Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby
Let's explore how you can Live Long and Well with six evidence based pillars: exercise, good sleep, proper nutrition, mind-body activities, exposure to heat/cold, and social relationships. I am a physician scientist, Ironman Triathlete, and have a passion for helping others achieve their best self.
Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby
#30: Evidence Meets Storytelling: A Discussion with Author/Podcaster Michael Easter
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In this episode, Michael Easter and I dissect the fascinating blend of scientific evidence and narrative storytelling, and learn how to navigate the sometimes conflicting realms of expert opinion and personal experience. Michael is the acclaimed author of "The Comfort Crisis" and "Scarcity Brain."
Michael's storytelling prowess paired with my evidence-based approach aims to empower you to step confidently into discomfort and reap the rewards.From the allure of digital distractions to the silent power of solitude, our discussion covers the spectrum of challenges faced when interpreting scientific evidence and applying it to real life.
Discover how venturing beyond the boundaries of comfort can unlock transformative growth in our latest conversation with
Picture this: I'm in Costa Rica, pushing my limits in a Misogi challenge led by Michael, finding new depths of resilience that even my experience with Ironman triathlons hadn't revealed. Michael's journey from a magazine editor to a full-time writer and lecturer is a testament to the power of embracing discomfort for personal evolution and health.
Together, we explore how modern life's conveniences might actually be roadblocks to growth, and how stepping into discomfort can offer profound benefits.
Time Stamps:
(3:03) Let Me Know Your Thoughts
(4:16) Michael’s Accolades and Newsletter
(7:13) Michael’s Background Starting At Men’s Health
(8:58) Short Synopsis of Michael’s Books
(14:37) Pushing Ourselves Outside of Our Comfort Zone
(17:23) Brain Gains
(19:30) Finding Your Sweet Spot
(22:21) The Scientist vs The Storyteller
(26:58) Integrating Expert Opinions
(32:33) The Misogi in Costa Rica
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Check Out "2 Percent with Michael Easter" to Improve your Health and Strengthen Your Mindset
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When you started eating meat. Only you stopped eating a bunch of butterfingers. Idiot Right Finding people who I think trust and are going to be fair and open and honest and talk about all the possible ways that something could be working, how a person could use it, what type of person might benefit from one practice over another, rather than someone who just says taking X supplement leads to release of Y and then Z definitely happens.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Dr Bobby Du Bois and welcome to Live Long and Well, a podcast where we will talk about what you can do to live as long as possible and with as much energy and vigor that you wish. Together, we will explore what practical and evidence-supported steps you can take. Come join me on this very important journey and I hope that you feel empowered along the way. I'm a physician, ironman, triathlete and have published several hundred scientific studies. I'm honored to be your guide. Welcome everyone to episode number 30, evidence Meets Storytelling a discussion with author and podcaster Michael Easter. Now, this is only the second time I've had an interview and I would really appreciate any feedback. You have to let me know what you think. Any feedback. You have to let me know what you think.
Speaker 2:Also, as the ever scientist, I have been looking at how long my podcasts are. Most of them are about 30 minutes. One recently was 20 minutes and one of them the one on placebo that I just had so many things I wanted to talk about was about 40 minutes. Do tell me what length works for you best. I look at the statistics and it kind of shows a graph of when people drop off listening. Obviously, the last 30 seconds. People don't need to listen to the ending and so they drop off. But the 40-minute placebo looked like more people dropped off earlier than I thought from other ones. So do give me feedback. I love it, I incorporate it and it's very much appreciated.
Speaker 2:Well, today I want to welcome Michael Easter. He is the New York Times bestselling author of not just one book, but of two books the Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain. He also writes 2%, one of the top newsletters in health and wellness. I read it religiously and I would recommend signing up for it. I'll have a link in the show notes. So, michael, welcome and thank you. I know you are about to leave on a long journey to begin writing your third book, so I really, really appreciate your being with us.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting. We've had some good conversations so far and it'll be great to have another one.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful. Well, I got to know Michael, so this isn't a cold call. I actually know Michael. Now. I didn't actually know Michael at the beginning because I read Scarcity Brain. Obviously, later I went and read the other one too.
Speaker 2:But Comfort Crisis, which was his first book that I read, brought out a concept called a misogy. So Michael will talk through what comfort crisis was all about. But basically we live in a comfortable world so we need to push ourselves periodically. Michael ran a misogy. So this is the first time I actually got to be with Michael in person and I have to say it was the hardest thing I've ever done. Now I've done four full Ironman triathlons and 12 half Ironman triathlons, and these are sort of six to 16 hour things. And the misogy, which is to force you to break out of your comfort zone, was done in Costa Rica in the rainforest, and it had the four H's it was hot, it was hilly, it was humid and it was hard. But there was one other feature which is uncertainty. I had no idea when it would end, unlike a triathlon where you know the distances. So Michael has indelibly etched himself into my psyche from that experience and other ones.
Speaker 2:Now I also think Michael and I are kindred souls. We have similar goals with our audiences. We want to share what works with others so that you can live long and well. Now, my approach is very evidence-based. I focus on studies and I share that, in a somewhat nerdy way, with you. Michael also focuses on evidence, but he's a writer and ultimately tells a compelling story. We both want the same end point, but we come at it differently, and I think that's what I'm hoping we will get to hear about over the next few minutes. So, michael, maybe begin tell us your background and how you got to be doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was a editor at Men's Health Magazine for a bunch of years. So I came up through the magazine industry when I was in, you know, junior high and high school. I was always reading, I was always a voracious reader of magazines and that led me to want to work in the magazine industry. When I was in grad school I had jobs at Esquire, gq and Scientific American, and so the combination of two men's magazines and one science magazine. When a job opened at Men's Health, I was a good fit for that and I worked at that magazine for about seven years, I would say.
Speaker 1:And then I ended up taking a job as a full-time lecturer at UNLV in the journalism department, because they had just launched a medical school and they wanted to have some classes on health journalism, things like that, and in that role half of my job was teaching and the other half was continuing to write. So I continued to write for a bunch of different magazines and when I was at UNLV I actually is when I wrote the Comfort Crisis I left the full time role at UNLV maybe two years ago and the reason for that is because I was doing more writing. The writing was kind of taking off. I had started doing the sub stack, which is three emails a week that I put a lot of work into and it was just kind of time became a thing and so, yeah, now I've been continuing with books, spending probably most of my day to day writing my newsletter, and it's. It's been fun, it's been a good journey.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful. So for folks who may not know about comfort crisis and scarcity brain, can you give a sort of a synopsis of each one, because I think that will kind of lead into where we're going to go with our dialogue time.
Speaker 1:So, if you think about the things that most impact your experience of daily life today, it's all technologies that are relatively new in the grand scheme of time and space, and they're all designed to make your life easier and more comfortable. So everything from climate control to how we get to point A, from point A to point B, to how we interface with other humans, to how we get our food, how we spend our time and attention on and on and on, I argue that these advances are, of course, great in the grand scheme of time and space, but, at the same time, what often improves people are things that require some level of discomfort. So the classic example that I use, that everyone gets, is that we've really engineered physical activity out of our lives, and the average person in the past probably took, if you look at different studies, maybe 20,000 steps a day. Well, today, because we have sedentary jobs, because we have escalators, because we have cars, the average person takes 4000 steps a day for 4500 about, and that's linked to a lot of the things that impact chronic disease risks, and so I kind of apply that same logic across the board to different things. We're no longer. We no longer experience hunger because we have easy access to food, we don't experience temperature swings, because we spend 93% of our time indoors. We don't get outdoor exposure. On and on and on.
Speaker 1:So that's what that book is about. Looks at how some of the downsides of our modern amazing world and how adding certain forms of discomfort can improve your life and health. And scarcity brain, I think. Fundamentally it looks at this question of everyone knows that everything is fine in moderation and yet we all suck at moderation and so and so why is that? And I argue that humans evolved in these environments where what we needed to survive and thrive was pretty scarce for all of time. And very recently, in the grand scheme of time and space, we have all these things that we really evolved to crave, and we have them in an abundance, and we don't necessarily have governors on them. So everything from food to possessions to information, on and on and on, we have this just amazing array of it all and we tend to overdo it and that hurts us.
Speaker 2:Is there a conceptual connection between the two books, an overarching theme that pulls them together, or are they just separate issues that we confront in life?
Speaker 1:when I started writing scarcity brain, I didn't think the two books related to each other, but I think over time they are linked and I think the thing that sort of links them is that in the world today to improve your life you often have to embrace short term discomfort. To get a long term benefit could come from exercise. Right. Exercise is hard but by doing it we improve. In the long term it could be from. You know, in scarcity brain I spent a lot of time. Spent a lot of time unpacking the technologies that most take our attention things like cell phones, media, things like that and I think that resisting the pull of that can be challenging. But if you use your time in a different way, that can often improve your life, even though it isn't quite as easy as watching 20 dog videos in a row, or whatever it is, on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yep, all right, let's let's drill in a little bit to comfort crisis and talk a little bit about what does it mean to push ourselves out of our comfort zone? I think the argument you make is very compelling that life has been changed compared to where we were kind of over the millennium, and that life is quite easy now and that if we live in that world all day long and all year long, we may be losing some of who we are and some of our self-confidence. So then the question is what's the antidote to it? And you talk about the misogy or the kind of ultimate challenge experience to get out of the comfort zone. And absolutely I sensed it, experienced it and it was really tough. So my question is and there may not be evidence to support this but does challenging ourself to get out of our comfort zone does it lead to broader benefits? No pain, no gain. Now you're asking me to do pain. Do I gain something beyond that? So I talk to people about cold plunges and they're like I don't want to do it.
Speaker 2:That's no, that's awful, and I say well it's. It raises dopamine levels. This is good for you, but the question is pushing ourself. Does it generalize? Does it carry over into our life?
Speaker 1:I think. Well, first I'll say it depends on what sort of discomfort we're talking about. A lot of things that are really good for us are uncomfortable Exercise, Occasionally going through some hunger in the context of a world where we've got ultra-processed food Time and silence in the context of a world where we've increased the world's loudness fourfold. There's also forms of discomfort that are just going to be uncomfortable for the sake of them, and so the way that I sort of frame it is I look at a lot of things through an evolutionary lens. And what were we adapted to in the past and how have we removed these things that are good for us? Now the question of whether they generalize.
Speaker 1:I think that many things like, for example, exercise, can generalize over to increase confidence. I think doing something like a Masogi, which is this single hard task that you're going to do once a year and just really throw yourself outside of what you think you're capable of and have a moment where maybe you realize you're capable of far more, I think that can generalize in many ways to increase confidence in daily life. And, of course, I think exercise generalizes just over to being healthier in general. It's going to help you move better, and if you move better, you're going to be happier, right?
Speaker 1:People who are people who have less mobility are generally have higher rates of depression, anxiety, all these different things. So to sort of unpack, a thing I'll get is you know, people might say, well, is doing an Ironman triathlon really going to make me better in the boardroom? It's like well, it's not a one-to-one right. An Ironman triathlon is not going to overhaul your sales numbers and all these things. At the same time, I think it can give a person insight about themselves, what they're capable of, what they consider hard and challenging and that can enhance other areas of their life.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what we would all hope is that these challenges will carry over. More broadly, and I'm guessing there's probably not a lot of psychological literature on this. I did a podcast recently on the 10 or so items you can do to reduce your risk of cognitive decline, and there were obvious ones, like you know get your blood pressure under control, exercise, sauna, those kinds of things. And then I got to the one which was the thorniest, which is brain games, because people are making a lot of claims and a lot of money off of ways to train your brain and the theory is, if you push your brain you will maintain cognitive function.
Speaker 2:But when they actually did the studies and they looked at things like, okay, so you do crossword puzzles and you do Sudoku, and the question then is, if you do that regularly, what happens a year or two or three later? And what they found was your ability at crossword puzzles and Sudoku improved or maintained itself. So by doing that, if your life was focused on I really want to be a good crossword puzzle person as I get into my 70s and 80s then the answer is it worked, but in terms of, did it kind of then blend over to general cognitive abilities? The answer was no. So I think the misogyny and pushing our comfort may be very, very different. Certainly, I think about kids doing athletics as a kid and the coach basically helping them see that they've got a lot more in them than they thought they did and, when they fall down, getting them back up again, and I believe that really really does change who they are as human beings. And so maybe it works in kids. The question is, does it work in us adult people? I think that the question is uncertain, but I think your anecdotes make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. And there is some research from a guy whose name is Mark Seery. He's in one of the New York he's I can't remember exactly what university he's at, but he's done some work where he's found that, on one hand, people who have challenge after challenge after challenge in their life, like just just hardships happening over and over and over piling up, they don't have good rates of mental health. Over piling up, they don't have good rates of mental health. On the other hand, people who have no challenges at all in their life, they have equally poor rates of mental health.
Speaker 1:There seems to be a sweet spot where going through trials and especially if you can unpack and learn about them and analyze what, what did I take from this? What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about, um, how I might behave in the future those people had some of the best rates of mental health. So I think for me, like and if you look at it from the concept, if you look at it from the perspective of a rite of passage, the most important part of the rite of passage was not necessarily the going out and doing, the challenging aspect of it, it was the reintegration and it was where the person comes back and we sit the person down and we go. What did you learn? What is this going to tell you? What is this going to tell you about the future, what did you learn about yourself and how are you going to use this? And so really kind of making sure that you analyze that, let that settle, I think, is important.
Speaker 2:That's a really good point and I think probably in my challenging experiences, probably I didn't go through a reintegration process as well as I could have. So I think that's a really good insight. So for those of you who are going to do a cold plunge or something, don't just do it, but reflect on the fact you were able to do it and that you thought you might not be able to, but you did so good lesson, thank you, michael. So I have an inner scientist in me. As folks are not probably very surprised to hear, I'm also an outer scientist. I'm sort of a scientist through and through. Michael, I think you have an inner scientist, but you also have an inner storyteller. You're a wonderful storyteller. I mean, all good writers can capture people's attention, keep their attention and have a storyline that carries through an awful lot.
Speaker 2:So which of your two parts your inner scientist or your inner storyteller wins out if there's a conflict? I mean, I'm about to do a podcast on red light therapy and there's a lot of arguments about red light therapy. I'm going to talk about white light therapy and blue light and all the rest. But I went into it trying to have an open mind because I didn't think it worked, but then, as a scientist, I was like well, wait a second, maybe there's something to this in some circumstances. And so in the end, I may not have a compelling story, because the evidence may be more conflicting than I would like. So when you have a conflict between evidence and a story, how do you resolve that conflict?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Conflict that's a great question. So what I? What I think I do is that if I have a story and an experience or a anecdote of someone else who had an experience and they learned from it and they seem to benefit from it and it was good, what I will then do is go okay, well, what does the evidence say about this? Is there a good reason for why this might have benefits for a person? And I try to look at both sides. Right, I'm going to go out looking for reasons why this could have benefits. I'm going to actively search for evidence that refutes what I think, and then I just try and present what I found. So I had this experience. It helped me and guess what? The nerds either agree or they disagree, and you can take that as you will.
Speaker 2:As a person, so you present it as there are different ways to think it through. It may not all line up in a row.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I had one. I'll give you an example. I did a post on 2%. It was about the benefits of silence, and I led that post with an anecdote about my time in the Arctic where it was so unbelievably silent up there, like so silent, and I found myself a lot calmer in that silence. And so that led me to start looking at the evidence around noise and the effects of the noise that we live in, and how much louder has our world gotten.
Speaker 1:And there is a lot of good evidence that suggests that people who live in more noise have worse mental health and physical health outcomes. At the same time, people who live near more noise might have other things going on. They may live closer to a road, which, by the way, roads have more smog. If they live closer to a noisy road, they may also live in a neighborhood that is less affluent, so they may have less money for help. So there's this myriad of different things that are happening. So I try to account for that myriad of things. But then just look on balance and say, look, if you live in the context of noise, probably spending more time in silence is going to be good for you. At the same time it's complicated, why don't you give it a try? And if it helps you, do more of what helps you. Do less of what hurts you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I'm very big of the end of one trial. If the evidence doesn't give us the right answer, or at least the definitive answer, we can test it in ourselves and see what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I really, I really appreciate that about you because you, I mean, you do have such a deep command of the science. You've done a ton of research yourself, and I think that sometimes people who are you know, quote, unquote evidence-based, can get exceedingly pedantic about the science and it's like, well, what are you? What are you going to say? If this person's like, hey, I do this and it helps me, what are you going to do? Argue with that, right?
Speaker 2:Okay. So we talked about the conflict between the evidence and the story. I would say one way that we differ is is that I focus on what the scientific studies show and oftentimes there may not be evidence to support one way or another. You know, the study hasn't been done and there's a million areas like nutrition where good studies generally haven't been done and I sort of leave it at that. I sort of say this is what we know, this is what we don't know and oh, by the way, you know, this is what we know, this is what we don't know. And oh, by the way, you know, this is what I've been doing.
Speaker 2:I think a part of your approach is to also talk to experts and to fold in expert opinion into the process. I tend to avoid that. I'll give you my bias for the moment. In 1491, if we got the best scientists and astronomers together and we said, is the world flat or round, the experts would say there's not a question, it is flat, obviously. In 1492, columbus went off the edge and realized it wasn't an edge and we found the new world and the rest is history. So experts I tend to take with a grain of salt. How do you fold in the expert's view, knowing that you know eggs used to be bad. Now eggs are good. The latest is seed oils are bad. My podcast suggests maybe not so much. How do you deal with experts and figure out whether to stand firm on what they say or to take it with a grain of salt?
Speaker 1:I think that I would differentiate between an expert and a practitioner.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I think that people who are on the ground and actually working with people can be very, very informative. So we may not have a clue about nutrition, right, like we have, there's a lot of open-ended questions about nutrition. Nutrition, right, like we we have there's a lot of open-ended questions about nutrition. It's like, okay, if I just go with the studies, I'm going to be like, well, here are all these complications with the studies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, well, maybe let's talk to someone that helps people lose weight. What do you have people do? Why do you think it works? Based on what you've seen, does that make sense? Is there cases where that doesn't? And so I just ask them a lot of questions and I think from that you can say like, hey, there's uncertainty in the studies.
Speaker 1:But I think the the the problem with many studies is they're conducted in a vacuum, and humans don't live in a vacuum. We don't live in a lab, right, we'll never get a good nutrition study because we can't lock a baby in a room and you know, you got a thousand babies and you lock them in a lab for the rest of their life and you feed some of them this and the others that, like, we just can't do that. So there's a lot that we're just never going to know, not to mention that when you put a person in a free living environment, a lot of stuff just goes totally out the window. And so I think what I try and do is blend the research with what people are finding, works on the ground and you know, and always be open to the fact that things change over time, and try it kind of back to that idea of like, hey, if it helps you, great, do more of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that approach makes a lot of sense, especially if you're dealing with issues that you could measure fairly soon. I talk to experts and this is what they suggest for improving your sleep or losing some weight. And, yes, you can try it. You can do an NM1 trial in yourself in a week, a month, six months. You'll know whether it works for you.
Speaker 2:Where it gets more challenging for me is when people are touting benefits that you won't see for 30 years.
Speaker 2:So if you take vitamin D, vitamin E, omega-3, you know whatever and I do this with all my patients and they feel great and it will help you live longer you kind of have to take it on faith or religion that they're right. And because you can't you can't assess it after a week or a month, you kind of have to do it for 30 years. I mean, I started taking creatine to see if it would help my strength training and there's some pretty good data in the fitness world and if you talk to people they say it's great. But I wanted to test it in myself and I did a DEXA scan and started it and did my strength training and six months later, you know, retested it and it definitely worked for me. So I'm really big on trying things that people might say works, as long as we can measure it relatively soon. Otherwise we're just have to hope that it works, and hope to me is not the same as science.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I, I try to. I try to speak with experts that will speak to those uncertainties and will kind of ask the bigger questions you know. So, for example and by the way, I would never do this, but let's say I talk to a carnivore diet person- Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Oh, carnivore, is this the thing? And here's all these reasons why it works, blah, blah, blah. It's like I would like to talk to the person who goes here are all these different diets, here's what people have tried and why it might work and why it might not work. You know, I find the expert that goes well. When you started eating meat, only you stopped eating a bunch of butterfingers, idiot, right. So I try and find people like I've had enough background training being coming up through men's health, where I just had this editor that would just point out possible fallacies that I can. Now I'm better at finding people who I think trust and are going to be fair and open and honest and talk about all the possible ways that something could be working, how a person could use it, what type of person might benefit from one practice over another, rather than someone who just says taking X supplement leads to release of Y and then Z definitely happens. You know.
Speaker 2:Yep, mechanism-based medicine not my favorite approach. Yeah. So, michael, as we wrap up, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have, or anything on your radar that you're excited about?
Speaker 1:Here's what I'll say. When we did our Masogi in Costa Rica, you were my favorite case study that survived the survivor, you completed it, which was it was just absolutely incredible. But what I think I loved seeing is that when we got there, you had a lot of questions how many liters of water do I need to take? How long are we going to be hiking? Do I need this thing? Do I need that thing? Do I need this thing? And the answer was yeah. I don't know, maybe you do, maybe you don't.
Speaker 1:And I could see you were uncomfortable going into that because the lack of the certainty and the ability to control things. But but you went into the unknown and by doing that, you kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other and just doing the thing and then at the end of it, it's almost like I saw this like shift where you I think you even told me wow, I like I being very um, making sure all my ducks in a row has helped me my like entire career. It's allowed me to get where I am. But in this scenario I couldn't do that and that was opened up, this whole new thing, and I just thought it was like the most beautiful example of how, for really anyone, throwing yourself occasionally into an adventure can be can be informative. So I just, I just love that. I think about that often.
Speaker 2:Michael, thank you, that's very sweet. Yes, it made me confront uncertainty in ways I'd never had, and it was good for me. It really, really was.
Speaker 1:It was awesome. It was awesome that you finished. You crushed that thing it was truly phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Michael, thank you for joining us today. For my listeners, please do check out his newsletter 2%. Again, I'll have the link for you. We come at the issue of live long and well in slightly different ways, but we really hope the end point is the same for all of you and until next time. Thank you all for listening. Thanks so much for listening to Live Long and Well with Dr Bobby. If you liked this episode, please provide a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you want to continue this journey or want to receive my newsletter on practical and scientific ways to improve your health and longevity, please visit me at drbobbylivelongandwellcom. That's, doctor, as in D-R Bobby. Live long and wellcom.