Health Podcast: Workout For Your Life; Put Your Phone Down; Your Glutes Forget

In this episode we feature:

An interview with happiness researcher, Gretchen Rubin, author of the book Life in Five Senses.

Eat before you do something stupid!

You’re shrinking!

Eat beans for your heart

And more ways you can improve your health today!

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

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Gib, hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard, here with another one of our special intelligence for your health with Connie Celica editions of the show today. Her guest is none other than Gretchen Rubin. She's author of the book Life in five senses. So very excited to bring that to you guys today here. Here we go without further ado, one of my favorite things we do intelligence for your health. With Connie Celica, don't make any important decisions until you've had a snack. According to the University of Dundee, when we're hungry, we make more rash decisions. In their study, hunger made people impatient and more likely to settle for something they didn't really want rather than wait for something else. Basically, our brains need fuel for maximum alertness, so have a little nosh then choose and if you make that snack a combo of protein and complex carbs even better, that will improve your mental strength, stamina and focus. Here's a good reason to go to the gym more often. It could cut your risk of an early death in half. That's based on data from the National Cancer Institute, which analyzed the lifestyle habits and mortality rates of more than 100,000 adults. Researchers found that when people did a muscle strengthening workout twice a week, but nothing else exercise wise, their risk of an early death was 15% lower, on average, than people who never lifted weights. So what about cardio? People who got 20 minutes a day of aerobic exercise and did nothing else were up to 30% less likely to die of any cause during this study. And what happened when study subjects combined a workout with weights with 20 minutes of daily cardio, the combination essentially cut a person's mortality risk in half for conditions including heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes, and where's the best place to get both weight training and aerobic exercise at the gym, which has the added bonus of providing a social environment, which is another factor linked with a longer, healthier life. So according to this new study, weights plus cardio plus being social is the formula for adding years to your life coming up. We'll talk to happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin, author of the book Life in five senses. She'll explain why. She says, Our basic senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste are under appreciated, even though we need them to survive. But first, here's an easy way to help keep your blood sugar in check. Eat more beans. Tulane University researchers found just a half a cup a day can cut your risk of heart trouble by 22% because beans contain fiber and minerals like potassium and magnesium that help smooth out blood sugar spikes. So think lentils, kidney beans, black beans and lima beans, and eat about a half a cup every day for a healthier heart. It's true, we do get shorter as we age, I have shrunk an inch. Dr Douglas Kyle is the director of the musculoskeletal Research Center at Harvard, and he says Men shrink about one inch during their lifetime, and women shrink about two inches. Here's why. First, with age, muscle fibers gradually weaken, making it harder to hold our spine upright. It gradually causes us to hunch forward. We also get shorter, because we tend to develop slipped discs as we age. That's when the shock absorbing discs between our vertebra begin to dry out, and by age 70, the discs that were once 13 millimeters high can be down to one millimeter that can cause a shorter stature and allow the vertebra to rub together and cause back pain. So is there a way to avoid getting shorter? Dr Kyle says the best move is to exercise for 30 minutes a day, focusing on stretching and mobility exercises, because that will help maintain the strength of your bones and the muscles that help hold up your spine. Okay, listen to this. Are you already exhausted from all the holiday hoopla? Put your feet up and look through old family pictures. Neurologist Dr Daniel Amen, who wrote, Change Your Brain, Change Your body, says too much socializing can deplete your brain store of energizing neurotransmitters and leave you dragging but positive images trigger happy memories and cut production of stress hormones, and that helps produce the energizing neurotransmitter GABA, which can increase your energy and banish the blues in 60 seconds or less. Today, our guest is Gretchen Rubin. She's a leading researcher on happy. Ness, whose latest book is called Life in five senses, and with a record number of people reporting more stress and anxiety these days, Gretchen says she's not surprised that many of us are looking for relief by turning to immersive experiences that appeal to our senses in some way, including taking nature walks, trying tasting menus in restaurants and playing games with virtual reality goggles. Gretchen says our attraction to things we can immerse ourselves in comes from the fact that our senses are often neglected in today's world. Well, I think there are two things pulling on us from opposite directions that make it very easy to get disconnected from our senses. On the one hand, life can feel very flattened and drained. We're doing things behind screens so things can feel thin and we feel like we're out of touch with the world. On the other hand, sometimes things feel hyper processed, so you're eating food that's been so processed that it hits every bliss point, but you're not cooking it yourself, so you're not getting those smells of grilling and roasting and baking, or you're watching a movie where you're seeing so many images and you're hearing a soundtrack that fills you with emotion, and yet there's no air In your face. There's no smells. So I think we're both kind of over stimulated and under stimulated with our senses, and that's what's making us seek things like immersive experiences. The idea of being in deep contact with our senses is just feels very, very appealing. Today we're talking to happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin, author of the book Life in five senses, and according to data from the National Institutes of Health, the number of people who say they practice meditation and mindfulness has tripled in the past decade, and since mindfulness has been linked to making us happier. I asked Gretchen how tapping into our senses can make us more mindful. One of the things that's really helpful about the senses is that we're experiencing them right here right now. Like if you're smelling something, you're smelling it right now. If you're feeling something under your fingers, you're feeling it right now. And so it will call you to the present moment. It will really remind you to to focus in on what you're experiencing. And that is a big part of mindfulness, is just noticing what you're noticing and being aware of what is in your awareness and and because of the the senses, you know, one of my favorite senses is the sense of smell, and I can't glut myself on perfume. I can't bookmark it, I can't save it for later. I can't even keep experiencing it over and over. I mean, you could listen to the same song on a loop all day long, but with the smell, you could only smell it for a few moments before you you habituate to it and you don't smell it anymore. So I can only appreciate it in the moment. And so I think that it's, it's really great way to cultivate mindfulness, because it really takes us into the present moment. Do you break for cats, dogs, squirrels, skunks and possums? How about horses, cows, elk, moose or deer? Well, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says you should fight the urge to swerve as you brake, unless you have time to check traffic first, of course, the size of the animal matters. If it's shorter than your car's hood and you don't have time to check other lanes, go through it. If the animal is taller than the hood, avoid it. If you can, knowing it still might be better to hit the animal. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says animal collisions happen so fast. A lot of drivers don't have the option of making a decision about what to do, but the best thing, unfortunately, in most cases, is to hit the animal and try to avoid swerving or doing something that could cause you to lose control and hit somebody else or an object or go off the road and roll over. Most human injuries from animal collisions occur not when animals are hit, but from the crash that follows today's medical term retrograde cricopharyngeus dysfunction, also known as a belchia or no burp syndrome. It's the reason why some people can't burp. It's caused by a quirk in the muscle that acts as the gatekeeper to the esophagus, the roughly 10 inch long tube that moves food between the throat and the stomach. The inability to burp can cause bloating, pain, gurgling in the neck and chest, and excessive flatulence, because the build up of air has to get out somehow, it can cause perpetual nausea or pain as bad as a heart attack in the chest, and some people have it from birth, but it was recently discovered. That it can be fixed with Botox injections, they can relieve a Belgium for up to 99% of patients, the amount of Botox needed is more than twice the amount often used to smooth forehead wrinkles, and it gets injected into the upper cricopharyngeal muscle. Dr Michael King is an ear, nose and throat physician, and he says it's the same way he treats people having a hard time swallowing after a stroke. People have been suffering from this condition for at least a few millennia. 2000 years ago, a Roman philosopher described a man who could not belch, but now there's a fix, and that's today's medical term, retrograde cricopharyngeus, dysfunction, also known as a belchia Coming up, we'll hear more from our guest happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin. She'll tell us her one minute rule for being more productive, which in turn, can make you happier. But first, can you take a break from your phone for 30 minutes? If so, researchers from Rutgers say it can boost your brain power. For the study, they had participants work on word puzzles, then everyone took a break, but one group was allowed to use their phones, the other wasn't. After the break, the group that used their phones finished the puzzles 20% more slowly and solved 20% fewer problems. That's because the phones drained the participants brain power. In fact, their brain power was lower than those who got no break at all. So if you need to be on point mentally, try taking a 30 minute phone break way back in 2017 we talked about a condition called Dead butt syndrome. It's absolutely real, and it's making a comeback now that people are back in offices, sitting at their desks all day. It's known officially as gluteal amnesia. It's a condition in which your glutes or butt muscles go dormant from inactivity, basically when we sit eight hours a day or more, our butt muscles become desensitized because the neurons that tell them to contract have weakened, and that's dead. Butt syndrome, in a nutshell. Dr Chris Colbert is a physical therapist at Ohio State University's Medical Center, and he says when your rear muscles aren't working efficiently, it means all the surrounding muscles need to compensate, and that can cause stress injuries. So how do you know if you have gluteal amnesia? Symptoms include numbness, stiffness or cramping in your glutes when you do move, but gluteal amnesia is totally reversible through exercises that work those muscles and bring them back to life, like side leg lifts, squats and doing a bridge where you lie on your back, plant your feet on the ground and raise your rear up and down, and, of course, make sure you're moving throughout the Day to avoid dead butt syndrome in the first place. Okay, listen to this. If you want to start working out more, tell yourself I'm a runner or I'm a cross fit athlete, instead of telling yourself I'm going to run or I'm going to lift some weights, according to the journal self and identity, when people used that strategy, they were better at sticking to an exercise regimen. That's because you're giving yourself an identity, not just a command, and that makes you feel like exercising is part of who you are. It also makes you feel like you belong to a community of exercisers or runners, and feeling like you're part of an active tribe makes you more motivated to keep up back with more health intelligence from Gretchen Rubin, author of the book Life in five senses, earlier, she said that paying attention to our senses is that key part of being more mindful, which is proven to make us happier. But what if you sometimes struggle to get in touch with your senses or wish they could be stronger? I asked researcher Ruben what she recommends if you want to really pay more attention to your senses as you go through your everyday life. One thing I love is a five senses journal. And this is just, you know, every single day, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, just note down one notable memory. It doesn't have to be your favorite, just something that you noticed. And you know. So maybe you walked by a movie theater and you smelled movie theater popcorn, and that's a really, a really powerful smell. So you just write this down, and what I find is that this is a way to just make sure that as I'm going through my life, I'm paying attention to my senses, because a lot of times they're just kind of running underground. We're tapping into them as we need to, and it just sort of a utilitarian way, and just by thinking to yourself, Okay, I'm looking for some highlights from today. I'm going to write them down. And also one of the most common pieces of advice, I. For happiness is to keep a gratitude journal. And I have to admit that I tried keeping a gratitude journal, and I found it to be kind of a deeply annoying exercise, but I found that a five senses journal operated as a kind of gratitude journal, but in a way that I found much fresher and more creative and more fun, but it really allowed me to feel like I was I was paying tribute to the beauty of the world by what I was noticing, and it really did help me. It helps me every day to just stay alive to everything that I'm experiencing through my five senses back with more health intelligence from happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin, author of the number one New York Times best seller, The Happiness Project. And when it comes to habits that can make us happier, one of Ruben's favorites is something called the One Minute Rule. So I asked her to take us through the One Minute Rule. The One Minute Rule is exactly what it sounds like. If there is a task that you can do in a minute or less, go ahead and do it without delay. So if you can print out a document and put it in the right folder, if you can put something in the recycling, if you can put the coffee mug in the dishwasher, go ahead and do it without delay. And what this does is it just gets rid of all those nagging casts, those things that are just kind of the scum on the surface of life, which are not consequential on their own. They don't take a lot of time, energy or money. These are little, tiny tasks, and yet they can make us feel very weighed down. You know, if you walk into your office and all you see is just like a bunch of stuff that is all out of order and just needs to be dealt with, and you just keep procrastinating about it. It's very, very draining. And I have to say, of all the things that I write about with habits, this is one where people most often say, wow, this really changed my life, because they just feel so much lighter and freer because all these tasks have been cleared out of their way. And sometimes when we get when we tackle the little task, we feel more capable of tackling bigger things. And that means that it's we can do the things that are more likely to make us happier, healthier, more productive or more creative. If you're going someplace Sunny, or you live where there's sun year round, put sunscreen on your ears. Skin cancer on the ears has been found to be more aggressive. The tumors grow larger and deeper than those on the face. That's because ear skin cancer is hard to catch, since we typically don't look inside our own ears, so it has a longer time to take root before it's spotted. And although skin cancer that appears on your ears typically is not melanoma, the deadliest form, it can lead to nerve and muscle damage, more intelligence for your health. From happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin, and because her latest book, Life in five senses, focuses on how to use our senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing to be happier, I asked Gretchen if there's one of those senses that tends to be more neglected than the others. Well, it's fascinating. After the book came out, I was still I'm still so fascinated by the five senses that I developed a quiz. So you can go to Gretchen, rubin.com/quiz and you can take a quiz to find what is your most neglected sense. And this is a really great thing to know about yourself, because when we neglect a sense, we don't turn to it for comfort or pleasure. We don't explore it. We don't use it to engage with other people. We are often more focused on avoiding the negative of that sense, rather than really availing ourselves of all the positives and pleasures of that sense. So it's really great to know your most neglected sense, because this is the low hanging fruit. This is where you have a lot of opportunities to make your life richer. And one of the things that surprised me now that 10s of 1000s of people have taken this quiz, is that I kind of suspected that certain senses would be the most neglected, but in fact, it's extremely evenly distributed among all five, so there isn't one that stands out as the most neglected among big groups of people. It's which I have to say. I had predicted that something like smell would be most neglected, but I did not find that, and I thought no one would neglect sight, because as human beings, we're really hard wired for sight. It's got the most wiring in the brain if there's a conflict among the senses, sight usually Trumps. So I thought no one would neglect sight. Well, it turns out it's it's just about the same as all the other four. Once again, if you'd like to take Gretchen Rubin's online test for assessing your senses, or learn more about her book Life in five senses, check out gretchenrubin.com to get a better workout, go ahead and grunt, just like tennis players do during a killer serve, it can actually improve your workout. Sports Psychologist Dr Joel fish says when an athlete grunts as they exhale, their strength increases. Take weight lifting a grunt helps the chest and open. Leak muscles work significantly harder. That's because vocalizations during exertion improve your muscles power output and makes exercise seem easier. In fact, when tennis players were told to grunt when hitting their serves, their shots were five miles per hour faster than the Silent Ones. Grunting can also ensure proper breathing, which helps stabilize your core and generates the most power. Here's an email I received at Connie at intelligence for your health.com, it comes from Carrie DeFranco, who writes, I hear so much about electrolytes. Do I need special drinks with them or something? Carrie the term electrolytes simply refers to substances that dissolve in water. And as far as your body is concerned, the most important electrolytes are sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium, because without the right balance of sodium and potassium, for example, cells can't function properly, and calcium is needed to make your muscles contract and for nerves to work. That's why companies spend billions of dollars each year promoting drinks and powders that claim to boost your electrolytes and keep you healthy. The problem according to Dr grant Lipman, emergency medicine physician at Washington Hospital healthcare, the average Western diet already contains more than enough electrolytes to maintain good health. In fact, he says, unless you're an intense exerciser who loses more sodium than normal through sweat, you can probably get all of the electrolytes you need from a handful of mixed nuts some berries and a cup of water, and tests of regular tap water show it provides healthy amounts of electrolytes. So the message from Dr Lipman is, unless you're an extreme athlete, you don't need to do anything special to maintain your electrolyte level. Thank you for your email. Carrie, I hope this helps. Okay, listen to this for a headache. Give yourself a neck rub. University of Alabama researchers say to rub your fingers along the back of your neck and the base of your skull that stimulates blood flow to the brain, reducing headache pain by half in five minutes. Have you ever wanted to get revenge on someone who wronged you? It's a natural human emotion. According to the journal Psychological Science, just the thought of getting revenge stimulates the part of our brain that processes reward. But the fact is, revenge almost always makes us feel worse instead of making us feel better, revenge prolongs our bitterness and feelings of resentment, and whatever was done to us keeps tormenting us. It creates a cycle that drags things out even longer. And researchers at Hope College found that simply imagining how we get revenge on someone raises our heart rate, constricts blood vessels and causes other stress related health problems. On the other hand, just trying to forgive someone lowers the level of stress hormones that damage our immune system. So even though they say Revenge is sweet, it actually makes us feel worse, mentally and physically. More intelligence for your health. From researcher Gretchen Rubin, author of life in five senses and something she recommends for boosting your sense of taste is to throw an occasional taste party that's where you gather friends to take bites of different foods and then get everyone to really focus on comparing the different textures and flavors of each bite. Gretchen says a typical party might involve trying a variety of different apples or cheeses or even different condiments. In fact, one of her favorite items to highlight at a tasting party is ketchup. Now, this is something that most people have tasted hundreds, 1000s of times during the course of their lives. I mean, you know, in the United States, most people have it in their refrigerator, but Heinz Ketchup is one of the rare foods that hits all five of the basic taste. It's sweet, it's sour, it's bitter, it's salty, and it's umami, and that is very hard to do. So I had everybody just taste a little bit of Heinz ketchup on their tongue, and everybody thought, oh my gosh, this is the most sophisticated, complex taste sensation. You know. You think of it as being this, this throwaway, bland thing that people glop all over their food. But it's actually incredibly sophisticated, which probably explains why Heinz Ketchup is a secret ingredient in all kinds of foods where you probably would not expect to find it, because it is so complex that this was just a fun way to connect with friends, like we were laughing, we were talking, we were reminiscing. I felt like I got an insight into their nature in a way that I never had before, and yet it was, it was easy and fun. Fun to put together. So I really, I highly recommend doing a taste party. That's it for our show today, our special intelligence for your health with Connie Selig. Edition of the podcast, I'm Gib Gerard. Don't forget to rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast. Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. It helps us out a lot. And also, you can reach out to us on social media. All of our links are listed down in the show notes, we try to respond to every DM, every mention of the show, because ultimately, we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.