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Primal Foundations Podcast
Welcome to the Primal Foundations Podcast! We will dive into what I believe are the 4 essential foundations you need to live a healthy lifestyle.
Strength , Nutrition , Movement , and Recovery.
Get ready to dive into discussions that will guide you on your transformative journey to unlocking your path to optimal health.
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Primal Foundations Podcast
Episode 43: Heart Rate Variability for Longevity with Dr. Torkil Færø
Discover how heart rate variability (HRV) can transform your health and longevity with Dr. Torkil Færø, physician and author of The Pulse Cure. Learn how wearable tech like Garmin, Whoop, and Oura can help optimize fitness, recovery, and stress management.
Dr. Færø shares actionable insights on smarter training methods like Zone 2 training, the impact of diet on HRV, and the importance of whole foods. Plus, get a sneak peek at his upcoming book on sun exposure.
Join us to explore the future of wellness and the power of HRV in living a healthier, longer life.
Connect with Dr. Færø:
https://www.instagram.com/dr.torkil/
https://pulskuren.no/
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Instagram: @Tony_PrimalFoundations
Website: Primalfoundations.com
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Welcome to the Primal Foundations podcast. I'm your host, tony Pascola. We will dive into what I believe are the four central foundations you need for a healthy lifestyle Strength, nutrition, movement and recovery. Get ready to unlock your path to optimal health and enjoy the episode. Today's guest is Torkel Farrell. Torkel is a Norwegian physician and author of the bestseller the Pulse Cure, which focuses on heart rate variability and the correlation to health. Torkel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Tony, it's great to be here. It's wonderful to have you on. I'm excited and intrigued to talk about some heart rate variability. Are you coming to us from Norway this morning?
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. So here is almost evening time.
Speaker 1:It's almost evening, it's about eight in the morning out in Chicago. Here All right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's cool that we can talk and there's no delay in as we were talking and discussing just a fantastic tool to be able to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's been great and I'm sure, with you know, promoting the book and reaching different audiences is and this is what I love to do the podcast, because it's like a grassroots version of you know getting some information out that some people might not even have access to and then for the listeners, can you, can you give us some background on how you found yourself in medicine and what was your motivation to write the Pulse Cure?
Speaker 2:How I found myself in medicine.
Speaker 2:That was actually to be able to travel the world and see the world, because in Norway you can work part-time, you can take two weeks here and two weeks there and work and then go off traveling.
Speaker 2:So my initial motivation behind becoming a doctor was actually to see the world and to have a free life.
Speaker 2:You know, but 10 years ago my father died, and he died from a well lifestyle related disease that that most diseases are these days, and I could see that if I continued my lifestyle because I've done all the mistakes in my own book I would probably not live to see 80 years old, and I would want to live as long as possible. So then I understood I have to change my lifestyle around totally. And as I did that, I found out that using heart rate variability, using the rhythm of the heart, can guide you towards the right choices, because when you do the right choices it will improve your heart rate variability, and if you do the wrong choices that I was a master at, you will also see that in your heart rate variability, and so it's a magnificent tool. You know that probably you and most of your listeners will already have on their wrist, and they may not be aware of the possibility that exists in using the heart rate to monitor your lifestyle.
Speaker 1:And then, for those that are unfamiliar with the book the Pulse Cure, can you explain what HRV is and why that's a good metric for health?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my book, the Pulse Cure, which has been a bestseller in Norway now for close to two years, is a book on the best strategies for lifestyle and, combined with using the variables to guide it and heart rate variability, will see how your autonomic nervous system works, how your stress balance, if it's good enough, if it's sustainable and compatible with health over time.
Speaker 2:So we need to stress and we need to put loads on our body, you know, to become stronger and more fit, but we also need to stress and we need to put loads on our body, you know, to become stronger and more fit, but we also need to recover properly and many athletes and many people in general they are under-recovered.
Speaker 2:There's not enough focus on the down state, on relaxing, on sleeping, on recovering after exercise or after life stress in total.
Speaker 2:And the way the heartbeat can show that and reveal the state of our stress balance is that if we are in the relaxed mode, then the heart rate will have a variation between the heartbeats.
Speaker 2:When we breathe in and there's more oxygen in the lungs, the heart rate will go up a little bit, and when we breathe out and there's less oxygen in the lungs, the heart will allow itself, so to speak, to relax a little bit. Measured in milliseconds, hardly detectable, but if you're in a really calm mode you can feel it yourself with your pulse and your corroded artery. But if you're in the stress state, then your heart will beat like a metronome, regardless of your breathing in or out. It will just beat at a very steady pace. And this is how the wearables can detect your stress balance and measure it in the moment and throughout the day and night, while you're busy living your life, and it can tell you so much about the load on your system, your ability to have a flexible nervous system to be able to calm down and also to stress when you need to we hear all the times of like we were talking about my garmin earlier.
Speaker 1:You know there's different wearables that you're hearing the who, whoop, aura, things like that. Which brand or style do you recommend for people? Is it specific, like athletes should kind of get this, or this is good for just average people?
Speaker 2:I think for most people, garmin watches are the best, like the one you have. Your version is a bit old, so there's a lot of new things about it that is, uh, has improved a lot. Your watch is probably four or five years old, I'll guess, and so garmin, for most people, is by far the best choice and also the the cheaper option often. But you can also use the whoop band, as you mentioned mentioned, and the Aura Ring, and the Apple Watch and almost all of the modern smartwatches will have some kind of system that will tell you about your stress balance. But Garmin is by far the best one as it will show you the stress level in the moment and throughout the day in very useful graphs. But it also depends, you know. Garment is the best to kind of micromanage your stress levels.
Speaker 1:If you just want to have like glimpses into your, the state of your physiology, then it might be a whoop band or or a ring will be good enough and for do you recommend for athletes that they have, if they're doing training, let's say like endurance endeavors, the chest strap, because I know a lot of people recommend having the chest strap versus yes, this does also do that, you know, on the wrist, but is there a difference if you're working out of your heart rate variability?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the chest strap. If you do some vigorous activity, you know, like running or tennis or racket sports or whatever, then it's best to have the chest strap absolutely. But often I forget it and then I can see that at least my new garmin watch will will be do pretty much the same job, but you're more certain to have the right result with a chest strap.
Speaker 1:HRV. What number is a good number for somebody, and does that differ between male and female?
Speaker 2:There will be minor differences between male and female. It's not so it will not be such Maybe one or two, three milliseconds in a difference on on the averages, and there's kind of a 50 percent genetic component to it. So you shouldn't really compare your HRV to anyone else's because it will not necessarily like if you have a low one that you could consider having like 25 milliseconds, which would be normally considered a low one for your age. Then another person that may have 50 or 60 could have exactly the same objective health level because of this genetic component. The most important thing is to find out how good can you get your heart rate variability under the perfect circumstances and just compare yourself to yourself, really Okay.
Speaker 2:And I would say we talked about the chest strap and the most important thing for athletes. They often focus too much on their heart rate during training, but I would say that the most important thing is how your heart rate reacts after the session. That will tell you more about how well you tolerated that session than the heart rate in itself or even your resting heart rate. You could, you could have the same resting heart rate at night, you know. Say that you have, for example, 45 in the resting heart rate. But your heart rate variability, as a measure of whether you are over trained or not, can can be kind of double or or half the value you know. So it's um. I often say it's like watching your heart rate with a magnifying glass.
Speaker 1:So so the heart rate variability will tell you so much more for an athlete yeah, and you you've talked about this before of almost like gamifying, or gamification of your life and in your training yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So. It becomes kind of a game where you suddenly have a like a dashboard to your own physiology, just like you have in your car. You know, and, uh, and you have all these different things. You know that, uh, that technology can get out of your movement, from your pulse, from your sleep, from your temperature and all of this and use artificial intelligence and can tell you so much more, and it will just probably just you know escalate in the coming years as well.
Speaker 1:You know when we go into the doctor's office, you know the traditional methods of assessing. You're looking at, you know a blood pressure or just a? You're just beats per minute. You know on the monitor Is HRV superior, not? Are they all kind of the same, giving you kind of the same exact idea?
Speaker 2:I would say that HRV is superior.
Speaker 2:Or, of course, if you have a bad blood pressure, if your blood pressure is too high, it may absolutely be more dangerous, but it would also. I don't think that you would have a high blood pressure without also having a low HRV, so those would be connected in somewhat. But the good thing about heart rate variability is that you have this number on your wrist, available at all times, and you have it. You know, not the doctor. You don't have to wait and pay the doctor to see the results. You have them on your wrist at all times.
Speaker 2:So you have the control and your heart rate variability will tell you a lot about your risk of contracting any kind of disease, any kind of lifestyle disease. That includes heart disease and cancer and autoimmune diseases and so many other diseases that we struggle with. So if you have a good heart rate variability that is a sign that your immune system is working smoothly and that you have a good physiology then your risk of getting a disease is a lot less. You know, as you probably know, that just if you're exercising a certain amount a week, you reduce your chances of getting cancer and heart disease. You know by a lot.
Speaker 1:That number that's attached to me it gives. It's also empowering right. If I, if this is the number that I'm looking for, I'm going to be doing my day to day looking at that number and also, like we, we talk about preventive care, a lot and lifestyle choices. Like you were mentioning, there's a lot of diseases that are caused by just lifestyle in general. Going into that, let's just talk about, you know, physical activity at first. You know what types of physical activity or training should we be doing to improve our HRV?
Speaker 2:Well, the optimal for longevity. That seems to be record sports. I don't know the reason for that. It's probably that it involves a lot of you know, speed, you know changing directions, cooperating with another person, obviously, and that is both kind of explosive. And then it's also endurance and so on technique, you know coordination. So racquet sport seems to be the best one for health and longevity. But for hrv I would say that would be probably any endurance, uh, sport you know, like like running, like cardio, like high intensity training and so on, and and anything is a lot better than nothing, and you don't.
Speaker 2:The worst thing is to be in that lowest 25% of VO2 max, because we can also probably compare it to the VO2 max. It's probably a better number to watch than the heart rate variability number in itself. So to have among the lowest VO2 max levels that you can also get from your Garmin, you know, and an Apple watch and so on, to be in the lowest quarter, the lowest 25%, that is, those are the ones who get sick. Once you get to the 50% and more, then it doesn't really matter so much whether you're on the 50% or among the 5% best VO2 max. The difference in health level and longevity is not so big, so you don't really have to struggle very hard and use 10 hours a week to improve your VO2 max to live longer. You may, of course, do it to run faster and win the game, you know, but for longevity, being there in the middle is good enough, I would say.
Speaker 1:I've also heard about racket sports and squash and tennis and how those are correlated with some of the one of the best options for being healthy for lifespan. But I think it is because you know you do a little bit of sprinting and you recover a little bit, and then you sprint a little bit, then you recover and you're also out there. It's something you're going to do a lot. You're going to do it because you're having fun as well. We always like think of fitness and training as like it's got to be this intense, like really hard workout or exercising, but it could just be fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually, you know, tennis would obviously be more fun also. And you have this, as you say, you sprint and then you pause, and then there's a lot of pauses, and actually the best tennis players are the ones who can lower their heart rate between the balls so that they are experts at calming themselves down, you know, before the next strike, or whatever you call it in tennis next strike or whatever you call it in tennis how much?
Speaker 1:because I know when, when people see these numbers and they people can really get into data and and the metrics of things and they start to add more to their lifestyle and their day-to-day, you know how much working out is is too much. Because I feel like there is an opposite end to this where people are actually overdoing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and they may not necessarily overdo it, but they would under recover. So I think that is a is more precise to say that. But normally exercising more than you know seven to 10 hours a week is often connected to worse outcomes than not training at all. You may be training too much, it may be too hard a load on your heart and on your system. We don't have a physiology that is constructed for those kind of loads. Really, really, if we put these variables on hunter gatherer societies that still exist today, we see that they are in moderate activity two or three hours a day. They're walking maybe 15 000 to 20 000 steps and occasionally in between them they are are really pushing their, their forces, but most of the time is in moderate. So actually there would be.
Speaker 2:I think I'm rarely impressed by the longevity of former athletes. It's not like when you see their obituaries that you think, well, wow, he or she lived a long life. You know it's more often the opposite, that you're kind of surprised that they didn't reach 70 or 75 or whatever. And from my clinical experience, the ones that live the longest they have not been exercising, they have just been moving. Naturally they have been outside, maybe gardening, walking, maybe living in such a place that they would need to move. Naturally, they've been eating real food you, you know and having good relationships, and and these things that are are more often connected to longevity and the good health. So it's not necessarily so that the more you push yourself and the more you exercise, the better health will be the outcome and I like how you hit the other points of like relationships.
Speaker 1:Like this is a it's not just about the working out we're going to get into some nutrition as well but that holistic approach to health and well-being versus I'm just going to go to be going to the gym and that's going to take care of all of my problems and with that recovery we talked about a little bit earlier. You know, when my watch tells me and that's why I get I don't really know what to believe of the watch. I know it's probably telling me the right things, but I'll do a workout like a run four miles, five, whatever it might be and then the recovery will show up at when I click the end button and it'll say recovery 48 hours. And I was like 48 hours I felt good on that run. Is that something that? Is that just in the moment that the watch is calculating and making an assumption, or is it?
Speaker 2:like from the whole day. Yeah, yeah it. It may be related. So if you had a tough workout the day before, you know, that maybe gave you 36 hours and you have the next session before those 36 hours, it will add, you know, maybe 10 hours from the previous workout. So that may be one of the reasons why we would be surprised, because it still kept kind of 10 hours from the day before you know and added on to this one session.
Speaker 2:But often it will be very hard to find out when you go over the lactic acid threshold.
Speaker 2:You will not necessarily feel it, but you know and that is why athletes you know need to take the finger test you know to check for lactic acid, because it's hard to know and once you go into that lactic acid threshold you need a lot more recovery.
Speaker 2:So that may also be one of the explanation why you are surprised, because you were pushing it into zone three or into zone four without really feeling it, because you felt so good, pushing yourself so hard that you you will have a lot of lactic acid will need a lot of recovery time after that.
Speaker 2:For example, when I did the VO2 max test, you know you're just running as hard as you can, maybe six or eight minutes, you know, on the treadmill from when you start until you're finished it's six to eight minutes, and I got 96 hours of recovery time and I really felt that as well. I felt like I had a flu for several days, and if I would run in zone two, for example, for one and a half hour, I would probably get less than 20 hours of recovery time. So it's that last high intensity part of it that will give you this really extra time and it is not necessarily worth it, you know, and that is why the best athletes often have 80% of their exercise in zone two and then maybe 20% in the more high intensity zone.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've covered on the podcast is that some instructors, master instructors, come on and one of the things is anti-glycolytic training, where you know you'll start to develop that lactic acid but giving it the time it your body needs to clear it before your next activity or your next session, uh, which is a different way of training in the states that people are used to. People are used to high intensity interval training. Going to these group classes get like smashing it and they, they feel that they've done a good job if they're on the floor like panting, you know yeah, that's right and yeah, it's not necessarily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not necessarily, not necessarily the best way.
Speaker 2:And particularly if they have a hard, you know, stressful life, if they have a stressful job, they have a family life that demands a lot of them, and then they think that, okay, I only have two hours a week to exercise so I need to go all in and maximize, uh, you know, the effort and that is not necessarily compatible with with good health overall and most people I think there's a tendency among ambitious people to to overdo it.
Speaker 2:I think so, and and the watches will then tell you. You know the new garmin watches. They have a training readiness, so they will give you an estimate of how well prepared you are for this day to to push yourself. And I can easily find that that that is a good measurement, because when I have a low training readiness and I can do just for experimenting, I do this exactly the same run, more or less the same speed and heart rate, and I can see that after the the session, the heart rate, if I have a low training readiness for some, whatever reason, then my heart rate will be higher the rest of the day than if I had a good training readiness and that I was well rested and recovered before I did the exercise. So I would look even more to how the heart rate reacts after the session than during the session.
Speaker 1:Have you ever heard of the Mathedon method at all? No, not really. Phil Mathedone, he, he kind of kind of coined this little formula. I I started to use it a little bit after, like I've done endurance events, iron man, and I used it a little bit at for my iron man and that's that's helped me. But before I was doing some marathon training I did not use the method.
Speaker 1:But it's basically, you know, not going over your maximum aerobic function threshold of so they basically putting at like take 180, you know, minus your age, like say for 30, that's 150 beats per minute and you and you can't go over that and you stay at that. You know, if you're doing long runs I easily can pick up the pace and feel good and go, but I'll go above the one 50. And so you, you force people to stay lower and so in in time that they stay at that heart rate. You know which they feel like they're not going very fast, but over time you will actually develop more speed and more endurance but your heart rate will stay the same. That's kind of like the general yeah, um, idea of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that is what I've done. I'm going to run the new york marathon now in november and I've been doing exactly that, just slowly, slowly exercising more, and I can run faster and longer at the same heart rate. So that's been my experiment for the exercise. I would be curious to know your VO2 max. I have a VO2 max of 46, which is excellent, like excellent for my age.
Speaker 2:The garmin was safe. So so many people. If they have a low vo2 max and they decide to, okay, I'm gonna start exercising now, I'm gonna start a new life. But if you then have a vo2 max down to maybe 30 32, you cannot tolerate much before you go into above the threshold and you're full of lactic acid and you feel sick and demotivated and want to quit, you know. So I think a lot of personal trainers underestimate the intensity that people with a low vo2 max can tolerate without getting into the, to the lactic acid. And and the garmin watches will tell you after a session how much anaerobic and how much aerobic load you put on yourself, and the aim then often would be to have a good load on the aerobic side and as little as possible on the anaerobic side, which which would release the lactic acid.
Speaker 1:So yeah, cuz anaerobic you're, you're that's, that's your full clip, like your full sprinting. At that point you know, with, with. You know we want to take care of physical activity, make sure we recovered, making sure we're smart about that and not overtraining. But what role does diet play in optimizing HRV?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the diet is also very important and a lot of people find out from their watches and devices that if they eat junk food or they eat, you know, crisps or chips, or eat crisps or chips or Dunkin' Donuts and all kinds of poor nutritional value food that it will also stress your system. A lot of people will find out that eating bakery goods like bread and buns and all of these kind of things will also create stress on your system, that it will raise your heart rate and you will use some of your energy handling this kind of food that you, your body and your intestines don't really tolerate well. That will create an inflammation in your body and, instead of the immune system kind of repairing your muscles and building yourself stronger, it has to deal with this inflammation that is created in your in your system.
Speaker 2:So I think for an athlete, it's very important to pay attention to your diet and to you know, eat real food, food that your great grandmother would recognize as food, foods that don't need any label to tell you what it is or any advice on this contains vitamin D. The real good food with nutritional value doesn't have any label on it. So that would be important, and it would also be important to have a restricted feeding window so that you don't eat too late in the day, maybe that you stop eating, maybe two or three hours before you go to bed, so that your intestinal system gets enough time to recover, because it's a very vulnerable system. It's like one cell from the contents of your intestines into the bloodstream. So if you eat poor food that creates inflammation, it's like having an open wound in your stomach, in your gut, that will sap you of your forces that you would rather want to have to recover better and build yourself stronger.
Speaker 1:Lots of the conversations that we have on the on this podcast, this mainly most people are. Uh, come to this one for like, um you know, a primal diet which is consisting of, like you know, animal meats, right, animal fats but we also talk about like um. I've had just recently dr bill schindler. He he's a great guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know him. Yeah, I met him in Oslo. He's a great guy.
Speaker 1:Oh, amazing yeah he's wonderful and things that we talk about on here is really one get connected to your food, which is important, and really understanding where it's coming from, of trying to really avoid ultra-processed, highly palatable foods, because they are addicting, over-consuming and they're just they recap it, like you were saying the inflammation piece. Most of these illnesses that we're dealing with is just chronic inflammation over and over again. But getting down to those single ingredients and those whole foods is gonna be. I think it's really hard for people to wrap themselves around, because our landscape of food has changed dramatically. We don't know where our food comes from. We get it from packages and we think that's where food comes from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And to find that real food you know it's quite a challenge in the stores, yeah, so yeah, like Eat Like a Human. You know it's quite a challenge in the stores, yeah, so yeah, like eat like a human. You know the Bill Schindler book, so it's a great advice. Yeah, and the good thing about the wearables, and then particularly Garmin, because to micromanage this you would need a Garmin that you can see that certain kind of foods will stress your system and that could be a surprise. It could also be for me. Like chili is like. That will be just like alcohol. So if there's some chili in the food, I may not even, you know, taste it as spicy, it's just in the food and then my stress levels will be super high throughout the night and I will wake up the next morning with a hangover just from the chili, from chili.
Speaker 2:From chili, yeah, so a lot of people get there, and I've heard lots of other people as well, and, of course, even before I had a wearable, I would eat chili, and I would, of course, never think. You know, when I wake up, you know at 8, 9 o'clock, that how I feel would have any connection to what I ate. You know 12 hours before so, but just when you, when you see the results, you immediately understand that wow, oh, my heart rate went up from 60 to 75. You know what's happening here and then you can understand then, of course, that okay, it's, it's, it's a chili. Once it happens, you know several times, you know, you understand the common denominator of what happened.
Speaker 1:You mentioned alcohol. Has alcohol affected? Does it affect HRV in like a small quantity we're talking like one glass, because a lot of people use that as kind of the de-stressor of the night, like I'll have a glass of wine or two at night or is it over-consuming alcohol that really messes with the HRV?
Speaker 2:Yeah, both, yeah, both, and I used to think that as well. Because in the alcohol you will feel calm. Of course, that is why so many people use it. But the problem comes when the alcohol is converted into acetaldehyde in your body, and acetaldehyde is very toxic, so it has to be prioritized over anything else, including then, of course, recovery, you know, and muscle building and whatever.
Speaker 2:So I can see that when you have the wearable, that my stress level, or maybe six, seven hours throughout the night is as high as if I'm standing having a lecture in front of 200 people. So the body, when you feel terrible, you know, after a party, it's not just the feeling, your body has been super stressed throughout the night. Um, and according to whoop that tracks their users, um, it takes five days after you've been out drinking until you're back again at full recovery. So then, if you drink two times a week, you know you, you will never be knowing your optimal performance. So so for an athlete to spend energy on alcohol would be a very, very poor choice. So the best athletes, they don't drink any alcohol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went through a phase where, you know, I actually cut out alcohol completely and I've cut back over the years and tried to kind of minimize it. But the one thing I did I originally wanted to do 30 days no alcohol, no wine, no beer, no nothing. I felt so good that I kicked it to 60 days. So I did 60 days of no alcohol. And the one thing is something I want to talk about as well as my sleep. I am a terrible sleeper. I just really hard for me to get down. I've tried a bunch of different things to do, but the one thing is when I absolutely took alcohol out, I like was like a sack of potatoes on the bed and I would just call it sleep in my recovery. Is there any any thing? I we all know that sleep is important, but is there anything that you do in particular know of people to optimize their sleep?
Speaker 2:Yeah, to optimize the sleep is the most important thing. It's also the first chapter in my book, the Pulse Cure, because it's kind of the foundation of everything else. Once you sleep well, you get enough, you know, you feel better and it's easier to make the good choices and to go out running. You know. If you've been don't feel refreshed and had a poor night of sleep, you know it. You don't want to do the exercise, you don't want to eat the right things, you take the the not so smart choice. So, and to sleep?
Speaker 2:The optimal way to sleep is to go to bed and wake up at the same time, more or less every day, within maybe a half an hour window. That you have a good sleep consistency that's one of the most important things. And also then that you can track on your wearable that your sleep is actually restorative. And for it to be restorative you need to not have eaten late. You need to not have trained Exercise hard late in the evening. You should not exercise hard maybe three or four hours before you go to bed, because then it will disturb the sleep. You should not have had caffeine after maybe noon at the same day. So that will be very individual. Some will tolerate it better than others, but most people will react to it by not getting optimal sleep. And then also, you need to wind down. The last one or two hours before you go to sleep, dim the lights, have a cool bedroom not cold, but quite cool. That will improve the restorative effect of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is some of the advice that I would that I need to do to to sleep as well as possible. Yeah, that's super important, and you will need seven to eight hours of sleep, and missing the sleep is not only uncomfortable or leads to you underperforming, but it's downright dangerous, and if you sleep less than six hours compared to more than seven, you double your risk of cancer, according to matthew walker, who has written the excellent book why we sleep. So it's actually dangerous not to to sleep properly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, I, I gotta get more sleep. I feel like I'm I'm like, if I'm lucky, I get six, and that's just me. But uh, the coffee after afternoon, uh, that's, that's a tough one for me. I am a a coffee fiend, so I'll have it. I've had a cup already in the morning. I'll probably have a cup, uh, right after this podcast, uh. But yeah, it's, it's, it's just, it's habitual. I have it. Maybe I just got to get to the decaf and then maybe wean myself off it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I do. I do the decaf. You know, if there's something afternoon, then I would do a decaf, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would always joke with people if they get decaf and I'm like why are you getting coffee if you're just getting decaf?
Speaker 2:but yeah, it's useful, it's better better sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely and one of the stories. I was listening to one of the podcasts that you're on and one of the stories and we were talking about stress, but also like lifestyle stresses and happiness, and you were kind of giving this uh example of your um, because you were with doctors without borders and you were in some areas that were like war-torn countries and one of the things you mentioned was like you looked around, you see that people that kind of had nothing seem to be the happiest, and then you look at other areas of the world that have abundance and they seem to be very unhappy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a weird thing, you know. Know, in our society today, we have as much as any generation before us, you know, with all kind of luxuries and and things, that if you went back 100 years, people would be just amazed at what we have. And still a lot of people are unsatisfied, they are looking for what they don't have, and and they are comparing themselves to others, you know, on social media and so on, and and uh. So when I went to angola, which just had been through a war you know, this is now almost 30 years ago uh, I was expecting to see very sad people, you know, uh, and but when I came there, and and in the years before I got there, half the population had died in this war, and and they were so full of life, you know, so full of happiness, of togetherness, of feeling meaning, you know. And, of course, being outside, doing manual work, sleeping when it's the night time, you know, at that time, and and also having this good mood, you know, dancing in the streets, you know.
Speaker 2:The children, although they ate minimally, you know, we're still very energetic, you know, of course, except for the worst ones that were in the hospital where I worked, where three children died every day more or less from starvation, from malaria, from pneumonia and so on. But still, in those conditions, I saw a joy and the joy of life that I, well had not seen. And the biggest shock for me was coming home and seeing the sad, sullen faces on people and reading everybody complaining about things. So that was kind of a surprise to me and triggered me into finding out oh, how can we live better even if we have it all? How can we learn from then to enjoy life and and to see, look at what we have and and not only be focused on what we don't have, you know?
Speaker 2:So, um, I don't really know the reasons for that, but the people are much more lonely, much more to themselves, and our modern lifestyle is kind of exactly the opposite from what we are developed for. You know, we live inside most of the time. 97 percent of the time we spend inside, we eat food that we're not supposed to eat. Most people move too little. You don't get enough sunshine, we don't get enough nature, we don't challenge our bodies enough to build ourselves stronger. So most people not you, of course I can see, but most people do.
Speaker 1:I'm trying, but everything you just listed is free.
Speaker 2:It's free. It's free so it's available to everybody, and it's um so uh. It's when you get sick that it starts to get expensive, and and then it starts to depend on your wallet if you get the best treatment or not. So so the best thing would be to avoid getting sick, of course, and and we can do that. So if you do these things, you know, make sure that you sleep, make sure that you sleep enough, make sure that you move enough, that you have some ways of managing stress, that you drink the minimal amount of alcohol, that you eat real food and you have good relationships, then, according to an American study from veterans, you can live 24 years longer if you do all these right things.
Speaker 2:So there's not just a couple of years or two, two, three years that are at stake, it's decades we're talking. And that's also with my own experience. You know, I've been working as a doctor for 26 years. I've had more than 100,000 consultations, and I can see this clearly that if you do the right choices in these areas, then your chances of getting to 90 years old is quite good. And if you don't do these things, if you do the opposite, you drink a lot, you don't move, you don't sleep well enough and all of these things, and you eat crap food. Uh, then you would be lucky to pass 70 years old.
Speaker 1:So, um, so I I can see that this difference is real yeah, and it's also this, this quality of life too, because I I talk with other people, that's been in the podcast and it's you might be getting. You might make it to 80 or 90, but what are those years looking like A lot of people do could make it to 80 or 90, but they lots of medications, uh, lots of hospital visits. I know my parents right now. Uh, my father just turned 70. You know he had a triple bypass. My mom had her thyroid taken out. She's almost 70 and lots of medication on. That's her lifestyle now, because of all of the years that they didn't do those things.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned something as well I tell people you're like it's really expensive to get sick, you know, and and it's I tell people when they're, when they give me the, because I'll be a, train other people and clients, I, you know, I really just, you know, don't have time to work out at all and I was like, if you don't have time to work out at all or like, take your life in your own hands, then you ain't, you don't have time to get sick, then yeah, that's gonna be a bad thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and that that time that you're saving there will, you will be subtracted at the other end of your, your life by by, uh, by a factor of something. Yeah, so, uh, so it's uh. And those 24 years I must also say is that if you do these things from you are 40 years old, you know so and and so there, and even if you start changing your lifestyle when you're 60, there's I think it was 16 or 18 years that you will live longer. So you would, essentially, if you, even if you had a poor lifestyle until you're 60, you could kind of double your remaining lifetime if you start using and changing your lifestyle. And I know because I did that.
Speaker 2:You know I used to weigh 40 pounds more than I do today. I used to not exercise at all. I used to drink alcohol more or less every day, not caring about sleep, food, anything, so so until my father died then, 10 years ago, then I understood I have to change everything around. So it's possible. And of course, it's motivating when you can see from your wearables that you can see the result in real time. Then it gets more motivating to do the cold plunges, for example. To do the fasting when you see that the effect is good on your heart rate variability. To do the fasting when you see that the effect is good on your heart rate variability.
Speaker 1:You know, and with the wearables do you see, you know, just kind of in your experience, you see the future of healthcare kind of evolving, you know. Do you think HRV monitoring could be in more of a mainstream practice with healthcare?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's already happening at a massive scale in Norway. I'm not sure how it is in the US, but I think in Scandinavia people are taking control of their health. You know, to see these numbers you have to be able to, to track it, to measure it to yourself. So it's kind of a major shift, then, from the power being in the doctor's hands and the health care system's hands and into your own hands literally, and from after you get sick until avoid getting sick in the first place. So, and now we know also so much more about it and that there is money to be made, you know the problem in the health care system is that there's too much money in sick people.
Speaker 2:You know, like your parents, you know there's too much money in having sick people on lifelong medications for 20-30 years. You know, maybe a multiple a lot of them would have five, six, six, seven, eight different medications. And now the good thing about these wearables is that there is money to be made to help people avoid getting sick. And that's quite uplifting because you need to follow the money. There needs to be some financial money to be made on healthy people. So that, I think, is one of the big changers in this.
Speaker 1:I. It was years ago this has had to be like 10 years ago where we had insurance through my, through my job, and they did this program and they don't do it anymore. But you, if you had I think it was fitbit at the time, if you had a fitbit and it might have been even apple watch as well but you can connect it to your insurance and they can see, like all of the activity that you're doing in your heart or whatever. And if you were healthy, you actually paid less and and I was like that, yeah, I'm like that, I'm doing the work now, like it's I'm making. You know, I'm I'm actually contributing to not causing the healthcare system to be overrun by people and so I'm kind of getting rewarded for that and I thought that was cool.
Speaker 1:And then they changed it over and it didn't. I don't know why they did that, but they don't have that anymore anymore. But I think some people still hold that to today and, um, it's, what is it for? We were talking about another podcast 4.8 trillion dollars in the united states of what we pay, uh, yearly on health care yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:I think it's the one of the most expensive health care systems in the world and you're not getting the results from it. Oh, it's, uh, yeah, and of course, of course. And this system, so it's like that a system that makes money on solving a problem will maintain the problem that it's the solution to, you know. So it's kind of an unconscious, but you know, mechanism in these systems. So it will stay that way until there's more money to be made, you know, and keeping people healthy. So take care of it now. Of course, you would save the money on the insurance by doing those steps on the Fitbit, but you will save years of your life. You know, with experiences and life on the planet, you know that's probably worth more than money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And lastly, is there anything that you're currently working on or some future projects coming up that you're excited about?
Speaker 2:some future projects coming up that you're excited about. Yeah, right now I'm finishing my book in Norwegian, though, so if it gets translated into English I don't know but it's about rest. The rest cure is about how to improve your ability to rest and to do the recovery work, because that seems to be the hardest thing for people. So it's kind of more like a deep dive into the rest part of the pulse cure. That chapter in the pulse cure is probably like 15 pages, you know, and now it's kind of 150 pages on that subject.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool, I think, like you said, I feel like rest and just play in general, you know, is we don't get enough of that. We're too focused on the day-to-day, our works, our jobs, getting here, getting there, you know, and then when we get home we watch Netflix or we get on the couch and we get too comfortable with that. But devoting the time to like really rest, recover but also play Any other future projects you're thinking of or events coming up for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I will, of course, run the New York Marathon soon, so I'm excited to see New York and see how that will be.
Speaker 2:And then I'm also actually going to start.
Speaker 2:Just in a new book, it's about the sun, because the sun exposure, the sun, has got a bad rap you know for for being dangerous, but it seems that we have forgotten to look at the positive sides of of the energy from the sun that is, cooperating with our skin, with our hormones, and improving our function.
Speaker 2:Of course, you know we, we are a species developed under the sun for millions of years and and we have learned to use the energy from the sun. You know it's electromagnetic energy. You know, entering our cells, that half of the sun energy is infrared light that will penetrate maybe five, six, seven centimeters into our bodies and doing a lot of good work. So the the price of scaring people about melanoma and the reason why we try to stay out of the sun has also a huge price, you know. So we don't get the benefits either from the sun. So and now the research is very clear on that that that is so much heart disease that comes from the lack of of sun actually. So so I'm really looking forward to start that project and to dive into the all the misconceptions about sun, sunshine and the dangers of sunshine and the lack of exploration of the benefits.
Speaker 1:Those both sound awesome. I do want to have a quick follow-up to that, just out of curiosity. You know a lot of places that are health, wellness studios, fitness places, are now installing infrared lights, infrared saunas. Is that a comparable in terms of benefits or it's kind of like a cash cow of like a fancy thing? That kind of works.
Speaker 2:No, it should work. Yeah, I need to go into the subject more, but it seems to work. Yeah, so it's the same same energy, some energy uh race, you know, and the same uh frequencies that they use, that is from the, from the sun, sun rays. So it should be uh, should be useful, you know, and and you can see also that the research can show that the mitochondria work better with the infrared exposure.
Speaker 1:Awesome, that's super interesting, so I'm going to be excited. Hopefully these next two books get translated to English so I can take a read at them. But, torkel, thank you so much. Where can people find you via social media or website? I'm on social media. I'm Dr Torkel. Thank you so much. Where can people find you via social media or website?
Speaker 2:I'm on social media. I'm Dr Torkel. I'm drtorkel and of course, my book is on Amazon and also an audio book for people who like to listen to books. And we also have a website called thepulsecurecom, where you can see. I have a free one-hour lecture there where I can tell you and show you how you can use your Garmin watch to micromanage your stress and identify the kind of energy thieves that you maybe was not aware of.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. You know I know it's late in Norway right now, but I appreciate you coming on to the podcast and thanks for everybody listening to another episode of the Primal Foundations podcast. Thank you all for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, like and share. See you all next time on the Primal Foundations podcast.