Bend Into Balance: Dr. Bruce Becker, CEO of Aquatic Science Associates LLC

In this episode of Bend Into Balance, Adriana Marino sits down with Dr. Bruce Becker, a nationally recognized physician and lifelong swimmer, to explore the profound physical and mental benefits of water. From rehabilitation and chronic illness to stress relief and longevity, Dr. Becker explains why aquatic movement is uniquely powerful across every stage of life.

Drawing on decades of clinical experience and his own personal journey with polio, aging, and daily swimming, Dr. Becker shares how water supports joint health, cardiovascular efficiency, brain function, and nervous system regulation. Together, Adriana and Dr. Becker reflect on Central Oregon’s pools, natural waterways, and the simple ways people can begin integrating water into their routines to feel stronger, calmer, and more connected to their bodies.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Hello, my name is Adriana Marino, and I am host and producer of Bend into Balance, Powered by the Source. Today I'm thrilled to be accompanied by Dr. Bruce Becker. I met Bruce by doing something that we both have in common, which is swimming. We met at the Juniper Pool. Um, one day, leaving my exercise routine, I asked the head master's coach, Bob, if he happened to know any good stories in that pool, because I was sure that among his many swimmers, there had to be an interesting story. And he said, yes, go to lane one and talk to Dr. Bruce Becker. He only told me that he was like a nationwide authority on water resistance, water, water therapy. Um, Dr. Bruce, thank you so much for being here. If you can please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Well, thank you, Adriana. It's a pleasure to be here, and I love speaking about the benefits of water. Aquatic therapy has been the major focus in throughout my professional career, and have found it so useful, both in terms of myself, in terms of maintenance and physical conditioning, but for patients from a broad range of difficult issues from neuromuscular disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal fractures, complicated pelvic fractures, complicated spinal cord injury, uh, pulmonary disease, cardiac disease, uh, virtually a whole panoply of medical pathology, as well as working with elite athletes uh from uh middle school up through Olympian uh world-class gold medalists. Uh so water really plays a role in so much of uh uh what happens uh physiologically, and the benefits are ubiquitous, uh, whether you're an infant or uh 109-year-old lady, like the gentleman whose grandmother we just spoke to. Uh it is unique in that. There are really no medications that cross that entire age spectrum. Uh, and there are almost no other medical options that have benefit across that range.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

That's amazing. What makes water so special? Why what are the physical properties of water that make it so beneficial for the body?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Well, water basically has a bunch of properties that are useful, uh, all of which play a role. Water is a great deal denser than air, uh about a hundred times denser than air. Uh, and as a consequence, uh we float in water, or most of us float in water. Uh the water is also dense in terms of essentially resisting movement through water. It takes more muscle energy to move an arm through water than it does, for example, in an overarm stroke. The overarm stroke goes fast, the underwater stroke completion is a lot slower and requires a great deal more energy. So water density plays a role. Buoyancy is an offshoot of that density. So when you're in water, uh the human body is effectively weightless. Um, obviously, somebody that is prone swimming tends to float at the top. Uh, people that are vertical in vertical water exercise doing that kind of exercise are offloading the joints of their ankles, feet, knees, hips, spine all the way on up. Uh, so most vertical water exercise is done in classes that are approximately chest high or a little deeper than that sometimes, or doing working in the deep water with flotation devices. So buoyancy plays a great deal of role in that. The combination of that buoyancy offloading is really useful, especially in some diseases like diabetes, where uh people wind up um having difficulty with bone joint issues quite commonly, especially with chronic long-term diabetes. Uh, so water is a unique is a unique property for that. For folks with obesity, obviously the buoyancy water offsets the load on the body. So most of my patients that have significant weight control issues, I try and encourage to get in the pool and see how that goes. And uh obviously, obese people sometimes have a lot of body image problems and are afraid to put on a swimming suit. So it requires a lot of coaching to get them to be comfortable doing that. But uh with that uh aside, uh, if I can get them into water, they almost always stay with it because it is so helpful. Sure. So water density, buoyancy, water is also a poor thermal conductor compared to air. I'm sitting here in probably 72 degrees air temperature. Water at 72 degrees feels cold or quite cold. It wouldn't be comfortable to sit here just talking in 72 degrees water without movement. I would need heat to be producing heat to feel that. Um, and so that's a property that can be useful. Folks with multiple sclerosis oftentimes have difficulty with exercise because it can increase their core temperature, which causes a flare-up of their multiple sclerosis. So using the pool to exercise is a really useful thing for folks with multiple sclerosis. But for folks with rheumatoid arthritis and things that are uh evolving other joint issues, warm water feels better. And while exercising in warm and hot water is difficult because your heart rate goes up to a substantial degree, uh, the feeling of getting into warm water is very, very unique. Uh one of the essentially effects uh that I have uh tried to investigate throughout my career is the universal effect of somebody sitting down into a warm water bathtub and just going, ah. And I wish I could explain fully from a medical standpoint what that ah is all about. I know some of the reasons, but I don't know all the reasons. That increased temperature has a bunch of effects on the human body, it drops blood pressure uh because the blood vessels relax. It typically decreases heart rate, even though the water is warm, and there are a bunch of cardiac effects that from just being in the water, which we'll probably get into. Uh, and the other effect is that it depresses the sympathetic nervous system response. There are two components that go into uh mood uh the physiologic um status. Uh, one is the parasympathetic nervous system, which is essentially the component that is leads to blood pressure control, slows heart rate, dilates eyes, uh causes a general feeling of relaxation, speeds, digestion, things like that. The sympathetic nervous system is often called the flight or fight component. And what happens with that is that the heart rate goes up, blood vessels constrict, muscles tense, uh, your focus becomes net much narrower, uh the pupils constrict. Uh you're basically ready to derive the runaway from the dragon. Right. Uh so water basically facilitates parasympathetic system response while decreasing sympathetic nervous system response. So those are all part of the factors that go into that uh response. But there are probably other things too. The problem with aquatics in general is that it has not received the amount of federal grant funding, research funding, looking at the multiple, multiple, multiple benefits. Uh and uh that's been very frustrating for me. Yeah. Uh as a consequence, um I've applied to uh multiple federal agencies with proposed grants for research in aquatics. Uh, and uh the National Institute of Health said, you know, you know, uh we really don't fund therapies per se. Uh why don't you apply to uh what was the then uh component of the National Institute of Health called the Center for Complimentary and Alternative Therapies. So I applied there. And complementary and alternative therapies said, wait a minute, aquatics is not complimentary alternative.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Right. Mainstream. Yeah, swimming is one of the most popular sports in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

That's correct, it's mainstream, and yet we can't get funding to answer some of the really useful basic questions.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

You know, I that's been the bane of my career. I've had some fairly substantial research funding, but I have not yet come to the final answer of getting to what is that ah all about.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Does it have something to do? I saw a video that you have on the internet about perhaps that that ah and that warm water kind of reminds of us, reminds us of Oh, there's no question.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

I know exactly where your question is heading. I mean, the reality is Mother Nature is smart. Uh when it wants to create an environment or take advantage of an environment, it uses warm water. And so the human organism basically spends the best nine months of its life, you know, immersed in a warm water environment. It's only after the infant emerges from that warm water environment that the bad stuff happens.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

So there may be something that Oh, it's it there's no question. I think a factor in some of that uh really may go back to that whole prenatal period. I don't know that. Of course, there's no way really to research that. Sure. Um, but yeah, I think it has a big thing to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Interesting. Um tell me, Bruce, I know you you mentioned to me that you were a swimmer, that you were a lifeguard. So can you tell me a little bit about your journey into swimming, into water sports, and how that later appeared into your career as a doctor?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Well, it uh it has evolved. I mean, uh a factor which I uh I believe has made a role in my life is that when I was uh age uh four, I had poliomyelitis. And just before uh the polio virus, the polar vaccine was developed and popularized. Uh so I spent several months in uh in a polio hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Uh that hospital uh at that point was called Sheltering Arms uh and has since been uh become part of the University of Minnesota Medical School. The hospital was renamed a number of years after that, um as it was as it had become particularly uh known famous for successful polio rehabilitation. Oh, okay. That was done under the care of an Australian uh nurse uh named Sister Kinney. Uh and Elizabeth Kenny was a very innovative, very iconoclastic uh nurse who had worked with polio in Australia during uh a number of it. It had been endemic with polio for some time. And she basically did very different things with polio management. At that point, uh polio was felt to be a disease that was treated by orthopedists who could cast affected extremities. The problem with casting extremities is that it freezes the muscles, atrophies the muscles, and locks up the joints. Sure. So that people were left with substantial disability. Sister Elizabeth Canney basically said, I'm gonna call a BS on that. I'm basically not going to do what is recommended. I want to keep people moving. Yeah and so in the rural part of Australia where she lived, all of the polio patients that came to her actually got through their disease with far better function than the patients that were going to the main uh orthopedic hospitals in Australia at that point. The Australian physicians were not excited about that. The fact that she was producing better outcomes simply as an RN. She wasn't even an RN at that point.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Uh she was practicing as a nurse, but without the credentials, and they refused to accept the fact that her patients were doing better than they could produce. Uh, she was effectively encouraged to migrate to Minnesota to Minnesota. Uh well, she migrated uh first to the United States, tried to find somebody that was interested in working with polio first on the East Coast, uh got some reception from a couple of famous uh polio practitioners at that point.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

This is what year, excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

And that would have been basically in probably 1939, 38. Okay. Somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Maybe even a little later, 1441. Okay. Um, and uh they suggested that she come to University of Minnesota, where she met uh then uh practitioner uh who was very popular in managing polio. And polio at that point had a very substantial epidemic going on. Sure. Uh that that practitioner um basically said, I'd like you to work with some of my patients. And he saw what she did. Uh, and at that point he was working out of the sheltering arms hospital, and so she became uh the head nurse in that hospital and trained uh practitioners essentially throughout the Minneapolis area. I happened to be hospitalized at that particular hospital during that period of time. So she was one of the people that I can dimly recall, because I was very young, yeah, four years old. Coming through the ward, because at that point pediatric patients were always housed in large wards. So the ward that I was in had kids in our iron lungs as well as milder cases like mine. My I mean, I had pretty severe involvement of both lower extremities, but no respiratory involvement. Okay, and no substantial upper extremity involvement that I knew of.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Uh and uh Sister Kenny had the sheltering arms had a pool, and she made good use of that. She basically did a bunch of things. She basically had the polio patients wrapped up in uh very hot army blankets, and to this day I remember the smell of those warmed army blankets. I mean, it was hot and it wasn't uncomfortable once you got all wrapped into it, but it was probably very therapeutic in terms of keeping muscle blood flow going.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

But then we also went to the pool, and I don't remember what they did in the pool, but I remember what the pool looked like, and I remember being in it, but I don't remember where the exercises were that were getting done.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

But it must have made a lasting impression if you still remember it so many years later.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Well, I've had to think about it a lot uh to recall because multiple times people have asked me, Well how did you first get interested in water? Well, I don't know that that was my first interest. But makes sense. Going backwards, it looks at a fact at a factor in my life that has become profoundly important as I've gotten older and sustained the impacts of that early childhood polio. Uh, but I never didn't swim. I think my mom basically saw swimming as a really important thing to continue for me. So I had swim lessons and swim lessons and uh became uh lifeguard, a camp hot counselor, teaching swimming. Water has been part of my life from early years on through. Uh it is for me, uh I think probably the single benef biggest benefit to my current physical situation, uh, ability to manage the effects of polio and arthritis and joint replacements and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. But water has always been important. I had uh not really thought a lot about it um until probably I was a freshman in medical school. And at that point, uh I was really struggling with my classes. I majored in my undergraduate major from Iowa State was in English and speech. Okay, which seemingly, I mean, I had a bunch of majors in chemistry or minors in chemistry and biology and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So I could get into medical school, but my interests at that point were focused on language. Um and uh coming from a language background into medical school, which is hardcore science memory repetition, yes, uh, was a real struggle for me. And I was flat flunking out. And by the end of the first semester, I was really in danger of being able to continue in medical school. And I decided uh that I needed to change my life. I'd never flunked out of anything in my life, I'd never flunked classes in college, come close, but that was probably more to do with falling in love and missing classes. Uh but anyway, I decided okay, what are you what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna finish my class day. I'm gonna go over the university pool. I'm gonna swim laps, I'm gonna come back from the pool instead of. Studying in my basement, dark North Dakota apartment, uh, I'm going to uh go to the med school library and study there. And that turned out to be a very fortuitous set of circumstances because I'd only done that, or you know, going from class to the pool, coming back, actually eating a meal in the student cafeteria rather than warmed over canned beans in my basement apartment of Minnesota eating a real meal, going up to the library, studying, which also happened to be the uh student nurse library, which was a wonderful learning environment from many standpoints.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

So I had uh it for the first time a life exercise, a social awareness, and my grades soared. Oh, that's uh just made an amazing difference.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

So I realized something about that was important. Now I could find ways of eating normally elsewhere, I could meet females elsewhere, but that whole combination proved to me that that was something that I should stick with. And so I sort of stuck with that through the rest of my medical education until I graduated. Um the the fact that relaxation was so important was really interesting, and I continued uh on that as best I could. I went into the military after medical school, and I didn't really have access to a pool at that point, so those years went by, but when I got into my residency training at the University of Washington, uh the pool at the university was open. I participated in that uh and found that helpful. Now, when you're a resident, there's not a lot of time to do anything except study, read, study, and learn. But I so it wasn't a regular thing. When I started my clinical practice in Eugene, Oregon, uh, I was the only physician in rehabilitation medicine. My clinical specialty is called physical medicine and rehabilitation.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Got it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

And uh I was really working hard. Uh my work day would start at or before seven in the morning, uh, making rounds of my patients, having patients in the office all day and afternoon, seeing consults after that until seven, eight o'clock at night, get home, eat a meal, and basically fall into bed exhausted, get up the next day. And that had gone on for probably four or five months, and I realized, you know, uh, I'm circling the drain, I'm gonna burn out doing this. So I decided what I'm gonna do is go to the parks and wreck pool and swim over the noon hour. I mean, nobody was demanding that I be in the hospital over the noon hour. I didn't have to schedule patients then, so I would basically you swapped your lunch hour for a switch. Right. Uh and um and in the beginning it was hard. I I would have to play mental games with myself. I said, all I have to do instead of catching up on paperwork during the lunch hour, all I have to do is put down the pen, walk out the office front door, and at that point I can turn around and come back and finish up my paperwork. Well, then it went to I'd get out the front door and at least walk out to the car in the parking lot. I can turn around then. I don't have to get in. So I played get the front door, get to the car, get in the car, go to the pool, drive back from the pool without getting wet, yeah, all the way to put on the swimming suit, come back. But my life changed with doing that. I mean, the the 45 minutes that I swam, uh, the time out of the office was probably a total of an hour and 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

But it was a life changer.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

And it made a huge difference. I slept better, I managed stress in the afternoon better, my concentration and focus was better, I could remember more stuff. Uh, and and there are really um physiologic reasons for most of those changes. Tell us about so water really has been a lifesaver for me throughout my career.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah. Tell us about those physiological changes. I mean, I experience the same thing every time I go in the pool. I know it, but like what is going on in our body?

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Okay, so you basically get into water, and basically in that immersed environment, you've got hydrostatic pressure pressing in on all of the parts that are underwater. So if you're in neck depth water, say for example, yeah, uh, the body is basically pushing on your skin, uh, compressing veins inside, uh, pushing the blood up into first the thorax and into the heart and lungs, but at the same time it's doing that with interstitial fluid, that is tissue fluid that is not in the vein, um but is within muscle or superficial to muscle. Uh, so there's a lot of fluid. It increases cardiac volume during immersion like that. About um what does that mean for the heart? Well, basically it pushes about 700 milliliters of fluid up into the heart and lungs.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

About a third of that blood goes into the heart. So it tends to dilate the heart. The heart rate as a consequence of that dilation tends to slow automatically.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

At the same time that it does that, it basically expands and then contracts more. Well, pulse rate is really important uh and and something that frequently is obsessional in working with athletes. They worry about an exercise that doesn't boost their heart rate dramatically. Zone two, zone three. Yeah, exactly. And and um when I was especially working with the Olympians, I had to explain to them the basis of the physiology. Working in water basically expands the heart. At the same time it's expanding the heart, it's making contraction more efficient. Okay. So that you increase stroke volume, the amount of blood that's pushed out with each beat, by about 30%, which is very, very significant. And as a consequence, the decrease in in rate coupled with the increase in volume means the body is working more efficiently. And at the same time, it's doing that contraction, your peripheral arterial structures are relaxing as a physiologic benefit. So it's more efficient to do that. Um and so it's better if you're working, I mean, this has been pretty extensively studied, and it basically turns out that the difference between a maximum heart rate in land and in water is about 12%.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

So if you're working to maintain a sustained heart rate on land of, say, 130, which is pretty rapid, yeah. Uh basically in water, you're dealing with a number that's down into the teens, 100 and whatever.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Which is more or less.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Which is significant, yeah. And and yet you're still getting the same cardiovascular benefits out of it, and actually even some more, because it's more efficient for the heart to deliver blood that way than it is on land.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

So it's it's really quite amazing. And in talking through this, uh, just last month I was giving a talk at uh Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

And it was uh yeah, I was talking to the Department of Cardiology, and none of the cardiologists knew that.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

None of them.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Uh well, actually, one of them did because he had come to some of classes that I had taught before. Thanks to you. But everybody else, nobody else really understood that. The power of woman. And it's it's it's I mean, it's it during the cardiac cycle, the heart relaxes, ventricles expand, and then when it comes time to contract, they contract, they contract, they contract, but they have to increase the pressure within the the ventricle, the pressure of the blood within the ventricle to a sufficient level to push through the mitral valve and get out into the bloodstream. And then as soon as the valve is open, you've got a whole column of immobile blood. So it's having to push that forward, and it does that until the the ventricle has contracted as much as it can, and it's contracting to hold that pressure, but moving no blood. And then it starts to relax and fill up within. So there are two points in the cardiac cycle where the heart is not moving any blood, it's not moving any blood while it's contracting to try and raise the pressure at a level that is necessary to open the valves, and it's also not moving any blood when it's relaxing. So there is essentially a physiologic demand uh that limits the maximum heart rate. Now, I mean, a young person um in the late teens, uh, maximum heart rate's probably around 120. Well, uh maximum heart rate in somebody as old as I am is theoretically around 140 or a little less. Well, I mean, I I I I don't know that that's actually obligate. I mean, during my cardiac workout, I can look at this morning. And did you swim this morning? Yeah, I yeah, I swam this morning. Let's let's see what happened. Okay. So my sustained heart rate for an hour and a half was 118. So that's a that's great. And for an hour and a half? For an hour and a half. That's yeah, for 30, yeah, for 90 minutes, basically, it was 118. And my maximum heart, it was 157. So way above the predicted age-related heart rate for me. Yeah, is that because there's something unique about my heart? Probably not. Uh, there's something unique about the fact that I've been a swimmer all my life. Sure. So I've sustained an ability to increase my heart rate, and at times it's been up into the very high 160s. Depends on how coach coaches this.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Okay. Can you share with the audience your age, Dr. Bruce?

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Can I what?

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Can can you tell us your age for those with I'm 81.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

I'm 83.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

83. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

That's very impressive.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

I'm not super young.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

I'm physiologically probably younger than 83.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

I would agree so. And can we talk about that? Because I've read that swimming can increase our lifespan by an average of 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

That it really can and you know, we've just seen I've not seen data that shows that, but I'm willing to believe that it makes a big difference. I mean, there's Why would that be? Well, okay, one of the things that typically happens as we get older is that we change uh the cellular makeup of uh muscles, tendons, and ligaments, and blood vessels. We lose some of what is called you know a collagen type one, which is and I'm pretty sure I've got these right. I think type one is is elastin, is the elastic kind of tissue that keeps us from wrinkling, and you lose that as you get older. And type two is a more rigid kind, so that the blood vessels basically lose that elasticity. Now it's been shown really in a couple of very excellent studies that water exercises definitely water exercise definitely impacts cardiac elasticity. Um and that increase in cardiac elasticity decreases the work the heart has to do to move blood throughout the bones and muscles and yeah, joints and organs. Okay. Uh and and so ideally what you would want to have is 20-year-old blood vessels. Well, probably in old can uh congen compet not necessarily competitive swimmers, but regular swimmers, their blood vessels probably are younger looking under microscopes. I don't know. Nobody has done the autopsy study. So interesting. I mean, it would be a very interesting study to do, but it's you'd have to basically get bodies donated to be able to look at blood vessels of older traditional uh the regular swimmers versus normal folks. Yeah, yeah. It's never been done, but boy would I like to see it done. That that increase in vascular elasticity uh and uh has a profound effect on all of the organs in the body.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

So yeah, that's I think important. The other thing that happens, which I've done quite a bit of reading on lately, is the impact on uh the brain as I become very old, uh having a brain that is functioning is not not increasingly important, but increasingly a concern. Um and so by increasing blood flow to the brain, both at rest and during exercise in the water, brain blood flow increases. The blood vessels that supply the brain, the carotid arteries predominantly are the ones that have been studied, uh show a significant improvement in blood flow velocity, but all and in diameter. So they're bigger blood vessels in water, and the blood is moving faster through them. So that there's probably about a 7% or so increase in cerebral blood flow. To the brain. To the brain. Uh-huh. And of course, blood flow means oxygen availability. Sure. And the brain needs lots of oxygen to keep functioning high.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Uh so I think that's a really important factor. And it's been found that that happens both in sedentary, just sitting in water as well as exercising in water.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

Really?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah. That's and that's an effect that doesn't happen with runners to that magnitude, with uh walkers, uh, with cyclists. It's a different magnitude of order in brain blood flow in swimmers.

SPEAKER_03 39:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Or in in aquatic, in the aquatic environment. I don't need to say just swimmers, but but uh folks doing water exercise, folks doing, yeah, for example, at our local um senior pool, uh Clark Spur. Yeah, Clark's Clark Spur, uh has a wonderful uh current program. They do, I've seen it. Yeah, and uh the folks that are walking in that environment for most part is roughly chest mid mid-chest depth for most of the people that are in that program or that I see in that are at at that depth. Well, that's enough to be increasing blood flow significantly. And of course, they're walking against current, so it's more work from that standpoint, too.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

And larkspur is a warmer pool than saying.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Larkspur is a warmer pool. It's not a hot water pool, but it's certainly a warmer water pool. Uh the shallower pool at uh Juniper, uh, not the outdoor pool, but the uh indoor pool. The 20 is the same temperature, yeah. So it's probably close to 85, 86, maybe. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

So those are, I mean, those are really good temperatures for most people, even for doing fairly vigorous exercise.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

My master's program would probably not be happy having that.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

No, I can't stand swimming in hot, hot water.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Uh they they would just as soon have colder water. Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

The cold water feels so good when you we're swimming many, many laps.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

I know.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Yeah. I mean, I I I couldn't be in the I I I couldn't be exercising that hard in the indoor uh warmer water pool at either uh Lark Spur or Juniper.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Yeah, when I do, I mean times that I've swam a lot in warmer waters, I get, I mean, I'm just exhausted when I finish. It's probably because the water is denser and I'm doing more exercise. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

I would guess. But but that feeling of post uh post-exercise fatigue happens with both uh yeah, vigorous exercise and and not vigorous exercise. I mean, I finish, I mean, we're talking right now, uh mid-afternoon, uh at one of my peak uh hopeful nap times. Yeah, when I when I finish, when I finish at the pool, uh I go home, I eat something. I usually have some chores to do around the house. And then about three o'clock, I love to just sit in my office chair and take a recliner and I'm out for about 24 to 27 minutes. And it's amazing. I mean, I look at the watch, I say, okay, 327, get up, wake up, and I wake up at 327. And it's it, I don't, I don't nap longer than that, but I wake up, I feel refreshed, and I can make it through the rest of the day.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

Well, thank you for being here during your normal nap time. I hope to make it more, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

I'll probably get around to it later, but okay. Um so anyway, uh yeah, the the effect on brain is I think really, really important. And I've given uh talk uh at a number of senior care centers uh to folks about aquatic exercise, especially those that have a pool. Um I've you know, our local large senior center. I've I sent in uh uh asking if they'd be interested in a talk, but they've never responded. But they have a pool.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

And I don't know how busy it is. Interestingly, it's where our coach Bob Bruce lives. Oh, okay. So I don't know that he's been asked to encourage programs there. Yeah, but they're missing a bet with both of us.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

I would definitely say so. Let me say so. And you're a living proven, you know, just the vitality you carry, you know, thanks to your swimming. You're saying you're swimming about six miles a week.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

I I uh yeah, uh yeah, typically. Um you know, the the some of the yeah, Coach Bob's Friday workouts, he calls it Fast Friday, that doesn't have as much yardage. It just is more intense. Okay. I mean, it's during Coach Bob's workout that my at one one of the workouts a couple of weeks ago, my overall average for the hour and a half was like 121, which is pretty high, and got into like 167 or something peak. So that's a pretty substantial bandwidth and cardiac effect. Um but as a consequence of that, probably from chronic long-term swimming, my resting height rate is pretty low.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

So is mine. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Uh, and I think that's very typical with swimmers. They tend to have probably larger hearts, maybe not in terms of dimension, but in terms of of wall thickness. And I don't know that I need to I meant to ask that to the cardiologists at uh Mayo Clinic, but I didn't ask that question. Um because a lot of times having an enlarge heart is not looked on as being a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Got it, okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yeah, what you really want is a large, capable heart, not a large, incapable heart. So Okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

So I have a question for you, Dr. Bruce. You clearly have studied a lot about water therapy, but you have also, I mean, you it the part of it is because you are a physical therapist as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Well, I'm not a physical therapist.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

Or not a physical therapist, but you studied Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

I'm a rehab doc, and a clinical the clinical name for my specialty is physiatry. And when I tell people I'm a physiatrist, they say, or are you a physical therapist? Well, I'm not. Okay. Yeah, I'm I'm not that good. Indeed.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

But you have, I mean, I read about your work and you've worked with soldiers from Afghanistan, Iraq wars, you've helped rehabilitate them through water. Can you tell us a little bit about that work as well? That's part of your knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah, this is interesting and and also a bit of a frustration. We had uh uh with the uh Tacoma uh Fort Manigan uh base uh worked with folks at Fort Manigan Hospital uh and had uh really good support with one of the physicians that at that point was in charge of the clinic. Uh and and so he allowed and encouraged us to work with the what was at that point and still is called the Wounded Warrior Program. And this was basically during the peak of Iraq and Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

Yeah, I know that organization.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

And we were uh I was very excited to get to do that because we were working with folks with both multiple musculoskeletal and orthopedic injuries, as well as almost all those folks with some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder. And so we were really getting good success with those soldiers. The program was becoming increasingly popular. There were more and more of those folks coming in, and then they changed administration in the hospital, and the program basically was not sustained, and I have no idea what the politics behind that were. Um, but that's politics and politicians, and politics and in the military, and politics in in uh college administrations are ubiquitous.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Yeah, I can imagine. But what did that experience leave you with?

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Like how how's water I was only convinced more than ever that the water is, especially for folks with PTSD, really quite uniquely beneficial. And it's um, you know, it's it's a clinical problem without really good medications for it that are systemic and uh capable of side and riddled with side effects, actually. And to be able to do that without medications is wonderful. So it it it's sad that it never got going. Uh we had a substantial volume of soldiers that we'd worked with, and we had questionnaires that we had done with them to validate the fact that their sleep patterns were changing, to validate the fact that um they felt calmer, they weren't having flare-ups to the same extent. But the military would never allow us to publish that.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Oh, really? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

I mean, publishing studies on soldiers is difficult because there are lots of privacy issues involved. So I could understand some of their concerns, but our data was not identified by soldier, it was identified by the cohort, which we identified by whether they had uh concurrent orthopedic disease, predominantly uh the cerebral uh dysfunction due to PTSD or other major health or medical problems. So we stratified by them by that, but within each cohort, we didn't know the names of any of the people, we just had the data.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

Okay, but they they didn't want it published.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Now perhaps they didn't want us published because there were so damn many of them. And the military, even today, our military is very, very reluctant to release information on it on how many people. I mean, I've read a number of studies that are looking at the current war, uh uh demonstrating some some of those exact same issues, a reluctance to look at what is versus uh the what the data show.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Got it. Okay. So and and going back to this issue of mental health that you raised, PTSD, why is it that water also, besides the physio, you know, the physiological effects that it has on the body, why is it so good for the mind?

SPEAKER_00 51:05

I suspect it has all entirely uh an effect of the autonomic nervous system. I mean, what what PTSD is essentially an aberrant uh recurrent response of the sympathetic nervous system. So whatever it is that triggers the event, the body immediately goes into full-scale uh fight or flight and panic. Yes. Uh and and that uh downregulation of the autonomic nervous system, I think, is the profound reason for that benefit in the water. It's interesting that some of those same impacts of uh autonomic dysregulation are common in Alzheimer's disease. And so Alzheimer's patients are not uncommonly suddenly flooded with emotions for reasons that may not be obvious for whatever triggers that. But working with Alzheimer's patients or working with dementia patients in general, and we have done some research on this, shows a really remarkable impact in their cognitive function.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Wow. So you are also studying this population as well?

SPEAKER_00 52:32

That's correct.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

With water.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Yeah, because I would really like to see uh the use of pools emerge as state-of-the-art regular medical practice for nursing home facilities that have access to pools. Yeah, it's why not do that? Yeah, because it's medication free, and there are no medications with dementia that are without significant side effects.

SPEAKER_01 53:02

For the rest of the body, of course.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Getting in and out of a pool is essentially devoid of side effects, provided you can both get in and get out. Sorryfully. Uh so it's critical. But uh, I mean, we published that on a series of of patients. Uh and one of them was really quite striking. It was a gentleman uh that had pretty severe dementia and essentially was uh able to sit uh in the wheelchair, uh not really able to dress himself. Uh he could feed himself, albeit with some difficulty, and slowly he wasn't communicative. His family he was living in a facility that had a nice available pool. His family, both daughters, uh said, you know, dad used to love the pool. Can we get him down to the pool? And so it had to go through the protocols within administration to get permission to do that. But we got Bill down into the pool, um, down into the water with a lift. At the very beginning, his spasms and stuff increased. Uh, but with time that calmed down, and he worked with the therapist in the pool pretty much one-on-one in the beginning, and improved to the point where his cognitive function was very significantly different. Uh actually, I think like on the third time in the water, that his neurologist came down to see how he was doing in the pool. And Bill basically looked up at the neurologist, waved, and said, Hi, Doc, how are you doing? He hadn't been communicative before.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

Later on, we've got video on this, uh, which is really quite remarkable. I mean, the therapist basically said, Okay, Bill, and he's standing at the pool side hole holding on to the rail. He said, Okay, Bill, uh, what I want you to do is to go down, hold your breath, and let's shoot for 15 seconds. Uh-huh. And so Bill went down and came up at 17 seconds. Wow. So he both followed the command and did exactly what was told.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

And exceeded it.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

And exceeded it. Other uh, he I've got also in the same with the same patient. He's walking with his two daughters in the water and they're having a conversation. Not just, how are you doing? Yeah, but can you remember mom or yeah? A conversation that's a two-way conversation. Well, that didn't exist before you can't do that with medications. There are no medications that are that powerful and do that. So uh, I mean, folks ask, you know, well, how did he do after that? I'd love to have the answer for that, but he was in his 90s, he died. Yeah. And so I don't I don't know how long the effects lasted, but the fact that he went from somebody that wasn't able to participate in his care to somebody that was able to self-feed, to dress himself, and to participate at times with his daughter in conversation was priceless.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Yeah, for sure. So I'm very happy that he had that nice finale to his life, the water.

SPEAKER_00 56:58

Yeah, or I mean, one of the other patients we worked with was pretty much non-ambulatory um and uh was emotionally very difficult to deal with. Um but within a period of uh several weeks of working with her, uh, and still because she was emotionally difficult, she insisted and when she'd go into the pool therapy, she insisted on walking around the pool before she'd go in. Or she couldn't even walk to start with.

SPEAKER_03 57:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

So uh I mean, is there a difference? Yes, there is a difference, and it's not explicable by any known medication.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

Yeah. No, water is so powerful. I remember in my first pregnancy, I swam most of it. I mean, actually to week 41, until my doctor said um, Adriana, you cannot swim anymore, you know. I was I because my but my son was born two weeks late, but I literally swam consistently till week 41. And um, of course, after he was born, I was very anxious to put him in the water. And I remember that I put him in the water for the first time when he was exactly two months of age. It was September 29th. Um and that night he slept his first night through. And from then on, at only two months of age, he slept the entire night and he would never wake up again.

SPEAKER_03 58:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 58:30

And that was the first, and it coincided with that first day of swimming, you know. And um, and he's been a swimmer ever since.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

So he auto-regulated.

SPEAKER_02 58:39

What?

SPEAKER_00 58:40

He auto-regulated.

SPEAKER_02 58:41

He did. It was fascinating. I was and I, yeah, I mean, I saw the connection right away and didn't understand all the benefit, you know, all the reasons why. And now I do, thanks to this conversation. But yeah, water, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:54

Well, and it's interesting. I mean, uh, in working with pregnant, and we had uh in my Eugene years, we had an active program uh with what with a community pool. Uh actually it was a uh a high school pool. Uh, but we because it wasn't in use all day long, we basically started first of class uh a program for musculoskeletal, I mean injured workers, uh, but that emerged into a program for uh people you know for pregnancy. Uh and by the end, we were dealing with first trimester, second trimester, last trimester pregnancy. And when that program came and and and we got too many complaints from the third trimester pregnancy patients that had delivered, yeah, they insisted on having a postpartum course for those folks, which and then in turn led to water babies. Yeah, well, it led it well, it led we weren't involved with the water baby program, but at that point, but we were dealing with this volume of infants who would come in, and grandparents would be taking care of the infant while the postpartum lady was in the water, which then led to the grandparents saying, No, we want our own programs. So then there was a senior program. Beautiful. But the time domino effects by the time we finished, I think there were during the course of the week, as I recall, there were like 18 different uh classes at uh Sheldon Pool. Wow. Yeah, and then they changed health, they changed how in the school administration and that went away.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:50

Okay. But we definitely need more pools in Benz. I know. Junior Pur and Larks for are not enough. I mean, there's the Bend Athletic Club and a new kid coming in.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

Are there any high school pools? Or do all the kids?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:04

I know in Redmond, the Redmond High School swims at um the Cascades Aquatic Center, which they're building a new one. Okay. It's gonna be open next year and it's gonna have just like Juniper, a 50-meter pool and a 25-meter pool. That's coming up. And then the Skyliner Club that's beginning to be built right now on Skyliner Road on the west side of Bend will also have a 25-meter pool. So there's a few more pools coming.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

We've got good swim teams here. I mean, the key, the kids' swim team programs here are very, very successful. I mean, we're we've had Olympians.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

So there must be school pools that are available. And I just don't know they were. I mean, I see the swimmers from those programs at uh at Juniper, yeah. Uh and the water polar sway players as well. It's also very strong.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Yeah. Um, and we're very lucky to be surrounded by so much natural water, our lakes, our rivers. Right. Yeah. So for somebody listening to this podcast who says, you know, I should get be getting in the water. I'm not doing enough of that. You know, what's a simple routine that someone can begin to adapt, adopt?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Well, I mean, first, find and find an aquatic environment that is both accessible and convenient is key number one. And within that aquatic environment, uh there are any range of options. I mean, you can do vigorous stuff vertically, you can do gentle stuff vertically. Uh, there's a wonderful program some places, but not here in Bend called I Chi, which is an aquatic tai Chi program. Oh wow. I want to look into that. And I I I've I've tried to push forward on that, but I need to talk with the director of Bend Aquatics. Okay. And I don't know who that, I don't know that person, and probably need to. Okay. Um, but that that is a uniquely uh useful program for folks with movement disorders, for folks with Parkinsonism, uh, and just for folks like me, uh, that have neurologically geriatric balance dysfunction because that's something that I Tai Chi is known to be useful for worldwide. Okay. Hai Chi is really an effective way of achieving the same thing, and at the same time here in water, so there's even less risk of falling.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

Interesting. Does high mean water?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:54

Pardon?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

Hai chi, the high comes from AI C H I. AI, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Yeah, I mean you can look it up online. I will. It's yeah, it's intriguing. It's it's quite popular, but it I don't think there's any I've not seen in any of the programming for either Larkspur or Juniper that we've got that. I mean, both Larkspur and Juniper have pretty active programs or vertical and swimming programs. Um, but finding, you know, a course to broaden that even further and making those pools useful to a broader range of people is it would be beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:37

I mean, the program, um, I mean, both the uh Larkspur and Juniper Warmwater Pool are perfect for that kind of a program because you know the warmer water makes it useful to stay in and not do high level aerobic kind of activity. Got it. So I would recommend to somebody that just starting out, try and find something that would work for you. Could it be just water walking? And water walking can be very useful and can be physically a very good exercise. And and so if I'm dealing with somebody that has access to a pool, but they're gonna be working on their own and basically say, okay, find a depth that is comfortable that you can comfortably walk at, walk across the pool and back, walk across the pool and back, and time yourself as to okay, for 10 minutes I'm gonna do that and see how many times I can go back and forth. Well, that gives you a metric as to what to work from. Sure. You can do one of two things. You can walk faster to get more reps in, you can put weights on you, that's correct, or you can go to deeper water, which gives you more. Rest and resistance and try and maintain the same pace, but do it as many times or do more. So you can increase it by depth, you can increase it by time or by distance. So those are all three metrics that you can work on in your own. It doesn't take a teacher to do that. It takes discipline to do it. And discipline is something that almost all human beings are deficient in, including yours truly.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Well, at six miles a week, at 83, you know, I think there's a lot to admire.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Yeah, I would have to say I'm I'm I'm I have discipline, but it isn't to say that there are no Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays that I don't say, oh geez, I I don't know that I want to do that today. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't often happen that I basically let myself out of doing that. Because I know that by the time so I I basically try and get there at 11 30.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:09

And the the master's group swims from 12 till 1. Yeah. Uh so I try and get there for a half an hour of warm-up time. But on the days when I've opted out at uh at a quarter to eleven or a quarter to twelve, I'm really pissed at myself. I'm really saying you gotta not do that. You gotta for you gotta push yourself. You pushed yourself. Yeah. My goal is to stay above the grass as long as I can.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

It's a good goal to have. I've always said to myself, and now after this podcast, after this interview with yourself, with more reason, I've always said I want to swim until I die, like until the very last day. And you've given me every reason to make to make sure that I maintain that promise to myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:06

Well, but let's not demean uh demean the uh dry land activity.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:13

I mean, the single No, I just feel like uh the water is such a happy place to be. It just feels so good for the body. You know, it doesn't give you any aches really, um, you know, um, for the joints. Um, I mean, it just since it's not an impact sport, which I know also has its drawbacks, as we are talking about for bone density and whatnot. But the fact that it's not an impact sport, when I come out of the water, I feel like I've just gone through a massage. Like all my body feels so relaxed. Exactly. They sleep beautifully at night.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

I uh every time I finish my my master swim, I get out and I'm I'm a happier person than when I got in. Me too. No question, unstoppably. Uh but to go back a little bit into your comment, uh when I was working uh when I was living in uh Spokane, but uh running my lab at Washington State University, I got to work with the basketball team under then coach Tony Bennett. Um Tony was the son of a very famous basketball coach and a really, really, really good coach on his own who left Washington State University a coach of Virginia, as such retired. But um Tony, I I was talking with Tony and explaining to him uh essentially one of the benefits of aquatic activity and uh it's known in land-based any sport land-based activity, that one of the rate limiting factors is respiratory fatigue.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:53

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

And so if you're looking at track, if you're looking at distance running, if you're looking at soccer, if you're looking at uh rugby, uh not so much, not even quite so much with football, but uh any continuous running type or vigorous respiratory activity, the respiratory muscles start to fatigue out.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:20

And if there's a way that you can strengthen those muscles, uh that would be useful. So what I what I had done some work with uh a couple of researchers in Canada who had really looked at ways to do that, but I knew that water-based activity could do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:43

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:44

What happens with respiratory muscle fatigue is that the body basically starts to it it creates what's called a metabol reflex, and that metabol reflex shunts blood up to the respiratory muscles to supply more oxygen to them so that those muscles have the metabolic ability to continue. Where does that blood come from? Well, it comes from everywhere else in the body that's not mission critical for survival. In a basketball player, that's the those are the muscles of the butt and lower extremities. So the body sends out this metabol reflex that vasoconstricts the vasculature to the lower extremities, and even a minor decrease in or even a minor increase in constriction causes a dramatic increase in fatigue rate of those muscles. So, what I said to Tony is if we can get your players in the water, and I'll work them really vigorously in the water, we'll be able to build up respiratory muscle strength and respiratory muscle strength and endurance at the same time they're working on increasing their lower extremity strength and endurance. So we did that, yeah. That year we got the pool. Well, I got I I I went down to the pool with the basketball players for one of the very first sessions, and they were excited, they thought this was gonna be a lightweight workout. And we put them into the pool, and we had in the deep end, water end, used a thing called the aqua jogger, which uh Dick Brown and I developed in Eugene in the early phase of my career there. So uh they had them put on aqua joggers and they were basically treading water in the deep end with the aqua jogger, and they had them lined up in two rows, basically at about a 10-foot distance each other, threw a couple of basketball balls in the water. I said, okay, what you're gonna do right now is to play hot potato. Hot potato is a game that is commonly used on land. It's just basically somebody throws the ball to you immediately, you yeah, you're firing it back, you're firing it back. Right. But if you're doing that in the water, uh-huh, you don't have ground resistance to deal with. Right. You have to do that with core. So you're building core muscles hard. Yeah. Doing that at the same time, you're having to tread water hard to maintain your position in the water and to give yourself force to push the ball forward. So we had them do that. I say, okay, we're gonna do hot potato for five minutes and then you'll get a minute rest. We're gonna do hot potato for another five minutes, we're gonna do two minutes rest. And and at the end of that first workout, they were climbing up the ladder. They could no longer get them to the edge of the pool and press up. They basically were, they said, Dr. Becker, we are gonna be so sore tomorrow. Yeah, and so I basically my office was just down the hall from the team office. And so I saw them after the I saw them the next day, and I said, How do you feel? So that we weren't sore. That's the I know we just weren't sore. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, so we did that. And Sports Illustrated, who was following basketball teams uh late in the season, basically were kind of had had basically put uh Washington State Cougars really pretty high up. And they said, right now the Cougars are clearly the strongest third quarter and overtime team in the nation. Wow. They had essentially beaten themselves into respiratory conditioning, that's incredible. And Tony continued and then moved to Virginia, and Tony continued to work with his team that doing that same stuff, and Virginia was very, very successful as at NC2 March Madness levels. Yeah, so yeah, I mean it there's no question that what we did made a difference. Oh, I can just imagine. So and it was fun watching them say, We are gonna be so sore. And yeah, that I mean, they were amazed at how much work it was.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:37

Uh-huh. So no, I mean, water they say is 800 times more resistant than ours. Right. I mean, I believe that.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:44

But I mean, I didn't even think through while we were doing that, what really it required all the parts that it required to stay uh afloat and to stay balanced and in control. Yeah. It's a lot, you're working a lot of muscles. Treading water in the middle of the different muscles. A lot of different muscles in terms of even things looking at it like agility.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:12

Yeah. And we haven't even gotten into the sport of swimming, as we've but I mean swimming. I understand if you do all the four styles freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and um butterfly, it's the most complete workout because you're working literally all the muscles of the body, and no other sport will do that. And one of the beauty of swimming as well is that all the strokes are symmetrical. So it's not like the right side is going to hurt more than the left side, like that happens in tennis or baseball, that you're using more whether you're right or left side dominant. That's one of the things I love about swimming too, is that it just feels so evenly distributed. Right. The force and the strength that we use throughout the body. Yeah. No, I I can't speak this. It's been such a pleasure and such a privilege to have you on this podcast. You know, I love swimming. A few weeks ago I had Ellie Jorgensen. She's a fitness supervisor at Juniper. And I told her that the best investment I did in my health this year was buying an annual pass to Juniper because I've made use of it. And I go exclusively to the pool. I had, I mean, I know that it offers a lot of other classes and whatnot, but I just directly go to the pool each time. And I think I'm swimming four to five times a week, and it's just made such a difference. I just love it. And so having you here telling me all about, you know, telling us all about the benefits of swimming, I do hope that we continue to see more pools in, you know, our beautiful Bend.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

Yeah, I hope so too. I I I I mean, Bend is, however, still very blessed with what we've got.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:40

It is, it is, and also with all the natural bodies.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

That's what we have. And and uh as a parks and rec program, I'm very proud of being a regular supporter of the program.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:53

No, did oh here.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:54

Yeah, uh they're it it coach Bodlick is a great great program. And yeah, I mean the the the aquatic staff. Um I mean uh I've worked uh quite a bit with uh helping with some of the teachers that run the uh larksburgh classes. Oh, okay. Uh and there are some absolutely gifted uh aquatic exercise instructors, some really good ones. Yeah um so we're fortunate in that. Definitely. I would just like to get somebody. Are there two kinds of classes that I would love to see Parks and Rec do? One is the Ai Chi program, the aquatic uh Chi equivalent. Yes, and the other is an entirely different program, and it's called Aqua Zumba. So it's Zoom. Yes, oh, and it is so I was thinking about that today.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:52

Do you know that the people who started Zumba graduated with me from high school? Oh, really? Yes, I know them. Oh Alberto Aguión and Alberto Perlman. They live in Florida, and they were they were my high school. Um, yeah, they went, they graduated in my high school class. They started with a third Alberto too, and yeah, now I mean they started in Florida many, many years ago, and now it's like this global phenomenon.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:18

Oh, it's so fun, yeah, it's so fun, and it would catch on like crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:22

Yeah, I was thinking about that today. That's so funny that you mention it. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have to look into that. That's interesting. It would be fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:30

Yes. Well, you know, I'd love to find uh a I really ought to get off my butt and find out who to talk to within Parks and Rec.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:42

Well, we I can connect you with Ali. Okay, she's the pit separate supervisor there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:47

That'd be a good start. For sure. We can m work from there.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:51

Yeah. Well, Dr. Becker, thank you so much for being on this podcast. It's been so much fun.