Age Less / Live More

Latest Episodes:

385: Binaural Beats & Meditation with Cory Allen Nov 13, 2019

Show notes

I had a rough year in 2006. It was the year I opened my first yoga studio. I should have been on cloud nine, but I wasn't ready for all that responsibility and all that stress. I had a staff of 12, hundreds of students, courses, a restaurant, and very little support. Mostly, I was alone. An old friend sent me some audio meditation tracks he'd be using that had a technology called binaural beats. I'd never heard of it, but I gave it a try. Right away, I felt something. Technology and I have a complex relationship, but when it makes life easier, I'm a fan. Meditation is really hard, and anyone who tells you differently is actually just walking their dog (and calling it meditation). The real practices require deep work, and it's very hard to do all alone at home, even with books and apps. This is why I love yoga breathing, and it's also why frequency-following music can be very helpful, particularly when you're just getting started or in a mental and emotional jam.

My guest on this week's show is an audio engineer who makes meditation music, and he'll share how this simple technology can potentially help you find more balance.

Links & Resources

About Our Guest

Cory Allen is an author, podcast host, meditation teacher, and audio engineer from Austin, TX. His first book, Now Is the Way, was just released. Cory has studied and produced music for over 15 years. He has released over a dozen albums.

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384: Tiny Habits that Lead to Big Change with Dr. BJ Fogg Nov 07, 2019

Show notes

I wanted to run a marathon this year. The truth is, I hardly ever run, but like any good mid-life crisis man, I wanted to tackle that goal to prove to myself I still could do hard things. Sounds great, right? Fun and challenging? Here's the problem—I didn't do it. I don't even think I wanted to do it. If I had been smarter, I would have set a tiny goal, like running 5 km per week for a year for example. Then I could "win" the goal, and if the marathon happened, it'd be gravy. Instead, here I am approaching the end of the year. I've actually logged at least 10 km/week all year long, but I don't feel like it matters. But it does matter. My goal was just poorly crafted.

In this "dream big" and "hustle hard" era, it can be difficult to dial it back and make tiny goals and tiny habits, but I'm convinced it's where most of the change is actually possible. On this week's show, Dr. BJ Fogg shares his behavior change research from his upcoming book.

Listen & Learn:

How you need an epiphany, an environment change, or a collection of tiny habits to make lasting change
Why stacking small successes is often much wiser than chasing huge moonshots
Why feeling good is the best way to change
How things that make you feel guilt and shame are unlikely to motivate you long-term

Links & Resources:

Nutritional Tip: Food Allergies

About Our Guest

Dr. BJ Fogg founded the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, where he directs research and innovation. He teaches industry innovators how to use his models in Behavior Design. The purpose of his research and teaching is to help people improve their lives. BJ is the author of Persuasive Technology, and Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything is coming out in a couple months.

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383: The Nocturnal Brain With Dr. Guy Leschziner Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

You close your blackout curtains, flip your phone to airplane mode, and crawl into bed with all the best intentions to get 7.5 hours of sleep—and then your monkey mind starts peeling bananas. Work deadlines stream through your mind, the next episode of your current favorite series beckons, and for no good reason, you're dying to see what your friends are posting on Instagram. Thirty minutes pass, and more of the same. You're now worried you'll have raccoon eyes at the office meeting in the morning, but that thought just makes things worse. You finally fall asleep at 2:00 am and manage just four hours of sleep. Sound familiar? Many people overcome this by drinking half a bottle of red wine, puffing on a CBD vape pen, or popping an Ambien—but these are all Band-Aids. The underlying problem has not been solved. You've got a sleep problem, and it needs to be fixed.

Sleep expert Dr. Guy Leschziner dedicates his work to the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, and he's my guest on this week's show.

Listen & Learn:

Why 50% of your sleep tendencies are likely inherited
How to intelligently use sleep apps and other consumer tracking devices
Why REM sleep is not fully understood and can even be problematic
How sleep problems and mental health are very much a chicken and egg problem
How to know when to get professional medical help

Links & Resources

About Our GuestGuy is the clinical lead for the Sleep Disorders Centre at Guy's Hospital, which is one of Europe's largest sleep units. He is also Reader in Neurology at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London. His new book The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep is available now.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Apples vs Oranges

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382: The State of the Heart With Haider Warraich Oct 24, 2019

Show notes

I said goodbye to my grandfather when I was 8 years old. He had his first heart attack, and my mom was convinced he didn't have long to live. Turns out he had many, many years ahead of him. Unfortunately, he was riddled with recurring heart problems, Parkinson's, and a whole host of medical challenges. He lived a long life, but not a healthy one. His rapid decline shook my family, turned my mother into a health fanatic, and she passed the bug onto me.

I wish I could say that pleasure and dreams of excellence motivate me, but it's pain and fear that drive most of the big moves in my life. "I don't want to end up in a rocking chair watching Wheel of Fortune," gets me to my yoga mat much more often than "I want to glow with radiant energy." I wish I chased carrots, but mostly, I run from the stick. What about you? My guest on this week's show is a medical doctor who has dedicated most of his work to trying to unravel the complex challenge that is the #1 killer in the world: heart disease.

Listen & Learn:

How medical advances treating heart disease are largely responsible for extended life expectancy
Why Lipitor is one of the most prescribed drugs in the world
How your choices and health goals might shift if you planned to live past 100 in a healthy state
Healthspan vs. lifespan: What matters most?
What the "heart-healthy" 1980s got right and what we got wrong

Links & Resources:

Book on Amazon

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Physician, writer, and clinical researcher Haider Warraich is the author of the new book, State of the Heart - Exploring the History, Science and Future of Cardiac Disease that we'll be talking about today. He writes for the New York Times but also contributes to the Guardian, the Atlantic, the LA Times and the Boston Globe. He completed internal medicine and cardiology training at Harvard Medical School and Duke University. Haider has appeared on CNN, Fox, CBS, PBS, and shows like Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm Show, The World, Marketplace and the BBC World Service.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Garlic and feeling bad

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381: A Year Spent Growing & Foraging Your Own Food with Rob Greenfield Oct 16, 2019

Show notes

Would you survive if you had to grow or forage your own food for an entire year? Would you eat roadkill, wild yam, coconuts, and acorn grubs? Rob Greenfield is finishing up 365 days straight growing and gathering (from the 'wild') as his own food. Rob is an adventurer, environmental activist, humanitarian, and a guy on a mission to create a more sustainable and just world.Listen & Learn:

Why our current food systems are broken
How extremes can plant seeds for moderate ideas that make more sense
Why mono-crops and siloed thinking have a lot in common
How our planet will look and feel with 9 billion people on it

Links & Resources:

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Rob Greenfield is an adventurer, environmental activist, humanitarian, and a guy on a mission to create a sustainable and just world. He dumper-dived into more than two thousand dumpsters across the United States, cycled across the USA three times, wore all his own garbage as clothing for 30 days, and spent the past year growing and foraging his own food. Rob walks his talk.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Hydration

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380: CO2 is Your Friend with Dr. Artour Rahkimov Oct 10, 2019

Show notes

"Inhale fresh, life-giving oxygen… exhale toxic, dead carbon dioxide," said my yoga teacher. I've heard some variation of this hundreds of times in classes. Oxygen is good, carbon dioxide is bad. In with the good, out with the bad. Right?

As it turns out, this kindergarten understanding of breathing physiology is wrong. Most of us could really benefit from more CO2 because it opens up your air passageways, relaxes smooth muscle tissues, and allows for greater absorption of oxygen. Lack of CO2 actually leads to a lack of oxygen. Confused yet? Don't worry, you're not alone.

On this week's show, we'll set the record straight and help you understand why slow breathing boosts CO2, and why that's a good thing.

Listen & Learn:

The CO2 paradox: why you need carbon dioxide to actually absorb oxygen
Why 4-6 liters of air per minute is what we need but most people breathe 2x that much
How over-breathing reduces (not increases) oxygen levels
Why over-breathing and mouth breathing is associated with dozens of neurological disorders and diseases
How to slow down your breath

Links & Resources:

Artour's Site

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Artour Rahkimov has been teaching the Buteyko method and breath retraining to thousands of students for more than 17 years. He was trained by Ludmila Buteyko and Dr. Andrey Novoh-zhilov, MD, the Chief Physician of the Buteyko Clinic in Moscow. Dr. Artour trained numerous breathing practitioners in the US, Germany and Denmark.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Why bread makes me sick

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379: Know Your Nerves: Polyvagal Theory with Deb Dana Oct 02, 2019

Show notes

People often compare the human body to a car, but this is a bad analogy (unless it's a Tesla) because your body doesn't contain a combustion engine. You're electric, my friend, and your nerves are in the driver's seat. One electrical stimulus makes you anxious, another makes you calm; mostly, you're an out-of-control cross-fire of signals that kicks you around energetically and emotionally throughout the day. To know your nerves, you must know the vagus nerve. It's the master controller of the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system - and it's more complex than simply "rest and digest." Let's deep dive into the polyvagal theory on this week's show.

Listen & Learn:

How to better understand your body's nervous system responses
The importance of the vagus nerve for stress modulation
How to deal with triggers and embrace and appreciate glimmers
The polyvagal theory explained
Ventral vagal complex: readiness to connect
Dorsal vagal complex: collapse and freeze

Links & Resources:

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Deb is a clinician, consultant, lecturer, and coordinator of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute. Her work is based on the Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma, understand the autonomic nervous system, and move into states of protection and connection. She is the author of the book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy available on Amazon or through her website.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Organic vs conventional

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378: Kids Sleep, Parents Sleep - We All Need to Sleep! with Craig Canapari, MD Sep 26, 2019

Show notes

My second child has black circles under his eyes in all his photos from birth to age four. He slept as little as possible and willed himself through most days with all the angst and irritability of any insomniac. At age four, he finally started sleeping and quickly became a new person. He learned more, laughed more, talked (a lot) and was a joy to be around. Was it just the sleep? No, but it made a huge difference. No more nervous anxiety in the mornings, no more dark circles, and finally, he seemed to find real moments of peace.

When kids sleep poorly, parents sleep poorly, and the entire health and happiness of the household are affected. When you sleep badly, you're obviously tired and grumpy, but there are much more worrying long-term effects that can include malformed jaws (in children), weight gain, mood disorders, and cognitive impairment. But what can you do?

Listen & Learn:

How poor sleep decreases leptin (satiety hormone) and increases ghrelin (hunger hormone)
How bad sleep is correlated with hedonistic eating (think Netflix+ Haagen-Dazs binges)
How attachment parenting may not be the best approach for you
Why "cry it out" techniques are not for everyone and not for every stage of development
How to discern what you can and should control and what you should simply let go of

Links & Resources:

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Craig is a pediatrician at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital in New Haven, CT, specializing in the care of children with breathing and sleep problems. He is boarded in Pediatrics, Pediatric Pulmonology, and Sleep Medicine. His book, It's Never Too Late to Sleep Train, is available on Amazon or on his website.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Eat seaweed

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377: Medical-Industrial Complex with Mike Magee, MD Sep 19, 2019

Show notes

The American life expectancy is currently 79, which sounds great until you realize that is the 26th in line worldwide. Despite being one of the most developed and wealthy nations in the world, the US system is not only ridiculously overpriced (at least 2x), it's also ineffective. It's a double fail with upstream and downstream effects that are impossible to even begin to quantify. This wonky system was built post World War II with financial incentives going to everyone except the average citizen, and while no one has a clear cut solution, everyone agrees that things must change.

My guest on the show is a medical doctor and industry insider-turned-whistle blower, and his insights provide an optimistic 10+ year outlook for change.

Listen & Learn:

How the medical industry has 4x the number of lobbyists than the military
Why the US medical system is about 2x overpriced
How Germany, Canada, and the Scandanavian countries all seem to do it better
How spending on medical care is on track to reach 20% of GDP by 2026

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Mike Magee is on faculty at Presidents College at the University of Hartford. He has worked as a doctor, a university medical school administrator, a hospital executive, and head of global medical affairs for Pfizer. He's the author of the book Code Blue: Inside America's Medical-Industrial Complex available on Amazon.

Links & Resources:

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Choose Seafood

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376: A Life Less Stressed with Dr. Ron Ehrlich Sep 12, 2019

Show notes

I live in Spain where the average life expectancy just hit 83 years—number three in the world, less than one percentage of a point behind Switzerland and Japan. Foreigners often hypothesize that the reason is due to the diet, the long walks, or red wine that keep people alive until such an old age, but after I've lived here for 10 years, I must disagree.As I look out of my office window right now, the corner cafe is filled with office workers on a morning break drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and eating croissants. In the evening, that same crew will return for beer and wine, deep-fried tapas, and another round of cigarettes. This is the norm. So why then do they live so long? My theory is that people are less stressed, on average, all the time. Plus, the family unit and social ties are extremely strong. Grown adults will share a sitdown meal with their parents weekly (or more). Friendships are cherished and developed, the average workday is long and leisurely, and life is slower and less intense. Research clearly shows that great relationships and reduced stress are predictive of health worldwide, and yet most of us obsess much more about the perfect meal or the perfect workout (at least I do). Chronic stress is a silent killer that affects your mood, your waistlines, your hormones, and mental health. The goal is not to live a stress-free life, that's impossible; instead, our aim should be to reduce the stressors we can and manage the rest effectively through diet, exercise, nutrition, breathing, and positive mental models. Our guest on this week's podcast teaches a "stress less" holistic approach to wellness. Listen & Learn:

Why 90% of periodontal disease has no pain and how a lack of pain in life is not a signal of no problems
How thoughts are things, literally, they are neurotransmitters made of proteins
The PERMA model (positive, engaged, relationships, meaning, accomplishment)

Links & Resources:

ABOUT OUR GUEST

B.D.S (Syd Uni) FACNEM (Dent) Dr. Ron Ehrlich is a holistic health advocate, educator, and holistic dentist. Dr. Ron has developed his health model of how stress affects our health; breaking stress down to emotional, environmental, nutritional, structural and dental stressors. He's the author of the book A Life Less Stressed available on Amazon or his website.

Nutritional Tip of the Week: