And I know it's like mind blowing. And this is the first time I've talked about it on your first show. Thanks, I'm done. For you newsy types, I think the scoop is important. I'm like, what am I going to tell her? That's fascinating. This is great. It is. And Bone also releases, this is a big deal, releases a protein called lipocalcin-2. It goes to the brain and tells your brain, okay, I'm full now. Just like the GLP-1. So, I mean, this is slightly blowing my mind. I know. Because now I've always just felt like my bone is just a piece of bone.

18:36That's right. Dry, dead. Yes. But I don't understand. How can you look after a bone to make sure that it can do all of these incredible things. Yes. As best it can. I love for people to notice their bones. And I sometimes suggest getting in front of a mirror naked, which is a very frightening thing sometimes, but it's your body. You own this thing. Let's just notice it. And okay, you have beautiful cheekbones. Well, we'll notice our cheekbones, right? But let's notice our clavicles, our collarbones that, you know, if we want to talk about it in terms of fashion, what holds up our gorgeous dresses, but our wrists are the delicate bones of our wrists or our kneecaps are sticking out.

19:16Let's just notice these bones, right? That's number one, because you can't love something you don't even notice. Yeah. Let's notice it. Well, number two, here's something that I would love everybody to start working on is we don't remember we were talking about being 50 and suddenly like, oh my God, what do I need to do to live long and prosper? Well, I would like women in particular, men and women, because this is a man and woman thing, it's a people thing, not just a woman thing, is to start noticing their bones in their 30s. We lay down bone, the bulk of our mineral bone, by the time we're 30.

19:53And then if we do nothing to continue to invest in it, what are we going to do? Live off that storehouse forever until we're 97, which is my target goal, at least. Is it? It is. Okay. Because my youngest daughter was born when I was 40 and I'm 57. So I think if I can stay around until she's my age, yeah, that's a lot of bugging my children, right? But anyway, so laying down the bone at 30. Okay. We're going to do the biggest favor in the world to our younger nieces, daughters, and people. We are going to teach them that they're in a prime time to secure their happiness for the rest of their lives by paying attention to their bones before they turn 30 because that's when you lay down bone.

20:40But do you know what I'm seeing? Even the millennial women, the 43-year-old elder millennials who are entering perimenopause and men are on the last stages of the mistaken societal craze of being little. This is my little person. We have to be little. We can't take up much space. We can't eat many calories. And in the United States, we've had a law equalizing sports called Title IX for about 53 years. So what that meant was that you must give women as much opportunity in sport, organized sport, as men. So if we had 100 male athletes, the colleges have to provide opportunities for 100 female athletes.

21:24So with that equalization, we have an entire generation of women who have come through that wonderful thing, wonderful law, who were very, very active, which you would think meant they would be laying down bone. But if they were in relative calorie deficit their entire young lives and very, very active, they might not have laid down enough bone. And that's what I'm seeing. I see 28-year-olds, 30-year-olds, early 40-year-olds already with bone deficit. it. So food is important and exercise. Like what can somebody, if you're talking to somebody in their late 20s, what can they do to lay down the best bone?

22:09Yes. So for people at every age, but especially people in their 20s and 30s to build better bone, there are three main components. Number one, let's bash these bones. It sounds crazy, but I need you to jump. I need you to run around. I need you to not just walk up the stairs. I need you to pound up the stairs because research has shown it's irrefutable. The mechanical impact of pounding your bones translates into biochemical feedback, which causes your bone to say, oh, a lot's being expected of us. Let's lay down better bone. So what we see in athletes, and there is great research coming out of the University of Wisconsin that shows even in young women comparing young athletes who are gymnasts, That's a lot of pounding of bone versus cyclists or swimmers.

22:58Those pounding athletes have much better bone density, thicker rinds, cortex, the outside layer of our bones. And that's something we need to do from childhood is to impact our bones. The next thing we need to do is make sure that we're feeding our bones. We cannot calorie restrict and expect to build enough bone density, partly because our bones require protein and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, but also because if we are calorie restricted, it is very likely that we are not going to have regular menstrual cycles. And that estrogen flux is critical for laying down bone because estrogen and testosterone have a critical role to play in healthy bone manufacturing.

23:49So nutrition, pounding your bones. Okay. If we want the healthiest bones ever, can we please stop smoking? We think it's only about lung cancer, but it inhibits bone growth. We know bone will not heal if we've got the poisons that come in in smoking in our bodies. And then finally, we need to build some muscle, you know, muscles, all the rage right now, but muscle works with bone in this way. So muscle, this hand is muscle, this hand is bone is connected to our bones through our tendons. My hand is a tendon. So bone will only move if a muscle contracts against it, right through our tendons. Well, that pulling of the tendon against the bone, our body perceives as mechanical stimuli.

24:41So even if you don't want to jump or can't jump or for whatever reason, can't pound your bones, we can build muscle to move our bones and that will build better bone. So those are the three main ways. And that's for young, that's for young people. That's for everybody. Okay. Because what I was going to say to you was um a couple of years ago i um fell i didn't i did not have a fall that's feels very aging i fell while i was running in the woods i tripped over something a traumatic traumatic fall um and i tore all the ligaments in my ankle 12 weeks i was fine got back to training it's absolutely back to normal but there's something in my head yes that has made me a little bit more scared of the leaping, the jumping, the running through the forest.

25:36Like, I'm a bit nervous about it again. What do you do about that? That's an aging thing. And that I'm sure is a big reason why some people stop jumping. We're fearful. We're fearful of injury because it hurts. It was miserable for you for 12 weeks. I know it must have been. I know because it affects our brain. Our brains are used to that. So the best way I have found to get back to the place of confidence is just progression, right? So maybe you don't go and go in the dark woods and run as fast as you can, but maybe you work on speed and agility in a gym. Because just like you found, you would not have been hurt had you not fallen.

26:17I trip over my work bag. I carry around this big red bag. I put it too close to my feet. I get up quickly and I I catch my foot on it, but because I still have the foot speed to step over it quickly like a gazelle, I don't fall, right? So doing those little foot drills will give your brain the confidence that, okay, I may have fallen once, but I got this. It doesn't, it's not my destiny. Let's talk about the sponsors of this podcast. Zoe Membership, a personalized nutrition program. I always get asked why I look after my body and the answer, I want to look good naked. Joke. Don't worry. That's not it.

26:59I do it because I know what my health is worth and I want to have the best life ever. I mean, every decade has looked very different from the last, but with age comes wisdom. Enough to recognise that the more I invest in my body, the more it pays me back. and I did Zoe's at-home test and learned about the good and the bad microbes in my gut and then Zoe gave me specific food scores so I could see which foods my body responds to best and it's science-led. In randomised controlled trials, Zoe members who participated in the study saw positive changes to their gut microbiome and energy levels. So if you want to join me and over 100 ,000 Zoe members, head to Zoe.com and use code DAVINA10 for 10 % off.

27:54That's Zoe.com and use code DAVINA10. Oh, and by the way, as you clearly like podcasts, you should go and check out their new show, Zoe Science and Nutrition. It's so good. I am a massive fan. I love how they do all of this research and they give it all away for free. I've read something very interesting in some of your writing about, I've always been about boosting my heart like cardiac, cardio, cardio, cardio. But you're talking about a much lower heart rate when you're working out. Talk me through that. Yes. So when we talk about our heart rate and effort in working out, we categorize it in zones.

28:32zone five is is when we're doing like vo2 max testing which is that the 100 if you make me keep going i'm probably going to get sick it's just too much well that's zone five that is your maximum heart rate for zone zero is less than what we're doing now right so there is a thought that if we're not if we're not gutting it out we're making no progress and the fact of the matter is that that is not how professional athletes work out. They do not gut it out for four hours every day, most specifically endurance athletes. They are very smart on how they use their effort and their heart rate. So we've learned from them that to keep our cardiovascular system the healthiest, to keep our mitochondria, which are the little parts of our cells, mainly living in muscle that generate our energy in the form of this chemical called ATP, to keep them healthy and flexible in what fuel they can use, we need to do something called base training, which is keeping our heart rates within a lower zone.

29:40It's individual for every person. The premise is that we would like to be burning fat for our base training instead of jumping up and burning carbohydrates during which we build up lactic acid, which burns in our legs. It decreases our performance. We'd like to just roll along and use as much fat as possible. Is that the kind of exercise where you can talk? Yeah, it's not quite this talking, but we could be together on a treadmill and we could be deciding our next big adventure, right? But not a full conversation. So zone two, we've heard a lot about it, works us at a place at the threshold of where you're burning fat most efficiently, but we have not yet put on so much effort.